Have you thought much about the terrific connection between the Blessed Mother and the Holy Spirit? There is an ever stronger interest in my heart that is building in me to experience more fully this intimacy, this desire of the Lord that is known in the heart of Mary. I mentioned it the other day by suggesting using some of the mysteries of the rosary to allow us to consider that intimacy between the Divine and the human. The Pope gave the follow meditation yesterday evening, the Vigil of Pentecost:

I greet all of you with affection at the end of the traditional Marian vigil that concludes the month of May in the Vatican. This year it has acquired a very special value since it falls on the eve of Pentecost. Gathering together, spiritually recollected before the Virgin Mary, contemplating the mysteries of the Holy Rosary, you have relived the experience of the first disciples, gathered together in the room of the Last Supper with "the Mother of Jesus," "persevering and united in prayer" awaiting the coming of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14). We too, in this penultimate evening of May, from the Vatican hill, ask for the pouring out of the Spirit Paraclete upon us, upon the Church that is in Rome and upon the whole Christian people.

The great Feast of Pentecost invites us to meditate upon the relationship between the Holy Spirit and Mary, a very close, privileged, indissoluble relationship. The Virgin of Nazareth was chosen beforehand to become the Mother of the Redeemer by the working of the Holy Spirit: in her humility, she found grace in God's eyes (cf. Luke 1:30). In effect, in the New Testament we see that Mary's faith "draws," so to speak, the Holy Spirit. First of all in the conception of the Son of God, which the archangel Gabriel explains in this way: "The Holy Spirit will descend upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you" (Luke 1:35). Immediately afterward Mary went to help Elizabeth, and when her greeting reached Elizabeth's ears, the Holy Spirit made the child jump in the womb of her elderly cousin (cf. Luke 1:44); and the whole dialogue between the two mothers is inspired by the Spirit of God, above all the "Magnificat," the canticle of praise with which Mary expresses her sentiments. The whole event of Jesus' birth and his early childhood is guided in an almost palpable manner by the Holy Spirit, even if he is not always mentioned. Mary's heart, in perfect consonance with the divine Son, is the temple of the Spirit of truth, where every word and every event are kept in faith, hope and charity (cf. Luke 2:19, 51).

We can thus be certain that the most Sacred Heart of Jesus, in his whole hidden life in Nazareth, always found a "hearth" that was always burning with prayer and constant attention to the Holy Spirit in Mary's Immaculate Heart. The wedding feast at Cana is a witness to this singular harmony between Mother and Son in seeking God's will. In a situation like the wedding feast, charged with symbols of the covenant, the Virgin Mary intercedes and, in a certain sense, provokes, a sign of superabundant divine grace: the "good wine" that points to mystery of the Blood of Christ. This leads us directly to Calvary, where Mary stands under the cross with the other women and the Apostle John. Together the Mother and the disciple spiritually taken in Jesus' testament: his last words and his last breath, in which he begins to send out the Spirit; and they take in the silent crying out of his Blood, poured out completely for us (cf. John 19:25-34). Mary knew where the blood came from: it was formed in her by the work of the Holy Spirit, and she knew that this same creative "power" would raise Jesus up, as he promised.

In this way Mary's faith sustains the faith of the disciples until the meeting with the risen Lord, and will continue to accompany them even after his ascension into heaven, as they await the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" (cf. Acts 1:5). At Pentecost, the Virgin Mary appears again as Bride of the Spirit, having a universal maternity with respect to those who are born from God through faith in Christ. This is why Mary is for all generations the image and model of the Church, who together with the Holy Spirit journeys through time invoking Christ's glorious return: "Come, Lord Jesus" (cf. Revelation 22:17, 20).

Dear friends, in Mary's school we too learn to recognize the Holy Spirit's presence in our life, to listen to his inspirations and to follow them with docility. He makes us grown in the fullness of Christ, in those good fruits that the apostle Paul lists in the Letter to the Galatians: "Love, joy, peace, magnanimity, benevolence, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control (5:22). I hope that you will be filled with these gifts and will always walk with Mary according to the Spirit and, as I express my praise for your participation in this evening celebration, I impart my Apostolic Benediction to all of you from my heart.

Each of the three Divine Persons is holy, and each is a spirit, and we give the name "Holy Spirit" to the Third Person precisely because He is all that the Father and the Son have 

common -their divinity, their charity, their blessedness, their delight in each other, their holiness and their spiritual nature. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Son, proceeding from both, and He is the unity and charity of them both. The Holy Spirit is so completely, so truly, God's gift that unless someone has the Holy Spirit, he has none of God's gift, and whoever has any of them, has them only in the Holy Spirit. Many things are given to us through the Holy Spirit, but they are valueless if the chief gift of charity is lacking. And the reason why the Holy Spirit is called "Gift of God" is because "the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us."

Nothing is more excellent than this gift, which ultimately differentiates between the children of the kingdom and the children of darkness. Even if all the other gifts are lacking, charity will take us to the kingdom of God. Although faith can exist without charity, only the faith that works through love can have any value. The Holy Spirit is the charity of the Father and the Son, by means of which they love each other. He is the unity in virtue of which they are one. When he is given to us, he enkindles in our hearts the love of God and of one another. This same love, living in our hearts, is the love by which God is love.

This is "the Spirit of the Lord which fills the whole world" with his all-powerful goodness, appointing a perfect harmony among all creatures, and filling them all with the vast riches of his grace, according to the capacity of each. It is he who teaches us to pray as we ought, making us cleave to God, rendering us pleasing to God and not unworthy to have our prayers answered. He enlightens our minds and forms love in our hearts. All this is the work of the Holy Spirit. We may even call it his own special work, if we remember that he is sufficient for this task only because he can never be separated from the Father and the Son.

William of Saint Thierry

Come, Holy Ghost, send down those beams,

which sweetly flow in silent streams

from Thy bright throne above.

O come, Thou Father of the poor;

O come, Thou source of all our store,

come, fill our hearts with love.

O Thou, of comforters the best,

O Thou, the soul's delightful guest,

the pilgrim's sweet relief.

Rest art Thou in our toil, most sweet

refreshment in the noonday heat;

and solace in our grief.

O blessed Light of life Thou art;

fill with Thy light the inmost heart

of those who hope in Thee.

Without Thy Godhead nothing can,

have any price or worth in man,

nothing can harmless be.

Lord, wash our sinful stains away,

refresh from heaven our barren clay,

our wounds and bruises heal.

To Thy sweet yoke our stiff necks bow,

warm with Thy fire our hearts of snow,

our wandering feet recall.

Grant to Thy faithful, dearest Lord,

whose only hope is Thy sure word,

the sevenfold gifts of grace.

Grant us in life Thy grace that we,

in peace may die and ever be,

in joy before Thy face. Amen. Alleluia.

This hymn, Veni, Sancte Spiritus, also known as the Golden Sequence, is the poetic text (a sequence) for the Mass for Pentecost. It is sung after the Epistle and before the Alleluia antiphon. It is regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces of sacred Latin poetry. The hymn has been attributed to three different authors, King Robert II-the Pious of France (970-1031), Pope Innocent III (1161-1216), and Stephen Langton (d. 1228), Archbishop of Canterbury. Archbishop Stephen is most likely the author. The inclusion of this hymn in the sacred Liturgy is noted in the mid-12th century or so and sung from Pentecost through the Octave. When the renewal of the Liturgy happened following the Second Vatican Council the Octave of Pentecost was suspended and the sequence limited to Pentecost Sunday.

For the most part, the time for priestly diaconal ordinations have come and gone. Where I am for the summer, a newly ordained priest is due to arrive in a few days. Having heard plenty of ordination homilies over the years none are as insightful as Benedict XVI's especially when he proposes a plan to be spiritually fit. Of course, all what is said is not restricted to priests but applicable to the laity as well. All of us reading this post are familiar with all the points made about developing a prayer life and seeing them together constitutes a serious plan. Father Mark draws our attention to one item that is near-and-dear to many of us: lectio divina. I am re-posting a portion of Father Mark's recent May blog entry because I think it's helpful.

What is Father Everypriest's daily Rule of Prayer according to Pope Benedict XVI? Let's consider the elements of the Rule in the order in which the Holy Father presents them.

1) Daily Holy Mass. Daily. Not 6 days week, not 5, or 4 days a week, but daily. The liturgical cycle in its hourly, daily, weekly, and yearly rhythms is given us precisely to facilitate our "abiding" in Christ hour by hour, day by day, week by week, and year after year. Integral to the liturgical cycle is daily Holy Mass. The Eucharistic Sacrifice sends the divine lifeblood coursing through one's spiritual organism. Without daily Mass, the priest will succumb to spiritual anemia.

2) The Liturgy of the Hours. The Hours give rhythm and grace to daily life. They are a school of discipline (discipleship), a supernatural system of irrigation channeling grace into every moment of the day, a privileged way of offering thanks in communion with all who, "in heaven, on earth, and under the earth," confess the Name of Jesus and bend the knee before Him. A priest who loves the Divine Office will enjoy an interior life that is sane, and sound, and wholly ecclesial. Fidelity to the Divine Office refines the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, sharpens one's discernment, and imparts to everything the priest does a certain Eucharistic and doxological quality.

3) Eucharistic Adoration. Are you surprised? Eucharistic adoration has known a kind of springtime since The Year of the Eucharist (2004-2005) that was also the year of the death of Pope John Paul II and of the election of Pope Benedict XVI. Two Americans known for loving their brother priests and ministering to them tirelessly -- Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen and Father Gerald Fitzgerald of the Holy Spirit -- insisted on a daily hour before the Blessed Sacrament as a sine qua non of priestly spirituality. The priest who adores the Blessed Sacrament exposes his weaknesses and wounds to the healing radiance of the Eucharistic Face of Jesus. Moreover, he abides before the Eucharistic Face of Jesus as the representative of his people: of the sick, the poor, the bereaved, and of those locked in spiritual combat. The priest who looks to the Eucharistic Face of Jesus, and draws near to His Open Heart in the Sacrament of the Altar, will, just as the psalm says, be radiant, and he will not be put to shame.

4) Lectio Divina. Again -- a monastic thing? No, a Catholic thing. The quality of a priest's preaching is directly proportionate to his commitment to lectio divina. Neglect of lectio divina leads to mediocre preaching. Opening the Scriptures is like opening the tabernacle: therein the priest finds the "hidden manna" his soul craves. The four steps of lectio divina can be accommodated to any length of time: 1) lectio, i.e. the Word heard; 2) meditatio, i.e. the Word repeated; 3) oratio, i.e. the Word prayed; 4) contemplatio; i.e. the indwelling Word. Lectio divina cannot be occasional; it is not a random pursuit. Learn to say, "I am not available." Get over feeling guilty about taking time for God!

5) Holy Rosary. Yes, the daily Rosary. It's a spiritual lifeline that has saved many a priest from spiritual shipwreck. The brilliant and holy exegete and founder of the École biblique in Jerusalem, Father Marie-Joseph Lagrange, was observed praying fifteen mysteries of the Rosary each day, and asked, "Why, Father, do you, a great exegete, need to pray the Rosary?" "Because, " he answered, "it decapitates pride." I would add that not only does the Rosary decapitate pride; it decapitates each of the seven capital sins: pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. With the passing of the years I have come to appreciate the profound wisdom of an old Dominican priest to whom I used to make my confession years ago. Invariably, after confessing my miseries, Father would ask, "Do you say the Rosary, son?" And invariably I would reply, "Yes, Father." And then he would say, "Aye, then you'll be alright." A priest who prays the Rosary daily will be alright and, almost imperceptibly, will grow in purity and humility.

6) Meditation. Meditation can mean many things, even within our Catholic tradition. It is integral to the prayerful celebration of Holy Mass and the Hours. "it nourishes Eucharistic adoration. It is the second "moment" of lectio divina. It is the soul of the Rosary. In my own experience, meditation is related to "remembering the things the Lord has done." Saint Gertrude the Great, a model of the mystical life grounded in the liturgy, used to say, "A grace remembered is a grace renewed." Understood in this sense, meditation, by recalling the mercies of the Lord in the past, infuses the present with hope, and allows the priest to go forward with a holy boldness.

Is it necessary to set a period of time apart for meditation as such? That depends on whom you ask. The Carmelite, Jesuit and Sulpician traditions would hold fast to some form of meditation as a daily exercise. The monastic tradition has, on the whole, taken a more supple approach to meditation. It is a daily practice, but one diffused in every form of prayer, including the liturgy itself. One learns to pace one's prayer, to pause, to breathe, to linger over a phrase, a word, or an image. Whether one espouses the Ignatian way or the monastic approach, meditation is an integral to every priest's daily Rule of Prayer.

