Tuesday, March 18, 2014

CELEBRATING SAINT JOSEPH, MARCH 19

Angelina Sings to Saint Joseph




Remarkable true story
 
We had already been filming on locations for two weeks. Angelina and the director, Manuel with a film crew and us standing by sometimes 12- 14 hour days. It was in the middle of summer in Rome and it was HOT! We were all weary from the pace we had been keeping to get this project finished within the 3 week period. I kept asking the director, when are we going to begin filming the music video for "Prayer of St. Joseph"? This was most important to me, because I am Sicilian and I grew up in a family with great devotion to St. Joseph. Back home in Mississippi, many altar societies go through months of preparation of baking and cooking to set up altars of food in honor of the great famine that happened in Sicily during the Middle Ages and the people cried and prayed to St. Joseph their patron Saint for help. When the famine ended, they were so thankful to St. Joseph that they made altars and filled them with food from their harvest as thanksgiving. Angelina ancestors brought this tradition over to the U.S. from Sicily and still today they spend countless hours of making beautiful breads and food to distribute to the poor and hungry. Saint Joseph's feast day is March 19.

Back to Rome- The director, Manuel, was at his wit's end for my constant asking him," when?". He did not know of any Church in Rome that had a statue of St. Joseph where we could possibly use as a backdrop for the song. Finally, he agreed tomorrow we will begin shooting. He had no idea where, but promised. Susan Stein from Heartbeat records was with us and she was writing the script that Angelina would say before each shoot. That night, Susan stayed up as we all went to bed and wrote the script. Then off to sleep she went. The next morning we all met very early downstairs in the hotel and as I sat near Susan, she began to tell me of a dream she had. The dream was of a beautiful garden near the hotel and that would be the backdrop to the film.She asked the desk clerk if there was such a garden. He smiled and in his thick Italian accent, he pointed across the street and said there was a magnificent little garden behind the wall of a Monastery. "Who lived there?", she asked. "The Sisters of St. Joseph", he replied. He then said he could call over and get us permission to come over.

We all gathered with cameras and script in hand only to walk across this street and knock on a huge metal gate. The gate opened and we all gasped. A most beautiful garden was before us complete with a St. Joseph statue holding the baby Jesus and a stunning view of St. Peter's Basilica in the background. The sisters were most welcoming and even let us take their statue from inside, out to the garden for effect. "Prayer of St. Joseph" turned out to be one of the Director's favorite video.

Hope you enjoy! Thanking the Sister's of St. Joseph once more and Susan Stein for following her dreams and more importantly our faith to step out when we did.

One last note, Angelina fell ill early in the day mostly from exhaustion. We rushed her back across the street to the hotel and let her sleep for a couple of hours and then made it back in time to film these gorgeous shots at the the end of the day. You can buy the song on I-Tunes, it is on the Songs of the Faithful CD/DVD or you may go to Amazon.com and purchase the whole CD.

Please pray with me to Saint Joseph for a return of the world to Chastity! Whenever we witness immoral behavior or values, let's say a quick prayer to him for help. He never sleeps, so we can go to him at any hour. He could handle all 7 billion of us at once, so don't imagine that he is too busy.

Our Lady of America said in an apparition to Sister Mildred Neuzil that her son, Jesus desires that Saint Joseph be honored especially for his  exceptional charism of Chastity.  She said that supplication to Saint Joseph will obtain EXTRA graces.  The holy Foster Father of Jesus is an extraordinary reservoir of clemency and self control.  Our Lady promises that if we seek his assistance, he will guide us to Chastity and we will then have World Peace!

ST JOSEPH COMMITTED TO RESCUE & UNFOLD CHASTITY   *    ST JOSEPH A STRONG ARM FOR SALVATION   *   ST JOSEPH BRINGER OF WORLD PEACE  

 
Pray to Saint Joseph for World Chastity,
then we will have World Peace.

Love, Jeanne

Thursday, March 13, 2014

THE COMING CHASTISEMENT, YVES DUPONT BOOK



The Book, CATHOLIC PROPHECY, THE COMING CHASTISEMENT by Yves Dupont, Published by TAN BOOKS, SAINT BENEDICT PRESS, LLC, (reprint, April 1, 2009) 125 pages.


