Forming Your Foundation

So, I'm always telling you prayer is important and we need to pray, etc. etc. Where do you start though? For me, I started with scripture and the Rosary. You can access daily mass readings at http://www.usccb.org/nab, with that you can reflect on the readings or I'm sure you can find various 30 days of scripture type things to get you started; however, I highly recommend you read the daily readings since they are given out by the church.
How do I meditate on scripture?
First off, start your prayer time by asking the Holy Spirit to come into your heart, and ask that He help you to quiet your heart and mind in order to be able to clearly know what the Lord has to speak to you that night. Then, read the passage once through. After your first reading, read again a second time, slower though, and maybe underline or highlight lines that stand out to you and see how they tie into your life. God will do the work if you give him the time and He will be soooo pleased that you are taking time out of your day to give to him. So don't hesitate to start!
 What do I do after meditation?
Well, it all depends. Sometimes I like to sit in silence and just let the Lord speak to my heart. If you're just getting started I would recommend a decade of the rosary or pray a divine mercy chaplet. Neither one takes long and they, of course, are both great ways of prayer! You can also look up prayers (I'll suggest a few at the end) to say. Also, you can just speak to God saying little lines like "Jesus I love you" "Jesus I trust you" "All I am is your Lord" or whatever comes to mind. It's all about letting the Holy Spirit guide you!

One of my favorite websites from when I first started praying and getting into my faith is: http://christmyhope.com/id17.html. They have many great prayers and sweet photos. It is a website I knwo you will love going to!

And now some prayers to say after meditation!

Anima Christi
Soul of Christ, make me holy.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, fill me with love.
Water from Christ's side, wash me.
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
Good Jesus, hear me.
Within your wounds, hide me.
 Never let me be parted from you.
From the evil enemy, protect me.
At the hour of my death, call me.
And tell me to come to you.
That with your saints I may praise you.
Through  all eternity. Amen.

Hail, Holy Queen
Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve: to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then,most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus, O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary! Pray for us O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Amen.


St. Francis Prayer
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.


If you feel meditation is too much then start even smaller. Start by saying a morning offering prayer such as this:
O Jesus, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I offer you my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world. I offer them for all the intentions of your Sacred Heart: the salvation of souls, reparation for sin, the reunion of all Christians. I offer them for the intentions of our bishops and of all the apostles of prayer, and in particular for those recommended by our Holy Father this month. Amen.

You'll build up once you start small. Don't allow yourself to become content where you are, but push yourself to seek holiness more and more and strive to constantly be growing closer to Christ. Bring the Lord to every task of your day. Stand on the sure, true, firm foundation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and you'll be sure to be caught if you fall. You'll be sure to be helped when you fall.

May God bless you!
Keep praying!

In Jesus&Mary,
amber

Answering the Call Part 1

My last blog talked about how God calls us to do great things, big and small, the question and problem is: how to answer the call... With prayer of course! But there's more than that!

Prayer is important because we get to know our Lord by spending time with him and the only way to spend time with the Lord is in prayer so we must pray to be able to discern what BIG or little thing God is calling us to do.

Today we're going to start with the little things.
What little things are important in your life?
For me, I find prayer and house chores rather important.
Prayer is important because it sets the foundation for the rest of your life, and for each day. You have to make time to spend with God each day so He can give you the grace you need to fight your battle that day.
House chores: why are the little things such as cleaning your room, the bathroom, laundry, dishes, etc. important? By doing them you build a habit of doing them rather than procrastinating and putting them off until it takes you two hours to complete a task when you could just give 5-10 minutes a day or week depending on the task. 

My advice: be diligent in the little things, doing so will form good habits for your future.


My challenge: pick a "little" thing you struggle with and strive to improve it...I suggest making a schedule for each day and sticking to it like glue.


My suggestion:Plan out each day or each week the night or week before so you know exactly what is going on when and can make time for prayer and the little way you want to improve your life in order to prepare you to do something big.

God bless!
Keep praying!

In Jesus&Mary,
amber

The Call

The Lord calls us all to great things, to serve Him, to trust Him with our lives and to put aside our fear of failure and to completely surrender to His will, however, this is extremely hard. Our human fears often interfere with God's great plan for us. I know I'm afraid to be judged by others because of my faith, and afraid to be rejected and persecuted because of Jesus, "Happy are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reweard will be great in heaven..." Mt. 5:11-12 This verse reminds us that we belong to Jesus, and only to Jesus. He will always provide for us. And so we need to come out of our comfort zone and turn to Christ, relying on Him as our strength, and well, completely surrender to him as he is our King, Father, and Savior. He has a divine will for us and the only way we can truly fulfill his will Divine will is by giving him everything that is within us!