The Holy Spirit makes the Christian experience truly Catholic and universal, open to all human experience. To be Catholic is to be universal and open to the world. Not only to Canada, North America Europe or Asia, or a certain familiar part of the world or segment of society, but it must be open to all, to every single person. The mind of Christ is not intended to be a selective mentality for a few but the perspective from which the whole world will be renewed and redeemed. An insight like this, the universal scope of salvation did not however come easily and without much pain and confusion.

In fact, the whole of the New Testament can be understood precisely as the emergence of the Catholic, the universal, in Christian life. Christianity, had it not moved from where it was particular and small would have just been a small modification of the Jewish experience, a subset of Jewish piety that was still focused in and around Jerusalem and the restoration of a literal kingdom of Israel. The first two generations of Christians discovered that Christianity could not be just that. Because they had received the Holy Spirit, which is the universal principle, the Holy Spirit opened peoples' eyes to the universal import of the Christian truth and through the encounter with non-Jews who received the Holy Spirit.

The artists of the Middle Ages often contrasted the Tower of Babel with the "Tower" of the Upper Room. Babel symbolizes the divisions of people caused by sin. Pentecost stands for a hope that such separations are not a tragic necessity. The babbling mob of Babel compares poorly with the heartfelt unity of the Pentecost crowd. Babel was a mob. Pentecost was a community. A people without God lost the ability to communicate. A people suffused with the Spirit spoke heart to heart.

At Pentecost the full meaning of Jesus' life and message is poured into our hearts by the Spirit alive in the community. The New Testament seems to say that - for a fleeting moment - the nations of the earth paused from their customary strife and experienced a community caused by God. The brief and shining hour of Pentecost remains to charm and encourage us to this day.

These paragraphs come from Basilian Father Thomas Rosica's essay on the Pentecost scriptures published on Zenit.org for May 28, 2009. Father Rosica is the executive director of Salt and Light TV. A video on Pentecost can be seen here.

The Suscipe prayer of Saint Ignatius of Loyola is a regular part of my spiritual regimen --and it has been so for many years-- because it reminds me of the total abandonment to God's will that I want to live. I offer the prayer here in English and Latin for your convenience. It is a perfect part of morning prayer.

Receive, O Lord, all my liberty. Take my memory, my understanding, and my entire will. Whatsoever I have or possess Thou hast bestowed upon me; I give it all back to Thee and surrender it wholly to be governed by Thy Will. Give me love for Thee alone along with Thy grace, and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more.

Suscipe, Domine, universam meam libertatem. Accipe memoriam, intellectum, atque voluntatem omnem. Quidquid habeo vel possideo mihi largitus es; id tibi totum restituo, ac tuae prorsus voluntati trado gubernandum. Amorem tui solum cum gratia tua mihi dones, et dives sum satis, hec aliud quidquam ultra posco.

(Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises)

O God, Who by the preaching and wondrous deeds of blessed Augustine, Thy Confessor and Bishop, did vouchsafe to enlighten the English nation with the light of true faith; grant that his intercession the hearts  of the erring may return to the unity of Thy truth, and that we may be one mind in doing Thy holy will.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604), was the first bishop of Canterbury, sent by Pope Saint Gregory the Great to evangelize the pagan English peoples.

Saint Augustine had been a monk of Saint Gregory's monastery on the Caelian Hill in Rome. In 595/596  he was sent to England first as the abbot of a group of monks. He established himself at Canterbury, the capital of the then powerful Kingdom of Kent, and in time baptized King Ethelbert.

Augustine is credited for laying the very foundation of the Ecclesia Anglicana because of his pastoral vision. That he was a close associate to Gregory the Great one thinks that the friendship had some role in the former's zeal for the Kingdom. Augustine's method of evangelizing England was not notable: he sent missionaries to all parts of England --how else would you preach the Gospel. But what was notable was his establishing Benedictine monastic life there, especially adjacent to the cathedral. So, looking at English ecclesial life you will notice the pattern of cathedrals have abbeys attached to them.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let all men know your forbearance. The Lord is at hand.

Father, You continually raise up Your faithful to the glory of holiness. In Your love kindle in us the fire of the Holy Spirit who so filled the heart of Philip Neri.

More information about the charism of Saint Philip Neri and the Oratorians may be found here and here.

Almost at the end of my visit today, I am particularly pleased to pause in this sacred place, in this abbey, four times destroyed and rebuilt, the last time after the bombings of World War II, 65 years ago. "Succisa virescit" [in defeat we are strengthened; when cut down, this tree grows again]: the words of its new coat of arms represent well its history. Monte Cassino, just as the secular oak tree planted by St. Benedict, was "pruned" by the violence of war, but has risen more vigorous. More than once I also have had the opportunity to enjoy the hospitality of the monks, and in this abbey I spent many unforgettable hours of quiet and prayer. This evening we entered singing "Laudes Regiae" together to celebrate the Vespers of the Solemnity of the Ascension of Jesus. To each of you I express the joy of sharing this moment of prayer, greeting everyone with affection, grateful for the welcome that you have reserved for me and those who accompany me in this apostolic pilgrimage.

In particular, I greet Abbot Dom Pietro Vittorelli, who has made himself the spokesman of your common sentiments. I extend my greetings to the abbots, the abbesses, and to the Benedictine communities present here. Today the liturgy invites us to contemplate the mystery of the Ascension of the Lord. In the brief reading taken from the first letter of Peter, we were urged to fix our gaze on our Redeemer, who died "once and for all for sins" in order to lead us back to God, at whose right hand he sits "after having ascended to heaven and having obtained sovereignty over the angels and the principalities and the powers" (cf. 1 Pt 3, 18.22). "Raised on high" and made invisible to the eyes of his disciples, Jesus has not however abandoned them, but was: in fact, "put to death in the body, but made to live in the spirit" (1 Pt 3:18). He is now present in a new way, inside the believers, and in him salvation is offered to every human being without distinction of people, language, or culture. The first letter of Peter contains specific references to the fundamental Christological events of the Christian faith. The Apostle's intention is to highlight the universal scope of salvation in Christ. A similar desire we find in St. Paul, of whom we are celebrating the two thousandth anniversary of his birth, who to the community of Corinth, writes: "He (Christ) died for all, so that those who live, live no longer for themselves but for him, who has died and is risen for them." (2 Cor 5, 15).

To live no longer for themselves but for Christ: this is what gives full meaning to the lives of those that let themselves be conquered by him. The human and spiritual journey of St. Benedict attests to this clearly, he who, leaving all things behind, dedicated himself to the faithful following of Jesus. Embodying in his own life the reality of the Gospel, he has become the founder of a vast movement of spiritual and cultural renaissance in the West. I would now like to refer to an extraordinary event of his life, which the biographer St. Gregory the Great relates, and with which you are certainly well acquainted. One could almost say that the holy patriarch was "lifted up" in an indescribable mystical experience. On the night of October 29 of the year 540 -- reads the biography -- and, facing the window, "with his eyes fixed on the stars he recollected himself in divine contemplation, the saint felt that his heart was inflamed ... For him, the star filled firmament was like the embroidered curtain that revealed the Holy of Holies. At one point, he felt his soul felt itself carried to the other side of the veil, to contemplate the revealed face of him who dwells in inaccessible light" (cf. AI Schuster, History of Saint Benedict and his time, Ed Abbey Viboldone, Milan, 1965, p. 11 et seq.). Of course, similar to what happened to Paul after his heavenly rapture, St. Benedict, following this extraordinary spiritual experience, also found it necessary to start a new life. If the vision was transient, the effects were lasting, his very character -- the biographers say -- was changed, his appearance always remained calm and his behavior angelic, and even while he was living on earth, he understood that in his heart he was already in heaven.

St. Benedict received this gift of God not to satisfy his intellectual curiosity, but rather because the charism with which God had endowed him had the ability to reproduce in the monastery the very life of heaven and reestablish the harmony of creation through contemplation and work. Rightly, therefore, the Church venerates him as an "eminent teacher of the monastic life" and "doctor of spiritual wisdom in the love of prayer and work; shining guide of people in the light of the Gospel" who, "raised to heaven by a luminous road" teaches people of all ages to seek God and the eternal riches prepared by him (cf. Preface of the Holy in the monastery to the MR, 1980, 153).

Yes, Benedict was a shining example of holiness and pointed the monks to Christ as their only great ideal; he was a master of civility, who proposed a balanced and adequate vision of the demands of God and of the final ends of man; he also always kept well in mind the needs and the reasons of the heart, in order to teach and inspire a genuine and constant brotherhood, so that in the complexity of social relationships the unity of spirit capable of always building and maintaining peace was never lost sight of. It is not by chance that the word Pax [peace] is the word that welcomes pilgrims and visitors at the gates of the abbey, rebuilt after the terrible disaster of the Second World War, which stands as a silent reminder to reject all forms of violence in order to build peace: in families, within communities, between peoples and all of humanity. St. Benedict invites every person that climbs this mount to seek peace and follow it: "inquire pacem et sequere eam" [seek peace and follow it.] (Ps. 33,14-15) (Rule, Prologue, 17).

By its example, monasteries have become, over the centuries, centers of fervent dialogue, encounter and beneficial union of diverse peoples, unified by the evangelical culture of peace. The monks have known how to teach by word and example the art of peace, implementing in a concrete way the three "ties" that Benedict identifies as necessary to maintain the unity of the Spirit among men: the cross, which is the very law of Christ, the book which is culture, and the plow, which indicates work, the lordship over matter and time. Thanks to the activity of the monastery, articulated in the three-fold daily commitments of prayer, study and work, entire populations of Europe have experienced a genuine redemption and a beneficial moral, spiritual and cultural development, learning in the spirit of continuity with the past, of concrete action for the common good, and of openness to God and the transcendent aspect of the world. We pray that Europe always exploit this wealth of principles and Christian ideals, which constitutes an immense cultural and spiritual wealth.

This is possible but only if the constant teaching of St. Benedict is embraced, the "quaerere Deum," to seek God, as the fundamental commitment of man. Human beings cannot achieve full self-realization or ever be truly happy without God. It is your special responsibility, dear monks, to be living examples of this interior and profound relationship with him, implementing without compromise the program that your founder summarized in the "nihil amori Christi praeponere" [put nothing before the love of Christ.] (Rule 4.21). In this holiness consists, a valid proposal for every Christian, more than ever in our time, in which the need to anchor life and history to solid spiritual principles is felt. Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, your vocation is as timely as ever, and your mission as monks is indispensable.

From this place, where his mortal remains rest, the patron saint of Europe continues to urge everyone to continue his work of evangelization and human promotion. I encourage you in the first place, dear brethren, to remain faithful to the spirit of your origins and to be authentic interpreters of this program of social and spiritual rebirth. The Lord grants you this gift, through the intercession of your holy founder, of his holy sister St. Scholastica, and of the saints of your order. And may the heavenly Mother of the Lord, who today we invoke as "Help of Christians," watch over you and protect this abbey and all your monasteries, as well as the diocesan community that lives around Monte Cassino. Amen!

Pope Benedict XVI, Homily at Vespers II, The Abbey of Monte Cassino, May 24, 2009

Pope Benedict, as noted before, celebrated the Mass for the diocese of Montecassino on May 24th. As previous popes had done so Benedict XVI made a pilgrimage to the place of Saints Benedict and Scholastica. His homily follows: 

"You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). With these words Jesus bids farewell to the Apostles, as we heard in the first reading. Immediately afterward the sacred author adds that "as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight" (Acts 1:9). Today we are solemnly celebrating the mystery of the Ascension. But what does the Bible and the liturgy intend to communicate to us in saying that Jesus "was lifted up"? We will not understand the meaning of this expression from a single text, nor from one book of the New Testament, but in carefully listening to the whole of Sacred Scripture. The use of the verb "to lift" is in effect Old Testament in origin and it referred to an installation in royalty. Christ's ascension thus means, in the first place, the installation of the crucified and risen Son of Man in God's royal dominion over the world.

