Some years ago, a priest came to our parish, St. John of the Cross. We were having some prayer service, and we were saying the rosary. He would say a brief meditation before each Hail Mary bead and then he would say the Hail Mary. This lasted a few decades and was the seed that the Lord planted in my mind. Little did I know it would come to fruition in this book of meditation on the holy rosary the Holy Spirit was inspiring me to write. Unlike the other meditations that were placed before each decade and by the time one has said half of the decade, the idea of the meditation was forgotten. This, on the other hand, was constantly being read to keep focused on that particular decade being prayed. So how is the story of the rosary being recalled? By the keeping in mind each division as it in turn presents itself. These divisions being: Joyful, Illuminous, Sorrowful, and Glorious. By keeping all these in mind, we are bringing to mind how all of this happened for our salvation. By having the meditation before each Hail Mary, the whole picture of that decade is being constantly built up until the decade is completed. This tends to keep one's mind on his prayers and not to wander aimlessly. Thus, the whole story of our redemption is set before the one praying the rosary. This all started with the Redeemer, promised in the garden of Eden, and whose coming was kept alive all through the Old Testament, finally came to our world in the womb of the Virgin; thus, the Joyful Mysteries. It describes his living among us in the little house of Nazareth. It does not give all the details of his early life in helping his foster father, Joseph, in the carpenter shop. We wonder if he performed any acts of wonder when he played with his little playmates. He comes to focus again when he starts his ministry of our salvation: the Illuminous Mysteries. He goes to where John is baptizing at the River Jordan. Here the blessed Trinity is first exposed to the world and the story goes all through the Mysteries of Light which culminates at the last supper where he offers his life in the form of bread and wine for his people and then lays it down on the cross for all the world to see. In the Sorrowful Mysteries, we see this was the second chance for the sons of Adam to partake of the fruit from the tree of life, and a reminder that Adam and Eve neglected this fruit in the garden of Eden and chose instead to eat the fruit from the tree of evil or death. Thus, did Jesus go through all the torments of his passion culminating in his death on the tree of the cross for the life of us all. Next, the Glorious Mysteries tell of our Redeemer's victory over death and to lead his people, the Church which is his bride, to be with him forever. He and his mother, Mary, preceded us into the kingdom of Heaven to live the life he earned for his body the Church forever. This is the story of our salvation. It started back in the Old Testament, kept alive all through those times until he came "to do the will of him who sent him." This is the glorious story of our redemption. It is placed before us every time we "tell" our beads. That's what telling our beads really means. Remember this the next time you pray your rosary. Heaven is watching you.

What happens when a former Zen Buddhist monk and his feminist wife experience an apparition of the Virgin Mary? “This book could not have come at a more auspicious time, and the message is mystical perfection, not to mention a courageous one. I adore this book.”—Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit Before a vision of a mysterious “Lady” invited Clark Strand and Perdita Finn to pray the rosary, they were not only uninterested in becoming Catholic but finished with institutional religion altogether. Their main spiritual concerns were the fate of the planet and the future of their children and grandchildren in an age of ecological collapse. But this Lady barely even referred to the Church and its proscriptions. Instead, she spoke of the miraculous power of the rosary to transform lives and heal the planet, and revealed the secrets she had hidden within the rosary’s prayers and mysteries—secrets of a past age when forests were the only cathedrals and people wove rose garlands for a Mother whose loving presence was as close as the ground beneath their feet. She told Strand and Finn: The rosary is My body, and My body is the body of the world. Your body is one with that body. What cause could there be for fear? Weaving together their own remarkable story of how they came to the rosary, their discoveries about the eco-feminist wisdom at the heart of this ancient devotion, and the life-changing revelations of the Lady herself, the authors reveal an ancestral path—available to everyone, religious or not—that returns us to the powerful healing rhythms of the natural world.

Deals with Medieval and Renaissance botanical symbolism of flowers associated with the Virgin Mary and the connotation of her virtues, attributes and mysteries.

The shattering novel of underground life the New York Times called “a cry of rapture and horror . . . the purest lyrical genius.” Jean Genet’s debut novel Our Lady of the Flowers, which is often considered to be his masterpiece, was written entirely in the solitude of a prison cell. A semi- autobiographical account of one man’s journey through the Paris demi-monde, dubbed “the epic of masturbation” by no less a figure than Jean-Paul Sartre, the novel’s exceptional value lies in its exquisite ambiguity.

"To you, blessed soul whom the Lord draws to the desert to speak to your heart; to you alone who chose it as unique, better: that He chose as host of praise forever! Do you want to burn in front of His adorable Face like a very pure wax? Do you want, like the Cherubim, like the Seraphim, to be irradiated with His clarity, ablaze with His love, to be for Him, in your turn, only light and charity? Consent to forget the world, the universe and yourself. If you hesitate to lose your life and lose it, do not go further. The following will not enlighten you. If the abyss tempts you, beg the Lord to envelop you in solitude; to throw you into the silence that it inhabits, fills, where it manifests. For yourself, try to live like this. As much as you can, in the exact obedience and perfect charity, you will avoid these four things, major obstacles to interior silence, and which make habitual contemplation impossible-interior noise, interior discussions, obsessions, concern for yourself. This done, you will have crossed the doors of silence"--

Grandma Lupita tells her granddaughter Rose and Rose's friend, Terry, the story about Our Lady of Guadalupe and the miracle that occurred near Mexico City in 1531. Includes facts about the event and its influence.

Fully illustrated, the charm of his English Roses comes across on every page, even if the reader has to imagine their scent. The Irish Garden Like its highly-respected companion in the series, Old Roses, this title draws the most useful information fr