I have been away for a while and not as good as I ought to have been about posting the final Divine Mercy Novena post, and for that I am sorry. But this has been my distraction:
He made his First Holy Communion yesterday.

Divine Mercy Novena starts today

The Divine Mercy Novena begins today, Good Friday. From EWTN: Jesus asked that the Feast of the Divine Mercy be preceded by a Novena to the Divine Mercy which would begin on Good Friday. He gave St. Faustina Kowalska an intention to pray for on each day of the Novena.... In her diary, St. Faustina wrote that Jesus told her:

"On each day of the novena you will bring to My heart a different group of souls and you will immerse them in this ocean of My mercy ... On each day you will beg My Father, on the strength of My passion, for the graces for these souls." For the next nine days, you can find the novena here. If you're in the neighborhood during the novena, and you want to stop by my parish to pray the chaplet, click here for the schedule. Mass on Mercy Sunday is awesome. 3:00, the hour of mercy. Please be aware it is a Charismatic Mass and it gets packed by 2:00. Click here for information on the Mercy Sunday Indulgence.

Prayer for Novena Day One (Good Friday):

"Today bring to Me all mankind, especially all sinners, and immerse them in the ocean of My mercy. In this way you will console Me in the bitter grief into which the loss of souls plunges Me."

Most Merciful Jesus, whose very nature it is to have compassion on us and to forgive us, do not look upon our sins but upon our trust which we place in Your infinite goodness. Receive us all into the abode of Your Most Compassionate Heart, and never let us escape from It. We beg this of You by Your love which unites You to the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Eternal Father, turn Your merciful gaze upon all mankind and especially upon poor sinners, all enfolded in the Most Compassionate Heart of Jesus. For the sake of His sorrowful Passion show us Your mercy, that we may praise the omnipotence of Your mercy for ever and ever. Amen.

Then, pray the Chaplet:

1. Begin with 1 Our Father, 1 Hail Mary and The Apostles Creed.
2. Then on the Our Father Beads say the following:Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.
3. On the 10 Hail Mary Beads say the following:For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.
(Repeat step 2 and 3 for all five decades).
4. Conclude with (three times):Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

I am here to help

I promise to get more of the New Orleans trip stuff up soon, but I want to wait until Scott's article gets published in case I wind up saying things he wants to say or use pictures he wants to use.

So, you know how the president is in Europe right now attending the G20 meeting? You know that he met the Queen yesterday? You know what he gave her? An i-pod. Now that is a fun gift, and certainly cool, but really, is it presidential? Then again, she gave him a framed photo of herself and Prince Phillip (the article says that all visiting dignitaries get one. I hope it's a nice frame.), so maybe it's not so weird.

BUT, a few weeks ago, when Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official visit to our newly-elected president, Brown brought Mr. Obama really cool gifts from our nation's history:

The Prime Minister gave Mr Obama an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet.

The unique present delighted Mr Obama because oak from the Gannet's sister ship, HMS Resolute, was carved to make a desk that has sat in the Oval Office in the White House since 1880.

Mr Brown also handed over a framed commission for HMS Resolute and a first edition of the seven-volume biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.

Do you know what our president gave to Mr. Brown? 25 DVDs. DVDs that won't even play on a DVD player in the UK because DVDs and players are formatted differently for international markets. You really must read the whole article from the Daily Mail, which is quoted above.

I am getting a little frustrated with the gifts Obama's giving to international dignitaries. He's making us look a little amateurish. Scott suggested checking out the warehouse where they took the Ark of the Covenant at the end of "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark," but I'm not sure they tell even the President where that is.

So, even though I didn't vote for Mr. Obama, I am willing to help out by being the official shopper for our country. I love finding gifts that make people happy and I would love to be paid to do that.

Here are some things that I think would have been great to give to our friends from the UK:

Gordon Brown wears lots of nice suits, but the recession is hitting us all hard. It's probably not as easy for him to get the same clothes as he could afford last year. Why not a $150 gift card to Harrod's? That way, he can pick what he wants.

But the exchange rate isn't that good. Our $150 would probably only be like 100 pounds. Maybe he could get a tie.

I know. British people like their afternoon tea. Why not some yummy cookies? Like Mrs. Fields or Famous Amos? Oh, but the Mrs. Fields' company is declaring bankruptcy and Wally Amos had some financial problems, too. Probably not the best idea in these troubled times.

Oh, I know! How about Martha Washington's cookbook? It has recipes prepared by the first First Lady herself for all of her family and her hired (and purchased) help. Mrs. Brown and the Queen might have to start preparing meals for hungry Brits who will start filling the bread lines if the global economy goes all the way into the crapper, so these recipes for rib-sticking "olde tyme" farm food might be a good idea. Come to think of it, let's make sure we give Mrs. O. a copy, too.

Boy, this is harder than I thought. None of these gifts are really historical enough or important enough. And a lot of people have them. I need to come up with something that just screams, "SPECIAL!!!!"

Think, think, think...

This is it! I would totally give the Queen the alien spaceship that crashed into Area 51. Let's face it, we already picked it apart and we know how it works now (plus, I bet we bred a whole bunch of aliens who are busy building new spaceships for us). We could get some of those little gray guys to fix up the original, make it remote controlled, and then we can just put it in the cargo hold of Air Force One and drop it off. I'll bet the Queen has a ton of fun freaking out her subjects by flying a saucer around London. And maybe Gordon Brown could take it out to where they have the crop circles. That would really get people talking. Let's get their minds off the recession and get them thinking about alien invasion!

