Communio – Page 279 – …bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Sacred Heart of Jesus

The designs of his Heart are from age to age, to rescue their souls from death,

and to keep them alive in famine. (Entrance ant. Ps 33)

I am always enthralled with the Church’s solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The wondrous love poured out for us, Christ’s Heart is the center of our life of love, forgiveness, peace, compunction, and action. It is from the Heart of Christ that the Church is born and sacraments given as a sign and nourishment.

In his chapter “The Heart of Jesus at His Birth in Bethlehem” Blessed Louis Guanella offers this prayer to the Sacred Heart:

O Most Holy
Heart of Jesus, I cannot love you as the Blessed Mother loved you. I feel bad
about it. I would like to love you, as the chaste Joseph did. At least, O Lord,
make me love you with simplicity and affection equal to that of the devout
shepherds. How happy will I be when I will really begin to love you! How
fortunate I will be when, enkindling my accent, I will be able to applaud
around you with the choirs of angels, saying: “Glory to God in the highest, and
peace on earth to men of good will!”

Blessed Louis Guanella

In the Month of
Fervor: Thirty Scriptural Maxims Developed on the Sacred Heart of Jesus for
Christian Souls

May the fire of the Heart of Jesus burn brightly within us!

A different view women of religious today

In the Catholic press this morning there is a story about the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma using the language of faith versus the language of politics for life, ministry and vocation. All this clap-trap with the LCWR and who’s on what side or not is a bit over the top for several reasons (which I won’t get into right now). Read what the Sisters of Mercy of Alma have to say –they give a more balanced view.

Vatican works more closely with Sport

The Church is getting more deeply into sport laity with the John Paul II Foundation for Sport, and the Pontifical Councils for Culture and Laity. It is believed that sport as a privileged place for dialogue among church, culture and youth. Sport is healthy recreation and appropriate challenge. Sport is a point of reference of bettering oneself and the development of virtue.

This is a new approach to following Christ.

(Sadly, the John Paul II Foundation for Sport is only a London based organization; let’s hope something in the USA and Canada gets working.)

From Vatican Radio:

Representatives from the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Pontifical Council for the Laity held a press conference at the Vatican on Thursday, during which they presented the new lines of cultural approach to sport. The new approach is aimed at coming to an understanding of sport as a privileged place for dialogue among Church, culture and youth. The conference also provided an opportunity to present the Pontifical Council for Culture’s new Department dedicated to Culture and Sport, which will work closely with the Church and Sport Section of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, and the John Paul II Foundation for Sport. One of those who participated in the press briefing was Fr. Kevin Lixey, who is Responsible for the Church and Sport Section at the Council for the Laity. He told Vatican Radio recent, highly publicized scandals in major league sports – including betting scandals in Italy – make the announcement extremely timely. “On the one hand,” said Lixey, “we wanted to announce something we’ve been doing for the past year and a half,” adding, “it’s a moment for the Church to show that it is concerned.” Fr. Lixey went on to say, “[The Church] is actively working and interested in trying to stimulate a little bit more the pastoral work with sport,” on all levels, from youth leagues to international and professional compretition. “There is,” said Fr. Lixey, “still a lot of good in sport.”

Listen to Chris Altieri’s extended interview with Fr. Kevin Lixey of the Pontifical Council for the Laity:

Origen attracts new interest with discovery

Yesterday there was a very brief article in the newspaper from the AP about the discovery of homilies from Origen (AD 185-253/4) Church father (theologian) from Alexandria, Egypt. Later I noticed a friend on Facebook telling us a little more of the discovery the homilies on the Psalms. Few of his texts are extant. The press release (in German) is noted here.

More than being esoteric, this a really important find because Origen is a pivotal Christian thinker because he contributed to the building of our witness to Christ.

The manuscripts of the homilies were found in the Bavarian State Library by Marina Molin Pradel while she was doing some other work. The texts were verified by Lorenzo Perrone of the University of Bologna. These homilies are important since Origen’s work as been until now unknown in Greek.

The 3rd century Origen was condemned by the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 553.

Zenit news has an article.

If you are interested in Origen you may be interested in what Pope Benedict XVI said about this theologian in 2007 when he dedicated two of his catechesis sessions on him.

Saint Anthony of Padua

Almighty ever-living God, who gave Saint Anthony of Padua to your people as an outstanding preacher and an intercessor in their need, grant that, with his assistance, as we follow the teachings of the Christian life, we may know your help in every trial.

One of the beautiful things that happened today was the reception of First Holy Communion of Giovannimaria Rainaldi, 6, who is living with neuroblastoma. From Rome, Italy, he’s been here seeking treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Giovannimaria has had a setback and needs our fraternal and prayerful support.

Be sure to read the select for Saint Anthony in the Office of Readings. As usual, it’s good for meditation.

Saint Anthony help us to find Christ, and stick with Him. Pray for us.

Modern Science, Ancient Faith: Portsmouth Institute set

The Portsmouth Institute is set to begin its third year of work from June 22-24, 2012, with the theme of “Modern Science, Ancient Faith.” The Institute is located at Portsmouth Abbey and School (Portsmouth, RI).

The speakers include Rt. Rev. Dom James Wiseman (St. Anselm’s Abbey, Washington, DC), R. Dom Paschal Scotti (Portsmouth Abbey), William Dembski, John Haught, Kenneth Miller, B. Joseph Semmes, Michael Ruse, Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, OP.

Prayer, fraternity and time to think are hallmarks of the Portsmouth Institute. Situated at the beautiful Portsmouth Abbey on the Narrangansett Bay, who could not love expanding one’s thinking on faith and science.

Visit the website noted above for more information of the conference, the Abbey and School.

