The Last Supper

(NB: minus 33 years)

Garabandal: The Warning And The Great Miracle by Ted Flynn

About the book: Garabandal: The Warning and the Great Miracle, The Divine Reset That will Correct the Conscience of the World (2023) is a book about the great HOPE coming to humanity in the not to distant future.

Although no date is precisely mentioned, events are much closer as we look at the state of the world, and the moral slide of humanity. The Warning, the Great Miracle, and the Permanent Sign are like three acts all in the same play that will all happen in no more than one year once the Warning happens. It is the ultimate act of Mercy and Grace for humanity.

For those who follow Garabandal, it is obvious the prophecies that were given to four young girls in northern Spain from 1961-65, are events the world has never seen before. The Warning is where everyone in the world at the same time will have an "illumination of conscience" where they will see the state of their soul where they will see the state of their soul where God would judge them at their death. After that will appear a Great Miracle at the nine pines of Garabandal. These events have never been seen in the world before, and will not be explained by science. It is an enjoyable read from start to finish where the reader will feel genuine hope when they finish the book. No prophecies have even been given like these in Church history. God is in control.

Read and learn about:

What was said by the Blessed Mother when she appeared from 1961-1965 to four young visionaries in a small village by the name of Garabandal, in northern Spain.

What are the supernatural elements of the Warning, the Great Miracle, and the Permanent Sign? How close are we to these events now?

During the WARNING, or judgment in miniature, illumination of conscience, or a life review, we will see our life as a slow-motion picture in the light of Divine Truth as God would judge us at death.

Within one year of the Warning, will be the Great Miracle. These events have never been witnessed in the history of the world. What details has Heaven revealed about the Great Miracle?

It has been said the Miracle will be much greater than the miracle at Fatima.

All who journey to Garabandal for the Great Miracle, have been promised to be healed. Russia will convert after the Miracle, and Our Lady said, "All will love Our Hearts."

What is the prophecy of, "It begins with an "A?" What were the Nights of Screams? What did Saint Padre Pio, and Saint Mother Teresa say about Garabandal?

The enemies Heaven is fighting are identified. The reasons for WHY the Miracle at Garabandal, and why is it NOW at this point in history?

What was said about schism in the Church? A pope going to Moscow, and then hostilities breaking out in Europe, and priests in hiding. The prophecy of the number of popes, and then the "end of times."

Is Communism coming back to the world on a broader scale? Why Russia again is central as it was at Fatima. What has the Church said over the last 60 years? What many notable people have said about Garabandal. What exactly did Conchita say about a Third World War?

The events will change civilization as we know it. There have never been promises like Heaven has made at Garabandal.

About the author: Ted Flynn has been a Washington DC resident for 48 years and has been involved in various apostolates and businesses during that time. In 1979, he was a Fellow of the Fellowship Foundation, an organisation that sponsors the National Prayer Breakfast, with a mission of discipleship to young leaders throughout the world.

In 1984, he and his wife Maureen co-founded a crisis pregnancy center, and in 1987, founded Teen Choice, a program designed to teach teen chastity. After counselling thousands of young women and men on the physical, spiritual and psychological effects of abortion, they decided teaching and forming people in the faith would have a greater impact in the culture to stop the scourge of abortion. Thus, Signs of the Times was started in 1989. Signs of the Times Apostolate (Sign.org) has been teaching and informing people on the faith providing resources through its magazine, product distribution, conferences and website. Seeing the lack of progress in politics providing an answer to the country's moral decline, the International Week of Prayer and Fasting (IWOPF.ORG) has been held annually at the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception since 1990.

Ted has been the President and founder of MaxKol Communications since 1993, a publishing company. He has travelled to over 50 countries of the world on business and pleasure, spoken in over 700 venues of the world, and done over 300 radio, TV and podcasts on political philosophy, religion and culture - topics addressed in his books. He has attended the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, American University, Washington DC, the University of Fribourg, Switzerland and the London School of Economics, England.

Sermon In A Sentence by Archbishop Fulton J Sheen

About the book: The human heart can only live on love. There is only one thing a human heart can love - and that is a Person. Make that Person one with the Way to be followed, one with the Truth to be known, one with the Life to be lived, and that Way, that Truth, and that Life will pull at a thousand heartstrings, drawing from them the sweet symphony of love. Such is the Person of Our Blessed Lord. - Archbishop Fulton J Sheen 

This handy little book contains hundreds of direct quotes and short sayings of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, arranged according to the Christian virtues and other spiritual topics, allowing the reader to encounter his thoughts about particular aspects of the Christian life in a more organized manner.

