Showing results by author "Bob Lord" in All Categories

We follow Mother Mary on a journey again to a far-off place high up in the mountains, where no one would consider going. We have never really paid much attention to what towns are located where in Japan, other than Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima. In looking on a map, we find Akita to be a thriving metropolis in the north of the country, with a population of about 300,000 people - a lot more than you would consider for a small town in the mountains of Japan.

As her illness had taken a toll on her strength, Saint Gemma Galgani was not able to return to school. She remained at home and taught her sisters and brothers. At her beatification, one of her brothers said, "Gemma always brought the olive branch." She lovingly cared for the needs, both spiritual and physical, of her family, often at the neglect of herself. She had no use for fancy clothes, and adorned herself in simple, extremely austere black dresses.

Being of the laity and never feeling worthy to be a priest, Philip Neri desired nothing but to serve as a lay man. He had been preaching in the hospitals and on the street corners, waiting for the office workers to leave for lunch or home. He would speak to them and instruct them with the true teachings of the Church. He taught with such love and such fire that more and more came and stayed longer and longer, until they began following him, visiting the poor and the infirm. The confraternity of the Laity was formed!

Our story is not only about a saint, but about a land blessed by the blood of martyrs, its every mile named after the holy - Sacramento (after the Blessed Sacrament), San Francisco (St. Francis), San José (St. Joseph), Santa Ana (St. Ann, Mary’s mother), San Gabriel (St. Gabriel the Archangel), to mention just a few. History is history, and sometimes history can be offensive to certain peoples, but it does not make history less history. Our story is about Junípero Serra.

Fatima, the pleas of Our Lady, and the promises of Fatima have been repeated to and embraced by everyone she has touched. A new generation of believers, people like us who were not born when Our Lady gave us this gift, have become completely enthralled by the power of Jesus and the love of Mary, as revealed to us at Fatima.

Paray le Monial is a beautiful, quiet town nestled in the center of France. But the power that emanates from this town is pure Holy Spirit. You can still feel the presence of our Lord Jesus. For, it is here that our Lord appeared to a nun over a period of 17 years. He brought his faithful message of love to an unfaithful people who had grown cold. Here, he, once again, spoke of that tremendous love of his to become man and suffer death - even death on the cross.

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.

The devil uses any means to kill us. For so many years, in the United States, the Polish people have been the brunt of very poor ethnic jokes. It is true, every new group coming into our free society inherits the suffering that the minority group before them endured. It's like being a freshman in college. The only difference is, growing up out of the persecution is swifter, but the freshman is only degraded for a year, not a lifetime.

Learn about the life of Saint Martin De Porres.

Born of a very devout mother and father who, in times when families were feuding amongst themselves, were called by some, "Jesus Christ’s peacemakers," it would appear from the very moment of her birth, God had special designs on Rita. There is a tradition in Roccaporena that as an infant, while she slept in a basket, in the fields where her parents were working, white bees swarmed around Rita’s open mouth. Not only did the bees not sting her, but it is said that they dropped honey into her mouth without her uttering a cry of warning to her parents.

This book examines the life of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes. We start at the birthplace of Bernadette, the Boly Mill in Lourdes and visit the Cachot where she lived during the apparitions, and La Maison Paternelle where she lived after the apparitions. We enter the Grotto of Massabiele, where our Lady appeared to her and go to Nevers to see her beautiful, incorrupt body.

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.

We could not think of writing a book about saints and powerful men who have changed the course of our lives and not include Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. I must admit I never watched Fulton J. Sheen on television, nor was I influenced by him while he was alive. But, as we began to discover our Catholic faith as adults, his words and his living based out of those words, became a strong part of our journey of faith toward new life in the Lord.

Whenever we are under attack from the slimy one, it is difficult to remember that God is in charge and that he is allowing this to strengthen us for even greater battles. The honeymoon over, God stood by and permitted Satan to tempt our little Catherine. But Sister Catherine was not so little that she could not tell the devil off when he tried to tempt her.

“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!

One of the most powerful Sacramentals is the Brown Scapular. On July 16, 1251, Our Lady appeared to St. Simon Stock, accompanied by her Heavenly Army of Angels and made the following promise: "Whoever dies wearing this Scapular shall not suffer eternal fire." Now, it was not our Lady's intention that the Scapular should replace the living out of a holy and virtuous Christian life. Instead, she meant it to remind us of the life she led, one of obedience to the Will of the Father, of humility, of fidelity, a willing vessel bringing the Savior to us.

Saint Anthony of Padua was proclaimed a doctor of the church. There are 33 doctors of the church. In the 2,000 years since the church was instituted, out of its millions of holy people, and thousands of canonized Saints, only 33 have been given the honor of this title. We have written about 15 of them thus far. Saint Anthony of Padua, the saint we pray to for lost objects, is one of these honored people. But until the Lord decided to put St. Anthony into active ministry, he was a dish washer and confessor to Franciscan hermits.

Bob and Penny Lord write about the apparitions of Mary, contending that each of them has significance for larger numbers than the fortunate few to whom she has appeared.

When we wrote on the life of St. Teresa in our book Saints and other Powerful Women in the Church, little did we think that we would, some day, be using her visions of heaven, hell, and purgatory to affirm these important truths of our Catholic faith.

The life of Saint Augustine and his mother, Saint Monica, who brought about his conversion.