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Our Lady of Kibeho Novena Starts Today!

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This morning I was praying and looked at my icon of the Blessed Mother, Our Lady of Kibeho. As you may know, I have developed a devotion to this apparition of Our Lady, and was reminded of the date. I checked my calendar, and the 30th anniversary of her first appearance to the visionaries of Kibeho, Rwanda is on November 28, 2021, which is also the First Sunday of Advent. When she appeared to the visionaries, she called herself Nyina Wa Jambo, or Mother of the Word.

My beautiful Our Lady of Kibeho icon by Aleksandra. Please support her beautiful ministry!

I urge all of you and your families and friends to join me starting today in doing a Novena to Our Lady of Kibeho. I could not find an existing novena but I did find this prayer on the Kibeho Shrine’s website by Bishop Augustin Misago, who investigated and approved of the apparitions, which I will be using:

“Prayer to our Lady of Kibeho (N° 2)

Lord our God,
we thank you for the good things which you always give,
and your infinite goodness in sending us the Blessed Virgin Mary,
mother of the Word so that she may come to bring us back to the good path
that Jesus Christ your Son showed us.
She asked us to repent,
to confess our sins and to pray without hypocrisy.
However we have disobeyed,
hardened our hearts, and this has been the source of our misfortune.
Thus, Lord our God, we beseech you through Jesus Christ your Son,
to have mercy on us and forgive us.

Lord, have mercy on us (3 times while striking the chest)

And you our mother,
Virgin Marie mother of the Word,
we thank you for having accomplished the mission of God,
for your patience toward us in suffering
by shedding lots of tears
when you saw that we refused to receive the message that you brought.
But, from this time, we commit ourselves
to be faithful children by doing all that the Lord tells us,
by following the advice that you gave us here at Kibeho,
and by fortifying the love to transform ourselves
into beautiful flowers whose scent is pleasant everywhere for everyone.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Word, pray for us!”

In addition to the Novena prayer, I am going to say a Rosary as well as the Seven Sorrows Rosary, which Our Lady instructed the visionaries to pray, each day.

If you want to know more about Our Lady of Kibeho, I urge you to check out this link to the Marian Fathers who have a mission near the Shrine, or watch this documentary. 

Last of the Projectionists: “The Wolf of Wall Street” is Not the End of 35mm Film

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A few days ago, a story from the L.A. Times announced Paramount Pictures had become the first Hollywood movie studio to release a film in an all-digital format. No 35mm copies were produced. What is even more interesting was that the film- “The Wolf of Wall Street-” was directed by Martin Scorsese, one of the highest-profile proponents of film preservation. Has the “end of film” arrived? While it certainly looks grim for film, I believe that it will survive.

I am a film buff and a filmmaker. I have also been a film archivist and a projectionist during the last decade when 35mm was the main format for commercially releasing films in movie theatres.

The way films are going to be released, and the public is going to see them has completely changed in the last five years, and not always for the better. Sure you can see live events in movie theatres but the sound and picture quality are not the same as 35mm. I am certain that just as records nearly died but did not because there were aficionados who kept the format alive long enough for a new generation to discover it, so will film.

I will continue to write about the topic of the transition of 35mm to digital in movie theatres in this space. In particular, I will look for stories from the perspective of the projectionists and the theatres on the margins that may not be able to/don’t want to make the transition, the aesthetics of film and moviegoing, and why this matters in the 21st century.