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LI Catholic Youth Day was held at St Anthony’s High School in So. Huntington on Saturday March 30th, 2019. Bishop John Barres celebrated holy mass with priests of the diocese, seminarians, religious and the young church of Long Island in the Franciscan Chapel on campus. The young attendees heard about discernment and prayer, and experiencing God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance.
The bishop gathers with Youth and Young Adult Diocesan staff shortly before mass. LI Catholic Youth Day was held at St Anthony’s High School in So. Huntington on Saturday March 30th, 2019. Bishop John Barres celebrated holy mass with priests of the diocese, seminarians, religious and the young church of Long Island in the Franciscan Chapel on campus. The young attendees heard about discernment and prayer, and experiencing God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance.
Brother Joseph Anoop, F.S.P.
Photo courtesy of the Brothers of St. Patrick
Read article at: visionvocationguide/docs/2025_vision/91
Father Corey Brost, C.S.V. (left) with a student pilgrim near the U.S.-Mexico border.
Photo courtesy of Viatorian Fathers and Brothers.
Read article at visionvocationguide/docs/2021_vision/72.
Bishop Barres raises the host while praying the Eucharistic Prayer. LI Catholic Youth Day was held at St Anthony’s High School in So. Huntington on Saturday March 30th, 2019. Bishop John Barres celebrated holy mass with priests of the diocese, seminarians, religious and the young church of Long Island in the Franciscan Chapel on campus. The young attendees heard about discernment and prayer, and experiencing God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance.
It is essential that priests dedicate themselves to service. Here, Father Miguel Briseño, O.F.M.Conv. serves his flock by presiding over a confirmation.
Photo by Alfonso Baeza, courtesy of the Conventual Franciscan Friars
Read article at: visionvocationguide/docs/2025_vision/102
🙏❤️♾️ Starting the Day by Praising ABBA FATHER, for a Life of ONENESS in HIM... A Life of Gratitude and Joy Filled Thanksgiving
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❤️⚡️👑 Morning Gratitude
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🙏❤️👑 Morning Magic
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🙏👑♥️ "Mi Reina ~ gracias por todo ~ Tú conoces mi corazón ~ Yo conozco tu corazón ~ ABBA conoce el futuro ~ Confía en el proceso ~ La misión de la vida está justo delante de nosotros ~ ♾️⚕️❤️
🙏♥️⚖️👑 Powerful Morning Prayer for Favor
ABBA Father, Esther found herself in a position she could never have completely orchestrated by herself; I ask You to orchestrate my steps according to Your wisdom. Put me where I need to be at the right time; let me meet the right people at the right time; let me hear the right counsel at the right time; let me recognize the right opportunity at the right time; save me from being early because of impatience; save me from being late because of fear; teach me to move with Your timing.
ABBA, give me courage when my moment comes. Esther eventually had to move beyond comfort and step into responsibility: she had to speak when remaining silent would have been easier.
Father, when You give me an opportunity, do not let fear make me shrink back: give me courage to speak with wisdom, give me courage to show up prepared, give me courage to use my gifts, give me courage to accept responsibilities that stretch me, give me courage to walk through doors You have clearly opened, give me courage to believe that if You have brought me to an assignment, Your grace will help me carry it.
Father, I surrender the fear of rejection. Not everyone will understand me, approve of me, support me, or recognize what You have placed within me, and I accept that. My identity cannot depend upon people's opinions.
Root me so deeply in Your love that praise does not inflate me and criticism does not destroy me. Let my security come from belonging to You.
When people say "yes," keep me humble; when people say "no," keep me peaceful; when doors open, keep me grateful; when doors close, keep me trusting; when I am celebrated, keep me grounded; when I am overlooked, keep me faithful.
Father, let favor meet preparation in my life; let opportunity meet wisdom; let influence meet character; let increase meet humility; let resources meet generosity; let leadership meet compassion; let every blessing You place in my hands find a heart prepared to use it well.
ABBA, I thank You in advance for the places You are preparing me for; I thank You for opportunities I cannot yet see; I thank You for lessons I am learning now that will make sense later; I thank You for every closed door protecting my future; I thank You for every delay developing my character; I thank You for every season that has taught me endurance.
I thank You because I am not forgotten; I thank You because I am not invisible to heaven; I thank You because my life has purpose; I thank You because my future is in Your hands; I thank You because what You have begun in me You are faithful to complete.
