From Poor, Uneducated, Suspected Nut Case Nun To Mystic, Saint, Promoter of Divine Mercy Devotion & Secretary of Mercy: St Faustina Kowalska

On October 5, the church celebrates the Memorial of St. Mary Faustina Kowalska, a poor, uneducated nun, who became a mystic, a Promoter of the Divine Mercy Devotion and a saint.

On April 30, 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized St. Faustina saying this was “the happiest day of my life.” Faustina was granted the title "Secretary of Mercy" by the Holy See in the Jubilee Year of 2000

In his  homily the Pope said: "Today my joy is truly great in presenting the life and witness of Sr. Faustina Kowalska to the whole Church as a gift of God for our time. By divine Providence, the life of this humble daughter of Poland was completely linked with the history of the 20th century, the century we have just left behind. In fact, it was between the First and Second World Wars that Christ entrusted his message of mercy to her. Those who remember, who were witnesses and participants in the events of those years and the horrible sufferings they caused for millions of people, know well how necessary was the message of mercy,”

It was also on this day, the Sunday after Easter, that Pope John Paul II instituted the Feast of Divine Mercy, which Jesus had asked for in his messages to Sr. Faustina.


Maria Faustyna Kowalska, born Helena Kowalska is also known as Maria Faustyna Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament,  a Polish Catholic religious sister and mystic. Faustyna, popularly spelled "Faustina", had apparitions of Jesus Christ which inspired the Catholic devotion to the Divine Mercy. She is sometimes called the "secretary" of Divine Mercy

Throughout her life, Faustina reported having visions of Jesus and conversations with him, which she noted in her diary, later published as The Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul. Her biography, submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, quoted some of the conversations with Jesus regarding the Divine Mercy devotion

At the age of 20 years, she joined 

a convent in Warsaw. She was later transferred to Płock and then to Vilnius, where she met Father Michał Sopoćko, who was to be her confessor and spiritual director, and who supported her devotion to the Divine Mercy. With this priest's help, Kowalska commissioned an artist to paint the first Divine Mercy image, based on her vision of Jesus. Father Sopoćko celebrated Mass in the presence of this painting on the Second Sunday of Easter or as established by Pope John Paul II), Divine Mercy Sunday.

Pope St. John Paul II wrote:
“It is truly marvelous how her devotion to the merciful Jesus is spreading in our contemporary world and gaining so many human hearts! This is doubtlessly a sign of the times — a sign of our twentieth century. The balance of this century, which is now ending, in addition to the advances which have often surpassed those of preceding eras, presents a deep restlessness and fear of the future. Where, if not in the Divine Mercy, can the world find refuge and the light of hope? Believers understand that perfectly,”

Faustina was born Helena Kowalska on August 25, 1905 to a poor but devout Polish family in 1905. At the age of 20, with very little education, and having been rejected from several other convents because of her poverty and lack of education, Helen entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. There, she took the name Sr. Faustina and spent time in convents in both Poland and Lithuania.

In 1924, at the age of 18 and a half, Kowalska went with her sister Natalia to a dance in a park in Łódź. Kowalska said that at the dance, she had a vision of a suffering Jesus, who she believed asked her: 'How long shall I put up with you and how long will you keep putting Me off?" She then went to the Łódź Cathedral, where, as she later said, Jesus instructed her to depart for Warsaw immediately and to enter a convent.She took a train for Warsaw, some 85 miles  away, without asking her parents' permission and despite the fact that she knew nobody in Warsaw. The only belongings she took were the dress that she was wearing.

In 1925, Kowalska worked as a housemaid to save the money she needed, making deposits at the convent throughout the year and was finally accepted, as the Mother Superior had promised. On 30 April 1926, at the age of 20 years, she was clothed in the habit and received the religious name Maria Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament.  In April 1928, having completed the novitiate, she took her first religious vows as a nun, with her parents attending the rite.

From February to April 1929, she was assigned to the convent in Wilno, then in Poland, now known as Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, where she served as a cook. Although her first assignment to Vilnius was short, she returned there later and met the priest Michael Sopoćko, who supported her mission. A year after her first return from Vilnius, in May 1930, she was transferred to the convent in Płock, Poland, for almost two years.

Faustina wrote that on the night of Sunday, 22 February 1931, while she was in her cell in Płock, Jesus appeared wearing a white garment with red and pale rays emanating from his heart. 

