Author: Paul Zalonski

New Lieutenant appointed for the Eastern Lieutenancy of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre

His Excellency, Michael La Civita on his appointment today by the Cardinal Grand Master as Lieutenant of the Eastern Lieutenancy US of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem.

The Grand Master, His Eminence, Fernando Cardinal Filoni, has appointed Sir Michael J. La Civita, KGCHS, as the next Lieutenant of the Eastern Lieutenancy, effective October 14, 2023.

Sir Michael was appointed as the Chancellor of the Eastern Lieutenancy four years ago, has served on the Lieutenancy Council for over a decade and currently chairs the Pilgrimage committee.

Michael La Civita, is the Director of Communications of Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA). A human development initiative of the Holy See, CNEWA addresses issues associated with conflict, injustice and poverty in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, India and Eastern Europe.

The CNEWA announcement of the appointment is made here.

“Today, dames and knights of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem throughout the world work to support the many charitable and humanitarian activities of the church in the Middle East, including schools, clinics, hospitals and social services for children, the elderly and the vulnerable, as well as programs for migrants and refugees — for people in need regardless of ethnicity, nationality or creed.”

May Our Lady Queen of Palestine intercede for you and the Lieutenancy.
May of the saints and blesseds of the Order intercede for Michael La Civita and the Order.

Photo: CNEWA. Michael is on the far left.

Blessed Eugene III, monk and pope

On the liturgical calendar of the Cistercian Order is the memory of Blessed Eugene III, a Cistercian monk and pope.

Blessed Eugene III OCist, was the Roman Pontiff from February 15, 1145 until July 8, 1153. Born in Montemagno, near Pisa, Italy, to a rich Christian family, belonging to Italian nobility, named after Pier Bernardo Pignatelli, the future Pope Eugene III was ordained priest in the city of Pisa. Biographers tell us he was intelligent, but reserved and very thoughtful. In 1135, he entered the Cistercian Order and enjoyed friendship with St Bernard of Clairvaux. He was appointed by his superior to open another monastery of the Order in the city of Farfa in the Diocese of Viterbo, where he was named an abbot by Pope Innocent II. In 1145, Bernardo Pignatelli was elected Pope and adopted the name Eugene III. He was the 167th pope. By his intercession, let us follow the path of fidelity to Christ and his Church. As pope Eugene took the reform of the Church seriously. The importance of this feast for us is the attending to the need to remain to Christ, the Gospel and the Church.

John Carroll’s prayer for government

The following prayer was composed by John Carroll, Archbishop of Baltimore, in 1791. He was the first bishop appointed for the United States in 1789 by Pope Pius VI. He was made the first archbishop when his see of Baltimore was elevated to the status of an archdiocese. John was a cousin of Charles Carroll of Maryland, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

For Catholics who love their country!

PRAYER FOR GOVERNMENT

We pray, Thee O Almighty and Eternal God! Who through Jesus Christ hast revealed Thy glory to all nations, to preserve the works of Thy mercy, that Thy Church, being spread through the whole world, may continue with unchanging faith in the confession of Thy Name.

We pray Thee, who alone art good and holy, to endow with heavenly knowledge, sincere zeal, and sanctity of life, our chief bishop, Pope N., the Vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the government of his Church; our own bishop, N., all other bishops, prelates, and pastors of the Church; and especially those who are appointed to exercise amongst us the functions of the holy ministry, and conduct Thy people into the ways of salvation.

We pray Thee O God of might, wisdom, and justice! Through whom authority is rightly administered, laws are enacted, and judgment decreed, assist with Thy Holy Spirit of counsel and fortitude N., that his administration may be conducted in righteousness, and be eminently useful to Thy people over whom he presides; by encouraging due respect for virtue and religion; by a faithful execution of the laws in justice and mercy; and by restraining vice and immorality. Let the light of Thy divine wisdom direct the deliberations of Congress, and shine forth in all the proceedings and laws framed for our rule and government, so that they may tend to the preservation of peace, the promotion of national happiness, the increase of industry, sobriety, and useful knowledge; and may perpetuate to us the blessing of equal liberty.

We pray for his excellency, the governor of this state , for the members of the assembly, for all judges, magistrates, and other officers who are appointed to guard our political welfare, that they may be enabled, by Thy powerful protection, to discharge the duties of their respective stations with honesty and ability.

We recommend likewise, to Thy unbounded mercy, all our brethren and fellow citizens throughout the United States, that they may be blessed in the knowledge and sanctified in the observance of Thy most holy law; that they may be preserved in union, and in that peace which the world cannot give; and after enjoying the blessings of this life, be admitted to those which are eternal.

