Paul Zalonski – Page 256

The Infancy Narratives by Joseph Ratzinger

The third and final volume of Joseph Ratzinger’s bestselling idea on Jesus of Nazareth was generally released today. In the USA it will be released on December 4. The Infancy Narrative (Random House, 2012) is available on Amazon with real good pre-order discount.

The four chapter plus epilogue book (256 pages) will be first available in 9 languages with another 20 translations planned. According to the press release The Infancy Narratives analyze the gospel narratives from the Annunciation of John and the Nativity of the Lord up to age 12.

The trilogy is deemed as an exceptional trilogy of Benedict XVI.

Saint Mechtilde of Hackeborn

The Church celebrates two Benedictine friends in several days: Saints Mechtilde and Gertrude. By today’s standards of canonizations, neither were formally canonized by the Church; until recently Hildegard enjoyed a canonization status only observed in Benedictine communities. Her liturgical observance is recognized more universally today. Pope Benedict XVI spoke eloquently of Saint Mechtilde of Hackeborn at a 2010 Wednesday Office. The Pope gives a superb insight into the person of Saint Mechtilde that is extraordinarily helpful.

Saint Mechtilde (1240-1298), the sister of Gertrude of Hackeborn (not Gertrude the Great [celebrated on Nov. 16], thought there is great confusion about this relation) attended the monastery school where her sister was a nun and after graduation she entered monastic life. Like Gertrude the Great Saint Mechtilde was known as a serious and gifted student and teacher. Someone described her having a “voice of a songbird.” Her wonderful personality was an asset for her Benedictine community and it likely led to her being a 40 year abbess. As it turns out, Gertrude the Great was a student of Mechtilde’s. Both of whom had a profound love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Privacy issues today weren’t known in the 13th century. Mechtilde’s spiritual experiences were recorded by Gertrude. Though unnerved by the perceived violation of boundaries, the Lord assured her that it was OK. In time Gertrude’s work was the basis of Mechtilde’s “Book of Special Grace” or later known as “Revelations of Saint Mechtilde,” a book that is oriented to the liturgical year and focussed on Christology and Trinitarian theology. The Pope tells us that Mechtilde’s starting point is the sacred Liturgy and her mystical experiences relate us back to the liturgical experience through the lens of the biblical narrative. Saint Mechtilde ought to be one of the heavenly patrons of liturgical studies.

In several places you’ll read that Dante used Saint Mechtilde for his Donna Matelda of his volume of the Purgatorio, Canto XXVII. Whether is true is not yet known. That Dante’s Donna Matelda and Saint Mechtilde are mystics, one wonders if the saint is fictionalized.

New cardinals are coming

The six bishops being created cardinals of the Holy
Roman Church this coming Saturday are: US Archbishop James M. Harvey, 63,
prefect of the papal household; Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai, 72;
Indian Archbishop Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal, 53, head of the Syro-Malankara
Catholic Church; Nigerian Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja, 68;
Colombian Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez of Bogota, 70; and Philippine
Archbishop Luis Tagle of Manila, 55. As signs of the new vocation the new cardinals
will receive from the Pope the red cardinal’s hat and a ring. By custom they
are referred as Your Eminence and in print they are often called “Princes of
the Church.”

Continue reading New cardinals are coming

When Fig Leaves Sprout

My neighbor has several fig trees. His children are now in the process of wrapping them up for the winter –New England is not an agreeable place to raise fig trees all year.

The opening prayer for Mass today speaks of “the constant gladness of being devoted to you [that is, God]” because God is “the author of all that is good.” This gladness, this happiness, and good is always lived in posture of hope. Symbolically, in many ways the fig is a tangible sign of happiness and goodness. In the Bible the fig tree is posited as figure of these virtues. Variously the fig is interpreted as symbolic of the good, of peace, personal and national prosperity, safety, concern for the other, personal and national fulfillment, and probably the most important, the Promised Land.

Likely to be the most spoken of tree is the fig. Our first parents cover themselves with fig leaves (Genesis 3:7), as a sweet and satisfying fruit is the fig (1 Kings 4:25) and if you need shade when you study the Word of God outside you would sit under a fig tree (John 1:48) or if you need a spring fruit for the table you would have figs (Hosea 9:10). So, it’s no surprise that the Lord uses the fig to illustrate a point in the synoptic gospels about being a disciple and of the Church.

Based on today’s Scripture readings, the poem “When Fig Leaves Sprout” by Minnesota composer William Beckstrand captures the sense of what we are about in the Christian life.

When fig leaves sprout, the summer’s near;

Just so, when sun and moon grow dim,

This earth and heav’n will pass and Christ

Will come and raise the dead with him.

This coming Christ, who
once for all

A sacrifice for sin’s dark stain

Has offered, will bring back to
life

All those who sleep, for doom or gain.

Secure with Jesus, Advocate

Who
pleads for us at God’s right hand,

We daily work to do God’s will,

And wait His
coming stern and grand.

Saint Gertrude the Great

One a few saints with the title “the Great” Saint Gertrude (1256-1301/2) is clearly a woman with a mission. Given by her parents to the Benedictine monastery at Hefta (some say it was a Cistercian house), a monastery known for its learning and saint-making, Gertrude excelled in her studies. One day, around the age 24, she realized that the excellence she had in secular learning was not what she needed, in fact, she considered this way of living vain, and therefore she was called to do by the Lord: to live singularly for Him. Was it earthy wisdom that saved, or heavenly wisdom? She began to change her modus operandi and followed the advice of the Apostle to be totally concerned with heavenly wisdom.

