Monday, June 7, 2010

Rosary Chaplet: Our Lady of Mount Carmel



Virgin of Carmel Traditional One Decade Rosary Chaplet




Chaplet Prayer: The Fifteen Secret Tortures and Suffering of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

The Fifteen Secret Tortures and Suffering of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Rosary Chaplet
This rosary chaplet consists of eighteen beads in total - fifteen on the loop and three on the drop.

Revealed to the pious, God-loving Sister Mary Magdalen of Sancta Clara Order, Franciscan, who lived, died and was beatified in Rome. Jesus fulfilled the wish of this Sister, who desired to ardently know something about the secret sufferings which He endured the night before His death.
This devotion is approved and recommended by His Holiness Clement II, (1730-1740)

On the first 3 beads is said:
"I looked for one that would comfort me, and I found none"
followed by an Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be....


On each single bead:
Meditate upon the secret tortures and sufferings.

The Fifteen Secret Tortures and Suffering of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ:

1. They fastened My feet with a rope and dragged Me over the stepping stones of the staircase, down into a filthy, nauseating cellar.

2. They took off My clothing and stung My body with iron joints.

3. They attached a rope around My body and pulled Me on the ground from end to end.

4. They hanged Me on a wooden piece with a slip knot until I slipped out and fell down. Overwhelmed by this torture, I wept bloody tears.

5. They tied Me to a post and pierced My body with various arms.

6. They struck Me with stones and burnt Me with blazing embers and torches.

7. They pierced Me with awls; sharp spears tore My skin, flesh and arteries out of My body.

8. They tied Me to a post and made Me stand barefoot on an incandescent metal sheet.

9. They crowned Me with an iron crown and wrapped My eyes with the dirtiest possible rags.

10. They made Me sit on a chair covered with sharp pointed nails, causing deep wounds in My body.

11. They poured on My wounds liquid lead and resin and, after this torture, they pressed Me on the nailed chair so that the nails went deeper and deeper into My flesh.

12. For shame and affliction, they drove needles into the holes of My uprooted beard. They tied my hands behind My back and led Me walking out of prison with strikes and blows.

13. They threw Me upon a cross and attached Me so tightly that I could hardly breathe anymore.

14. They threw at My head as I lay on the earth, and they stepped on Me, hurting My breast. Then, taking a thorn from My crown, they drove it into My tongue.

15. They poured into My mouth the most immodest excretions, as they uttered the most infamous expressions about Me.
Then, Jesus added,
"My daughter, I desire that you let everybody know the Fifteen Secret Tortures in order that everyone of them be honored." "Anyone who daily offers Me, with love, one of these sufferings and says with fervor the following prayer, will be rewarded with eternal glory on the day of judgment."

On the Crucifix:
Say the prayer that Jesus gave to Sister Mary Magdalen of Santa Clara.
My Lord and My God, it is my unchangeable will to honor you in these Fifteen Secret Torments when You shed Your Precious Blood; as many times as there are grains of sand around the seas, as fruit in the orchards, as leaves on the trees, as flowers in the gardens, as stars in the sky, as angels in Heaven, as creatures on earth. So many thousands of times may you be glorified, praised and honored, O Most love-worthy Lord Jesus Christ - Your Holiest Heart, Your Precious Blood, Your Divine Sacrifice for mankind, the Holiest Sacrament of the altar, the Most Holy Virgin Mary, the nine glorious choirs of Angels and the Blessed Phalanx of the Saints, from myself and everyone, now and forever, and in the eternal ages.
In like manner, I desire, my dear Jesus, to give You thanksgiving, to serve you, to repair and atone for all my ignominies, and to offer You my soul and body as Your possession forever. Likewise, I regret all my sins and beg Your pardon, O my Lord and my God. And I offer You all the merits of Jesus Christ to repair everything, to obtain a happy dying-hour and the deliverance of the souls from Purgatory. This prayer I desire to renew at each hour until my death, O lovable Jesus. Sweet Savior, fortify my resolution and permit not that neither wretched men nor Satan destroy it. Amen.
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Fifteen Secret Tortures of Christ Chaplet


Friday, June 4, 2010

The Chaplet of Saint Philomena

 The Rosary Chaplet of Saint Philomena

St. Philomena is a most powerful helper of students at examinations.  She cures the sick in the most desperate cases. She obtains great help for mothers at childbirth. She is also the Patron of The Living Rosary and Patron of The Children of Mary.  To read more about Saint Philomena please click here.

 The Chaplet of St. Philomena consists of a Medal of her likeness with 3 white beads in honor of the three Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity in thanksgiving for all favors obtained through her intercession, and 13 red beads representing the thirteen years she spent on earth.