Finally, we pray to Thee, O Lord of mercy, to remember the souls of Thy servants departed who are gone before us with the sign of faith and repose in the sleep of peace; the souls of our parents, relatives, and friends; of those who, when living, were members of this congregation, and particularly of such as are lately deceased; of all benefactors who, by their donations or legacies to this Church, witnessed their zeal for the decency of divine worship and proved their claim to our grateful and charitable remembrance. To these, O Lord, and to all that rest in Christ, grant, we beseech Thee, a place of refreshment, light, and everlasting peace, through the same Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior. Amen.

It is fitting to pray this prayer after all Masses on civic holidays of the USA, such as 4 July and Thanksgiving.

Americans among the readership might print it and bring it to your parish priests and ask them to use it after Mass on national holidays.

Order of Malta Eastern CT Area Celebrates Feast of St. John the Baptist

Today, the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist is a solemn feast for the Order of Malta as the Forerunner to the Messiah is our patron saint. The Eastern Connecticut are of the Order of Malta met for a meeting, some education, Holy Mass and scrumptious meal. Sister Maryann Cantlon, CSJ, gave an informative presentation on Restorative Justice (aka Prison Ministry). Holy Mass was celebrated by Bishop Michael Richard Cote, ChC.

The day’s events took place at St. Bernard Church, Blessed Sacrament Parish in Rockville-Vernon, CT. Gina Raymond, DM, Area Membership Chair, hosted the event and invited members of her Parish Council to participate in the Mass and to attend lunch with the Clergy.

Blessed feast to all members of the Order of Malta! May Saint John the Baptist continue to intercede for us.

Priest faculties to absolve the sin of abortion

Because someone asked, What are the current faculties of priests in regard to absolving the sin of abortion and corresponding censures? The canonical reference included here.

“Given this need, lest any obstacle arise between the request for reconciliation and God’s forgiveness, I henceforth grant to all priests, in virtue of their ministry, the faculty to absolve those who have committed the sin of procured abortion. The provision I had made in this regard, limited to the duration of the Extraordinary Holy Year, is hereby extended, notwithstanding anything to the contrary. I wish to restate as firmly as I can that abortion is a grave sin, since it puts an end to an innocent life. In the same way, however, I can and must state that there is no sin that God’s mercy cannot reach and wipe away when it finds a repentant heart seeking to be reconciled with the Father. May every priest, therefore, be a guide, support and comfort to penitents on this journey of special reconciliation.”

Pope Francis, apostolic letter Misericordia et misera 12, November 20, 2016, AAS 108 [2016] 1319–1320; translation from this site.

Picture: Fr Bede Price, priest of the Diocese of Nashvillee

St. Alban, protomartyr of England

Today the Church in England honors its first martyr early in the 4th century, St Alban. In some missals, St Alban is commemorated on June 20. The saint’s biographer writes,

“St. Alban was the first martyr of England, his own country (homeland). During a persecution of Christians, Alban, though a pagan, hid a priest in his house. The priest made such a great impression on him that Alban received instructions and became a Christian himself.

“In the meantime, the governor had been told that the priest was hiding in Alban’s house, and he sent his soldiers to capture him. But Alban changed clothes with his guest, and gave himself up in his stead. The judge was furious when he found out that the priest had escaped and he said to Alban, “You shall get the punishment he was to get unless you worship the gods.” The Saint answered that he would never worship those false gods again. “To what family do you belong?” demanded the judge. “That does not concern you,” said Alban. “If you want to know my religion, I am a Christian.” Angrily the judge commanded him again to sacrifice to the gods at once. “Your sacrifices are offered to devils,” answered the Saint. “They cannot help you or answer your requests. The reward for such sacrifices is the everlasting punishment of Hell.”

“Since he was getting nowhere, the judge had Alban whipped. Then he commanded him to be beheaded. On the way to the place of execution, the soldier who was to kill the Saint was converted himself, and he too, became a martyr. 304 A.D.

Let us pray with the Church:

O God, by whose grace Saint Alban gave himself up for his friend and received the martyr’s crown as the first in this land to shed his blood for Christ: Grant, we pray, that, following his example and supported by his prayers, we may worship you, the living God, and give true witness to Christ our Lord. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Blessed Gerard of Clairvaux

Today’s liturgical memorial of Blessed Gerard is relatively unknown among us except for those who follow the Benedictine and Cistercian charism. Blessed Gerard is the second eldest blood brother of Saint Bernard. History reveals to us that Gerard followed Bernard to Clairvaux where he became his cellarer. Gerard initially refused to enter the monastery but later received the habit at Cîteaux in 1112; and then followed his brother to make a monastic foundation at Clairvaux in 1115. There he served as the competent and virtuous cellarer for the Cistercian community. We know that Gerard was Bernard’s confidant and assistant. The feast was originally on January 30, but settled on today’s date, but sometimes you have his feast on June 14.

