celestial preview

celestialFortifying the Hearts of Women

One Flesh

Special Edition

02 | J.M.J. celestial magazine

12

04 EDITOR’S MESSAGE

26 MY WIFE: PART ONE

28 BOY WITH THE GREEN ROSARY: PART ONE

30 BRIDES OF OLD

64 WEDDING HAIR SECRETS

65 REFLECTIONS OF LOVE

76 DIY

Inspiration How To’s78 LOVE FINDS A WAY

81 FANCY A FONT?

Free fonts for wedding planning85 MY WIFE: PART TWO

87 BOY WITH THE GREEN ROSARY: PART TWO

89 WEDDING MAKEUP TIPS

90 WORDS TO THE WISE

93 EVERLASTING LOVE

95 MY WIFE: PART THREE

96 BOY WITH THE GREEN ROSARY: PART THREE

130 THE FRUIT OF MARRIAGE

DEPARTMENTS

ContentsSPECIAL EDITION | ONE FLESH

Jaime + Jenny

special edition J.M.J. | 1

40Is He “Mr. Right”?

98

48SPECIAL EDITION | ONE FLESH

Daniel + Melyssa

Seth + Brigid

™

06 PROVIDENTIAL UNION

12 HE WHISPERED IN MY EAR

Jaime + Jenny40 IS HE “MR. RIGHT”?

Jason Evert48 WILL YOU LET ME SERVE YOU?

Seth + Brigid98 I WANT TO LEAD YOU TO HEAVEN

Daniel + Melyssa

FEATURES


was never the type of girl who dreamt of her wedding day, as most girls do. Yes, one day I did want to walk down the aisle and hear those wedding bells ring, but when it happened, it happened. With that, I never felt the pressure of not being married while my friends around me said their “I do’s.” I knew that there was more to this happily ever after. Marriage is a serious step in life and I felt confident that God would lead me down that path (or should I say aisle!) when the time was right for me. It wasn’t something to do just because everyone was doing it, as if it were a fad.

I am so thankful that I took that outlook, as it brought me peace and trust in God’s plan for my life. The adventure that God took me upon was a love story between the two of us! My time of being single allowed me to be strengthened in Christ before giving myself to another. I recommend this to all women before they get married, to allow Christ to reveal to you who you are in His eyes and just be…with Him.

The day did come when God finally brought a man into my life, a man worthy of my love. If you have read our previous issues of celestial, thenyou might have read the beginning of my love story and how it unfolded. We added those articles to this issue so that you may understand the story in its entirety. I, like many, have walked down the aisle dressed in white, giving myself to another to become One Flesh. This issue is a celestial Special Edition in jubilation of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. Through this sublime sacrament, Christ has made me new.

All things for Christ,

Melyssa Campbell Founder/Editor-in-Chief

[email protected]

message from the editor-in-chief

He makes all things new


“Then the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he was fast

asleep, He took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it. And the Lord

God built the rib which He took from Adam into a woman: and brought

her to Adam. And Adam said: This now is bone of my

bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman,

because she was taken out of man. Wherefore a man

shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his

wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.”

~ Genesis 2: 21-24


“Husbands and wives should live

peacefully in their union of marriage;

they should be mutually edifying to

each other, pray for one another, bear

patiently with one another’s faults,

encourage virtue in one another by

good example, and follow the holy

and sacred rules of their state,

remembering that they are the children

of the saints and that, consequently,

they ought not to behave like pagans,

who have not the happiness of knowing

the one true God.”

- St. John Marie Vianney


he whispered in my ear

Jenny + Jaime26 29


he whispered in my ear

Jenny + Jaime26 29

J U N E 1 5 T H , 2 0 1 3SACRED HEART CHURCH CATSKILL, NEW YORKPATRON OF MARRIAGE:T H E H O L Y F A M I L Y


Brides of Old

The Onewhen the one whose hand you’re holding

is the one who holds your heart when the one whose eyes you gaze into gives your hopes and dreams their start,when the one you think of first and last

is the one who holds you tight,and the things you plan together

make the whole world seem just right,when the one whom you believe in puts their faith and trust in you,

you’ve found the one and only loveyou’ll share your whole life through.

author unknown


?IS HE

“Mr. Right”


BYJason Evert


WILL YOU LET ME

Serve YOU?


&26 & 27

St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church

June 18, 2011

Patron of Marriage: St. Gianna Molla

Seth Brigid


We often hear stories about those couples, or at least of one of the spouses, who knew that they were destined to marry the second they saw one another. I always wondered if this was really possible…until it happened to me!

At the start of 2008, I began attending Mass regularly as I was considering becoming Catholic. I must have toured the entire Diocese of San Diego trying to discern if there was a certain parish and/or priest that I was meant to enter into the Church with. No matter where I went, however, I couldn’t get out of my mind that old Italian priest I once saw offer Mass. And so I ultimately decided to make the trip to Little Italy every Sunday for the 12pm Mass he celebrated.

It was at one of those Masses that I first saw her…this woman holding her little nephew. I knew that she was my wife the second I laid eyes upon her. I saw a love, a beauty that I had never seen before. As I looked at her, I could see a love in her heart that even she had no idea that she had – so beautiful, so intense, so caring, so tender. That was it – I was in love and I knew that this was the woman God wanted me to lead to Heaven. I knew that she would be the most amazing mother and her husband a most blessed man. Could that really be me? Did God place this in my heart the very second I saw her? The two of them – her and this little boy – were so completely in love. She adored this nephew, I could tell. I knew she was not his mother, but I saw from the way that she was holding him just what kind of mother she would be.

I now had even more reason to go to the 12pm Mass…in hopes that I would see her again! I sat in the same place in the same pew every single Sunday to be close to where she always sat. I went over and over in my head the ways that I could start a conversation with her, only to be too nervous to actually approach her. To think…I even almost wrote her a note to ask her out.

