Women Espousing Purity for Christ

• My next encounter with our Holy Mother was “Our Lady of Fatima”, at the Fatima Shrine in Holliston, Massachusetts.  My husband was transferred from Springfield, Massachusetts to Cambridge, Massachusetts in March of 1986 just as our third son Daniel was arriving to the world. 

Ten days after Danny was born, we were in a car in the eastern part of Massachusetts looking for a home.  I kept hearing the town of Holliston in my head but knew we had to exhaust other options closer to Cambridge first.  As the day wore on it became obvious that we needed to head towards Holliston.  Yes, there was one house newly constructed that was being sold by the builder. The market was so good at the time he wouldn’t work with realtors so we drove by the house, took the number off the sign and went to the pay phone in front of Russel’s supermarket to call the builder.  I was very direct, “Margaret Munck I would like to buy the house on Rolling Meadow drive, where can we sign the papers”?  I have to show you the house he said and I say no need I have to get back to my family in Springfield.  He insisted so we waited and as God would have it the builder went to school with my husband.  Several weeks later we were together again in our home in Holliston, just a few miles from the Fatima Shrine with lots of Masses and plenty of priests.  We were going to the Baptist church as a family, but I was being called back into the Catholic Church.  I was very reluctant as we both had short marriages in our early twenties, and I didn’t want to go through the annulment process. The hound of Heaven kept coming to my door and I kept saying no thank you.

I actually put God to the test by saying, “you have to tell me one more time”.  And so he did!  I was taking Danny for a stroll when a car passed me with a sticker on the back that read something about ACTS——–.  Oh no this is not good.  I chased her car and found that she was moving just down the street.  She is a Catholic Charismatic, who does inner healing with a group of other people.  The Charismatic Masses are just up the street at the Fatima Shrine.    

    THIS IS MY BLOOD GIVEN FOR YOU

The following morning, I went to my first Catholic Mass in many years at St. Mary’s in Holliston.  I did go to communion.  I went up to the altar to receive the Host and then the precious Blood.  As I held the chalice, time stood still, I saw the head of Christ with the crown of thorns come up to me out of the chalice and say, “This is my blood given for you”. 

We resided in Holliston for about twenty-two years.  The family grew from three boys to five boys.  Bill and I got our annulments, he became a catholic and we were married in the Catholic Church at St Mary’s.  I was in spiritual direction for 5 years with a priest from Mexico who was residing at the shrine.  Many more stories about the Shrine of our Lady of Fatima.

• In 1988 we began our return to Catholicism at St. Mary’s in Holliston Massachusetts.   My husband Bill went through RCIA in 1988 and was confirmed in the Roman Catholic faith in the spring of 1989. In the fall, of 1989 we went to Europe on an all expenses paid trip to Paris and ending in a little village in Bosnia, Yugoslavia.   We joined a pilgrimage from Swansea, Massachusetts having made plans to meet them in Medjugorje.  Total change from the luxury of Paris. We boarded a Communist flight where people were drinking and smoking even before the plane took off.   I sat next to Bill praying for someone who wasn’t a huge burly man to sit next to me, thank you Mother, a beautiful young lady sat beside me.  I was wearing a medal of The Mother of Medjugorje given to me by a previous friend and pilgrim.  I heard a whisper, give her your medal.  I just gave it to her which sparked a conversation that took us right back to Holliston.  This young woman was on her way to Kuwait from her family home in Colombia.  She was to meet her fiance and marry there.  Now for the kicker, she had spent the summer in a little village outside of Boston, yes Holliston. Massachusetts. Her cousins had a big family wedding and many of them spent a good part of the summer at the house of the aunt and uncle in Holliston. 

Medjugorje was very raw in 1989, no hotels just farmhouses that had been converted for sleeping and eating.  Shocking for an American who ran hotels in America.  At our first dinner I sat next to a priest who I had never seen in my life.  I told him we had just joined the church, but that I had my second son baptized in a Catholic church in Baldwin, Missouri in 1982 and couldn’t find the records or remember the name of the church.  Of course, he was from a church in Baldwin, Missouri, within a week of our getting home I had Greg’s Baptism records.   

