“NEVER GIVE IN!”

Years ago, there was a young man in Illinois with only six months of formal school education. His mother home-schooled him and taught him to have a dream and to keep trying to realize that dream, relying on the power of persistent prayer. First, he ran for an office in the legislature and was beaten. Next, he entered business but failed at that, too, and spent the next 17 years paying the debts of his worthless partner. He fell in love with a charming young lady and they became engaged, but she died. This loss led the young man to a short-term nervous breakdown. Next, he ran for Congress and was defeated. He then tried to obtain an appointment to the U.S. Land Office but didn’t succeed. With strong belief in the power of prayer, he ran for U. S. Vice-Presidency and lost. Two years later he was defeated again for the office of Senator. He ran for office once more and was elected the 16th President of the United States, thus realizing his dream by the power of persistent prayer. He was Abraham Lincoln. It took Winston Churchill three years to get through the eighth grade, because he couldn’t pass English – of all things! Ironically, he was asked many years later to give the commencement address at his alma mater, Harrow School. His now famous speech centered around three words: “Never give in!” — No leader in history, perhaps, matched Churchill’s capacity for blurring the lines between speech and battle cry. This is one of his best. It’s an urban legend that the “Never give in” exhortation comprised the totality of his address; Churchill went on for several more paragraphs. But there’s no question that this, far and away, was what Harrow’s students remembered. And that is the message of today’s Gospel parable of the poor widow and the corrupt judge.

“Then you can imagine how humble and awkward I feel in yours.”

Winston Churchill knew the difference between celebrities and heroes. In the summer of 1941, Sergeant James Allen Ward was awarded the Victoria Cross for climbing out onto the wing of his Wellington bomber at 13,000 feet above ground to extinguish a fire in the starboard engine. Secured only by a rope around his waist, he managed to smother the fire and return along the wing to the aircraft’s cabin. Churchill, an admirer as well as a performer of swashbuckling exploits, summoned the shy New Zealander to 10 Downing Street. Ward, struck dumb with awe in Churchill’s presence, was unable to answer the Prime Minister’s questions. Churchill surveyed the unhappy hero with some compassion. “You must feel very humble and awkward in my presence,” he said, “Yes, Sir,” managed Ward. “Then you can imagine how humble and awkward I feel in yours,” returned Churchill.
Churchill knew he was in the presence of a real hero. So did the disciples. In fact, they knew they were in the presence of Someone whose significance went beyond celebrity, even beyond heroic. He was their Lord, their Master, their King. If we are wise, Jesus will be our Lord, our Master, our King.
If we are wise, Christ will be our Hero, too.

Meet Me In The Stairwell – by Stacey Randall

You say you will never forget where you were when you heard the news On September 11, 2001. Neither will I.

I was on the 110th floor in a smoke filled room with a man who called his wife to say ‘Good-Bye.’ I held his fingers steady as he dialed. I gave him the peace to say, ‘Honey, I am not going to make it, but it is OK..I am ready to go.’

I was with his wife when he called as she fed breakfast to their children. I held her up as she tried to understand his words and as she realized he wasn’t coming home that night.

I was in the stairwell of the 23rd floor when a woman cried out to Me for help. ‘I have been knocking on the door of your heart for 50 years!’ I said. ‘Of course I will show you the way home – only believe in Me now.’

I was at the base of the building with the Priest ministering to the injured and devastated souls. I took him home to tend to his Flock in Heaven. He heard my voice and answered.

I was on all four of those planes, in every seat, with every prayer. I was with the crew as they were overtaken. I was in the very hearts of the believers there, comforting and assuring them that their faith has saved them.

I was in Texas, Virginia, California, Michigan, Afghanistan. I was standing next to you when you heard the terrible news. Did you sense Me?

I want you to know that I saw every face. I knew every name – though not all know Me. Some met Me for the first time on the 86th floor.

Some sought Me with their last breath. Some couldn’t hear Me calling to them through the smoke and flames; ‘Come to Me… this way… take my hand.’ Some chose, for the final time, to ignore Me. But, I was there.

I did not place you in the Tower that day. You may not know why, but I do. However, if you were there in that explosive moment in time, would you have reached for Me?

Sept. 11, 2001, was not the end of the journey for you. But someday your journey will end. And I will be there for you as well. Seek Me now while I may be found. Then, at any moment, you know you are ‘ready to go.’

