Please Pray For My Mom

My mother passed away in March of this year. Yesterday would have been her 67 birthday, and today is her wedding anniversary. My mom was so devoted to the rosary, and I thought that a great gift to her would be for everyone who reads this to take some time to pray the rosary for her, if at all possible. It would be one of the greatest gifts she could ever receive.

If your not sure how to say the rosary, or just need a refresher, here is a helpful link.

Thanks!

 

Happy Easter

It’s been exactly three weeks, today, since I lost my mother to pancreatic cancer. Life has been pretty different lately. Holidays can be difficult when you have lost someone so special, and who had a profound effect molding your holiday expectations. My mom always worked so hard to make every holiday special for her family, and Easter was no different.

Mom spent many Easters uniting family and relatives for brunch at our house after Easter Mass. My mother would always work so hard to make it a very special day. When we were younger, my mother use to help us make our own Easter baskets. We would get an old shoe box, wrap it in construction paper, or tin foil, and then decorate them with assorted arts and crafts. We would always watch the Easter specials with her, and help decorate the eggs. She loved to see the excitement on our faces on Easter morning when we saw the eggs, and gifts that the Easter bunny left for us in our baskets. My mom loved to see her children happy, and she worked hard to achieve that.

This year we will visit mom at Holy Cross cemetery… very different from the years past. We all miss her so much.

I had a dream the other night; Judy, Mary, Luke, my dad, and I, were in Church on Easter. My mother was in her wheel chair. I was looking at her and said: “Mom, I know that you are not physically here, but I want you to know that I love you.” She looked at me and said: “I know, I love you too.” My mother always felt that God communicated, and helped those who have passed, to communicate with loved ones through dreams. Perhaps she just wanted to share Easter in this way with me.

 

Weird!

I was up early this morning, around 6:30am, so I decided to go to the 7:30am Mass at Most Blessed Sacrament Parish in Wakefield. After the prayers of the faithful, instead of sitting with everyone else, I was thinking about my mother, and mindlessly knelt down. After about 20 seconds, I realized that I was the only one kneeling, and everyone else was sitting. Anyway, I just finished my prayerful thought, made the sign of the cross, and sat with the other parishioners.

Fast forward to after the 9am Mass, which my wife attended. The kids, and I picked her up and she told me that she was thinking about my mother and knelt down, instead of sat down after the prayers of the faithful. We hadn’t even discussed this until then. Weird!

 

The alienation of God

I received this email in my in box today. It was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday morning commentary. I disagree with the use of the Dr. Spock example (I really don’t believe in hitting a child,) but really love the message that Ben is trying to convey in this commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish.  And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees… I don’t feel threatened.  I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, ‘Merry Christmas’ to me.  I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto.  In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu .  If people want a crèche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians.  I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period.  I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country.  I can’t find it in the Constitution and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him?  I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too.   But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her ‘How could God let something like this happen?’ (regarding Katrina) Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response.  She said, ‘I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.  And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out.  How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?’

In light of recent events… terrorists attack, school shootings, etc.  I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.  Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself.  And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem.  We said an expert should know what he’s talking about.  And we said OK.

Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out.  I think it has a great deal to do with ‘WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.’

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell  Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.  Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit.  If not then just discard it… no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don’t sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

My Best Regards,  Honestly and respectfully,
Ben Stein