I Had A Call Last Week...

 and it was just the oddest thing EVER. Normally, we get 10 calls a day from Google asking to verify our listing (t's been verified) and other spammers, so I honestly don't answer if the call is flagged as potential spam. Darn bots!! Anyway, Someone didn't realize they were leaving a message and I heard them say "OK Father, hello? Hello?" so I called them back (extremely rare without an actual message). I told her about the website and she said that she had looked at it, but it didn't look Catholic or even Christian. Ummm, what? I wholeheartedly hope she was looking at another site. 

 

The site is only 3 pages, and it does have a link to the store, but what doesn't look Catholic? Our ebay store has the same banner, btw, so that you know you are in the right place.  I had a nice little chat with her and told her what we carry.

To get to the ebay store directly you can use the following link, or the one to the right of this post (on a computer or classic blog style on phones). Our current list of items available are:

Rosary beads (all price ranges and styles including gemstones, sterling, pewter, freshwater pearl, plastic, wood), Rosary cases/holders, rosary bracelets, rosary rings, rosary necklaces, statues, pictures, icons, triptychs, diptychs, keychains, magnets, incense, crib medals, sterling silver medals, crosses, crucifixes and pins (made in the U.S.), veils/caplets, Cameos, chaplets, pocket prayer books & novenas, coins/charms, reliquaries, fonts, holy water bottles, devotional jewelry, Miraculous Medals, scapulars, tapestries, sports medals both pewter and sterling silver, and some beautiful tiles! www.ebay.com/str/gloryglorygifts. 

I assure you, we are Catholic. As always, if you are looking for something and do not see it, feel free to contact us via ebay messaging or Mare@gloryglorygifts.com. I don't suggest using the chat on the website as there is a delay in getting responses. Til next time. 

Have a good week and God bless.

Peace,

Mare 

Musings......

 I was just thinking the other day how incredibly blessed my current life is, for this week, and the last few anyway. Every day, I have the will to get up and get going because of my absolute love of Glory Glorying, my great grandson, my artwork, my family, my prayer life and my God. You all know how life is ~ everything is just glorious and then in one minute your life falls apart. Sadly, I've had decades upon decades of life falling apart, so it is extremely nice to have the lulls where everyone is happy, healthy and in a good place all at once. Of course, that's been true throughout my life.

I'm a huge fan of just sitting and listening to the silence and solitude in my mil studio and streaming adoration from Poland with my Rosary in hand. You cannot imagine how that centers me and dulls the craziness that sometimes goes on all around me. The craziness fades into the corners. Even the birds outside are quieted from the extreme heat hitting NYC this week. It's too hot to bicker over berries and bugs, so they just perch and observe. At the moment, the household cats and my dog aren't trying to find common ground to play with each other, which usually entails lots of hissing, barking and an occasional punch thrown by Luna (king of the castle). Except for the intermittent sound of the a/c unit coming on, no other appliances or electronics are adding to the din. Nobody is home, except for me. It's quiet in all its beauty.

Then slowly, the house will come alive again with the family returning, one by one. The doors will open and the animals mingle, or avoid each other depending on their moods. We will sit as a family and enjoy dinner. Our littlest member, Timothy, is learning to clasp his hands as we pray over our meal. Then we spend time as a family until he goes up for his bath and bedtime. It's such an incredible joy and blessing to have loved ones to spend time with and that want to spend with you too. 

Enjoy the small moments in your life that will create memories and sustain you for the times to come. Find that quiet time during the day to spend with God and refresh your heart and soul. Time is flying by ferociously, so grasp those moments. Make time for God and family, for without them life truly is vacant. 

Peace,

Mare 

It Occurred to Me...

