Very intersting article on the location of the new Mormon Temple in Tegucigalpas, Honduras. It will not be located next to the Basilica of Our Lady of Suyapa.
Mormon Times | Published: Saturday, Jan. 31, 2009 | By Michael De Groote
"Public fears that a "gigantic temple" would block the view of one of Honduras' most famous Catholic basilicas has led The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to look for a new location for the Tegucigalpa Honduras Temple.
The Tegucigalpa Honduras Temple was announced June 9, 2006, and ground was broken a year later at a site that is about 2,000 feet away from the Our Lady of Suyapa Basilica. The LDS Church purchased the land about 15 years ago, according to a local church leader, Luis Duarte, who was quoted in an article in the Honduran daily newspaper La Tribuna. The site is across the street from the National Autonomous University of Honduras, the largest university in Honduras.
"People saw (the temple being built so close to the basilica) as a provocation," said Bishop Darwin Rudy Andino Ramirez, auxiliary bishop of the Tegucigalpa Catholic Archdiocese, in La Tribuna, "but we have not seen it that way and are in dialogue with them because a representative from the (LDS) church headquarters in the United States of America came to Honduras to talk. But I do not know what decisions they have reached."
When final building permits were not forthcoming, the LDS Church began the process of looking for a new site for the temple. "No decision has been made yet (where the new temple site will be located), the church will make an announcement when a place is found," Duarte told La Tribuna.
The proposed temple would serve members of the LDS Church in Honduras and Nicaragua. as of December 2006, Honduras and Nicaragua had more than 175,000 members of the LDS Church and 308 congregations."
I visited the shrine some 20+ years ago. It is a mystic place, akin to Czestochowa in Poland (though obviously not as old.) It is in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Tegucigalpas.
Can you imagine if the LDS had built this next door?
Luckily, in Honduras, at least for now - Our Lady has the last word!
LONDON (CNS) -- The Vatican has dismissed the claims of a woman in England who says Mary has visited her outside her home for more than 20 years.
Ruling that her claims are "highly questionable," the Vatican also has refused to approve the statutes of the community she founded.
Patricia De Menezes said the apparition has been appearing to her beneath a pine tree at her home in Surbiton, a London suburb, since 1984. She claimed she has received a divine message that the Catholic Church must proclaim aborted babies to be martyrs.
She also founded the Community of Divine Innocence, which has about 3,000 members in 43 countries, many coming from the pro-life movement. Community members "strive for holiness and innocence within God's own family," according to the community's Web site.
Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, announced the decision in a letter to Archbishop Kevin McDonald of Southwark, the archdiocese in which De Menezes lives. The letter from Archbishop Amato was dated July 16; it was released by the Southwark Archdiocese Sept. 21.
Archbishop Amato said the doctrinal congregation found De Menezes' claims to be exaggerated and hysterical. He said inappropriate words and phrases were attributed to Jesus, problematic demands were made over the status of aborted children, and "unusually violent and threatening language" was used in attacks on church authorities.
"Given the supposed revelations which ground the spirituality of the Community of Divine Innocence are highly questionable, it follows that the community's spirituality is flawed at its root," said Archbishop Amato.
"Because this spirituality thoroughly animates the community's proposed constitution, it cannot be approved," he said.
The archbishop specifically took issue with the message that De Menezes claims to have received about the "martyrdom of all the innocent children deliberately killed before birth."
"A martyr is someone who bears witness to Christ," he said. "If the victims of abortion were to qualify for martyrdom, it would then seem that all victims of any moral evil should be likewise deemed martyrs."
Archbishop McDonald said in a Sept. 21 statement that the ruling meant there is "no ecclesiastical approbation for Catholics to meet as the group known as Divine Innocence."
"I am aware that many devout people, deeply committed to the pro-life movement, have become involved with the Divine Innocence," he said. "I wish to encourage them in their work and prayer, but in view of the observations of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, this must no longer be in the context of the organization or spirituality of the Divine Innocence."
De Menezes, 67, a freelance jewelry designer, declined to comment on the Vatican ruling.
She has said that her supernatural experiences began when she heard the words "I am the bread of life" while cycling near her home. She said she later saw visions of Mary, Jesus and St. Joseph in her garden and was catechized by them.
She claims that Mary continues to appear to her on a daily basis.
Following the Archdiocese of Southwark's examination and rejection of her claims in 2001, De Menezes sought Vatican approval of the community's statutes.
Father Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne & The Miraculous Medal
The conversion of Alphonse Ratisbonne is truly a remarkable and beautiful testimony to the power of the Blessed Virgin Mary, through whom it pleases Our Lord to give all graces to humanity, and well worth reading.
Alphonse Ratisbonne was an agnostic Jew. He was a virulent anti-Catholic as well and blamed the Catholic Church for the suffering of the Jewish people.
