December 2010 – Page 6

Orthodox Christians in the USA grow 16% in a decade

Whitney Jones for ENI, wrote that “America’s Eastern
Orthodox Parishes have grown 16% in the past decade, in part because of a
settled immigrant community according to new research.” Her article follows:

Alexei
Krindatch, research consultant for the Standing Conference of the Canonical
Orthodox Bishops in the Americas, said the 16 percent growth in the number of Orthodox parishes is “a fairly high
ratio for religious groups in the United States,” Religion News Service
reports.

The number of Orthodox parishes has reached 2,370, and the Orthodox
community in America consists of more than 1 million adherents across 20
different church bodies, according to the 2010 U.S. Orthodox Census.

The top
five largest Orthodox churches in the United States are Greek Orthodox
(476,900), Orthodox Church in America (84,900), Antiochian Orthodox (74,600),
Serbian Orthodox (68,800) and Russian Orthodox (27,700).

Two of these church
bodies – the Bulgarian Orthodox Eastern Diocese and the Romanian Orthodox
Archdiocese – experienced a growth rate of more than 100 percent. Both churches
began with a small number of parishes in 2000 and are supported by a community
of established eastern European immigrants.

Continue reading Orthodox Christians in the USA grow 16% in a decade

Prayer for Anglicans seeking full communion with the Catholic Church

Eternal Father, we place before you the project of forming
the Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans seeking full communion with the
Catholic Church. We thank you for this initiative of Pope Benedict XVI, and we
ask that, through the Holy Spirit, the Ordinariates may become:

families of charity, peace and the service of the poor,
centres for Christian unity and reconciliation, communities that welcome and
evangelize, teaching the Faith in all its fullness, celebrating the liturgy and
sacraments with prayerful reverence and maintaining a distinctive patrimony of
Christian faith and culture.

Drawing on that heritage we pray:

Go before us, O Lord, in all our doings with thy most
gracious favour, and further us with thy continual help; that in all our works,
begun, continued and ended in thee, we may glorify thy holy Name, and finally
by thy mercy obtain everlasting life; though Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

V. Our Lady of Walsingham.

R. Pray for us
as we claim your motherly care.

V. Saint
Therese of the Infant Jesus.

R. Pray for us as we place this work under your patronage.

V. Blessed John
Henry Newman

R. Pray that Christ’s Heart may speak unto our hearts.

V. Saints and
Martyrs of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and North America.

R. Pray for us and accompany us on our pilgrim way.

Where is heaven?

Heaven does not belong to the geography of space, but
to the geography of the heart. And the heart of God, during the Holy Night,
stooped down to the stable: the humility of God is Heaven. And if we approach
this humility, then we touch Heaven. Then the Earth too is made new. With the
humility of the shepherds, let us set out, during this Holy Night, towards the
Child in the stable! Let us touch God’s humility, God’s heart! Then his joy
will touch us and will make the world more radiant. Amen.

Pope Benedict XVI

Christmas Homily, 2007

Diarmuid Martin: Church in Ireland had grown beyond what’s legitimate: self-centered & arrogant

The Catholic Church in Ireland is facing what we in the USA continue to face and the Church in parts of the world also face or will face: sin. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, is working overtime to renew himself and the Church he leads to a deeper contrition and to a renewed sense of mission as a disciple of Jesus Christ. Like Saint John the Baptist, Archbishop Martin tells us clearly that self-centeredness and arrogance are not legitimate virtues for Catholics to allow to dwell in the heart and in the way one acts. What the Archbishop says about his Church can be said of us personally, and the Church in the USA. Time to change!!!! As the Baptist says, “I must decrease and He –Jesus– must increase.

The Gospel of this morning’s
Mass recalls that great figure: John the Baptist. John’s task was to announce
the coming of Jesus. He was called to reawaken a sense of expectation among a
people that had grown tired and distant from God. He was called to bring
renewal to institutional expressions of religion which, at the time, had so
often become fossilised into mere formulae or external ritual. John’s work was
extraordinary. He attracted thousands to come out into the desert to see
him. He wrought conversion on a vast scale.

John was a man who stood out.
His strange dress – the wild camel hair and the leather girdle – was not chosen
as a publicity gimmick or a trademark. His message was one that spoke of
rising above conventional ways of thinking, conventional expectations and
attitudes. He shunned the external amenities of a comfortable life
because he wanted to show his absolute dependence on God. His detachment
from life’s comforts gave him the freedom to truly recognise the message of
Jesus.

The figure of John serves as a warning to us today, to all believers, to
the Church and to Church organizations of every age of our need to draw our
strength from Christ alone, rather than from identifying with the cultural
patterns and fashions of the day, which in any case come and go.

Continue reading Diarmuid Martin: Church in Ireland had grown beyond what’s legitimate: self-centered & arrogant

Philip Hannan needs prayers

Archbishop Philip Matthew Hannan, 97, the highly revered archbishop emeritus of New Orleans, is failing in health but taking treatment at home.