There is a deeper meaning, however, that is not immediately graspable. The passage from the Acts of the Apostles says first that Jesus was "lifted up" (1:9), and afterward it adds that "he was assumed" (1:11). The event is not described as a voyage up above, but rather as an action of God's power, which introduces Jesus into the space of nearness to the divine. The presence in the clouds that "took him from their sight" (1:9) recalls a very ancient image of Old Testament theology and inserts the Ascension into the history of God with Israel, from the clouds of Sinai and above the tent of the covenant, to the luminous clouds on the mountain of the Transfiguration. Presenting the Lord wreathed in clouds definitively evokes the same mystery expressed in the symbolism of "sitting at the right hand of God." In Christ ascended into heaven, man has entered in a new and unheard of way into the intimacy of God; man now finds space in God forever. "Heaven" does not indicate a place beyond the stars but something more bold and sublime: it indicates Christ himself, the divine Person that completely and forever takes on humanity, he in whom God and man are united forever. And we draw near to heaven, indeed, we enter into heaven, to the extent that we draw near to Jesus and enter into communion with him. For this reason, today's Solemnity of the Ascension invites us to a profound communion with Jesus dead and risen, invisibly present in the life of each of us.

In this perspective we understand why the evangelist Luke says that, after the Ascension, the disciples returned to Jerusalem "full of joy" (24:52). They are joyful because what happened was not a separation: in fact now they had the certainty that the crucified and risen Christ was alive, and in him the gates of eternal life were opened forever. In other words, the Ascension did not begin Christ's temporary absence from the world but inaugurated instead the new, definitive and insuppressible form of his presence, by virtue of his participation in the royal power of God. It will belong to them, to the disciples, emboldened by the power of the Holy Spirit, to make his presence felt with their witness, preaching and missionary commitment. The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord should fill us also with serenity and enthusiasm like the Apostles, who returned from the Mount of Olives "full of joy." Like them, we too, accepting the invitation of the two men "dressed in white garments," must not stay looking up at the sky, but, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we must go everywhere and proclaim the salvific message of the death and resurrection of Christ. His own words -- with which the Gospel according Matthew concludes: "And behold I am with you all days until the end of the world" (Matthew 28:19) -- accompany and comfort us.

Dear brothers and sisters, the historical character of the mystery of the resurrection and ascension of Christ helps us to recognize and to understand the transcendent and eschatological condition of the Church, which was not born and does not live to take the place of the Lord who has "disappeared" but which finds its reason for being in his mission and in the invisible presence of Jesus working with the power of his Spirit. In other words, we could say that the Church does not carry out the function of preparing for the return of an "absent" Jesus, but, on the contrary, lives and works to proclaim his "glorious presence" in an historical and existential manner. Since the day of the Ascension, every Christian community advances in its earthly journey toward the fulfillment of the messianic promises, fed by the Word of God and nourished by Body and Blood of its Lord. This is the condition of the Church -- the Second Vatican Council says -- as she "presses forward amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God, announcing the cross and death of the Lord until he comes" (Lumen Gentium, 8).

Brothers and sisters of this dear diocesan community, today's solemnity calls on us to reinvigorate our faith in the real presence of Jesus; without him we cannot do anything of value in our life or apostolate. It is he, as the Apostle Paul recalls in the second reading, who "made some apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ," that is, the Church. And he does this so that "we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature to manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ" (Ephesians 4:11-13, 14). My visit today is situated in this context. As your pastor noted, the purpose of this visit is to encourage you constantly to "build, found and rebuild" your diocesan community on Christ. How? St. Benedict himself points the way, recommending in his Rule to put nothing before Christ: "Christo nihil omnino praeponere" (LXII, 11).

This is why I thank God for the good that your community is accomplishing under the leadership of your pastor, Father Abbot Dom Pietro Vittorelli, whom I greet with affection and thank for the kind words that he spoke to me on behalf of everyone. Together with him, I greet the monastic community, the bishops, the priests and the men and women religious who are present. I greet the civil and military authorities, in the first place the mayor, to whom I am grateful for the speech with which he welcomed me in here in Piazza Miranda, which will afterwards bear my name. I greet the catechists, the pastoral workers, the young people and those who in various ways are overseeing the spreading of the Gospel in this land rich with history, which experienced moments of great suffering during the Second World War. The many cemeteries that surround your resort city are a silent witness of this. Among these, I think particularly of the Polish, German and Commonwealth cemeteries. Finally I extend my greeting to all the citizens of Cassino and the nearby towns: to each, especially to the sick and suffering, I assure my affection and my prayer.

Dear brothers and sisters, we hear St. Benedict's call echo in this celebration of ours, to keep our hearts fixed on Christ and put nothing before him. This does not distract us but on the contrary moves us even more to commit ourselves to the building up of a society where solidarity is expressed in concrete signs. But how? Benedictine spirituality, which you know well, proposes an evangelical program synthesized in the motto: "ora et labora et lege" -- "prayer, work, culture." First of all prayer, which is the most beautiful legacy that St. Benedict left the monks, but also to your local Church: to your clergy -- most of whom were formed in the diocesan seminary, for centuries housed in the Abbey of Monte Cassino itself -- to the seminarians, to the many who were educated in the Benedictine schools and recreation programs and in your parishes, to all of you who live in this land. Looking up from every village and district of the diocese, you can all admire that constant reminder of heaven that is the monastery of Monte Cassino, to which you climb every year in the procession on the eve of Pentecost. Prayer -- to which grave peals of the bell of St. Benedict calls the monks every morning -- is the silent path that leads us directly to the heart of God; it is the breath of the soul that gives us peace again in the storms of life. Furthermore, in the school of St. Benedict, the monks always cultivated a special love for the Word of God in the "lectio divina," which has become the common patrimony of many today. I know that your diocesan Church, following the instructions of the Italian Bishops' conference, takes great care in studying the Bible, and indeed has begun a course of study of the Sacred Scriptures, dedicating this year to the evangelist Mark and continuing over the next four years will conclude, please God, with a diocesan pilgrimage to the Holy Land. May attentive listening to the divine Word nourish your prayer and make you prophets of truth and love in a joint commitment to evangelization and human promotion.

The other hinge of Benedictine spirituality is work. Humanizing the world of work is typical of the soul of monasticism, and this is also the effort of your community that seeks to be at the side of the many workers in the great industry present in Cassino and the enterprises linked to it. I know how critical the situation of many workers is. I express my solidarity with those who live in a troubling precariousness, with those workers who on unemployment assistance and those who have been laid off. May the wound of unemployment that afflicts this area lead those who are responsible for the "res publica," the entrepreneurs and those who are able, to seek, with everyone's help, valid solutions to the employment crisis, creating new places of work to safeguard families. In this respect, how can we not recall that today the family has an urgent need to be better protected, since it is gravely threatened in its very institutional roots? I think also of the young people who have difficulty finding a dignified job that allows them to build a family. To them I would like to say: Do not be discouraged, dear friends, the Church will not abandon you! I know that more than 25 young people from your diocese participated in last year's World Youth Day in Sydney: treasuring that extraordinary spiritual experience, may you be evangelical leaven among your friends and peers; with the power of the Holy Spirit, be the new missionaries in this land of St. Benedict!

Attention to the world of culture and education also belongs to your tradition. The celebrated archive and library of Monte Cassino contain innumerable testimonies of the commitment of men and women who meditated on and researched ways of improving the spiritual and material life of man. In your abbey one can touch with one's hands the "quaerere Deum," the fact that European culture has been constituted by the search for God and availability to listen to him. And this is important for our time as well. I know that you are working with this very spirit at the university and in the schools, so that you become workers of knowledge, research, passion for the future of new generations. I also know that in preparation for my visit you recently held a conference on the theme of education to solicit in everyone the lively determination to transmit to the young people the values of our human and Christian patrimony that we cannot renounce. In today's cultural effort aimed at creating a new humanism, faithful to the Benedictine tradition you rightly intend to stress attention to the fragility, weakness of man, to disabled persons and immigrants. And I am grateful that you have given me the possibility today of inaugurating the "House of Charity," where a culture attentive to life will be built with deeds.

Dear brothers and sisters! It is not hard to see in your community, this portion of the Church that lives around Monte Cassino, is heir and repository of the mission, impregnated by the spirit of St. Benedict, to proclaim that in your life no one and nothing must take Jesus away from the first place; the mission to build, in Christ's name, a humanity to teach hospitality and help of the weakest. May your patriarch help and accompany you, with St. Scholastica his sister; may your holy patrons, and above all Mary, Mother of the Church and Star of our hope, protect you. Amen!

O God, our Father, endless source of life and peace, welcome into Your merciful embrace the fallen of the war that raged here, the fallen on all wars that have bloodied the earth.

Grant that they may enjoy the light that does not fail, which in the reflection of Your splendor illumines the consciences of all men and women of good will.

You, Who in Your Son Jesus Christ gave suffering humanity a glorious witness of Your love for us, You, Who in our Lord Christ gave us the sign of a suffering that is never in vain, but fruitful in Your redeeming power,  grant those who yet suffer for the blind violence of fratricidal wars the strength of the hope that does not fade, the dream of a definitive civilization of love, the courage of a real and daily activity of peace.

Give us your Paraclete Spirit so that the men of our time may understand that the gift of peace is much more precious than any corruptible treasure, and that while awaiting the day that does not end we are all called to be builders of peace for the future of Your children.

Make all Christians more convinced witnesses of life, the inestimable gift of Your love, You Who live and reign for ever and ever. Amen,

(Pope Benedict XVI, Polish Military Cemetery, Montecassino, May 24, 2009)

O God, Who has glorified Thy Church by the learning of blessed Bede, Thy Confessor and Doctor; mercifully grant to Thy servants that they may ever be enlightened by his wisdom and aided by his merits.

Catholics in America are generally unfamiliar with Saint Bede the Venerable. The Venerable Bede as he is often called, is rightly known as the "Father of English History" and his lasting work, History of the English Church and People, remains the basis of modern knowledge of the early period of the Church in England. Church has honored Bede with the titles of Confessor and Doctor of the Church.

Bede's History is a decisive synthesis of the Celtic, Gregorian and 'Benedictine' heritage. The medieval scholar Mary R. Price said: 'Under Bede's eyes, as he toiled away in his cell,the divided peoples of the "island lying in the sea" were being welded into a nation, and through his eyes and by his pen we can see this happening. We see also the fusion of the free-lance monasticism of the Celtic monks with the more regular discipline of the Benedictine rule, of the Celtic Church with the Roman.' Another scholar who knows Bede's work well says: 'The centuries on which Bede concentrates are a crucial and formative period in our island history, during which the future shape and pattern of the English Church and nation were beginning to emerge.' The Church universal is grateful for Bede's interpretative and synthesizing work that these key formative centuries are coherent and present to us as they give us a light on the form, life and significance without parallel.

The rigorous approach to the facts of history in his narration is widely acknowledged. He explicitly offers his own theological interpretation of the history he is treating, and clearly offers a monastic reading ecclesial history in the light of salvation history. But what else would you expect of a monk?

Every time we celebrate Holy Mass, we hear echo in our heart the words that Jesus left with his disciples at the Last Supper as a precious gift: "Peace I leave you, my peace I give you" (John 14:27). How much the Christian community and the whole of humanity need to taste completely the riches and the power of Christ's peace! St. Benedict was a great witness, because he welcomed it in his existence and fructified it in works of authentic cultural and spiritual renewal. "Pax" ("Peace") is posted as a motto at the entrance to the Abbey of Monte Cassino and every other Benedictine monastery: the monastic community in fact is called to live according to this peace, which is the paschal gift par excellence. As you know, in my recent trip to the Holy Land, I went as a pilgrim of peace, and today -- in this land marked by the Benedictine charism -- I have the opportunity to emphasize, once again, that peace is in the first place a gift of God, and therefore its power is in prayer.

It is a gift given, however, to human care. Even the energy that is needed to actualize it is drawn from prayer. So, it is essential to cultivate an authentic prayer life to assure the social progress of peace. Once again the history of monasticism teaches us that a great growth in civilization is prepared by daily listening to the Word of God, which moves believers to a personal and communal effort in the struggle against egoism and injustice. Only in learning, with the grace of Christ, to combat and defeat the evil within ourselves and in relationships with others, can we become authentic builders of peace and civil progress. May the Virgin Mary, Queen of Peace, help all Christians, in their different vocations and situations in life, to be witnesses of that peace that Christ gave us and left us as a demanding mission to realize everywhere.

Today, March 24, liturgical memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Help of Christians -- who is venerated with great devotion at the shrine of Sheshan in Shanghai -- we celebrate the Day of Prayer for the Church in China. My thoughts turn to all the people of China. In particular I greet the Catholics of China with great affection and I exhort them to renew on this day their communion of faith in Christ and of fidelity to the Successor of Peter. May our common prayer obtain an effusion of gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that unity of all Christians, the catholicity and the universality of the Church always will be deeper and more visible.

