AMDG
From left to right Daniel, Anselm, & Stefcia Spiotta, her
brother Joseph visit their Aunt Marycia & her son Mihal Pozoga in Kielce,
Poland. Then follows Elizabeth, Juan
Pablito, & John-Paul, his godson Adash, his Uncle Janusz Pozoga and grandson Krisztof at his side. May 2023 was their
last chance for Juan Pablito and Anselmito to fly free before reaching their second
birthdays on May 26 and May 29. Here
they are visiting a medieval castle in Poland.
May 2023 our daughter Stephanie Sebastian Spiotta (Daniel) and daughter-in-law Elizabeth Herrera Sebastian (John-Paul) together with their respective families visited relatives in Poland (see above photo). It was their last chance for their toddler sons (Anselmito and Juan Palblito respectively) to travel free (less than two years old fly free).
During their visit they made a pilgrimage to the
great shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa. Both asked Mother Mary to intercede
that each have a child. Guess what? A
couple of weeks after returning to the U.S., they were both pregnant! This past February 27 Sophia Rose was born to Elizabeth and
John-Paul. Exactly one week later on
March 5 Antonina Frederyka (named after
her great grandmother and grandmother respectively) was born to Stephanie and
Daniel. They are truly Mary’s babies.
After
considerable prayer by many people, Naomi and John Faro gave birth to a
beautiful rainbow baby, Bennett James on July 28. The
Lord indeed answers prayers! Let us all
prayerfully trust in His will which is somehow for the best in the long run.
2024 has become for us the Year of the Baby.
Thank you, Lord!
Naomi and John previously kept it as a secret the sex of the baby they expected. They kept us guessing until Naomi’s friends threw a baby shower/gender reveal party on June 15. Everything was either pink or blue……dishes, utensils, balloons, etc. Each person was supposed to predict boy or girl. I predicted girl because I heard they already had a name for a girl but not a boy. In the afternoon they took us out to the back yard and John shot off a toy cannon and out came a rain of blue confetti. The secret was revealed. It was a beautiful fun filled day. What a great party that Naomi’s classy friends threw. Lizzy, her Franciscan University roommate came all the way from Boston!
So we were very busy with our babies……spending time in Front Royal, VA, Irving, TX, and Durham, NC. As with Juan Pablito and Anselmito, Jaga was super in helping out with baby care, grocery shopping, and cooking. You know, been there done that in helping the women to adjust to a first or second baby. During this time I have been official dish washer and help out with babysitting.
I really appreciate Jaga more than ever now since she made it look so easy and I took her for granted in raising our four children, John-Paul, Stefcia, Naomi, and Joseph while working as a nurse 20 hours a week and when I was a full time professor at the University of Rio Grande, she took care of my ailing and aging mother who died in our living room at the age of 97 several months after a severe stroke. She wanted no part of a nursing home and was happy sitting at the kitchen table and watching the kids run around. Kathleen (four kids) and Kate (8 kids) were also super moms who we also tended to take for granted at the time. And of course Elizabeth, Stephanie, and Naomi are doing great jobs, the first two handling a toddler and a baby and Naomi is adjusting to motherhood at all hours of the day and night.
All five grandchildren are or will be familiar if not conversant in three languages. Children are unusually gifted at language. Jaga speaks to them only in Polish (as John-Paul and Stefcia also do to some extent) and I speak to them only in Spanish.
The five grandchildren seem to be developing
nicely with their share of crying and tantrums plus waking up at night. Anselmito loves to put on shows for his
little sister. He loves to make her
laugh by making faces and dancing. We’re happy that Juan Pablito and Anselmito
have adapted well to the arrival of their new baby sisters.
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Please pray for my younger brother Deacon John (82). He has fought Rheumatoid Arthritis for several years. Now he is recovering from a new ailment. His bone marrow is not producing red blood cells and thus has had 17 blood transfusions. His energy level is minimal. On top of that he is getting over a bad case of cellulitis in his badly swollen left leg that hospitalized him for a week. He has handled it all with exemplary faith and courage. John keeps saying that he’s grateful because “many others have it a lot worse”. I have Stage Four kidney disease. If it stays the way it is, I can live with it. I can still walk two miles a day, but slow. My filtration rate is way down and my bone marrow produces protein and not enough red blood cells. So I can also use some prayers. Please continue to pray for Kathleen, who had severe balance problems because of liquid around the brain. The doctor put in a shunt and it seems to be working as she continues to recover beautifully.
John has done a great job as deacon. Read one of his homilies that received
accolades.
(259) A Veteran
Speaks Out on Patriotism and Wokism......... By Deacon John V. Sebastian Sr. in
His Veterans Day Homily https://paulrsebastianphd.blogspot.com/2021/11/259-veteran-speaks-out-on-patriotism.html
Please also pray for my best friend, Joe Ladik; we
were classmates at Carnegie Mellon U. He
was president of our Catholic Newman Club.
An avid gardener, he lost his balance and his head struck a rock. That left him paralyzed from the neck
down. Shorty after that he lost his wife
Carole, the former head of pharmacy at Pittsburgh’s Penn Magee Hospital, due to
cancer. For over three years Joe has
heroically carried this huge cross while his son Jeff so faithfully takes care
of him. He continues to offer this great
cross to the Lord and I am sure all of that is making a saint out of him.
