Suffering With Joy

Prayer from Prime II

February 23, 2010

Cometary knots in the Helix Nebula

Another prayer from the Hour of Prime prayed daily by those keeping the 1962 liturgical books…

I manipulated the Hubble image at the left by saturating the colors, rotating it, and rendering it as an oil painting with none of the detail of the original.  Then I laid down the script to make another prayer card which you may copy if you wish.  I love the colors and wish this photo would inspire a textile designer to create a woven or print fabric for a long dress!  (Sorry, guys – maybe a shirt?)

The following information from APOD tells the context of the cometary knots.  If you click on “Helix Nebula” you will see the very famous telescope photo called “The Eye of God”.

The Helix Nebula is the closest example of a planetary nebula created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The Helix Nebula, given a technical designation of NGC 7293, lies about 700 light-years away towards the constellation of Aquarius.

Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise Him in the heights;

Praise Him, all you His angels, praise him, all you His hosts.

Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all you shining stars. (Psalm 148: 1-3)

Tags: art, Divine Office, Liturgical calendar

Sunday Snippets – A Catholic Carnival

February 21, 2010

Welcome to Sunday Snippets where Catholic bloggers link to their favorite posts of the week.  Anyone is welcome to join in the fun.

This week I didn’t post much, even though I had good intentions.  I just got overtaken with duties and only so much energy to accomplish them. Nevertheless, I’ve managed to keep to my 1/2 hour of spiritual reading every day but one.  This Lent my book is Romano Guardini’s The Art of Praying: The Principles and Methods of Christian Prayer which I started a few years ago and never finished.  It’s one of my top 10 recommended for Lent.

This week I was determined to conquer one aspect of the digital art program I use.  It resulted in my post on a prayer from the Divine Office of Prime superimposed on a Hubble photograph of Pismus 24.  I hope to create more of these as time goes on.

I researched and wrote an article on the history of Ash Wednesday which is here.  The clip art was black and white, but I used my digital art program to add color.

This week I read The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back (John MacRae Books)by Charles Pellegrino and will be reviewing the book soon.  The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saw the heart of hell and endured as eye witnesses of the greatest evil created by man.  A great and holy man, Dr. Paul Takashi Nagai, born into Shintoism, turned atheist and finally Catholic is revered by all Japanese for his wisdom and approach to healing from the wounds of the bombs.  Today I checked a book out from the church library about him: A Song for Nagasaki: The Story of Takashi Nagai-Scientist, Convert, and Survivor of the Atomic Bomb.  If you like Asian history or world history, these books provide valuable insight into the dynamics of the War in the Pacific.  The first should be required reading for all high schoolers and the second for Catholics from teens on up.

Today I add one more Kseniya Simonova sand art piece.  Although I can’t read Russian, I got it that she had a friend whose baby died.  What a memorial!  God bless everyone, stay safe, and pray for the conversion of hearts to God.

Tags: art, Divine Office

Prayer from Prime

February 17, 2010

The hour of Prime from the Divine Office is my favorite.  It was suppressed after Vatican II when a totally new breviary came out, but those who stay with the 1962 liturgical books pray it every day. This is one of two beautiful prayers which I superimposed over a star shot from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.  I adjusted the color intensity and made some changes to accommodate the need for script visibility.  You can print it out and use it for a prayer card.

Pismus 24 is one of my favorite images taken by the Hubble telescope.   Originally astronomers thought it was one star, but the excellent pictures taken by Hubble show that Pismus derives its luminosity from not one but at least 3 stars. Toward the bottom of the image, stars are still forming in the associated emission nebula NGC 6357.

“The heavens are telling the glory of God…” (Ps 19: 1)

Tags: art, Divine Office

Frost and Cold Bless the Lord

February 3, 2010

Hoar frost on viburnam

This morning when I woke up, what did my wondering eyes behold but spectacular hoar frost on everything.  This phenomena occurs every now and then in the Ozarks and thanks to my very nice husband, I have some photos to share with you.

On clear, frosty nights, God works His wonders, readying winter beauty to greet the dawn.  If vegetation or objects have been chilled below freezing by radiation cooling, ice crystals form and the fragile pointy thorns create a fantasy world we glimpse only until the sun melts them with its warmth.  Radiation cooling is the process by which a body loses its heat by radiation and that’s enough science for today.