Deeply grieved at Dom Gerard’s death, Bernard lamented his passing in these tender words:

… a loyal companion has left me alone on the pathway of life: he who was so alert to my needs, so enterprising at work, so agreeable in his ways. Who was ever so necessary to me? Who ever loved me as he? My brother by blood, but bound to me more intimately by religious profession. Share my mourning with me, you who know these things. I was frail in body and he sustained me, faint of heart and he gave me courage, slothful and negligent and he spurred me on, forgetful and improvident and he gave me timely warning. Why has he been torn from me? Why snatched from my embraces, a man of one mind with me, a man according to my heart? We loved each other in life: how can it be that death separates us? And how bitter the separation that only death could bring about! While you lived when did you ever abandon me? It is totally death’s doing, so terrible a parting…How much better for me then, O Gerard, if I had lost my life rather than your company, since through your tireless inspiration, your unfailing help and under your provident scrutiny I persevered with my studies of things divine. Why, I ask, have we loved, why have we lost each other?

Text from Bernard to Clairvaux’s Sermon 26: On The Song of Songs.

Mary, Mother of the Church

The title given to Mary –Mother of the Church (Mater Ecclesiae)– has its roots in the 4th century with Saint Ambrose. In later centuries various theologians and saints gave this title new currency. Most recently Pope Francis (in 2018) made the Monday after Pentecost the feast of Mary, Mother of the Church. The hope of His Holiness is to “encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety.”

The perennial teaching of the Church indicates that just as Eve was “the mother of all the living” (Gen. 3:20), Mary is mother of all those living in Jesus Christ.

Francis echoes St. Paul VI, in Credo of the People of God, who explained, “Joined by a close and indissoluble bond to the Mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption, the Blessed Virgin, the Immaculate, was at the end of her earthly life raised body and soul to heavenly glory and likened to her risen Son in anticipation of the future lot of all the just; and we believe that the Blessed Mother of God, the New Eve, Mother of the Church, continues in heaven her maternal role with regard to Christ’s members, cooperating with the birth and growth of divine life in the souls of the redeemed.”

In 1964, St. Paul VI “declared the Blessed Virgin Mary as ‘Mother of the Church, that is to say of all Christian people, the faithful as well as the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother’ and established that ‘the Mother of God should be further honored and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles.’”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church of St. John Paul II teaches us that Mary’s role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it. The Catechism (487) makes it clear –once again, that anything said of Mary is first said of Her Son and Our Savior, Jesus: “What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.”

Going more deeply into The Catechism (964-965) we read: “This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christ’s virginal conception up to his death”; it is made manifest above all at the hour of His Passion: Thus the Blessed Virgin advanced in her pilgrimage of faith, and faithfully persevered in her union with her Son unto the cross.

Ultimately, the what the Church believes, teaches and honors about Mary is found in the liturgical prayers of the Mass:

O God, Father of mercies,
whose Only Begotten Son, as He hung upon the Cross,
chose the Blessed Virgin Mary, His Mother,
to be our Mother also,
grant, we pray, that with her loving help
your Church may be more fruitful day by day
and, exulting in the holiness of her children,
may draw to her embrace all the families of the peoples.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

– Collect for the Feast of Mary, Mother of the Church

Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us.

St Joseph the Worker

Pope Benedict XVI once commemorated the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, he spoke of the fruitful tension (the generativity) that emerges for the Christian meaning of work:

“Work is of fundamental importance to the fulfillment of the human being and to the development of society. Thus, it must always be organized and carried out with full respect for human dignity and must always serve the common good.

At the same time, it is indispensable that people not allow themselves to been slaved by work or idolize it, claiming to find in it the ultimate and definitive meaning of life…”

The Pope continues:

“Work must serve the true good of humanity, permitting “men as individuals and as members of society to pursue and fulfill their total vocation” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 35). For this to happen, technical and professional qualifications, although necessary, do not suffice; nor does the creation of a just social order, attentive to the common good.

It is necessary to live a spirituality that helps believers to sanctify themselves through their work, imitating St Joseph, who had to provide with his own hands for the daily needs of the Holy Family and whom, consequently, the Church holds up as Patron of workers.”

Thus, as Catholics we don’t see meaningful work as trivial, a drudgery, a four lettered word –something to be avoided. We understand work as contributing to our sanctification and it demonstrates our ability to collaborate with God in building up the Kingdom of God. Following the example of St. Benedict who points to Joseph quietly, as one example, our goal is to integrate work and prayer, by pursuing the model of holiness as a beautiful work.

Easter of the Resurrection –Cardinal Filoni’s message 2023

This is the recurring expression we read in the calendar on the Sunday on which the Church celebrates Jesus, the Risen One. It is an expression we also find in liturgies and theology; in short, it is the language of the Church. But what does ‘Easter of the Resurrection’ mean? Certainly many grasp its meaning perhaps through catechetical reminiscence, but it is also worth seeking its deeper meaning.

