Immaculee Ilibagiza was interviewed via telephone on January 2nd on CatholicTV's "This Is the Day" program. Here is the show in its entirety - she appears about 7 minutes in. She talks about her latest book, Our Lady of Kibeho. To get to the controls of the video (play, pause, fast forward, etc.), simply place the cursor anywhere on the video and you will see the controls.
Visit www.catholictv.org to see all their great programs. Commission members Marie Fusaro Davis and Susan Bailey will be appearing on "This Is The Day" in May to promote the conference, and we'll have it for you on this blog.
Here is Immaculee's interview:
Friday, March 20, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
A review of Immaculee Ilibagiza's latest book
Courtesy of Today's Catholic Woman found at the Catholic Exchange website. This review was written by Leticia Velasquez, a wife and homeschooling mother of three daughters. She is a free lance writer whose articles have appeared in Faith and Family and Celebrate Life magazines. A film critic for Mercatornet, Leticia has recently helped create a new blog called Catholic Media Review.
Immaculee Ilibagiza will be one of two keynote speakers at the Gather Us In 2009 conference sponsored by the Commission for Women of the Diocese of Worcester. For more information, visit the Gather Us In 2009 page on our website.
Review of Immaculee Ilibagiza’s Our Lady of Kibeho
Anyone of the millions of readers of Immaculee Ilibagiza’s New York Times bestselling book, Left to Tell in which she relates the terrifying ordeal she endured, hiding in a tiny bathroom with 7 women, while the Rwandan genocide raged outside, is left with a burning question; where did she find the strength to endure those 90 days of torment? Her latest book, Our Lady of Kibeho is Immaculee’s answer to that question, as well as a personal account of the only Church-approved Marian apparition in Africa.
No one who knew Immaculee as little girl would have predicted her role in the genocide and its aftermath: Immaculee had an idyllic Catholic childhood. Raised in a picturesque village in the mountains of Rwanda, her devout parents, Rose and Leonard were teachers, and were widely respected. Immaculee’s earliest memory is of being rocked in her mother’s arms as she prayed the rosary. The young Immaculee lived a holy life of prayer, study and innocent play until at age 11, when she was confronted by a crisis of faith. Not wanting to burden her loving family with her questions, Immaculee suffered silently until the day her doubts were put to rest forever, when her teacher told her the story of Our Lady of Fatima.
The story of three shepherd children from Portugal visited by the Queen of Heaven captivated Immaculee’s imagination, and she convinced her friend Jeanette and her brother Fabrice to climb a local hilltop each day to tend their goats, where they prayed fervently for Our Lady to appear to them. Eventually the children grew discouraged and gave up their efforts, and were thrilled to hear, not a week later that Our Lady did appear to a young woman in Rwanda, in a convent school in a remote town named Kibeho.
The story of the apparitions of Our Lady at Kibeho has familiar elements to Catholics familiar with the stories of Lourdes and Fatima; simple children who receive the message, and are mocked at first by skeptical friends and authorities. Our Lady asks for increased prayer, conversion of hearts, and for a chapel to be built. But no other apparition gives such vivid detail of future tragedies to occur if the people do not repent. The prayerfully singing, rapturous crowd was abruptly silenced as the visionaries shrieked in horror at the visions of thousands of bodies hacked to death and rivers flowing with human blood revealed to them by a tearful Mother. All this is powerfully related to Immaculee by the tape recorder of her pastor, Fr. Rwagema.
The lives of Rwandans were deeply affected by the apparitions, with thousands of pilgrims, including Immaculee’s father Leonard, traveling for weeks on foot, sleeping outdoors with little food or water in order to pray, sing and learn from Alphonsine, Anathalie, Marie-Clare, and the other visionaries. A chapel of Our Lady was built and thousands learned to pray a special rosary commemorating the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady. Immaculee describes how, although she was not able to travel to Kibeho until after the genocide, the visit of Our Lady steeled her for what lay ahead,“Mary knew who her son was, and from his earliest days was aware of the pain that awaited him(and her). Yet through all those years, she supported him with the love of a mother, standing by him while he was whipped, beaten and crucified And she was there for him when he drew his last breath. I realized that Our Lady, whose soft and gentle voice enthralled the visionaries, has rock-solid strength. It was the rock upon which I would build my faith in God, the strength that would sustain me through whatever sorrows life held in store for me.” P 97
Immaculee didn’t realize until days before the genocide destroyed her village and wiped out most of her family that she and her people were being prepared for unimaginable suffering. In this she joins the exalted company of the saints, who though close friends of Our Lord, suffered the darkness of man’s inhumanity to man and entered into the Passion of Christ.
Our Lady of Kihebo can be found on Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble.
Immaculee Ilibagiza will be one of two keynote speakers at the Gather Us In 2009 conference sponsored by the Commission for Women of the Diocese of Worcester. For more information, visit the Gather Us In 2009 page on our website.
Review of Immaculee Ilibagiza’s Our Lady of KibehoAnyone of the millions of readers of Immaculee Ilibagiza’s New York Times bestselling book, Left to Tell in which she relates the terrifying ordeal she endured, hiding in a tiny bathroom with 7 women, while the Rwandan genocide raged outside, is left with a burning question; where did she find the strength to endure those 90 days of torment? Her latest book, Our Lady of Kibeho is Immaculee’s answer to that question, as well as a personal account of the only Church-approved Marian apparition in Africa.
