Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes for Alcoholics: Day 6

We all bear grudges at one time or another. Someone has wronged us, either by a real infraction or a perceived one, and we are hurt. There is a wound on our psyche and we suffer. The hurt remains and we are tied to the person and the event by this feeling. This is maintained by being unforgiving.

Forgiveness cuts these ties. By forgiving the person of the wrong they have perpetrated against us we release ourselves from the anchor that hinders our spiritual development.

Some people, myself included, feel that withholding forgiveness denies victory to the perpetrator. We feel that we have the upper hand, the moral high ground in the conflict. Truth is, quite often the perpetrator doesn’t remember the action, doesn’t care about the event and may even be not guilty of any wrongdoing. The only person suffering is the victim. Not always, but even when the grudge is justified, holding onto it only perpetuates the original act. It is as if there just wasn’t one harmful act, but a succession.

We can heal ourselves by forgiving the person, either outright through contact with that person, or just in our own minds. We release ourselves from the event and the harm it had caused. The effects may not be immediate, but healing will occur over time.

There are additional posts on forgiveness on this blog, just go to the “Labels”section in the sidebar and click on “Forgiveness”.

The Blessed Mother is always ready to assist us:

Pray:

Oh ever Immaculate Virgin, Mother of Mercy, Health of the Sick, Refuge of Sinners, Comfortess of the Afflicted, you know my wants, my troubles, my sufferings. Look upon me with mercy. When you appeared in the grotto of Lourdes, you made it a privileged sanctuary where you dispense your favors, and where many sufferers have obtained the cure of their infirmities, both spiritual and corporal. I come, therefore, with unbounded confidence to implore your maternal intercession. My loving Mother, obtain my request. I will try to imitate your virtues so that I may one day share your company and bless you in eternity. Amen

From: Prayers – Catholic Online: “Prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes”

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes for Alcoholics: Day 5

Patience is a condition that we alcoholics have serious issues with. And these issues can continue well into our sobriety. It seems as if we can never ever fully get rid of the “I want what I want and I want it now” attitude, no matter how much we have worked on developing our sense of patience.

“Lord, give me patience, and make it QUICK!”

It can be argued that impatience is a secret desire to be like God. Only God has control over time, and impatience is a desire for control over time. Time doesn’t move fast enough, events do not take place when we want them to. Things take too long to finish. The present time is never enough, we want the future, too.

This is of course futile and only leads to anger and frustration, two emotions that we alcoholics cannot afford. We lose our self-control and get knocked “off the beam” and our sobriety is at risk.

Developing a patient attitude takes time. A person in recovery who has a good sense of self and a good knowledge of their interior life can learn over time all those emotional and situational triggers which set off an impatience binge and then learn to counter them. Merely recognizing when they occur is often enough to quiet them down. Not always, but given the practice, the intellectual and spiritual sides of the person will be able to tame the impatient streak.

Pray:

Oh ever Immaculate Virgin, Mother of Mercy, Health of the Sick, Refuge of Sinners, Comfortess of the Afflicted, you know my wants, my troubles, my sufferings. Look upon me with mercy. When you appeared in the grotto of Lourdes, you made it a privileged sanctuary where you dispense your favors, and where many sufferers have obtained the cure of their infirmities, both spiritual and corporal. I come, therefore, with unbounded confidence to implore your maternal intercession. My loving Mother, obtain my request. I will try to imitate your virtues so that I may one day share your company and bless you in eternity. Amen

From: Prayers – Catholic Online: “Prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes”

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes for Alcoholics: Day 4

Grief. Mourning the death of a loved one and dealing with how to fill the hole created in your life by the loss may be the biggest threat to an alcoholic’s sobriety.

The grand theological concepts of Faith such as an afterlife and a possible reunion with the beloved in Heaven only if you both have died in the grace of God might cause this to be an insurmountable situation for some. If just swept under the rug and avoided it becomes a landmine lying in the road of recovery we are trudging along.

Death. The landscape of your life has changed. The person is gone and is never coming back. One constant piece of advice offered in recovery is that you need to change how you react to things. This is fine for most events. Death is the one unavoidable and unalterable event. It happens to everyone. It will happen to you. How you react to it fundamentally defines your relationship with God and how strong your faith is.