Before it was a popular devotion, Saint Gertrude was known for her devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Eucharist.

Saint Gertrude’s extant writing includes “The Herald of Divine Love,” The Life and Revelations,” and the “Spiritual Exercises.”

May Saint Gertrude’s greatness inspire us to live more intensely for a deeper communion with the Lord, in this life so as to be with Him in the next.

“My heart has said of you, I have sought your presence Lord.

It is your face, O Lord, that I seek.”

Alexia Kelley, Obama consultor to head FADICA

Alexia Kelly is the new president of a prominent Catholic fundraising office in Dupont Circle, Washington, DC.

Ms Kelley holds a Masters degree in theology from Harvard Divinity School is reportedly committed to dialogue with others for the sake of advancing the common good, and interested in Catholic charitable works. Her resume includes being a former employee of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development; the executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good; the Deputy Director and Senior Policy Advisor for the Whites Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships; and the First Lady’s Office, for whom she launched Let’s Move Faith and Communities. Most recently Kelley’s been the director of the Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the HHS.

Continue reading Alexia Kelley, Obama consultor to head FADICA

Sant’Anselmo unveils strategic plan

The Benedictine monks of Sant’Anselmo unveiled an impressive strategic plan for its work as an international university in Rome.

Historically, the Pontifical Athenaeum Sant’Anselmo (Rome) was founded in 1687 by Pope Innocent XI and renewed and re-established by Pope Leo XIII in 1887 and given as a work to the worldwide Benedictines.

Read the first section of the Strategic Plan:

And, a most important part of the Plan,

Sant’Anselmo Marketing.pdf

The vital parts of the Strategic Plan are noted here.

Looking good and abundant blessings….

Congress of Abbots 2012 statistics

lYou’re likely going to say big deal… there’s already been too much info on the 2012 Congress of Abbots on the Communio blog. Well, you’re correct. But a few statistics set a context.

Meeting at the Primatial Abbey of Saint Anselm in Rome for the September 2012 Congress of Abbots, there were:

250 abbots
380 monasteries represented: 205 abbeys, 45 independent priories, 130 dependent priories
21 Benedictine Congregations of monks
7,358 monks represented
62 Benedictine Congregations of women
13,650 Benedictine nuns and sisters represented.

Father Luke MacNamara OSB, a monk of Glenstal Abbey (Ireland) oversaw the simultaneous translation work of 5 languages.

Dorothy Day’s cause for canonization gets US bishops approval

The canonization process of the Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897-1980) the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) by an unanimous voice vote on November 13, 2012 at the annual meeting of the bishops.

Sanctorum Mater (2007), requires of the diocesan bishop promoting a sainthood cause to consult at least with the regional bishops’ conference on the work of the cause.

Regarding Dorothy Day, she is a very well-known figure who is often connected with her stances on the economics and politics; the Catholic Worker movement that she co-founded is seen as a socialist and not too Catholic today. Day was based in New York City and her cause of canonization is being promoted by Timothy Cardinal Dolan, archbishop of New York and current president of the USCCB.

We know that in 1933 Dorothy Day co-founded the Catholic Worker movement with Peter Maurin, as a Catholic, personal response to those who lived on the margins. Sadly, Day is most remembered for the incidental things of work with the poor and a direct critique of the systems that kept them poor and peace. But do we know and appreciate, even follow Day as a 1927 convert to Jesus Christ and her intense love for the Church? As the late Father Richard John Neuhaus once said Day was “deeply grounded in fidelity to Catholic faith.”

Of the places Dorothy Day prayed, Saint Michael’s Russian Catholic Center was one of them. She apparently loved to pray the Divine Liturgy.

Yesterday Cardinal Dolan called Day “Augustinian,” in that “that “she was the first to admit it: sexual immorality, there was a religious search, there was a pregnancy out of wedlock, and an abortion. Like Saul on the way to Damascus, she was radically changed” and has become “a saint for our time.” In fact, Dorothy Day was a Benedictine for these same reasons. Not that being an Augustinian is a bad thing, but her heart was rooted in the charism of Saint Benedict even before her 1955 Oblation as a lay Benedictine.

History tells us that “Dorothy Day met [Saint Procopius] monks at parish in NYC in the fifties. She became an oblate in 1955 primarily due to Father Rembert Sorg’s writings on the theology of manual labor. Father Brendan McGrath, scripture scholar of the community, received her oblation. She befriended Benedictine Father Chrysostom Tarasevich whom she met at the NYC Byzantine Catholic Russian Center.

Benedictine All Souls

May the memory of the deceased monks, nuns, sisters, and oblates be eternal.

Historically [supposing that your view of history goes back before 1900], today is the traditional date for the liturgical memorial of All Benedictine Souls. You are not going to find many American Benedictine monasteries observing this commemoration. Sad, I think. They will offer the argument that the Church’s November 2nd commemoration of All Souls (and for that matter, All Saints) to include the monks and nuns of the Order.

As a monk noted, monasteries who hold this idea are employing “the same argument that was used at the time of the Reformation to eliminate the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, since we are all ‘saints.’ Whatever the theological merits of this position, even the Episcopal Church has recognized its psychological deficit and has restored All Souls on November 2.”

Old fashioned or not, there is a good value in retaining the observances of All Saints and All Souls of Monks and Nuns. Informed opinion indicates that when monasteries remember the nuns and monks who have gone before us in faith and perseverance, remembers not only persons but also puts eschatological hope that eternal life is possible and indeed ought to be sought.

We pray for graces of light, peace and mercy for our departed monks and nuns, sisters and oblates ask for their prayers for us.