All posts filed under: Monthly Spiritual Exercise Group

Becoming A True Prepper

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Becoming a True Prepper There is a whole industry today built around people’s anxiety to be prepared in the event of a catastrophic disaster, both natural and man-made.  How would you survive if there was a nuclear war, if there was an asteroid hit, or if the grid was completely knocked out? It’s the dilemma of Lazarus.  Jesus raised him from the dead at his sisters’ pleading.  But his reprieve from death was temporary.  He eventually had to be prepared to die again.  You can bet, though, that the time between his first death and second death served to detach him even more from this present life so that he was fully ready when it came time to die again.   You start thinking about these things when you assess the real-time threats we face.  It is true that we are called to read the signs of the time and be responsibly prepared.  But our goal has to be more than saving ourselves and our life here.  Jesus warns us that seeking to save ourselves …

The Leaders We Deserve

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 It’s often been said that God gives us the leaders we deserve. If that’s true, we should then do everything in our power to become worthy of good leaders. Everyone who grows anything knows that the stock you start out with is very important. If the stock is not healthy, it will not produce good fruit. Simply saying this, in a political season, can bring about the pressing temptation to pivot to our leaders and complain about our options. But the point is that reform begins with ourselves. If we want good leaders, we have to become good ourselves. It’s as simple as that. As a people, we produce our own leaders. But if we are trying to produce leadership without any connection to or real reference to God, and if the criteria for a good leader have become completely secularized, we are going to run right up against the impossibility of bringing anything good out of it.  God the Father is the source of every good gift, and if we are honest, we soon …

Join Us for Our Next Spiritual Exercise

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Sr.AnneMarie Walsh is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Monday, July 15, 2024, 6:30 pm mountain time; 7:30pm central Topic: Sr.AnneMarie Walsh’s Personal Meeting Room Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/6516969698?pwd=WWQ4dndGQnVyTGx6SW1Hc0RrMjM3UT09 Meeting ID: 651 696 9698 Passcode: 246122 — One tap mobile +16469313860,,6516969698# US +19292056099,,6516969698# US (New York) — Meeting ID: 651 696 9698 Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/ace2MfJLLg

A Phrase for Life

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Living life by a particular motto can have untold benefits.  Many of the saints had mottoes to which they oriented their entire lives.  “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?”  That motto spoke to St. Anthony of the desert as the conversion or turning point of his entire life.   We may be familiar with other mottoes, such as Padre Pio’s “Pray, hope, and don’t worry.” Or, Pope St. John Paul II, who entrusted his life to the care and protection of Our Blessed Moth and encapsulated this in his papal motto: “Totus Tuus,””,  meaning “Totally Yours.”  St. Junipero  Serra’s motto was “Always forward, never back.” Padre Miguel Pro, who was martyred for the faith in Mexico during the Cristero uprising against the government and who died by firing squad, proclaimed the motto he lived his life by:  “Viva Christo Re!” or, “Long live Christ the King.” Each of us lives our lives according to our beliefs and the way we understand life in general.  At the …

Tragedy and the Power of Prayer

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Sr.AnneMarie Walsh is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: Tragedy and the Power of Prayer Monday, May 13, 2024 7:30pm central time/6:30 pm mountain time Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/6516969698 pwd=WWQ4dndGQnVyTGx6SW1Hc0RrMjM3UT09 Meeting ID: 651 696 9698 Passcode: 246122 Meeting ID: 651 696 9698 Tragedy and the Power of Prayer A dear friend of mine recently lost a grown daughter to suicide.  The daughter was a wife and a mother of two teenagers.  My friend, who is a devout Catholic, has been almost inconsolable so much has this death shocked the whole family. None of them saw any signs that this was coming.  There was no explanation for this sudden happening, only unfiltered speculations on what brought the daughter to this point, none of which could touch the acute pain they have been in since her death. One expression (which is roundly rebuffed by those suffering this tragedy) is the oft-repeated, almost trite observation that suicide “is a permanent answer to a temporary problem.”  It may be ok to make this remark to someone currently struggling with suicidal ideation.  But …