The first fifteen chapters are arranged under virtues corresponding to the classical Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary, making this ideal for anyone to use for daily spiritual reading and inspiration. Reading these sayings while reciting the Rosary is like praying it with Archbishop Sheen, joining both prayer and the study of his writings in one great journey of advancing all the more in holiness and the love of God.

The Venerable Fulton Sheen (1895 - 1979), Titular Archbishop of Newport, without doubt ranks among the greatest Catholic evangelists of the modern day. He was also a distinguished philosopher and theologian who wrote numerous books and articles about the Faith. Behind the Emmy Award-winning TV personality was a man of deep piety who spent an hour in Eucharistic adoration every day and whose apostolic work was rooted in a profound interior life. His heroic virtue has been officially recognized by the Holy See.

Sermon in a Sentence: A Treasury of Quotations on the Spiritual Life (2015, 2020) is selected and arranged by John P McClernon. The other books in the Sermon in a Sentence series are Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska and Saint John Paul II.

About the author: Fulton John Sheen (1895-1979) was an American bishop of the Catholic Church known for his preaching and especially his work on television and radio. Ordained a priest of the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, in 1919, Sheen quickly became a renowned theologian, earning the Cardinal Mercier Prize for International Philosophy in 1923.

He went on to teach theology and philosophy at the Catholic University of America and served as a parish priest before he was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York in 1951. He held this position until 1966 when he was made the Bishop of Rochester. He resigned in 1969 as his 75th birthday approached, and was made archbishop of the titular see of Newport, Wales.

For 20 years as "Father Sheen", later monsignor, he hosted the night-time radio program The Catholic Hour on NBC (1930–1950) before he moved to television and presented Life Is Worth Living (1952–1957). Sheen's final presenting role was on the syndicated The Fulton Sheen Program (1961–1968) with a format that was very similar to that of the earlier Life Is Worth Living show. For that work, Sheen twice won an Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Television Personality, and was featured on the cover of Time magazine. Starting in 2009, his shows were being re-broadcast on the EWTN and the Trinity Broadcasting Network's Church Channel cable networks. His contribution to televised preaching resulted in Sheen often being called one of the first televangelists.

The cause for his canonization was officially opened in 2002. In June 2012, Pope Benedict XVI officially recognized a decree from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints stating that he lived a life of "heroic virtues," a major step towards beatification, and he is now referred to as Venerable. On 5 July 2019, Pope Francis approved a reputed miracle that occurred through the intercession of Sheen, clearing the way for his beatification. Sheen was scheduled to be beatified in Peoria on 21 December 2019, but his beatification was postponed after the current Bishop of Rochester expressed concern that Sheen's handling of a 1963 sexual misconduct case against a priest might be cited unfavourably in a forthcoming report from the New York Attorney General. The Diocese of Peoria countered that Sheen's handling of the case had already been "thoroughly examined" and "exonerated" and that Sheen had "never put children in harm's way." (Source: Wikipedia)

Our Lady Speaks To Her Beloved Priests by The Marian Movement of Priests

About the book: Our Lady Speaks To Her Beloved Priests (1974, 6th English Edition 1980) has been to many, a great help to live out their entrustment to Our Lady, an entrustment Pope John Paul II asked of Priests on Holy Thursday 1979. 

In a letter to them our Holy Father said: "I also desire that you should entrust your Priesthood to her (Mary) in a special way. Allow me to do it myself, entrusting to the Mother of Christ each one of you - without any exception - in a solemn and at the same time a simple and humble way. And I ask each of you, dear brothers to do it yourselves, in the way dictated to you by your own heart."

Religious and lay have also found the Book a powerful help to living their consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

• The book calls for Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

• It calls for unity with the Holy Father and the Bishops in union with him.

• It urges us to live out faithfully ones baptismal/priestly consecration.

• It calls upon us to listen and to act upon the motherly urgings which Mary has made to us time and time again but especially at Fátima.

• It calls upon us to bring others to a renewed devotion to Mary.

Our Lady Speaks To Her Beloved Priests is in the form of inner 'locutions' made to a humble Italian priest by the name of Father Stefano Gobbi.

This 6th edition of Our Lady Speaks To Her Beloved Priests is translated from the 9th Italian edition published by the Movimento Sacerdotale Mariano in Milan. 

Purpose of the book: As per guidelines established by the International Headquarters in Italy, it is asked that, as a general rule, the book be distributed only for use and participation in the MMP prayer cenacles as requested by Our Lady in her messages. For more information, go to: https://en.msm-mmp.org/libro or The Marian Movement of Priests. The MMP centers around the world are the only authorized centers of distribution.