So, Mr. Obama I will be waiting by the phone. I am ready to start any time.

Oh my, Nola, Part 2: The Lower 9 and Chalmette

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans? I miss it, each night and day the longer I stay away. Miss the moss covered vines, the tall sugar pines where mocking birds used to sing....

The Lower 9th Ward is the neighborhood in the city of New Orleans that was worst hit by Hurricane Katrina and the levee burst that came with her. As Christina, one of the Americorps volunteers we had the chance to work with, said, "The city came through the storm fine. It was when the levee broke that we had problems."

There was a barge moored in the levee canal during the hurricane. It came loose from its mooring during the storm and it smashed through the levee, sending millions and millions of gallons of water though the levee wall and into the neighborhood below.

It is illegal to leave boats, barges, and other vessels in the levees. They can pass though, but they are not supposed to sit there, especially not during a hurricane. This is a law that is not enforced. When we were visiting with some folks in the Lower 9 last Thursday (March 19, 2009), there was a tugboat parked in the levee. We could see it over the wall. One is left to wonder what would have happened here if that barge had not been in the levee in Augiust 2005.

The Lower 9 was not the land of gang bangers and murderers that I understood it to be before we got there. The Lower 9 had the highest percentage of black homeowners (owned their homes outright, no mortgage) in the country before Katrina. It was a tight neighborhood where families lived for generations. Even the kids who left NOLA came back to the Lower 9 to raise their kids and to take care of their aging parents. It was a poor neighborhood, but they were working poor who took care of their homes.

This is Mr. Eugene Johnson (above, in front of his rebuilt house). He and his wife, Helen, rode out the storm in their home. He got 5 feet of water in his house when the levee broke. His wife stayed in the attic because she can't swim. Mr. Johnson told us about what he saw when the levee broke: "I was watching out the window and a house up on the corner comes floating down the street, like it had a rudder on it. It didn't hit a telephone pole or nothin'."

Mr. Johnson lives on the west side of S. Claiborne St., which seems to be the dividing line between really bad and devastating on the Lower 9.

This is a photo Scott took from the top of a levee in the Lower 9: You can see the foundations of the houses that were either wrecked then torn down or simply floated away, lifted right off of their concrete foundations. You can see that out of the over one thousand houses that were here how few of them have been rebuilt. In this part of the lower 9, the houses were covered in up to 20 feet of water.

This is Mr. Robert Green, Sr. (left, next to Christina from Americorps). When he told us about his experience, he said the water was rising so fast that they had 5 minutes to get the family from the first floor to the attic then 5 minutes to get through the roof before the house was filled with water. In the struggle and confusion, his elderly mother and his 3 year old granddaughter drowned. You can read the entire story here.

Part of the memorial (outside of Mr. Greene's trailer) to Mrs. Green and Shanai Green. Those are Shanai's shoes under the wreaths on the right hand side.

The Chalmette section of St. Bernard Parish borders the Lower 9 and is also right next to the levee. We saw a townhouse development that has been gutted and has weeds 4 feet high growing in the cracks of the driveways and sidewalks. There are seashells on the doorsteps. The Gulf of Mexico is an hour away. The storm surge deposited these seashells and others like it as a far away as downtown New Orleans, maybe further.

There are grocery stores and churches and schools that have not reopened because the people have not returned to rebuild.

Oh my, NOLA (part 1)

This week, Scott and I had the opportunity to go with some students from the college where he works on an “Alternative Spring Break” trip. 20 young men and women from the college traveled to New Orleans to help rebuild homes down there with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA). I didn’t think there had to be much to do down there. It’s three and a half years after Hurricane Katrina. From what I’d seen up here in New Jersey, things were swinging again in NOLA: “Laissez les bontemps rouler!”

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The Superdome and the Arena have been fixed. The Saints and the Hornets are playing. Mardi Gras parades are happening and Bourbon Street is rocking. The more wealthy citizens of the city have been able to repair and rebuild. Traveling through the wealthy sections of town that we had the chance to visit, we saw very few houses that are still uninhabitable. We even passed one historic home on Esplanade that is being rebuilt by the citizens of Qatar. But when you leave the business and tourist districts of the city, and see where most of the people live, it’s easy to see how much really has to be done.

The first house that some of the students were working on is for a lady named Carol. Carol needs a walker to get around, so there is a ramp for her on the side of the house and one on the inside of the home as well.

Carol started rebuilding a long while ago. She got her grant money and her low interest loan (more on the financial aspects of what’s going on in another post) and hired a contractor. That contractor did some work and then skipped town with Carol’s money.

The next contractor Carol hired hung some drywall and started to paint. Then he skipped town also. Carol was out of money. Now it’s 3 and a half years that Carol has been sleeping on her sister’s couch.

Carol applied for help from Project Homecoming. Project Homecoming has been able to help Carol to buy materials for her house and secure volunteers through PDA (like the college students that we went with) who, under the guidance of Site managers like Christina (center of photo at right), are rebuilding Carol’s house in the Lower 9.

Next up: the Lower 9