From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   -- 1 John 5:14-15 -–   
      
   And this is the confidence which we have towards him: That, whatsoever   
   we shall ask according to his will, he heareth us.  And we know that   
   he heareth us whatsoever we ask: we know that we have the petitions   
   which we request of him. DRB   
   =================================   
   "I woke up early this morning   
       And paused before entering the day.   
       I had so much to accomplish   
       That I had to take time to pray"   
      
       Stop this morning and take time to discuss with God what he wants for   
   you.   
   When we align our days with what he wants us to do--he listens and will give us   
   the direction and power to do his will.   
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   May 16th - St. Andrew Bobola   
   Also known as   
   Andrzej Bobola   
   Apostle of Lithuania   
   Hunter of Souls   
      
   Memorial   
   16 May   
   21 February in Poland   
   23 May (Jesuits)   
      
   (1591-1657)   
   For most martyrs, one persecution is enough. St. Andrew Bobola, who   
   died for his Catholicism in 1657, was, in a sense, doubly persecuted.   
   Long after his death his body was again grossly mistreated by enemies   
   of his faith.   
      
   Andrew, the scion of a distinguished Polish family, was born in   
   Sandomir, Poland, in 1591. In 1611 he entered the Society of Jesus at   
   Vilna, in the present Lithuania. Ordained to the priesthood in 1622,   
   he was appointed pastor at Niewiez. There he won great favor, not only   
   for his pastoral efforts but also for his heroic care, in 1624, of the   
   victims of plague.   
      
   Father Bobola spent his whole active priestly career working in Vilna   
   and elsewhere as a missionary. He enjoyed great success in bringing   
   back lay Catholics to the practice of the faith, and in persuading   
   whole villages of separated Orthodox to return to union with the pope.   
   In the concurrent political and religious struggle between Poland and   
   Russia, the Jesuits became marked men, Bobola in particular. When he   
   entered a town that had a large non-Catholic population, the townsfolk   
   made a practice of sending their children out to insult him and try to   
   shout him down as he preached. Andrew did not allow himself to be   
   discouraged by them, or even impatient.   
      
   Eventually, however, the Polish Jesuits were driven from their   
   churches and colleges and had to take refuge in the forests and   
   wetlands. In 1652 Prince Radziwill invited them to live in one of his   
   residences at Pinsk, in White Russia. Bobola accepted the invitation,   
   although he knew that Pinsk was an even more perilous location.   
      
   In May 1657, Cossack cavalry raided Pinsk and the surroundings. Near   
   Janow they seized Father Andrew and gave him a severe beating. Then   
   two of them, tying him by a rope to the pommels of their horses, made   
   him stumble back to Janow behind them.   
      
   At Janow the priest was interrogated and ordered to abjure his   
   Catholicism. When he gave a firm reply, the officer nearly cut off his   
   hand with a sword. The barbarity with which he was then treated was   
   almost unbelievable: scorched and skinned by his tormentors, his nose   
   and lips were sliced off and his tongue torn out. The prayers he   
   uttered to Jesus and Mary seemed to make his bitter executioners all   
   the more furious. Finally, they beheaded him. They cast his mutilated   
   body on a manure pile.   
      
   The dead missionary was buried in the crypt of the Jesuit church in   
   Pinsk. Forty years passed. Then in 1697 his tomb was rediscovered in   
   the ruined church and found to be perfectly incorrupt, even though it   
   had never been embalmed. Still clearly visible on the fair flesh were   
   his wounds and mutilations. It was as if God, by this miraculous sign,   
   had wished to preserve the evidences of his cruel martyrdom. Father   
   Andrew’s tomb at once became a center of pilgrimage and many miracles   
   were reported. The cause for his canonization was soon introduced,   
   although circumstances prevented his being declared a saint until   
   1938.   
      
   Over a decade before the canonization, the treasured relics of Blessed   
   Andrew were submitted to new indignities. The Bolsheviks came to power   
   in Russia in 1917. In 1922, Soviet troops took over the shrine church   
   (it was then in Polotsk) and, knowing of the reputation of Bobola’s   
   body for being incorrupt, broke open the tomb. Unimpressed,   
   apparently, they stripped the body of its clothing and threw it on the   
   floor. It was then taken to Moscow and put on exhibit in an atheist   
   medical museum as an illustration of religious credulity. Thus did the   
   saint undergo his 2nd persecution.   
      
   When he learned of the desecration, Pope Pius XI asked the Russian   
   government to consign the relics to him. Once the whereabouts of the   
   body were discovered, Father Edmund A. Walsh, an American Jesuit, as   
   an emissary of the pope, succeeded in bringing it to Rome in 1923.   
   After the canonization, the relics were carried back in triumph to   
   Poland. Today they are finally at rest in the church of St. Andrew   
   Bobola in Warsaw. The martyr’s frame is now rigid and his skin is   
   dark, but the body is still well preserved and bears even today the   
   marks of his hideous tortures.   
      
   –Father Robert   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   Let us therefore give ourselves to God with a great desire to begin to   
   live thus, and beg Him to destroy in us the life of the world of sin,   
   and to establish His life within us.   
   --St. John Eudes   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations;   
    Knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience.  And let   
   patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire,   
   lacking in nothing.  (James 1:2-4) DRB   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   QUESTIONING HEART   
      
   Mary is crying!   
   I care...do you?   
   Jesus is bleeding anew,   
   And I care...do you?   
   Do you ever say "I love Thee?"   
   He cares for you--   
   Will you love Him till the end time?   
   There's Heaven then for you!   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)