Not knowing how to paint, Faustina approached some other nuns at the convent in Płock for help, but she received no assistance. Three years later, after her assignment to Vilnius, the first artistic rendering of the image was produced.

In the same message about the Divine Mercy image, as Faustina also wrote in her diary (Notebook I, item 49), Jesus told her that he wanted the Divine Mercy image to be "solemnly blessed on the first Sunday after Easter Sunday; that Sunday is to be the Feast of Mercy."

In November 1932, Faustina returned to Warsaw to prepare to take her final vows as a nun, by which she would become in perpetuity a sister of Our Lady of Mercy. The ceremony took place on 1 May 1933, in Łagiewniki.

In May 1933, Faustina was transferred to Vilnius to work as the gardener; her tasks included growing vegetables. She remained in Vilnius for about three years, until March 1936. The convent in Vilnius then had only 18 sisters and was housed in a few scattered small houses, rather than a large building

Shortly after arriving in Vilnius, Faustina met priest Michael Sopoćko, the newly appointed confessor to the nuns. He was also a professor of pastoral theology at Stefan Batory University, now called Vilnius University.

When Faustina went for the first time to this priest for confession, she told him that she had been conversing with Jesus, who had a plan for her. After some time, Sopoćko insisted on a complete psychiatric evaluation of Faustina by Helena Maciejewska, a psychiatrist and a physician associated with the convent. Faustina passed the required tests and was declared of sound mind.

Sopoćko then began to have confidence in Faustina and supported her efforts. Faustina told Sopoćko about the Divine Mercy image, and in January 1934, Sopoćko introduced her to the artist Eugene Kazimierowski, who was also a professor at the university.

By June 1934, Kazimierowski had finished painting the image, based on the direction of Kowalska and Sopoćko,  the only Divine Mercy painting that Faustina saw.

The first Mass during which the Divine Mercy image was displayed occurred on 28 April 1935, the second Sunday of Easter, and was attended by Faustina. It was also the celebration of the end of the Jubilee of the Redemption by Pope Pius XI. 

On 13 and 14 September 1935, while still in Vilnius, Faustina wrote of two visions about the Chaplet of Divine Mercy in her diary (Notebook I, Items 474 to 476). According to her, the chaplet prayers and structure were dictated to her directly by Jesus Christ, who granted several promises to its recitation. Kowalska wrote that the purpose for the chaplet's prayers for mercy is threefold: to obtain mercy, to trust in Christ's mercy, and to show mercy to others.

Before her death, Faustina predicted that "there will be a war, a terrible, terrible war" and asked the nuns to pray for Poland. In 1939, a year after Kowalska's death, Romuald Jałbrzykowski noticed that her predictions about the war had taken place and allowed public access to the Divine Mercy image, which resulted in large crowds that led to the spread of the Divine Mercy devotion. The devotion became a source of strength and inspiration for many people in Poland. By 1941, the devotion had reached the United States, and millions of copies of Divine Mercy prayer cards had been printed and distributed worldwide.

Divine Mercy

the Divine Mercy is a devotion to Jesus Christ associated with the reported apparitions of Jesus to Faustina Kowalska.

The venerated image under this title refers to what Faustina's diary describes as "God's loving mercy" towards all people, especially for sinners.

Miracles Attributed to the Divine Mercy Devotion

It is not possible to lost all of the miracles connected to the Divine Mercy and the promise Jesus made to mankind in regards to the image and the chaplet. To list all, would fill many books by themselves. Many more are often personal and people do not report them. See for example Health With Grace blog about Miracles of the Divine Mercy

The Inequity of the Pursuit of Excellence in College Sports;

John Branch writing for the New York Times in an October 4, 2024 essay tittked What Does College Football Have to Do With College? then goes on to explain why the question matters: "The question isn’t new. But seismic changes to college sports, embraced by Coach Deion Sanders and his University of Colorado Buffaloes, have made it more relevant than ever."


On Tuesday, the university of Tennessee shared with football season-ticket holders via email, an what is believed to be the first arrangement of its kind: Tennessee fans for all sports will be charged a 10% "talent fee" on tickets to help pay athletes as part of the new revenue-sharing plan set to begin in 2025. Nothing to do with academic excellence.


Branch writes that Colorado star quarterback Shedeur Sanders, the coach’s son, drives a Rolls-Royce and earns more than $5 million in sponsorship deals, according to estimates by On3. Last April, near the end of his third semester on campus, Sanders attended an in-person class for the first time. It was filmed for his social media accounts.

