Guided Holy Hour: Honoring the Resurrection and The Most Holy Eucharist

Welcome to April. This month of Easter joy is also the month the Catholic Church has dedicated to the Most Holy Eucharist.

Here at Catholic Holy Hour, we are spiritually in the Garden each Thursday... so we deeply feel the Easter joy, knowing Christ resurrected IN A GARDEN! We can't wait to share this Glorious Mystery together in our newest Holy Hour.

Did you journey with us over Lent in the "Thursdays in the Garden" 7 Week Vigil with Our Lord? If you enjoyed it, take a moment to leave a brief comment at the bottom of this page. We wait to hear your words of encouragement.

These reviews will be used as testimonials to draw in more souls to pray future/upcoming retreats. Your words of encouragement keep us going...

See you in the Garden!

The word "Easter" simply means, the "East," coming from the Old English. The sun rises in the East and so it is a symbol for Our Risen Lord, who brings all light, warmth and hope! Remember... Eden was in the East. God's original Garden was in the East. No wonder Mary Magdalene thought our Risen Lord was a Gardener! We Prayer-Gardeners know... He is.

Thank you so much for hearing the Easter call of the Resurrected Lord in the Garden. It is an exciting and poetic reminder that the Garden of Gethsemane leads to the Garden of Resurrection!!!

Welcome to the Garden.

Don't forget to tell us how we can pray for you. Leave a comment below and be assured of our fervent prayers! While you're at it, tell us your favorite part in the Holy Hour you have just prayed so we can keep making more beautiful Holy Hours that inspire you.

Blessed be God.
Blessed be His Holy Name.
Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.
Blessed be the Name of Jesus.
Blessed be His most Sacred Heart.
Blessed be His most Precious Blood.
Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse.
Blessed be God in His angels and in His saints.

Reflection: Our Lord the Gardener
by Annabelle Moseley, from Awake with Christ

Our Lord, with whom we watch and pray in the Garden has become the Gardener! In each work of art depicting Our Risen Lord featured in this Holy Hour, look for the spade or rake or Gardener's hat the artist has painted in a stroke of Paschal joy.

He was betrayed in the Garden, forsaken in the Garden, agonized in the Garden, died on the crossed limbs of a tree overlooking a Garden, was buried in a Garden... willingly trampled like an innocent rose sacrificed beneath the boots of sinners... then rose from the dead in a Garden.

Our Master has done perfectly what any good gardener strives for: to bring order and growth to what is wild and choked by weeds; to bring beauty and good fruit where once was only overgrowth or tiny seeds. The Master Gardener has flowered forth from the grave in Easter triumph!

It was a tradition for many years that the great churches would display art of the stations and often conclude with what is known as the Fifteen Station: the Resurrection. Rembrandt's painting, "Christ and St. Mary Magdalene at the Tomb," depicts the image of Jesus as the Gardener. This scene chronologically follows the Stations of the Cross. It depicts the first Glorious Mystery...

And some artists, sensing how much those who love Christ have gone through in the journey to the Crucifixion and the three days within the tomb, decided to add to the Fifteenth Station a depiction of Mary Magdalene seeing the Risen Lord for the first time and thinking He was the Gardener.

There is great beauty and, dare we say, some much-needed whimsy in this thought! How refreshing to our soul, after walking with Christ along the Via Dolorosa and being prayerfully present with Him at Calvary, to encounter Him not bleeding, not affixed to a cross, but as the pruner of the garden.

And since Jesus has sacrificed Himself for man and given us the chance to earn heaven once more, it is as though God desires to return to the Garden again; this time not to mourn Adam's betrayal or face the Agony or the Judas kiss, but to greet a treasured and loyal friend with the most wonderful Easter news that all has been set to right. The idyllic garden of Paradise that man was banned from entering has been opened up to us once more. But if we want to "finish the race and keep the faith," (2 Tim 4:7) we must roll up our sleeves and get to work tending the earthly garden of our lives.

Let the gardening continue!

Read, Meditate, Pray, and Contemplate the following passage of Scripture. Which word or phrase moves you the most spiritually, or speaks to you about something you are going through at this time? Which word calls to you to take new action in your life?

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the Gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.

Let us pause to make an examination of conscience

Ponder and Pray: Now that Lent is over and Easter is here, how can I, like Mary Magdalene, share with others the good news that "I have seen the Lord" at work in my life?

And now we reflect on the poem-prayer "Mary Magdalene Describes the Resurrection," from Awake with Christ

…
Correctly— I beheld a gardener
He spoke my name, fully restored my sight
to see all that had bloomed. “Good Pardoner,
you’ve made it spring, flowered forth from the grave—
an herb of lasting sweetness from the cave.

An herb of lasting sweetness from the cave,
I tried to cling to him—instead, received
a sacred mission: “Spread my word.”
He gave this task to send my heart, so deeply grieved,
in service to bind up my wounds and theirs.
His words were tendrils climbing as he’d speak—
a vine to strengthen and console his heirs.
“Why are you crying? Who is it you seek?”
Each word’s petal was bold, and had a smell
like frankincense and honey. This bouquet,
I’d bring to the apostles. I would tell
his mourning ones: I spoke with him today.
In death, I sought my Lord. But what I found?
My Lord God Gardener, raised from the ground.

