Beads of Joy Blog II (2025 - 2026)

  June 2 Our Lady of Edessa Sts. Marcellinus and Peter, Martyrs Today’s Gospel: Mark 12:13-17 Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. They thought they had Him. The Pharisees walked up to Jesus with a coin and a clever question, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? It was a trap wrapped in a compliment, and everyone in the crowd knew it. Answer yes, and you betray your people. Answer no, and you're a revolutionary. Either way, they win. Jesus asked for the coin. Turned it over. Whose image is this? Caesar's. Then render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. They marveled at that one statement, and He walked away. What the Pharisees missed, what most people still miss, is the second half of that equation. The coin bears Caesar's image, so it belongs to Caesar. But you bear God's image. Which means you belong to God. Every minute. Every ounce of energy. Every conversation. Every decision about where your time goes....

  June 1 Our Lady of the Star St. Justin Martyr Today’s Gospel: Mark 12:1-12 A man planted a vineyard. Built a wall around it. Dug a winepress. Put up a watchtower. Then he handed it all to some tenants and left. When he sent someone to collect the fruit his vineyard had produced, they beat the messenger and sent him away empty. Jesus told this story, and everyone listening knew exactly what it meant. God gives. We receive. And then comes the question that never goes away: What did you do with it? Justin Martyr knew his answer. He took the sharpest mind of his generation, a gift if there ever was one, and spent every last bit of it defending the Faith. They beheaded him for it. He never asked for his gift back. I don't have a philosopher's mind, and I never claimed to. What I do have, I try to give away. That's the whole strategy, plain and simple. Whatever flows in flows right back out, to the Rosary Makers Ministry, to others, and basically to whoever ne...

May 31 The Queenship of Mary Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars." - Revelation 12:1 The Crown at the End of May May began with a child placing a crown of flowers on Our Lady's statue. It ends with God Himself placing a crown of twelve stars on her head. There is a beautiful completeness to this. A month that opened with the simplest gesture of human devotion closes with the grandest vision of heavenly glory. We started with wildflowers in a little girl's hands. We end with the woman clothed with the sun, enthroned in heaven, reigning with her Son. The feast of the Queenship of Mary was formally established by Pope Pius XII in 1954, on the centenary of the definition of the Immaculate Conception. It was placed on May 31 to crown Our Lady's own month. It was later moved in the liturgical calendar to August 22, but May 31 retain...

May 30 Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit." - Romans 5:5 The Guardian of the Heart of Jesus The devotion to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart was founded in the nineteenth century by Father Jules Chevalier, a French Missionary of the Sacred Heart, who understood Mary's unique relationship to the Heart of her Son. She is, in the most personal sense imaginable, the Guardian of the Sacred Heart, the one who knew it first, who carried it, who heard it beat for nine months from the inside. No one has ever been closer to the Heart of Jesus than His Mother. She carried it. She held it in her arms in the stable. She felt it break at the Cross. She knows its rhythms in a way that theology can describe but never fully capture. Father Chevalier understood that to go to Mary under this title is to go directly to the Heart she guards. And from that Heart flows everything: the gr...

May 29 Our Lady of Ardents Arras, France (1095) Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness." - John 8:12 The Candle That Healed a City In 1095, the city of Arras in northern France was in the grip of a terrible epidemic. A disease called the Sacred Fire, ergotism, caused by a fungal infection of rye, was burning through the population. The symptoms were agonizing burning sensations in the limbs, gangrene, and convulsions. The people were terrified and helpless. According to the tradition of Arras, Our Lady appeared separately to two men, a bishop and a troubadour, and instructed them to meet. When they came together, each bearing an account of the same apparition, their stories confirmed one another. Our Lady gave them a candle and instructed that the wax, dissolved in water, be given to the sick. Those who drank the water were healed. The epidemic ceased. A shrine was built. Our Lady of Ardents, Ou...

May 28 Feast of the Relics of Our Lady Venice Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "Blessed is she who believed." - Luke 1:45 She Was Truly Here Venice, the most improbable and magnificent city in the world, built on wood pilings in a lagoon, rising from the water by what appears to be a combination of engineering and miracle, has always been a city of relics. The great Basilica of San Marco was built around the bones of the Evangelist, carried secretly from Alexandria in the ninth century. Venice knew that sacred objects anchor sacred stories. To touch what the saints touched is to touch, however faintly, the life they lived. On this feast, Venice honored portions of Our Lady's veil and other relics associated with her earthly life, cloth said to have been worn by Mary, preserved across centuries by hands that loved her. Such relics were among the most precious objects in medieval Christendom. Not because they were magical, but because they meant something profoun...

May 27 Our Lady of Naples Italy (533) Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "The Lord is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear?" - Psalm 27:1 The Mother of a City That Never Stopped Needing Her Naples, Napoli, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe, built by Greek colonists centuries before Christ. It has been Catholic for nearly as long as the Church has existed. And in the year 533, amid the chaos of the Gothic Wars that were devastating all of Italy, the faithful of Naples formally honored Our Lady in a communal act of devotion that stands as one of the earliest specific Marian celebrations recorded in this region. The sixth century was a time of tremendous upheaval. Byzantine armies were fighting to reclaim what the Ostrogoths had taken. The peninsula was being torn apart. In that climate of destruction and fear, the Neapolitans turned to Our Lady with particular urgency. They have never stopped. Naples is among the most intensely, pa...

May 26 Our Lady of Caravaggio Italy (1432) Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "I am with you always." - Matthew 28:20 She Came to the Field On May 26, 1432, a young woman named Giannetta de Vacchi was working in the fields near the town of Caravaggio in Lombardy when a woman appeared before her, luminous, serene, standing on the ground without crushing the grass beneath her feet. The woman identified herself as the Virgin Mary. She spoke words of comfort and instruction to Giannetta, told her to call the people to penance and prayer, and pointed to a spot on the ground where a spring of water would appear as a sign. As Our Lady disappeared, the spring burst from the earth. Giannetta, who had been suffering from a serious illness, was healed. The Bishop of Cremona investigated and declared the apparition worthy of belief. A chapel was built over the spring, which has flowed continuously ever since, with numerous healings attributed to it. The sanctuary of Caravaggio...

May 25 Our Lady the New Jerusalem (530 AD) Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. "See, I am making all things new." - Revelation 21:5 The New Eve in the Holy City The Emperor Justinian I, one of the greatest rulers of the Byzantine Empire, the man who codified Roman law and built the Hagia Sophia, was also a man of deep Christian faith. In 530 AD, he completed and dedicated in Jerusalem a magnificent church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title Nea Ekklesia, the New Church. The Nea Church was one of the largest churches in Jerusalem, built with imperial extravagance in honor of the Theotokos, the God-Bearer. Marble columns, gilded mosaics, all the magnificence the Byzantine court could bring to bear, were offered to the Mother of God in the city where her Son had died and risen. Justinian understood something the title expresses beautifully: Mary is the New Eve. Where Eve said no to God and introduced death into the world, Mary said yes and introduced L...