Now this is easier said than done, so how do we start? Where do we go from deciding it's time to raise the standards and do something more with our lives?

We pray! Start small and build your way up. Pick somewhere you want to start. A great way is by doing a consecration to Jesus through Mary, Pope John Paul II made one based off of St. Louis Marie de Montfort's original. It's a good foundation for prayer because it has 33 days where you read scripture, meditate on it, say prayers for the part you are on, and make a resolution to improve wherever God is calling you to improve in your life. You can also find in either the front or back of your bible ways to read the bible in 2 years, or something like that and so you can do it that way. You can start with a chaplet of divine mercy, a decade of the rosary, a morning offering prayer, or whatever else floats you boat. Just be sure to take that quiet time in your day to give to the Lord and get to know Him and spend time with him because prayer will need to be the foundation for your earthly journey.

God bless!
Keep praying!

In Jesus&Mary,
amber

P.S. if you need prayer sources feel free to contact me via email: amberrose521@hotmail.com, or facebook or comment on here. I'd be more than happy to help you get started on your path to holiness. I promise it'll be a decision you never regret making!

"Do Hard Things"

This evening my youth minister gave me a novel to read for inspiration as I'm going to work with one of my friends to serve the Lord and help bring knowledge of His great love for us to the youth of the world, "Do Hard Things" by Alex&Brett Harris. Alex & Brett are two teens who chose to begin challenging the youth of the world to raise their expectations. In reading 15 pages I am already inspired to be a greater self gift to those around me. I want to cook dinner for my family once a week, unload dishes, clean and be of service to my mom without being asked. I want to be a self gift. I refuse to settle for less than my best, so why am I telling you this? Well, I want you to join with me on this journey! Challenge yourself! How can you be a greater self gift? And I don't mean a literal gift, I mean a gift of your service, of your time, of your hard work? How can you better spend your time? Volunteer at a local nursing home or hospital. Help your parents around the house, complain less and sacrifice that television time for your friends, family or even a stranger. I want to challenge others, you included, to do harder things. Strive to be your best and settle for nothing less! From there we'll grow with our faith as well. Service is part of being a christian, so serve then do something fun, go see a movie, open your time of service in prayer, find those friends who are going to push you to take the next level, get involved with a church youth group. Seek to challenge yourself and take the road less travelled. Seek the good Lord, our God and Savior in all that you do. Raise you expectations!

I challenge you to be a self gift in your service to the other people in this world!

God bless!
Keep praying.

In Jesus&Mary,
amber 

By the Grace of God

This weekend I had a retreat for the servants/leadership team in my youth group. It was a wonderful experience to be able to open up to the Lord and recommit my life to Him over again, as it is important to continually give our lives over to Him. Giving ourselves to the Lord isn’t a one time thing. We started Saturday morning with mass and finished the day with confession and adoration. For me, adoration was amazing, as I’m sure it was for everyone else. Lately, I have really been struggling to see the beauty within me and to see myself as Jesus sees me so I praying all week and starting Friday night in our communal prayer asking Christ to show me myself in His eyes. He kept giving me the verse Song of Songs 4:7 “You are all beautiful, my beloved, there is no blemish within you”. So I was just giving myself to the Lord telling Him I give everything that is mine and completely emptying myself so that He may fulfill my every need and become the strength I need to keep pressing on, but also to spread the word of God and share His glory with others. After our Holy Hour everyone wanted to be crazy and play ridiculous games, but I knew the Lord wasn’t done speaking to my heart. I really wanted to bond and grow in fellowship with my brothers and sisters, but I knew God was calling me to Himself to speak to me in a more intimate way.

You see, during adoration I ended up just sitting with my arms open and completely opened myself up asking the Lord to come into my heart. Now He wanted to speak to me. First I started by reading An Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales to help me come back to my quiet place. That night we also began our consecration to Jesus through Mary done by St. Francis de Montfort, so I began by reflecting more on the day one readings and journaling what had been on my mind during my meditation.

Following this I began to read from my Volume II Conversations with the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus written by Anne the lay apostle(http://www.directionforourtimes.org/). The passage I came to was about something we had heard in one of the talks earlier that day. Jesus was reminding us to examine our intentions of our actions to be sure we are acting from our heart as Jesus desires. He was also reminding us to not become discouraged when things don’t go as we suspect or hope which goes around to trusting in His divine will and that whatever happens must be a part of His will which was nice for me to hear since this year I will be having life changing decisions to make. So finding that passage God was reminding me to be His servant and strive to serve Him with the purest of intentions.

