Archive for the 'Jesus Stuff' Category
Prayer of St. Francis
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
October 20 2009 | Jesus Stuff | No Comments »
Yesterday’s Zenit included this article referencing a letter from the Bishop of Sioux City, Iowa in which he cautions against “a hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” prevalent in the Roman Catholic Church as we interpret the documents of Vatican II. He comments:
It seems to me that in many areas of the Church’s life the “hermeneutic of discontinuity” has triumphed. It has manifested itself in a sort of dualism, an either/or mentality and insistence in various areas of the Church’s life: either fidelity to doctrine or social justice work, either Latin or English, either our personal conscience or the authority of the Church, either chant or contemporary music, either tradition or progress, either liturgy or popular piety, either conservative or liberal, either Mass or Adoration, either the Magisterium or theologians, either ecumenism or evangelization, either rubrics or personalization, either the Baltimore Catechism or “experience”; and the list goes on and on! We have always been a “both/and” people: intrinsically traditional and conservative in what pertains to the faith, and creative in pastoral ministry and engaging the world.
The bishop proposes five action items for his diocese that I think any diocese, parish, or person of faith should also consider:
- We must renew our reverence, love, adoration and devotion to the Most Blessed Sacrament, within and outside of Mass.
- We must strengthen catechesis on every level, beginning with and focusing on adults.
- We are called to protect, build up and foster holy families in our midst, without whom the Church and the world perish.
- If we renew the Eucharistic, catechetical, and family life of our diocese, we will simultaneously foster a culture where young people can more readily respond to the radical calls of ministerial priesthood and the consecrated life.
- We must acknowledge and embrace the missionary character of the Catholic Faith and the vocation of all Catholics to be, not only disciples, but also apostles.
With any call to cling to new things, there is a correlating call to let go of something. The Bishop suggests…
In order to strengthen our devotion to Christ in the Holy Eucharist and worship God rightly, we need to renounce any attachment to how we worship currently… To improve the spiritual depth of how we perform the Church’s liturgy, we will need to renounce attachment to worldly expectations and long-standing habits. To spend more time adoring Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, we need to renounce attachment to how we currently use our time. To deepen our intimate love for God in our hearts and heads, we need to renounce attachment to whatever is not God that is filling our hearts and heads. To live in more intentional and holy Catholic families, we need to renounce attachment to distractions, sins, and imperfections that harm our domestic churches. To accept the divine plan God has for each of us, we need to renounce attachment to our own plans. To change the world for Christ, we need to renounce attachment to how we want the world to be for ourselves.
October 20 2009 | Jesus Stuff | No Comments »
Caritas in veritate, Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, is released. Give it a read, I certainly plan to.
Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite.
July 07 2009 | Deacon Formation and Jesus Stuff | No Comments »
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:27-30
Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.
In his first apology (150AD ish), Justin Martyr wrote:
“We call this food Eucharist; and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true…”
Since Protestants do not believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist as Catholics do, they do not discern or recognize that Jesus’ body is present under the appearance of bread and wine. We would therefore, according to Paul, be allowing them to eat and drink judgment upon themselves.
The intention is to avoid giving occasion for sin to our Protestant brothers and sisters, with whom we enjoy a spiritual communion in the Body of Christ, although imperfectly. Sometimes interpreted as close-minded and mean-spirited, we mean it as an act of love.
June 10 2009 | Jesus Stuff | No Comments »
Joseph was always very conscious that he was in the presence of Jesus and Mary.
– Most Rev. Placido Rodriguez, CMF
And so should we all.
May 05 2009 | Jesus Stuff | No Comments »
I noticed this Easter how Jesus refers to us first as disciples/servants/slaves, then friends, and ultimately his brothers. I have noticed this progression in my own experience, but hadn’t previously recognized it so explicitly in the gospel. The theme seems to be consistent across all the gospels. I trace it here through John since that’s where I noticed it during our Lenten gospel readings, and since looking at a single gospel should avoid clouding the issue with stylistic or linguistic discrepancies between the various evangelists.
When Jesus first called his disciples, he called them as disciples, subject to his rule as their teacher. Jesus states the condition for entering this state of discipleship is to follow him, saying “Follow me” (John 1:43), and “If anyone serves me, he must follow me.” (John 12:26). In John 13:13-16, Jesus makes it clear, after having washed the disciple’s feet, that it is right to recognize him as Lord, and Master, saying
“You call me Master and Lord. And you say well: for so I am. If then I being your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also. Amen, amen, I say to you: The servant is not greater than his lord: neither is the apostle greater than he that sent him.”
We are not left in this state of servanthood, however, but progress ‘farther up and deeper in’ to become his friends. Jesus gives his great commandment, to love one another as he has loved us, then says that in obeying this commandment, we are not merely good servants, but that “You are my friends if you do what I command.” (John 15:13) What a strange master this is, that in obeying his commandment, we become his friends. Jesus underscores that this is not merely a hypothetical promise when he proceeds to say
“No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”
Or, in another translation,
“I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends. because all things, whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.”
This word friend is used the same way as in our culture, but I noticed it has another significance that is particularly important given that he is speaking to his apostles.
