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| Journey to Bethlehem, Joseph Brickey |
Day 23: Journey to Bethlehem
Read The Jesse Tree, pp. 78-80. Hang ornament (donkey).
Mary and Joseph are forced to travel to Bethlehem because of a Roman census. When they arrive, they are refused room in the inn and are forced to stay with the animals.
Scripture reference: Luke 2:1-5
Comment: As once Mary traveled with Joseph to Bethlehem to fulfill God's purpose to send His Son for our salvation, so still Our Lady travels to many places around the world to bring Christ to all people. God does not desire that anyone should be lost, and Our Lady always desires what God Himself desires. She desires God's Will to be done because it is perfect, holy, and always just. She loves God's Will because she loves God. And so she visits many people, throughout time and place, to bring to them the Saviour she carries in her womb. In the Americas, she appeared to St. Juan Diego bringing to the Aztec people a message of hope and salvation.
Related Title: Our Lady of Guadalupe
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| Virgin of Guadalupe |
Hear me and understand well, my son the least, that nothing should frighten or grieve you. Let not your heart be disturbed. Do not fear that sickness, nor any other sickness or anguish. Am I not here, who is your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within my fold? What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by anything.--Our Lady to St. Juan Diego
Excerpt from Pope John Paul II's Prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe
Virgin of Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas, we pray to you for all the Bishops, that they may lead the faithful along paths of intense Christian life, of love and humble service of God and souls. Contemplate this immense harvest, and intercede with the Lord that He may instill a hunger for holiness in the whole people of God, and grant abundant vocations of priests and religious, strong in the faith and zealous dispensers of God’s mysteries.
Grant to our homes the grace of loving and respecting life in its beginnings, with the same love with which you conceived in your womb the life of the Son of God. Blessed Virgin Mary, protect our families, so that they may always be united, and bless the upbringing of our children.
Our hope, look upon us with compassion, teach us to go continually to Jesus and, if we fall, help us to rise again, to return to Him, by means of the confession of our faults and sins in the Sacrament of Penance, which gives peace to the soul.
We beg you to grant us a great love for all the holy Sacraments, which are, as it were, the signs that your Son left us on earth.
Thus, Most Holy Mother, with the peace of God in our conscience, with our hearts free from evil and hatred, we will be able to bring to all true joy and true peace, which come to us from your son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Amen.
For a complete novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe, go to this site.
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