In a nut shell, Branch describes the
Pareto Rule of College Sports: 99% of college players never make it to the professional league


According to WalletHub financial writer Adam McCann in a July 2 article titled “Most & Least Educated Cities in America” (2024,) Ann Arbor, Michigan, was No. 1 on WalletHub’s list of most educated metropolitan areas with an overall score of 93.7 out 100.

Meanwhile, 100% of student athletes are subdidised by taxpayers.Why do you think the cost of operating a higher education institution has grown exponentially?

Meanwhile, Newsweek’s Joe Edwards reports that Washington state has not only seen the biggest influx of college-educated Americans, but Seattle is the least-religious large metro area. In addition. Washington not only has several student loan forgiveness programs that are specific to just the State of Washington, but residents can also qualify for various Federal student loan forgiveness programs. Consistent with the Law of Bilk; Residents who want to bilk the system go where they are welcomed and stay where they are protected and well treated. Soon, passing the bar exam will no longer be a requirement for becoming a lawyer in Washington.

In the past. a degree meant something: the degree holder was responsible, hard-worker, independent and most of all, was well versed in their field of study.. If that person left and went to another state, that would be a brain drain. It is no longre brain drain but more like dead weight augmentation for the receiving state.









So, when the likes of Adam McCann and Joe Edwards report about the Most and Least Educated Cities in America, they should really be more precise and identify whether they mean Educated, Indoctrinated or Degree Holders.

NYT's Modern Fat Romance

The October 2, 2024 of the NYT's Modern Love, explores obesity and romance: ‘For me, the hardest was walking into a party with our friends, where I was like, I don’t want to be the fat couple.’

Gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins, is defined as excess in eating and drinking

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of food and drink, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the holy Spirit; whoever serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by others. - Romans 14:17

The NIH says the obesity epidemic is because people are responding to the forces in their environment, rather than lacking in willpower and self-control.62(pS141)

Likewise, the Fentanyl crisis, according to Yale Medicine, driving overdose deaths is because fentanyl is easy to manufacture, it is easy to ship around the country - not willpower and self-control.

WHO'S Bertolote argues that the mental health crisis is due to a lack of clear and widely accepted definition of mental health as a discipline was. - not willpower and self-control

Gone are the days of personal responsibility. The NYT, NIH, Yale Medicine, WHO et al, seem to have graduated from Stanford University Professor Nir Halevy's class on how to blame others:

To be fat, an addict  a mental health patient, straight or LGBT is not about shaming. It's not about boasting. After all, we are made in the image of God. Human life is sacred and that the dignity of the human person is the foundation of a moral vision for society. This notion is well-supported by Sacred Scriptures;

• Genesis 1:26-31: God created man and woman in his image.
• Deuteronomy 10:17-19: God loves the orphan, the widow, and the stranger.
• Psalms 139:13-16: God formed each of us and knows us intimately.
• Proverbs 22:2: The Lord is the maker of both rich and poor.
• Luke 10:25-37: The good Samaritan recognized the dignity in the other and cared for his life.
• John 4:1-42: Jesus broke with societal and religious customs to honor the dignity of the Samaritan woman.
• Romans 12: 9-18: Love one another, contribute to the needs of others, live peaceably with all.
• 1 Corinthians 3:16: You are holy, for you are God’s temple and God dwells in you.
• Galatians 3:27-28; All Christians are one in Christ Jesus.
• James 2:1-8: Honor the poor.
• 1 John 3: 1-2: See what love the Father has for us, that we should be called Children of God.
• 1 John 4:7-12: Let us love one another because love is from

We all have free will. (CCC 1732) As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.   The late Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar says we can choose to live an Ego-Drama, where everything we do revolves around ourselves and no one else; we write the script, we produce it and we star in it. Or we can live a Theo-Drama where  everything we do revolves around God. He writes the script.  He produces it.  We are merely a supporting cast.

Human failings are not only a result of the Ego-Drama but the demonic. As Bishop Robert Barron writes: “What are the signs of the demonic?  “What are the ways the demonic appears? Look at the names the Bible gives the devils, called in the Greek δῐᾰ́βολος (diabolos), diablo in Spanish, and le diable in French; διαβάλλειν (diaballein) means “to cast apart,” “to throw apart,” “to scatter.” The great sign of the demonic is scattering. God is a great gathering force. Whenever things come together, when a community forms, that is a sign of the Holy Spirit. The scattering power is a sign of the darker powers. When families get scattered, when business organizations, communities, and cultures get divided, that comes from the demonic.”