Father, continue working within me before You work around me; continue preparing my heart before You enlarge my territory; continue teaching me how to carry blessing without losing humility; continue giving me wisdom to recognize what comes from You and what merely looks attractive.
ABBA, as You did in Esther's story, arrange circumstances beyond my ability: let Your providence speak where my effort ends; let Your wisdom guide what I cannot control; let Your favor accomplish what striving cannot accomplish.
I will do my part faithfully, but I refuse to live anxiously as though everything depends upon me: You are God, I am Your child; I will prepare and I will trust; I will work and I will pray; I will move when You lead and I will wait when You say "wait."
Father, I place my name before You again; I place my future before You; I place every dream, every plan, every opportunity, every relationship, every gift, and every unanswered prayer before You.
Recommend me according to Your purpose, position me according to Your wisdom, prepare me according to Your standards, promote me according to Your timing, and wherever You take me, Father, let me never forget that the greatest privilege of my life is not being known by people—it is being known, loved, and called by You.
So I remain here before You, ABBA —still believing, still surrendering, still thanking You, still asking You to prepare me for everything You have ordained for my life.
Continue working on my heart, continue increasing my wisdom, continue strengthening my character, continue ordering my steps, continue placing Your favor upon the work of my hands, and continue preparing me for every place where Your purpose will require me to stand.
Father, as I bring this prayer to a close, I place everything I have prayed completely into Your hands. I refuse to leave Your presence anxious about when, where, or how You will answer me.
I trust You, I trust Your wisdom, I trust Your timing, I trust Your direction, and above everything else, I trust Your heart toward me.
ABBA, just as You positioned Esther for a purpose greater than she could initially see, position me where my life can fulfill Your purpose.
Let Your favor rest upon me, let Your wisdom guide me, let Your presence distinguish me, let my character prepare me for every opportunity You place before me.
Father, when my name needs to be remembered, bring me to remembrance; when my gifts need to be recognized, let them speak; when the right opportunity appears, give me discernment to recognize it and courage to embrace it.
Connect me with people of wisdom and integrity who align with the purpose You have for my life. But ABBA, never allow my desire for greatness to become greater than my desire for You
Para Siempre porque Ubuntu
❤️ You . . .
Bishop Barres and concelebrants praying the Eucharistic Prayer. LI Catholic Youth Day was held at St Anthony’s High School in So. Huntington on Saturday March 30th, 2019. Bishop John Barres celebrated holy mass with priests of the diocese, seminarians, religious and the young church of Long Island in the Franciscan Chapel on campus. The young attendees heard about discernment and prayer, and experiencing God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance.
Attendees doing an excercise in the chapel about God's faithfulness. LI Catholic Youth Day was held at St Anthony’s High School in So. Huntington on Saturday March 30th, 2019. Bishop John Barres celebrated holy mass with priests of the diocese, seminarians, religious and the young church of Long Island in the Franciscan Chapel on campus. The young attendees heard about discernment and prayer, and experiencing God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance.
Sister Limétèze Pierre-Gilles, S.S.N.D. with Sister Sharon Kanis, S.S.N.D. Behind them is an image of their community’s foundress, whose portrait triggered a conversation that eventually led Pierre-Gilles into religious life.
Photo courtesy of courtesy of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Atlantic-Midwest Province
Read article at: visionvocationguide/docs/2025_vision/16
The bishop gathers with liturgical ministers in prayer shortly before mass. LI Catholic Youth Day was held at St Anthony’s High School in So. Huntington on Saturday March 30th, 2019. Bishop John Barres celebrated holy mass with priests of the diocese, seminarians, religious and the young church of Long Island in the Franciscan Chapel on campus. The young attendees heard about discernment and prayer, and experiencing God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance.
Concelebrating clergy. LI Catholic Youth Day was held at St Anthony’s High School in So. Huntington on Saturday March 30th, 2019. Bishop John Barres celebrated holy mass with priests of the diocese, seminarians, religious and the young church of Long Island in the Franciscan Chapel on campus. The young attendees heard about discernment and prayer, and experiencing God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance.
