NOVENA: PREPARATION FOR TRAVEL, DAY 4 WE PRAY TOGETHER

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Now to the 4th days of our novena for and with those who are preparing to travel to the international gathering of La Associates of the La Salette Community.

Let us pray:
4.     Famine, children dying, mother-earth is sick
        Exodus, chapter 10, verses 12 to 20 The plague of the grasshoppers
        Do I understand how ecology is related to reconciliation and to the quality of life of human
        beings?
                           MEMORARE TO OUR LADY OF LA SALETTE
Remember, Our Lady of La Salette,
true Mother of Sorrows,
the tears you shed for us on Calvary. 
Remember also the care you have taken
to keep us faithful to Christ, your Son.
Having done so much for your children,
you will not now abandon us.
Comforted by this consoling thought,
we come to you pleading,
despite our infidelities and ingratitude. 
Virgin of Reconciliation,
do not reject our prayers, but intercede for us,
obtain for us the grace
to love Jesus above all else.
May we console you by a holy life
and so come to share the eternal life
Christ gained by his cross.  Amen.
                              Update about Fr. Maurice Cardinal,MS

Update on the condition of Father Maurice Cardinal, MS, whom many of you know.  Father was operated on for a skin cancer near his left eye.  It was discovered that the cancer had invaded his left eyeball.  Therefore the decision was taken to remove the left eye.
Isabel and I visited Father Maurice this evening [August 20, 2011] and chatted with him for about an hour.  Father Maurice is comfortable with his situation.  He is thanking God that he will still have good eyesight from the remaining eye [right].  He is in good spirits and is not indulging in anything close to self pity.  In fact he is praying for some missionaries of Our Lady who are in the process of loosing their eyesight to macular degeneration.  He feels bad for them because they are still only half his age.
Father Maurice is a source of inspiration to all of us.  Many years ago he was cured of asthma during a visit to La Salette.  He then told Our Lady, "If you want me to continue working, you have to spare me from this asthma."  He went back to the Philippines and hasn't had asthma ever since.  Many decades have passed and he knows that we are going to La Salette.  We told him that we are praying that Our Lord and His Holy Mother will keep him strong because there is still a lot of work that he can do.  Besides, it will be only half bad, right? ;-)
Father made a joke about the operation.  Once the eye is removed, the doctors will take a sheet of skin from his thigh.  They will then do some reconstructive surgery to make the face easier to look at.  Father asked the doctor is he would consider putting a nice tattoo on the graft.  We laughed.  When we asked if the doctor had laughed, he said, "No, not really.  Maybe it's because he's Korean.  They don't laugh as easily as we do."
Father's surgery is scheduled for August 26, 2011.  Let's pray for another miracle.