Paul Zalonski – Page 447

Documents between 1939-45 on Pius XII papacy

The Vatican Publishing House is making available, free of charge on the internet, more than 8,000 pages of the Actes et Documents du Sainte-Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale (1965-1981) edited by Jesuit Fathers Pierre Blet, Angelo Martini, Robert A. Graham and Burkhart Schneider.

The release of these documents are the result of a request of the Pave the Way Foundation (PTWF) made to the Holy See to digitalize and publish 5,125 documents of the Vatican Secret Archives dated from March 1939 to May 1945. PTWF president Gary Krupp said his Foundation aims to remove the barriers between Catholic and Judaism. He told Jesús Colina of Zenit, “In the futherance of our mission we have recognized the papacy of the war time Pope Pius XII as a source of friction impacting over one billion people.”

More information on the Vatican Secret Archives may be found here.

From athlete to religious life

A few weeks ago Yahoo sports posted a story that caught my attention (but I am only now getting around to posting it, sorry) about a former world-class speedskater now on a journey to the vowed life as a Franciscan Sister of the Renewal.

Kirstin Holum, now Sister Catherine, stands out because she was once a high-profile athlete with promise now (she was at the 1998 Olympics in Japan) she’s devoting her life to Christ and the Church in a new race outlined by Jesus, Saint Paul, Saint Francis and the Church.

Prayers for Sister Catherine’s perseverance and for the Sisters of the Renewal.

Saint Gabriel of the Sorrowful Mother

My servant continued with all his heart doing what is just before my eyes.

O God, Who in the design of Your love called Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows to live in the mystery of the Cross with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, guide our spirit towards Your Crucified Son so that by participating in His Passion we may achieve the glory of the Resurrection.

Among the young saints of the Church are those who followed the Passionist charism, that is, those who made the paschal offering of Christ on the cross and His sorrowful mother so very central to their. The oblation of Christ crucified is THE Christian spirituality of our day, especially given the suffering many of us endure for the faith and for Saint Gabriel of the Sorrowful Mother is one such figure that we would do well to spend time learning. As the Mass collect above suggests, we are to ask for the grace to participate in the Lord’s Passion with the hope of his glory. This is the destiny of all Christians.

At 24 he was stricken with TB and died prior to his ordination. As grace is operative I feel close to Gabriel and ask his intercession for young seminarians even for me not being so young having just turned 41 a few weeks ago. Saint Gabriel’s youthful witness to Christ led him to being named a patron for the youth and seminarians by Pope Benedict XV in 1920 when he was canonized. The image given here is that of Saint Gabriel healing Saint Gemma, whom she was devoted.

Read up on Saint Gabriel here.

A rather helpful blog is maintained on our friend, called “Saint Gabriel Our Lady of Sorrows,” you can explore of Gabriel’s life and legacy for today.

May the Passion of Jesus and the Sorrows of Mary be ever in our hearts!

motto of Saint Paul of the Cross

Archbishop Dolan notes a need for coherence in faith & public order

In a NY1 Exclusive interview with NY’s Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan the other day, the Archbishop spoke about many things including NY politics, culture and he distinguishes between being welcome to attend events and being honored at publicly sponsored Catholic events. A topic many Catholics are familiar with in recent years, especially at university graduation time. This is question is also on the plate since the St Patrick’s Day Parade is fast approaching at which the gay and lesbian activists normally cause a stir because of perceived anti-Catholic bias toward their lifestyle and then in fall there’s the Al Smith dinner where Catholics and politicos rub shoulders at a high profile dinner. People want to know what and how the Church is going to handle such situations; the Catholics need solid guidance and reasons for belief and hope. The Archbishop is clear that when it comes to faith and the public order people we need (want!) good leadership who live lives with honesty and that the public have an expectation that civil and religious leadership be questioned about their lives. Good governance depends on coherent life. Politically people are asking these questions in light of the recent troubles of NY governor David Paterson, a Catholic and yet pro-abortion, not to mention pro-liberal on all topics.

Watch the interview.