How to pray this chaplet:

On the medal pray:
The Apostle's Creed - to ask for the grace of faith.

1st White Bead pray:
The Our Father - in honor of The Father

2nd White Bead pray:
The Our Father - in honor of The Son

3rd White Bead pray:
The Our Father - in honor of The Holy Spirit

On each Red Bead pray:
Hail, O holy St. Philomena, whom I acknowledge, after Mary, as my advocate with the Divine Spouse, intercede for me now and at the hour of my death.

St. Philomena, beloved daughter of Jesus and Mary, pray for us who have recourse to thee. Amen.

In conclusion say:
Hail, O illustrious St. Philomena, who shed so courageously your blood for Christ! I bless the Lord for all the graces He has bestowed upon thee during thy life, and especially at thy death. I praise and glorify Him for the honor and power with which He has crowned thee, and I beg thee to obtain for me from God the graces I ask through thy intercession.


Saint Philomena: Patron of The Living Rosary

Portrait of St. Philomena commissioned by St. John Vianney.

Saint Philomena is venerated as a virgin martyr saint of the Catholic Church, said to have been a young Greek princess martyred in the 4th century. Her veneration  began in the early 19th century after the archaeological  discovery in the Catacombs of Priscilla of the bones of a young woman, which were interpreted as those of a martyr. Nothing else was known about her, but an inscription found at the tomb was taken to indicate that her name was (in the Latin of the inscription) Filumena; corresponding to the English name Philomena.

The remains were removed to Mugnano del Cardinale in 1805 and became the focus of widespread devotion, with several miracles credited to the saint's intercession, including the healing of Venerable Pauline Jaricot in 1835, which received wide publicity. Saint Jean Vianney attributed to her intercession the extraordinary cures that others attributed to himself. Accounts of her life and martyrdom circulated on the basis of visions of a Neapolitan nun.

Her liturgical celebration was never included in the General Roman Calendar for universal use, but, beginning in 1837, it was approved for some places. The 1920 typical edition of the Roman Missal included a mention of her, under August 11, in the section headed Missae pro aliquibus locis (Masses for some places), with an indication that the Mass to be used in those places was one from the common of a Virgin Martyr, without any collect proper to the saint. On 14 February 1961, the Holy See ordered that the name of Saint Philomena be removed from all liturgical calendars that mentioned her. Accordingly, the 1962 Roman Missal, the edition whose continued use as an extraordinary form of the Roman Rite is authorized by the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, also has no mention of her.

Discovery of The Remains

On 24 May 1802 in the Catacombs of Priscilla on the Via Salaria Nova an inscribed loculus (space hollowed out of the rock) was found, and on the following day it was carefully examined and opened. The loculus was closed with three terra cotta tiles, on which was the following inscription: lumena paxte cumfi. It was and is generally accepted that the tiles were in a wrong order and that the inscription originally read, with the leftmost tile placed on the right: pax tecum Filumena (i.e."Peace with you, Philomena"). Within the loculus was found the skeleton of a female between thirteen and fifteen years old. Embedded in the cement was a small glass phial with vestiges of what was taken to be blood. In accordance with the assumptions of the time, the remains were taken to be those of a virgin martyr named Philomena.

The belief that such vials were signs of the grave of a martyr was still held in 1863, when a 10 December decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites confirmed a decree of 10 April 1668.  But this view has been rejected in practice since the investigations of Giovanni Battista De Rossi (1822-1894).


Shrine to St. Philomena inside the church at Mugnano del Cardinale, Italy


In 1805, Canon Francesco De Lucia requested relics for a new altar, and on 8 June obtained the remains discovered in May 1802 (reduced to dust and fragments) for his church in Mugnano del Cardinale , where they arrived on 11 August, after being taken from Rome to Naples on 1 July.  In 1827, Pope Leo XII gave to the church in Mugnano del Cardinale the three inscribed terra cotta slabs that had been taken from the tomb.

Church of Saint Philomena in Mugnano del Cardinale, Italy

Reported Life of Saint Philomena

On 21 December 1833, the Holy Office declared that there was nothing contrary to the Catholic faith in the revelations that Sister Maria Luisa di Gesù (1799-1875), a Dominican tertiary from Naples, claimed to have received from the Saint herself.

