My Sisters the Saints by Colleen Carroll Campbell

My Sisters the Saints by Colleen Carroll Campbell was an inspiring book for me of a woman's deep faith and the saints who became her sisters along the path to her answered prayers because I could so readily identify with her through my own personal witness of redemptive suffering followed by the triumph of the cross in many adverse episodes of my own life This book really resonated with me. I never had a quest to understand the meaning of my feminine identity in light of my Christian faith and Italian upbringing and a culture shaped by modern feminism. My Italian upbringing especially largely due to my almost perfect mother solidified in me an unshakable view of what true femininity and womanhood were not. I found grace and inspiration from Mary, the Mother of God and through my dear Mamma’s selfless giving to me. Secular feminists were never appealing to me. I was never confused over sexual promiscuity or fidelity, professional success or family; marriage over cohabitation; or freedom over responsibility. I loved pleasure but my life was not driven by it. Love and liberation were not tied for me ever. In fact, what I would ultimately discover is that true liberation would come from my surrender to God' completely. Unrestricted Freedom was just a trap and a way that Satan would lure modern women under the guise of equal rights for women to total subjugation and slavery. My dear mother may have been a slave but she was a slave of God through her own volition. Saint Paul exhorts us to be slaves of Christ, to imitate HIs unconditional love and that is the love that my dear Mother refracted onto me through her exemplary deeds. My parents were not educated in the sense of formal schooling or through reading Scripture but they embodied Jesus in how they lived their daily lives. I, on the other hand, through my Catholic and public formal education cultivated a true love for my Catholic faith through frequent attendance of daily mass, the love of contemplative prayer, reading of scripture and spiritual books, reciting of the Rosary and other devotions and going to adore, thank, praise and petition my Lord and Savior at Eucharistic Adoration. I would come to fully realize later in life the incredible gifts and graces that I would receive through the beauty of my Catholic faith, its Church and most importantly, through its founder, our Lord, King, and Savior Jesus Christ. I also discovered EWTN and Relevant Radio later on in life and I am so indebted to them for the vast enrichment and deepening of my faith. I love everything about the Catholic Church:

1 Jesus as (God – man, Nativity, Crucifixion and Resurrection for Man's eternal salvation)

2 The Eucharist for my spiritual daily nourishment (my Heaven on Earth) - being with Jesus, truly present body, blood, soul, and divinity in communion with all the angels and Saints. Such a beautiful gift from God to us!

 3 The other six Sacraments- Reconciliation where all of my sins are absolved, Baptism which is the initiation or entry to the kingdom of God; Confirmation which is the continuation of God's grace to opening my heart to the gifts of the Holy Spirit especially the gifts of awe and wisdom; Marriage which is a union of two souls ( a man and a woman) to love as Christ loved us; Holy Orders which is to give us unbroken, apostolic succession to teach us the Gospel and to give us the body and blood of Christ in Persona Christi and lastly, Last Rites so that we may meet our Maker and make peace and be granted eternal life.

5 The Communion of Saints such as Saint Francis of Assisi, St Joseph, St Anthony, Saint John Paul II, Saint Gianna Molla, Saint Gerard, Blessed Francis Seelos for a few examples with their heroic love & faith in God to guide us through their illustrious example of love of God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Colleen Carroll Campbell was able to get through her crosses and trials with the mystery of life, love, illness, and death through her encounter and inspiration with the following six female saints: Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Faustina of Poland, Edith Stein of Germany, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Mary of Nazareth. Her fascinating personal memoir, My Sisters the Saints was a great witness of faith and of authentic feminism for me.

4 The Blessed Virgin Mary (Our Lady of Lourdes, of Fatima, and of Medjugorje)

The Blessed Mother Mary is the perfect mother of God and of us all. She has always helped me in my trials and tribulations in a world that is imperfect and through it all always helping me to draw closer to Jesus, to help him, serve him and imitate him. Reciting my nightly rosary when I can before I fall asleep from exhaustion always gives me peace and a tremendous sense of hope because nothing is impossible for God. (Luke 1 verses 36-37). 

“Generations that called Mary blessed not only because of her unique privileges, but because of the role she plays in guiding the rest of us toward the complete union with God.”  Colleen Campbell

 God used a tumultuous pregnancy and Mary's example to teach me to truly love those who had hurt me in the past, to truly forgive them, and to truly love and trust my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To surrender completely, to accepting His will through my brokenness and through the miraculous birth of my first beautiful grandson I did not marvel that God transformed my life so radically but I thanked him with immense gratitude for having done so. My faith was never shattered, never doubted, just tested and triumphant.