Using analysis tools like the Ishikawa Diagram, the Pareto Rule, Security Professionals' Attack Tree and or Occams Razor, they all suggest that after the uber progressive Warren SCOTUS (1963) 

decided that teaching children about wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety,  fear of the Lord., charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control and  chastity was too radical, and all hell broke lose.  A decade later Roe v Wade followed: California became No 1 Global Fentanyl Consumption, No 1 Child Exploitation, 43rd in education, we have had a mental health crisis. Infanticide turned into Black Genocide. African American nuclear family is in the extinct list, we have had an AIDS epidemic,  Opiod crisis, a fatherlesssness crisis,

a Trans Crisis, an Obesity crisis, and so on.

Its not about weight, wealth, addiction or sexual preferences. It's about personal responsibility. The best part is that when we feel we need help, expensive therapy is not required. There's always someone who can intercede for us is intercession in difficult or seemingly impossible challenges: for example, Saint Jude. He was on of the original twelve Apostles of Jesus and the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes. Venerated by millions of people worldwide, he is believed to have miraculous powers, and his intercession is often sought for difficult or seemingly impossible. Then there is Dymphna is known as the patroness of nervous disorders and mental disease, depression and incest, but she is not the only saint who can help the faithful in times of mental anguish. Those looking for saintly intercession can choose from a pantheon of holy helpers.

October, the Month of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary

October is dedicated to the Most Holy Rosary,  primarily because the liturgical feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is celebrated annually on October 7.  It was instituted to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary in gratitude for the protection that she gives the Church in answer to the praying of the Rosary by the faithful.

The Holy Rosary 

The purpose of the Rosary is to help keep in memory certain principal events in the history of our salvation. There are twenty mysteries reflected upon in the Rosary, and these are divided into the five Joyful Mysteries (said on Monday and Saturday), the five Luminous Mysteries (said on Thursday), the five Sorrowful Mysteries (said on Tuesday and Friday), and the five Glorious Mysteries (said on Wednesday and Sunday). As an exception, the Joyful Mysteries may be said on Sundays during Advent and Christmas, while the Sorrowful Mysteries may be said on the Sundays of Lent.

Pope Francis  calls for October 7 to be day of prayer and fasting for peace - October is the Month of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Miracles Attributed to the Rosary

The mysteries of the Rosary are based on the incidents in the life of Our Lord and His Mother that are celebrated in the Liturgy. There is a parallel between the main feasts honoring our Lord and his Mother in the liturgical year, and the twenty mysteries of the Rosary. Consequently, one who recites the twenty mysteries of the Rosary inm one day reflects on the whole liturgical cycle that the Church commemorates during the course of each year. That is why some of the Popes have referred to the Rosary as a compendium of the Gospel:

Pope Pius XII (papacy: 1939-1958) said the Rosary is " a compendium of the entire Gospel" (AAS 38 [1946] p. 419). The Rosary draws its mysteries from the New Testament and is centered on the great events of the Incarnation and Redemption


John Paul II called the Rosary his favorite prayer, in which we meditate with Mary upon the mysteries which she as a mother meditated on in her heart (Lk. 2:19) (Osservatore Romano, 44; 30 Oct. 1979).0ĺ

The Rosary Center offer several different modes of praying the Rosary, including a scriptural-based mode: For exsmple The First Joyful Mystery – Mary is Chosen Mother of GOD

1. Through the disobedience of Adam sin enters the world. Rom. 5:12
2. The Father sends His Son to save the world. Jn. 3:17
3. The Angel Gabriel is sent to a virgin named Mary. Lk. 1:26,27
4. The Angel tells Mary: “You are to have a Son and will name Him Jesus.” Lk. 1:31
5. He is the Son of God. Lk. 1:32
6. Mary consents: “Let it be done to me.” Lk. 1:38
7. God the Son becomes Man, in obedience to His Father. Lk. 1:35
8. By His obedience many shall be saved. Rom. 5:19
9. Mary becomes Mother of God. Lk. 1:35
10. Nothing is impossible with God. Lk. 1:37

History of the Holy Rosary 

The feast was introduced by Pope St. Pius V (1504-1572) in the year 1571 to commemorate the miraculous victory of the Christian forces in the Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571. The pope attributed more to the "arms" of the Rosary than the power of cannons and the valor of the soldiers who fought there.  In 1571 when the Catholic League entered into battle against the Ottoman Empire to protect Italy from invasion. The Turks were on a warpath to overthrow all of Europe, killing millions of people and forcing Islamic conversion on survivors. They had conquered the Middle East and Mediterranean islands of Cyrus and Crete; Italy was next.

