Author: Paul Zalonski

Saint John the Evangelist


St John on a 12th c MS.jpgToday we honor the Apostle who likely knew the Lord’s
mind and heart the best. Typically, Holy Church uses Scripture to bring us into
the sacred Liturgy but today the entrance antiphon is taken from the other leg
of the Magisterium, that of tradition to orient our prayer and belief. We are
told,


This is John, who reclined on the Lord’s breast at supper, the blessed
Apostle, to whom celestial secrets were revealed and who spread  the words of life through all the
world.


With the Church we pray,

O God, who through the blessed Apostle John
have unlocked for us the secrets of your Word, grant, we pray, that we may
grasp with proper understanding what he has so marvelously brought to our
ears.

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Christ is present in His Church today

The beautiful sections of Pope Paul VI’s encylical Mysterium Fidei (1965), are the ones dealing with the manner in which Our Lord is present in the Church today. Christmastide is nothing if not about the Presence of Someone who makes a difference in our lives, who redeems us from sin, who gives Himself completely, par excellence, to us in the Eucharist. The Presence is not about the doing of nice things, but offering us concretely eternal life. As Saint Ignatius of Antioch famously said of the Eucharist, the Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist is given to us as the “medicine of immortality.”


The full text of Mysterium Fidei is obligatory reading for those who want to be well-educated in the Faith. Emphasis added.


Detail - Glory of the New Born Christ in prese...

Glory of the New Born Christ Child in presence of God Father and the Holy Spirit (Annakirche, Vienna) Adam and Eve are represented bellow Jesus Christ Ceiling painted by Daniel Gran (1694-1757).

35. All of us realize that there is more than one way
in which Christ is present in His Church. We want to go into this very joyful
subject, which the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy presented briefly, at
somewhat greater length. Christ is present in His Church when she prays, since
He is the one who “prays for us and prays in us and to whom we pray: He
prays for us as our priest, He prays in us as our head, He is prayed to by us
as our God”; and He is the one who has promised, “Where two or three
are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them.” He is
present in the Church as she performs her works of mercy, not just because
whatever good we do to one of His least brethren we do to Christ Himself, but
also because Christ is the one who performs these works through the Church and
who continually helps men with His divine love. He is present in the Church as
she moves along on her pilgrimage with a longing to reach the portals of
eternal life, for He is the one who dwells in our hearts through faith, and who
instills charity in them through the Holy Spirit whom He gives to us.

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Saint Stephen

Stoning of Stephen.jpgThe gates of heaven were opened for blessed Stephen, who was found to be first among the number of the Martyrs and therefore is crowned triumphant in heaven. (Entrance Antiphon)

There’s nothing sentimental about the Christmas season, at least, liturgically speaking, with the day after the feast of the Incarnation being dedicated to the first martyr, Saint Stephen. The antiphon for Mass (above) tells us what the Church believes. The Stational Mass in Rome for today is the Church of Saint Stephen on the Coelian Hill.

Stephen is clearly one of the earliest followers of Jesus, a convert to the way of living proposed by Jesus. Stephen is known to be the first to lay down his life for Christ.
What comes to mind for Saint Stephen’s intercession is help is all those Christians around the world who live in fear of persecution, and those who live in an atmosphere of being misunderstood –falsely accused. Today is also a day to pray for our deacons since Saint Stephen was among the first 7 deacons of our Church.

“Yesterday the Lord of the universe welcomed us whereas today it is the imitator [Stephen] of the Lord,” Saint Gregory of Nyssa preached.
Stephen was stoned in Jerusalem two years after the Lord was crucified. The Church’s Liturgy echoes the teaching of the Fathers of the Church and what was experienced by Stephen himself: imitate the Lord by teaching truth, praying for those who harm you, forgiving those who falsely accuse you, and offer your life completely, even unto death. Persecuted Christians give good evidence of this assessment.
What connection must we make between the beauty of the birth of the Son of God and the death Stephen? The Child born humbly in poverty will humbly die on the cross, the swaddling clothes at the birth will become the burial shroud; the cave of the birth later becomes the cave of death.
Among the things Saint Stephen is the patron of, are deacons, persecuted Christians, coffin makers, and against headaches.
With the Church we pray,
Grant, Lord, we pray, that we may imitate what we worship, and so learn to love even our enemies, for we celebrate the heavenly birthday of a man who knew how to pray even for his persecutors.

A change of heart

The New Haven Register’s Michael Bellmore has something to say to me in “Lapsed Catholic has a confession to make.” His struggle with Christian faith is not unique to him, nor is the struggle for living coherently. Earlier this evening I had a conversation with friends about faith, meaning and struggle for truth in the lives we lead. I was privileged to be invited to a gathering at a friend’s house sharing in an interesting conversation with his niece who’s a freshman at Providence College and who just read Saint Augustine’s Confessions as part of a Western Civ class. Wow! Someone is still reading Augustine’s Confessions. Admittedly, the book is challenging for a well-educated person, and yet I find it clarifies my own journey and the path most people make in life.

To be honest the first line of the article gave me the feeling, “Oh, hear we go again, another angry, complaining, silly reporter trying to give another black eye to the Church.” But I read the article and I found something else. I found a young man searching for meaning, reaching out in anxiety and finding friendship, mercy and forgiveness: a stony heart exchanged for new  one.

