St. Michael's Podcast

I also own a company that makes Sacred and Immaculate Heart Claddagh Rings! They make great Catholic “Promise” rings because they represent the purity of Christ and Mary. We sell them in Sterling Silver and in 14 K Gold. If you want 14K you need to call and get a quote since Gold goes up and down so often! The cost may go up and down based on the cost of the metals used to make them. For more information, or to order yours write or call our goldsmith Kevin Pugh. Kevin has his own company called Myers & Pugh. Here is their contact information:

Kevin Pugh
Master Goldsmith
Myers & Pugh Designer Jewelers

website-Pughsdesignerjewelers.com

email  sales@pughsdesignerjewelers.com

44 South 2nd St., Newark, Ohio 43055
E-Mail: kevin@diamondstodiefor.com
Website: diamondstodiefor.com
740-344-9259

The word “Metanoia” means “Change of Heart”!

The Twelve Promises of the Sacred Heart

There are also 12 promises that go with the displaying of the Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart in a family home. Usually this is done by hanging the images or pictures on the wall and having a priest come and “Enthrone” them. The “Enthronement” is a small ceremony with special devotional prayers that invoke the protection of the Sacred & Immaculate Hearts. I would think that wearing the devotional symbols and displaying them on your person would somehow bring about the same end as far as the ninth promise and the rest of the promises are concerned.
The twelve promises are as follows:

1. I WILL GIVE THEM ALL THE GRACES NECESSARY FOR THEIR STATE OF LIFE.
2. I WILL GIVE PEACE IN THEIR FAMILIES
3. I WILL CONSOLE THEM IN ALL THEIR TROUBLES.
4. THEY SHALL FIND IN MY HEART AN ASSURED REFUGE DURING LIFE AND ESPECIALLY AT THE HOUR OF DEATH.
5. I WILL POUR ABUNDANT BLESSINGS ON ALL THEIR UNDERTAKINGS.
6. SINNERS SHALL FIND IN MY HEART THE SOURCE AND INFINITE OCEAN OF MERCY.
7. TEPID SOULS SHALL BECOME FERVENT.
8. FERVENT SOULS SHALL SPEEDILY RISE TO GREAT PERFECTION.
9. I WILL BLESS THE HOMES IN WHICH THE IMAGE OF MY SACRED HEART SHALL BE EXPOSED AND HONORED.
10. I WILL GIVE TO PRIESTS THE POWER TO TOUCH THE MOST HARDENED HEARTS.
11. THOSE WHO PROPAGATE THIS DEVOTION SHALL HAVE THEIR NAME WRITTEN IN MY HEART, AND IT SHALL NEVER BE EFFACED.
12. THE ALL-POWERFUL LOVE OF MY HEART WILL GRANT TO ALL THOSE WHO SHALL RECEIVE COMMUNION ON THE FIRST FRIDAY OF NINE CONSECUTIVE MONTHS THE GRACE OF FINAL REPENTANCE; THEY SHALL NOT DIE UNDER MY DISPLEASURE, NOR WITHOUT RECEIVING THE SACRAMENTS; MY HEART SHALL BE THEIR ASSURED REFUGE AT THE LAST HOUR.

Prayer for Daily Neglects

ETERNAL FATHER, I offer You the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with all its love, all its sufferings, and all its merits.
First, to expiate all the sins I have committed this day and during all my life. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall ever be, world without end. Amen.

Second, to purify the good I have done poorly this day and during all my life. Glory be, etc.

Third, to supply for the good I ought to have done, and that I have neglected this day and all my life. Glory be, etc.

HISTORY: Soon after death, a Poor Clare nun appeared to her abbess, who was praying for her, and said: “I went straight to Heaven because I paid all my debts by virtue of this prayer.”

An Indulgenced* Prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Here is the story of the ring design it is transfered here from my old website:

The Sacred Heart Ring

As the creator of the Metanoia Sacred & Immaculate Heart rings, I am often asked where I got the idea. I always tell people it came to me while I was praying before the Blessed Sacrament in the Our Lady Of The Angels Chapel at the Eternal Word Television Network. This is the story of the inspiration that developed into the ring designs.

First I must state very clearly that I am not a visionary or receiving inter locutions from Our Lord Jesus Christ or The Blessed Virgin Mary. It is important to me that no one mistakes my story of the idea for the rings as either of these very specific gifts from God. Having said that I feel comfortable saying that Jesus and Mary gave me the idea as I was praying for guidance.

In 1988 I had made a pilgrimage to Medugorje Yugoslavia and had a major conversion back to my Roman Catholic roots. I spent the next few years finishing my college degree and praying a lot. My conversion was fast and strong, but my personal faith life was under heavy construction. While I was in Medugorje on my second pilgrimage in 1989 I had been advised by Fr. Ken Roberts and Fr. Michael Scanlon, to put my degree in telecommunications to work for the Lord. It was sometime in the year 1991 that I found myself working as a TV producer at Mother Angelica’s wonderfully Catholic Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN).

Being surrounded by so many holy people certainly had it’s effects on me. There were many trips to the confessional and the chapel to spend time with Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament. I was about 30 years old and wondering what to do with my life. I thought I might have the vocation to be a priest but after much prayer and discerning I decided that I was called to my current vocation of “Husband” and “Father”. It was on one of these trips to the chapel that I got the idea for the ring designs.