With this I still felt God more to say and He did. I started flipping through my bible hoping the Holy Spirit would guide my pages and surely enough He did. I came to few passages I’d read before, but one really hit home, and it was a new one. The Lord showed me 1 Corinthians 15:10 “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them-yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” This verse, I felt, described me perfectly. Having converted to the Catholic faith many tell me that I am amazing and what I’ve done is amazing, but it was not I who did this. It was not I who nagged at my heart to the point where I could no longer resist, but Jesus. Only by the grace of God am I here! If it weren’t for God placing certain people in my life when He did I wouldn’t even be alive today of this I’m sure. If he hadn’t placed Jaime and Tim in my life I would have never been introduced to the faith. Therefore, it is only by the grace of God that I am where I am. Were it not for His divine will, his mercy, and his glorious grace, where would I be? Where would you be?




If it were not for the grace of God where would you be today?

Keep praying!
God bless!

In Jesus&Mary,
amber

Growing "Old" or Up rather

Remember the days when wearing Hollister Co. jeans made you B.A. and you thought you were the shiznit if you owned a pair? Do I ever! Remember the bad hair(perms/color), bold crazy make-up, ridiculous fights over silly boys you never ended up dating and found out that dating isn't all it's cracked up to be, unless of course you have the right person? If not for those days, we wouldn't be who we are today.

This evening I began looking through all my old photos from my middle school days, and freshman too...even back to last year actually and it truly amazes me how quickly we grow and change. To refer to a specific grade I'll pick 8th because I have the most photos from it. Compared to how we all look now our faces were still chubby with "baby" fat and we all had weird body shapes, poor make-up experiments, bad outfits, crazy moments of boredom with poor judgement. There is just so much growing and changing that we have done in 4 years. We've all matured at least a little, some more than others. We've grown into our bodies, our clothes aren't quite as bad and when it comes to girls and make-up we either don't wear it or have it mostly under control. I think the best part though has to be looking at the pictures of the guys who we've watched grow over the years. They hadn't had their growth spurts yet so they're the size of all us girls and it's crazy to look at when most of them are close to 6' if not over these days. It's funny, really, how we all ended up turning out so far.

We, the seniors of 2011 have more year left together. To enjoy each other, to laugh at each other, but also to grow together, to make life changing decisions. We've been together, some of us since we were in diapers, lets make it a good one, full of memories that will last a lifetime! So as we're filling out college applications, becoming frustrated and not wanting to grow up, to move on, to move forward and start the rest of our lives, we'll remember the good times and then remember there are so many more great memories to be made!
And to finish off, a few photos for old times sake!

Days: Good & Bad

As human beings we should not be expected to be perfect, to be cheerful, to be joyful all the time, but so often it seems we are. So what do we do? We put on a mask and try to hide from the world that nothing is right, everything is wrong and we feel as if we're falling apart, nothing is holding us together and we are weak. But our masks, oh our masks! They hide that. People who don't know you well will buy right into the lie. "how are you?" "Oh...I'm good. how are you?" this would be how a conversation would go, but the oh and ... hint to something more. Something so much more that says my life sucks and I feel so lost. However, from most people this feeling can be hidden and the mask works. When it doesn't work you break down. You start crying, falling apart, crumbling because this person who knew you were not okay is someone who knows you so well to know that you weren't okay.

Truly, it is amazing to me how quickly everything can change. Yesterday, I had my picture perfect day. It was quiet, I had time to think, time to pray, time to read, and simply took a lot of time and gave it to God. It was wonderful and I couldn't have asked for a better day. Then the internet acted up and I just wanted to start applying for colleges like I'm supposed to and so I became frustrated very quickly turning mood all around. I was questioning if I did the right thing in one situation, and extremely agitated. It all went downhill from there. Should I have told this guy or just let it run it's course and pan out? Will I go to college? Why do I feel so alone? I feel so lost! I don't know what to do, my head spinning in circles a millions times a second! Endless thought after thought.

And so, we have good days and we have bad days. That's a fact of life. Today I want to challenge you, don't expect people to be perfect and don't judge them when they fall. Help them up, love them and be their friend because when people fall, when people fail, that's what they need: a loving friend to help them up again. So even in their imperfections love the people in your life.
God bless!

In Jesus&Mary,
Amber