Last week you might remember a note on the secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, addressing the American Bible Society and friends in NYC on Tuesday, 28 July.
Confirming prior research a team of doctors released their findings in the World Journal of Surgical Oncology that there is a 66% increase of breast cancer among women who have had an abortion.
With the Church we pray:
Heavenly Father, your son was received as an honored
and welcome guest in the home of Bethany. Keep us close to the Master in our prayer and work that, blameless in his sight, he may welcome us into our eternal home, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
Never a day goes by that I don’t ask the question about my faith and my life of faith. I doubt any serious Christian would go through life without asking the same: How does my faith impact my relationship with God and vice verse? Do I live in certain intimacy with the divine nature? Do others see God in me as I relate to them? How credible a witness am I of Jesus Christ and His Good News?
Without faith it is impossible to please God. (Hebrews
11:6). Faith is the foundation of our relations with God. For the man without
faith, God has no meaning, no value, no place in his life. On the contrary, the
more lively our faith is, the more God enters into our life, until finally he
becomes our all, the one great reality for; which we live, and the One for whom
we courageously face sorrow and death. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if
we die, we die to the Lord (Romans 14:8). Those who dedicate themselves to the
spiritual life do not lack faith; but often our faith is not alive and concrete
enough to make us always see God in everything, which would give us the sense
of his fundamental, transcendent and eternal reality that infinitely surpasses
all earthly realities. In practice we do not reflect sufficiently on the truth
that to be a believer is a pure gift of God, not due to any personal merit. God
is both the object of faith and the giver of faith; it is he who infuses into
us the desire to know him and to believe in him and who makes us capable of the
act of believing.
Divine Intimacy, Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, OCD
My first thought goes — it’s obvious — to your
founder Monsignor Luigi Giussani, to whom many memories tie me, since he had
become a true friend to me. Our last meeting, as Father Carrón mentioned, took
place in Milan Cathedral two years ago, when our beloved Pope John Paul II sent
me to preside at his solemn funeral.
A CNA article today announces the priest who identified the alleged apparitions of the BVM is now leaving the priesthood and his religious order. The authorized his defrocking in March. Also disturbing are the reports that some of the seers are living in wealthy conditions, presumably derived from monies given by pilgrims. See the brief Mail Online article. The Telegraph tells more…
The Capuchins in Italy are taking time to reflect on
the greatest God-given gift they’ve received: work of 100 years among the native Brasilian
peoples. What really struck me was the Provincial’s comment: “And we truly lived it as
a gift: participating in His mission, that is to say, the mission of Jesus
Christ.”
You won’t see me giving space to the “good work” of the Nat’l Catholic Reporter on this blog very often (almost never except for John Allen’s work) because of the NCRs frequent loyal opposition to the Church, but a recent article on the intersection of business and Ignatian Spirituality is worth noting. Read it here.
I highlight this article because I like the work of Jesuit Father Robert Spitzer, the president emeritus of Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. Father Spitzer is a philosopher with significant grounding in faith and reason (science). He has hosted a few programs on EWTN that are very worthwhile.
I don’t think “grandparents day” in the Hallmark manner has hit the pope yet, but he did tell his listeners that grandparents are a central part of the family. The feast of Saints Joachim and Anne is the Church’s way of honoring grandparents seeing in Saints Joachim and Anne great models of what grandparents are to be for children and family systems. Pope Benedict’s remarks came within a reflection of the Sunday gospel where we heard Saint John’s narrative of the Multiplication of the loaves and fish. He asks THAT rather important question which we ask ourselves in front of Christ: who am I?