Gods gift this morning reminded me of the canticle of Daniel in the Divine Office hour of Sunday Lauds (praise).  The third chapter, verse 69 calls out:

Frost and cold, bless the Lord; praise and exalt Him above all forever.

Through Daniel we find ourselves realizing that our poor efforts at praise need the help of all creation. Beginning with verse 57 through verse 90 we call upon the heavens, the earth, the angels, spirits of the just and men to praise and bless the Lord, ending with joyful thanks for deliverance from the powers of hell and death through the salvation Jesus brings.

The fence post is cropped from a larger photo and colored sepia.  the hoary tentacles reminded me of the head of Medusa, hence the title of the picture.

Hoar frost on fence with honeysuckle behind.

This image makes a brilliant graphic statement.  Roger has a real eye for this kind of thing.

Greenbridge

Frosty trees  set off a country bridge near home.  Locals call it “Greenbridge”.  You can see the river underneath on the right.

Forming a perfect background for the hoary branches, still water mirrors the trees on the river bank at the city park.  Cropped from a larger image.

Branch over the river

Lastly, a view from the bridge upriver.  The trees appear to be embracing all the sky.  Cropped image from a larger composition.

On the river bank

These images are copyrighted, but if you want to use them  you may as long as you credit Barb Schoeneberger and Roger Prai and if you would, please donate a little to this site.

Tags: Divine Office, joy

Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary

December 8, 2009

Today the Church celebrates with joy the advent of our Savior, Jesus Christ, through the Immaculate Conception of His mother, Mary, in the womb of her mother, St. Anne.  We celebrate the sublime privilege by which Mary was preserved from Original Sin from the beginning of her conception by the power of God.

Immaculate Conception c.1626, Peter Pauwel Reubens, oil on canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid

 A Painting for this Feast 

This beautiful painting of Our Lady under the title of “Immaculate Conception” portrays Mary as the woman of Revelations 12:1.  She is the one promised by God in Genesis 3:15.  It is one of my favorites because of the rendition of colors and technique and because of the rich symbolism Reubens included.  Great religious art is always meant to convey the truth of the revealed Word of God, and can be a great aid to prayer.  Reubens accomplished this for me as it fills my heart with joy to contemplate what God has done for us in the Blessed Virgin.

Mary in Today’s Liturgy

Mary was not only the daughter of God, she was Mother of the Son and bride of the Holy Spirit.  For this reason she could not be permitted to suffer the impurity of Original Sin, but was instead filled with grace (Lk. 1:28) from the very beginning of her conception (Cant. 4: 7). Without Original Sin, she lacked the concupiscence we all inherit from Adam and Eve and thus remained sinless throughout her life. 

At Vespers of the Divine Office today the Church chants the Magnificat antiphon:

All generations shall call me blessed, because He that is mighty hath done great things for me, alleluia.

The prayer at Mass and at the end of each hour of the Divine Office is:

O God, Who by the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin didst prepare a worthy dwelling-place for Thy divine Son; grant, we beseech thee, that, as by the foreseen merits of the death of this, Thy Son, Thou didst preserve her from every stain of sin, we also may, through her intercession, be cleansed from our sins and united with Thee.  Through the same Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end.  Amen.

History of the Celebration

The early Fathers of the Church taught this dogma which they inherited from the Apostles.  Dom Prosper Guerenger, the great Benedictine monastic and liturgical reformer of the 19th century, tells us in his first volume on the Liturgical Year that  

1. by the 500s, the feast was celebrated in the Eastern Church,
2. by the 700s in Spain,
3. by the 800s in Naples,
4. by the time of Charlemagne in France,
5. by 1066 in England,
6. by 1049 in Germany,
7. by 1142 in Belgium.

History shows that it was Pope Sixtus IV who published the decree for the celebration of  Our Lady’s Conception in Rome in 1476.  Pope St. Pius V included the feast in the universal edition of the Roman breviary in 1568. 

A Celebration of God’s Omnipotence and Mercy

This great and joyful feast is a celebration of God’s love and glory, His omnipotence and mercy towards man.  He knows how weak we are, and has taken pity on us.  Not only did the Father send us His Son to free us from our slavery to sin through the Immaculate Virgin, He gave us in her a loving Mother (Jn 19: 26-27) whose example of purity and fidelity to God’s will shows us the way to turn our feet. 