Indeed, Easter literally reminds that our tears of love in the Garden lead us to the Gardener!

We pause for another Lectio Divina

Read, Meditate, Pray and Contemplate the following passage of Scripture. Which word or phrase moves you the most spiritually, or speaks to you about something you are going through at this time? Which word calls you to new action in your life?

How is this Lectio Divina relevant to the Resurrection and also to the Eucharist?

To the victor I will give the right to eat from the tree of life that is in the Garden of God. The victor shall not be harmed by the second death.

To the victor I shall give some of the hidden manna; I shall also give a white amulet upon which is inscribed a new name, which no one knows except the one who receives it.

To the victor, who keeps to my ways until the end, I will give authority over the nations." (Rev 2:7-11)

We visit the Garden every Thursday. How comforting and beautiful it is to read in Sacred Scripture that the one who perseveres until the end can anticipate this triumph, this pure joy, this blissful refuge in the Garden of God.

A Saint to Guide us

One of the saints of April, St. Francisco Marto (one of the Fatima children), can help us to have refreshed zeal for April's liturgical theme of the Most Holy Eucharist, as well as our year-round call to draw ever nearer to our Eucharistic Lord from the Garden. St. Francisco Marto's feast day is April 4th.

St. Francisco was a shepherd boy from a large family. A handsome little boy, he had soulful eyes and a strong, earnest disposition. Since the Fatima children are notably serious in their photos, it has been jokingly suggested by some that the three Fatima children are patrons of kids who refuse to smile in photographs, and that is a cute thought. But if we consider that these three young children had been literally shown hell (this vision changed them inexorably and necessarily aged them beyond their years), and they felt a heavy weight of responsibility to honor and console Jesus and Mary and to save souls, their expressions become more understandable, and the meaning deepens. Their innocent childhoods were transfigured into the missions of great saints. Their faces reflect not grumpiness but rather the weight of responsibility, gravity and purpose. They can teach us so much about how to live for God and for Our Blessed Mother.

Little Francisco could be mischievous at times, but had a noble heart. He once gave all the money he had, a penny, to purchase a bird from the boy who had captured it. Instead of keeping the creature, he set it free. Francisco played a little reed pipe, and his favorite possession was a handkerchief with the image of Our Lady upon it. At one point when confronted with one who would have fought him to take the handkerchief, he simply gave it away. What a beautiful heart he had.

Although Francisco never heard Our Lady’s words as the Fatima girls did, he did see her. Our Lady told Lucia that Francisco would go to heaven if he prayed many rosaries. That should be a motivation for us all to pray many rosaries! Francisco took this guidance very seriously and indeed prayed many, many rosaries. He also often skipped school in order to go to church and pray to the “Hidden Jesus” in the tabernacle. By earthly standards, he was not ambitious, but by heavenly ones, it could certainly be said he had his priorities in order!

Francisco had a great devotion to Our Eucharistic Lord, and would spend hours consoling Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

This holy little boy died the day after he first received Communion, while on his sickbed with influenza. He was eager to go to heaven as soon as possible. He showed great courage and even joy in the face of death. His sister, Jacinta, would die only a year after him.

Lucia asked Francisco to bring many intentions with him to heaven. He answered, “You better ask Jacinta, because I’m afraid of forgetting. When I see Jesus, I’m just going to want to comfort him.”

Francisco, even in death, wanted to console Our Lord. And consoling Our Lord is a big part of our charism, here at Catholic Holy Hour. Amazing thing is... the more we console Our Lord, the more we ourselves are consoled.

St. Francisco Marto, the little boy who lived a holier life in ten years than many live in one hundred, gave us these three quotes to live by:

In April, the month of the Eucharist, we are called to spend more time going to daily Mass, (therefore also going to Confession so that we may receive Holy Communion in a state of grace) and going to Eucharistic Adoration. Praying the rosary is a wonderful use of time during Eucharistic Adoration. But to follow St. Francisco’s example to pray many Rosaries… we can also find new ways to pray more Rosaries… perhaps more than once a day! Many saints prayed multiple Rosaries a day. Ways to do this? We can get other Rosaries in in creative ways, such as in the car while we drive, while going for a walk, or even in bed as we fall asleep.

This is a wonderful reminder this month to offer up all our sufferings and pains for the consolation of Our Lady and for Our Eucharistic Lord.

This is a wonderful reminder this month to offer up all our sufferings and pains for the consolation of Our Lady and for Our Eucharistic Lord.

St. Francisco explained his greatest heart’s desire. It was the reason he skipped school to spend time in church! He understood something even adults forget: that Our Lord, source of all our consolation, should also be consoled by us. When we pray for the souls in Purgatory; those souls on earth in danger of being lost, and those who are in most need of Christ’s mercy… when we compassionate Our Lord in His Passion, or console Our Lady, we in turn bring consolation to Christ’s Sacred Heart. What a critically important and beautiful venture! “A little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6).

We pray the prayer that the angel gave to the Fatima children: "The Pardon Prayer"

My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love Thee!
I ask pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love Thee.