Hot Scot the priest! LOL! Thats funny! I trust in God- I know he will lead me down the right path but.....How do I get out of his way?
I've found closing my mouth and declining participation in programs until I've offered it in prayer has helped me immensely. It's the Enclosed Garden where I hear Him the best. Lee
You see I was born with my mouth open and operating so it's a very huge lesson for me to learn to close it. Sometimes I'm successful, many times not. It's always a challenge, always.
A lovely story about Scott...somehow I never saw the priest part coing till it hit me. :lol: I remeber a story Archbishop Fulton Sheen tells about when he was a student in Belgium. He said he used to love to get away to visit the Shrine down in Lourdes in France ,although he often had very little money. One time he wanted tp p[ay a visit but had only enough money to cover him for the train trip down and for a few days in the hostel, but not enough to pay for his trip home, hundreds of miles away. But he decided to step out in faith and pray to Our Blessed Lady to take care of him for the trip home. Anyway he says he got down to Lourdes and always kept reminding Our lady he needed taken care of for the trip home...and he says as the days rolled on he began to addressing her with increasing fervour as no sign of the dough showing up appeared...in fact he was starting to get in a real sweat........... (You know Archbishop Sheen was a very,very holy man and had a great faith, but I was never to sure of his prudence in heading down so far away without the means to come back; but.......} So it came to the morning of the last day of his stay and he left his hostel and praying to Our Lady the whole time he began the worried walk to the train staion holding Our Lady's hand in prayer hoping... But on the way to the station he fell in with a fellow American family who began to talk and when they heard he was a Clerical student they insisted on paying his train fare home right in the foyer of the train staion!! I guess they didn't have to insist too much!! :lol: :lol: ] A really nice thing happened to me when I visited Italy one time, years ago. Again I hade very little money but carried a little tent which I hoped to put up in fields and campsites. My first morning in Rome I slept under some bushes with a wonderful view of St Pater's in the distance and turned up at the doors of St Peters before they opened. I headed down by train to Padre Prio's home at San Giovanni and walked into the Church meaning to ask where there was a campsite (not knowing there is no camp site there). I asked a Franciscan Priest who took me to a couple who lived there and told them to put me up while I satyed in the village. They put me up in the baesment . Becaue of this, they wroked at the monastery I got a private tour round, beacuse the mother's brother-in-law was a heart specialist I got a private tour of the hospital and introductions and to cap it all of I got first had accounts of Padre Pio from folks who knew him. At the end I was given part of the wax seal used to close the lid of Padre Pio's coffin...really about the best relics you could get... It was as if from I stepped of the train I was just taken by the hand and carried the whole way. I recall crying as I was leaving because the whole family came out, the children as well and waved me off laughing and smiling and insisting I return. The providence of God...
Isn't he beautiful? Your story of San Giovanni Rotando was marvelous. Padre Pio's monastery had an effect on me that was very similar to Medjugorje. Supernatural things just happen there, your story is a case in point. You must have loved that trip. How bold you were to go with the idea of camping in mind. It was there that I asked to be Padre Pio's Spiritual child. Every time I talk about it, tears come to my eyes. God has a plan, God has a plan.
I love the Italians Gail; especially the southern ones, it reminds me of being in an opera everything is so dramatic , sometimes I felt like waving my arms about myself!! :lol: On my way down from Rome in the train to San Giovanni, I had gone into a shop in Rome and bought myself some wonderful bread and...very unwisely...but remember I'm Irish......... a bottle of wonderful cheap white wine. So out in the corridor of the train I got a little tipsy and began to sing The Bells of the Angelus which the passengers began to join in..and we were all singing. :lol: :lol: But then there was urgent signal from the passengers in the nearest compartment to come in. A group of Siciian ladies dressed soberly in black had come with the conductor to have me thrown from the train for siging a religious song with a bottle of wine in hand; which they found very offensive. So there started an excited babble in which the Italians and Sicilians all debated wether or not I should be put off the train in the middle of nowhere , the Italians vociferously and laughingly insisting I should stay and the Sicilian ladies with murderous; grim, dark looks insisting I should be flung of. I didn't mind as I had the tent and could sleep in the fields. :roll: But with a great gesture the Conducter held his arm of up and hushed everyone and ruled I could stay on, with which the Sicians left with grim smouldering looks and the Italains all up abd down the train went into gales of delighted laughter and they all began to sing again... :lol: One of them explained that the Sicilians and Italians do not get on and were highly pleased that the Sicilians and gtten one in the eye. :roll: As I say, like an opera; delightful.
Padraig, the image of you singing your head off with a bottle of white wine in hand & the passangers all joining in made me laugh out loud. You have made my night!
Padraig, thank you for this Bishop Sheen link. Angel Carroll (my guardian Angel) used it to send me a message this evening...not in this video specifically (though this one was great, I marked it in my favorites) but in one I clicked on after viewing this. Funny thing was, I had no intention of finding the answers I was looking for in the video I clicked on, yet there it was plain as the nose on my face! I've been pondering about answers to some tough questions posed to me about Jesus and the cross and "why a crucifix" brought up by my son's girlfriend who was raised Jewish (she said she finds the crucifix offensive and depressing) - I fumbled around with what I feel are reasons for the crucifix, but didn't really convince her, and my son was no help either, actually siding with her a little bit, parroting what I hear from many protestants about not wanting to remember Jesus like that and so on. Anyway, Bishop Sheen explained it all to me today. I had been thinking about trying to find some better answers online, but had not bothered to do it yet. Your link, and my angel, did it for me. Once again, the forum comes through! LOL Here's what I found by association - as we so often do! You need to watch at least through part 2.
PS, the stories above are all TERRIFIC!!! I loved reading them. God takes care of us when we let him.