 6 The Pope, the Catholic Church, Bishops, Priests and Sisters and Missionaries

I don't know what I would have done or who I would be today without the guidance, counseling and teaching by these holy, good, and beautiful mentors of imitators of Christ.

 7 The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass – (liturgy and sacrifice of Calvary)

 When I am at Mass I am at home with my Creator. I feel safe and at peace and the most joyful I could ever be.

 8 the Beatitudes of Christ on Mount Olive

 These are radical tenets for imitating Christ’s Compassion (Caritas)to my fellow man.

“Love one another as I have loved you.  Love God and love your neighbor and enemies as yourself.” This is a tremendous shift from the old Covenant to the New Covenant of Jesus Christ and very difficult to do. To follow the Ten Commandments is challenging enough but to follow the Beatitudes is even more challenging but definitively more edifying.

 9 The Cross

Christ gives us spiritual trials in our souls for those who love Him so that they may learn to love Him more. In Catholic school I was taught what my mother and father exemplified in their life, to unite my sufferings to the sufferings of Christ. “To err is human to forgive is divine.” Christ said to his Father on the cross, “ Forgive them for they know not what they do.”  My own father would always say that the best vendetta is to forgive. If we imitate Christ in loving and forgiving our enemy we get closer to Him and closer to perfect love (Caritas) as in Christ’s Passion. It takes God’s grace which alters our pride into humility. Christ’s love surpassed even that standard, as he gave his life not just for his friends but for those who had made him their enemy.

The six saints described by Colleen Carroll Campbell in her spiritual memoir illuminated the Christian life for me in a way that made me relate completely to her experience with them and with my own experience with the Catholic faith and my Italian upbringing.

I highly recommend this moving and powerful book of Colleen Carroll Campbell.

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

This radical Marxist ideology that I know so well from the WWII generation of my parents and their family is strikingly and frighteningly similar to what my generation of baby boomers experienced unknowingly and surreptitiously under the guise of social justice in my grad and undergrad studies and in education in general in the 60's and 70's and especially during President Obama's 2 terms in office as our government was dictating more and more what needs to be forcibly taught to our students. It is truly a wolf in sheep's clothing account of what has been happening to us. It finally makes sense to me! I always knew it viscerally and intuitively but now I actually understand how it evolved and that even the Catholic Church was gullible and duped by radicals such as Saul Alinsky in every sense of the word and now we are A CULTURE OF DEATH as St. Pope John Paul II coined it! How sad that Oprah shockingly said that my generation should die sooner so that racism would be eradicated! What a horrible mindset to have and to unabashedly share it publicly with the world. Shame on her! Ironically, she is demonstrating a lack of open-mindedness, charitable love and wisdom which she supposedly espouses. After interviews with my daughter that I have participated in with the WWII Generation, there is no group that best reflects a love for faith, family, country, freedom and love for humanity. They view all human beings with dignity because they inherently believe that we are ALL made in the image and likeness of God inclusive of the unborn, the sick, the , disabled, the marginalized, the poor and the elderly... ALL OF OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS especially the most vulnerable! Our young people are vulnerable, too because they are made ignorant by the limited and controlled college curricula that have been progressively omitting great Western literature art, philosophy and history topics that are invaluable. The past is ignored and only the present is emphasized! Eventually, the great contributions of Western Civilization will be so obscure that no one will even know that they existed. As an educator I have noticed little by little that it is trendy to belittle the accomplishments of Western individuals and culture in an attempt to be politically correct. People, even in academia, sometimes seem more eager to highlight the negative than the positive. In a field of research where objectivity is one of the highest goals, it is evident that historical revisionism has become dangerously biased and ridden with falsehoods. Furthermore, I am saddened that media outlets and TV networks like the History Channel have so much influence over the average person's perspective of history. Conspiracy and fringe theories are being given legitimacy in favor of popularity and ratings. Unknowing consumers, especially young minds are taking sensationalist opinions as fact and ignoring the decades and centuries of legitimate research already done in these fields. There are fewer and fewer people who stand against such sensationalist history and defend objective historical knowledge.
The documentary, "A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing"  really moved me and I guess the question is: Who are the wolves in sheep's clothing today?