Used copies of Our Lady Speaks To Her Beloved Priests can be purchased from eBay and Amazon (UK and USA). 

About the author: Stefano Gobbi (1930-2011) was an Italian Roman Catholic priest. He was born in the Province of Como, Italy and was ordained as a priest in 1964. He later obtained a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. He founded the worldwide Catholic movement, the Marian Movement of Priests (MMP) following what he reported as an interior locution in 1972 at the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima. The Roman Catholic Church has never officially recognized the purported interior locutions of Gobbi as being of a heavenly nature. 

On 8 May 1972 he was on a pilgrimage to Fátima, Portugal and was praying in the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima. He reported an interior locution from the Virgin Mary. He did not claim a Marian apparition, but a locution, that is, an internal voice. This inner voice urged him to gather other priests who would be willing to consecrate themselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and be strongly united with the Pope and the Catholic Church.

According to Gobbi, he later prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary for a confirmation of the inner voice, which he reported as receiving in May 1972 while praying in the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth. On 13 October 1972, on the 55th anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima he and two other priests formed the Marian Movement of Priests in a church in Gera Lario near Como, Italy.

The Marian Movement of Priests grew and by September 1973 included over 80 priests when it held its first national meeting at San Vittorino, near Rome. In 1974, Gobbi started to hold prayer cenacles in Italy for priests and laity, and later held prayer cenacles all over the world. During the cenacle, Catholics are called to pray to Jesus through Mary, since it was through her that the Church, the Body of Christ, was born. The MMP is now based in Milan Italy, with branches worldwide. The Marian Movement of Priests in the United States was established in 1975, is based in St Francis, Maine, and received an official papal blessing from Pope John Paul II in November 1993.

In July 1973, Gobbi began to write his reported interior locutions as messages which he attributed to the Virgin Mary. The messages from July 1973 to December 1997 were published in the book: To the Priests, Our Lady's Beloved Sons (formerly Our Lady Speaks To Her Beloved Priests). Cardinal Bernardino Echeverría Ruiz, OFM, Cardinal Ignatius Moussa Daoud and Cardinal John Baptist Wu provided their imprimatur for Gobbi's book. The messages have a pronounced apocalyptic tone.

Prior to his death, Gobbi was officially based in Milan, but continued to travel worldwide to hold prayer cenacles and promote the cause of the MMP. He died on 29 June 2011 after suffering a heart attack earlier that month. (Source: Wikipedia)

The Jesus Prayer by Bishop Kallistos Ware

About the booklet: The Jesus Prayer is the most popular devotional prayer in the Orthodox Church and increasingly popular in the West. 

A simple and direct method of invoking the mercy of Jesus Christ by repeating his Holy Name, it is a way of obeying St Paul's instruction to "pray always". 

In an increasingly noisy and frenetic world, the Jesus Prayer offers us an oasis of inner peace and a lifeline back to God.

The Jesus Prayer was first published in 2014 by The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society.

Excerpt from page 3: Once there was an old man who spent several hours each day in church. "What are you doing there?" his friends exclaimed. "I'm praying," he replied. "Praying!" they exclaimed. "There must be a great many things that you want to ask from God." With some indignation the old man responded, "I'm not asking God for anything." "What are you doing, then?" they said. 

And the old man replied, "I just sit and look at God, and God sits and looks at me."

About the author: Kallistos Ware, Bishop of Diokleia, is the best-known exponent of Orthodoxy in the United Kingdom and has a lifetime of experience teaching the Prayer.

Marthe Robin: The Cross And The Joy by Reverend Raymond Peyret

About the book: Marthe Robin (1902-1981) was physically incapacitated, bed-ridden and blind for most of her life; yet this physical suffering did not prevent her from living a life of heroic virtue, one of service to the missions, prisoners, the poor and retreatants throughout the world.

Her lifelong fast, constant prayers, and meditations led to startling visions that reflected the values and challenges of the Church in her time. 

As a stigmatist, she was revered by the people of the French countryside and by numerous members of the clergy as well, and her funeral in 1981 drew immense crowds.

This book, Marthe Robin: The Cross and The Joy (1983), should especially appeal to those interested in the other stigmatists of our century such as Padre Pio, Therese Neumann and Adrienne von Speyr.

Always unsettling, inevitably controversial and, for many, profoundly inspirational, the stigmatists form a unique and rare element in the varied and complex religious and spiritual scene.

Currently, Marthe Robin: The Cross and The Joy (1983) can be purchased 'used' in various forms from Amazon (USA and UK) and eBay. 