When Bill went through RCIA it was not required to go to confession before receiving the Holy Eucharist.  I had a private prayer I had been saying for him as he went through the process of becoming a Catholic. “A cross in my pocket”.  At our second Mass there were about 30 priests.  As many people do in Medjugorje, Bill decided to make his first confession.  He walked up to a priest and asked for his card.  As a businessman I guess he was just making sure he was a priest.  The card was rather large and in it was the poem, “A cross in my pocket”.  He was from Nebraska.  Yup Mother strikes again.   

So much more to this short but grace filled time. My rosary beads that belonged to my grandmother turned gold. We could stare at the sun as if it was being blocked by a host.  The picture I took explains what we saw. 

• While living in Holliston and working as a volunteer at Our Lady of Fatima Shrine, a man by the name of Big Jim came and took over one of the offices. He came there to promote the ” World Mission Rosary.” I put together a group of young students from the area whose mothers brought their children to the shrine.  We formed, ” St Theresa of the Child Jesus Rosary Prayer Group.”  We met after school on Thursday.   We set up a place for the children and mothers to make World Mission rosaries.  We then went into the chapel and prayed the rosary, followed by all holding hands around the altar and praying the novena prayer to The Little Flower.  

“St. Theresa of the Child Jesus, please pick me a rose from the heavenly garden and send it to me with a message of love, ask God to grant me the favor I the implore and tell him I will love him each day more and more.”  

My third son Danny and I went through a terrible delivery experience and as a result he was born with learning disabilities.  At the age of six we had extensive testing done.  He was still not talking, although we communicated pretty well.  Sometimes he would get so frustrated he would just sit and rock.  The result was that we should have a genetic work up and never have more children, according to the doctor who conducted the testing. We went on to have two more boys.  Holliston had a very good special education program so we proceeded to enroll him in public school. 

One Thursday at the children’s prayer group it was Dan’s turn to lead the rosary.   He sat very close to me and I would lead the prayers for him.  Well, our Holy Mother and St. Theresa had another plan.  Dan began to lead the rosary with perfect diction. Our Father, ten Hail Mary’s and a Glory be to the Father.  You could hear a pin drop in the chapel.  Dan was given his voice.  After this we found a very good private school and Dan was wrapped in the mantle of Mary and still is.  He is almost forty and one of the most wonderful people I have ever had the privilege to know.   He lives with us in North Carolina, drives a truck, has two jobs and plans to take care of us until we die.   He is a prayer warrior and has been given the gift of wisdom. It is such a pleasure to be in a home where you are greeted every morning by a young man who knows how to spread love and blessings wherever he goes.   When I think of him the scripture passage that best describes him is,

“My Yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11: 28-30.   

• Our Lady of Grace has been a very important partner in raising my family.  Unless you have done it, it is impossible to understand how nearly impossible it is to raise five nice young men in the society as we know it over the past thirty or so years.  Of course, the Mother of God and her son know everything and provide the grace for what seems like an impossible task.  

Over the years I have had several close prayer partners.   When I was pregnant with son # five (Justin). I was praying with my friend Paula.  We had prayed together once a week either in church or at home for possibly ten years.  While at prayer Our Lady of Grace appeared to me and infused me through the palms of my hands with Maternal Love.  I was happy to be pregnant and had no idea why this happened but as time went on and our world kept spinning in a direction very contrary to the way we raised our sons I realized it would take much more than the maternal love and strength in my heart to launch these boys into men.  

Justin is now thirty years old, and I am finally able to sleep at night.  Suffering, praying, and offering everything for the salvation of souls has taken me from forty-four to seventy-four.  A mother’s heart breaks day in and day out for her children.  I have been told that there is a God given eternal connection between a mother and her sons, I do believe this is true.  Without the grace of Maternal love given by such a generous Mother as Mary I for one would not have been able to endure all that was spread before me.  

It would seem impossible but as a Carmelite we pray for the grace of detachment.  The gift is given in God’s time not ours.   The boys have a long way to go but I am finally at peace.  I have great friends who take on praying for the family with me, as I pray for them.  God is very, very good.

Margaret Alice of souls for Jesus Munck OCDS

• Shortly after we moved to Holliston I had a visit from St Padre Pio. Three times he said, “You may bear the five wounds of Christ,” silence and once again, “you may bear the five wounds of Christ, and after a short silence, “you may bear the five wounds of Christ.” The voice was direct but gentle.