 

 

Last week I was outside doing my daily prayers and a great thought came to me. Usually when you say the Rosary, you say it and contemplate the mystery associated with the decade. As you know, there are 20 of them and you meditate on them while you say it. If you don't know how the Rosary is structured, let me refresh your memory:

Joyous Mysteries: The Annunciation, The Visitation, The Nativity, The Presentation in the Temple, Finding Jesus in the Temple. (Mondays, Saturdays)

Sorrowful Mysteries: The Agony in the Garden, The Scourging at the Pillar, The Crowning with Thorns, The Carrying of the Cross, The Crucifixion. (Tuesday, Friday)

Glorious Mysteries: The Resurrection, The Ascension, The Descent of the Holy Spirit, The Assumption of Mary and The Coronation of Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth. (Wednesday, Sunday)

Luminous Mysteries: The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, The Miracle at Cana, The Proclamation of the Kingdom, The Transfiguration and The Institution of the Eucharist. (Thursday)

Sometimes it is very difficult to stay focused while you pray. That's why it helps sometimes to stop and try to visualize the mystery or maybe look at a picture of it while you pray. We have some wonderful little Rosary Books at the store if you need a visual to help you btw, and it is currently under $5!

Okay, so what was I thinking? I was thinking of a way to say the Divine Mercy Chaplet and tie it into your daily Rosary. The Divine Mercy Chaplet has 5 decades of 10, as does the Rosary, so while you are saying it contemplate on the Sorrowful Mysteries! Instead of just reciting, "for the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world," visualize His agony in the garden, His scourging, His crowning with thorns, His carrying of the cross and His crucifixion for each decade of beads. Makes perfect sense to me, especially since I say them at the same time. For me, it brings the chaplet to a whole other level.  The chaplet can be found to the right of this post or above. 

The other thing that I wanted to tell you about is the absolute need to go to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament as often as you can. As Catholics, we believe that Jesus is present in the Eucharist, body, blood soul and divinity after it is consecrated by the priest. Many churches have adoration. Check your parish, and local churches, to see if and when they have it. That is 100% a life-changing event to include daily/weekly visits to the blessed sacrament. I 1000% believe that He is present in the Eucharist, because of my own experiences (which you can find on this blog, and also to the right). 

If you cannot possibly make it to an adoration chapel, there is an absolutely beautiful live stream from Poland's Saint Maximillian Kolbe parish on Youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v+BlR18Pvy11U. If you say the Hail Mary, the Our Father, and Saint Maximillian Kolbe, pray for us, you will receive an indulgence. If the link doesn't work, search for live adoration on YouTube from Poland. EWTN also has it on their site on there. The chapel, statue of Mother Mary and Eucharist, is truly magnificent, but nothing beats being at a chapel irl, so my suggestion is to get to your local parish as often as you can! 

That's it for now. Have an amazing day and be careful in the horribly hot temps moving across the country.

Peace,

Mare 

Hello There and Welcome to my Blog! It's Been a Minute...

It has been quite a while since I posted anything on here, since October actually, but it's not because we are winding down or closing Glory Glory Gifts. It's due to a myriad of reasons most of which were technical issues due to old equipment.

Sometime mid last year, Google Chrome started to block many of the sites that we use daily to contact our distributors, log onto the website or eBay, where our biggest store resides. Safari did as well. No problem. We just switched to Firefox and used that instead, but little by little the things we could do on the eBay store were whittled down. Eventually the only thing that we could do, was create shipping labels and I had to use my tablet or phone to do everything else. That becomes quite burdensome when you have a store with 2,000 products on it that you have to maintain and daily sales to ship. Searching on it became a nightmare to update inventory and out of stocks, sending offers, listing new items, etc.   No way was I going to download an app on either of my handheld devices to get into the website, and Godaddy, our host, wasn't really allowing access. So I decided to shut the store down on there and use it solely as a gateway to the eBay store. Long story summarized: We no longer have products for purchase on the website BUT there is a link to the eBay store so it's one step further but so much better! I was personally never thrilled with the layout of the website store anyway. I much prefer the format of the eBay marketplace store. If you have never visited it, I suggest that you do! The link is to the right of this post and we have hundreds of items to choose from! We look forward to your visit. 

At the same time this was happening, I got very sick for all of February into half of March first with RSV, then bronchitis, then pneumonia, then it went back into some other kind of URI. It was a nightmare and an extremely upsetting time for me. For weeks I struggled with handling the business and keeping things as status quo as I could with customers and I prayed on it. I asked God if it was maybe time to close down and I also prayed to our newest millennial saint, Carlo Acutis (aka my tech guy) for guidance and my prayers were answered!! I found a REALLY sweet deal on a 7-year old Mac on MacSales (highly recommend!!!).  A month after we got the new computer, the old computer completely died and so did the printer. Thankfully I found a new one on Target and had it delivered the next day. PTL we are 100% back in business until the good Lord tells me otherwise. Thank you Saint Carlo. You never steer me wrong. 

