The Year of the Priest, Annus Sacerdotalis –Congregation for the Clergy
It’s expected that on June 29th the Pope will
publish his latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth).
Last week he said: “As you know, my encyclical on the
vast theme of economics and labor will soon be published. It will highlight
what, for us Christians, are the objectives to be pursued and the values to be
promoted and tirelessly defended, with the purpose of realising a truly free
and human coexistence in solidarity.”
Pope Benedict’s two previous encyclicals are Deus Caritas
Est (God is Love, 2005) and Spe Salvi (Saved by Hope, 2007).
It’s time to get excited because the Pope’s words are always germane.
Today, June 24, is the first anniversary of the dedication of Saint Dominic’s
Monastery new monastery in Linden, Virginia.
What an amazing year!
This summer four young women will enter the Monastery as postulants. As
envisioned, the Monastery is acting as a magnet attracting young women to
devote their lives to God. The life follows the traditional form of Second Order Dominican nuns with the night Office, the grill, silence, sacrifice and prayer. The nuns rarely leave the cloister and are completely focussed on Christ.
I would like to encourage everyone to send Sister Mary Paul (the
prioress) and the nuns at Saint Dominic’s Monastery an anniversary card and, if
possible, to include an anniversary gift – a check to support the formation of
their new members.
Cards can be mailed to:
Sister Mary Paul, O.P.
Saint Dominic’s Monastery
2636 Monastery Road
Linden, VA 22642
My friends Fathers Gabriel and Jordan as well as the laywoman Julie tell me the life of the monastery is going extremely well and the need for assistance is also great. So, I think the life of these Dominican nuns is VERY worth a sacrificial gift. Don’t you?
Elizabeth the wife of Zachary gave birth to a great man, John the Baptist,
the Precursor of the Lord.
The Lord called Father H. Tim Vakoc, US Army Major, to himself on June 20th.
Archbishop Timothy Dolan is serious: he’s praying for ALL the people of the Archdiocese of New York (and others) when he’s in the Eternal City next week to receive the pallium from the Pope. He’s the link between us and our Roman sainted forefathers and mothers; likewise, he’s the link between the archdiocese and the Holy Father. Spiritual closeness is a cool thing in the Catholic Church.
A fascinating initiative was launched the other day for the Year of the Priest on Twitter by Utrecht’s Archbishop Willem Jacobus Eijk. Follow the Archbishop at FuturePriests.com.
As a sacrament, the Eucharist has a double aspect: it is
both a sign and the reality signified by it, both a remembering of the past and
a making-really-present: “When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, she
commemorates Christ’s Passover, and it is made present: the sacrifice Christ offered once for all on the Cross remains ever present” (Catechism
of the Catholic Church,1364).
Here the three meanings of “present” come together: Christ
in the Eucharist is 1) present, not absent, but really here; 2) present, not
past, but happening now; and 3) presented as a gift (a “present”), really
given; offered, not withheld. Christ is “present in many ways to his
Church” (CCC, 1373) but “[t]he mode of Christ’s presence under the Eucharistic species [forms, appearances] is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as ‘the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend’ [St. Thomas Aquinas]. In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist ‘the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.’ ‘…[I]t is presence in the fullest sense…Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present'” (CCC 1374). (from Peter J. Kreeft, Catholic Christianity, 2001)
Pope Benedict’s vacation advice from a recent general
audience: “We must set aside time in life for God, to open our life to God with
a thought, a meditation, a small prayer and not to forget Sunday is the day of
the Lord.” And in another place he said: “He who neglects contemplation is
deprived of the vision of the light of God; he who is carried away with worry
and allows his thoughts to be crushed by the tumult of the things of the world
is condemned to the absolute impossibility of penetrating the secrets of the
invisible God …While at work, with its frenetic rhythms, and during vacation,
we have to reserve moments for God. [We have to] open our lives up to him,
directing a thought to him, a reflection, a brief prayer. And above all, we
mustn’t forget that Sunday is the day of Our Lord, the day of the liturgy, [the
day] to perceive in the beauty of our churches, in the sacred music and in the
Word of God, the same beauty of our God, allowing him to enter into our being.
Only in this way is our life made great; it is truly made a life.”
Give me the grace to long for Your holy sacraments, and
especially to rejoice in the presence of Your body, sweet Savior Christ, in the
holy sacrament of the altar. Amen.