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Festivus, a celebration?


festivus1.jpgTODAY IS THE SOLEMNITY OF FESTIVUS! It is a Holy Day
of Obligation. Be sure to go to Holy Mass!!! 


May I be the first to wish all of
you a warm and happy and healthy and prosperous Festivus!

My friend Basil composed what would be an opening collect: 

O Lord, you have given us the great feast of Festivus to remind us that
despite sending your only begotten and eternal son to redeem mankind, your
people still prove to be a HUGE disappointment to just about everyone,
including yourself I’m sure. We tell you this through our Lord Jesus Christ
your son, who lives and reigns with you (because after 33 years down here, we
ran him out of town) and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever, Amen.

Another friend, Dominic composed following alternative:

Having
received, O Lord, from your abundant kindness this annual memorial of Festivus,
we humbly beseech you, that, mindful of the saving mission of your
Only-Begotten Son for the redemption of mankind, even as we prove a
disappointment to ourselves beyond due proportion, so also we do to you as
well. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who etc.

Popularized by Seinfeld in 1997, Festivus is a another way for some to celebrate a season. Supposedly it rejects the commercialism of the season. It was invented in 1966 and includes feats of strength. You can make a donation to the Human Fund.

Happy festivus.
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The Perfect Gift

(Mary prays:) “The Lord has exalted me by a gift so
great, so unheard of, that language is useless to describe it; and the depths
of love in my heart can scarcely grasp it. As I contemplate his greatness,
which knows no limits, I joyfully surrender my whole life, my senses, my
judgment, for my spirit rejoices in the eternal Godhead of that Jesus, that
Savior, whom I have conceived in this world of time.”

The Venerable Bede

Locked doors, open hearts -to Satan


Father George Rutler, pastor of the Church of Our Saviour (NYC) wrote the following in a recent newsletter that ought to be part of our ongoing reflection on what happened to the good people of the Sandy Hook Elementary School:

Locking school doors will not keep Satan out if our
hearts are open to him. Nor will banning weapons ban murder if God is banned
from the conscience. Cain slew Abel without a gun. An illogical world can be
saved from self-destruction only by loving the Logos who was in the Beginning,
who was with God and was God.

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Benedict XVI forgives former butler Paolo Gabriele


B16 Paolo Gabrele.JPGForgiveness is only possible with God’s grace. Pope John Paul II taught us this fact several times with the events of his own life and in Church life. Pope Benedict’s papacy has notable grievances that require pardon. Today is a good example with the Pope forgiving the actions of his former butler Paolo Gabriele who leaked to the world the Pope’s private letters and arrested on 23 May 2012.

Paolo Gabriele, appealing to a high moral standard, said that he wanted the good of the Church by exposing evil and corruption that he loved the pope and the Church. No doubt Gabriele’s actions personally grieved Benedict in a very personal way, by the breaking of trust, it also opened the governance of the Church to harm. A Vatican Tribunal found Gabriele guilty and sentenced him to jail on 6 October 2012.

Paolo Gabriele, 46, is married with three children.

Vatican Radio’s Emer McCarthy posted this report. The Holy See’s Press Office released the following today:

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In a fractured world is Pope Benedict calling for political engagement?

benedict to curia.jpg

Pope Benedict
gave his annual address, a “State of the Church,” if you will, to the curial officials
of the Holy See today. 

You might say the content talk is crucially relevant for the
work of the Church and the proclamation of the Gospel as he reviews key events
and focuses on some themes.  Among many things which need our attention and reflection,
the Pope spoke about nature of man, family life, and inter-religious dialogue.
Regarding man in which he gave insight into, he speaks of how evil and destructive vague and
ideological the “gender conscious crowd” is to the nature of the person and removes God from conversation. Read the full text here.

The Pope notes the crisis of the family and its effect on society, caused by the
unwillingness to make a commitment and by unwillingness to suffer.  But he
goes beyond the symptoms to diagnose the cause of the crisis. This talk is not an attack, it is an appeal to truth.

Each of Pope
Benedict’s addresses to the Roman Curia are important, certainly the 2005
address stands out, but today’s will be memorable. 

Here’s a section:

First of
all there is the question of the human capacity to make a commitment or to
avoid commitment. Can one bind oneself for a lifetime? Does this correspond to
man’s nature? Does it not contradict his freedom and the scope of his
self-realization? Does man become himself by living for himself alone and only
entering into relationships with others when he can break them off again at any
time? Is lifelong commitment antithetical to freedom? Is commitment also worth
suffering for? Man’s refusal to make any commitment – which is becoming
increasingly widespread as a result of a false understanding of freedom and
self-realization as well as the desire to escape suffering – means that man
remains closed in on himself and keeps his ‘I’ ultimately for himself, without
really rising above it. Yet only in self-giving does man find himself, and only
by opening himself to the other, to others, to children, to the family, only by
letting himself be changed through suffering, does he discover the breadth of
his humanity. When such commitment is repudiated, the key figures of human
existence likewise vanish: father, mother, child – essential elements of the
experience of being human are lost”.

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