On the question of relating to our fellowman – our neighbor’s spiritual need transcends every commandment. Everything else we do is a means to an end. But love is an end already, since God is love.
Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)
Author: Paul Zalonski
The dinner invite that shouldn’t
The white-tie Al Smith Dinner on 18 October may have one of the worst public officials whose record for life issues at a key table: The US President. Mr Obama is known as one of the worst offenders on matters of life. And his dinner partner is Timothy Michael Cardinal Dolan of New York. In extending an olive branch to the Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates His Eminence is fueling a fire that may not merely do away with troublesome undergrowth but kill off the roots, too. Exactly, how is inviting Mr Obama and Mr Romney helpful to the pro-life movement?
The Gremlin still prowls
I’ve been walking past this AMC Gremlin for two years now. I am now taking a picture of it for the sake of culture, even if it’s a wrong side up. This car resides as it were on East 68th Street in NYC.
When I was kid my mother had a silver AMC Gremlin car. It was an interesting looking car but I remember a dreadful driving experience.
According to the stats the AMC Gremlin was manufactured for 8 years (1970-78) and with a production total of 671K. You can more about this car’s cultural relevance at the link above.
May it rest in peace.
Saint John Marie Vianney
Almighty and merciful God, who made the Priest Saint John Vianney
wonderful in his pastoral zeal, grant, we pray, that through his
intercession and example we may in charity win brothers and sisters for
Christ and attain with them eternal glory.
The August liturgical memorial for Saint John Marie Vianney, the patron of priests, is yet another reminder we ought to have in interceding on behalf of priests. God needs to hear from us n this subject…
May Saint John Vianney approach the Throne of Mercy for all priests.
Rediscover the newness of faith by a gift of self
I’m seeing headlines in the Catholic press that say or
suggest that a persecution of those who claim the importance of Christian faith
as essential to the person. This is making me think of what follows the HHS
mandate. Education and service of the poor? The work of knowing the contours of religious freedom are not for an elite group of Catholic academics, or the clergy, or the daily communicant. It is important for each of us to understand, and to live, and to share with others the fruit of a living faith in Christ. These issues have me searching for what the Church has said and is saying. John Paul II helps to begin to frame the issues.
Continue reading Rediscover the newness of faith by a gift of self
From the Olympics to the Convent
Today is Day 7 of the London Olympics and with 37 medals for Team USA at this writing, reminded me of a Franciscan Sister of the Renewal Sister Catherine Holum who was an Olympian in 1998. The National Catholic Register ran a story on Sister Catherine in a recent issue. You can read about Sister’s journey here. The journey of Sister Catherine is poignant.
The risks the fire
A fantasy [that people have] property takes no account of the fact that, for the great majority of mankind, life is a struggle. On those grounds I would see this idea of choosing one’s own path in life as a selfish attitude and as a waste of one’s vocation. Anyone who thinks he already has it all, so that he can take what he wants and center everything on himself is depriving himself of giving what he otherwise could.
Man is not there to make himself, but to respond to demands made upon him. We all stand in a great arena of history and are dependent upon each other. A man ought not, therefore, just try to figure out what he would like, but to ask what he can do, and how he can help. Then he will see that fulfillment does not lie in comfort, ease and following one’s inclinations, but precisely in allowing demands to be made upon one, in taking the harder path. Everything else turns out somehow boring, anyway. Only the man who “risks the fire”, who recognizes a calling within himself, a vocation, and ideal he must satisfy, who takes on real responsibility, will find fulfillment. It is not in taking, not on the path of comfort that we become rich, but only in giving.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
God and the World, p. 258
What is the Church for?
We inundate Him with problems, with demands for information, for clues, for an easier path, forgetting that in his Word he has given us the solution to every problem and all the details we are capable of grasping in this life.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Saint Mary of the Angels & The Portiuncula Indulgence
The spiritual tradition of the Franciscans is connecting the with the good work of the sainted founder, Saint Francis, who as you know, fixed three chapels: the third was called the Portiuncula (the Little Portion), dedicated to Saint Mary of the Angels. As you can see, the chapel sits in a large basilica in Assisi. The friars have been at the Portiuncula since early thirteen century. Saint Clare made her vows following Palm Sunday in 1212 and where Francis died on 3 October 1226.
For centuries the Church, at the request of Francis, has attached a spiritual favor in the form of indulgence, a grant remission of sins to all who came there. It used to be given only at the Portiuncula but now the privilege extends beyond the Portiuncula especially those administered by Franciscans, throughout the world, to others churches as well.
The Church teaches that a plenary indulgence is a powerful tool for works of mercy and weapon in the living of the Christian life, that is, in our spiritual warfare. A plenary indulgence is the remission of the effects of sin, through the merits of Jesus Christ and the saints, through the Church, of all temporal punishment due to sin already forgiven through the reception of the sacrament of Confession.
To obtain the Portiuncula plenary indulgence, a person must visit the Chapel of Our Lady of the Angels at Assisi, or a Franciscan church or chapel, or even one’s parish church, with the intention of honoring Our Lady of the Angels. The recites the Creed and prays the Our Father for the Pope’s designated intentions (see the monthly papal prayer intentions). Key is going to Confession (“free of attachment to venial and mortal sin). One can make a confession and receive Holy Communion 8 days before or after.
Sister Stella and Companions or Blessed Martyrs of Nowogródek
This picture of the Blessed Martyrs of Nowogródek has been imprinted in my mind and heart since I was in grammar school with the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth. It recalls the murder of the nuns on this date in 1943. How could one be not moved by the death of these women?
The martyrdom of Sister Stella and her 10 companions by the Nazi occupation is one the events in history that keeps me attune to the possibilities of men and women doing evil things to others.
Today, let’s pray for the grace to resist doing evil by keeping heart and mind focussed on Christ and his Gospel. Blessed Stella and companions, pray for us.