The Archbishop was born in Washington, DC in 1913, ordained priest for Baltimore-Washington in 1939. In 1956, Hannan was ordained a bishop and appointed an auxiliary bishop of Washington before being elected the Archbishop of New Orleans in 1965 serving until 1988. He attended 4 sessions of the Second Vatican Council.

He needs to be sustained with our prayers.

Read the story…

Legion of Christ orders changes

The Legion of Christ in recent days has been making some changes to its way of proceeding. The other day, for example, the pontifical delegate Cardinal Velasio de Paolis, CS, named the committee that will examine and re-write the congregation’s constitutions (Fathers Gianfranco Ghirlanda, SJ, Agostino Montan, CSI, and 4 LC priests –Roberto Aspe Hinojosa, Anthony Bannon, José García Sentandreu and Gabriel Sotres).

On December 6 but made public on the 11th, a decree was sent to the order’s superiors regarding the following:

a new way of referring to Father Marcial Maciae: either as “the founder of the Legion of Christ & Regnum Christi” or just “Father Maciel”;
photos of Father Maciel in public places are to be removed but given personal freedom, individuals are free to keep his image privately;
no dates concerning Father Maciel will be celebrated; the date of his death with be a day of prayer;
Father Maciel’s writings and talks will not be for sale in any of the congregation’s houses or works but a preacher may use Maciel’s works appropriately;
the place of internment of Father Maciel will be treated as a place of burial, nothing else;
retreat centers in Cotija will be places of prayer, reparation and expiation of sin.

The Associated Press is running this story today, which does add more to the news release of the congregation but it does show the news is getting around.

As always, we beg the Holy Spirit to guide the seminarians in the discernment to follow the Lord in the vocation given.

The parish community is an expression of beauty & unity, Pope says

Pope Benedict visits a parish in his diocese a few times a year as any good bishop would do. Yesterday, Gaudete Sunday, he visited the parish community of Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Here are few paragraphs of the Pope’s homily.

Together with all of you I
admire this new church and the parish buildings and with my presence I desire
to encourage you to realize in an ever better way the Church of living stones
that you yourselves are. I know the many and significant efforts at
evangelization that you are engaged in. I exhort all of the faithful to make
your own contribution to the building up of the community, in particular in the
field of catechesis, the liturgy and charity — pillars of the Christian life
— in communion with the whole Diocese of Rome. No community can live as a cell
that is isolated from the diocesan context; it must rather be a living
expression of the beauty of the Church that, under the bishop’s leadership —
and in the parish, under the pastor’s leadership — walks in communion toward
the Kingdom of Heaven.

Continue reading The parish community is an expression of beauty & unity, Pope says

Saint Lucy, martyr

In your patience, O Lucy, you
possessed your soul; you have hated the things of this world, O bride of
Christ, and so received glory among the angels; you vanquished the adversary, O
martyr, with your own blood.

(Magnificat Antiphon, First Vespers of St. Lucy)

Today is a good day to remember in prayer before Saint Lucy the people of Sicily, those who live with blindness, diseases of the eye, salesmen and for my friend and seminarian Ken Dagliere on his birthday.

Benedictine monks create first handwritten Bible in 500 years

Since the beginning of Benedictine monasticism monks and nuns have written original works of art that were used in the monastery library or assisting the praying community. Some of the monks and nuns copied existing manuscripts in order to have copies of a text in their own monastery or to send to other people. The Benedictine way of life creates new things and it preserves others. Kindles and iPads are somewhat foreign concepts in a culture that’s manual, personal and original. But modern means ought not be totally dismissed as incongruent to the old ways of doing things.

The monks of Saint John’s Abbey and University have commissioned the Saint John’s Bible, the first handwritten, Illuminated Bible, the first work of this type in 500 years, that is, since the advent of the printing press. Certainly, the monks are leaving their mark on Catholic culture in the US for centuries to come. The artists commenced in 1998 with the idea of igniting the theological, liturgical and spiritual imagination of all people. The Saint John’s Bible illuminates the Word of God for the 21st century.

The dimensions of Saint John’s Bible is a manuscript that stands 2 feet tall and 3 feet wide when open. The head calligrapher is Donald Jackson, the calligrapher to Queen Elizabeth II. Jackson proposed the idea to Benedictine Father Eric Hollas who then waited three months before proposing the idea to Abbot John and the monks of Saint John’s. It’s written on vellum, using quills, natural hand-made inks, hand-ground pigments and gold leaf while incorporating various 21st century themes, images and technology. Artwork includes images of the World Trade Center towers, ashen skulls recalling the Cambodian killing fields, flora and fauna of Minnesota

On April 24, 2008, Pope Benedict XVI received the Books of Wisdom literature of the Saint John Bible and said it was “a work of art, a great work of art” and w “work for eternity.”

More info on the Bible project can be seen here.

Portions of the Saint John’s Bible is on display at The Church of Saint Paul the Apostle (9th Avenue & West 59th Street, NYC) until December 17.

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Most Blessed Mother, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.