The Family Foundation School Catholic Bulletin
Pauca Verba (a few words)
Who says young people can’t be moved by great zeal!?Read on!
Blessed Fedele Fuidio Rodriguez: Religious and Martyr (1880-1936)
Fedele Fuidio Rodrguez, of Yecora, Spain, enrolled as a postulant (beginner) of the Marianist Congregation at the early age of twelve. Twelve years later, he took his perpetual vows as a Marianist brother. Over the years that followed, he served as a college teacher in schools across Spain, bringing to the classroom a joyous spirit stemming from his great apostolic zeal. Brother Fedele earned a doctorate in history and became an early exponent of the study of the archeology of Madrid. He was remembered for his promptness in responding to his fellow religious, as well as for his deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. On July 25, 1936, at the outset of the Spanish Civil War, the college where Brother Fedele had been teaching in Ciudad Real was confiscated by the anti-Catholic Popular Front. Brother Fedele thereupon took refuge in an inn. Two weeks later, Popular Front agents discovered him with a crucifix about his neck and arrested him. On October 15, he was released, but within two days he was recaptured by Popular Front troops, who shot him to death during the night of October 16 to 17, 1936.
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OH, READ THIS – SLOWLY AND CAREFULLY!
“I want to see”
To the eye that sees, littleness reveals infinitely more than vastness. God is known more truly by a little finite creature through the contemplation of a snowdrop than through the contemplation of the universe. Very soon the intellect staggers before immensity, it is used up, exhausted, only the rare hearts responds to it at all. But the inward eye fills with light when it contemplates a little thing, the heart can fold upon it, and so the heart expands and the mind does not wither, but puts out petal upon lovely petal of thought.
Julian of Norwich cried out for joy when she took an acorn into her hand, not because she held an oak tree in a tiny casket, but because that smooth, oval polished thing that fit into the palm of her hand had life and its life was in it only through God, only because God its creator lived and gave it life!
From the universe we learn that God is infinite, that we cannot compass him at all. From such things as insects, flies, little frogs, ice, and flowers, we learn that to us he is something else. He is Father, brother, child, and friend!
If you ever had a little green tree frog and watched him puffing out with a pomposity worthy of a dragon before croaking, you must have guessed that there is a tender smile on our heavenly Father’s face, that he likes us to laugh and he laughs with us; the frog will teach your heart more than all the books of theology in the world. (Caryll Houselander)
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A hymn to sing as we hear this Sunday’s gospel of blind Bartimaeus meeting Jesus on the roadside. Maybe make up your own melody.
A blind man sat beside the road,
And begged for charity,
Until he heard a stranger’s step,
And asked, “Who can this be?”
“Who can this be, and will he stop
For one as poor as I?”
Then voices pierced his darkness deep:
“The Lord is passing by.”
“He must not pass me by,” he cried;
“He must in pity see
These empty hands, these sightless eyes!
Have mercy, Lord, on me!”
Then Jesus stopped, in mercy spoke:
Those sightless eyes he healed
Which, opened wide, by faith made whole,
The Son of God revealed.
Our blindness cries for vision bright,
Our poverty for grace,
O Lord, have mercy now on us;
Celebrating Sukkot