I will be in the stairwell of your final moments.

The Dynamite King

Wise people know how to use their fortunes to improve their reputations. One morning in 1888, Alfred Nobel, one of the world’s leading industrialists, opened a French newspaper and was shocked to see his own obituary. It was a mistake, of course; it was Alfred’s brother who had died. However, Alfred Nobel had an opportunity to see himself as other people saw him. The obituary simply called him “The Dynamite King.” He had made a fortune in manufacturing and selling explosives, but it rankled with him to be thought only that way so Alfred Nobel decided to use his wealth to change his reputation. He immediately arranged his estate to establish the Nobel Prize, to be given each year to the person or persons who has done the most for the cause of world peace. — In the past century, it has long been forgotten that the name Nobel once meant “The Dynamite King.” Today the name stands synonymous with promoting world peace.

Golden handshake

There was a Home Building company which did business was on a very large scale. There is a story told about one of their building contractors, who was approaching the age of retirement. He had become very careless, and his working standards were constantly slipping. He began cutting corners, using inferior material, and taking shortcuts. He was quite pleased with himself, and he felt he was onto a good thing here. As time progressed, the standard of his work deteriorated. The houses were new, so the faults would not show up straightaway, and he would be well out of the business by then. The time of his retiring arrived, and it coincided with what was possibly the most shoddily built house he had ever produced. Imagine his surprise, at his retirement party, when his golden handshake was to be presented with the keys of that last house he had just completed!

Money Makers

When her husband, Ray Kroc, died in 1984, Joan Kroc was left with an estimated $700 million. Her wealth included an 8.7 percent share of the common stock of the McDonald’s food empire and full ownership of the San Diego Padres Baseball Franchise. Since that time this fast-food empress has become a woman of many causes. Besides giving sizable donations to nuclear-disarmament groups, the San Diego Zoo, St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, and the American Red Cross for African Famine relief, Joan Kroc has also been a steady supporter of the arts, alcohol and drug rehabilitation, medical research, wildlife preservation and programs to combat child abuse. Some skeptics dismiss her as a jet-set do-gooder, but close friends say that she becomes personally involved in many of the causes she supports. — Today’s readings from Scripture seem to be a blueprint for Joan Kroc’s use of money. She is the antithesis of the rich decried by the prophet Amos for trampling on the needy and taking unfair advantage of the poor. The Gospel reading is a collection of three separate statements Jesus made about money and material things, which Joan Kroc seems to have taken to heart.

The healing love of God’s forgivenesses. Msgr. Hugh O’Flaherty story

Hugh O’Flaherty CBE, was an Irish Catholic priest and senior official of the Roman Curia, and a significant figure in Catholic resistance to Nazism. During World War II, O’Flaherty was responsible for saving 6,500 Allied soldiers and Jews. Wikipedia
Dubbed “Ireland’s Oskar Schindler”, Hugh O’Flaherty masterminded a large-scale operation from within the Vatican, to help Jews and escaped Allied prisoners on the run from the Nazis. Often putting himself at serious risk, he used a series of safe houses and church buildings and sheltered an estimated 6,500 people. Oct 29, 2013
– When the German commandant of Rome realized that Germany would lose the war, he secretly asked to meet with Msgr. O’Flaherty. Despite his friends objections, for fear of a trap, Monsignor O’Flarity met with the General, Kurt Malzet, Who wanted him to give safe passage to his family out of Italy, He thought he would be captured and executed. Monsignor O’Flaherty was very angry for the Nazis had killed thousands of his friends. He left angry. The General said: : “So much for your Christ”. When Rome fell, the General was in prisoned. monsignor O’Flaherty went to visit him. in prison. He asked to see his family. The American troops could not find them. The commandant thought they were lying. . Then Monsignor Flarity Visited him and told him that they were safe In Canada, because of the arrangements he had made. Monsignor O’Flarity visited him every day in prison until he died years later. During that time the Commandant converted to Catholicism and Experienced the healing love of God’s forgivenesses.

Remember this lady?

Irena Sendler Died: May 12, 2008 (aged 98)
In Warsaw , Poland during WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto,
as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an ulterior motive.
Irena smuggled Jewish infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried.
She also carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck, for larger kids.
Irena kept a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.
The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.
During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants.
Ultimately, she was caught, however, and the Nazis broke both of her legs and arms and beat her severely.
Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she had smuggled out, in a glass jar that she buried under a tree in
her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and tried to reunite the family.
Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.
In 2007 Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize.
She was not selected.

