Hope for the Church!

Beloved Family, I just now watched the conversion story of Father James Mawdsley and cannot keep it to myself. Many of you have already known of him and of his conversion to the Catholic Church, especially those who have attended the Catholic Identity Conference. The rest of us must. That is my opinion, of course, but I see no other hope for the Church in this dark night than holy, courageous priests who are willing to give their all for the One Who gave His all for us.

Perhaps, through his message, each of us might be willing – or converted – to truly be who God has called us to be, without hesitation, without compromise.

Our love and prayers for you all,
Mother Miriam

Mother Miriam’s Final Vows

“Now to Him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20,21)

Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God made the solemn profession of her final vows before Bishop Joseph Strickland on August 15, the feast of the Assumption, at St. Joseph the Worker parish in Tyler, Texas. The first member of her community to take final vows, Mother Miriam began the Daughters of Mary, Mother of Israel’s Hope, in 2008 and leads the community as its Prioress. Watch now in this exclusive feature presentation from LifeSiteNews the moment in which Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God takes her final vows before Bishop Strickland.

Watch at LifeSiteNews.com

Miracle in Missouri?

Beloved, I imagine that many of you have already learned about the wonderful miracle of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, Foundress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, whose body was found to be fully intact only last week on the Solemnity of the Ascension, four years after having been buried on the same Solemnity in 2019. I was at Sister Wilhelmina’s funeral for her beautiful Holy Requiem, and to be able to witness this extraordinary grace of God is, for me, one of the greatest happinesses of my life. What hope this brings to the community which she founded, and also to the Faithful throughout the world. I’ve included below the article from the National Catholic Register and pray your own hearts will be filled with joy and the heavenly reality of eternal life in Our Blessed Lord that awaits all who put their trust in Him. God bless you.
Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God, O.S.B.

Miracle in Missouri?

Body of Benedictine Sisters’ Foundress
Thought to Be Incorrupt

According to Catholic tradition, incorruptible saints give witness to the truth of the resurrection of the body and the life that is to come.

A pilgrim venerates the incorrupt body of Benedictine Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster on May 20. Sister Wilhelmina was recently exhumed in Gower, Missouri. (photo: Kelsey Wicks/CNA / EWTN)

Hundreds of pilgrims have descended on a Benedictine monastery for religious sisters in rural Missouri in recent days after news began to spread on social media last week that the recently exhumed remains of the contemplative order’s African American foundress appear to be incorrupt, four years after her death and burial in a simple wooden coffin.

Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster founded the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles — best known for their chart-topping Gregorian chant and classic Catholic hymn albums — in 1995 at the age of 70, leaving the Oblate Sisters of Providence, her community of more than 50 years, to do so.

Known for her devotion to the traditional Latin Mass and her faithfulness to Benedictine contemplation and the Liturgy of the Hours, she died at age 95 on May 29, 2019, on the Solemnity of the Ascension.

Roughly four years later, on the Solemnity of the Ascension in the Latin Rite, the abbess and sisters decided to move her body to a final resting place inside their monastery chapel, a long-standing custom for founders and foundresses.

Expecting to find bones, the Benedictine sisters instead unearthed a coffin with an apparently intact body, even though the body was not embalmed, and the wooden coffin had a crack down the middle that let in moisture and dirt for an unknown length of time during those four years.

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Holy Saturday:

More Than Meets The Eye,
and the Church of One

In our just sorrow for the death of Our Lord and our grievous sins that caused it, we naturally focus on the mystery of Our Lord lying, dead, in the tomb. The painting of the last post, by Hans Holbein the Younger, is a fruitful source of meditation. But there is so much more to this mystery: Christ’s triumphant descent into hell. From the Liturgical Year:

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The CHRISTIAN Reset: Thank God for Globalists

Beloved, I just now saw this portion of a video by Michael Matt of Remnant TV and did not want to keep it to myself. Michael’s messages are filled with truth, with sanity, and with hope for the true Faith and the Faithful.
God bless you,
Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God, O.S.B.