If your religious and spiritual faith is strong and death is an accepted part of living, then you will cope with the loss in a manner that may ensure your sobriety’s survival. If you hadn’t encountered death yet, but have a healthy, viable and ongoing means of conversion (i.e. you’re into “spiritual progression”) you will have it rough as you adjust to this new thing, but you’ll survive. You may not want to, but you will. It is almost as if you are back at that “jumping off place”, that area in your drinking career when you’re at bottom and you know that drinking leads to death, and not-drinking may only bring a wish for death.

You learn that grief is not something to be avoided, but used. Grief is something you plow through, not work around.

As in other times, but perhaps more in this situation than in any other, the Blessed Mother is ready and able to help.

Pray:

Oh ever Immaculate Virgin, Mother of Mercy, Health of the Sick, Refuge of Sinners, Comfortess of the Afflicted, you know my wants, my troubles, my sufferings. Look upon me with mercy. When you appeared in the grotto of Lourdes, you made it a privileged sanctuary where you dispense your favors, and where many sufferers have obtained the cure of their infirmities, both spiritual and corporal. I come, therefore, with unbounded confidence to implore your maternal intercession. My loving Mother, obtain my request. I will try to imitate your virtues so that I may one day share your company and bless you in eternity. Amen

From: Prayers – Catholic Online: “Prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes”

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Novena to Our lady of Lourdes for Alcoholics: Day 3

Depression is another affliction for us alcoholics, especially in early recovery. With our moods swinging wildly from day to to day, and sometimes more quickly, we fall into a state of wondering “will it ever get better?” It becomes easy to lose hope and to wonder whether this sobriety thing is worth it if an emotional roller coaster is the cost.

A dark cloud seems to follow us and we drift from meeting to meeting to seek a means to snap out of it. We see others with more long-term sobriety than ours and we “want what they have”, but we want it now. And gloom sets in when we see the long road ahead that we need to trudge to get where they are.

It passes as easily at it arrived, this depression. We eventually learn that it is a normal part of the landscape of our minds, and eventually we endure. It does not make it any easier, nevertheless we develop the strength to see it through and our fortitude pervades our life.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, ever our watchful and protective mother, is ready to assist:

Pray:

Oh ever Immaculate Virgin, Mother of Mercy, Health of the Sick, Refuge of Sinners, Comfortess of the Afflicted, you know my wants, my troubles, my sufferings. Look upon me with mercy. When you appeared in the grotto of Lourdes, you made it a privileged sanctuary where you dispense your favors, and where many sufferers have obtained the cure of their infirmities, both spiritual and corporal. I come, therefore, with unbounded confidence to implore your maternal intercession. My loving Mother, obtain my request. I will try to imitate your virtues so that I may one day share your company and bless you in eternity. Amen

From: Prayers – Catholic Online: “Prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes”

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes for Alcoholics: Day 2

Anxiety is another cross that we alcoholics have to bear. Fears and worries about the future or about present circumstances and the apparent powerlessness over them leads to anxiety.

Anxiety happens when faith is weak or absent. We lack the confidence that God is there to help us or provide for us, and we feel we are cast adrift. Our inability to deal with things in the past had pushed us to drinking as a means to cope, and now without that crutch anxiety fills the gap.

Anxiety fills the empty spaces where love and faith should abide.

At Mass is the following dialogue after the Lord’s Prayer:

Priest: Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Via Catholic Resources.)

One of the little-known effects of the Mass is that it is a weapon against anxiety. If we are the faithful servants of our Lord then we should be confident that the One who died for us will not let us stumble and fall beyond His reach.

The Mass is the drama of God’s love for us. Immerse yourself in it. (Helpful if you are a member of a parish with a reverent priest who says the Mass properly.)

Pray:

Oh ever Immaculate Virgin, Mother of Mercy, Health of the Sick, Refuge of Sinners, Comfortess of the Afflicted, you know my wants, my troubles, my sufferings. Look upon me with mercy. When you appeared in the grotto of Lourdes, you made it a privileged sanctuary where you dispense your favors, and where many sufferers have obtained the cure of their infirmities, both spiritual and corporal. I come, therefore, with unbounded confidence to implore your maternal intercession. My loving Mother, obtain my request. I will try to imitate your virtues so that I may one day share your company and bless you in eternity. Amen

From: Prayers – Catholic Online: “Prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes”

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes for Alcoholics: Day 1

We are all individuals. Sometimes our sense of individuality gets unhealthy and and is replaced by a feeling of aloneness. We feel isolated and no longer a part of whatever community or communities we belong to. This separation is distinctly harmful and will lead to all sorts of thoughts about our well-being that are untrue. Our problems are worse that anybody else’s. No one likes me. No one notices me, I am invisible.

