A Little Help From My Heavenly Friends

                          

Mary at The Beautiful Gate has written a wonderful post about the power of the Church Triumphant. This term refers to all the saints in heaven. Since I usually leave a post~sized comment on Mary's blog, I decided to accept her invitation to her readers to write a post of their own on this topic.
As anyone who has followed my blog for any length of times knows, the saints are one of my favorite topics. Those of you who participate in my yearly saints pick, know that I enjoy letting the saints choose who among you they would like to companion for the year. (Yes, I will be doing this again this year~ around late November as we get ready to start a new Liturgical Year.)
Like Mary, I like to follow the saints for each day. I like to ask that particular saint to assist me in my prayer for that day, especially when praying the Rosary. As much as I love Our Lady, I struggle with this prayer~my mind is always wandering! So I can use all the help I can get in praying that beautiful prayer well.
However, I do have a few that are my "go to" saints on a consistent basis. Mary Magdalen is someone I pray to often. I ask her to help me to love Jesus as she did. Also, I can relate to being a "woman of many sins" who has been delivered from those sins.
St Anne has chosen to be my patron for the last three years so obviously she is trying to teach me something. I go to her when I find my self struggling with my spiritual motherhood.
I love the Carmelite saints~especially Sts. Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. They are two heavy duty saints, not always easy to understand, but I get much from their writings and feel like they kind of hold me accountable in my prayer, as well as help me to deepen it. St Teresa is someone on some levels I can relate to; she talks to Jesus like I do sometimes~just a running conversation with Him throughout my day. Since reading more about St John of Avila as our Holy Father will be adding him to the ranks of the Doctors of the Church, I have added him to my favorites among the Carmelites. His letters are wonderful.
Finally, there is St Michael on whom I rely on for protection and help in fighting the spiritual combat that is sure to come my way during this lifetime.
Well this is just to name a few. I am so grateful that God has given us this powerful gift of the friendship and assistance of these heavenly friends. They know what is to live this earthly exile and so they cheer us on to finish the race so that we can one day join them in heaven.

We can talk more about this over at The Front Porch.