Pope Benedict XVI, Regina Caeli Address, Miranda Square, May 24, 2009

Most Holy and Immaculate Virgin, Help of Christians, we place ourselves under your motherly protection. Throughout the Church's history you have helped Christians in times of trial, temptation and danger. Time and time again, you have proven to be the Refuge of sinners, the Hope of the hopeless, the Consoler of the afflicted, and the Comforter of the dying. We promise to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, your Son, to proclaim His Good News of God's love for all people, and to work for peace and justice in our world. With faith in your intercession, we pray for the Church, for our family and friends, for the poor and abandoned, and all the dying.

Grant, O Mary, Help of Christians, the graces of which we stand in need. (mention your intentions. May we serve Jesus with fidelity and love until death. Help us and our loved ones to attain the boundless joy of being forever with our Father in heaven. Amen.

Mary, Help of Christians, pray for us!

Mary, Help of Christians, pray for Belmont Abbey!

Mary, Help of Christians, pray for China!

Mary, Help of Christians, pray for the Salesians of Don Bosco!

Consecration of the Home to Our Lady, Help of Christians

Most holy Virgin Mary, appointed by God to be the Help of Christians, we choose you as the Mother and protectress of our home. Favor us with your powerful protection. Preserve our home from fire, flood, lightning, storm, earthquake, thieves, vandals, and every other danger. Bless us, protect us, defend us, keep as your own all who dwell in this home: protect them from all accidents and misfortunes, and obtain for them the grace of avoiding sin. Mary, Help of Christians, pray for us. Amen.

The Novena to Our Lady, Help of Christians

Pope Benedict XVI with great affection for Saint Benedict of Nursia, the Rule of Saint Benedict and Benedictine spirituality made a visit to Monte Cassino, 75 miles southeast of Rome, today. The Abbey of Monte Cassino was founded by Saint Benedict in 529 and it's the sight of great holiness and humanity.

Among the various pastoral engagements the Holy Father had, he celebrated Mass for the diocese in the heart of the city, prayed Vespers with the monks, offered prayers for the dead, and visited the House of Charity. (This house works for peace and the promotion of life.) He also visited the monks of the monastic community there and addressed visiting abbesses and abbots. The Pope was hosted by Abbot-Nullius Pietro Vittorelli, 46.

Historically Monte Cassino is a center of art, culture, learning, and faith. The monks at Cassino are quick to recall that the abbey's culture is Neapolitan. Nevertheless, the sole purpose of life in the abbey, indeed in any Benedictine abbey, is the search for God, pressing forward announcing the Paschal Mystery, of which is the incredible fact of Christ's presence known now, that is today. Thus we comprehend the reason for the holy Rule of Benedict: keeping our gaze fixed on Christ.

In Saint Benedict we have a genius who gave cohesion to Europe and the rest of the world through his Rule for monasteries and Lectio Divina. Some will say it is one of the centers of humanity, of Western civilization because the Benedictine life gave voice to the aspirations of men and women. The notable archive at Monte Cassino attests to the search for God and the conscience of the Christian life. A new humanism is underlined by the Rule because it is attentive to one's real humanity seen particularly in the vulnerable of society. 

A fascinating heritage of Cassino abbey is the historic presence of the Greek monks who lived there for a few hundred years prior to founding the Abbey of Grottaferrata. Without digressing the Abbey was destroyed four times (in 577, 883, 1349 & 1944) and rebuilt four times. The last time the abbey was destroyed it was bombed by the American military during the Second World War because the Allied armies feared the advance of the enemies. The destruction, however, was carried out under wrong intelligence which the cost the lives of many. However, Succisa virescit! It is the 65th anniversary of the rebuilding of the abbey and city, the icon of beauty, strength and peace all people. 

This visit of Pope Benedict is in continuity with the visits of past popes. This is not a first visit of Benedict XVI since he made several visits before as cardinal (but it is the first visit as the first as pope) to Monte Cassino; significantly in 1992 made a few days of retreat with his brother and personal secretary at the abbey and then he worked with Peter Seewald on his book, Salt of the Earth (1997) there. So, as an honor, the Mayor of Cassino announced today that Miranda Square was renamed today to "Pope Benedict XVI Square."

The Pope's homily was incredibly striking and we wait for a proper translation in English.

Blessed is he comes in the Name of the Lord.

The Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth (CSFN) in the New England region celebrated the jubilees of three sisters today: Sister Mary Victoria (75 years), Sister Mary Barbara (50 years) and Sister Maryann (25 years). We also remembered Sister Jeanette who died in December and who was to celebrated 50 years.

The Sacrifice of the Mass was celebrated by Father Jim Meszaros (of NY) and the homilist was Monsignor Robert Weiss, pastor of Saint Rose of Lima (Newtown, CT & friend of Sister Barbara); six priests concelebrated. Sister Mary Ellen did a very nice job with the music that was selected by a julibarian sister.

The Mass included the renewal of vows of the jubilarians. After giving thanks for the graces of perseverance and service, the sisters promised to continue to be faithful to Mother Foundress' vision and spirit cooperating with Christ and the Church as women of prayer and service. The example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph and the saints were invoked for supernatural assistance. A striking line from Blessed Mary of Jesus the Good Shepherd were striking: "Once again I had the unmistakable evidence that human hearts are in the hands of God, that we depend upon Him alone, and that His Will guides the course of our lives."

Guests from all over New England and New York and Pennsylvania came to pray and celebrate. The Sisters had a delicious dinner for us. I enjoyed dinner and conversation with friends and colleagues Sisters Mary Ellen, Thaddeus, Rose, (at right) Virginette and Mary Anthony. The company was truly delightful and the hospitality warm!

Following our midday dinner Sister Mary Ellen (in the gray habit) gave me a gracious tour of the beautiful grounds and the CSFN heritage room. Since I love the history of religious life and the Sisters of this congregation, I was much happy to see how the CSFNs have labored in the Lord's vineyard.

Among the sisters at the Monroe convent are my second and fifth grade teachers plus a few other sisters I've known since my grammar school days. Sister Mary Constance is doing well for 86 (65 years in the convent) and Sister Mary Estelle is living with Alzheimer's and was peacefully sleeping. I also saw Sister Hedwig at dinner.

But who are the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth (CSFN)? In their own words they are:

We, the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, an international apostolic Congregation, believe that the Holy Family of Nazareth, three persons in communion with God and each other; obedient and faithful to the will of God, reveals to us the profound reality that God is present in the most simple and ordinary experiences of human life. This vision, which so captivated our Foundress, Blessed Mary of Jesus the Good Shepherd (Frances Siedliska), is the source and inspiration for our life and service. Sharing in Jesus' mission of spreading the Kingdom of God's love, we engage in a variety of ministries with and in the Church. Mindful that it is an environment of love that persons come to fullness of life, we witness a family spirit among ourselves, and are dedicated to the moral and religious renewal of family life. We are committed to create communities of love and hope, which celebrate the oneness of the human family.

Suppose you were to find yourself in the presence of God and someone were to give you the command: "Look in that direction." And suppose that, on the contrary, God were to say: "I am absolutely unwilling for you to look." Ask yourself in your heart what there is, among all existing things, for the sake of which you ought to take that look in violation of God's will.

Saint Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo

We are firmly living the days of the Paschal Mystery. What God has given us and what the Church faithfully teaches is that nothing is done without the action of the Holy Spirit. Our encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ, our prayer to the Blessed Trinity, is firmly rooted in the Pauline belief that it is the Holy Spirit who first places within our hearts the desire for communion with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. That same Spirit breathes within us the grace of eternal life and places on our lips the words we pray. Thinking about this dogma of our Catholic faith, I found an encyclical of Pope Leo XIII which guides our spiritual life to depend more deeply on the Holy Spirit today.

That divine office which Jesus Christ received from His Father for the welfare of mankind, and most perfectly fulfilled, had for its final object to put men in possession of the eternal life of glory, and proximately during the course of ages to secure to them the life of divine grace, which is destined eventually to blossom into the life of heaven. Wherefore, our Savior never ceases to invite, with infinite affection, all men, of every race and tongue, into the bosom of His Church: "Come ye all to Me," "I am the Life," "I am the Good Shepherd." Nevertheless, according to His inscrutable counsels, He did not will to entirely complete and finish this office Himself on earth, but as He had received it from the Father, so He transmitted it for its completion to the Holy Ghost. It is consoling to recall those assurances which Christ gave to the body of His disciples a little before He left the earth: "It is expedient to you that I go: for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you: but if I go, I will send Him to you" (1 John xvi., 7). In these words He gave as the chief reason of His departure and His return to the Father, the advantage which would most certainly accrue to His followers from the coming of the Holy Ghost, and, at the same time, He made it clear that the Holy Ghost is equally sent by-and therefore proceeds from - Himself and the Father; that He would complete, in His office of Intercessor, Consoler, and Teacher, the work which Christ Himself had begun in His mortal life. For, in the redemption of the world, the completion of the work was by Divine Providence reserved to the manifold power of that Spirit, who, in the creation, "adorned the heavens" (Job xxvi., 13), and "filled the whole world" (Wisdom i., 7).

... we ought to pray to and invoke the Holy Spirit, for each one of us greatly needs His protection and His help. The more a man is deficient in wisdom, weak in strength, borne down with trouble, prone to sin, so ought he the more to fly to Him who is the never-ceasing fount of light, strength, consolation, and holiness. And chiefly that first requisite of man, the forgiveness of sins, must be sought for from Him: "It is the special character of the Holy Ghost that He is the Gift of the Father and the Son. Now the remission of all sins is given by the Holy Ghost as by the Gift of God" (Summa Theologica 3a, q. iii., a. 8, ad 3m).

Concerning this Spirit the words of the Liturgy are very explicit: "For He is the remission of all sins" (Roman Missal, Tuesday after Pentecost). How He should be invoked is clearly taught by the Church, who addresses Him in humble supplication, calling upon Him by the sweetest of names: "Come, Father of the poor! Come, Giver of gifts! Come, Light of our hearts! O best of Consolers, sweet Guest of the soul, our refreshment!" (Hymn, Veni Sancte Spiritus). She earnestly implores Him to wash, heal, water our minds and hearts, and to give to us who trust in Him "the merit of virtue, the acquirement of salvation, and joy everlasting." Nor can it be in any way doubted that He will listen to such prayer, since we read the words written by His own inspiration: "The Spirit Himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings" (Romans viii., 26). Lastly, we ought confidently and continually to beg of Him to illuminate us daily more and more with His light and inflame us with His charity: for, thus inspired with faith and love, we may press onward earnestly towards our eternal reward, since He "is the pledge of our inheritance" (Ephesians i. 14).

Wherefore, We decree and command that throughout the whole Catholic Church, this year and in every subsequent year, a Novena shall take place before Whit-Sunday, in all parish churches, and also, if the local Ordinaries think fit, in other churches and oratories. To all who take part in this Novena and duly pray for Our intention, We grant for each day an Indulgence of seven years and seven quarantines; moreover, a Plenary Indulgence on any one of the days of the Novena, or on Whit-Sunday itself, or on any day during the Octave; provided they shall have received the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist, and devoutly prayed for Our intention. We will that those who are legitimately prevented from attending the Novena, or who are in places where the devotions cannot, in the judgment of the Ordinary, be conveniently carried out in church, shall equally enjoy the same benefits, provided they make the Novena privately and observe the other conditions. Moreover We are pleased to grant, in perpetuity, from the Treasury of the Church, that whosoever, daily during the Octave of Pentecost up to Trinity Sunday inclusive, offer again publicly or privately any prayers, according to their devotion, to the Holy Ghost, and satisfy the above conditions, shall a second time gain each of the same Indulgences. All these Indulgences We also permit to be applied to the suffrage of the souls in Purgatory.

(Divinum Illud Munus, 1, 11, 13)

 Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical on the Holy Spirit May 9, 1897

Following the pastoral leadership of Pope Leo XIII, I recommend that we pray the Novena to the Holy Spirit 

The key to living the spiritual life is the awareness we have of God's (the Blessed Trinity's) action in our lives. The daily reckoning of what, how, when, and perhaps why God acts in such way for, with and through us is essential for us because the journey of faith is not static but dynamic. Saint Ignatius of Loyola believed that we advance in the spiritual life by asking for the grace of insight into our lived experience and to interpret that experience light of the Incarnation. Father Hamm provides me (us) with a good primer on the Examen. His emphasis is on feelings but I think Hamm stands in good company especially when you read that Saint Augustine speak of zeroing-in on one's feelings because God is right there.