No one suffers with us.

We somehow must re-establish our connections with those around us and reassert our balanced perspective as to how we are in relation to others.

Prayer is one way. Prayer, that seeking out conscious contact with God and uplifting our hearts and minds to Him reconnects us to the Divine, and in turn helps us to be aware that we are not truly alone. God is there and He softens our hearts and assists us in seeing those about us.

In this novena, we turn to Our Blessed Mother and request her intercessory powers to aid us in our healing. We can turn to her and ask that our feelings of aloneness be banished when they arise.

Pray:

Oh ever immaculate Virgin, Mother of Mercy, Health of the Sick, Refuge of Sinners, Comfortess of the Afflicted, you know my wants, my troubles, my sufferings. Look upon me with mercy. When you appeared in the grotto of Lourdes, you made it a privileged sanctuary where you dispense your favors, and where many sufferers have obtained the cure of their infirmities, both spiritual and corporal. I come, therefore, with unbounded confidence to implore your maternal intercession. My loving Mother, obtain my request. I will try to imitate your virtues so that I may one day share your company and bless you in eternity. Amen

From: Prayers – Catholic Online: “Prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes”

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes for Alcoholics

On February 11 is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. It honors the 1858 apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France. Along with the apparition at Fatima, Portugal, it is one of the best known of Marian apparitions. Even non-Catholics have heard of it due to miraculous healings of people immersed in the waters of its springs. This article from New Advent contains the basic information Lourdes.

At daily Mass this morning I got the idea of starting a novena (a prayer of petition or supplication said daily for nine days.) in honor of this feast day. I might have thought of it last year, but never got to it for whatever reason.

It will start tomorrow, February 3rd, and end on the feast, February 11th. Some novenas start 10 days before the feast and end the day just before, others start 9 days before and end on the day of the feast. Honestly, I never got a straight answer from anyone as to why this is so, so I just start them so that they end on the day of he feast. Other Catholic bloggers that you read might have started their own novenas to Our Lady of Lourdes today. That’s OK, I just wanted to explain why we’re a day off.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Our Lady of the Rosary: year in review reflection

Today was the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. That link is a post I wrote last year.

It has been quite a year for me since that post. In that year I relocated to a new city to be closer to my then-girlfriend (after commuting weekly 360 miles/580 km round-trip for nearly 2 months), took a low-paying part-time job just to be near her, got a new job a few months later – just before the actual wedding, and endured a lot of change and trials on that job these past 8 months on it. I proposed to her 10 months ago today on the Vigil of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (Rose said “Yes” but made me propose again the next day as she felt it was more proper to do so on the day of the feast instead. Women… (!!!). ) All in all, a new life, and a year that most people would have taken several years to live out. No boasting, just a lot of life development and such all packed in to one year, that others would have experienced over a longer period.

A strong faith and strong sobriety was key in my surviving this past year. There was much that could have undermined my sobriety, ask any long-term member of a 12 Step group and they would have said something about too much change too soon. Change, or big change and a lot of it, isn’t good for any recovered/recovering alcoholic. Having something worthwhile to achieve (like a great lady) helps.

From Romans 12:12: “Rejoice in hope, endure in affliction, persevere in prayer.”

(Via USCCB.)

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Feast of the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary

From a post last year saying Happy Birthday, Mom

Call your Mother. Say the Rosary.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

New Scriptural Rosary website

From Bill B., a Sober Catholic reader:

Hello,

I was surfing through Catholic blogs and came across your blog. It was especially interesting to me because my father was an alcoholic and he eventually passed away when his liver failed him.

He was a great dad! Somehow he managed to coach our ball teams, provide everything we needed and was always there for us. He was never abusive physically or verbally. I wouldn’t have traded him for any other dad. Still, he had a drinking problem and it eventually killed him.

Any way, the reason I was surfing catholic blogs was to try to create an awareness of a new Scriptural Rosary site that I have published. I’m soon to become a full time volunteer and the Rosary is a big part of my journey. I felt compelled to share my favorite way to pray it.

Take a look, if you like it, I hope you’ll visit often and share it with friends and readers of your blog. Perhaps if I loved the Rosary this much when I was younger, it could have helped my dad.



Thanks for your time.

God Bless,

Bill

Here is the link .

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)