I then finally met Father Louis just before Easter and started receiving instruction from him to prepare for entering the Church. I had definitively realized that the Catholic Church was the one, true Church, and I needed to convert to enter into the fullness of Christianity’s intellectual,

by Daniel Campbell

wifeMy


sacramental, moral, and spiritual life. Father Louis and I would meet from then on every few weeks until I received the Sacraments of Confirmation and First Eucharist on August 31st. Each time we talked, I would go in with a number of questions scribbled on post-it-notes as they came to my head throughout the days. One of them was always to ask him about who this woman was, yet I could never bring myself to do so. He was the first priest I’d had any substantial conversation with, and I didn’t know if one could talk to priests about women! Little did I know that he would be the best possible person to talk to about such things! There is a modern notion that priests are not really in touch with the world, that they live such different lives from the ordinary person that they don’t

have much to say about the “real world” and can’t truly relate to us. In reality, there’s nobody better to talk to and who knows more than a priest who gives his life daily to serving those in the world.

As the months went by, I continued to flounder in my attempts to talk to her or ask Father Louis anything. And yet, providentially, Father Louis himself brought her up at one of our meetings without me having ever talked to him about her. He told me that he had a girl that he needed to introduce me to…the very same one! The woman that I was in love with, that I knew was my wife, turned out to be the very same woman Fr. Louis started to talk about?!? To think that I had gone to him for instruction having always written down a reminder to ask

him who this girl was, only to never follow through with it! And now he, on his own, was bringing her up…I thought surely this must mean something if my priest wants to bring me to this woman. Everything that I already knew was being confirmed.

Father Louis finally introduced us after Mass on August 24th, a full six months after I had first seen her. My Lord, what a woman! Finally, she was here before me, so full of love for Fr. Louis as she joked with him, so full of life with her great smile and laugh. A real woman that I could tell, just in this first meeting, was so strong, mature, faithful. The most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I loved her even more having finally met her. My wife…but does she know it? cm

My Wife https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8DdUASebA4

J&J Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFas0STAc-U


It was after Sunday Mass at Our Lady of the Rosary parish when Father Louis parted the crowd and, without saying a word, took my hand to introduce me to the “boy with the green Rosary”. He always attended the same Sunday Mass and sat in the same pew holding a green Rosary. There had been a great deal of talk between Father Louis and my sister in the weeks prior, both urging me to meet him. I, on the other hand, was leaving to return to Barcelona, where I had been living for the past two and a half years. In my mind, nothing was going to stop this plan. In fact, I was already interested in someone else back in Barcelona. But, if you know Father Louis, you never say “no” or “I can’t” to this insistent Italian who does all things with his heart full of love!

The moment of meeting that seemingly everyone was anticipating, except me, finally came (though deep down I did sometimes wonder…who was this boy with the green Rosary? And mustn’t that green Rosary be from an Irish girlfriend???). Still wearing my veil from Mass, Father Louis walked me up to him as he was praying in the pew. Father Louis said intently: “Daniel, stand up.” I will never forget how Father Louis took the place of a devoted father that day, introducing me to the man he thought worthy. Little did I know, but God’s plan was being fulfilled through Father Louis. A woman with a vocation to marriage never

by Melyssa Padilla

greenRosary

the boy with the

VeilSince the dawn of Christianity, women have always veiled themselves before the Blessed Sacrament as a sign of humility, purity, and modesty, veiling their beauty to focus all attention upon the worship of Beauty Itself.


knows how or when she is going to meet the one God has created for her, but when I look back on those moments when I first met Daniel, God couldn’t have started our love story in a more sacred way.

There is only one word to describe our first encounter: holy. Usually after Sunday Mass Fr. Louis will wait outside to greet his flock. Yet here Christ’s priest came right over to me and took my hands in his to introduce me to a guy…as I now think…little old me? Such a providential touch is the love of our Heavenly Father, the one who wants to be a part of every aspect of our lives. He is a living, personal God, not detached up above from the intimate details of our hearts. He wants to be part of our every-day lives. However, with my mind elsewhere on Barcelona, this was not exactly what I was thinking at the time!

As Daniel stood up and turned around, I thought, not…my…type! I know, superficial, it’s true! In my head I was certain I was looking for a foreign, adventurous man from Europe. Daniel appeared to be a very sweet boy, but, like I said, I was looking for a man! He seemed atypical to the men I found myself usually interested in and to what I felt I wanted for myself. For one, he lived in San Diego, me in Barcelona. And two, I’d made my own plans for my love story, and that man was somewhere in Europe riding a horse! We talked for about five minutes while everyone else watched, waiting to see if the Heavens were going to open and little cherubim angels were to come down to play their harps around us as a love match was being made. Ummm, no! Instead, I was making it clear to him that I was on a jet plane out of there in two weeks. In other words…no chance!

For him, his nervousness was loud and clear. I found out he was being received into the Catholic Church, the Bride of Christ, that following Sunday under the direction of Father Louis…so this is where Father Louis got the idea to introduce us! The conversation came and went. I could tell he fancied me, but I was not looking back. I did what I had to do: say hi, smile, and be cordial. I thought I could now say to God, and to Father Louis, that I did what they were asking of me, that I was open to their plan for my life. Thanks for the intention, but I had other ideas in mind. I thought the story was to end here, but God apparently had other plans... cm

Want to tell us about God’s grace working in your courtship…write in about how God began your love story! Email [email protected].


I Want to Lead You to Heaven


M&D

I Want to Lead You to Heaven

January 12, 2013

Holy Ghost Church

Patron of Marriage: St Joseph

Daniel & Melyssa


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