The bishop gathers with liturgical ministers in prayer shortly before mass. LI Catholic Youth Day was held at St Anthony’s High School in So. Huntington on Saturday March 30th, 2019. Bishop John Barres celebrated holy mass with priests of the diocese, seminarians, religious and the young church of Long Island in the Franciscan Chapel on campus. The young attendees heard about discernment and prayer, and experiencing God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance.
The self is rarely as singular as it sounds when it speaks aloud. Human beings prefer coherence in retrospect. We like to imagine that beneath our contradictions there exists a single, stable voice merely waiting to be expressed clearly. Yet lived experience suggests otherwise. Much of consciousness unfolds as simultaneity rather than simplicity. Desire speaks while conscience speaks. Memory speaks while performance speaks. Fear speaks while longing speaks. The public self forms a sentence while some deeper or rival interior register presses against it with another meaning entirely. This image turns toward that layered condition. The man stands before the dark window, and the reflected version of him does not appear as a grotesque double or a supernatural interruption. It appears as something more unsettling because it is more familiar: another angle of the same self, equally real within the scene, quietly accompanying what the body presents outwardly.
That structure belongs deeply to the lived-world of Confessions to the Empty Chair. The book repeatedly resists the fiction that a person can be reduced to a single active motive or a clean interior thesis. It understands the self as a site of concurrency. Multiple claims can occupy one soul at once without canceling one another. A man can mean what he says and still mean something else beneath it. He can genuinely love and still distort. He can aspire upward while consenting downward. He can tell the truth selectively and thus remain partly hidden even from himself. The book does not flatten this complexity into relativism. Rather, it treats interior plurality as one of the basic burdens of moral and spiritual life. The task is not to pretend the self has only one voice, but to discern which voices are speaking, which are masquerading, which are wounded, and which deserve authority.
Phenomenologically, the image captures the way selfhood often appears indirectly. We do not encounter ourselves only from within as pure immediacy. We also meet ourselves through reflection, through role, through public posture, through memory, through the reaction of others, and through moments when our outward expression fails to coincide cleanly with our inward state. The reflected face in the glass becomes powerful here precisely because it is natural. It emerges through ordinary optics, not special effects. That matters because inner plurality does not require fantasy to be real. One does not need a fractured mirror or surreal duplication to know the experience of being divided. Ordinary life is sufficient. A single face can carry multiple orientations. A single posture can conceal rival meanings. A single moment can hold more than one truth about the one living it.
In the world of the book, this plurality often becomes visible not in dramatic collapse but in quiet contradiction. A person notices that his speech and his appetite are not aligned. He recognizes that his analysis is accurate yet incomplete because another layer of his being remains unacknowledged. He finds that what he consciously intends is being accompanied by another movement he did not authorize but cannot deny. This is one reason the image’s urban setting matters. The storefront glass reflects not only the man but fragments of the city around him. The self does not speak in isolation. It speaks within a world already crowded by memory, cultural roles, expectations, temptations, past scenes, and unprocessed meanings. Interior plurality is not a vacuum phenomenon. It is intensified by a world in which every person must carry multiple registers of identity at once.
Psychologically, the image touches one of the most difficult truths of maturity: sincerity is not the same thing as wholeness. A person may be honest in one register while another register remains active beneath his honesty. He may say what he truly feels in the moment and still fail to account for the deeper motives or counter-motives moving through him. This is why self-knowledge is so slow. It is not enough to identify a single present feeling. One must learn to hear competing interior claims without collapsing them too quickly into a convenient narrative. The self that says “I meant what I said” may indeed be telling the truth. But the self that says “something else in me meant something different” may also be telling the truth. Human consciousness is layered, and those layers often speak over one another rather than in sequence.
There is also a theological seriousness here. The moral life depends not only on outward conduct, but on rightly ordering the inner world. Yet that order is not given automatically. The human person must come to recognize which voice in him is dominant, which voice is parasitic, which voice is formed by fear, which by vanity, which by habit, which by grace, which by love, and which by the desire to evade judgment. Confessions to the Empty Chair understands that spiritual struggle is often a struggle of interior discernment. The soul is not saved by denying its plurality. It is deepened by bringing that plurality under truth. One must discover not merely that multiple voices exist, but that not all voices deserve the same obedience.