John-Paul, a great Math teacher,
got burnt out doing it and elected to work from home for Pennymax, a mortgage
broker. Very fulfilling is helping customers to manage huge debt and be able to
keep their homes. Qualified in actuarial
science plus Excel and always a whiz at Math, he is allowed to work from
home. He’s done very well in that and
has an excellent way with customers. They
have written glowing feedback reports and John Paul was commended by his
immediate superior. He’s a member of
St. Basil’s Byzantine Catholic Church in Dallas and is a member of their
choir. It’s gratifying that he’s
following our Byzantine Catholic heritage that his great grandfather, Fr.
Vladimir Mihalich handed down.
Daniel continues as
professor of Literature at Christendom College, one of the very few Catholic
Christ centered colleges, true to its founding mission. His dissertation is slow, but hopefully sure.
It’s so hard to teach full time, raise a family, and get the dissertation done. Daniel is so gifted. Both John-Paul’s family
and Stephanie’s family are so blessed to have full time mothers. And it looks like Naomi will do the same
except for some part time work. Both Stephanie
and Elizabeth are former teachers.
John Faro is a full time medical
doctor with a residency in radiology at Duke University, perhaps the best
nationally in that field. The work is
demanding, but after a year of general interning in Dayton’s Kettering
Hospital, he is in his second year of radiology residency with three more to
go. He will be among the country’s top
radiologists in no time. He’s blessed
with a brilliant mind, patience, and perseverance. Naomi had been a labor &
delivery nurse in Cincinnati dealing with problem pregnancies. In Durham, North Carolina she has been a
pediatric nurse over the last year in the Duke University Health System.
Joseph,
a Ohio State graduate in Engineering & Computer Science, is a program
developer for Epic that computerizes patient records. Although he had only one year at Franciscan
University, he had an even better formation with St. Paul's Outreach which has
something like fraternity and sorority houses on a number of college
campuses. They received good formation
in community living and go out and bring in other students for dinner and Bible
studies. For the past two years Joseph
has been a software Engineer for Microsoft in Atlanta. He’s been so faithful with his weekly
telephone calls to us. He manages to
attend every family function (Baptisms, weddings, Christmas, Easter,
etc.). All of them have been faithful
Catholics. May it continue that way, I
pray.
As a team Jaga and Paul continue to bring Holy Communion
to the sick every Sunday, pray with them, and give moral support. We encourage them to trust in the Lord and to
unite their crosses with the Lord's cross, offering it all to Him as a dynamic
prayer for the conversion of sinners as Mary requested at Fatima, for the
world, for the Church in crisis, and for their loved ones. Research shows that patients who spiritualize
their suffering, do better. Then
suffering has meaning and purpose, becoming productive and more bearable.
Suffering born with patience, faith, and trust is a path to sanctity. See
http://paulrsebastianphd.blogspot.com/2014/02/133-lourdes-and-world-day-of-sick.html
.
Jaga gave
up her role as First Communion teacher to give time for our grand babies, but
she still helps out at a weekly soup kitchen and another on the last Sunday of
the month before the welfare checks arrive.
Paul writes blurbs and inserts for the church bulletin and
his blog at (http://paulrsebastianphd.blogspot.com). He’s also very active in the Knights of
Columbus.
Another big event in
our family was the reception of our son-in-law, John Faro into
the Church. I don’t remember sharing
it. We told him not to convert unless he
truly believed. Read about it at
(282) AN UNFORGETTABLE EASTER VIGIL…… Our Son-in-Law Is Received
Into the Catholic Church https://paulrsebastianphd.blogspot.com/2023/07/282-unforgettable-easter-vigil-john.html
Every January, the anniversary of the Roe
v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in 1973, I participate with about 300,000
other pilgrims in the March for Life in Washington. See details at of one of them at http://paulrsebastianphd.blogspot.com/2018/02/203-diversity-as-east-meets-west-at.html. In the past we've had all kinds of bad
weather.......rain, sleet, snow, and bitter cold, including being stuck on the
Pennsylvania Turnpike for 18 hours. But
the weather for the 2018 March was absolutely beautiful. I usually devote a blog for each March. On the eve of the March there's a standing
room only crowd for a Mass at the huge Basilica of the Immaculate
Conception. The fellowship is always
great. During a break I meet with my
godson, Danny Turk in the Archives Building.
To close you might be interested in a
couple of my more recent blog articles.
The first is perhaps the best I’ve ever written….what one can do during
Eucharistic Adoration and a meditation on the great love of God for each one of
us.
(293) “A Forty Hours Eucharistic Meditation:
The Greatest Love Story of All Time and True”
https://paulrsebastianphd.blogspot.com/2024/08/293-forty-hours-eucharistic-meditation.html
On July 17-21 the very successful National Eucharistic Congress was held as part of the National Eucharistic Revival. Over 54,000 people attended, many of whom made walking pilgrimages from the extreme north, south, west, and east. The following article blog tells all about it with photos and videos of the talks.
(291) It's Over But You Can Still Attend the National Eucharistic Congress Via EWTN On Demand and Youtube: Be a Eucharistic Missionary and/or Knight of the Eucharist
https://paulrsebastianphd.blogspot.com/2024/07/291-attend-10th-national-eucharistic.html
We just celebrated Labor Day not long ago and below is a Labor Day reflection on how the economy works and the role of the worker in it.
(267) “THE FRUITS OF YOUR LABOR IN THE ECONOMY: A Labor Day Reflection From a Christian World View, a Simple Model of How the Economy Works”
https://paulrsebastianphd.blogspot.com/2022/09/267-fruits-of-your-labor-in-economy.html