Iragi Christian community & the Dominican sisters in danger: Urgent prayers needed

This afternoon, I received a request for prayers, which I now recommend to you, for the Christians in Iraq. The following note was sent by Sister Donna Markham, the Prioress of the Adrian Dominicans:

This evening I have received very tragic news about the situation in Iraq . I have just returned from being with the 5 Iraqi sisters who are with us in Adrian . Today, all the Christians have fled from Mosul. There have been murders and rapes of Christians there and for now they are fleeing to the Christian villages. Sister Maria is very frightened about the safety of the sisters and the Christian people. As of now, the five elderly sisters who have been holding down the Motherhouse are choosing to remain there because they do not want to lose their Motherhouse to the terrorists. She said most Christians are making plans to evacuate from Iraq and, as a consequence, she does not know what will happen with her Congregation. She said they will follow the Christian people where they go, but where that will be is uncertain. The sisters’ families remain in grave danger and, as you can imagine, the young ones with us and with Springfield are terrified. As of now, nothing is being reported in the US press. She asks if any of us know people in Washington whom we could contact and tell the story, to please do so. Most importantly, she asks for our prayers.

Join the Facebook page “Save Christians in Iraq“

May Our Lady of Peace, pray for us.

Saint Dominic and Dominican saints and blesseds, pray for us.

Saint Walburga

Prayer to Saint Walburga

Saint Walburga, by your blessed life of love, God blessed you with the power to heal, to make whole the soul as well as the body. Beg for us what we cannot obtain for ourselves, and heal our world of sickness and sorrow. May God hear you, who lived so graciously for His glory, and send us the healing grace we need through your powerful intercession. Amen.

More on Saint Wlaburga, read this blog post.

Is Lent a time of healing for you?

In the Syriac Christian tradition the healing power of
Christ is presented to the faithful, by the Church, by knowing that the believing community of faith, is the Lord’s bride and our
mother. We know this experientially through the sacramental ministries of the priesthood. Saint Ephrem prays to Christ crucified and risen:

With three medicines

You have cured our sickness;

Humanity was weak, suffering and failing;

You have strengthened it by you blessed bread,

You have consoled it with your sober wine,

And You have given it joy with your anointing.

Lent is the springtime of our healing in mind, body and soul. Lent is a time to have the
great reversal happen: from weakness to strength, from sickness to health, from sinfulness to a
life of grace. This is all possible in the confession of sins, the worthy
reception of the Holy Eucharist, and the luscious anointing of the Holy Spirit
pour out over us.

Purifying our love

Let’s face it: many Christians find Lent meaningless. There are some among us who get their ashes, make some crazy resolution –give up the daily consumption of 5 beers, are nice to a sibling, do homework– to make “penance” and the season of Lent more “holy.” Silly things at Lent beget shallow experiences of conversion, perhaps even lend to a falsification of the Christian witness at during the time of Lent. Read the Pope’s lenten addresses an see what he has to say about the nature of this season we call purposeful, holy, penitential, even great. He would agree with me (wow that could be dangerous!) that unless you take Christ seriously who is standing in front of you in the person of your neighbor, Lent is going to be boring and miserable. How pure is your love for Jesus? How does your love for Jesus made real, concrete, fruitful? The following 3 paragraphs may begin to help answer these questions. Emphasis mine.

Christ attracts me primarily through things and people. My wounded, tired soul could stop at that. Idolatry is nothing other than to confuse the creature with the Creator, which is why there is a continual need for the purification of love.

My comments here come directly from a saying of Fr. Giussani that I have referred to many, many times and that, in the book I wrote about him, I cited as one of the loftiest, most impressive and truly innovative points in the Church’s recent
history: the definition of virginity as distance in possession, or possession that includes distance in it. We must take this expression in its entirety. In it is the exaltation of the human in Christ, which so characterized Fr. Giussani’s entire life, and the inevitability of sacrifice, which he always cited as the condition of the road. No one wants to do away with or repress friendship and sentiments, or to put them “in parentheses”, but we must be very clear and ask ourselves: what does God want of me? And what does that mean for the other, in light of the road that God has assigned to him?

Christ is not paradoxical. Christ gives us an abundance of human affections to help us to understand what it means to love him. It doesn’t scandalize me when someone says: “It seems that I love that person more than I love Jesus”, because our path towards the Infinite is without end, and, before you love the God that you don’t see, you love the neighbor that you see. But love the neighbor that you see so as to walk toward God, to walk toward the fullness of yourself.