About 20 years ago, at breakfast and during the few hours that followed, I had a small revelation. This happened while I was living in a small community of five Jesuits, all graduate students in New Haven, Connecticut. I was alone in the kitchen, with my cereal and the New York Times, when another Jesuit came in and said: "I had the weirdest dream just before I woke up. It was a liturgical dream. The lector had just read the first reading and proceeded to announce, 'The responsorial refrain today is, If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.' Whereupon the entire congregation soberly repeated, 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.'" We both thought this enormously funny. At first, I wasn't sure just why this was so humorous. After all, almost everyone would assent to the courageous truth of the maxim, "If at first..." It has to be a cross-cultural truism ("Keep on truckin'!"). Why, then, would these words sound so incongruous in a liturgy?*A little later in the day, I stumbled onto a clue. Another, similar phrase popped into my mind: "If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts" (Psalm 95). It struck me that that sentence has exactly the same rhythm and the same syntax as: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Both begin with an if clause and end in an imperative. Both have seven beats. Maybe that was one of the unconscious sources of the humor.

The try-try-again statement sounds like the harden-not-your-hearts refrain, yet what a contrast! The latter is clearly biblical, a paraphrase of a verse from a psalm, one frequently used as a responsorial refrain at the Eucharist. The former, you know instinctively, is probably not in the Bible, not even in Proverbs. It is true enough, as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. There is nothing of faith in it, no sense of God. The sentiment of the line from Psalm 95, however, expresses a conviction central to Hebrew and Christian faith, that we live a life in dialogue with God. The contrast between those two seven-beat lines has, ever since, been for me a paradigm illustrating that truth.

Yet how do we hear the voice of God? Our Christian tradition has at least four answers to that question. First, along with the faithful of most religions, we perceive the divine in what God has made, creation itself (that insight sits at the heart of Christian moral thinking). Second, we hear God's voice in the Scriptures, which we even call "the word of God." Third, we hear God in the authoritative teaching of the church, the living tradition of our believing community. Finally, we hear God by attending to our experience, and interpreting it in the light of all those other ways of hearing the divine voice-the structures of creation, the Bible, the living tradition of the community.

The phrase, "If today you hear his voice," implies that the divine voice must somehow be accessible in our daily experience, for we are creatures who live one day at a time. If God wants to communicate with us, it has to happen in the course of a 24-hour day, for we live in no other time. And how do we go about this kind of listening? Long tradition has provided a helpful tool, which we call the "examination of consciousness" today. "Rummaging for God" is an expression that suggests going through a drawer full of stuff, feeling around, looking for something that you are sure must be in there somewhere. I think that image catches some of the feel of what is classically known in church language as the prayer of "examen."

The examen, or examination, of conscience is an ancient practice in the church. In fact, even before Christianity, the Pythagoreans and the Stoics promoted a version of the practice. It is what most of us Catholics were taught to do to prepare for confession. In that form, the examen was a matter of examining one's life in terms of the Ten Commandments to see how daily behavior stacked up against those divine criteria. St. Ignatius includes it as one of the exercises in his manual The Spiritual Exercises.

It is still a salutary thing to do but wears thin as a lifelong, daily practice. It is hard to motivate yourself to keep searching your experience for how you sinned. In recent decades, spiritual writers have worked with the implication that conscience in Romance languages like French (conscience) and Spanish (conciencia) means more than our English word conscience, in the sense of moral awareness and judgment; it also means "consciousness."

Now prayer that deals with the full contents of your consciousness lets you cast your net much more broadly than prayer that limits itself to the contents of conscience, or moral awareness. A number of people-most famously, George Aschenbrenner, SJ, in an article in Review for Religious (1971)-have developed this idea in profoundly practical ways. Recently, the Institute of Jesuit Sources in St. Louis published a fascinating reflection by Joseph Tetlow, SJ, called The Most Postmodern Prayer: American Jesuit Identity and the Examen of Conscience, 1920-1990.

What I am proposing here is a way of doing the examen that works for me. It puts a special emphasis on feelings, for reasons that I hope will become apparent. First, I describe the format. Second, I invite you to spend a few minutes actually doing it. Third, I describe some of the consequences that I have discovered to flow from this kind of prayer.

A Method: Five Steps

1. Pray for light. Since we are not simply daydreaming or reminiscing but rather looking for some sense of how the Spirit of God is leading us, it only makes sense to pray for some illumination. The goal is not simply memory but graced understanding. That's a gift from God devoutly to be begged. "Lord, help me understand this blooming, buzzing confusion."

2. Review the day in thanksgiving. Note how different this is from looking immediately for your sins. Nobody likes to poke around in the memory bank to uncover smallness, weakness, lack of generosity. But everybody likes beautiful gifts, and that is precisely what the past 24 hours contain-gifts of existence, work, relationships, food, challenges. Gratitude is the foundation of our whole relationship with God. So use whatever cues help you to walk through the day from the moment of awakening-even the dreams you recall upon awakening. Walk through the past 24 hours, from hour to hour, from place to place, task to task, person to person, thanking the Lord for every gift you encounter.

3. Review the feelings that surface in the replay of the day. Our feelings, positive and negative, the painful and the pleasing, are clear signals of where the action was during the day. Simply pay attention to any and all of those feelings as they surface, the whole range: delight, boredom, fear, anticipation, resentment, anger, peace, contentment, impatience, desire, hope, regret, shame, uncertainty, compassion, disgust, gratitude, pride, rage, doubt, confidence, admiration, shyness-whatever was there. Some of us may be hesitant to focus on feelings in this over-psychologized age, but I believe that these feelings are the liveliest index to what is happening in our lives. This leads us to the fourth moment:

4. Choose one of those feelings (positive or negative) and pray from it. That is, choose the remembered feeling that most caught your attention. The feeling is a sign that something important was going on. Now simply express spontaneously the prayer that surfaces as you attend to the source of the feeling-praise, petition, contrition, cry for help or healing, whatever.

5. Look toward tomorrow. Using your appointment calendar if that helps, face your immediate future. What feelings surface as you look at the tasks, meetings, and appointments that face you? Fear? Delighted anticipation? Self-doubt? Temptation to procrastinate? Zestful planning? Regret? Weakness? Whatever it is, turn it into prayer-for help, for healing, whatever comes spontaneously. To round off the examen, say the Lord's Prayer.*A mnemonic for recalling the five points: LT3F (light, thanks, feelings, focus, future).

Do It

Take a few minutes to pray through the past 24 hours, and toward the next 24 hours, with that five-point format.

Consequences

Here are some of the consequences flowing from this kind of prayer:

1. There is always something to pray about. For a person who does this kind of prayer at least once a day, there is never the question: What should I talk to God about? Until you die, you always have a past 24 hours, and you always have some feelings about what's next.

2. The gratitude moment is worthwhile in itself. "Dedicate yourselves to gratitude," Paul tells the Colossians. Even if we drift off into slumber after reviewing the gifts of the day, we have praised the Lord.

3. We learn to face the Lord where we are, as we are. There is no other way to be present to God, of course, but we often fool ourselves into thinking that we have to "put on our best face" before we address our God.

4. We learn to respect our feelings. Feelings count. They are morally neutral until we make some choice about acting upon or dealing with them. But if we don't attend to them, we miss what they have to tell us about the quality of our lives.

5. Praying from feelings, we are liberated from them. An unattended emotion can dominate and manipulate us. Attending to and praying from and about the persons and situations that give rise to the emotions helps us to cease being unwitting slaves of our emotions.

6. We actually find something to bring to confession. That is, we stumble across our sins without making them the primary focus.

7. We can experience an inner healing. People have found that praying about (as opposed to fretting about or denying) feelings leads to a healing of mental life. We probably get a head start on our dreamwork when we do this.

8. This kind of prayer helps us get over our Deism. Deism is belief in a sort of "clock-maker" God, a God who does indeed exist but does not have much, if anything, to do with his people's ongoing life. The God we have come to know through our Jewish and Christian experience is more present than we usually think.

9. Praying this way is an antidote to the spiritual disease of Pelagianism. Pelagianism was the heresy that approached life with God as a do-it-yourself project ("If at first you don't succeed..."), whereas a true theology of grace and freedom sees life as response to God's love ("If today you hear God's voice...").

A final thought. How can anyone dare to say that paying attention to felt experience is a listening to the voice of God? On the face of it, it does sound like a dangerous presumption. But, notice, I am not equating memory with the voice of God. I am saying that, if we are to listen for the God who creates and sustains us, we need to take seriously and prayerfully the meeting between the creatures we are and all else that God holds lovingly in existence. That "interface" is the felt experience of my day. It deserves prayerful attention. It is a big part of how we know and respond to God.

Father Dennis Hamm, SJ, a Scripture scholar, teaches in the department of theology at Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska. Reprinted from America, May 14, 1994. www.americamagazine.org.

Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News & World Report's "God & Country" blog posted an exclusive interview in which Newt Gingrich speaks on following his desire to enter into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. 

The former Speaker of the House said in part: "The whole effort to create a ruthless, amoral, situational ethics culture has probably driven me toward a more overt Christianity."

To read the interview

"Please let me suffer like You, Divine Savior," was Saint Rita's prayer.

Saint Rita of Cascia (d. 1457) is the well-known saint and patron of the desperate, seemingly impossible causes and situations. She assists Saint Jude and others before the Throne of Grace. The reputation of Saint Rita is such because she had been involved in so many stages of life as a - wife, mother, widow, and Augustinian nun, she buried her family, helped bring peace to her city Unmbria in Italy, saw her dreams denied and fulfilled - and never lost her faith in God, or her desire to be with Him. The shrine where her relics are venerated in Cascia (Italy) is well-visited.

Holy Patroness of those in need, Saint Rita, you were humble, pure and patient. Your pleadings with your divine Spouse are irresistible, so please obtain for me from our risen Jesus the request I make of you: (mention your petition). Be kind to me for the greater glory of God, and I shall honor you and sing your praise forever.

Glorious Saint Rita, you miraculously participated in the sorrowful passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Obtain for me now the grace to suffer with resignation the troubles of this life, and protect me in all my needs. Amen.

Visit the National Shrine of Saint Rita of Cascia

Just as the man who thinks only of this world does everything possible to make life here easier and better, so must we, too, who believe in the eternal kingdom, risk everything in order to receive a great reward there. (Franz Jägerstätter)

Franz Jägerstätter (1907-1943) married Franziska Schwaninger in 1936 and honeymooned in Rome receiving a blessing from Pope Pius XI after which he maintained it was a spiritual awakening. He was a daily communicant and a Secular Franciscan.

At the time of his death at age 36, Blessed Jägerstätter left behind a widow and 3 small daughters. Interestingly both his priest and his bishop urged him to give up his conscientious objection, and join the army; his sacrifice was regarded as folly by his neighbors. The chaplain who saw Jägerstätter to his death related that Jägerstätter said, "I am completely bound in inner union with the Lord."

Reflecting upon the context of his life he said:

The situation in which we Christians of Germany find ourselves today is much more bewildering than that faced by the Christians of the early centuries at the time of their bloodiest persecution ... We are not dealing with a small matter, but the great (apocalyptic) life and death struggle has already begun. Yet in the midst of it there are many who still go on living their lives as though nothing had changed ... That we Catholics must make ourselves told of the worst and most dangerous anti-Christian power that has ever existed is something that I cannot and never will believe ... Many actually believe quite simply that things have to be the way they are. If this should happen to mean that they are obliged to commit injustice, then they believe that others are responsible. ... I am convinced that it is still best that I speak the truth even though it costs me my life. For you will not find it written in any of the commandments of God or of the Church that a man is obliged under pain of sin to take an oath committing him to obey whatever might be commanded him by his secular ruler. We need no rifles or pistols for our battle, but instead spiritual weapons, and the foremost of these is prayer.

The Common for Martyrs: One Martyr in Easter Time

Read William Diono's First Things article, "Franz Jägerstätter: Martyr and Model" 

For another essay on Blessed Franz Jägerstätter read... 

His biography, In Solitary Witness, can be purchased from Amazon

Erna Putz' biography, Franz Jägerstätter-Martyr: A Shining Example in Dark Times can be read here

The Houston Catholic Worker's article on the witness of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter 

Franz Jägerstätter: Letters and Writings from Prison (Orbis Books, 2009).

