Give the gift of facilitating an ENDOW study.....

If you haven’t facilitated an ENDOW study....might this be the call to give this gift to the women of your parish? Please prayerfully consider facilitating....it is a blessing which cannot be fully described! Please check out the available ENDOW studies here and start planning a new study group. Bringing women together to discover their God given dignity...and to grow in the love of Christ and his Body the Church! .....YES! God loves a cheerful giver!

The attitude of Gratitude! Let us GIVE THANKS..........

Bishop Gerald M. Barbarito says in a recent CNA article ....“The attitude of gratitude is one that is part of God’s very nature. Gratitude is an expression of love. God is love and for all eternity gives himself away and literally sacrifices himself. It is that love which is his life as a community of persons — Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In their eternal expression of love for each other, the persons of the Trinity also express gratitude to each other. That gratitude was so often reflected in the life of the Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, who always prayed to his Father in a stance of thanksgiving.”(full article here).

Let us pray that all who are part of ENDOW celebrate this wonderful time of year with heartfelt thanksgiving and step forward in actively living our lives with greater attention to gratitude! We thank God for all of the abundant blessings received through ENDOW studies!

All Saints’ Day and all Souls’ Day.......immersed within the Body of Christ...

Yesterday we celebrated All Saints’ Day.... a Solemnity which was instituted to honor all the saints, known and unknown, and, according to Urban IV, to supply any deficiencies in the celebration of saints' feasts during the year.” Praise be to God for all of his saints!

Today we celebrate All Souls’ Day. Take a moment or two to soak deep within the blessing of being surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses! Let us become deeply aware of the saints who assist us and the souls who need our offerings. The saints are praying for all souls and we can join them in our offerings for the dear departed souls who are being purified to stand before God. We are all intricately linked to one another as members of the Body of Christ. Let us intently help one another by our prayers and good works and we offer our joys and sufferings for another’s sake. When we do for others, we demonstrate our “yes” to living our commitment to ever increasing gift-of-self.

Take in the joy and strength of our loving interdependence. We are instructed.... “But the souls of the just are in the hand of God and no torment of death will touch them. In the eyes of the foolish, they seemed to die, and their departure was considered an affliction, and their going away from us, a banishment. Yet they are in peace. And though, in the sight of men, they suffered torments, their hope is full of immortality. Troubled in few things, in many things they will be well compensated, because God has tested them and found them worthy of himself. Like gold in the furnace, he has proved them, and as a holocaust victim, he has received them, and in the time of their visitation they will shine, and they will dash about like sparks among stubble. They will judge the nations and they will rule over the people, and their Lord will reign forever. Those who trust in him, will understand the truth, and those who are faithful in love will rest in him, because grace and peace is for his elect.” (Wis 3:1-9)

Sharing in ENDOW studies increases our knowledge and trust in the loving plan of Our Father. ENDOW is helping so many women, their friends and families shine forth as faithful souls on our journey together! Enjoy this blessed Solemnity of All Souls!

How a humble "Thank You" is a true gift of self.......

So, have you ever noticed just how difficult it is at times to receive a compliment? One perspective is put forth on this difficulty by Cheryl Dicklow in an article titled “Just Say Thanks” on CNA’s Catholic Womanhood site. Cheryl speaks about John Paul II’s teaching on feminine genius, the giving nature of women and how as natural givers it can be difficult to receive at times. Cheryl says “To take something, even in the form of a compliment, is almost foreign to many females. When Pope John Paul II spoke of the ‘feminine genius,’ he was speaking directly about a trait that is inherent in the nature of woman, what he called ‘the gift of self.’ Women are, by their very design, meant to give. They are wired to nurture and tend to others. Sure, some do a better job of this than others, but at her very core, a woman is created as a giver.....It doesn’t matter how often some radical feminists deny it: women are different from men. The truth our Faith teaches, though, is that this ‘different’ doesn’t have a value attached to it. The value exists in the full and complete phrase ‘different but equal’-- and complimentary......It is this very message that is at the core of who we are and how we can serve God.” (See full article here)

By developing the habit of graciously saying “Thank You” to a compliment, we are actually growing in becoming true gifts of self. Lets all put forth a special effort on cultivating the habit of thanksgiving by joining all of creation in this beautiful time of autumn in saying THANK YOU to God for creating each of us so uniquely...... and for surrounding us with the beauty of His creation. Let us pray to notice the goodness in all those we encounter...to graciously give and receive compliments as ALL good gifts are from Our loving Father.

To find out more about woman’s unique God-given nature and about the complimentarity of man and woman as God created us, please consider an ENDOW study......click here for more information.