According to Sister Maria Luisa di Gesù, Saint Philomena told her she was the daughter of a king in Greece who, with his wife, had converted to Christianity. At the age of about 13 she took a vow of consecrated virginity. When the Emperor Diocletian threatened to make war on her father, he went with his family to Rome to ask for peace. The Emperor fell in love with the young Philomena and, when she refused to be his wife, he subjected her to a series of torments: scourging, from whose effects two angels cured her; drowning with an anchor attached to her, but two angels cut the rope and raised her to the river bank; being shot with arrows, but on the first occasion her wounds were healed, on the second the arrows turned aside, and on the third, they returned and killed six of the archers, and several of the others became Christians. Finally the Emperor had her decapitated, which occurred on a Friday at three in the afternoon, as with the death of Jesus. The two anchors, three arrows, the palm and the ivy leaf on the tiles found in the tomb were interpreted as symbols of her martyrdom.

In these visions she also revealed that her birthday was 10 January, that her martyrdom occurred on 10 August (the date also of the arrival of her relics in Mugnano del Cardinale), and that her name "Filumena" meant "daughter of light". (It is usually taken to be derived from a Greek word meaning "beloved".)

For prayers to Saint Philomena, including her rosary chaplet,  please click here.

Article taken from Wikipedia.

La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre - The Virgin of Charity

La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre

La Virgen de La Caridad del Cobre
"The Virgin of Charity"

The Virgin of Charity (La Virgen de la Caridad) is a miraculous statue of the Virgin Mary in the mining town of El Cobre, outside Santiago in southwest Cuba. Her shrine is the most important religious site on the entire island.

A focus of intese popular devotion—not just for Catholics but also for followers of Santería and even those who aren't otherwise religious—the beloved Virgin of Charity was declared the patron saint of Cuba by the pope in 1916. 

History

The town of El Cobre was founded in 1550 as a Spanish copper mine, worked by slaves and Indians. One day in 1608, two Indians and a slave boy were gathering salt on the coast near El Cobre when they saw something floating in the water. It was a small statue of the Virgin Mary, carrying the Christ child and a gold cross. She floated on a board bearing the inscription, Yo soy la Virgen de la Caridad, "I am the Virgin of Charity."

At the time, the church in El Cobre was dedicated to Santiago, St. James, the powerful patron of the Spanish conquest. So the statue of the Virgin was placed in a thatched hut instead of in the church. But on three successive nights, the statue disappeared from the hut and was found on top of the hill above El Cobre.


Statue of the Virgin of Charity in the El Cobre Basilica, Santiago, Cuba


The Virgin of Charity resided in several small shrines until 1630, when the copper mine was closed and the slaves were freed. She then took St. James' place above the high altar in the church, a symbol of the triumph of the people over the Spanish conquerers.

Since then, the Virgin has continued to assist her people and has been credited with countless miracles. In 1731, when an attempt was made to reintroduce slavery, she became a symbol of emancipation for one of Cuba's largest slave insurrections. In the end, the slaves were declared free. This spread devotion to Our Lady of Charity even further.

In 1916, the pope visited the shrine of the Virgin of Charity and declared her the patron saint of Cuba. El Cobre Basilica was built to house her in 1927. In 1998, Pope John Paul II crowned her statue during his historic visit to communist Cuba.

The Virgin has collected many votive offerings from her grateful worshippers over the years. In the 1950s, Ernest Hemingway  gave the Virgin the Nobel Prize for Literature he won after writing The Old Man and the Sea in Havana. The mother of Fidel and Raul Castro  left a small golden guerrilla fighter at the feet of the Virgin as her sons battled the government of dictator Fulgencio Batista ahead of the Cuban Revolution.

Today, the Virgin of Charity in El Cobre continues to receive streams of visitors and stacks of votive gifts. Common objects left in more recent times include replicas of rafts, representing safe journeys to America, and photos of activists who have been imprisoned by Castro's government.


El Cobre Basilica, Santiago, Cuba

Prayer to Our Lady of Charity, Patroness of Cuba

Most Holy Mother of Charity
who came to us as a messenger of peace across the sea.
You are the Mother of all Cubans
To you we come, Most Holy Mother of God
to honor you with love as your children.
To your motherly heart
we entrust our desires and hopes
our work and our prayers.
We pray for our torn country
that we may be able to build
a nation based on peace and unity.
We pray for our families
that they may live in fidelity and love.

We pray for our children
that they may grow strong
in spirit and in body.

We pray for our young people
that their faith may increase,
as well as their attachment to
the truth.

We pray for the sick, the homeless,
the lonely, the exiled,
and for all suffering souls.
We pray for the Catholic Church in Cuba,
for its mission,
for its priests, deacons,
religious and laity.

We pray for the victory
of justice and love
in our country.

Mother of Charity!
We place ourselves
under your mantle of protection!
Blessed are you among women
and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus!
And to Him be the glory and the power
now and forever. Amen. 



Source: http://www.sacred-destinations.com/cuba/el-cobre.htm