Marthe Robin: The Cross and The Joy (1983) is translated from the French by Clare Will Faulhaber.

About the author: Raymond Peyret, a Valence priest and editor of the Catholic weekly of Drome, Peuple Libre (A Free People), became interested in Marthe Robin while covering her extraordinary funeral. Though he lived just twenty-five miles from Marthe Robin and had heard about her from his youth, by nature he was little inclined towards private visions and was not interested in esoteric spirituality. Yet, when he investigated first hand the life of this woman, he became completely won over by her and felt compelled to write this book.

The Menendez Murders by Robert Rand

About the book: The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings that Stunned the Nation (2018) is the latest definitive book on the Menendez case - and the primary source material for NBC’s Law and Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders. 

A successful entertainment executive making $2 million a year. His former beauty queen wife. Their two sons on the fast track to success. But it was all a façade. 

The Menendez saga has captivated the American public since 1989. The killing of José and Kitty Menendez on a quiet Sunday evening in Beverly Hills did not make the cover of People magazine until the arrest of their sons seven months later, and the case developed an intense cult following. When the first Menendez trial began in July 1993, the public was convinced that Lyle and Erik were a pair of greedy rich kids who had killed loving, devoted parents. 

But the real story remained buried beneath years of dark secrets. Until now. 

Journalist Robert Rand, who originally reported on the case for the Miami Herald and Playboy, has followed the Menendez murders from the beginning and has continued investigating and interviewing key sources for 28 years. Rand is the only reporter who covered the original investigation as well as both trials. With unparalleled access to the Menendez family and their history, including interviews with both brothers before and after their arrest, Rand has uncovered extraordinary details that certainly would have changed the fate of the brothers’ first-degree murder conviction and sentencing to life without parole.

In The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menedez Family and the Killings That Stunned the Nation, Rand shares these intimate, never-before-revealed findings, including a deeply disturbing history of child abuse and sexual molestation in the Menendez family going back generations, and the shocking admission O J Simpson made to one of the Menendez brothers when they were inmates at the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail.

About the author: Robert Rand is an Emmy and duPont-Columbia Award winning journalist who began covering the Menendez brothers’ case for the Miami Herald over 33 years ago - the day after the killing of José and Kitty Menendez on 20 August 1989. He is the only reporter who covered the investigation in the fall of 1989 and was in court daily for each six month long Menendez trial in 1993-94 and 1995-96. He provided analysis for Court TV, CNN, ABC News, and CBS News. Rand spent three days interviewing Erik and Lyle Menendez two months after the murders and five months before their March 1990 arrest. The Miami Herald published the first speculation that the investigation was focused on them in December 1989 in Rand’s story titled “Who Killed the Next U.S. Senator from Florida?”  Rand’s cover story for People Magazine two weeks after the brothers were arrested, “A Beverly Hills Paradise Lost,“ was published 26 March 1990.

Robert Rand is Co-EP of a new documentary series  ‘Menendez + Menudo Boys Betrayed’ that began streaming on Peacock 2 May 2023. New evidence Rand has developed could be the foundation for the Menendez brothers to reopen their case. A new habeas corpus petition asking the courts to review the Menendez Brothers’ case and vacate their 1996 convictions was filed a day after the docuseries premiered on 3 May 2023.

In March 1991, Playboy published Rand’s article “The Killing of José Menendez.” The 14,000-word story is the longest article ever published by Playboy. His second Playboy story on the Menendez case titled “Menendez Confidential” was published in July 1995. Rand’s print work includes stories contributed to The Guardian, People, Playboy, Stern, Grazia, and Tropic, the Sunday magazine of the Miami Herald. He covered the 1991 William Kennedy Smith rape trial for Paris Match.

Rand was awarded a Los Angeles Emmy Award in 2001 for two years of stories at KCOP in Los Angeles about an illegal immigrant who was wrongly convicted. The stories resulted in the overturning of a ten-year-old conviction and the release of the man from jail. Rand was nominated for several Emmy Awards for stories he produced as a member of the Special Assignment investigative reporting group at KCBS (CBS 2) in Los Angeles. He was a member of the I-Team at KYW (CBS 3) in Philadelphia that won a duPont-Columbia Silver Baton Award for a yearlong series about wealthy property tax dodgers.