As the impending battle loomed, Pope Pius V called on various religious communities throughout Europe to join him in praying the Rosary, including public recitations, to defeat the Islamic threat. Heading into battle, every man in the Catholic League’s forces carried a Rosary. Their fleet was no match for the competition; they were vastly outnumbered.

Miraculously, the Catholic League returned victorious after a daylong battle known as the Battle of Lepanto that took place off the coast of Greece. In thanksgiving for Mary’s intercession and protection, Pope Pius V declared the day — October 7 — as a feast day for Our Lady of the Rosary. To celebrate, a Rosary procession was held in Saint Peter’s Square.

The history of the Rosary is replete with facts, truths, legends, myths and genuine piety. For more than 600 years, the Rosary has been a hallmark of Catholic devotional life and has been and is a most engaging form of prayer for countless millions.

The roots of the Rosary go back to two distinct sources: the first is 3000 years old and is found in the psalms attributed to King David in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament; the second is the practice of keeping track of prayers by counting with beads, pebbles, or marks on wood or stone. This practice, found in the great religions of the world such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Islam, is very ancient as well.

The 150 psalms come from the early Hebrew writings around the time of Kings David and Solomon. The psalms were prayed by the Jews at the time of Jesus, and He prayed them and quoted from them even on the cross as he was dying: “My God, My God, why have you abandoned Me?” (Psalm 22).

Early Christian monks who had fled to the desert to escape the distractions of the world and to seek God and pursue holiness prayed the psalms in sets of 50. They imagined that they were praying the psalms in the company of King David and the prophets and holy men and women of old and also in the company of Jesus. They soon were praying the psalms together in community and used scrolls of papyrus or lambskin to read from. Many of the monks could not read or understand Latin, the language of the Bible in the early Middle Ages.

Most of the people outside the monasteries did not have scrolls or books and likewise never learned to read and write. However, illiterate monks working in the fields and many devout laypeople wished to share in the prayer life of the literate Monks and of the Church. Since they did not know Latin and could not memorize all 150 psalms, they gradually began substituting the Paternosters (Our Fathers) for the psalms. They needed a way to keep track of how many they prayed, so they grouped the prayers into sets of 50, as the psalms were in the Psalter. They still needed a way to keep count, so they collected small pebbles or other items, which eventually become beads, similar to those used in other religions to count prayers and acts of devotion

Legend tells us that the Rosary as a form of prayer was given to St. Dominic (1170-1221) by Mary, the Mother of Our Lord, who entrusted it to him as an aid in the conflicts with the Albigensians. The most vibrant heresy in Europe was Catharism, also known as Albigensianism—for Albi, a city in southern France where it flourished. Catharism held that the universe was a battleground between good, which was spirit, and evil, which was matter. Human beings were believed to be spirits trapped in physical bodies.

The Dominican pope, St. Pius V, did much to further the spread of the Rosary and it thereafter became one of the most popular devotions in Christendom. It was the same Pope St. Pius V, who in 1569 officially approved the Rosary in its present form with the Papal Bull, Consueverunt Romani Pontifices. It had been completed by the addition of the second half of the "Hail Mary" and the "Glory be to the Father" at the conclusion of each mystery.

During the Middle Ages, the Rosary was popular in various medieval monasteries as a substitute for the Divine Office for the lay monks and devout lay persons who did not know how to read. Instead of the 150 psalms, they would pray 150 "Our Fathers" counting them on a ring of beads known as the crown or "corona." With the growth of popularity of Marian devotion in the twelfth century, the "Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary" evolved substituting 150 "Hail Marys" in place of the "Our Fathers."  Divine Office, also referred to as The Liturgy of the Hours is the prayer of the whole People of God. In it, Christ himself “continues his priestly work through his Church.” His members participate according to their own place in the Church and the circumstances of their lives. The laity, too, are encouraged to recite the divine office either with the priests, among themselves, or individually.

The celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours demands not only harmonizing the voice with the praying heart, but also a deeper “understanding of the liturgy and of the Bible, especially of the Psalms.  The laity,  are encouraged to recite the divine office either with the priests, among themselves, or individually

The 150 "Hail Marys" were subsequently subdivided into fifteen decades by the young Dominican friar, Henry Kalkar (1328-1408), with each decade referring to an event in the life of Jesus and Mary. The Dominican, Alanus de Rupe (1428-1478) further divided the episodes in the history of salvation into the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries. He also attributed the origin of the Rosary, then known as the "Psalter of the Blessed Virgin" to St. Dominic and thus spurred the Dominican Order to make the Apostolate of the Rosary their special concern. The Dominicans have, since then, promulgated the Rosary.