The Authority on Catholic Prophecy


This book, CATHOLIC PROPHECY, THE COMING CHASTISEMENT , is an orderly discussion of Yves Dupont's scholarly findings on Catholic Prophecy of the "End Times." It gives a broad view of the whole subject. This discourse is not about the Antichrist. The Antichrist comes later. Keep in mind that Mr. Dupont died in 1979. This work was written during the pontificate of Pope Paul VI, and predates the Apparitions of Our Lady at Medjugorje . Here is the

Table of Contents

Precisions on the Treat Disaster .................. 1
Publisher's Preface ....................................... 6
About the Author ........................................... 7
Introduction ................................................... 9
Prophecies and Commentaries ................... 13
The Comet .................................................... 83
The End of the World .................................. 89
Nostradamus ................................................ 93
The Present State of the Church ............... 113
Alphabetical Index ..................................... 118
Bibliographical Index ................................ 121
Chronological Index .................................. 123
Paragraph Index ........................................ 124

TAN BOOKS SPEAKS: "In our opinion, this is the best book of prophecy in print! Covers the Great Catholic Monarch, the Holy Pope, and the period before Antichrist, with excellent, excellent commentaries by Dupont. It seems totally impossible that so many prophecies from various countries and different centuries should all speak about the same time and the same historical characters. Shows the coalescing of Saints' prophecies on our times and our immediate future. 125 Pp.PB. " TAN BOOKS WEBSITE

SPIRIT DAILY SPEAKS:  Catholic Prophecy, the Coming Chastisement by Yves Dupont, is available online at SPIRIT DAILY . SPIRIT DAILY BOOK STORE (124 pp) $7.50 SPIRIT DAILY says, “Yves DuPont, the classic compilation of prophecies from mystics who have long forecast a coming chastisement and the potential arrival of a comet -- enthralling predictions from ancient times through nuns, mystics, and stigmatists in the twentieth century, for your discernment!” 

I AGREE with these assessments! PLEASE READ THIS BOOK! Jeanne 
 

Download this book FREE in various formats: https://archive.org/details/CatholicProphecy

 
Love, Jeanne

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

STATIONS OF THE CROSS - A HISTORY


The Way of the Cross_A short History


         Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617–1682)
The tradition of moving around the Stations to commemorate the
Passion of Christ began with St. Francis of Assisi and extended
throughout the Roman Catholic Church in the medieval period.

 
STATIONS OF THE CROSS (or Way of the Cross; in Latin, Via Crucis; also called the Via Dolorosa or Way of Sorrows, or simply, The Way) refers to a series of artistic representations, often sculptural, depicting Christ Carrying the Cross to his crucifixion. Most Roman Catholic churches contain Stations of the Cross, typically placed at intervals along the side walls of the nave; in most churches, they are small plaques with reliefs or paintings. The tradition of moving around the Stations to commemorate the Passion of Christ began with St. Francis of Assisi and extended throughout the Roman Catholic Church in the medieval period. It is also observed in Lutheranism and Anglo-Catholicism. It is most commonly done during Lent, especially on Good Friday.

HISTORY The Stations of the Cross originated in pilgrimages to Jerusalem. A desire to reproduce the holy places in other lands seems to have manifested itself at quite an early date. At the monastery of Santo Stefano at Bologna a group of connected chapels was constructed as early as the 5th century, by St. Petronius, Bishop of Bologna, which was intended to represent the more important shrines of Jerusalem, and in consequence, this monastery became familiarly known as "Santa Gerusalemme." These may perhaps be regarded as the germ from which the Stations afterwards developed, though it is tolerably certain that nothing that we have before about the 15th century can strictly be called a Way of the Cross in the modern sense. Although several travelers who visited the Holy Land during the twelfth, thirteenth, and 14th centuries (e.g. Riccoldo da Monte di Croce, Burchard of Mount Sion, James of Verona), mention a "Via Sacra," i.e., a settled route along which pilgrims were conducted, there is nothing in their accounts to identify this with the Way of the Cross, as we understand it. The devotion of the Via Dolorosa, for which there have been a number of variant routes in Jerusalem, was probably developed by the Franciscans after they were granted administration of the Christian holy places in Jerusalem in 1342. Today, nine of the Stations of the Cross that were established by the Franciscans are located along the Via Dolorosa as it wends its way from the northwest corner of the Temple Mount to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, within which the remaining five stations are located.

The earliest use of the word "stations," as applied to the accustomed halting-places in the Via Sacra at Jerusalem, occurs in the narrative of an English pilgrim, William Wey, who visited the Holy Land in the mid-15th century, and described pilgrims following the footsteps of Christ to the cross. In 1521 a book called Geystlich Strass was printed with illustrations of the stations in the Holy Land.

During the 15th and 16th centuries the Franciscans began to build a series of outdoor shrines in Europe to duplicate their counterparts in the Holy Land. The number of stations varied between seven and thirty; seven was common. These were usually placed, often in small buildings, along the approach to a church, as in a set of 1490 by Adam Kraft, leading to the Johanneskirche in Nuremberg. A number of rural examples were established as attractions in their own right, usually on attractive wooded hills. These include the Sacro Monte di Domodossola (1657) and Sacro Monte di Belmonte (1712), and form part of the Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy World Heritage Site, together with other examples on different devotional themes. In these the sculptures are often approaching life-size and very elaborate. In 1686, in answer to their petition, Pope Innocent XI granted to the Franciscans the right to erect stations within their churches. In 1731, Pope Clement XII extended to all churches the right to have the stations, provided that a Franciscan father erected them, with the consent of the local bishop. At the same time the number was fixed at fourteen. In 1857, the bishops of England were allowed to erect the stations by themselves, without the intervention of a Franciscan priest, and in 1862 this right was extended to bishops throughout the church.

SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE The object of the Stations is to help the faithful to make a spiritual pilgrimage of prayer, through meditating upon the chief scenes of Christ's sufferings and death. It has become one of the most popular devotions for Roman Catholics, and is often performed in a spirit of reparation for the sufferings and insults that Jesus endured during His Passion. In his encyclical letter, Miserentissimus Redemptor, on reparations, Pope Pius XI called Acts of Reparation to Jesus Christ a duty for Catholics and referred to them as "some sort of compensation to be rendered for the injury" with respect to the sufferings of Jesus. Pope John Paul II referred to Acts of Reparation as the "unceasing effort to stand beside the endless crosses on which the Son of God continues to be crucified".

TRADITIONAL STATIONS OF THE CROSS
Jesus is condemned to death
Jesus carries his cross
Jesus falls the first time
Jesus meets his mother
Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross
Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
Jesus falls the second time
Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
Jesus falls the third time
Jesus' clothes are taken away
Crucifixion: Jesus is nailed to the cross
Jesus dies on the cross
Jesus is taken down from the cross
Jesus is laid in the tomb.


Pope John Paul II carried the cross in the annual
enactment of the  Scriptural  "Way of the Cross"
in the Colosseum in Rome, starting in 1991.

SCRIPTURAL WAY OF THE CROSS Out of the fourteen traditional Stations of the Cross, only eight have clear scriptural foundation. Stations 3, 4, 6, 7, and 9 are not specifically attested to in the gospels (in particular, no evidence exists of station 6 ever being known before medieval times) and Station 13 (representing Jesus's body being taken down off the cross and laid in the arms of His mother Mary) seems to embellish the gospels' record, which states that Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus down from the cross and buried him. To provide a version of this devotion more closely aligned with the biblical accounts, Pope John Paul II introduced a new form of devotion, called the Scriptural Way of the Cross on Good Friday 1991. He celebrated that form many times but not exclusively at the Colosseum in Rome. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI approved this set of stations for meditation and public celebration.

SCRIPTURAL WAY OF THE CROSS
Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane,
Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested,
Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin,
Jesus is denied by Peter,
Jesus is judged by Pilate,
Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns,
Jesus takes up his cross,
Jesus is helped by Simon to carry his cross,
Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem,
Jesus is crucified,
Jesus promises his kingdom to the repentant thief,
Jesus entrusts Mary and John to each other,
Jesus dies on the cross,
Jesus is laid in the tomb.

MODERN USAGE The devotion may be conducted personally by the faithful, making their way from one station to another and saying the prayers, or by having an officiating celebrant move from cross to cross while the faithful make the responses. In the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II led an annual public prayer of the Stations of the Cross at the Roman Colosseum on Good Friday. Originally, the Pope himself carried the cross from station to station, but in his last years when age and infirmity limited his strength, John Paul presided over the celebration from a stage on the Palatine Hill, while others carried the cross. Just days prior to his death in 2005, Pope John Paul II observed the Stations of the Cross from his private chapel. Each year a different person is invited to write the meditation texts for the Stations. Past composers of the Papal Stations include several non-Catholics. The Pope himself wrote the texts for the Great Jubilee in 2000 and used the traditional Stations.

The celebration of the Stations of the Cross is especially common on the Fridays of Lent, especially Good Friday. Community celebrations are usually accompanied by various songs and prayers. Particularly common as musical accompaniment is the Stabat Mater. At the end of each station the Adoramus Te is sometimes sung. The Alleluia is also sung, except during Lent.

Structurally, Mel Gibson's 2004 film, The Passion of the Christ, follows the Stations of the Cross. The fourteenth and last station, the Burial, is not prominently depicted (compared to the other thirteen) but it is implied since the last shot before credit titles is Jesus resurrected and about to leave the tomb.

MUSIC Franz Liszt wrote a Via Crucis for choir, soloists and piano or organ or harmonium in 1879. In 1931, French organist Marcel Dupré improvised and transcribed musical meditations based on fourteen poems by Paul Claudel, one for each station. David Bowie regarded his 1976 song, "Station to Station" as "very much concerned with the stations of the cross." Michael Valenti (known predominantly as a Broadway composer) wrote, with librettist Diane Seymour, an oratorio depicting the fourteen Stations of the Cross entitled "The Way." It was premiered in 1991. Stefano Vagnini's 2002 modular oratorio, Via Crucis, composition for organ, computer, choir, string orchestra and brass quartet, depicts the fourteen Stations of the Cross.

As the Stations of the Cross are prayed during the season of Lent in Catholic churches, each station is traditionally followed by a verse of the Stabat Mater, composed in the 13th century by Franciscan Jacopane da Todi.  ADAPTED FROM WIKIPEDIA
 
 
Pray for Souls !
 
 
Love, Jeanne