Roving Reporter #38 – Fra Gabriel Mary on skateboarding, religious life, and evangelization ( 16min) >>> Play

Ave Maria from the Land Down Under! In this Roving Reporter, Fra Gabriel discusses his unique apostolate – skateboarding, and how this unique apostolate fits into the daily life of a Franciscan of the Immaculate. Ave Maria! +++

The post Video – Roving Reporter #38: Fra Gabriel M. of Our Lady of Guadalupe first appeared on AirMaria.com.

FI News #60 -Friars begging door to door online December 2009 ( 03min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

The AirMaria crew would love to venture into the world of HD – hopefully to make our videos better and more enjoyable to watch. We also have a few other items we need for backing up our data and ensuring we don’t lose any data during power failures. If you would like to help us take the leap into HD, or to help us prevent data loss, please browse our Christmas list below. If you intend to purchase an item for us please let us know and we’ll remove it from the list. ADDRESS: AIRMARIA.COM, 199 Colonel Brown Rd., Griswold, CT. 06351  (860) 376-6840

Thank you to all our supporters and benefactors over the past year in particular. Our benefactors hold a very special place in the hearts and prayers of the friars.

AirMaria’s Christmas List:

Quantity: 1 Canon VIXIA HF S11 Dual Flash Memory Camcorder

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/645110-REG/Canon_4063B001_VIXIA_HF_S11_Dual.html

CLICK “MORE” TO VIEW THE WHOLE LIST

Quantity: 1 WD-H58 Wide Converter Lens

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=WD-H58+Wide+Converter+Lens&N=0&InitialSearch=yes

Quantity: 4 HITACHI Deskstar HD32000 IDK/7K 2TB

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145276&cm_re=hard_drives_internal-_-22-145-276-_-Product

Quantity: 2 APC SC620 620VA Smart-UPS

http://www.amazon.com/APC-SC620-620VA-Smart-UPS/dp/B0006HJB1G/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1260033300&sr=1-3-fkmr0

Quantity: 1 APC SC420 Smart-UPS 420VA

http://www.amazon.com/APC-SC420-Smart-UPS-420VA/dp/B0006H0HXM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1260033103&sr=8-1

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

The post Video – AirMaria: LICENSE TO BEG first appeared on AirMaria.com.

MEDITATION:

Unless our life is one of intimacy with God and His Son Jesus, we cannot be His collaborators, docile instruments in His hands; unless we have an intense interior life, we cannot have the mind of Christ and be associated with His love and His work for the salvation of souls.

By means of prayer and the struggle against sin, by self-renunciation, and the practice of the virtues, the interior life progressively rids the soul of all that is defective, thus favoring in it the growth of grace and love, that is to say it vivifies the soul with divine life, since grace and love are a participation in the very life of God. It follows, therefore, that the more a soul cultivates the interior life, the nearer it will come to God and having become like Him by grace and love, will be able to live in intimacy with Him, enjoy His friendship, penetrate His mysteries and participate in them. Who, then, will be better able to understand the great mystery of the Redemption and contri­bute his share to it, than one who by means of a fervent interior life, lives in intimate friendship with God?

The first degree of friendship with God, which consists in the absence of serious sin, does not suffice to fulfill the purposes of the apostolate. A deeper friendship is required, one which creates such uniformity of will, desire and affection that the apostle is enabled to act according to God’s Heart; he is moved not by his own impulses, but by the impulse of grace, by God’s will, and the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. It is a very significant fact that Jesus made His apostles live for three years in intimacy with Him, treating them like dear friends, before sending them out to convert the world : ” I will not now call you servants … but I have called you friends” (Jn. 15:15)

In a single moment, the moment of our justification, God infused charity into us without any cooperation on our part, but He does not preserve this gift, much less increase it, unless we remain united to Him by living an interior life. The purpose of the struggle against our passions, the practice of the virtues, recollection, prayer, the practice of the presence of God, and frequent reception of the Sacraments, is to foster union with God and the growth of charity. The interior life is a secret hearth where a soul in contact with God is inflamed with His love, and precisely because it is inflamed and forged by love, it becomes a docile instrument which God can use to diffuse love into the hearts of others.

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene OCD

The post The Soul of the Apostolate first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Ave Maria!

Well we’ve been very busy here at AirMaria. However, we admit that it has not always been directly posting videos as can be seen from a sparse period in our posting when we got behind on many of our video projects. But we have completed many of the side projects that were holding us back and we’re making up for lost time as you can see by by our many videos in the past week.

