Mother’s Day Open Thread

Faithful.

I’m sorry for your loss. My mom went home on November 9th 2017.
I’ll put both of them in prayer today.

John Bosco had his famous “dreams.”

When I saw the snake run out of the house in the clip above, I remembered that one of Bosco’s dreams was that of the rope destroying the snake. Children are like rose’s to our Heavenly Queen. The rosary is the rope.

The snake, birth control representative, could not stand the sweetness of Roses. She was conquerd.

We keep at it. Praying the rosary in front of the snakepit. One day the pit will be destroyed.
Care… no matter what… that is the catch phrase in front of the pit.

We too care, no matter what, hence our unwavering faith at the doors of the pit.

Philip Kosloski – published on 01/31/19
updated on 10/05/23

The sinister snake was no match for a string of Hail Marys.
St. John Bosco was a holy priest whose deep spiritual life led to frequent visions or “dreams,” as he would call them. He wrote about one of them in a letter to his students.

The dream occurred on the eve of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and in it a stranger came up to him and asked him to look at something on the ground.

He took me to a meadow alongside the playground and pointed to a huge, ugly snake, over twenty feet Iong, coiled in the grass. Frightened, I wanted to run off, but the stranger held me back. “Get closer and take a good look,” he said.

“What?” I gasped. “Don’t you realize that monster could spring on me and
gobble me up in no time?”

“Don’t be afraid! Nothing of the sort will happen. Just come with me.

The stranger went to get a rope and asked St. John Bosco to slap the snake with the rope.

We stretched the rope and then snapped it across the snake’s back. The monster immediately sprang up and struck at the rope, but, as it did so, it ensnared itself as in a noose.

The snake began to struggle and quickly died. Then the stranger picked up the rope and put it in a box. What happened next was astonishing, and then the stranger explained the spiritual symbolism behind what happened.

Within a few moments he opened the box. We looked in and were astounded to see the rope shaped into the words Ave Maria.

“How did that happen?” I asked.

“The snake,” the man replied, “is a symbol of the devil, whereas the rope stands for Ave Maria or, rather, the Rosary, a succession of Hail Marys with which we can strike, conquer, and destroy all of hell’s demons.”

St. John Bosco took the lesson to heart and wrote to his students, “Let us devoutly say a Hail Mary whenever we are tempted, and we’ll be sure to win.“

The experience confirms what many exorcists have said about the power of the Virgin Mary over the devil. Satan is greatly humiliated by the purity and simplicity of the Blessed Mother and flies as fast as he can whenever he hears her name. It’s a powerful reminder, one that urges us to pray the Rosary devoutly whenever we feel threatened by the Evil One.

My sons sent me a Mothers Day gift of a sterling silver rosary that the older son bought at the Vatican when he and his girl friend visited Rome. Even if the rosary beads were plastic I would still have been thrilled. I took it as a sign that maybe my boys are edging back to practicing their Faith.
Re Satan I picked up a book on Satans presence through the ages in the church vestibule. The chapter on Lourdes csught my eye. It seems that there were many fake apparitions after Bernadette’s were acknowledged to be true by the Church Some heard voices shouting, “Leave! Leave now!. Hurry! It was thought that a demon was urging the others to vacate because though unseen the Bledsred Mother wss present. I didnt take the book home because I dont want anything to do with Satan in my home..