June 6
Our Lady of the Rosary
of
Pompeii
St. Norbert, Bishop
Today’s Gospel: Mark 12:38-44
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| Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. |
The rich walked up and dropped in large
amounts. Impressive. Visible. The kind of giving that turns heads. Then a poor
widow walked up quietly and dropped in two small coins. Barely worth counting.
Jesus turned to His disciples and said, "She gave more than all of them."
Not because the amount was greater.
Because she held nothing back. The rich gave from their surplus. She gave from
her poverty. Everything she had. Two small coins. Her whole life in her hands,
and she let it go.
St. Norbert understood that kind of
surrender completely. He was a wealthy, pleasure-seeking nobleman riding his
horse one afternoon when lightning struck the ground in front of him and threw
him to the earth. When he got up, he was a different man. He gave away
everything he owned. Built a religious order from nothing. Spent the rest of
his life in radical poverty and prayer. God didn't need much from Norbert to
work with. Just everything.
In 1983, on the Garden State Parkway, I
fell asleep at the wheel while driving home from a camp weekend, and my car rolled
three and a half times at highway speed. Camping gear was scattered across the
highway. The car landed on the driver's door and slid. The police officer on the scene looked at us and said we should never have survived that. He was right.
We walked out of that hospital without a single serious injury between my sister and me. I know who protected us and saved us. Sitting in my parents' camper
on the way home, I leaned out the window and screamed into the sky, “Why did you
save me? My father said, “I thought you didn't believe. I said, “I don't.” But
something had already shifted in my heart, and I couldn't explain it.
Months later, I walked into a prayer group
on Staten Island, unwillingly, wanting nothing to do with any of it. I came out
totally and completely spiritually renewed. The Holy Spirit moved through me in
a way I still can't fully put into words. And at the very next meeting, Our Lady
of Fatima entered my world, and she has never left. I promise you she never
will, till my last breath, I will share our Lord, our Lady, and the Rosary.
Something to sit with today:
Has God ever had to knock
you completely off your feet to get your full attention, and what did you do
when you got back up?
Our lives can be changed in
an instant; sometimes, there's no way to prepare for what's coming. When Jesus
wants your attention and love, inevitably, he gets you. My life has never been
the same. I pray that you experience something as wonderful as having Jesus
Christ as the center of your life.
Rosary Man Jim 🌹
Freely given. Freely shared.
