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To: All
March 11, 2007

”Servant of Slaves”

”I believe in God.
I hope in God.
I love God.
I want to live and die for God.
~Henriette Delille

Heniriette Delille was born in 1913 into one of the New Orleans’ oldest families of free people of color. The exact date of her birth is unknown, but March 11 is often celebrated as her birthday.

Henriette was educated, taught music and French literature, and attended balls. One day she met a French man who impressed the young girl with her dedication to God and her charitable work.

Henriette transformed her life. She taught religion to slaves, baptized them, and encouraged marriage, at a time when Louisiana law prohibited educating slaves and free people of color, under penalty of death or life imprisonment.

Unable to find a religious community that would accept a black woman, in 1835 she sold all her property in order to found a religious community of black sisters. In 1842, after several setbacks, she and friend, Juliette Charles, received permission from the diocese to establish the Sisters of the Holy Family.

Besides educating and evangelizing slaves and free people of color, Sr. Henriette also encouraged the order to build a home for the sick, aged and poor black residents of the city. She died Nov. 16, 1862.

In 1997, the U. S. bishops unanimously endorsed her cause for canonization.

54 posted on 03/14/2007 10:18:08 PM PDT by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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To: All
Sunday – Third Week of Lent

The Fig Tree

We are all going to die.

It might happen through cruelty (like those Galileans killed by Pilate.) or by accident (like those people in Jerusalem killed when a tower fell upon them.) But inevitably, we’re all going to die one way or another, and in the perspective of the long sweep of history, we’re going to died relatively soon.

Lent is a good time to think through like that.

We are each created by God and put here on earth for a purpose. We may not know, this side of the grave, what our purpose is. But if we do our best, in the circumstances of our own life, to live as Jesus taught us to live, we still accomplish our purpose. In the eyes of the world, what we do may not seem all that important. It won’t make me famous. But there is no greater, more important accomplishment than simply to do what it is God put us here to do.

But we don’t always take this seriously. We don’t think we’re that important or that good. But the fact is each one of us is put here by God to accomplish something that no one else is given to accomplish. And we do that simply by doing our best to live the Gospel in the situations of our own life.

Am I doing it? Am I living the Gospel and thus having the effects that god wanted me to have on this earth?

If not, I’ve still got some time given to me by the gardener, Jesus.

Spend some quiet time with the Lord.

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55 posted on 03/14/2007 10:20:27 PM PDT by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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