Join Jennifer at My Chocolate Heart in a weekly celebration of Gratitude to God for the many blessings He bestows upon us!
1. Praise God for young men who are willing to step out of the stereotypical box of teenager as hooligan and show their true selves as sons of God willing to give their all to serve the Church. Have you seen "A Vocation to be a Priest" yet? If not, please check it out! These amazing teenagers have united to put forth an outstanding website where they can share their love for the Lord, their unique call to the Catholic Priesthood and encourage others to do the same. Let's give these boys our support and encouragement as they listen to the voice of God calling them to lifelong service in the vocation of Priesthood! Here is their new press release link and a link to their "call stories". My son John has added his call story to their page as well.
2. My husband Paul, our son John and I had the great honor to attend our Archdiocese's Rector's Dinner this past Friday. Over 500 people were in attendance to show their support through prayer and finances to continue the education of the 36 fine Seminarians studying in our Archdiocese. Praise God for our Seminary and it's fabulous Rector, our Seminarians aspiring to holiness and all of the good people who love and support them.
3. Today is Respect Life Sunday and my family and I will participate in a local life chain. Later, I plan to visit my homebound neighbor and friend to show my love for her and hopefully decrease her loneliness just a bit. For more ideas of unique ways to celebrate this special day, visit Esther at A Catholic Mom in Hawaii. Praise God for all those who choose and support all life from conception to natural death.
4. Praise God for my awesome, loving husband who has put up with me for 18 years and who has blessed me with his love through thick and thin.
5. Praise God for the wonderful support of the blogging community. In my sheltered life I never imagined I could feel so connected to so many wonderful people around the world!
For what are you most thankful today?
Today, I am thankful for a God who loves us so much that He constantly reaches out to us, pouring grace upon grace on us all. I,too, am thankful for the blogging community and all who build up the body of Christ!
ReplyDeleteI just read your son's story and most of the others. I wanted to add: Praise God for so many young men who are so open to His plans for them! Their stories were beautiful and I felt blessed to have read them.
ReplyDeleteI am grateful for today's events, which I put into the twitterlets on my blog: we had a wonderful mass, the last of a novena, for the Feast of St. Francis at our church, which was founded by Franciscans, today. The bishop attended, as did the monks and friars from nearby St. Francis Retreat, the sisters from our local Franciscan convent, and, of course, our third order, the Secular Franciscans. That was followed by a happy reception. I met a priest from the Franciscan order in Korea; he knew the church I had attended while there -- an Italian Franciscan, whom I met, is currently the priest there. It's a small world! A lady from another town sat beside me. Partway through the mass, she noticed my Franciscan cross and asked if I knew anything about the third order. Of course! It turns out that she and a friend (sitting behind her) were interested in becoming third order candidates but had not known where to turn -- so I introduced them to at least a dozen members at the reception, and they will be joining us at our next meeting. I don't believe this was purely a coincidence. (Some "coincidencess" are just times when God chooses to remain anonymous -- I don't recall who said that, but I think it is true.) So, bottom line: I am grateful for our church, the people in our town, and coincidences.
ReplyDeleteI am also thankful, of course, that everyone in my surrounds is getting better: my husband who had the eye surgery, my son who had the appendix surgery, my granddaughter who had the recent spina bifida surgery and multiple surgeries before that, and my daughter's cat who had the fractured-jaw-from-being-flattened-by-a-falling-bed surgery. All in all, a good day and a wonderful life! Am grateful for it all (even for the bad stuff -- that turned out to be educational in the long run).
(BTW, I think I did not tell you that I joined the Saturday Evening Blog Post yesterday where we re-post our favorite September post -- I chose the one that you wrote as a guest on my blog. People have made some good comments about it, too.)
Praise God for faithful young me indeed!
ReplyDeleteWe will keep them all in prayer (we already pray for John a lot!)
You have much to be joyful about with these glorious blessings of life Anne! I hope you all enjoyed the dinner with the Archbishop very much!
Praise God for all the support and encouragement and prayers we have received, especially from you Anne! Today we received an email from Fr Anthony who is the Vocations Director of the Archdiocese of Melbourne in Australia who describes our humble site as 'fantastic' and has invited some of our story tellers to write to him on 'what attracts young men to become priests' for an article he is writing.Please keep those prayers going!
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