We believe in Jesus whom we have not seen. Those who have seen and touched him with their own hands, who have heard the word from his mouth, are the ones who have borne witness to him. It was to teach these things to the world that they were sent by him. They did not presume to go out on their own initiative. And where did he send them? You heard the answer to that in the gospel reading: "Go, proclaim the Good News to every creature under heaven." The disciples were sent to the ends of the earth, with signs and wonders accompanying them in confirmation of their testimony, because they spoke of what they had actually seen.

We believe in him though we have not seen him, and we await his return. Whoever waits for him in faith will rejoice when he comes, but those without faith will be put to shame at the appearance of what they cannot at present see. Then let us abide in his words, so that his coming may not put us to shame. In the gospel he himself says to those who have believed in him: "If you persevere in my word, you will truly be my disciples." And to their unspoken question, "What will it profit us?", he adds: "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

At present we possess our salvation in hope, not in fact; we do not yet possess what we have been promised, but we hope to do so in the future. The one who promised it is faithful; he will not deceive you, so long as you wait for his promised gift without growing weary. The truth cannot possibly deceive. Make sure then that you yourself are not a liar, professing one thing and doing another; keep faith with him, and he will keep his word to you. If you do not keep faith, it will be you who deceive yourself, not he who made the promise.

"If you know that he is righteous, you can be sure that everyone who acts rightly is born of him." Our righteousness in this life comes through faith. None but the angels are perfectly righteous, and they have only a shadow of righteousness in comparison with God. Nevertheless, if there is any perfect righteousness to be found in the souls and spirits created by God, it is in the holy angels who are good and just, who have not fallen away from God nor been thrust out of heaven by their pride. They abide forever in the contemplation of God's word and find their happiness in nothing apart from him who made them. In these is found the perfection of righteousness, but in us righteousness has its beginning through faith, as the Spirit leads us.

World Youth Alliance (WYA) Europe invites young people from all over Europe to a 4-day summer camp (June 26- 29, 2009), "The Drama of Love" in a beautiful mansion in Orleans, France, to learn about and experience love, fulfilment and the goal and meaning of life. Through different lectures, workshops and movies we will learn about love and relationships, their potential for problems but also for fulfilment and happiness, as well as one's own personality. We will also explore the wisdom of great literature such as Greek and Roman mythology, Plato, etc. We will visit Paris and the castles and sights of the Loire valley, the very place of Renaissance romanticism and acquire journalistic and writing skills through the composition of a Viviamo magazine.

More information will be online soon, until then please contact us at iris@wya.net.

No other name under heaven has been given to men by which we can be saved.

One Saint Bernardine's famous homilies:

The name of Jesus is the glory of preachers, because the shining splendor of that name causes his word to be proclaimed and heard. And how do you think such an immense, sudden and dazzling light of faith came into the world, if not because Jesus was preached? Was it not through the brilliance and sweet savor of this name that God called us into his marvelous light? When we have been enlightened, and in that same light behold the light of heaven, rightly may the apostle Paul say to us: Once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light. 

So this name must be proclaimed, that it may shine out and never be suppressed. But it must not be preached by someone with sullied mind or unclean lips, but stored up and poured out from a chosen vessel. That is why our Lord said of Saint Paul: He is a chosen instrument of mine, the vessel of my choice, to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel. In this chosen vessel there was to be a drink more pleasing than earth ever knew, offered to all mankind for a price they could pay, so that they would be drawn to taste of it. Poured into other chosen vessels, it would grow and radiate splendor. For our Lord said: He is to carry my name.

When a fire is lit to clear a field, it burns off all the dry and useless weeds and thorns. When the sun rises and darkness is dispelled, robbers, night-prowlers and burglars hide away. So when Paul's voice was raised to preach the Gospel to the nations, like a great clap of thunder in the sky, his preaching was a blazing fire carrying all before it. It was the sun rising in full glory. Infidelity was consumed by it, false beliefs fled away, and the truth appeared like a great candle lighting the whole world with its brilliant flame.

By word of mouth, by letters, by miracles and by the example of his own life, Saint Paul bore the name of Jesus wherever he went. He praised the name of Jesus at all times, but never more than when bearing witness to his faith. Moreover, the Apostle did indeed carry this name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel as a light to enlighten all nations. And this was his cry wherever he journeyed: The night is passing away, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves honorably as in the day. Paul himself showed forth the burning and shining light set upon a candlestick, everywhere proclaiming Jesus, and him crucified.

And so the Church, the bride of Christ strengthened by his testimony, rejoices with the psalmist, singing: "God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. The psalmist exhorts her to do this, as he says: Sing to the Lord, and bless his name, proclaim his salvation day after day. And this salvation is Jesus, her savior."

From a sermon by Saint Bernardine of Siena (Sermo 49, De glorioso Nomine Iesu Christi, cap 2: Opera omnia, 4. 505-506)

For the 43rd World Communications Day the Vatican has rolled out some new tech initiatives. The Pontifical Council for Social Communications has been working overtime these days to bring the Church into the 21st century via technology. 

See the following:

A story

Some resources for pastor types

The Pope's address for the Communications Day on May 24th: "New Technologies, New Relationships: Promoting a culture of Respect, Dialogue and Friendship"

Pope2You  (to be officially launched Thursday)

Plus there is

Vatican Radio

Vatican TV

The Vatican on YouTube

The Vatican on Facebook

iBreviary (available from iTunes for the iPhone for a $1.00, in English & Italian)

For your iPhone there is an application for a  Jewish Prayerbook

Are we committed to beauty and truth in art? Thinking about Dan Brown's books which contains Catholic "material" I have been a bit distressed at some peoples' an uncritical acceptance of what I think is mostly scandalous regarding the Catholic faith. To me it is not OK because Brown is, as it's said belowi, cashing in on the work of the Church. But my gripe is that fiction is always received as such by some people aren't able to clearly discern the meaning of things. That is, there are people who can't separate fact from fiction in printed materials; for them anything in print is true. Right, it's ludicrous but people do think that what Dan Brown writes is true and beyond reproach. Father John Wauck, an Opus Dei priest, is a professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, and the author of the blog "The Da Vinci Code and Opus Dei" said the following recently in an interview the rest of the interview was published on Zenit.org.

Dan Brown's trying to sell books by offering a "cocktail" of history, art, religion and mystery, and, in today's world, there seems to be only one place where he's able to find all those things together: in the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, he's cashing in on the culture of the Church.

Universities are an invention of the Church. Copernicus was a Roman Catholic cleric, and he dedicated his book on the heliocentric universe to the Pope. The calendar we use today is the Gregorian Calendar, because it was promulgated by Pope Gregory XIII, who was working with the best astronomers and mathematicians of his time. Galileo himself always remained a Catholic, and his two daughters were nuns. One of the greatest Italian astronomers of the 19th century was a Jesuit priest, Angelo Secchi. The father of modern genetics, Gregor Mendel, was a Catholic monk. The creator of the "Big Bang" theory was a Belgian priest, Georges Lemaitre.

In short, the idea that there is a some natural tension between science and the Church, between reason and faith, is utter nonsense. Nowadays, when people hear the words "science" and "the Church," they immediately think of Galileo's trial in the 1600s. But, in the larger scheme of things, that complex case --which is frequently distorted by anti-Catholic propagandists--was a glaring exception. There's a reason why critics of the Church are always brings it up: It's the only example they've got. So, when we hear the words "science" and "the Church," we should think Copernicus, Secchi, Mendel and Lemaitre. They're representative. Galileo's trial is not.

Jesuit Fathers Campbell and McMahon write in their book, Becoming a Person in the Whole Christ:

The essential foundation of our ability to become a person lies in our ability to transcend isolation and to share ourselves as free gift with another.

This capacity for openness to all of reality, the hallmark of every spiritual being, is the essence of man as person, providing him with potentialities for human growth that are unlimited. It is also the "ground" of our capacity for religious experience, making it possible for God to give Himself to us through a sharing in His divine life, and ultimately in the fullness of open friendship with Him.

This paragraph from the Pope's homily for the May 3^rd priesthood ordinations is a good example of the Pope's holy agenda for priests, indeed, for all who are called to serve the Lord and His Church. As the Pope says, this is dear to his heart...

...prayer and its ties with service. We have seen that to be ordained priests means to enter in a sacramental and existential way into Christ's prayer for "his own". From this we priests derive a particular vocation to pray in a strongly Christocentric sense: we are called, that is, to "remain" in Christ as the evangelist John likes to repeat (cf. Jn 1: 35-39; 15: 4-10) and this abiding in Christ is achieved especially through prayer

What does it mean to be a teacher in today's educational climate? Can an adult be in an educative relationship with a young person without risk? To be a teacher implies the offer of a proposal that reaches the heart of the student, but this is only possible if it is communicated by an energy that originates from the presence of the educator.

For more info see the website.

Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads toward a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey. The promise of Christ is not only a reality that we await, but a real presence. (Benedict XVI)

We speak about how things ought to be or what is not going well and "we do not start from the affirmation that Christ has won the victory." To say that Christ has won, that Christ has risen, signifies that the meaning of my life and of the world is present, already present, and time is the profound and mysterious working of its manifestation. (Luigi Giussani)

There are very few men who realize what God would make of them if they abandoned themselves entirely to His hands, and let themselves be formed by His Grace. A thick and shapeless tree trunk would never believe that it could become a statue, admired as a miracle of sculpture ... and would never consent to submit itself to the chisel of the sculptor who, as St. Augustine says, sees by his genius what he can make of it. Many people who, we see, now scarcely live as Christians, do not understand that they could become saints, if they would let themselves be formed by the grace of God, if they did not ruin His plans by resisting the work which He wants to do... In this life a thing is good only in the degree in which it serves eternal life. And it is evil in that degree in which it makes us turn aside or away from it. In this way the soul, suffering contradictions on this earth, enlightened and purified by the eternal dew, builds its nest on the heights, concentrates all its desires on the search for Christ crucified since, after being crucified in this life, it will rise to life with Him in the next.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola to Ascanio Colonna, Rome, April 25, 1543

Well done, good and faithful servant; because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things, saith the Lord.

O God, Who didst give Thy people blessed Isidore as a minister of eternal salvation, we beseech Thee; grant that we may deserve to have him as an intercessor in heaven, whom we had as a teacher of life on earth.

Saint Isidore was married to a religious woman named, Maria Torribia. She, too is a saint of the Church. The couple had one son who died unexpectedly as a child. After the son's death Isidore and Maria vowed to live a life of perfect continence. We ought to remember that Isidore came from a family of saints.

It is known that Isidore frequented Mass every morning making him late to work, which likely made his employer a bit annoyed, except that his work as a plowman was done by angels resulting in three times more productivity. His boss witnessed such miraculous events and accorded Isidore with great respect. Keep this info in the back your head next time you're late to work due to attendance at Mass.

Saint Isidore loved the poor and the animals. The miracle of the multiplication of food occurred when he fed a flock of starving birds and at another time he shared his food with a large group of beggars.

Isidore died on May 15, 1120 at 60 years of age and was canonized in 1622 along with four very notable Spanish saints. The joke at the time of his canonization was that there were four Spaniards and a saint. The famous group was Saints Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, Francis Xavier, Phillip Neri, and Isidore. His body has been found incorrupt.

A biography on our bishop and doctor saint.

Thinking about prayer, my desire to pray and the priest's duty to be man of prayer, I found this reflection on prayer, dependence on God helpful. I think Dom Augustin's essay is quite good at getting the heart of reality. Perhaps it be helpful for you, too.

The reasons for praying are as numerous as they are imperative. They correspond to all our needs without exception, and to all occasions. They are also in accord with the favors we receive in answer to our prayers and to God's rights over His creatures.

Our divine Master's word has explored and lighted up everything, our human world and God's world. He revealed the powerlessness of the first when He said: "Without Me, you can do nothing" (John 15:5).

We have read these words often enough, but without penetrating them. We no more understand the "nothing" than we do the "all." The nature of our being does not allow us to understand it. We do not look at our tiny being as it actually is in the light of the "all." We do not compare the hours of our life, so short and transient, with God's changeless eternity. We do not see the place we occupy in the universe as compared to His immensity, which infinitely overflows our tiny universe, and could embrace numberless others, far greater than ours. Above all, we forget that our being is not ours. 

Moment by moment we receive the tiny drop of being that God designs to give us. The only reason we have it is because He gives it to us; and having received it, immediately it begins to dissolve; it slips through our fingers and is replaced by another which escapes us with the same rapidity. All this being comes from God and returns to Him; it depends upon Him alone. We are like vessels into which He pours that being drop by drop, so as to create a bond of dependence upon Him, whereby His Being is manifested and made known and, when lovingly welcomed, is glorified.

