NCRegister Blog: Easter Hope is for Those who Sorrow

I meditated on the Joyful mysteries to the thump of my feet on the treadmill in the early silence of Holy Saturday morning. Hail Mary, full of grace... The almost wail-like tone of the chanting of the end of the Passion of St. John echoed in my head from the liturgy of Good Friday. It brought me back to another Saturday morning run on the treadmill when my heart was full of hope after I learned I was newly pregnant last Fall. The hope only lasted a few weeks as our baby passed away too soon. While I prayed the rosary my heart ached for our Blessed Mother as I contemplated how her search for the child Jesus in the Temple was a precursor to the laying of her dead son in the Tomb. With all of her sorrow she had to trust in God’s plan and walk away from the body of her son.

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NCRegister Blog: When We Accompany We Also Need to Speak the Truth

I want to tell you a few stories of accompaniment and discernment about real people. The first is about a man who once made a great sacrifice for the sake of living the Christian faith. When he was 17 years old he had a son with a woman whom he could not or would not marry. They spent 15 years together raising this son. He had been interested in the Catholic Church from his childhood, but it took him many years to come to believe in all of the Church’s truths. His mother who was Catholic prayed and sacrificed for him everyday, and devoted her life to helping him know and accept the truths revealed by God to the Church. During these long years he learned the teachings of the Church, was drawn to the beauty of truth, grew a real love for God in his heart. He learned much from a bishop, whom this young man described as one of those “who speak the truth, and speak it well, judiciously, pointedly, and with beauty and power of expression” (Christian Doctrine IV.21). It was the truth that compelled this young man to desire to be Catholic.

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NCRegister Blog: A Simple Way to Give to the Church in India

David and Kathy Rennie of Bloomington, Minnesota had an experience of being rich with poor outside their gate when traveling to India in 1985 to adopt their sixth child (their fifth adoption). Kathy had long desired to adopt a little girl from India, and had been inspired to do so by the life and work of St. Teresa of Calcutta. Kathy’s mother, Rose Mayer, had sponsored a poor seminarian more than a decade before, and the Rennies contacted him during their visit to India.  This seminarian was now a priest working as a secretary to the bishop of his diocese, and after they made contact he helped them overcome the difficulties they were having in adopting their daughter. It was through knowing Fr. Sebastian Thekethecheril, who was consecrated as Bishop of the Diocese of Vijayapuram in Kottayam, Kerala, India, in 2006, that the Rennies saw firsthand the great poverty of the Christian people of Kerala.

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