This blog which I wrote in 2020 is even more true now than ever before as we experience what just happened in the last week. There are so many wolves in sheep's clothing on the radical Left. The immense distrust of this current administration and establishment.

Pearls of wisdom from the Catholic Faith

For this Lent I thought I would reflect on words of inspiration from great minds of the Catholic Faith and from my own upbringing.

To serve when there is no delight in serving,this is true love.
St. Theresa of Avila

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.
Tertullian

If you can pervert the language and call something entirely different than what it is, then the people who practice Infanticide called "Nurturers" in this world ( The Giver) you can call them nurturers but they are still killers.
Lois Lowry

Prayer is to the soul as rain is to the soil.
Father Bill Casey

The substance of faith is a hope in the unseen.
Hebrews 11:1

The greatest way in which my parents loved me is to discipline me.

Take delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37

Ask, "What is the loving thing to do when you are confronted with a moral thing to do?"
How do I love God and my fellowman in choosing what to do?  Love is the peg on which everything hangs! CARITAS!

My grandchild asked me why I always wear my necklace with the cross? I told him that my parents wore it and they gave me a beautiful necklace with a cross when I was 4 years old and now I imitate that tradition with a necklace with a cross that my husband gave me when we dated and I have worn it for all of my married life up to this present moment. When I look at the cross it reminds me of who I am. I am made in the image and likeness to God which then reminds me of my commitment to Jesus and to my fellowman. It essentially reminds me of my Catholic and Italian identity.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth makes the world blind and toothless.
Gandhi

You don't find yourself until you lose yourself in Christ.
Pope John Paul II

Jesus promised his disciples three things:
that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy and in constant trouble.
G. K. Chesterton

That is all for today and I will continue during this Lent with more pearls of wisdom that I have collected.

See you soon! Alla Prossima!

A Cataclysmic Transformation of My Mind, Heart and Soul

My daughter sent me the following email while she was at Middlebury College studying for a Masters in Italian:

Ciao Mamma,

Can you put into words how Dr. Trovato’s Italian literature class changed you? You can see the point that I am trying to make below .... If his class is an example of this, please explain to me how in your own words ...

NO RUSH ... if and when you have time .... (You can also just tell me on the phone too ...)

Love, Tori

We have all heard stories about how after someone read a quote, met someone, read a book, took a course, and other opportunities when people came into contact with information, from that point forward, a metamorphosis happened in someone’s life. Quotes have resonated with individuals and often times an individual will make that particular quote their personal mantra from there on out. There are people who read a book and it is after reading that book that an individual’s life is transformed. Examples about how one nugget of knowledge or know-how altered one’s reality are multitudinous. My Mom tells the story of how she was in Dr. Trovato’s Italian literature class at Northwestern University and she viewed Italian literature as well as life in general different after this class. This teacher taught this class in such a way that it profoundly affected my Mom’s life.     .......    My Mom explains it as:

 Wow, this is quite a daunting question but I will try to respond. When I was taking a course on the Divine Comedy for the third time at age 33 after being married with three children and in the midst of two aging and ailing parents, my father who would soon have a stroke that would paralyze him on the right side and my mother who was in the middle stages of Alzheimers, it was at this crossroad of my life that I was truly beginning to understand what Dante was saying in the greatest epic poem of all time, the Divina Commedia which would ultimately become for me a reflection of the Good News of Christ. My class was every Wednesday night and even though my dear father had just had his stroke and hospitalized, I felt the need to attend this class even more for my survival. I was working full-time teaching Italian as a high school teacher, raising three children with my dear husband, taking a grad class on Dante, taking care of my Mamma with Alzheimers on the weekends and suddenly having to contend with my dear Papa's debilitating stroke. People would often tell me to join a support group but my support or life line came from my faith, my family, and from the hopeful messages that I was receiving from Dr.Mastrobuono’s Dante Studies class ( which initially came from Dr. Trovato, my most favorite professor from Northwestern, my alma mater for my MA in Italian).  The love I experienced through my Catholic faith, my Italian family, and my study of Dante spelled out one, incontrovertible form and definition of love that was called CARITAS!  All these types of love were inextricably linked. The more I would imitate Christ’s love for us, the more I would become who I was meant to be. Through this beautiful lesson of what love really is, I found peace, joy, and HOPE in my life. Through my studies of Italian literature as an MA graduate student at Northwestern with Dr.Trovato and through my biblical studies as a catechist at my Catholic church, I clearly began to understand how Faith and Reason go hand in hand. The love I was going to have to give and continue to give in my life that would cause me to have an internal conversion was God’s sacrificial love or “Caritas”. I was going to have to place others before my own needs and wants.

