Showing results by author "Bob Lord" in All Categories

Saint Edith Stein was born in Poland on October 12, 1891. Her parent were Jewish. She was a brilliant student. When she turned seventeen, she entered a Girl's High School in Breslau. At the same time, in another part of Germany, another teenager - Adolph Hitler was failing an entrance exam to the Academy of Arts and already blaming it all on the Jews. Two teenagers, one a Saint and the other damned to hell for all eternity.

Family, if there was ever a Saint who had complete focus in what the Lord was calling him to do, it was St. Peter Julian Eymard. He is called, among other things, Champion of the Blessed Sacrament. He had such an unbelievable singleness of purpose, in his great devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, and desire that eucharist adoration should be practiced worldwide, that he would found an order devoted solely to adoration of the blessed sacrament and the spread of that devotion. That religious order is called Priests of the Blessed Sacrament.

St. Robert Bellarmine, brilliant follower of St. Ignatius of Loyola, has been credited with being one of the most outspoken critics of the heresies of Martin Luther and John Calvin. He focused the church of his time on the true teachings of the Catholic faith, which were contradicted by the Protestant Reformation. He is one of the powerful men discussed in this book whom the Lord sent to construct a suit of spiritual armor to defend his Church in this crucial time of crisis.

This audiobook discusses some of the saints, visionaries, and mystics down the ages. They include Saint Catherine of Bologna, Saint Gemma Galgani, Saint Martin de Porres, Saint Veronica Giuliani, Saint Louis Marie de Montfort, Saint Rose of Lima, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Saint Joseph of Cupertino, and many others.

The Shrine of Saint Michael the Archangel in the Gargano was the first monument of the archangel that we ever visited. We pray that Michael and his shrine touch you in the same way they have touched us, as we have been called back, again and again. Come with us now, and experience the kingdom, the glory, and the power of God as shown to us through his angels, especially the prince of the angels, our Michael.

We are in the north of Italy, in a little village called Desenzano, east of "Brescia". The quiet little town lies peacefully on picturesque Lake Garda, on the outskirts of the "Lombardy" region. If your eye travels northward on the map, you will see the village of Trent where the Council of "Council of Trent" was held in the 16th century, in 1545, five years after our Saint Angela Merici died. We never know what our actions are going to bring about; but one thing we can be sure: They will either be life-giving or life-ending.

This story is about another who suffered, only as a Dry Martyr for her Lord, a willing victim of sacrifice for her Church. Just as Blessed Anna Maria Taigi was being born in Italy, another child was coming into the world, Napoleon Bonaparte. When Anna Maria opened her eyes and let out her first cry, it was to a world groaning in pain, a world inundated by sin and perversion, very like our own. The throne of France was heading madly toward its own destruction and demise, taking Christianity down with it.

Come with us to the little hamlet of Ars in France, where we trace the life of the this super saint, known as a saint of the eucharist, and perfect confessor. Discover his church in Ars, and venerate his incorrupt body; discover his confessional, the rectory he lived in, his bed the devil set afire, the shrine to his incorrupt heart, and the altar where our lady appeared to him and where he was healed through the intercession of St. Philomena.

There are many stories that can be told of a mysterious voice warning you of danger, of something or was it someone interfering in the knick of time. As we started to write this book on Angels, we found ourselves remembering incidents in our lives we had long forgotten. Could it be our Guardian Angels reminding us? Why not?

Ireland is a magical land, famous for its shamrocks and harps, leprechauns, shillelaghs, and green-eyed colleens with skin as white as milk. It is called the Emerald Isle, and the national color is green; Ireland is lush green, almost tropical in certain areas. The national drink is Guinness, although he’s a “damned Protestant”. Ireland is not only a country; it’s a state of mind, a way of life. We think of the Irish people as being quite fanciful, partly because of Barry Fitzgerald, who gave us our unofficial description of what an Irishman should be.

St. Thomas Aquinas is so outstanding. The Lord has given him the ability to take very complex matters, such as the differences between animal, human, and angel, and break them down into logical, extremely understandable terms. He was particularly enraptured by angels, as are we. He made a study of them. I have to believe he got a lot of help in his research from the angels themselves, in the form of angelic inspiration, or possibly by a direct line. We pray they will be as kind to us, as we try to explain their culture, and their role in salvation history in general, and in our lives.

We go to Careggi, Italy, where the incorrupt body of Saint Mary Magdalene de Pazzi is. We visit the Carmelite convent where she lived, the bell tower where she rang the bells while in ecstasy, the chapel and the garden where she had ecstasies and visions from souls in Purgatory.

Realizing he was not able to handle all of the niceties of his office, due to the tensions he was constantly under, Pius IX had handed over most of the diplomatic chores of his Papacy to Cardinal Atonelli, but he died in 1877, and Pope Pius IX died the following winter. It is fair to say that the Vatican was in a diplomatic shambles after the death of Pope Pius IX. So who was the Lord going to choose to put in the hot seat of the Papacy? He chose a very strong, but very peace-loving Cardinal from Perugia, Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci, to be known as Pope Leo XIII.

The Lord had an urgency to give Saint Faustina Kowalska the message of divine mercy with or without a spiritual director; and so, the day was to come, on February 22, 1931, in Vilnius, when the Lord’s mission would begin to be revealed to her. She was in her cell; she saw the Lord Jesus clothed in a white garment.

Our Lord Jesus loves us so much, he made detailed preparations for our well-being, right up to the end of his life. He wanted to have a last supper with his disciples. He had instructions for them. He wanted to be sure they understood their role in Salvation History, and how they were to conduct themselves. He wanted to leave them and his Church ammunition for the days ahead.

"In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." We say it, but do we know what we're saying; are we really aware of the awesome truth we're proclaiming? Many of our newer, more traditional priests, before they begin to pray the Mass, preface it with, "As we should begin all things, let us begin in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

Heresies have attacked the Church before, and she is still standing. Jesus made a promise that hell would not prevail against his Church, and he has kept his promise for over 2000 years. That’s all well and true, but how many dead bodies were left behind by the disobedience of a few possibly (or not) well-intentioned dissidents!

Saint Teresa later wrote of Saint John of the Cross: "I realized that he was a saint, and had always been a saint." Before her was a figure tiny in physical stature, as the world measures, but a towering giant in the eyes of the Lord. She recognized the same fire burning in him that raged inside of her. She was 52; he was 25. She, a nun twice his age! He, a young friar with a dream to become a Carthusian hermit.

St. Paul of the Cross was born Paul Francis Danei, on the January 3, 1694, the second of 16 children. One of his brothers John Baptist would be very instrumental in the work Our Lord had chosen for St. Paul. His parents, although of nobility, were neither affluent nor privileged. Even though the town hall at Castellazzo had once been the family palace, St. Paul's father, a cloth merchant, was always in serious debt.

“Born poor and humble of heart, undaunted champion of the Catholic faith, zealous to restore all things in Christ, crowned a holy life with a holy death.” Who was Pope Saint Pius X? This is the story of a Pope who refused to stay buried in the annals of history. The boy who became Pope always worked with the image of Mother Church and her founder Jesus Christ before him, leading the way, as if on a path, beckoning him to follow. He never ceased being the boy who worked and struggled endlessly to keep alive the true teachings of the Church!