Friend (Philos – Strong 5384): a friend, an associate, a companion, or one of the bridegroom’s friends who on his behalf asked the hand of the bride and rendered him various services in closing the marriage and celebrating the nuptials
Is that not exactly the apostles’ calling? To ask for the hand of the bride of Christ, and to render him various services in sealing the marriage covenant?
It is hard to imagine that we could proceed from slave to a trusted friend and companion, but Jesus is not content to leave us even in this exalted state. He makes us his sisters and brothers.
“When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own.” (John 19:26-27)
In giving us his mother through John*, “The disciple whom he loved,” Jesus makes himself our brother. He has already dignified humanity by humbling himself to become man; now he again confirms his choice despite our rejection and betrayal of his love.
* Even for those hesitant about “the whole Mary thing,” the relation is clear. At the very least, setting aside the symbolism of Jesus giving Mary to the entire church through John, even the most Protestant can agree that the Apostle John is our brother in Christ, and therefore John’s mother is our mother. How it must grieve the heart of Jesus that so many of his brothers reject his and their own mother’s loving kindness, and refuse to allow her to interceed with him on their behalf.
April 27 2009 | Jesus Stuff | No Comments »
“In self-knowledge, then, you will humble yourself, seeing that, in yourself, you do not even exist; for your very being, as you will learn, is derived from Me, since I have loved both you and others before you were in existence; and that, through the ineffable love which I had for you, wishing to re-create you to Grace, I have washed you, and re-created you in the Blood of My only-begotten Son, spilt with so great a fire of love. This Blood teaches the truth to him, who, by self-knowledge, dissipates the cloud of self-love, and in no other way can he learn.”
–St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue
April 21 2009 | Jesus Stuff | No Comments »
Francis X. Maier presents a provocative article on InsideCatholic.com giving some additional perspective on the scandal (and it is a scandal) of sexual abuse by clergy as compared to that occurring in our public schools. Why is it we’re fixated on the scandal of clerical abuse, but blind to the far more prevalent occurrence of the same abuse in public schools? How is it that such a small percentage of perpetrators in the public school environment ever face prosecution, or even lose their teaching credentials? Are we so driven by greed that we’ve chosen to target the deep pockets of the Catholic Church? Pockets that are deep only because the faithful give faithfully? Are we being deliberately mislead by a media intent on destroying the Christian faith, and in love with secular public education as a tool easily manipulated in that aim to destroy faith and the institutions of religion?
He quotes Professor Charol Shakeshaft, who reported in 2006 “Of the approximately 45 million students attending public and private K-12 schools, more than 3 million will have been the target of physical sexual exploitation by an employee of the school by eleventh grade… These 3 million [victims] include only students who have been the target of sexual abuse that includes touching. This number does not include adults who show students pornography, who expose themselves, or who direct other forms of visual and verbal sexual abuse at children. I’m only talking about sexual abuse actions that include forced touch. If those [other abusive] actions are added, the number of students nationwide is 4.5 million.”
Maier points out that even if you were to assume the data is off by half, the scope of public school sexual abuse involves many hundreds of thousands of students and eclipses anything in the Catholic clergy.
The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus also has some comments relevant and interest. They are primarily in his columns for First Things, and are collected for easy reference at http://richardjneuhaus.blogspot.com/. He points out that the number of abuse cases reported in the public school systems in one year 1998) is ten times greater than those reported in the church or by clergy from 1950 to 2003.
It’s worth a read, and some serious consideration. By no means is sexual abuse ever acceptable, nor are we excused from guilt by virtue of being in bad company, but is there an agenda other than justice for the abused driving the selective prosecution of the real and alleged perpetrators of abuse?
April 21 2009 | Jesus Stuff | No Comments »
In class this morning, Monsignor James asked why does the Creed of Nicea say “the third day he rose again?”
The creed as expressed by the First Council of Nicea (A.D. 325)
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten (γεννηθέντα), not made, being of one substance (ὁμοούσιον, consubstantialem) with the Father. By whom all things were made, both which be in heaven and in earth. Who for us men and for our salvation came down [from heaven] and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the third day he rose again, and ascended into heaven. And he shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead. And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost. And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not (ἤν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν), or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he was made of things that were not, or that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion — all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them.
Looking first at the English (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/again), we see in the American Heritage dictionary again doesn’t mean only “a subsequent time,”
- Once more; anew: Try again.
- To a previous place, position, or state: left home but went back again.
- Furthermore; moreover: Again, we need to collect more data.
- On the other hand: She might go, and again she might not.
- In return; in response: paid him again.
In this case, “again” indicates “to a previous place, position, or state”, or “anew”. Jesus was returning to his original state of being alive.
We use this in common language as well, as in “I tripped and fell, but picked myself up again, dusted off my knees, and looked around to see who might have noticed.”
This seems to be consistent with my VERYrudimentary understanding of the Latin and original Greek.
April 18 2009 | Deacon Formation and Jesus Stuff | 1 Comment »
“We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God; for, beholding His greatness, we realize our own littleness; His purity shows us our foulness; and by meditating upon His humility we find how very far we are from being humble.”
St. Theresa of Avila (Interior Castle)
April 17 2009 | Jesus Stuff | 1 Comment »
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