An excerpt from an address tilted, “Our Fulfillment” by Father Massimo Camisasca, founder of the Fraternity of Saint Charles.

The Fraternity is an international missionary congregation of priests begun in 1985 as a response to the work of Monsignor Luigi Giussani. The Fraternity has about 100 priests in 20 countries and 30 in formation to be ordained priests. To read the rest of the address, click here.

The crucible of Lent: the Embertide

In the reformed Catholic Liturgy we hear little of the traditional days throughout the year given by the Church to pray in a more intense way and to fast in the light of the sacred Liturgy. Namely, Ember Days. Not only is it Lent but this week, Wednesday (today), Friday and Saturday, we have something extra added (at least we did, let me explain below): we offer to God the work and fruit of the season of spring and we ask God for blessings. In the old way of doing things deacons were ordained priests on Saturday. An intense sensibility of prayer and fasting make these days notable.

Catholics should always situation themselves in the context of the Liturgy (that is, Lauds, Vespers & Mass) with the minor though NOT incidental liturgical observances like Ember days that happen about quarterly in the calendar year. Before the promulgation of the Missal of Paul VI (the style of Mass we now have) there was a tradition of specifically gathering on three days, three times a year which correspond to the seasons of the year. In addition to what said above about the character of the Ember Days, one can also emphasize the purpose of these days as to place before the Lord our own struggle to live a life of holiness asking for the grace to continue without back-sliding (which is easy to do for many of us). The work to overcome our disordered concupiscence (conversion of morals) is difficult and excruciatingly painful at times. And to be honest, it’s only possible to advance in the spiritual life with the abandonment of self to God unreservedly. What the Church proposes is that we consider the Scripture narrative of the Transfiguration of the Lord (seen on the right by Giovanni Bellini) as an apt motif for our own desire to change for the better.

Even though the reflections offered at the New Liturgical Movement blog are within the perspective of the Missal of John XXIII (the 1962 Missal), it is worth noting what the two writers say about the Lenten Ember Days because the liturgical practice is correct and helpful for all of us.

I, for one, would love to see a reclaiming of the Embertide traditions if not in the actual restoration to the liturgical observance then in teaching the faithful through the normal channels of CCD, bulletin teaching and preaching. What is striking about the Embertide liturgy is the use of sacred Scripture: the number of readings increase thus giving a fuller plate of the word of God for our meditation.

Here is the post on the Ember Days in the Fall.

Let us ask Mary, Mother of God, refuge of sinners, to aid us with her prayers.

Is our practice of charity leading us anywhere?

How often do you think about the spiritual acts that you do, let’s say for Lent, are pleasing God? Why are you do act of penance? Really, why are you “giving something up for Lent”? If you are doing something to observe the 40 days of Lent, what or who is your guide, and why? How sufficiently aware are you when it comes to your attitudes, desires, ways of interacting with others? When I read the following passage these and other questions surfaced because the author is dead-on. In fact, he cuts a little too close to the heart.

By means of Scripture, the Church instructs her
children in the true meaning of Lenten penance for, as St. Leo the Great
comments: it is useless to deny food to the body if the soul does not reject
sin (4th Sermon of Lent). If mortification does not lead to an interior effort
to eliminate sin and practice virtue, it cannot be pleasing to God, who wants
us to serve him with a heart that is humble, pure and sincere.

Selfishness and
the tendency to assert our ego too often lead us to put ourselves at the center
of the universe; we trample on the rights of others and in doing so evade the
fundamental law of brotherly love. That is why those Jews who fasted, wore
sackcloth and slept on ashes, but did not cease oppressing their neighbors,
were severely rebuked by God and their acts of penance were rejected. It is of
little or no use to impose physical privations on ourselves if we are unable to
renounce our own interests in order to respect and promote those of our
neighbor; if we will not give up our views in favor of some one else’s; if we
do not try to get along with everyone and bear wrongs patiently.

Sacred
Scripture makes it very definite that what makes penitential practices
acceptable to God lies in the area of charity.

Divine Intimacy

Father Gabriel
of St. Mary Magdalen, OCD