This is our 18th year in business! I can't believe how incredibly fast that time has flown. Our goal is the same and that is to teach people how to pray and to preach the Gospels of Jesus Christ. Every item that we sell has a prayer attached to it, so it is included either physically, via a prayer card(s) or printed on the invoice. Our main prayers are The Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet more specifically. The Divine Mercy Chaplet is for the conversion of souls, even those most hardened of hearts, so it's important that I share it as it IS the reason why Glory Glory was instituted in the first place. It's an amazing prayer! Say it daily. Say it often.

On May 4th I  entered The People's Artist contest, through a Facebook ad. I'm not a full-time artist but do enjoy painting and have sculpted in the past. I even had an art exhibit back in the late 70's early 80's with my sculpted works. Anywho, you know how things are with Facebook and bots, they flagged my account, for a bogus charge (as were hundreds of other artists just looking for votes) and I'm not allowed to run any ads (boo hoo), monetize my account (again boo hoo), create or share any videos (SAY WHAT???), until mid-July. Not a big deal that I can't run ads on there since they basically said that targeting  Christians or Catholics is not inclusive so it is not allowed. That IS my target audience isn't' it? So yeah, haven't advertised in  quite a few years, but don't expect any videos until July. 

I received the most amazing gift for my birthday this year and have actually wanted it for the longest time. You know how things go... You really want something but there is always a reason why you have to put it off. Murphy's Law shows his ugly little head. My present? The Ethiopian Bible in English. I believe that it is the earliest version of the Bible dating back to the 300's and was originally written in the Ge-ez language (classic Ethiopian). I love how it is written, especially the additional books. It's very straight forward without the thees and thous and point blank says things like:  Jesus healed a leper.  Jesus healed Kepha's (Peter) mother from a fever, so she got up and started to serve them. I love that about it, but it doesn't stop me from reading my other Bible that I've had since 1989. (That one is filled with markings in the margins and highlighted sentences.) Anyway, I know that the protestants always attack the Catholics about our veneration of Mary as the Mother of God and how it isn't Biblical and guess what? It is CLEARLY stated in the Ethiopian Bible. Not only that, it also says to pray TO her to ask her Son's intercession. So the veneration of Mary is very much Biblical and has been since a Bible was first written. Also, there are separate books called Täˀammərä Maryam (Miracles of Mary) and also Ta'amra Iyesus (Miracles of Jesus). Miracles of Mary (English name) includes not only veneration of her as the Mother of God, but also her assumption into heaven. The Miracles of Jesus are actually the missing years from birth to 12 and includes several stories about Him. I haven't actually read them yet, but, I have read the Gnostic Gospels and it sounds like they are the same or very similar. We have a toddler running around our house, and he is a handful, so I can't imagine poor Yosef and Miriam admonishing a God child.  Whew. That takes some divine intervention 😇. I know that the Ethiopian Bible can be found on the internet, so look it up for yourselves. (I read Enoch on here years ago.) I highly recommend it and especially enjoyed the Book 83, The Covenant II, which includes the Mary passages and Book 88 The Canticles, which is just lovely.

Another fascinating book to read is Jesus in Egypt. That is filled with stories handed down through the Coptic generations of the Holy Family's time there after their flight from Bethlehem. It's written by Paul Perry and has some truly amazing tales of the infant Jesus. Check it out.  

The United States is going to be consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on June 11th. To prepare for this, the Novena to the Sacred Heart has begun (as of yesterday) and will be said for the 9 days leading up to the consecration. I'm sure EWTN will have some kind of coverage on it, so check your listings! Also, you can have the novena delivered right to your email daily, which is a terrific reminder, from the good folks at PrayMoreNovenas.org. Check them out!

Last, we have so many new and beautiful collections at the store! Here are just a few of our newest so get on over to Glory Glory Gifts eBay store!  The link is to the right of the post. 

Have a blessed and beautiful day in the Lord and don't forget to say your prayers!

Mare