In the Catholic liturgy, the two terms – Easter and Resurrection – go hand in hand and refer to two extraordinary events that should be briefly recalled. First of all, Easter finds its origins in the Greek word for ‘Passover’, originally from the Aramaic pashd’ (in Hebrew pesach), is used in the Bible (Ex 12:48) to recall the ‘passing of God’ and the ‘exodus’ of the Jews from Egypt; it is a feast of great importance, full of familial and sacred rites. Jesus and his natural family devoutly celebrated it every year as was and is traditional in observant Jewish families. The celebration became a memory, a story, a prayer of gratitude and praise to the Eternal for the intervention in favor of ‘His’ people. It is not an epic, because Passover concretely touches the life of every good Jew, so much so that it binds him to God in an eternal Covenant, and vice versa; but also to the land he will bequeath to his children; Passover is a celebration around the Word of God; it is a perennial journey.
Jesus assumes, but then also transcends, the meaning of that Jewish solemnity; so much so that not only did he not want to ignore it despite being ‘sought after’ by the Sanhedrin, but, he “earnestly desired” (Desiderio desidervi – Lk 22:15) to celebrate it together with the Twelve, his new family, in deference to the style of the so-called chaburot (the gatherings for pilgrims who went to Jerusalem for the occasion); during that Last Supper, Jesus introduces something unexpected with respect to the practice: he gives thanks to the Eternal and offers his ‘Body’ and ‘Blood’ to the Twelve in the concrete matter of bread and wine, as a sign of the new Covenant.

Jesus’ “Gesture” is an important novelty and will allow the Apostolic Community, not only to be formed around the Risen One and to be consecrated for the coming of the Holy Spirit, but also to be constituted, as Ekklesìa, that is, Community of the faithful, and to repeat it; that “Gesture” is also God’s “Gift” for us and this in the friendship of Jesus Christ, of the One who forgives and allows humanity to accept it as an expression of God’s own love and to return it to God; in short: love and sacrifice come together. Benedict XVI wrote all the currents from the Old Covenant are also present that in every celebration of the Eucharist, and in some way also the secret expectation of all religions (Themes of Dogmatic Theology in Che cos’è il cristianesimo).

When we say ‘Resurrection’, the reference is to the body of Christ in which human life was no longer there. Jesus is laid in a tomb. It was approaching the beginning of Shabbat, the Sabbath on which no actions involving work could be performed, corresponding to that seventh day on which, after creation, God ‘rested’. Jesus observes it in the silence of death; it is the day of Sabbath rest, apparently an “idle” time.

For the Catholic liturgy, ‘Holy Saturday’ has become the day of meditation, of intimate sorrow, the day when we recall all of the memories, the words, the many whys that accompany extreme moments, such as death. This until the first day of the week after the Sabbath, which for Christians is Sunday and for Holy Scripture corresponds to the day of the creation of light (cf. Gen 1:5). An analogy that is not accidental!

On that day, the first of the week, the unexpected, the unprecedented, the most shocking event took place: The Resurrection of Christ.

“Whom do you seek?” This was the question put to those, women and men, who had gone to visit a deceased person. The only ones present at the moment of the Resurrection had been the soldiers, but then they had fled in shock, to report back to those who had ordered them to custody the tomb.

Now the Risen Christ becomes the space for the adoration of God, comments Benedict XVI; Christian faith is born and our inclusion in the new ‘Body’ is realized, which definitively unites every baptized person to the Risen One. This is the Easter of Resurrection. In the Christian faith, Jesus’ death is the most radical act of love in which the reconciliation between God and a world marked by sin is truly accomplished, and the Resurrection is the most sublime event of God’s work.

Every Knight and Dame must embrace within themselves this mystery that qualifies them in a special way for a very high spiritual mission. The event of the Resurrection reminds us that Christ transcends in Himself human nature and history, and in the newness of His being the Living One, our conversion to the Lord holds incomparable glory (cf. Heb 3:10, 16).

It is in the Easter Resurrection that the Risen One offers us, the Order of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, who have visited him on our pilgrimages like the pious women and disciples, an “inheritance” with the “Title” of the place of his deposition, and to enter into his friendship and be destined for a mission of faith and high charity. That Sepulchre in which the Son of God had laid the burden of our sinful and sorrowful humanity, becomes the place of the beginning of new life in Him, of hope for all the multitudes.

As the Son of God, says the Letter to the Hebrews, “Christ (… ) as a Son over His house—whose house we are, if we hold fast our confidence and the boast of our hope firm until the end” (Heb 3:6).

Happy Easter of the Resurrection!

Fernando Cardinal Filoni
April 2023