MODELS OF FAITH

Click the URL link for the Video of the Model of Faith

 Abraham the Chaldean from Ur who heed the call of God to leave his land together with his clan to live in the land of Canaan. Moses-the Hebrew raised in the courts of the Pharaoh who later led his people towards freedom from Egyptian slavery in the dramatic story of Exodus Mary-the young Jew who according to tradition consecrated her life to God as a virgin but later was called to be the mother of the Messiah.

 Peter-one of the first disciples of Jesus, brother of Andrew, both fishermen. He later became the leader of the apostles spreading the Good News outside Jerusalem. He died through crucifixion up-side-down during the persecution of the early church. Paul-the so-called apostle to the Gentiles. A Pharisee by formation, he initially persecuted the early Christians. Later however he had a conversion which saw him to become an assiduous disciple in spreading of the gospel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82 QPIQXV5l0

Bl. Teresa of Calcutta

 The Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, M.C.,[1] commonly known as Mother Teresa (26 August 1910 5 September 1997), was an Albanian born, Indian Roman Catholic Religious Sister. Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation, which in 2012 consisted of over 4,500 sisters and is active in 133 countries. They run hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis; soup kitchens; children's and family counseling programmes; orphanages; and schools.

 Mother Teresa was the recipient of numerous honours including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. In late 2003, she was beatified, the third step toward possible sainthood, giving her the title "Blessed Teresa of Calcutta". A second miracle credited to her intercession is required before she can be recognised as a saint by the Catholic Church.[1]

MARIA GORETTI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rph4uM3Vz_g

 Maria Goretti (October 16, 1890 July 6, 1902) is an Italian virgin-martyr of the Roman Catholic Church, and she is one of the youngest canonized saints. She died from multiple stab wounds inflicted by her attempted rapist after she refused to submit to him.[1] Before she expired, she forgave her assassin and desired that he be with her in heaven. While in prison, he later converted through the intercession of Maria Goretti.

CHIARA LUCE BADANO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y35K1rv-oIU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfSq10ssbfo

CHIARA LUCE BADANO

Chiara Luce Badano-a young Italian girl active in sports and dedicated as Christian youth who contracted bone cancer but lived her illness in heroic love and union with God and neighbor in simple. She was beatified last Sept. 25, 2010.

 Chiara was very popular. She had a lot of friends, she played sports, and she loved to sing and dance. But when asked, she said she did not try to bring Jesus to her friends with words. She tried to bring Jesus to them with her example and how she lived her life. When she was 17, Chiara learned she had a very serious form of bone cancer. Treatments were painful and unsuccessful. She became paralyzed. One day someone asked her if she hoped to walk again and her answer was no. When she suffered, she felt closer to Jesus. She even refused to take pain medication that would make her too sleepy to continue to live her life.

 Despite her illness and being confined to bed, Chiara wrote letters and sent messages to other. She attended Focolare youth meetings. She inspired everyone who she encountered with her faith and love for others. She gave all her savings to a friends who was becoming a missionary in Africa. When her life was nearly at an end, she said, I have nothing left, but I still have my heart, and with that I can always love.

 Chiara died in 1990. Within nine years, the bishop of her diocese began the work on her cause for canonization. Pope Benedict XVI declared her Blessed in 2010. Only Love with a capital L gives true happiness, and thats what Blessed Badano showed her family, her friends and her fellow members of the Focolare movement, the pope said. She was a normal, everyday girl, and possibly a normal, everyday saint. Chiaras brief life showed us how much one person can accomplish in Gods name.

 Bl. Chiara is among the 18 saints and blesseds whom Benedict XVI chose as patrons of World Youth Day 2013, which will be held July 23-28 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Cardinal Fracois Nguyen Van Thuan

A cardinal who loves to cook Now on the road to sanctity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPfz7T0g4jk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDudAUqYb W0

 Cardinal Francois Nguyen Van Thuan-as a young Vietnamese priest, he was imprisoned for 13 years by the communist. He was kept in solitary confinement but wasted no time to communicate the faith even to his communist guards. Strengthened by the Crucified Christ whose corpus-less wire crucifix he kept, he live Christian charity to the fullest.

 During the Second World War he provided shelter to refugees from Greater Poland, including 2,000 Jews whom he hid from Nazi persecution in his friary in Niepokalanw. He was also active as a radio amateur, with Polish call letters SP3RN, vilifying Nazi activities through his reports.

Maximilian Kolbe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKokL592sGo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3R-7feP__s

 On February 17, 1941 he was arrested by the German Gestapo and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison, and on May 25 was transferred to Auschwitz I as prisoner #16670. In July 1941 a man from Kolbes barracks vanished, prompting SS-Hauptsturmfhrer Karl Fritzsch, the deputy camp commander, to pick 10 men from the same barracks to be starved to death in Block 13 (notorious for torture), in order to deter further escape attempts.

 (The man who had disappeared was later found drowned in the camp latrine.) One of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, lamenting his family, and Kolbe volunteered to take his place. During the time in the cell he led the men in songs and prayer. After three weeks of dehydration and starvation, only Kolbe and three others were still alive. Finally he was murdered with an injection of carbolic acid.

 Father Kolbe was beatified as a confessor by Pope Paul VI in 1971 and was canonized by Pope John Paul II on October 10, 1982 in the presence of Franciszek Gajowniczek. Upon canonization, the Pope declared St. Maximilian Kolbe not a confessor, but a martyr.