My esteemed professors of the Divine Comedy reached me in a very personal, intellectual, and spiritual way that spoke to me in a very intimate way at that very challenging and difficult time in my life. I truly was becoming an adult capable of unremitting compassion ( Caritas) and generous humanity at this time confronting the mortality of my parents’ as well as anticipating my own. This work of sublime poetry from the 13^th century was more relevant to me than any modern writing had ever been. It demonstrated that the human condition never changes and that morality never changes because at the core we are born to love and be loved as God so loved the world that He gave his only Son so that we may be saved and have life both here on this earthly kingdom of God and well as eternal life in heaven after we die. “Caritas” is what I so beautifully not just learned and understood but experienced so deeply in my mind, heart, and soul.  I truly learned how to love sacrificially and charitably. I experienced my parents’ love all my life and my husband’s and children’s love through our marital covenant but it was not until I experienced the suffering of my parents that I truly learned how to love more perfectly. Through great literature and through magnanimous professors who could explain and exemplify spiritual love so beautifully and coherently to me was I finally able to understand as well as verbalize what love is.

I wish I could have more eloquently told my two esteemed professors how much their teachings of Dante meant to me, saving me in all senses of the word, changing me forever, and to this day, continuing to give me HOPE in a world that wants to give us despair.

Dr. Trovato’s son sums up so beautifully what his father was to him and to students like myself.

“yes, my dad was many things to many people, and to me he was a moral beacon. a guide by which i could look into the darkness and see the light shining bright and continuously pointing in the right direction. today his light shines bright on the horizon. it is there for all of the people he touched throughout his life. it is there for us.”

I heard Dr. Trovato give one of his last lectures on Dante in the twilight of his life and soon after he died in 2009 but his teachings on Dante and anecdotal stories of his own life will always nourish my heart, mind, and soul. He will always be one of the greatest mentors and most loving human beings I have ever known. How privileged and blessed was I to have had Dr. Trovato as my Italian Professor. He was a beacon of God’s light that emanated from his face, from his teachings, and from his deeds as a good and humble human being. He lived what he taught and what he taught was beautiful, good, and true. What I pieced together was Scripture, Faith, Reason, and Famiglial Love in a masterful literary work whose central theme of “Caritas” would change me forever.

Someone else who truly enlightened me on Dante was Pope Benedict  XVI. Herewith  attached is a preface he wrote for his encyclical, Deus Caritas Est. It says so eloquently what I have intuited from  my experiences of Caritas (God is Love) through my sufferings and joys that came and continue to come through loving others as Christ loves us. Perfectly!  I can only love perfectly by loving Christ and loving others as I love Him.  In this way we can love God, know Him, and serve Him by serving our fellow man, especially the poor, the disenfranchised, and the persecuted in our world. In this way we are truly free, at peace, and in harmony with God’s plan for us.

I cannot possibly put into a few pages all of my spiritual and philosophical thoughts, insights, messages, and discoveries that profoundly affected me from my study of Dante with Dr. Trovato and Dr. Mastrobuono. I would also like to say that my vast appreciation for my Dante studies could not have maturated without the maturation of my faith and Scripture and above all, from my Papa and Mamma’s love that now I fully know reflected God’s sacrificial and perfect love for us. In its perfect form human love is connected to divine love. I have learned through my intimate relationship with God to naturally extend that same love to my fellowman which has brought and continues to bring me harmony, peace and joy in my life. God is Love and we are made to love as He loves us.

In the following preface of Pope Benedict’s Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est ( God Is Love) he begins to  speak of Dante in his encyclical  on the theme of Love in a way that expresses in words  so perfectly what I know or have intuited so perfectly in my heart. I would encourage everyone to read this preface and encyclical to begin the reading of the Divine Comedy. I encourage you because the vision and comprehension of “Caritas” will transform you as it transformed me. I was able to see God’s luminous face and God’s charitable heart through this long journey of faith, family and Dante studies.

“The strength of "Caritas" depends on the strength of faith of all its members and collaborators.  