As a child of five I had a drowning experience in the pond behind my family home. As my older sister and I struggled to get to the shore she became too exhausted to help me. I was sinking to the bottom, bubbles coming out of my mouth. I could hear the angels singing. As my soul was going up into the clouds I heard a very strong male voice, “Send her back, it is not her time yet.” With that I was walking out of the water. My mother, who could not swim, and the rescue people had arrived. My sister needed oxygen and other attention but I just walked up to my room and watched from my window as neighbors and rescue workers helped my sister and her friend.

I mention this now because of the voice. This was the voice of God, stronger and more powerful than the voice that told me “You may bear the five wounds of Christ.” I had no idea what this meant. What I did know at that point is that I would need perpetual help. I did not know the symbolism behind this painting but I knew what the word perpetual meant. I asked her to please be with me and stay with me.

Within a few days of this encounter with the voice of St. Padre Pio I was given a spiritual director and had an opportunity to pray with a small group of three women who were well known for their holiness and prophetic gifts. Almost immediately the Mother of God told one of the women that what I said was true. She impressed it upon her by giving her pain in her five fingers of the right hand. This surprised everyone as they had a well established prayer and healing group. They expected that I needed healing and all of this would go away. They referred me to Fr. Paco Anzoatague for spiritual direction and investigation. I realize now that the sufferings of my life right up to this moment were to be united with the sufferings of Jesus for abused children and the clergy who were to help them.

There have been times when I could feel the blood pouring down my forehead and into my eyes. I received the wounds individually, a description I will give at a later time. This is why I ran to Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

• I had never considered joining a religious community until the priest at our parish of St Mary’s in Holliston, Massachusetts suggested it.  His sister-in-law Doris was planning to begin her journey as an Aspirant, I said yes as it seemed like it was God’s will also.  Doris was in her late thirties, had four children and two types of breast cancer. Doris was a very lovely woman with not much time to live. Along with becoming Aspirants, we also started a Divine Mercy prayer group at her home.  Doris was given a two-year reprieve after being prayed over by a healer from Maine, Lorraine Laveau of Life Song.  Life was good but after the two-years was up the cancer came back with forty brain tumors, yes forty.  Subsequently, she called Lorraine who told her to place her hand on her head and so prayed over her by phone. The forty tumors disappeared leaving only one; this one would eventually take her to the Kingdom of Heaven.  

The time came to receive our scapulars.  Doris, Debby and one other woman were ready.  When my name was called I knelt before the priest, I was taken instead to a place where Archbishop Sean P. O’Malley of Boston was receiving his Cardinal’s mitre from Jesus himself.  I was asked at that moment to give my Carmelite vocation for Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley.  I was in full agreement, not knowing anything about this type of commitment.

 In the final analysis I believe this is why I was chosen to have the invisible stigmata.  He was just beginning to tackle the horrendous issue of the priest abuse scandal in Boston. When my book is written, I will give a detailed account of how and why I was chosen for this. The Carmelite books, readings and prayers have sustained me for all these many years.  I had to take a break in my formation as we moved to New Hampshire where it became very difficult for me to get to the meetings. I did keep up the prayers and readings for years in my own prayer room until we moved to North Carolina where a group in discernment had just been formed.  The group meets less than an hour from my house. An impossible dream comes true.  Three years later, I became a professed member of the “Carmelite Community of St. Joseph in discernment, Wilmington, North Carolina.”

In 2018 my husband and I went on a pilgrimage to Israel and while there, actually visited Mt Carmel, it was such a memorable moment.

 Recently I found out that our new Pope Leo has a grandmother who is a secular Carmelite.   The Carmelites were formed by God through the prophet Elijah before Christ was born.  Elijah was at the transfiguration where Jesus promised that the Carmelites would last forever. 

Our Lady of My Carmel watches over me spiritually.  She introduced me to a Carmelite brother who is very learned in the spirituality of the Carmelites with 45 years of experience.  Meeting only once a month with my community and having no one else who understood me was difficult.  Walking out of church one day I felt the sun on my face, the warmth of Mothers Mantel around me.  I looked behind me and there stood Brother Francis.  The story goes on from there .    

Margaret of Souls for Jesus Munck OCDS