In MEMORIAM – 79 YEARS LATER
It is now more than 79 years since the Second World War in Europe ended.
This post is being shared as a memorial chain, In memory of the six million Jews, 20 million
Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered massacred,
Now, more than ever, with some claiming the HOLOCAUST to be ‘a myth’,
it’s imperative to make sure the world never forgets, because there are others who would like to do it again.

The baby was thrown in the trash

Abandoned as a newborn and called ‘dumpster baby,’ he’s now an entrepreneur worth millions
Hours after he was born in 1989, Freddie Figgers was set down next to a dumpster in a rural area of Florida’s panhandle.
A passerby found him alone and in distress, and called police. The infant was hospitalized with minor injuries for two days, then placed in a foster home. The couple who took him in, Nathan and Betty Figgers, lived in nearby Quincy, Fla., and already had a daughter.
Shortly after Freddie began living with them, the Figgerses — who often took in foster children — decided to adopt him.
In elementary school, Freddie Figgers said, other children would bully him and call him “dumpster baby” when they learned he had been put out with the garbage as a newborn.
“It’s a rural area, so after it happened, everybody heard about it,” said Figgers, now 30. “My parents told me the truth about what happened as I grew older. I thought about it a lot as a kid, and I’d have to say it was embarrassing when I was younger.”
His life hit a turning point when he was 9, he said, when his father paid $25 for a broken 1989 Macintosh computer at a thrift shop. Nathan Figgers, who was a maintenance worker at Florida State University, brought the computer home and set it on the kitchen table so his son could tinker with it.
He thought that a computer might help to keep me out of trouble,” said Figgers.
His father was right. Figgers took it apart and put in back together several times. He figured out that he could get it to power on when he installed some components he found in an old radio that belonged to his father.
“I still have it,” Figgers said of that first computer. “It’s what sparked my interest in technology.”
He’d gotten so good at tinkering with computers that when he was 13, the city of Quincy hired him to help repair its computers, he said. When he was 15, he started his first company, Figgers Computers, repairing computers in his parents’ living room and helping clients store their data on servers he created. He was a self-starter and a fast learner. After building his own cloud database, he decided to skip college.
“I wouldn’t recommend my path to everyone,” said Figgers. “But it worked for me. When I was 17, I had 150 clients that needed websites and storage for their files. I just kept building from there.” His big break came several years later, in 2012, he said, when at age 23, he sold a GPS tracker program to an undisclosed company in Kansas for $2.2 million. Figgers’s father had developed Alzheimer’s disease and would frequently wander off when he was confused. “I created a device that I could insert in his shoe that would allow me to track him, plus talk to him through his shoe,” said Figgers. Nathan Figgers died in 2014, shortly after Freddie started Figgers Communications (and developed 80 custom software programs) with the money he’d earned from his “smart shoe” technology. “It was difficult to watch him decline — it’s something you never forget,” said Freddie Figgers. “I’ve always been so grateful to him and my mom. They taught me not to let my circumstances define who I was.” Some would say that’s an understatement. Figgers, who now lives in Parkland, Fla., is the founder of Figgers Wireless, a privately held telecommunications company that he said was appraised in 2017 to be worth more than $62 million.
He also runs the Figgers Foundation, which donates to a variety of causes, including relief efforts after natural disasters, college scholarships for high school students and assistance with school supplies for cash-strapped teachers. “The best thing any human being can do is influence another one,” said Figgers, who credits his adoptive parents for believing in him and allowing him to channel his energy into creative computer projects at a young age. Although Figgers does a sizable business selling his smartphones and data plans, he said he is still passionate about combining technology with health care and safety. He sells a wireless blood glucose meter for people with diabetes that allows patients to download and share glucose levels through Bluetooth technology. And he is working on a project similar to his “smart shoe” technology to help families stay in touch with loved ones experiencing homelessness.
“That could be me on the streets — I could have been homeless or dead if I hadn’t been found by the dumpster after I was born,” he said.
After Figgers grew up, he learned that his birth mother was a prostitute and had a drug addiction. He said he has not met her, and he has no desire to.