The spectacle of suffering man touches our heart. But charitable commitment has a meaning that goes well beyond mere philanthropy. God himself pushes us in our interior to alleviate misery. In this way, in a word, we take him to the suffering world.  

The more we take him consciously and clearly as gift, the more effectively will our love change the world and awaken hope, a hope that goes beyond death.”

 Pope Benedict XVI)

(This writing today is another example of HOPE that I continually discovered and continue to discover in my studies of Italian, in my reconversion to my Catholic faith and

in living my faith not just in words but in charitable deeds toward the ones I love but also toward anyone who crosses my path of my BELLA VITA!

http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/867/Why_Love_is_the_Theme___Benedict_XVI.html

My attraction with Italy's beloved "Pinocchio"

I have always had a fondness and affiliation with the character of Pinocchio.  As I was maturing through my faith, my formal education, and through my experiences of parenting, I was discovering the beauty of the story of Pinocchio by Carlo Lorenzini. Let me explain a little more clearly how I came to love Pinocchio so much. As a high school Italian teacher I chose to use a beginning reader in Italian II, an abridged version of the Italian novel by Carlo Collodi entitled “Le Avventure di Pinocchio.”  As I was  using this text in my high school curriculum in the teaching of Italian, I was learning more about my faith as a catechist, I was learning strategies to improve students’ reading comprehension through my degree as a reading specialist, and I was learning so much about children as a mother of three beautiful children. For over twenty years I used the reader of Pinocchio in my high school curriculum and I created a learning scenario for the teaching of  “Le Avventure di Pinocchio” that became very popular in my teaching circles among my colleagues. I gave many presentations in school districts, at state and national foreign language conventions as well as at various workshops of the AATI, AATF, and other foreign language organizations.  My enthusiasm and passion for the teaching of Pinocchio was known by those who knew me and by my students. Though I enjoyed teaching so many other cultural topics in the Italian curriculum, the teaching of “The Adventures of Pinocchio” was my favorite didactic unit to teach in the teaching of Italian because every time that I would teach the unit I would appreciate some new aspect of Pinocchio that connected with increased knowledge of my faith and Scripture, with improved reading strategies in the foreign language classroom and with increased wisdom as a parent of three children.

So, let’s begin by saying that Carlo Collodi (Lorenzini) was the author and creator of Pinocchio, the wooden boy puppet who came to life only after many trials and tribulations that taught him ultimately how to love sacrificially as God loves us. Roberto Benigni, the great Italian actor and comedian realized his dream of co-writing, directing, and starring in the film version of “Pinocchio,” based on the original fable of Carlo Collodi. The film was well received in Europe but in the United States, it was not appreciated because Americans had been raised on Walt Disney’s heavily edited and sanitized version of Pinocchio. I would always be very satisfied at the completion of teaching my Pinocchio unit because my American students would enthusiastically show a preference for Roberto Benigni’s film over Walt Disney

ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZdRMed2jC0
Remember Pinocchio? Not Disney's version but this one or Roberto Benigni's? I just resaw this for the umptheenth time and I always loved watching it and teaching it to my students: The little puppet who worked to become a real boy! Actually, my students would always learn that beyond the fond Disney story they knew, they realized that the original story by Lorenzini was a very profound story because it has to do with what it means to be human and what we are made for...CARITAS or Sacrificial Love! I just read Anthony DeStefano's book, A TravellGuide to Life and he states what I always taught about Pinocchio when we read the abridged version of The Adventures of Pinocchio that the story has to do with free will and what it means to be an authentically human being. In other words, Pinocchio learns how to love through Christian biblical overtones. What is interesting is that DeStefano also says that we, today are living the Pinocchio story in reverse. That is to say that instead of becoming children of God and becoming real, loving and free human beings, we spend our lives trying to become puppets. I think he is right! I have always been a non-conformist and my parents and Pinocchio taught me this very important mantra of my life...not to follow the current, but to follow your heart and your intellect just as Dante did in the Divine Comedy. This never gets old for me.LOL Love it

The Importance of the Past for Hope

The importance of the Past

Education today tends to ignore the past and focuses on the present. G.K. Chesterton states that modern historians have not given us a reliable version of the story of civilization. Modern historians called revisionists change the past and reinterpret it according to their own preconceptions and biases toward theology, religion and in particular toward the Catholic Church. I have seen it with my own eyes as a college professor for the last ten years. Curriculums purposefully and deliberately exclude God, religious works, or any topic or book that reflect or present the catholic faith, the Catholic Church, catholic social teachings or catholic prominent figures so as to only represent the agendas of education today. What are the agendas of our day? They are, in essence to present only a secular view of the world historically. The omission or disinformation of history of this kind disfigures and intentionally but subtly falsifies the rudiments of the history of civilization, specifically Western Civilization. Why? Because the intent is to vilify all that the Catholic Church and Christianity have positively contributed to Western Civilization because that would mean that we acknowledge that there is only one God, Creator of Heaven and Earth and that we are made in His image and likeness.