The image’s restraint keeps it from becoming melodramatic. The man is not visibly unraveling. He is composed. That composure matters because inner plurality often exists within ordinary social functioning. A person can appear stable, coherent, and self-possessed while carrying an ongoing multiplicity of inner claims. The danger of contemporary language around fragmentation is that it sometimes dramatizes what is, in many lives, a quieter and more common condition. Most people do not experience themselves as shattered. They experience themselves as layered. They know the tension of meaning one thing publicly while sensing another current moving beneath. This image honors that more subtle truth.
In the broader world of the book, such tension becomes one of the keys to reading a life honestly. Memory, conscience, desire, shame, and aspiration do not always take turns politely. They often overlap. They compete for interpretive authority over the same event. One voice narrates a memory as innocence. Another narrates it as evasion. One voice calls an attachment love. Another calls it dependency. One voice sees pain. Another sees revelation. The self is not a parliament easily brought to order. It is a contested field. Yet this contest need not lead to despair. It can lead to seriousness. It can force the person to ask not merely what he feels, but who in him is speaking when he feels it.
“Both Were Speaking At Once” names that sober condition without reducing it to pathology. It acknowledges the strange dignity and difficulty of being a creature whose interior life exceeds simple narration. We do not always lie when we contradict ourselves. Sometimes contradiction reveals that more than one interior claim is active, and maturity consists in refusing to flatten that complexity for the sake of comfort. The reflected face beside the embodied one does not tell us which voice should rule. It tells us something more fundamental first: that the self is not exhausted by its first utterance. It contains overlap, rivalry, echo, and tension. To live truthfully is not to pretend otherwise, but to listen long enough for the hidden speakers to emerge into judgment.
Theresa Marino leads prayer in song. LI Catholic Youth Day was held at St Anthony’s High School in So. Huntington on Saturday March 30th, 2019. Bishop John Barres celebrated holy mass with priests of the diocese, seminarians, religious and the young church of Long Island in the Franciscan Chapel on campus. The young attendees heard about discernment and prayer, and experiencing God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance.
Ursuline associate Amy Olson visits with a class at Sacred Heart Academy in Louisville, Kentucky.
Photo courtesy of Ursuline Sisters, Louisville, Kentucky.
Read article at visionvocationguide/docs/2020_vision/52.
"suppose God brings you to a crisis and you almost endure it, but not completely. He will engineer the crisis again, but this time some of the intensity will be lost. you will have less discernment and more humiliation at having disobeyed. If you continue to grieve His Spirit, there will come a time when that crisis cannot be repeated, because you have totally quenched Him. But if you will go on through the crisis, your life will become a hymn of praise to God. never become attached to anything that continues to hurt God. For you to be free of it, God must be allowed to hurt whatever it may be." --- Oswald Chambers
Felician Sister Maria Louise Edwards, C.S.S.F. serves as a leader in Ángeles del Desierto (Angels of the Desert), a voluntary search-and-rescue effort started by a man grieving the death of his brother, left to die in the desert by a smuggler. The Angels of the Desert operate patrols in California and Arizona, often finding human remains that are returned to families for proper burial. Here Edwards is at the Arizona border, in the Tohono O’odham Nation, with a border officer.
Photo by Peter Tran
Read article at: visionvocationguide/docs/2024_vision/38
Working with and for the poor as a public representative of the church is part of being a sister in an “apostolic” (active) religious order. Sister Colleen Gibson, S.S.J. (right) with a co-worker at the Sisters of Saint Joseph Neighborhood Center in Camden, New Jersey.
Photo courtesy of Sisters of St. Joseph.
Read article at: visionvocationguide/docs/2021_vision/102
Later...
Mr. H (having talked for a VERY long time about his nanny experiences): So you see, I've served in many a fine household back in Britsylvania. And I daresay my charges have all faired well in their young lives. Above all, I brook no quarter concerning slovenly-ness or ill manners. A firm paw, sir! A firm paw, madam!
Kingsley: The campgrounds kittens are all quite well behaved, I assure you, Mister Higgs.
Millie: Although some of them can be pretty silly...
Mr. H: Well, there's the right and wrong sort of silly, I daresay. Fortunately my powers of discernment in that department never fail. A bit of silly can go a long way in the right paws. As you shall see in due time, and so, when then shall I report for service?
Kingsley: Um...well but first we--
Millie (beaming): Four of our shops are doing a "soft opening" December 12. Would that work for your first day, Mister Higgs?
Clever liars give details, the cleverest don't.