Here is a brief description of the events which caused Alphonse Ratisbonne to agree to wear the Miraculous Medal:
"Since you abhor superstition and espouse such liberal views," he asks Alphonse, "would you consider submitting to a simple test?"
"What test?"
"To wear something I'm going to give you. It's a medal of the Holy Virgin. It appears quite ridiculous to you, no doubt. But as for me, I attach great importance to it." And he shows Alphonse the Miraculous Medal attached to a cord.
Alphonse is dumbstruck. He can scarcely believe the baron's impertinence. But as a man of the world, he doesn't want to seem to be making too much of a trifle. So he consents, breezily quoting a line from The Tales of Hoffman: "If it does me no good, at least it will do me no harm."
This is too much. "Laissons ces sottises!" exclaims Alphonse -- "Let's stop this foolishness!" For the mention of St. Bernard has reminded him of his brother, Abbe' Théodore Ratisbonne, author of a biography of the Cistercian saint. Anything that reminds Alphonse of his traitor-brother arouses his rage. [Note: Théodore Ratisbonne, Alphonse's older brother, had converted to Catholicism]
However, the baron persists. If Alphonse refuses to pray this short prayer, he insists, he'll thereby render the whole "test" null and void. So, Alphonse consents. At the Baron's behest, he even agrees to copy out the Memorare. Then he pockets it and leaves, greatly amused at the entire absurd episode.
But later that night, when he mechanically copies the prayer, something happens. He can't get the words of the Memorare out of his mind. They haunt him, he recounts later, like an annoying tune one can't dislodge from one's head. Over and over again, with mounting irritation, he murmurs this obtrusive prayer of St. Bernard.
Our Lady appeared to Ratisbonne at the church of Sant' Andrea delle Fratte in Rome in 1842. After the vision of Our Lady, Ratisbonne was instantly converted to the Catholic faith.
Learning of Ratisbonne's conversion through this medal was one of the events that inspired St. Maximilian Kolbe to found the Militia Immaculata.
Fr. Alberto Arzilli, OFM Conv., a fellow friar with St. Maximilian, related the story on April 26, 1942:
"Fr. Maximilian . . . was convinced of what he had to do [regarding the founding of the MI] on the [75th] anniversary day of the apparition of Our Lady to Alphonse Ratisbonne, January 20, 1917. The inspiration came to him during the morning meditation conducted by the . . . Father Rector Ignudi. In the meditation Father Ignudi told the story of Ratisbonne's miraculous conversion and commented on it."
"With a face beaming and bubbling with joy at the power of Our Lady shown in the conversion of Ratisbonne, Friar Max spoke to me of his inspiration. Smiling, he told me we had to crush the Devil and all heresies, and especially the error of Masonry."
Wikipedia has an excellent article on Mary's Assumption here: Assumption of Mary
Tota pulchra es, Maria
et macula originalis non est in te.
Vestimentum tuum candidum quasi nix, et facies tua sicut sol.
Tota pulchra es, Maria,
et macula originalis non est in te.
Tu gloria Jerusalem, tu laetitia Israel, tu honorificentia populi nostri.
Tota pulchra es, Maria.
You are completely pure, Mary,
and the stain of original sin is not within you.
Your clothing is white like snow, and your face is like the sun.
You are completely pure, Mary,
and the stain of original sin is not within you.
You are the glory of Jerusalem, you are the joy of Israel, you are the honoured of our people.
You are completely pure, Mary
Saint Maximilian Kolbe (January 8, 1894–August 14, 1941), also known as Maksymilian or Massimiliano Maria Kolbe and "Apostle of Consecration to Mary," born as Rajmund Kolbe, was a Polish Conventual Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz in Poland.
He was canonized by the Catholic Church as Saint Maximilian Kolbe on October 10, 1982 by Pope John Paul II, and declared a martyr of charity. He is the patron saint of drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalist, amateur radio, prisoners, and the pro-life movement. Pope John Paul II declared him the "The Patron Saint of Our Difficult Century".
Kolbe, the son of a Polish family with partial German origin, was born in 1894 in Zduńska Wola, at that time part of Russian Empire, as the second son of Juliusz Kolbe and Marianna Kolbe (née Dąbrowska). His parents moved to Pabianice, where they worked first as weavers, then ran a bookstore. Later, in 1914, his father joined Józef Piłsudski's Polish Legions and was captured by the Russians for fighting for the independence of a partitioned Poland.