Revisionist historians according to G. K. Chesterton want to only present scientific and factual aspects of history without understanding the facts culturally or within the chronological time they represents. By cultural facts, G. K. Chesterton means the legends and traditions that assist in the interpretation of history especially if little evidence is available in written form. Without the study of oral history the recounting of history is false according to Chesterton.

I agree with G. K. Chesterton when he states that “All Roads Lead to Rome.” I have amassed much information about Rome after a half century of studying and teaching the Italian language, its culture and its civilization. I agree with Chesterton that “All Roads come from Rome” or in other words that our modern civilization comes from Roman civilization. As the Roman Empire dissolved into chaos, its Church took its place and produced some of its greatest leaders and its greatest contributions of all time.

Having studied the Middles Ages in Spain, France and in Italy in particular, I can unequivocally concur with Chesterton who says that the Catholic Church single-handedly brought the Medieval Ages out of Darkness into the Light. Not only were the barbarians conquered but in many cases they were converted. By the end of the 5^th century, most of the non-Roman peoples settled in the West were adopting Roman customs and Christian belief. Intermarriage with established Roman families, the acquisition of Imperial titles, and finally, conversion to Christianity assisted a process of acculturation among their leaders, for instance as in the case of Clovis, the Frank. Generally speaking, when modern historians describe the Medieval Ages as cruel, they just want to denigrate the Catholic Church as cruel and barbaric. They ignore the fact that it was the Catholic Church that fought off the barbarians and in a more amazing way, converted them. They ignore the more striking fact that they have been the cruel ones who want to destroy the Catholic Church and disregard all that we borrowed from the Catholic Church that is humane and good for society. It was the Church that founded hospitals, orphanages and universities. It was the Church that fed the poor and defended the weak. It was the Catholic Church that rejected the modern, atheistic culture in the 20^th century that tortured and killed more people than the rest of history combined. In my next blog I will write about a plethora of contributions that came from the Middle Ages and from Christianity.

What would I say to my Grandchildren

Carissimi e Preziosi Nipoti,

You are the light of the world! You are the salt of the world!
The Eucharist will be your greatest gift on the earth because
it is the real presence of Jesus who will teach you how to really love.
Through the Eucharist , you will also learn how to forgive others not just
once but every single time that you are hurt by them through  their actions and words.
 In order to be able to continually forgive, you will need the Eucharist to nourish
your soul. Just as you need food for your bodies, more importantly, you will need food
for your soul. Jesus who is meek and humble of heart will make your hearts
like His if you receive the Eucharist worthily. That means that you should never
 receive the Eucharist if you have a hardened heart and a soul stained with mortal sin.

Jesus is truly present in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Unite yourselves wholly to Him.
Love Him above all things and desire to receive Him in your souls as often as you can.
We only have to go to mass once a week on Sundays but what I realized in my life as I
grew in my faith what a precious  gift it was for me to be able to go to mass and receive
Jesus' Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity daily when I could. I started to go to daily mass when
I had heavy crosses to carry in my life such as my own personal illnesses or those of my loved
 ones. By turning to God in the Holy Eucharist of the mass, I was able to never lose hope and
always find peace. When I would go to daily mass, I was able to leave everything in God's hands
 and know that He would take care of me and my family.

"Cast all your worries upon him because he cares for you."   -1 Peter 5;7

My hope now is that I not go to daily mass just when I am in need of a prayer to be answered but when I am at peace and thankful for all of the blessings that I have in my life.

And my hope for you, "I Miei Carissimi " Grandchildren, "Angioletti Miei" is that you will discover this treasure trove of the Eucharist in your life, too!

Tanti Baci,
La vostra Nonna che vi vuole tanto tanto tanto bene♥♥♥