We have also gotten behind on fund raising and our budget is showing the strain. We are currently a few hundred dollars in the red and have several operating expenses coming up and there are several capital expenses that we need to make, including essential things like expanded storage. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Administration System

One big side project was our new administration system which is entirely behind the scenes of AirMaria but was essential to handle the growing number of videos which was getting too large to handle on Google Docs. It allows people to contribute from anywhere on the globe and provides many automation features that simplifies the production and publishing of videos especially the homilies. The system is currently online and operational and will be undergoing much fine tuning and many more features will be added.

Liturgical Section

We added a liturgical section to AirMaria which is still in its infancy and is an out growth of some of our automation endeavors just mentioned. There are a few goals in mind, help our priests prepare their homilies, make the readings easier to add to the homily posts and finally provide more information about the Mass to you, the viewer. All of this centers around a liturgical database that we created and linked to the AirMaria software that first enables the priests to read the readings and get access to related information including liturgical music, then once the priest selects which form of the Mass he wants to use, a post will automatically generated that has the readings displayed and all the same information linked to it so you too can access it via our Liturgical Explorer.

By having resources for both the Novus Order and the Extraordinary Form we hope to serve as a bridge, emphasizing the continuity between the two forms of the Mass which is the essence of Pope Benedict’s Moto Proprio letter Summorum Pontificum, allowing the general use of the old form of the Latin Rite.

We still do not have the system working in all aspects, especially for the saint’s feast days and memorials and for the music but we hope to have it soon and we hope to add more features in the future. Eventually we will also link doctrinal information from several catechisms together along with Fathers of the Church and then provide links back from any particular doctrine to all our homilies that cover it. This should make AirMaria a premier site for priests to prepare for their homilies and enable us to offer a distinct FI Marian bent to a wide swath of homilists.

SQPN Catholic New Media Celebration, Boston, Aug 6-7

We will be going to the Catholic New Media Celebration held by SQPN this Friday and Saturday in Boston. We are looking forward to meeting many zealous Catholics involved in Internet, Radio, and TV and we hope this includes some of you.

Coredemption Conference, Lacrosse WI, August 21st.

We are heading to Wisconsin toward the end of the month to film the Marian Conference at the National Shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse which will be on Saturday, August 21st. We hope to broadcast live as we did last year and we will have a great line up of speakers. If you are in the general area I hope you can attend and we will be able to say hello in person. It promises to be a monumental event with solid spiritual and intellectual nourishment. You can register here.

On Location DVDs

We are also configuring a system to burn DVDs on location at La Crosse so that we can offer them to people within 20 minutes of the completion of each talk. Not only should this be very popular and will provide yet another way to deliver our message, but we hope to use it for future events to offset some of the costs of these trips. Another advantage is that when the event is finished all the work is finished and so it will save us many hours of editing afterward, enabling us to add more events to our schedule and more content to AirMaria. So if there are any Marian conferences that you need filmed in the Northeast let us know. We can do other events as well but we want to focus on Mary since this is our main charism. We can travel further depending on the circumstances and donations.

2000 Subscribers on YouTube

Our YouTube channel is continuing to be very popular. We recently surpassed 2000 subscribers so whenever we post a video there, over 2000 people get notified. And we get many comments every day. Not all of them are on our side but even this is positive in that it shows we are engaging a broad audience.

Radio Update

Our station in Owego, NY is still operating with a 24 hour a day 7 days a week broadcast of EWTN and we have had many favorable comments and are pleasantly surprised with the range of our minimal transmitter. You can see our recent posts here and here. Our next phase is to increase the power of the station and to build a higher tower, four times higher! We have already submitted the license modification to the FCC. This would increase our audience from 20,000 to 125,000.

In New Bedford, MA we are currently drafting a tower lease. Once this is signed we could be on the air within three months. So our goal is December 8th. Keep us in your prayers. We need it! The sound studio there is also making great progress and should be fully functional on the day of the first broadcast.

Our station in Stockbridge, MA is also making progress. Also, many of our other close partners in the radio apostolate have had their licenses approved and we hope to announce how we intend to work with them in coming months.

Other news is that we received a very large donation of equipment for our sound studios from a professional sound studio of a close friend of ours in New York City who is moving to a new location. We made several trips to New York City carrying back loads of useful furnishings, acoustical panels and sound proof doors.  This will reduce the cost of setting up our other sound studios and has already helped with our video apostolate. Deo Gratias!

Again we are making so much progress with such few people and very little income. Be assured that you probably cannot find any place where your donation will go farther to advance the Gospel message and to promote devotion to Mary to a new generation than right here on AirMaria. Please be generous this month.