https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/6383-unite-the-clans-8-000-men-publicly-stand-with-christ

The Eve of the Feast of the Epiphany is
the Twelfth Day of Christmas

(from https://fisheaters.com/epiphanyeve.html)

The Eve of the Feast of the Epiphany is the twelfth day of Christmas, and tonight is known as”Twelfth Night” (or “Twelfthnight”). It begins the celebration of Christ’s revealing His Divinity in three ways, which is formally celebrated tomorrow:

  • to the Magi who, guided by the great and mysterious Star of Bethlehem, came to visit Him when He was a Baby (Matthew 2:1-19)
  • through His Baptism by St. John, when “the Spirit of God descending as a dove” came upon Him and there was heard a voice from Heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 3, John 1), and all Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity were manifest (Note: the Baptism of Our Lord is also commemorated on the 13th of January)
  • through His first public miracle — that of the wedding at Cana when Our Lord turned water into wine at the request of His Mother (John 2). Just as God’s first miracle before the Egyptian pharaoh, through Moses, was turning the waters of the Nile into blood, Our Lord’s first miracle was turning water into wine.

In many Catholic homes (especially Italian ones), it’s not Christmas Day that is for giving presents to children, but the Feast of Epiphany, when the gifts are given in a way related to the Magi. So today will have a “feel” of Christmas Eve, and because of the Epiphany’s association with the Magis’ gift-giving, tomorrow is often referred to colloquially as the “Little Christmas.”

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Fourth Sunday of Advent:
Saving Fire

The 4th Sunday of Advent originally did not have a Roman Station church because of the linkage between Ember Saturday and Sunday.  Eventually, to bring the Sunday into harmony with other great Sundays it gained a Station at the Basilica of the Twelve Apostles.

The 4th Sunday of Advent arrives on the heels of Ember Saturday with its preceding vigil readings and meditations in the night. Ember Saturday was in the ancient Church of Rome the day for priestly ordinations at St. Peter’s in the Vatican, the ceremonies of which lasted into Sunday morning.  They took things seriously back then.  In a sense, this Sunday is an extension of the Ember Day.

The Sunday Mass texts can be seen as a summation of our Advent preparation with the three great figures whom the Church chose to accompany us as we approach the arriving Lord. In the first chant of the Mass, the Introit, we hear the Prophet Isaiah cry out, “Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness (Hebrew sedeq – righteousness, justice); let the earth open, that salvation [Hebrew yêsha – “deliverance, salvation”; Latin Vulgate salvator – “a savior” ] may sprout forth”.  The Vulgate personifies both the justice of God, justice being “the just one”, and the saving action of God, “savior”, which is what we sing in the Introit and the characteristic Advent Antiphon from Isaiah 45: Rorate caeli desuper et nubes pluant iustum.

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The Third Sunday of Advent

THE PRACTICE OF ADVENT
by Dom Gueranger, 1910

If our holy mother the Church spends the time of Advent in this solemn preparation for the threefold coming of Jesus Christ; if, after the example of the prudent virgins, she keeps her lamp lit ready for the coming of the Bridegroom; we, being her members and her children, ought to enter into her spirit, and apply to ourselves this warning of our Saviour: ‘Let your loins be girt, and lamps burning in your hands, and ye yourselves be like unto men who wait for their Lord (St. Luke xii. 35, 36. )!’ The Church and we have, in reality, the same hopes. Each one of us is, on the part of God, an object of mercy and care, as is the Church herself. If she is the temple of God, it is because she is built of living stones; if she is the bride, it is because she consists of all the souls which are invited to eternal union with God. If it is written that the Saviour hath purchased the Church with His own Blood (Acts xx. 28. ), may not each one of us say of himself those words of St. Paul, ‘Christ hath loved me, and hath delivered Himself up for me (Gal. ii. 20.)’? Our destiny being the same, then, as that of the Church, we should endeavour during Advent, to enter into the spirit of preparation, which is, as we have seen, that of the Church herself.

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