In July 2016, Rand was hired by Wolf Entertainment as a consultant for the development of NBC’s eight hour limited series ‘Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders’ which aired in the fall of 2017. Rand has appeared as a featured interview in dozens of documentaries about the Menendez case, including ABC 20/20’s ‘Truth and Lies: The Menendez Brothers,’ and Dateline NBC’s ‘Unthinkable: The Menendez Murders,’which both aired in 2017. ABC 20/20 aired ‘Inside the New Menendez Brothers’ Supporters Movement’ in April 2021 (now streaming on Hulu). Rand still maintains contact with Erik and Lyle Menendez through phone calls and visits them regularly at R J Donovan prison near San Diego. March 2023 marked the 33 year anniversary since the Menendez brothers were incarcerated.

Robert Rand is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Los Angeles.

Geoff Dyer (b 1958), English Author

Cloistered by Catherine Coldstream

About the book: Cloistered: My Years As A Nun (2024) by Catherine Coldstream is the author's evocative account of life as a nun in the 1990s, and the dramatic events which led to her flight from the monastery.

After the shock of her father’s death, twenty-four-year-old Catherine was left grieving and alone. 

A search for meaning led her to Roman Catholicism and the nuns of Akenside Priory.

Here she found a tight-knit community of dedicated women and peace in an ancient way of life. 

But as she surrenders to her final vows, all is not as it seems behind the Priory’s closed doors. 

Power struggles erupt – with far-reaching consequences for those within.

Catherine comes to realise that divine authority is mediated through flawed and all-too-human channels. 

She is faced with a dilemma: should she protect the serenity she has found, or speak out?

A love song to a lost community and an honest account of her twelve years in the Order, Cloistered is also a cautionary tale about what can happen when good people cut themselves off from the wider world.

About the author: Catherine Coldstream was born in London, and grew up loving music, words, and books. After converting to Roman Catholicism in her twenties, she spent twelve years in a Carmelite monastery where she lived the life of a silent contemplative nun. Since leaving her community, she has studied at the Universities of Oxford, East Anglia, and London, and taught theology, philosophy, and ethics in schools. The effects of her years as a nun have never left her and continue to inspire and inform her writing.

World Book Day 2024

Schmökern

Loneliness by Mary Oliver (1935-2019)

My Father's House by Joseph O'Connor

About the book: September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. SS officer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. The war’s outcome is far from certain. 

An Irish priest, Hugh O’Flaherty, dedicates himself to helping those escaping from the Nazis. His home is Vatican City, the world’s smallest state, a neutral, independent country within Rome where the occupiers hold no sway. Here Hugh brings together an unlikely band of friends to hide the vulnerable under the noses of the enemy. 

But Hauptmann’s net begins closing in on the Escape Line and the need for a terrifyingly audacious mission grows critical. By Christmas time, it is too late to turn back. 

Based on an extraordinary true story, My Father’s House (2023) is a powerful literary thriller from a master of historical fiction. 

Joseph O’Connor has created an unforgettable novel of love, faith and sacrifice, and what it means to be truly human in the most extreme circumstances.

About the author: Novelist, screenwriter, playwright and broadcaster, Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin. He is the author of nine novels including Star of the Sea, Ghost Light (Dublin One City One Book novel 2011) and Shadowplay (June 2019). Among his awards are the Prix Zepter for European Novel of the Year, France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, an American Library Association Award and the Irish Pen Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature. His work has been translated into forty languages. In 2014, he was appointed Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. Twice-Booker Prize-winner Peter Carey has written, ‘There are few living writers who can take us back in time so assuredly, through such gorgeous sentences. Joseph O’Connor is a wonder, and Shadowplay is a triumph.’

Rating: 4/5

In The Camps by Darren Byler

About the book: In the control society of a Safe City, life is made predictable by maintaining relations of power at a technical remove. It does something more than this too. When the technology begins to think for people, it starts to normalize its power over life. When space for thinking is lost in the black blox of a complex automatic system, it becomes banal and inhumane, producing profound capacities for cruelty. (Chapter Two, Phone Disaster, Page 52).

In China’s vast northwestern region, more than a million and a half Muslims have vanished into internment camps and associated factories. 

Informed by hours of interviews with camp survivors and workers, thousands of government documents, and over a decade of research, Darren Byler, one of the leading experts on Uyghur society uncovers their plight.

Revealing a sprawling network of surveillance technology supplied by firms in both China and the West, Byler shows how the country has created an unprecedented system of Orwellian control, powered by both automation and sheer brutality. 

A definitive account of one of the world’s gravest human rights violations, In the Camps (2022) is also a potent warning against the misuse of technology and big data and a revelatory account of what is really happening to China’s Uyghurs in China's high-tech penal colony.

About the author: Darren Byler is Assistant Professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. He is one of the world's leading experts on Uyghur society and writes a regular column for SupChina and his work has appeared in The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Prospect Magazine,as well as many academic journals. He received his PhD in anthropology at the University of Washington.