The practice of dedicating the entire month of October to the Holy Rosary developed toward the end of the last century. Pope Leo XIII (papacy: 1878-1903) strongly promoted the increase of devotion to the Blessed Mother by encouraging the constant use of the Rosary.

Beginning on September 1, 1883, with Supremo Apostolatus Officio, he wrote a total of eleven encyclicals on the Rosary, ending with Diuturni Temporis in 1898. We are currently celebrating the centennial of these papal encyclicals.

Many other popes have contributed to help increase devotion to the Rosary by their writings. In the recent past, Pope Paul VI ( papacy: 1963-1978) devoted the last section of his Apostolic Exhortation MARIALIS CULTUS to the Angelus and the Rosary (MC 40-55). In this document, he wrote that "the Rosary retains an unaltered value and intact freshness." (MC, 41)

Selected Miracles Attributed to the Rosary 

Pope Francis  calls for October 7 to be day of prayer and fasting for peace - October is the Month of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Rosary Defeats Muslim Forces in The Battle of Lepanto ~ 1571


The Rosary Converts Pompeii from Satanic Influence, Late 1800's

Father Patrick Peyton, The Rosary Priest 1909


The Rosary Protects Jesuit Priests from The Atom Bomb at Hiroshima ~ 1945


The Rosary Frees Austria from Communist Rule in 1955

The Rosary Saves Brazil from Communism, 1962‐1964



The Rosary stops a serial killer 1978


The Rosary Defeats a Philippino Dictatorship in 193333osary Saves Man’s Life on September 11 2001

 

Little Saint, Thérèse of Lisieux's Little Way, The Greatest Saint of Modern Times

Little Saint, Thérèse of Lisieux's Little Way, The Greatest Saint of Modern Times, All in the Saintly Family,  A Child Doctor of the Church, all describe St. Thérèse of Lisieux. St. Thérèse has been a highly influential model of sanctity for Catholics because of the simplicity and practicality of her approach to the spiritual life. She is one of the most popular saints in the history of the church,although she was obscure during her lifetime. Pope Pius X called her "the greatest saint of modern times." Patron saint of missionaries, florists, pilots, and priests, she died at the age of 24 from tuberculosis.

St. Thérèse was beatified and canonized by Pope Pius XI. In 1997, Pope John Paul II declared her a Doctor of the Church - the four great women of the Church: Saint Hildegard of Bingen, Saint Catherine of Siena, Saint Teresa of Avila, and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.

Her feast day in the General Roman Calendar is 1 October.   In 2015 St. Thérèse’s parents, Louis Martin and Marie-Azélie Guérin, were canonized by Pope Francis; they were the first spouses to be canonized as a couple.

The long journey to personal holiness starts but with The Little Way -the simplicity in God’s service - As Francis Cardinal Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster on the Feast of the Presentation of Our Blessed Lady, 1912, writes in the preface to the electronic version of the Story of a Soul” – by Saint Thérèse of Lisieux - of the perfect accomplishment of small recurring duties, of trustful confidence in Him who made and has redeemed and sanctified us. Humility, self-effacement, obedience, hiddenness, unfaltering charity, with all the self-control and constant effort that they imply,

In the deeply religious atmosphere of her home, Therese felt an early call to religious life, her piety developed early and intensively. All four of her elder sisters became nuns, and at the age of 15 she entered the cloistered Carmelite community of Lisieux, Normand, another sister, Céline, also later joined the order.  After nine years as a Carmelite nun, having fulfilled various offices such as sacristan and assistant to the novice mistress, in her last eighteen months in Carmel she fell into a night of faith, in which she is said to have felt Jesus was absent and been tormented by doubts that God existed. 

The story of Thérèse’s spiritual development was related in a collection of her epistolary essays, written by order of the prioresses, who happened to be her sister,

and published in 1898 under the title Histoire d’une âme (Story of a Soul, trans. from French 1996). Her popularity is largely a result of this work, which conveys her loving pursuit of holiness in ordinary life. Thérèse defined her doctrine of the Little Way as “the way of spiritual childhood, the way of trust and absolute surrender.”