No one who knew Immaculee as little girl would have predicted her role in the genocide and its aftermath: Immaculee had an idyllic Catholic childhood. Raised in a picturesque village in the mountains of Rwanda, her devout parents, Rose and Leonard were teachers, and were widely respected. Immaculee’s earliest memory is of being rocked in her mother’s arms as she prayed the rosary. The young Immaculee lived a holy life of prayer, study and innocent play until at age 11, when she was confronted by a crisis of faith. Not wanting to burden her loving family with her questions, Immaculee suffered silently until the day her doubts were put to rest forever, when her teacher told her the story of Our Lady of Fatima.
The story of three shepherd children from Portugal visited by the Queen of Heaven captivated Immaculee’s imagination, and she convinced her friend Jeanette and her brother Fabrice to climb a local hilltop each day to tend their goats, where they prayed fervently for Our Lady to appear to them. Eventually the children grew discouraged and gave up their efforts, and were thrilled to hear, not a week later that Our Lady did appear to a young woman in Rwanda, in a convent school in a remote town named Kibeho.
The story of the apparitions of Our Lady at Kibeho has familiar elements to Catholics familiar with the stories of Lourdes and Fatima; simple children who receive the message, and are mocked at first by skeptical friends and authorities. Our Lady asks for increased prayer, conversion of hearts, and for a chapel to be built. But no other apparition gives such vivid detail of future tragedies to occur if the people do not repent. The prayerfully singing, rapturous crowd was abruptly silenced as the visionaries shrieked in horror at the visions of thousands of bodies hacked to death and rivers flowing with human blood revealed to them by a tearful Mother. All this is powerfully related to Immaculee by the tape recorder of her pastor, Fr. Rwagema.
The lives of Rwandans were deeply affected by the apparitions, with thousands of pilgrims, including Immaculee’s father Leonard, traveling for weeks on foot, sleeping outdoors with little food or water in order to pray, sing and learn from Alphonsine, Anathalie, Marie-Clare, and the other visionaries. A chapel of Our Lady was built and thousands learned to pray a special rosary commemorating the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady. Immaculee describes how, although she was not able to travel to Kibeho until after the genocide, the visit of Our Lady steeled her for what lay ahead,“Mary knew who her son was, and from his earliest days was aware of the pain that awaited him(and her). Yet through all those years, she supported him with the love of a mother, standing by him while he was whipped, beaten and crucified And she was there for him when he drew his last breath. I realized that Our Lady, whose soft and gentle voice enthralled the visionaries, has rock-solid strength. It was the rock upon which I would build my faith in God, the strength that would sustain me through whatever sorrows life held in store for me.” P 97
Immaculee didn’t realize until days before the genocide destroyed her village and wiped out most of her family that she and her people were being prepared for unimaginable suffering. In this she joins the exalted company of the saints, who though close friends of Our Lord, suffered the darkness of man’s inhumanity to man and entered into the Passion of Christ.
Our Lady of Kihebo can be found on Amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Eating right, living well and loving God
In the fall as the days grow short, nights long and the holidays come, folks tend to eat more, entertain more, spend more and stress out more. It’s no wonder Jesus came in this darkest time of the year. God knew we needed light in our personal and corporate darkness then and now 2000 years later. Maybe that is why we start New Year resolutions, with or without God. We as people know we need to always begin again.We decided at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in West Boylston to start a program called 3-D, a plan for eating right, living well and loving God. This is a twelve week program based on a book by Carol Showalter with Maggie Davis MS, RD, LDN, FADA, CDE titled Your Whole Life. Our program started shortly after the New Year, with two groups of ten women each. We are a little more than half way done and I would like to share some of the things we’ve learned.
As our pastor wrote in the church bulletin, “The Christian approach to weight loss does not jibe with our culture’s obsession with youth, beauty, perfection and thinness.” He goes on to say “ we are all beautiful in God’s eyes and should be in each other’s.” Even those of us who know we are created by a God whose works are wonderful have a hard time praising Him for ourselves or others, as the psalmist does in Psalm 139:14 “I praise You Lord because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
We picked this time of the year to start our program not only because it came after the holidays but also it runs during Lent and finishes just before Holy Week. Lent is a time we are more focused on God’s grace, care and mercy. We are learning that self-denial doesn’t have to be a time of painful, morbid giving up, which produces bad dispositions, but a time of freedom and the abundant life God has promised us. We are trying to be open, teachable and vulnerable to one another.
We laugh and have fun walking our mile with Leslie Sansone’s DVD that one of our members picked up at Walmart. There is still a lot of drama in our weight room. It’s a great room when we are loosing otherwise it is not. But we are learning little bit by little bit to eat healthier, changing habits, caring for others and ourselves. We are encouraging, challenging, inspiring and educating ourselves. We are working at becoming the best God wants us to be.
We are daily loving God, leaning on Him who knows each of us so intimately. We are reading scripture and daily meditations from Your Whole Life to consider and reflect on. We also have a commitment to memories a weekly Bible verse and pray for one another. We are building good habits that are teaching us to focus and submit to God.
Maggie’s system of gradual behavior changes has given us hope for long term change in our eating habits. We do have good weeks and then weeks that set us back. We are learning Satan really wants us to fail, not be healthy, not be whole, but ineffective. But we are learning God is always greater. We are learning we have the power to resist the devil. We are learning to deny our own unsanctified desires. We are learning to submit to God, to change and be well.
It is so nice to go to different Masses and to see someone from our group, someone I know is praying for me, someone closer and more familiar than folks you see just to say hi before Mass, shake hands at the peace, and bye when we leave. Attending our weekly group makes me think how good our God is. He uses our imperfections, our needs, to bless us. And now I can look in the mirror and begin to say Yes Lord – I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
May God Bless you all,
Shirley Pukaite
Shirley is one of our newest members of the Commission and we heartily welcome her! Ed.
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