In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,

Fra Roderic

Summorum Pontificum

The post FiNews – AirMaria Update first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Ave Maria!

Well, as many of you have noticed, we have been down quite a few times in the last 24 hours with a message something like:

Our generous benefactor who gives us the web space free (he owns a web design business) has told us that AirMaria has maxed-out the current server.

The Good News

This is good news in that we now have about double the traffic coming to the site.

The Bad News

But it is also bad news in that we now need to upgrade to a dedicated server! This will be about four times the price. Our benefactor would love to pay for the whole server but with EIGHT kids (truly a pro-life Catholic!) he has some pretty serious budget constraints. The cost will be $200 per month.

He is willing to pitch in $50 per month and a lot of his precious time in regard to free consulting and tech support. What we need is three more people to commit to supporting us with a $50 monthly donation. If you are willing, we can even set up an electronic payment feature that will make the entire process as easy as possible in the months to come.

With this server we will be able to keep AirMaria going well into the future, even with 20 times the traffic! It is something to seriously pray about. Let me know by sending an email to apostolate@airmaria.com

In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary,

Fra Roderic

The post Fi News – Need for a New Server first appeared on AirMaria.com.

( 29min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

In this interview with Fr. Gabriel M. Pelletieri, Co-Founder of the Franciscans of the Immaculate, the basic points on “The Marian Plan of Franciscan Life” are covered.

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

+++

The post Video – Fr Gabriel: Marian Plan of Franciscan Life first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Face of Pro-Life #127 –  ( 30min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

Friar Roderic of AirMaria.com talks about the pro-life activity of this apostolate and the general use of the internet and mass media in the pro-life cause.

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

+++

The post Video – Face of Pro-Life #127: Fra Roderic Pro-Life AirMaria first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Homily #121205b ( 14min) Play – Card. Raymond Burke gives the homily during the third Mass for the Priests Retreat at Our Lady Mother of the Redeemer Retreat Center. Cardinal Burke exhorts us to take retreat from missionary activity in order unite ourselves with the one who sends us to the missions and who is the source of all our missionary activity. By doing this we will sanctify ourselves and make our outward activity fruitful and so fulfill what God is calling all priest to do.
Ave Maria!
Mass: Wednesday in the 1st Week in Advent – Wkdy – Form: OF
Readings: 
1st: isa 25:6-10
Resp: psa 23:1-3, 3-4, 5, 6
Gsp: mat 15:29-37

Audio (MP3)

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The post Dec 05 – Homily – Card. Burke: Unite to Him who Sends Us first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Homily #130721b ( 23min) Play – Fr. Casey gives the Sunday homily which is also the closing of the retreat here titled the ‘”The Spiritual Combat of Our Time”. Based on the Gospel of today with Martha complaining that her sister Mary is not helping and Jesus replying that she has chosen the better part, Fr. Casey stresses the importance of listing to Christ, attentive to his word, starting with scripture as Vatican II insists all Catholics should have:

• Direct access to the Bible
• prayer based on the bible
• Knowledge of Scripture is knowledge of Christ

And also with prayer.

The essence of mental prayer is intimate friendship and heart to heart conversation with the One that you love.

Prayer must be a family event, part of the family culture, pass on a prayerful attitude to our children. Teens are constantly distracted, on the run, all their little cares. Technology, iPhones, etc. All of which distracts them from God. Need to be convinced of His goodness and graces and our inadequacy. Requires humility.

Need to have a balance of prayer and active life, the exact formula of which will be dictated by our state in life, married, single, religious. Even those engaged directly in apostolic work needs to pray. In fact, even more so since prayer is the soul of the apostolate. We must work with God. Without him we can do nothing.

Ave Maria!
Mass: 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Sunday – Form: OF
Readings: 
1st: gen 18:1-10
Resp: psa 15:2-3, 3-4, 5
2nd: col 1:24-28
Gsp: luk 10:38-42

Audio (MP3)

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The post Jul 21 – Homily – Fr. Casey: Attentive to the Word first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Homily #131006 ( 12min) Play – If we are not bearing witness to our faith and working for the Gospel according to each of our abilities, we are not being uselful to the Church or to ourselves (from the Vatican II document, “Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity“).
Ave Maria!
Mass: 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Sunday – Form: OF
Readings: 
1st: hab 1:2-3, 2:2-4
Resp: psa 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9
2nd: 2ti 1:6-8, 13-14
Gsp: luk 17:5-10

Audio (MP3)

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The post Oct 06 – Homily – Fr Ignatius: Be Useful According To Your Ability first appeared on AirMaria.com.