A beautiful Dream about the Warning.

I prayed and picked the avatar for you Susan You are more than welcome to change it at anytime if you like.

It is off the Martyr ,St Agnes. Do you know much about her?

According to tradition, Saint Agnes was a member of the Roman nobility born c. 291 and raised in a Christian family. She suffered martyrdom at the age of twelve[2] or thirteen during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, on 21 January 304.
The Prefect Sempronius wished Agnes to marry his son, and on Agnes' refusal he condemned her to death. As Roman law did not permit the execution of virgins, Sempronius had a naked Agnes dragged through the streets to a brothel. Various versions of the legend give different methods of escape from this predicament. In one, as she prayed, her hair grew and covered her body. It was also said that all of the men who attempted to rape her were immediately struck blind. In another the son of the prefect is struck dead, but revived after Agnes prayed for him, causing her release. There is then a trial from which Sempronius excuses himself, and another figure presides, sentencing her to death. When led out to die she was tied to a stake, but the bundle of wood would not burn, or the flames parted away from her, whereupon the officer in charge of the troops drew his sword and beheaded her, or, in some other texts, stabbed her in the throat. It is also said that the blood of Agnes poured to the stadium floor where other Christians soaked up the blood with cloths.
A few days after Agnes' death, her foster-sister, Saint Emerentiana was found praying by her tomb; she claimed to be the daughter of Agnes' wet nurse, and was stoned to death after refusing to leave the place and reprimanding the pagans for killing her foster sister. Emerentiana was also later canonized. The daughter of Constantine I, Saint Constance, was also said to have been cured of leprosy after praying at Agnes' tomb. Emerentiana and Constance appear in the scenes from the life of Agnes on the 14th-century Royal Gold Cup in the British Museum.
Agnes' bones are conserved beneath the high altar in the church of Sant'Agnese fuori le mura in Rome, built over the catacomb that housed Agnes' tomb. Her skull is preserved in a separate chapel in the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone in Rome's Piazza Navona.
An early account of Agnes' death, stressing her steadfastness and virginity, but not the legendary features of the tradition, is given by Saint Ambrose.[2]
[edit] In popular culture



Santa Inês (Saint Agnes)
by Francisco de Zurbarán.
An interesting custom is observed on her feast day. Two lambs are brought from the Trappist abbey of Tre Fontane in Rome to the pope to be blessed. On Holy Thursday they are shorn, and from the wool is woven the pallium which the pope gives to a newly consecrated metropolitan archbishop as a sign of his jurisdiction and his union with the pope.
Saint Agnes is the patron saint of young girls. Folk custom called for them to practice rituals on Saint Agnes' Eve (20–21 January) with a view to discovering their future husbands. This superstition has been immortalized in John Keats's poem, "The Eve of Saint Agnes".
She is represented in art as a young girl in robes, holding a palm branch in her hand and a lamb at her feet or in her arms.
In the historical novel Fabiola or, the Church of the Catacombs, written by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman in 1854, Agnes is the soft-spoken teenage cousin and confidant of the protagonist, the beautiful noblewoman Fabiola.
Hrotsvitha, the tenth-century nun and poetess, wrote a play the subject of which was Saint Agnes. Grace Andreacchi wrote a play based on the legends surrounding the martyrdom of Saint Agnes.

 

I always liked John Keat's poem on , 'The Eve of St Agnes'

39. The Eve of St. Agnes


I.

ST. AGNES’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told 5
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.

II.

His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man; 10
Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,
And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan,
Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees:
The sculptur’d dead, on each side, seem to freeze,
Emprison’d in black, purgatorial rails: 15
Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat’ries,
He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails
To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails.

 

I did talk to Mary one time; I will pray for yourself and your children.

 

I teach at a private Catholic School and I once taught an Agnes. She was a miracle for the parents and later they had a little boy they called Leo (symbol of lion and lamb). I learned a little about Agnes at that time. I like the picture but I am close to Francis of Asissi. Do you have a picture of him with animals? Do you go to Medjugorje often or have you been there?

 

I love that picture (the one in the chosen for Sue's avatar). It takes me back my childhood. My sister had a book of saints and that exact picture was in it. I think that book is still in print.

No offense, padraig, but I don't care for the other picture of St. Agnes that you posted. The artist painted her with man hands and a 5 o'clock shadow! In real life she was so dainty that during her arrest the handcuffs slipped off of her wrists.

 

Yes Sue I was in Medugorje once, as I think were many on the forum . I know some people who practically live there. I wish the whole world were like that village. But I suppose thats the point we are all supposed to be Medugorje, to carry it around with us.

I hope you like this other avatar. It is a funny little dog a Corgi, looking like he wants to eat Francis.

 

Well Deanna I was over in England a few weeks ago and attended an art echibition in a museum. It was of the school of Pre raphaelites which is where this picture is from.

I like St Francis but have an abiding interest in St Philomena who seems such a mystery gal but so powerful. Hard to imagine the courage of these young girls in the face of toture, brutality, rape and atrocious deaths.

Here is a painting from the same school.



