May is Mary's Month - doula specials for May and Mother's Day Giveaway!

Many titles of Mary...

Welcome to May!  
May is Mary's Month - so I plan to hopefully post once a week here or in the newsletter about Mary and some of her feast days.  See below for our first "Marian story" for this month...also keep reading for giveaway information. We also  have a May Specials page!

We are hosting a mini-May mester for Teen Doula Explore starting next week around May 8/9th and going for 2 weeks. We will also have a June and July class - learn more about our explore course.   Enrollment link is at bottom of page or use this link.

We are hosting our 7-week fast-track birth doula course starting in mid-May to become a birth doula, so we start around May 18th for that class.  We are extending the early bird to May 8th to save $200 after that we might do a savings of $100 off up to the start date.   Enrollment link is at bottom of page or  use this link.

We are also considering a weekend combo doula course - or you may pick one or the other as well (birth or postpartum) - this Memorial Day weekend course is tentative  for Memorial Day weekend - but if it doesn't make - we will consider doing a different weekend in June or July for this idea.   Click here to get more information! 

Mother's Day Giveaway - so technically this giveaway you can enter till end of the month- we will give away a book or two from my author collection (Choose A Catholic Postpartum, Little Way of Motherhood, or Rebozo Revealed) - if we receive more than 50 entries there will be 2 books. For now we will give away one book and the M.O.M. Advocate Breastfeeding course as our prizes. I may find other things to include - so surprises  maybe included if you win!  Go to our contact page to enter. 

Marian Titles - Mary has a lot of titles - probably over 100! So, I thought I would feature at least one or two of her beautiful titles each week in this blog and our online newsletter  as well.  We will also feature a picture or two of Mary under the titles we talk about. 

Our Lady of Banneux
January 15
Little Mariette Beco, waiting for her brother to come home, pressed her face against the window while darkness fell; it was seven o’clock in Banneux. Mrs. Beco was working in a back room; the rest of the family had retired – none of them had attended Mass that Sunday morning – the father was a lapsed Catholic.
Suddenly Mariette called out, “Mother, there is a lady in the garden. It is the Holy Virgin.”
Mrs. Beco scoffed at this. Taking a rosary Marietta had found on the road, she began to pray it.
When Julien came home and heard what had happened, he said there was nothing in the garden; perhaps the icicles reflected weirdly and confused Marietta.
The pastor was informed, but he did not put much stock in the story, thinking the vision of Beauraing and Lourdes was resulting in an epidemic of visions. He sent word to Mariette to forget about it and not spread stories.
The next morning, Wednesday, the priest was surprised to see Mariette at Holy Mass – she had quit school because she failed in her First Holy Communion examination three times, and after that had not gone to church anymore. That day Marietta went to school and for the first time in her life knew her lessons well.
The next evening she went into the garden, knelt and said the rosary; her father followed her with a coat which he threw around her shoulders. He tried to get the pastor who was out, then called a neighbor, a practicing Catholic, and together they followed. The child was being beckoned on to the highway by the lady, now known as Our Lady of Banneux, till they reached a spring, into which Marietta plunged her hands at the command of the lady, who said, “This spring is set aside for me. Good night!” Then she vanished.
When they reached home, the Abbe was waiting for them. Marietta described the lady: “Her robe was long and white; she wore a blue belt and rays of light shone from her head. She was a little more than five feet tall; her right foot was bare and under it a golden rose. Her hands were raised to her breast on which was a golden heart. A rosary hung from her right arm: - all similar to the Lourdes apparition.
There were six or seven more apparitions of Our Lady of Banneux; at one of these Marietta, at the advice of the pastor asked the lady her name, to which Our Lady of Banneux replied, “I am the Virgin of the poor,” and leading the girl to a spring, said, “This spring is for all nations…for the sick…I would like a chapel built. I come to relieve suffering. Have faith in me and pray much. My dear child, pray hard…” At the end of each visit Mary would say “Au revoir,” which means, “until we meet,” but at the last visit she said, “Adieu,” which means, “good-bye.” She blessed Marietta then, at which the girl fainted. Marietta did not see the lady depart.
The Beco family and many others became model Catholics. The chapel was built, and the spring became the site of numberless cures. During the German occupation of Belgium in 1942, the bishop encouraged the cult of Our Lady of Banneux, Our Lady of the Poor.
In 1947, the bishop approved the devotion. In 1948 the cornerstone of a new basilica was laid; this was to supplant the small chapel. During the war, Marietta married a Dutch salesman. During the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, an American chaplain found them and their fifteen month old baby living in a cellar of a small home occupied by American troops.
Belgium is one more reminder in these days when communism seems to be sweeping everything before it, that our great hope – our only hope – lies in our carrying out the requests Our Lady made at Fatima and other places. Mary prays for us without ceasing, but we, too, must pray, must sacrifice. We must do our part, if we expect Mary to help us.
*from The Woman in Orbit

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Our Lady of Bethlehem
January 22

"Bethlehem, the city of David, is located about 5 miles south of the city of Jerusalem. According to tradition, Bethlehem is the place where David was born, and also where he was anointed king by the prophet Samuel." 
"The place which the supreme King of kings and the Lord of lords had chosen for entertaining his eternal and incarnate Son in this world was a most poor and insignificant hut or cave, to which most holy Mary and Joseph betook themselves after they had been denied all hospitality and the most ordinary kindness by their fellow-men. This place was held in such contempt that though the town of Bethlehem was full of strangers in want of night-shelter, none would demean or degrade himself so far as to make use of it for a lodging; for there was none who deemed it suitable or desirable for such a purpose, except the Teachers of humility and poverty, Christ our Savior and his purest Mother. On this account the wisdom of the eternal Father had reserved it for Them, consecrating it in all its bareness, loneliness and poverty as the first temple of light and as the house of the true Sun of justice, which was to arise for the upright of heart from the resplendent Aurora Mary, turning the night of sin into the daylight of grace.
Most Holy Mary and saint Joseph entered the lodging thus provided for them and by the effulgence of the ten thousand angels of their guard they could easily ascertain its poverty ad loneliness, which they esteemed as favors and welcomed with tears of consolation and joy.
Our Lady of Bethlehem
When later the Magi approached, the heavenly mother awaited the pious and devout kings, standing with the Child in her arms. Amid the humble and poor surroundings of the cave, in incomparable modesty and beauty, she exhibited at the same time a majesty more than human, the light of heaven shining in her countenance. Still more visible was this light in the Child, shedding through the cavern effulgent splendor, which made it like a heaven. 
The three kings of the East entered and at the first sight of the Son and Mother they were for a considerable space of time overwhelmed with wonder. They prostrated themselves upon the earth, and in this position they worshiped and adored the Infant, acknowledging Him as the true God and man, and as the Savior of the human race. By the divine power, which the sight of Him and his presence exerted in their souls, they were filled with new enlightenment. They perceived the multitude of angelic spirits, who as servants and ministers of the King of kings and Lord of lords attended upon Him in reverential fear.
Most Holy Mary, with saint Joseph and the sacred Child, took leave of the cave although with tenderest regret. When the Child and his mother took leave of the cave, God appointed an angel as its keeper and watcher, as He had done with the garden of Paradise. This guard had remained to this day, sword in hand at the opening of the cave; and never since then has an animal entered there. 
from City of God by the Venerable Mary of Agreda

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