The Greatest of Marian Knights
Yesterday was the feast day of one of the principal Saints in my life, Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe.
You will notice that I take my name from Saint Maximilian.
This is so because I have a great devotion to this Saint of God. To Saint Maximilian, I owe much of my Roman Catholic formation.
In many ways, he is to me the greatest of all Marian Knights.
He and my darling Annelies Marie share a connection in my life that have proven to be more than mere coincidence.
He is the patron Saint of the suffering addict and refuge of the recovering addict.
My own Marian character was taught to me by Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe.
Glorified be God forever in all His Angels and in all His Saints!
---<--@
The Feast of the Assumption
Today is the feast day of the Assumption of our Lady.
It is the focal Marian feast that reveals through the life of our Lady the immense joy of our Christian faith.
It is equivalent to the Transfiguration in the life of our Lord, Jesus Christ, in that both of these are a preparatory experience in the Christian life.
Simply put, a Marian character in a Roman Catholic soul multiplies joy.
This Marian joy lends its strength to Christian endurance. It prepares our hearts to live the hope of ordinary time.
- selah -
Now, if there is anything our Lady desires of thee, O my Philippines - it is thy own heart at prayer.
You know this in your own hearts, my fellow Filipino compatriots, that God has set a labor before our hearts and a challenge for all the world to repent unto Peace and forsake War.
For these are defining times indeed, we are living in a transition from age to age.
Prayer is a battle we can not refuse to fight.
But our prayers can not ascend to the unity of the LORD, O my nation, if War is in our heart.
- selah -
We have to learn to pray as a nation:
We have to learn to desire what a nation desires.
We have to forsake the divisions that have prevented our unity.
We have to let go of the bitterness that have fed these animosities.
We have to stand up against the despair that have shackled our dreaming.
We have to see our generations through this midnight darkness
ever by the light of our faith in God and in each other as citizens together.
We have to understand -
A nation that prays as one, stays as one.
And a nation at one with its own truth is a nation at peace.
Verily, as a nation, we can not be anything else but one.
So let us pray to God for the gift of prayer for our nation. Let us desire it from God as our Lady desires it from us now so that in time we may all profess to the LORD as one the truth that the prayer of the Philippines is Peace.
---<--@
Closing Reflection -
The common religion of every Man is peace - it is that mysterious desire dwelling deep within all of us to be able to somehow return to the happiness and perfection of that one common belonging written in each our heart; the Peace of the LORD, the one God of All creation.
---<--@
Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.
Hope Taking Wing
An Act of Unity