Paul Delaroche

French, 1797 - 1856
The Young Martyr

Date: 1855

Courtesy: Musée du Louvre
This painting was completed a year before Delaroche's death in 1856. It depicts the death of a young Christian martyr in the 3rd century AD during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. Click here to read more about Diocletian.
'The Young Martyr' has been called the 'Christian Ophelia' due to its resemblance to portrayals of Ophelia (from Shakespeare's Hamlet) by Pre-Raphaelite artists such as John Everett Millais.
See also 'A Christian Martyr Drowned in the Tiber During the Reign of Diocletian' at the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia.

..and here is one of St Eulalia I saw at the exhibition..



Saint Eulalia (Aulaire, Aulazia, Ollala, Eulària) (c. 290–12 February 303), co-patron saint of Barcelona, was a 13-year-old Roman Christian virgin who suffered martyrdom in Barcelona during the persecution of Christians in the reign of emperor Diocletian. There is some dispute as to whether she is the same person as Saint Eulalia of Mérida, whose story is similar.[1]


Relief of Eulalia by Bartolomé Ordóñez in the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia.
For refusing to recant her Christianity, the Romans subjected her to thirteen tortures; including:

• Putting her into a barrel with knives (or glass) stuck into it and rolling it down a street (according to tradition, the one now called Baixada de Santa Eulalia "Saint Eulalia's descent").[2]
• Cutting off her breasts
• Crucifixion on an X-shaped cross. She is depicted with this cross, the instrument of her martyrdom.
• Finally, decapitation.

Stylized X-shaped Cross of Santa Eulalia in L'Hospitalet

A dove flew from her neck after decapitation. This is one point of similarity with the story of Eulalia of Mérida, in which a dove flew from the girl's mouth at the moment of her death. In addition, Eulalia of Mérida's tortures are sometimes enumerated among the Barcelona martyrs, and the two were similar in age and year of death.
Eulalia is commemorated with statues and street names throughout Barcelona.[2] Her body was originally interred in the church of Santa Maria de les Arenes (St. Mary of the Sands; now Santa Maria del Mar, St. Mary of the Sea). It was hidden in 713 during the Moorish invasion, and only recovered in 878. In 1339, it was relocated to an alabaster sarcophagus in the crypt of the newly-built Cathedral of Santa Eulalia.[3] The festival of Saint Eulalia is held in Barcelona for a week around her feast day on February 12.[4]

 

As far as paintings go, that's more like it, padraig. They're gorgeous and this one absolutely blows my mind:

 

Your last posting on your dream/visions was amazing padraig! I truly can't wait for the event. I'll be very nervous for sure, but the fruits it will produce for individuals and the world will be amazing! I truly can't wait to see angels in the sky and whatever other images are sent our way when Heaven's gates open. I was looking at a Christmas picture recently of the angels appearing to the shepherds and I couldn't help thinking they were so lucky. Then I read your post and was blown away of what the stars will do. Can't wait to see it!

I hope you have more to post. I'm always left wanting to hear more!

 

I think at the end it will be like a Second Pentecost. After that a rebirth. I think some of the saints have talked about the monasteries and convents being full up again .The big crisis is that people no longer believe. Even often people who do believe ..well often it is not an active belief a belief that changes lives and relationships. A kinda moribound dead belief.

I live in Ireland, supposed to be one of the most Catholic countries in the world. But I am amazed at the reaction of my fellow Catholics to the fact that I go to mass each morning before work, or that I ffast each day and so on. THye are amazed and look at me as if I had dropped from a flying saucer. But it is not so very long ago that daily mass going was quite common place.

After the Warning I believe the Churches will be packed again..at least for a while. I am reminded of:

Romans 5:20

New International Version (NIV)
20 The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,

So where sin abounds , grace EVEN MORE abounds. Since as Billy Graham points out sin as probably at its highest zenith since the foundation of the world, than there must be a huge resevoir of grace ready to be outpoured on us all.

'Some years ago, my wife, Ruth, was reading the draft of a book I was writing. When she finished a section describing the terrible downward spiral of our nation’s moral standards and the idolatry of worshiping false gods such as technology and sex, she startled me by exclaiming, “If God doesn’t punish America, He’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”
She was probably thinking of a passage in Ezekiel where God tells why He brought those cities to ruin. “Now this was the sin of … Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen” (Ezekiel 16:49–50, NIV).
I wonder what Ruth would think of America if she were alive today. In the years since she made that remark, millions of babies have been aborted and our nation seems largely unconcerned. Self-centered indulgence, pride, and a lack of shame over sin are now emblems of the American lifestyle.'



But as he also , very happilly said:

I've read the last page of the Bible. It's all going to turn out all right.

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/billy_graham.html#Wdzgh6SjK3J92zua.99​

 

What a crusader for Christ he is. Look at that beautiful face. Once when I was 10 I was invited by a neighbor to go hear him in a large stadium. He was too far away and I was too young to get lost in the crowd to "go forward" but I did in my heart. I'd never seen anything like him before, nor since!