Author: Paul Zalonski

Pope Benedict XVI’s monthly prayer intentions for September 2011


Pope blesses crowd August 31 2011.jpgThe papal prayer intentions for September bring to mind the ministry of teaching and proclaiming the Gospel in Asia. Let’s join Pope Benedict and the Church in asking God to bestow His grace on these two intentions.




The general intention

That all teachers may know how
to communicate the love of truth and instill authentic moral and spiritual
values.


The missionary intention

That the Christian communities in Asia may
proclaim the Gospel with fervor, witnessing to its beauty with the joy of
faith.

Saint Jeanne Jugan

St Jeanne Jugan life icon.jpg

Today’s feast is probably of a little known saint, Saint Jeanne Jugan (1792-1879). Her’s a remarable life of grace and heroic virtue. 

“…Jeanne Jugan was concerned with the dignity of her brothers and sisters in humanity whom age had made more vulnerable, recognizing in them the Person of Christ himself. “Look upon the poor with compassion,” she would say, “and Jesus will look kindly upon you on your last day.” Jeanne Jugan focused upon the elderly a compassionate gaze drawn from her profound communion with God in her joyful, disinterested service, which she carried out with gentleness and humility of heart, desiring herself to be poor among the poor. Jeanne lived the mystery of love, peacefully accepting obscurity and self-emptying until her death. Her charism is ever timely while so many elderly people are suffering from numerous forms of poverty and solitude and are sometimes also abandoned by their families. In the Beatitudes Jeanne Jugan found the source of the spirit of hospitality and fraternal love, founded on unlimited trust in Providence, which illuminated her whole life. This evangelical dynamism is continued today across the world in the Congregation of Little Sisters of the Poor, which she founded and which testifies, after her example, to the mercy of God and the compassionate love of the Heart of Jesus for the lowliest. May Saint Jeanne Jugan be for elderly people a living source of hope and for those who generously commit themselves to serving them, a powerful incentive to pursue and develop her work!


Pope Benedict XVI

Canonization homily

11 October 2009

A feast day slide show done by the Little Sisters of the Poor. You can read more about Saint Jeanne Jugan here.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien to lead the Order of the Holy Sepulchre

EDWIN F. OBRIEN.jpgIt sounds like this appointment of Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, 72, to head the 1000 year old lay group Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

The video of the press conference where Archbishop Edwin O’Brien announces he’s going to head the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

Up to now he’s been the 15th Diocesan Ordinary of Baltimore; in 2007 Benedict appointed O’Brien to succeed Cardinal William Henry Keeler.

Several articles from Baltimore’s Catholic Review shed some light on Archbishop O’Brien: here, here and his own remarks.
As the Archbishop promised when he took over the Baltimore Archdiocese nearly four years ago, “Whatever I am and all that I have, I give to you” will be the same pledge to the Knights and Dames of the Holy Sepulchre.
Here’s a piece on the playful side of Edwin F. O’Brien.
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Beheading of Saint John the Baptist


Beheading of St John the Baptist HMemling.jpgO God, who willed that Saint John the Baptist should
go ahead of your Son both in birth and in death, grant that as he died a Martyr
for truth and justice, we, too, may fight hard for the confession of what you
teach.



There is no
doubt that blessed John suffered imprisonment and chains as a witness to our
Redeemer, whose forerunner he was, and gave his life for him. His persecutor
had demanded not that he should deny Christ, but only that he should keep
silent about the truth. Nevertheless, he died for Christ. Does Christ not say:
“I am the truth”? Therefore, because John shed his blood for the truth,
he surely died for Christ. 

Through his birth, preaching and baptizing, he bore
witness to the coming birth, preaching and baptism of Christ, and by his own
suffering he showed that Christ also would suffer. Such was the quality and
strength of the man who accepted the end of this present life by shedding his
blood after the long imprisonment. He preached the freedom of heavenly peace,
yet was thrown into irons by ungodly men. He was locked away in the darkness of
prison, though he came bearing witness to the Light of life and deserved to be
called a bright and shining lamp by that Light itself, which is Christ.

Father Pius Parsch
The Church’s Year of Grace

Saint Augustine of Hippo


St Augustine caravaggio.jpgChrist humbled himself, you have something, Christian,
to latch onto. Christ became obedient. Why do you behave proudly? 


Saint
Augustine

When you read what the Pope has to say about Saint Augustine, you can tell that he really loves and knows Saint Augustine…as we all ought. He’s given us a lot to think about using Augustine’s thinking. Here’s the 2008 discourse of the Pope on the saintly Bishop of Hippo.

Given what is said above, pay close attention to the second half of the Pope’s talk.