Prayer is this intelligent vessel, which knows, loves, thanks and glorifies. It says, in effect: My God, the present moment and the light by which I am aware of it, comes from You. My mind, which appreciates it; the upward leaping of my heart which responds to that recognition and thanks You for it; the living bond created by this moment -- all is from You. Everything comes from You. All that is within me, all that is not You; all created beings and their movements; my whole being and its activities all is from You. Without You nothing exists; apart from You is just nothingness; apart from Your Being there is merely non- existence.

How this complete dependence, upon which I have so often and so deeply meditated, ought to impress me! I feel that it plunges me into the depths of reality, into truth. Nevertheless, it does not completely express that reality. There was a time when this nothingness rose up in opposition to "Him Who is". It wanted to be independent of Him; it put itself forward, refused to obey Him and cut itself off from Him. It made war on Him and became His enemy. It destroyed His Image in the heart's citadel where hitherto He had reigned, and usurped His Throne. These are only metaphors, and they do not do justice to the real horror of the plight created by sin; but we must be content with them, as they are all we have. We must remember, however, that they are completely inadequate.

And every day we add to this predicament, already so grave. Every personal sin of ours is an acceptance of this state: we choose it, we love it and prefer it to union with God. We lap up, as it were, these sins like water. We take pleasure in plunging into them as into a stream, the waters of which rise persistently, and in time overwhelm us and carry us away. They toss us about like a straw, and submerge us. Thoughts, feelings, words, really bad acts and innumerable omissions fill our days and nights, and intermingle, more or less consciously, with our every movement, and at all hours. They spoil the purity of our ordinary actions such as eating and drinking; they introduce themselves into our sleep and mix with our waking movements, and with our external acts as with our most intimate thoughts. Because of our fallen state, everything becomes matter and occasion to drag us down further into evil.

Dom Augustin Guillerand, O. Cart. (1877-1945), The Prayer of the Presence of God

French Dominican theologian Cardinal Yves-Marie Congar once said: "We can pass through the doors of ecumenism only on our knees."

Today, James Cardinal Stafford, the Major Apostolic Penitentiary (or visit this link) announced that during the Year for Priests, June 19, 2009 - June 19, 2010, the Pope Benedict will grant plenary indulgences to priests and the faithful.

The year will begin on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, "a day of priestly sanctification," when the Holy Father "will celebrate Vespers before relics" of Saint John Mary Vianney, patron saint of priests.

In recent years we've been blessed with many favors granted through the pious work of Pope Benedict. I, for one, am grateful to receive the Pope's solicitude for my destiny, for my soul. Why am I happy? I am happy about this because I happen to think the Pope is a man who enjoys a deep communion with the Lord and he is guided by the Holy Spirit. His spiritual paternity is one that connects with my desires to be a man prayer grounded in my desires for communion with God and neighbor. I don't want to be controlled by sin; I don't want to be a sinner all my life; I don't want to be ungrateful for the gifts I've received from the Lord: life, parents and family, friends and colleagues, humor and intellect, desire and faith, etc. Life is not easy. Christian living is even tougher some days and I know what I am capable of and what I am not. Two favorite scripture passages that focus my attention in daily living are: "O God, be merciful to me a sinner" and "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief."

What is distressing about some of the criticism about indulgences is the ignorance of intelligent Catholics. There is a group of people who lack understanding of a sense of grace and mediation of the Church for our salvation are highly skeptical about the resurgence of talk on indulgences. You ask what is an indulgence and why are we speaking about indulgences again. In short, the point of an indulgence is that it "intends as its primary aim to stimulate the faithful in their fervor of charity, and thereby in the worthy reception of the Sacraments and the carrying out of the works of mercy and penance." More information can be gained by reading the article at this link.

The means to obtain the indulgence, this favor, are as follows:

(A) All truly penitent priests who, on any day, devotedly pray Lauds or Vespers before the Blessed Sacrament exposed to public adoration or in the tabernacle, and ... offer themselves with a ready and generous heart for the celebration of the Sacraments, especially the Sacrament of Penance, will be granted a Plenary Indulgence, which they can also apply to their deceased confreres, if in accordance with current norms they take Sacramental Confession and the Eucharist and pray in accordance with the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. Priests are furthermore granted a Partial Indulgence, also applicable to deceased confreres, every time they devotedly recite the prayers duly approved to lead a saintly life and to carry out the duties entrusted to them.

(B) All truly penitent Christian faithful who, in church or oratory, devotedly attend Holy Mass and offer prayers to Jesus Christ, supreme and eternal Priest, for the priests of the Church, or perform any good work to sanctify and mold them to His Heart, are granted a Plenary Indulgence, on the condition that they have expiated their sins through Sacramental Confession and prayed in accordance with the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. This may be done on the opening and closing days of the Year of Priests, on the 150th anniversary of the death of Saint John Mary Vianney, on the first Thursday of the month, or on any other day established by the ordinaries of particular places for the good of the faithful.

The elderly, the sick and all those who for any legitimate reason are unable to leave their homes, may still obtain a plenary indulgence if, with the soul completely removed from attachment to any form of sin and with the intention of observing, as soon as they can, the usual three conditions, "on the days concerned, they pray for the sanctification of priests and offer their sickness and suffering to God through Mary, Queen of the Apostles."

A partial indulgence will be offered to the faithful each time they pray five "Our Father," "Hail Mary," and "Glory Be," or any other duly approved prayer "in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to ask that priests maintain purity and sanctity of life."

Let Him Easter in us,

Be a dayspring to the dimness of us,

Be a crimson-cresseted east.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.

The Wreck of the Deutschland

With a great voice like that of a trumpet,

You proclaimed the coming of Christ to the world.

You were revealed as a swiftly-writing scribe of the things to come;

Therefore, we acclaim you with hymns,

Most illustrious prophet Isaiah. (Troparion, Tone 4)

Endowed with the gift of prophecy,

Prophet-martyr Isaiah, herald of God,

You made clear to all the incarnation of Christ

By proclaiming with a great voice:

"Behold, the Virgin shall conceive in her womb." (Kontakion, Tone 2)

This evening the Pastor and I attended the local observance of the 58th Annual observance of the National Day of Prayer. This year's theme was "Prayer...America's Hope." The occasion was OK. It was Scripture-based with free prayer offered for certain areas of concern (business, family, education, military, government, church). I was only impressed that 50 gathered for prayer for the nation, state and city; I wasn't particularly impressed by the concern for all faiths to be represented. One significant disappointment was that it was too Christian, (too evangelical) and not interfaith. This is not the typical complaint you would ordinarily hear from me but the fact is event was the National Day of Prayer it was designed to be inclusive of the city's various faith traditions. I freely admit that many occasions of prayer done in the interfaith mode are vapid and simply not done well. The representatives of the Jewish and Muslim faiths were not present and neither were the Buddhist monks nor the Episcopalians nor Lutherans. It would've been good to have the clergypeople from the various ecclesial communities and interfaith communities present, but let's be careful not to fall into the trap of essentialism.

The National Day of Prayer was established in 1952 by President Truman and President Reagan determined by resolution in 1988 to observe the day on the first Thursday of May. 

The problem I have with President Obama on this matter is that he decided to sideline public observance of prayer under the guise that he didn't want to wear his faith on his cufflinks. Fine, don't make a show it. But let's be honest, does the President think he can run the country without God? Does he think that his example is good leadership? So, ultimately I can accept that the White House would not have its own prayer time but that they would not attend any of the other prayer observances in the District, including the National Day of Prayer Task Force, I find arrogant.

The President's press secretary Robert Gibbs says that "Prayer is something the President does everyday." Really? I am unconvinced.

Of course, the President can neither tell us to pray nor how to pray but he does open the possibility for the nation to pray for the good of the nation by his own witness. If an atheist were chagrined by a prayer day then that person could simply observe a moment of silence or offer a poem that lends itself to the ideal of patriotism or the common good. Whatever the case may be in today's context, the point is that is important to gather people of good will with the hope of being united in something spiritual, something that takes the other person's destiny seriously.

For those interested in some further thinking on ecumenism and interfaith matters, I recommend Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions (Ignatius Press, 2004).

Theological: concerns with regard to matters of doctrine, Liturgy and theology;

Local: promotes the collaboration and cooperation between Christian communities living in the same place;

Social: refers to when the entire community is invited to participate in an activity to help others; matters of social concern affect everybody;

Spiritual: encourages praying together as in the Week of Prayer, for the intention of Christian unity and one's own conversion.

Great News! Today, the Holy Father nominated Reverend Father Cyril Vasil, SJ, until now the rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, as the Secretary to the Congregation for Eastern Churches, raising him to the dignity of archbishop.

Archbishop-elect Cyril Vasil was born in 1965 (in Slovakia), ordained a priest in 1987, entered the Society of Jesus in 1990 taking solemn vows in 2001. In 1994 he earned a doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical Oriental Institute. He has a working knowledge of 11 languages.

In 2002, Cyril Vasil was elected dean of the faculty of Oriental Canon Law and in 2007 he was named rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute. He is the first rector of the PIO to be of the Byzantine Catholic Church.

Among his responsibilities for the Church he is a consultor for the Congregations of Eastern Churches, Doctrine of the Faith and Pastoral Care of Migrants. Moreover, he was an expert for the 2005 Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist. And he's been active in the International Union of Scouts of Europe being named a spiritual advisor in 2003.

I can say that this is an excellent choice for the Church: he's affable and competent. With Archbishop Vasil's appointment there are now two Jesuits in prominent positions in the Roman Curia, both are archbishop secretaries. It is also interesting to note that the new archbishop is the first in history working as a Vatican official to be the son of a married Catholic priest of Slovak Greek-Catholic Church, the vast majority of whose clergy are married family men in accord with the age-old (and fully salutary) tradition in the Byzantine East, Catholic and Orthodox. His father, Michael, was ordained by Blessed Vasil Hopko.

The renowned German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once remarked, "it is very easy to over-estimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others."

Indeed. Beginning right now let's take an honest look at ourselves and our work.

For some reason--and we can all make our own list as to why--many Catholics have gotten away from the sacrament of Confession. I know my own sense of grace and sin sends off an alarm when I receive Holy Communion with mortal sin on my soul. My conscience gets the best of me as I think of Saint Paul's warning that receiving the Eucharistic Lord with sin on the soul: to do so is at one's own peril. Avoiding Confession is imprudent, that is, not good at all because one ignores reality, a life with sin squeezes out grace, one ignores the fact of Jesus' love for me personally and mercifully and our humanity is reduced. Some theologians and commentators will say that the Eucharist is forbidden Food if one receives the Eucharistic Lord with mortal sin on the soul. Saint John-Mary Vianney had strong thoughts about the subject:

"How many have the temerity to approach the holy table with sins hidden and disguised in confession. How many have not that sorrow which the good God wants from them, and preserve a secret willingness to fall back into sin, and do not put forth all their exertions to amend. How many do not avoid the occasions of sin when they can, or preserve enmity in their hearts even at the holy table. If you have ever been in these dispositions in approaching Holy Communion, you have committed a sacrilege. It attacks the Person of Jesus Christ Himself instead of scorning only His Commandments, like other mortal sins." Vianney would also say that receiving Holy Eucharist with sin on the soul "crucifies Jesus Christ in his heart."

Those of us who claim to have a conscience would not be pleased to hear from Saints Paul and John Vianney that by receiving Communion unworthily have worked out our condemnation. Saint John-Mary Vianney was not a saccharine man, was he?

This morning I attended the Mass of Christian Burial of Sister Mary Veronica (of the Eucharistic Face of the Lord) Grzelak. Sister Veronica was 98 years old and 83 years a professed religious sister in the Congregation of Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth and she was my grammar school principal. The chaplain to the sisters, Father James Cole, gave a fine homily connecting the suffering and pain we suffer here, as Sister Veronica did in the last years of her life, with the suffering and pain of the Lord. That is, suffering and pain is redemptive, that is, it has real meaning if we accept it and connect it with the Lord's suffering. Therefore we say that in connecting our trials here with someone greater than ourselves allows us not to focus on ourselves alone but on the needs and sufferings of those around us, indeed others in the world. In this case, that someone is the Jesus.

The Holy Father gave the following address to the Social Sciences Academy which is led by Mary Ann Glendon. It is a rather important speech with regard to faith and reason and it deserves our serious attention. As supplementary readings you might re-read the Pope's 2008 address to the United Nations and an essay by Tracey Rowland, "Natural Law: From Neo-Thomism to Nuptial Mysticism" in the journal Communio 35 (Fall 2008). 