We who were not conceived without sin have a Brother who is God and a Mother who was without any stain of sin and is perfectly united to Him.  She is, moreover, a human being who experienced the same kinds of pain and suffering we suffer as human beings, save sin.  She knows our plight.  Whatever God the Father asks of us, no matter how difficult it seems, we can find joy and peace following the example of Mary, the human being who most closely imitated His Son, Jesus.  It pleases Him that we honor this most beautiful of His creations.  We are truly blessed.

Tags: Blessed Virgin, Divine Office, Liturgical calendar, peace and joy

All Saints – Our Heavenly Family

Today, November 1st, is a special feast in the liturgical year – All Saints Day.  In the Divine Office hour of Vespers, a short scriptural reading called the “chapter” is from Apocalypse 7: 2-3:

Behold, I, John, saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God; and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, who had it in their power to harm the earth and the sea, saying: do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.

The prayer for the day, said at Mass and after each hour of the Divine Office is:

Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given us in one feast to venerate the merits of all Thy saints; we beseech Thee through the multitude of intercessors to grant us the desired abundance of Thy mercy.  Through our Lord Jesus Christ Who lives and reigns with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.

The Gospel of the day is Matthew 5: 1-12, the Beatitudes.People behind the pro-death agenda have given themselves over to the Prince of Darkness, whose kingdom is the world.  Our offering of pain and suffering of persecution for justice’ sake guarantees us a share in the heavenly kingdom and bears more fruit for those living in darkness than we can know in this life.

Finally, the Gospel of the Beatitudes teaches us how we will get to heaven to join our family of saints.  Which beatitude are you most attracted to?  Mine is “Blesed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  The world hates God and the natural law.  No doubt the babies targeted for abortion are persecuted, and soon the disabled and the elderly will also be persecuted overtly if things continue on their current trajectory. 

The prayer reminds us that we have countless people in heaven who want to see us join them some day.  They are interceding to God for us.  We are not forgotten.  Just as God was merciful to them, He also extends His mercy to us when we ask with a sincere heart.

This day celebrates every person who is in heaven, whether known and officially named in the Church’s liturgy or not.  It is interesting to me that the seal of the angels is on the forehead and not the heart.  Our heart represents our feelings, our forehead represents our mind and will.  We may not feel like doing what God wants, but by an act of will, we do it anyway, and, if we are really humble, we do it joyfully rather than begrudgingly.  Just the thing for people who are suffering to keep in mind!

Be sealed with the mark of Christ, the Cross.  Rejoice in seeking God’s mercy for others by suffering with joy.

Paradise,1375-76, Giusto de' Menabuoi, fresco, baptistry, Padua

Tags: Divine Office, Liturgical calendar, peace and joy, pro-life

He Made Us; His We Are

“From the beginning and before the world was I created, and unto the world to come I shall not cease to be, and in the holy dwelling place I have ministered before him.” Eccl. 24:14.

Catholics praying the Divine Office will find this Biblical quote in the hour of Lauds from the Saturday Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  It is a favorite of mine because not only does it apply to Our Lady, it applies to every person created.  In this one verse God tells us that we are in His mind from all eternity, and that we will live forever after death, worshiping and praising Him. 

I am constantly struck by the love God has for each person – that He made us and His we are. (Ps. 99:3)  When we are struggling with pain and illnesses of all types we can sometimes forget that One greater than we has us in His heart.  Often we are so preoccupied with just getting by under our own power we forget to surrender to His power – to stop and ask what He is asking from us.

With the culture of death gaining greater ascendance daily, it seems to me that we must practice our Faith ever more diligently and especially to pray for the conversion of others.  (We must pray daily for our own conversion, too, but that is another topic.) 

For those of us who cannot do much in the physical realm, there remain the intentions of the heart: the unseen sacrifices we make in union with Christ.  The value of these sacrifices cannot be measured in earthly terms.  We will only know their true worth at the Last Judgment.  Fortunately, we have great examples to follow from Our Lady to our brothers and sisters in Christ who have gone on before us.  Saints such as Catherine Laboure, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Faustina Kowalska, St. Aloysius Gonzaga, St. John Cantius, and Blessed Herman Joseph of Steinfeld – all spiritual giants who called no attention to themselves but left us the example of quiet holiness and the desire that all come to know and love Our Lord.

Tags: Blessed Virgin, Christ, conversion, Divine Office, pain, sacrifice, suffering