— Anon
Typeface: Bembo
Merchandise available: www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/138192828
LI Catholic Youth Day was held at St Anthony’s High School in So. Huntington on Saturday March 30th, 2019. Bishop John Barres celebrated holy mass with priests of the diocese, seminarians, religious and the young church of Long Island in the Franciscan Chapel on campus. The young attendees heard about discernment and prayer, and experiencing God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance.
Praise everybody, praise nobody.
— Samuel Johnson
Typeface: Palomino Script Regular
Merchandise available: www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/121446996
Knowledge without sense is double folly.
— Gracian
Typeface: Roswell
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The Diocese of Rockford Vocations Office held the first annual Discernment Day for men between the ages of 16-35 who may be considering the priesthood.
Speaker Mari Pablo at prayer. LI Catholic Youth Day was held at St Anthony’s High School in So. Huntington on Saturday March 30th, 2019. Bishop John Barres celebrated holy mass with priests of the diocese, seminarians, religious and the young church of Long Island in the Franciscan Chapel on campus. The young attendees heard about discernment and prayer, and experiencing God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance.
Praise everybody, praise nobody.
— Samuel Johnson
Typeface: Palomino Script Regular
Merchandise available: www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/121445635
Attendees gathered in the chapel. LI Catholic Youth Day was held at St Anthony’s High School in So. Huntington on Saturday March 30th, 2019. Bishop John Barres celebrated holy mass with priests of the diocese, seminarians, religious and the young church of Long Island in the Franciscan Chapel on campus. The young attendees heard about discernment and prayer, and experiencing God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Penance.
The abbot of the monastery places the hood, or capuche, around the shoulders of Brother Pachomius
Alvarado, O.S.B. during his profession of temporary vows. The hood is the part of the habit that signifies, at St. Bernard Abbey, that a monk is a professed (vowed) member of the community.
Photo by Anne Stephens, Benedictine Oblate of St. Bernard Abbey, courtesy of St. Bernard Abbey
Read article at: visionvocationguide/docs/2024_vision/80
Mexican traditional costumes mix with Knights of Columbus garb for a festive opening weekend at the new St. Teresa of Kolkata Parish in Maynardville, Tennessee.
Photo courtesy of Glenmary Challenge Magazine
Read article at visionvocationguide/docs/2020_vision/62.
www.cagnz.org/the-second-coming-of-jesusknocking-at-the-d...
Christian Movie “Knocking at the Door”: The Second Coming of Jesus
Two thousand years ago, the Lord Jesus prophesied, “And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom comes; go you out to meet him” (Matthew 25:6). “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). For the last two thousand years, believers in the Lord have been watchful and awaiting the Lord’s knock on the door, so how will He knock on mankind’s door when He returns? In the last days, some people have testified that the Lord Jesus has returned—Almighty God incarnate—and that He is doing the work of judgment in the last days. This news has rocked the entire religious world.
Yang Aiguang, the protagonist of the film, has believed in the Lord for decades and has always been enthusiastically engaged in work and preaching, waiting to welcome the Lord’s return. One day, two people come and knock on the door, tell Yang Aiguang and her husband that the Lord Jesus has returned, and share the words of Almighty God with them. They are deeply moved by Almighty God’s words, but because Yang Aiguang has been subjected to the fallacies, deception, and strictures of the pastors and elders, she throws the witnesses of The Church of Almighty God out of the house. After that, the witnesses knock on their door on many occasions and read the words of Almighty God to Yang Aiguang, bearing witness to God’s work in the last days. During this time, the pastor disrupts and hinders Yang Aiguang time after time, and she continues to waver. However, through hearing the words of Almighty God, Yang Aiguang comes to understand the truth and gains discernment regarding the rumors and fallacies propagated by the pastors and elders. She finally understands how the Lord knocks on people’s doors during His return in the last days, and how we should welcome Him. When the fog clears, Yang Aiguang finally hears the voice of God and acknowledges that Almighty God really is the return of the Lord Jesus!
Image Source: Daily Devotionals
Source from: Our Daily Devotionals
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La Hermana Christa Parra, I.B.V.M. (izquierda) con la Hermana Romina Sapinoso, S.C.
Photo courtesy of Sister Christa Parra, I.B.V.M.
Read article at: visionvocationguide/docs/2021_vision/86