The Story of a Soul, is the autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux,  a spiritual classic and one of the most beautiful autobiographies ever written. Sister Thérèse wrote this autobiography out of obedience to Mother Agnes of Jesus, her religious superior who was also her sister, Pauline. Her autobiography reveals her deep love of God and draws the reader into the beautiful workings of grace within her soul.
The free version of the Story of a Soul is in the public domain and may be used and copied without restriction thanks to the Gutenberg Project

Prayers to St. Therese

Even in prayer, Therese teaches simplicity – talking to God and Jesus in direct, personal and heartfelt ways. She prayed from her heart as a child speaks honestly and trustingly to a parent they love.

First, there was a Pulitzer-Prize-For-Fake-News. Now there's a Pulitzer-Prize--For-Sentiment-Manipulation

Getting Sentimental Over Social Media. Why is it MSM, including the New York Times keep posting old-stories, instead of leaving the original ones in a thread? Because of Sentiment Manipulation!

According to AWS, Sentiment analysis is the process of analyzing digital text to determine if the emotional tone of the message is positive, negative, or neutral. Today, companies have large volumes of text data like emails, customer support chat transcripts, social media comments, and reviews. Sentiment analysis tools can scan this text to automatically determine the author’s attitude towards a topic.

 Companies use the insights from sentiment analysis to improve customer service and increase brand reputation. Sentiment analysis, also known as opinion mining, is an important business intelligence tool that helps companies improve their products and services.  But improvement is only possible when the data is reliable - Garbage In, Garbage Out. If those managing the sentiment analysis tools are vested in a particular outcome, the end customer will not be well served.

Another Pulitzer-Prize-For-Fake-News / Sentiment Manipulation piece  by the NYT
This type of 'reporting' should be classified as political campaign donation.

Not unlike Journalists who are vested on supporting their bosses' narrative, not on uncovering the truth. Pulitzer Prizes are now given to the best fake news, for example.

While businesses can avoid personal bias associated with human reviewers by using artificial intelligence (AI)–based sentiment analysis tools, the old GIGO adage rules the day.  You may have heard about Google's Gemini, for example.

Social Media companies, including make money through advertising rather than charging each user individually. If you are not paying for the product, the product is YOU. The media company renting your eyeballs to its advertisers. The more users on the site, the greater the number of advertisers willing to engage them, and the more those advertisers are willing to spend. The more the inflammatory the posts, the more clicks.The more clicks, the more revenue for the social media company. If the social media company knows you like to author or or read longer posts, the company can sell this information to advertisers. It’s all about data mining. The crown jewels of a social media company is the data mining algorithm that identifies affinity groups and the traffic cop algorithm that control traffic between silos. All this information in the hands of a social media company is gold. Their clients get the perfect sentiment analysis.

Affinity groups are segments of users who have expressed or demonstrated an interest in a specific topic, category, or activity on social media platforms.  Social media made $11 billion in U.S. ad sales from minors in 2022, for example. But Pedophilia is just one of thousands of affinity groups: if you are into the occult, there’s a silo for you. If you are into antiSemitism, Communism, Socialism, star-gazing, and so on, there are silos for you. These silos can then serve you ads designed specifically for you.

Finding affinity groups is a function of social media platform. For example, on Facebook, you can use the Audience Network tool to explore different affinity groups based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and connections. On Instagram, the Explore tab shows what topics and hashtags are trending among users. The Insights tool shows the top interests and categories of followers and those who interact with your posts. Twitter’s Trends tool show popular topics and hashtags among users, while the Analytics tool can reveal the top interests and categories of your followers and those who engage with your tweets. LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager tool allows you to select different affinity groups based on demographics, job functions, skills, industries, and interests.

With over 353.9 million monthly active users and a staggering $5 billion in ad revenue, Twitter stands as a social media juggernaut. Not surprising, countless Twitter advertising agencies are vying for the right silos.


SociallyIn for example, boasts that Ad targeting and demographic precision stand at the forefront of its service offerings and claims it has “mastered the art of eliminating ad wastage by precisely targeting specific audience segments based on varied criteria, including age, gender, and location.

An advertiser wants to control traffic between silos.  Every Twitter ad campaign is a symphony of analytical precision and creative ingenuity, ensuring resources are allocated efficiently and messages reach those most likely to convert.

Given the technology, who would even consider sentiment manipulation? The usual suspects.  If they can get a Pulitzer-Prize-For-Fake-News, and they do not have the 

data, much less the data mining

 algorithm that identifies affinity groups,  legacy media organization resort to using social media where they can manipulate the data.