In 1907, Kolbe and his elder brother Franciszek decided to join the Conventual Franciscan Order. They illegally crossed the border between Russia and Austria-Hungary and joined the Conventual Franciscan junior seminary in Lwów. In 1910, Kolbe was allowed to enter the novitiate. He professed his first vows in 1911, adopting the name Maximilian, and the final vows in 1914, in Rome, adopting the names Maximilian Maria, to show his veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In 1912, he was sent to Kraków, and, in the same year, to Rome, where he studied philosophy, theology, mathematics, and physics. He took a great interest in astrophysics and the prospect of space flight. While in Rome he designed[citation needed] an airplane-like spacecraft, similar in concept to the eventual space shuttle, and attempted to patent it. He earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1915 at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and the doctorate in theology in 1919 at the Pontifical University of St. Bonaventure. During his time as a student, he witnessed vehement demonstrations against Popes St. Pius X and Benedict XV by the Freemasons in Rome and was inspired to organize the Militia Immaculata, or Army of Mary, to work for conversion of sinners and the enemies of the Catholic Church through the intercession of the Virgin Mary. In 1918, he was ordained a priest. In the conservative publications of the Militia Immaculatae, he particularly condemned Freemasonry, Communism, Zionism, Capitalism and Imperialism.
In 1919, he returned to the newly independent Poland, where he was very active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and supervising the monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, a seminary, a radio station, and several other organizations and publications. Between 1930 and 1936, he took a series of missions to Japan, where he founded a monastery at the outskirts of Nagasaki, a Japanese paper, and a seminary. The monastery he founded remains prominent in the Roman Catholic Church in Japan. Kolbe decided to build the monastery on a mountain side that, according to Shinto beliefs, was not the side best suited to be in tune with nature. When the atomic bomb struck Nagasaki, Kolbe's monastery was saved because the blast of the bomb hit the side of the mountain that the monastery was not located on, the said side took the main blow of the blast. Had Kolbe built the monastery on the side of mountain he was advised to choose, his work and all of his fellow monks would have been destroyed.
Auschwitz
During the Second World War, in the friary, Kolbe provided shelter to refugees from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews whom he hid from Nazi persecution in his friary in Niepokalanów. He was also active as a radio amateur, with Polish call letters SP3RN, vilifying Nazi activities through his reports.
On February 17, 1941, he was arrested by the German Gestapo and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison, and, on May 25, was transferred to Auschwitz I as prisoner #16670.
In July 1941, a man from Kolbe's barracks had vanished, prompting SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, the Lagerführer (i.e., the camp commander), to pick 10 men from the same barracks to be starved to death in Block 11 (notorious for torture), in order to deter further escape attempts. (The man who had disappeared was later found drowned in the camp latrine.) One of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, lamenting his family, and Kolbe volunteered to take his place.
During the time in the cell, he led the men in songs and prayer. After three weeks of dehydration and starvation, only Kolbe was still alive. Finally he was executed with an injection of carbolic acid.
Kolbe is one of ten 20th-century martyrs from across the world who are depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, London. He was canonized by Pope John Paul II on 10 October 1982, in the presence of Gajowniczek.
Militia Immaculata Consecration Prayer
Composed by Saint Maximilian Kolbe
O Immaculata, Queen of Heaven and earth, refuge of sinners and our most loving Mother, God has willed to entrust the entire order of mercy to you. I, (name), a repentant sinner, cast myself at your feet, humbly imploring you to take me with all that I am and have, wholly to yourself as your possession and property. Please make of me, of all my powers of soul and body, of my whole life, death and eternity, whatever most pleases you.
If it pleases you, use all that I am and have without reserve, wholly to accomplish what was said of you: "She will crush your head," and "You alone have destroyed all heresies in the whole world. " Let me be a fit instrument in your immaculate and merciful hands for introducing and increasing your glory to the maximum in all the many strayed and indifferent souls, and thus help extend as far as possible the blessed kingdom of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus. For wherever you enter you obtain the grace of conversion and growth in holiness, since it is through your hands that all graces come to us from the most Sacred Heart of Jesus.
V. Allow me to praise you, O sacred Virgin R. Give me strength against your enemies
Saint Maximilian Kolbe is one of my favorite saints. I was consecrated to the Immaculata through the YMI (Youth Mission of the Immaculata) and the Father Kolbe Missionaries of the Immaculata many years ago.
I found this video with a brief story of his life and many pictures:
I wish we had many, many more priests like Saint Maximilian Kolbe! I would not be surprised to find there are some out there.
Whatever the case, we are all called to be saints. Each one of us was created by God in order to know, love, and serve Him in this life in order that we may be happy with him forever in the next life.
Not everyone is called to the priesthood. Not everyone is called to religious life. Not everyone is called to martyrdom.
However, all of us, and each human being you meet is called to be a saint. We are all called to holiness. The fact that we are not all called to the priesthood, religious life, or martyrdom does not mean we don't have to be holy.
Heaven is for saints.
Saints are sinners who recognize their weakness, sinfulness, and imperfection, and then repent and turn to God.
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