I was, at that point, pretty certain that I was to be married, but I was not sure about who God would send me as a wife. I spent most of my time back then praying that Mary and Jesus would send me someone special. Although I knew I was called to it, I didn’t know if I had the ability to lead a chaste life. I had a great desire to atone for my past sins in this area. But as St. Paul said my spirit and my flesh where at war with each other. I knew if I could make amends for my life before my conversion and add small acts of reparation along the way, that God would bring me a holy spouse in His time. Still His time and ours can seem worlds apart. My past had been full of relationships that were very needy. Often times I had let morals slip in order to retain relationships that I mistook for Love. I felt my heart was pretty badly beaten up. I was not certain that I had it in me to find the “Narrow Gate” that Jesus spoke of in the gospels. So I found myself praying that day before the Blessed Sacrament asking for help in this area.

Using what Mother Angelica once called “Our Holy Imagination”, in my mind’s eye, I “saw” myself holding my badly broken and damaged heart out to the Lord through the Blessed Virgin’s intercessory prayers. I was acutely aware of the scars on it from every wrong relationship I had been in. I took to heart the words of God where he said I will take away their hearts of stone and give them new hearts of flesh. My prayer at that time went something like this ” Lord, I give you my heart of stone. Please take it and give me a new one patterned after your mother’s Immaculate Heart and your own Sacred Heart. So that I may love you as I ought to and that I may love others the way I am supposed to.”

My old heart was way too quick to fall in love and give away anything to keep a relationship. I knew I had this weakness and I didn’t want to fall into anymore wrong relationships. I knew this prayer was a strong act of faith and I knew God would help me keep out of trouble. I “saw”, in my mind, Mary’s hands cupping my heart and forming a strong wall of defense against the “attacks and flaming arrows of the evil one”. Gradually Mary’s hands opened again and held my new heart rather like the heart in the Irish Claddagh is held. I thought to myself what if Jesus answered my prayer through Mary and gave me the answer to my prayer as a Sacred Heart claddagh. I could “see” His hands, which would have the open wounds from the nails, holding out His own Sacred Heart as a replacement for my battered, beaten, sin scarred heart! It was a beautiful image in my mind. I left the chapel thinking I must have a ring created to remind me of that encounter with Jesus and Mary through prayer.

I bought a normal claddagh ring at an Irish specialty shop and set about finding a jeweler who could help me cut the design out of the normal hands, heart, and crown of the claddagh. In my search I found a co-worker at EWTN (who has since become a sister there) was once a goldsmith. She took the claddagh and with my instructions created the first Sacred Heart ring.

A little while later I started to date again (after not doing so for a few years) and I had the Immaculate Heart ring made for the girl I was dating. Both designs were present in my mind that day before the Blessed Sacrament. That is why I say that Jesus and Mary gave me the idea for the ring designs.

As a Catholic television producer at EWTN I met many people laity, priests, nuns, and even a few bishops, who commented on the unique ring designs and asked how I came up with them. Soon friends and relatives started asking about the rings. If I could make one for them. I thought about it for a while and decided to start The Metanoia Ring Company.

The old Baltimore Catechism used to answer the question ‘Why did God make me?’ with this answer. ‘To know Him, love Him, serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him in the next. In the design of the claddagh the hands represent Friendship the heart represents Love, and the Crown on the heart represents Loyalty. I find these very compatible with the old catechism’s answers. To know God is to be His friend and certainly more than that as we come to know Him more and more we learn to Love Him. As we love God more and more we chose to “Serve” Him by being “Loyal” to Him and working for His “Kingdom”. I find the relationship is cyclical in nature that as we serve Him we know Him better. The more we know Him the more we love him. The more we love Him the more we want to loyally keep His commands. It keeps right on going just like a ring with no ends to it but a beautiful, ever increasing, relationship of closeness with our creator.

What a perfect image of unending love is the Sacred Heart ring. The cross that is in the flames on the top of my first sacred heart ring was originally cut out of the “Loyalty Crown” of my claddagh ring. How often we are reminded that there is no crown of glory in our lives without first having a cross to embrace. Even Christ’s own cross was to “Loyally” follow the will of His Father even unto death on the cross, in order to attain salvation for us sinners. In this life Jesus chose not to wear the crown of a king, but rather to endure the crown of thorns which represent our sins etched in His most loving and Sacred Heart as seen in Jesus’ apparitions to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.

The word “METANOIA”.

Before I went to Medugorje the first time in 1988, I came across the word “Metanoia”. I can not tell you the first time I heard it, probably at a mass somewhere, but I was very unaware of it consciously. The word started drifting into my mind here and there in the mid nineteen eighties. I tried typing it up on my word processor and searching for it in the dictionary, but I could not find it and my spell check told me there was no such word. I thought it seemed to be part “Metaphysical” and part “Paranoia”. I had no idea what it meant but it haunted me and I liked it. For a long time I thought I had made it up. I had been using it (for a few years) as a lyric in a song I had written in the mid eighties when I found out what it meant at mass one day.

Metanoia is the Greek word for “Repentance” or “Change of Heart”. Where ever you see the word “repentance” in modern biblical texts the Greek texts will have some form of the verb “Metanoia”. This word, to me, symbolizes the transformation that my heart went through as a result of exposing myself repeatedly to Our Lord Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament during hours of Eucharistic Adoration. My own personal “Metanoia” began in Medugorje but has continued with lots of little conversions along the way.

I do find it interesting that the meaning of the translation “Change of Heart” coincides so well with my prayer and the images that Jesus and Mary inspired in me. I decided to name the Sacred Heart & Immaculate Heart ring company I was starting The Metanoia Ring Company because it fit so well. I hope anyone who wears a Sacred Heart or Immaculate Heart ring will be constantly reminded of the love Jesus & Mary have for them.