Got Pride?

We are all free to believe whatever we want. We are free to believe in God or the Albigensian Heresy. We are free to choose how we live our lives. We all must face the consequences

While there are different worldviews: Hindu sees the human person as a soul trapped in a body. The Buddhist sees the person as neither a body nor a soul. The atheist views the person as a body without a soul












The Christian view is that humans are bodies and souls, created in the image and likeness of God. Every human being has a unique and rational soul that animates his human body, whether in the womb, outside the womb or in a jail cell.


The Church (CCC 355 ) Teaches."God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them."218 Man occupies a unique place in creation: (I) he is "in the image of God"; (II) in his own nature he 

unites the spiritual and material worlds; (III) he is created "male and female"; (IV) God established him in his friendship.


56 Of all visible creatures only man is "able to know and love his creator".219 He is "the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake",220 and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God's own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity:

What made you establish man in so great a dignity? Certainly the incalculable love by which you have looked on your creature in yourself! You are taken with love for her; for by love indeed you created her, by love you have given her a being capable of tasting your eternal Good.221


357 Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love.


We are all free to believe whatever we want. We are free to believe in God or the Albigensian Heresy. We are free to choose how we live our lives. The late Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar says we can choose to live an Ego-Drama, where everything we do revolves around ourselves and no one else; we write the script, we produce it and we star in it. Or we can live a Theo-Drama where everything we do revolves around God. While we are free to choose, we make choices and choices make us: we must face the consequences.


The Church understands that we are all sinners in need of a savior (Rom 5:12-21). We are inheritors of original sin and all its consequences, and by actual sin we distance ourselves from God. We can’t save ourselves, but we don’t need to: Jesus Christ has paid the price for our sins. The Catholic Church teaches that salvation comes through Jesus alone (Acts 4:12), since he is the “one mediator between God and man” (1 Tm 2:5-6).

Sacred Scriptures say life is short, death is real, Hell is hot, eternity is long, and Jesus saves! Everyone made in God's image. Everyone is broken. Everyone is created for love.

According to Pope Francis, making a list of which sinners are welcome in the church and which sinners are not goes against the teaching of the Gospel. ""The son of God wants us to understand that he doesn't want a select group, an elite,"  "Then maybe someone gets 'smuggled in'? But at that point, God takes care of it and indicates the path" forward.

"When they ask me, 'But can these people who are in such an inappropriate moral situation also enter?'" the pope said, "I assure them, 'Everyone. The Lord said it.'""

 https://www.usccb.org/news/2024/pope-says-document-blessings-makes-clear-gospel-all#:

As Father Mike Schmitz says, everyone has desires that are not good. We are all broke. Those who identify as gay or trans, have dignity. Those who experience same-sex attraction are worthwhile. Those who are grappling with their sexuality as part of the family, that is, part of the human family, and if they are Christian, they are part of the family of God. If you are same-sex attracted person, you belong to the Catholic Church.





While the unwelcome LGBT rhetoric is close to the one articulated by the Head Of Hizbullah’s Shari’a Council in Lebanon -He wants to kill gay people, because he is afraid of being infected by them - The Major League Basebal, including the Los Angeles Dodgers Mocking The Catholic Faith is just as despicable. Let’s not forget the full on attack on Christianity by Corporate America, including Bud Light, NorthFace, the US Navy and so on, as the White House, DOJ, FBI and Main Stream Media are in lock step to promote the Christo-Fascist, America Is Racist narratives

Just as the NAACP and the FBI see Catholics as potential domestic terrorists, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and 19 GOP state attorneys general are demanding answers from the FBI and Justice Department and threatening legal action after a leaked internal FBI memo revealed that the agency had efforts underway to identify and treat Catholics as “potential terrorists.” “Anti-Catholic bigotry appears to be festering in the FBI, and the Bureau is treating Catholics as potential terrorists because of their beliefs,” the AGs wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland




According to Prophet Ezekiel (36:25)
" I will sprinkle clean water over you to make you clean; from all your impurities and from all your idols I will cleanse you. I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you so that you walk in my statutes, observe my ordinances, and keep them.


A heart transplant as the one described by the Prophet Ezekiel cannot be legislated or surgically handled. God is the only one who can change hearts. The love that raised Christ from the dead can raise these broken hearts, including those who denigrate the LGBT community and
those mocking the Christian faith.