As you gather for the fifteenth Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, I am pleased to have this occasion to meet with you and to express my encouragement for your mission of expounding and furthering the Church's social doctrine in the areas of law, economy, politics and the various other social sciences. Thanking Professor Mary Ann Glendon for her cordial words of greeting, I assure you of my prayers that the fruit of your deliberations will continue to attest to the enduring pertinence of Catholic social teaching in a rapidly changing world.

After studying work, democracy, globalisation, solidarity and subsidiarity in relation to the social teaching of the Church, your Academy has chosen to return to the central question of the dignity of the human person and human rights, a point of encounter between the doctrine of the Church and contemporary society.

The world's great religions and philosophies have illuminated some aspects of these human rights, which are concisely expressed in "the golden rule" found in the Gospel: "Do to others as you would have them do to you" (Lk 6:31; cf. Mt 7:12). The Church has always affirmed that fundamental rights, above and beyond the different ways in which they are formulated and the different degrees of importance they may have in various cultural contexts, are to be upheld and accorded universal recognition because they are inherent in the very nature of man, who is created in the image and likeness of God. If all human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, then they share a common nature that binds them together and calls for universal respect. The Church, assimilating the teaching of Christ, considers the person as "the worthiest of nature" (St. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, 9, 3) and has taught that the ethical and political order that governs relationships between persons finds its origin in the very structure of man's being. The discovery of America and the ensuing anthropological debate in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe led to a heightened awareness of human rights as such and of their universality (ius gentium). The modern period helped shape the idea that the message of Christ - because it proclaims that God loves every man and woman and that every human being is called to love God freely - demonstrates that everyone, independently of his or her social and cultural condition, by nature deserves freedom. At the same time, we must always remember that "freedom itself needs to be set free. It is Christ who sets it free" (Veritatis Splendor, 86).

In the middle of the last century, after the vast suffering caused by two terrible world wars and the unspeakable crimes perpetrated by totalitarian ideologies, the international community acquired a new system of international law based on human rights. In this, it appears to have acted in conformity with the message that my predecessor Benedict XV proclaimed when he called on the belligerents of the First World War to "transform the material force of arms into the moral force of law" ("Note to the Heads of the Belligerent Peoples", 1 August 1917).

Human rights became the reference point of a shared universal ethos - at least at the level of aspiration - for most of humankind. These rights have been ratified by almost every State in the world. The Second Vatican Council, in the Declaration Dignitatis Humanae, as well as my predecessors Paul VI and John Paul II, forcefully referred to the right to life and the right to freedom of conscience and religion as being at the centre of those rights that spring from human nature itself.

Strictly speaking, these human rights are not truths of faith, even though they are discoverable - and indeed come to full light - in the message of Christ who "reveals man to man himself" (Gaudium et Spes, 22). They receive further confirmation from faith. Yet it stands to reason that, living and acting in the physical world as spiritual beings, men and women ascertain the pervading presence of a logos which enables them to distinguish not only between true and false, but also good and evil, better and worse, and justice and injustice. This ability to discern - this radical agency - renders every person capable of grasping the "natural law", which is nothing other than a participation in the eternal law: "unde...lex naturalis nihil aliud est quam participatio legis aeternae in rationali creatura" (St. Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, 91, 2). The natural law is a universal guide recognizable to everyone, on the basis of which all people can reciprocally understand and love each other. Human rights, therefore, are ultimately rooted in a participation of God, who has created each human person with intelligence and freedom. If this solid ethical and political basis is ignored, human rights remain fragile since they are deprived of their sound foundation.

The Church's action in promoting human rights is therefore supported by rational reflection, in such a way that these rights can be presented to all people of good will, independently of any religious affiliation they may have. Nevertheless, as I have observed in my Encyclicals, on the one hand, human reason must undergo constant purification by faith, insofar as it is always in danger of a certain ethical blindness caused by disordered passions and sin; and, on the other hand, insofar as human rights need to be re-appropriated by every generation and by each individual, and insofar as human freedom - which proceeds by a succession of free choices - is always fragile, the human person needs the unconditional hope and love that can only be found in God and that lead to participation in the justice and generosity of God towards others (cf. Deus Caritas Est, 18, and Spe Salvi, 24).

This perspective draws attention to some of the most critical social problems of recent decades, such as the growing awareness - which has in part arisen with globalisation and the present economic crisis - of a flagrant contrast between the equal attribution of rights and the unequal access to the means of attaining those rights. For Christians who regularly ask God to "give us this day our daily bread", it is a shameful tragedy that one-fifth of humanity still goes hungry. Assuring an adequate food supply, like the protection of vital resources such as water and energy, requires all international leaders to collaborate in showing a readiness to work in good faith, respecting the natural law and promoting solidarity and subsidiarity with the weakest regions and peoples of the planet as the most effective strategy for eliminating social inequalities between countries and societies and for increasing global security.

Dear friends, dear Academicians, in exhorting you in your research and deliberations to be credible and consistent witnesses tot he defence and promotion of these non-negotiable human rights which are founded in divine law, I most willingly impart to you my Apostolic Blessing.

Remember, O Creator Lord,

that in the Virgin's sacred womb

Thou wast conceived, and of her flesh

didst our mortality assume.

Mother of grace, O Mary blest,

to thee, sweet fount of love, we fly;

shield us through life, and take us hence

to thy dear bosom when we die.

O Jesu! born of Mary bright!

Immortal glory be to Thee;

praise to the Father infinite,

and Holy Ghost eternally. Amen.

This is the traditional hymn for the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the hours of Terce, Sext, None, and Compline.

A Century of Prayer for Christian Unity is a celebration of the 100-year history of the Week of Prayer.  It is a useful resource for understanding the theology and practice of  prayer in common for the intention of the reconciliation of Christians.

Contributors are among the best informed Anglican, Roman Catholic, Baptist, and Reformed theologians. Each essayist offers significant insights into the history, theology, and spirituality of the Week of Prayer in particular, and of ecumenical prayer in general.

The book is available through the Graymoor Book & Gift Center: 845-424-3671, ext. 3155 or www.graymoorbooks.com.

Jesus, gentle and humble of Heart,

You are the Bread of Life;

help me to live my life hidden in Your Eucharistic Heart

in the Presence of our Father

united in the love and power of Your Holy Spirit.

Give me a listening heart,

a heart to love You for Your own Sake, to love You in myself,

and to love You in my brothers and sisters as You have loved.

Consume me in the fire of Your love.

Mary, Mother of the Incarnate Word and my Mother,

you are the first "house of bread."

Help me to live in perfect love by being:

the bread of Humility and Abandonment to the Father's will;

the bread of Sincerity and Truth,

the bread of Purity of Heart;

the bread of Word and Eucharist;

the bread of Simplicity, Poverty and Littleness;

the bread of Silence and Solitude;

the bread of Prayer and Contemplation;

the bread of Reconciliation and Peace;

the bread of Interior and Joyful Suffering;

the bread of Charity and Desert Hospitality,

broken and offered with Jesus to the merciful Father

and shared for the salvation of the world.

Holy Mary, Lady of Bethlehem, Queen of the Desert,

guide me in the journey of the Spirit that, together with you,

I may participate in the wedding feast of the Risen Lamb

until at last I may sing an eternal Magnificat of Love and Praise, 

face to Face, before our All-Holy Triune God. Amen.

A Way of Desert Spirituality: The Plan of Life of the Hermits of Bethlehem

Father Eugene L. Romano, Founder of the Hermits of Bethlehem, Chester, New Jersey

Here the prophet shows that, if at times we ought to refrain from useful speech for the sake of silence, how much more ought we to abstain from evil words on account of the punishment due to sin. Rule of Saint Benedict, Chapter 6

Restoring unity among all Christians: Unity in Diversity, Diversity in Unity

by Fr. John J. Keane, SA

Ecumenism refers to "the restoration of unity among all Christians." It comes from the Greek word oikoumene meaning the whole inhabited earth and is inspired by Jesus' prayer to his father, "that they may all be one" (John 17:21). Unity is seen as a gift from God that we already have, but that we must realize and accept. Christians have been encouraging common prayer, often referred to as spiritual ecumenism, since the 17th Century as a means to achieve unity. The Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism called "prayer the soul of the ecumenical movement" and called the "reconciliation of all Christians in the unity of the one and only Church of Christ" a "holy objective."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church encourages ecumenism and urges dialogue among theologians and meetings among Christians of the different churches and communities and collaboration among Christians in various areas of service to mankind as expressions of Christian unity (820-822).

In Working for Unity, Fr. Emmanuel Sullivan, SA and his co-author Dennis Rudd write, "It cannot be said too often that the quest for unity does not imply a need, nor even a desire, for uniformity. Diversity is a mark of the Holy Spirit...and God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is the very model of unity in diversity, diversity in unity."

Today is the 7th anniversary of death of Adé Béthune, a renowned artist and liturgical scholar of Newport, Rhode Island. Much of her influence was known through the Saint Leo League --an organization to assist the laity and the clergy to live the sacred Liturgy more fully. Out of the Saint Leo League came the publication, Sacred Signs, which published a quarterly review of articles on the liturgical arts (iconography, book reviews, articles, parish helps, museum notes; Sacred Signs is timely now as it was when still in print. She had a passion for liturgical art and sacred music, especially Gregorian Chant.

Adé was an Oblate of Saint Benedict of the Abbey of Saint Gregory the Great - Portsmouth, where she is buried in the abbey cemetery. When I was at the abbey recently I made a special point in visiting her grave to offer a prayer for her.

The collection of her artist work and intellectual work is held at The College of Saint Catherine (St. Paul, MN).

You can read the Catholic Worker obit for Adé and the Time Magazine piece on Adé's work in 1962.

May she rest in peace.

Mary helps us, she encourages us to ensure that every moment of our life is a step forward on this exodus, on this journey toward God. May she help us in this way to make the reality of heaven, God's greatness, also present in the life of our world. Is this not basically the paschal dynamism of the human being, of every person who wants to become heavenly, perfectly happy, by virtue of Christ's Resurrection? And might this not be the beginning and anticipation of a movement that involves every human being and the entire cosmos? She, from whom God took his flesh and whose soul was pierced by a sword on Calvary, was associated first and uniquely in the mystery of this transformation for which we, also often pierced by the sword of suffering in this world, are all striving.

Pope Benedict XVI, Homily on the Solemnity of the Assumption of the BVM, August 15, 2008

Pray for us, Saint Joseph, alleluia.

Thou faithful protector of all our work, alleluia.

Work was the daily expression of love in the life of the Family of Nazareth. The Gospel specifies the kind of work Joseph did in order to support his family: he was a carpenter. This simple word sums up Joseph's entire life. For Jesus, these were hidden years, the years to which Luke refers after recounting the episode that occurred in the Temple: "And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them" (Lk 2:51). This "submission" or obedience of Jesus in the house of Nazareth should be understood as a sharing in the work of Joseph. Having learned the work of his presumed father, he was known as "the carpenter's son." If the Family of Nazareth is an example and model for human families, in the order of salvation and holiness, so too, by analogy, is Jesus' work at the side of Joseph the carpenter. In our own day, the Church has emphasized this by instituting the liturgical memorial of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1. Human work, and especially manual labor, receive special prominence in the Gospel. Along with the humanity of the Son of God, work too has been taken up in the mystery of the Incarnation, and has also been redeemed in a special way. At the workbench where he plied his trade together with Jesus, Joseph brought human work closer to the mystery of the Redemption.

In the human growth of Jesus "in wisdom, age and grace," the virtue of industriousness played a notable role, since "work is a human good" which "transforms nature" and makes man "in a sense, more human."

The importance of work in human life demands that its meaning be known and assimilated in order to "help all people to come closer to God, the Creator and Redeemer, to participate in his salvific plan for man and the world, and to deepen...friendship with Christ in their lives, by accepting, through faith, a living participation in his threefold mission as Priest, Prophet and King."

What is crucially important here is the sanctification of daily life, a sanctification which each person must acquire according to his or her own state, and one which can be promoted according to a model accessible to all people: "St. Joseph is the model of those humble ones that Christianity raises up to great destinies; ...he is the proof that in order to be a good and genuine follower of Christ, there is no need of great things-it is enough to have the common, simple and human virtues, but they need to be true and authentic."

Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Custos, 1989

The general intention

That the laity and the Christian communities may be responsible promoters of priestly and religious vocations.

The missionary intention

That the recently founded Catholic Churches, grateful to the Lord for the gift of faith, may be ready to share in the universal mission of the Church, offering their availability to preach the Gospel throughout the world.