Session 61: Finding Our True Selves

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FACING OUR IMMORTALITY Sr.AnneMarie Walsh is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: Finding Our True Selves Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/6516969698?pwd=WWQ4dndGQnVyTGx6SW1Hc0RrMjM3UT09 Meeting ID: 651 696 9698/Passcode: 246122 FINDING OUR TRUE SELVES Blessed Carlo Acutis, the young Catholic, Italian website designer who died of Leukemia at 15 years of age while living a holy life in the modern world, observed that “All people are born as originals, but many die as photocopies.” This is a problem if we understand that God has a master plan for our happiness but that many people do not, knowingly or unknowingly, choose to follow it.   Blessed Carlo understood this.  His plan for life was to stay close to Jesus and allow Jesus to unfold his life and its unique purpose.  It wasn’t a long life, but it was one in which he could say:  “…in eternal life, something extraordinary awaits us.”  “I am happy to die because I have lived my life without wasting a minute on those things which do not please God.”  He also understood that …

Facing Our Immortality

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Please join us! We meet Monday, March 11 at 6:30 pm Mountain time; 7:30 pm Central time Sr.AnneMarie Walsh is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: I Can Love Myself Better Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/6516969698?pwd=WWQ4dndGQnVyTGx6SW1Hc0RrMjM3UT09Meeting ID: 651 696 9698 Passcode: 246122 “I Can Love Myself Better?” Certain things are just obviously ridiculous. It’s hard to fathom how anyone could believe them.  Yet today, there are so many examples of people believing patently false ideas that you wonder how they have become so estranged from the truth. If someone showed up seriously promoting the idea that The Encyclopedia Britannica was created by the random explosion of a typewriter, most people would laugh.   Yet people readily accept things much more ludicrous than that.  Many people believe that there is nothing greater than ourselves, that the universe in all its infinite, delicate, micro and macro details just happened, and that one day we (or “Science”) will figure it out, but that basically, there is a human explanation for it.  God is not necessary.  Man is the …

Definitive Questions

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Sr. Anne Marie Walsh is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting for Facing Our Immortality online support group. Join Zoom Meeting: Please use the link below. Included are the meeting ID and password. Our meeting begins at 6:30 pm MT. Topic: Definitive Questions Time: Feb 12, 2024 07:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada); (NB) 6:30 pm Mountain Time https://zoom.us/j/95448669169?pwd=eUZ0MzNTczZTcG1jVFZUSUNNOGM3Zz09 Meeting ID: 954 4866 9169 Passcode: 325195 Prayer: Remember O Most Gracious Virgin Mary… Definitive Questions The saints often cast our meeting with God at the end of our time on earth in terms of a life review in which certain questions are implicit.  How have you loved?  Have you kept my commandments?  What do you have to show for the gifts you’ve been given? There is another plausible question that the Lord might ask us and which we may not be expecting: How many disciples have you made?  Currently, there are about 1.3 billion Catholics in the world (which boasts an 8.1 billion population). If every Catholic devoted time to making at least one disciple, one …

The Burden of the Age

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Life’s burdens come in many forms.  What is a burden for one may not be a burden for another.  But what is certain is that everyone either carries or has had to carry burdens in their lifetime.   Of all the possible burdens that may come to us, it is wise to consider which are the heaviest, the most debilitating, and really the most unnecessary.  There is a difference between those that are essential in our lives and those holding us back from the life we were meant to live. Essential burdens revolve around commitments and responsibilities necessary for growth, development, maturity, and our humanity in general, such as family and community demands, personal obligations, charitable outreach, care in times of illness, etc. A story from the life of St. Jerome illustrates a kind of burden that is the opposite, that holds us back from the future that Jesus has for us.   St. Jerome had just finished decades of work on translating the Bible from Hebrew to Latin.    It was around Christmas time, and Baby Jesus …

An Examination of Love: Spiritual Exercise 10/09/23

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Sr.Anne Marie Walsh’s Zoom Meeting Please join us Time: Oct 9, 2023 06:30 PM Mountain Time/7:30 Central Time https://zoom.us/j/92645572023?pwd=S2Q2dHdHUytwVnRuSGROUnhza1A3UT09 Meeting ID: 926 4557 2023 Passcode: 084331 Opening Prayer: The Memorare REMEMBER, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly to thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to thee do I come; before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy, hear and answer me.  Amen An Examination of Love One of the benefits of regularly examining our conscience is to make us more sensitive to God and His ways so that we do not become lax in identifying areas of sin and weakness in our lives. Sin always affects our intimacy with God. It spiritually (and psychologically) distances us from God and inclines us to make light of what He requires or asks us to do. The …