Previous Institutes:

2009 The Catholic William F. Buckley, Jr.

2010 Newman & the Intellectual Tradition

2011 The Catholic Shakespeare?

Join the work being done…

Profession of vows, celebration of 50 years of monastic vows

Trust in the Lord and do good, and you will dwell in the land and be secure.
Find your delight in the Lord, and he will grant your heart’s desire.
(Ps 37; Introit for Mass for Religious)

These days there are celebrations of profession of vows and recognition of 50 years of monastic profession. The vocation to the monastic life is the search for God (cf. Rule of St Benedict) by the serious living of the gospel and one’s baptism. It is a glorious vocation, one that entering the narrow gate is not easy but eloquent for its witness.

Three friends are living their vocation with fresh eyes. Each called by the Lord to follow and to be see-ers of the Kingdom (cf. Ratzinger) in this manner is sacrificial oriented to life eternal (cf. Spe Salvi, 12).

Benedictine Brother Pietro, a monk of the Monastery of Saint Peter and Paul (outside Milan, Italy) professed his first vows (temporary profession), Father Hilary of the Abbey of Saint Mary (Morristown, NJ) celebrated his 50th annviersary, and Benedictine Sister Marie Rita celebrated her 50th anniversary of profession of monastic vows. There are several others I could mention but let me satisfy this desire to recognize the sign of profession for service of the Kingdom and one’s salvation.

Brother Pietro studied medicine and follows the lay ecclesial movement of Communion and Liberation. His monastery is a diocesan rite monastery following the Rule of SaInt Benedict and the teachings of the Servant of God Father Luigi Giussani. Pietro gave up a promising career in medicine to follow and seek the face of Christ more intimately in an Italian monastery. I can’t help but think of Pietro’s vocation as a witness poignant today in postmodern Italy where monasteries are virtually empty. His monastery receives postulants regularly and I am grateful for his YES.

Father Hilary is a monk and a priest of Morristown, NJ’s Abbey of Saint Mary where he teaches in the Delbarton School and he works in the community as novice and formation director. In the American Cassinese Congregation of monks the 50 year julibilarian receives from the abbot the baculus (a craved stick; this one is made in Ireland) with the liturgical phrase exhorting the monk, “Use the baculus not so much as a support for bodily strength, but rather to obtain spiritual fortitude from our Savior, Jesus Christ, who has called us all to himself in the gospel, saying, Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you, for my yoke is easy, my burden light.” Hilary’s quiet demeanor is a stable form of living the manner set out by the Lord and Benedict.

Sister Rita is the Prioress of the Monastery of the Glorious Cross, Branford, CT. Her’s is a vocation to lead a group of women who daily surrender to the Lord their health and mobility uniting themselves more and more eucharistically.

At Sister’s Jubilee Mass more than 75 friends attended with spiritual assistance of Father Peter John Cameron, OP celebrating the Mass and preaching, with Abbot Caedmon Holmes, OSB (of Portsmouth Abbey), Father Prior Vincent DeLucia, OP (St Mary’s Priory, New Haven), Father Jacob Restrick, OP (Hawthorne, NY) Father David Borino (Archdiocese of Hartford), Father Robert Usenza (Diocese of Bridgeport and Father Paul Halovich and Deacon Fusco (also of Hartford).

Sister Rita’s sister Canossian Daughter of Charity Sister Margaret flew in from China where she is a missionary to be present. The Canossian sisters have the great Saint Josephine Bakhita as one of them.

As you may know, monks and nuns profess the monastic vows of conversion of manners, stability and obedience according to the Rule of Saint Benedict. Benedictines live a life with a quality being subtle.

With the Church we pray,

O God, who inspire and bring to fulfillment every good intention, direct your servants into the way of eternal salvation, and as they have left all things to devote themselves entirely to you, grant that, following Christ and renouncing the things of this world, they may faithfully serve you in their neighbor in a spirit of poverty and humility of heart.

I’ve blogged about Monastery of Saint Peter and Paul (Monastero Ss. Pietro e Paolo), Cascinazza (Milan), before here.

Washed in Christ’s blood St Catherine’s parishioners take to NYC streets for Corpus Christi

Yesterday was the great feast of The Solemnity of the
Body and Blood of Christ. At Saint Catherine of Siena Church in New York City
the parish community with the Dominican Friars led by Father Jordan Kelly
celebrated a Solemn Mass for the feast and then took to the streets with the Monstrance containing Our Lord and Savior. For the
first time in years Our Lord in His Eucharistic Presence was carried in
procession in the neighborhood of the church. Imagine the faces of Catholics, Christians, Jews, Muslims and those who do not share our Eucharistic faith seeing such display of faith and devotion!

Graces beyond imagining:
beautiful weather, lots of people, terrific sacred music given to our worship
by Daniel B. Sañez and his superb choir, an insightful homily and a rededication to the Sacred Heart with Benediction after an extended period of adoration.

I
came across this reflection from Saint John Chrysostom:

If we wish to
understand the power of Christ’s blood, we should go back to the ancient
account of its prefiguration in Egypt. ‘Sacrifice a lamb without blemish’,
commanded Moses, ‘and sprinkle its blood on your doors’. If we were to ask him
what he meant, and how the blood of an irrational beast could possibly save
people endowed with reason, his answer would be that the saving power lies not
in the blood itself, but in the fact that it is a sign of the Lord’s blood. In
those days, when the destroying angel saw the blood on the doors he did not
dare to enter, so how much less will the devil approach now when he sees, not
that figurative blood on the doors, but the true blood on the lips of
believers, the doors of the temple of Christ.

Indeed, washed in Chris’s blood,
and not that of a animal is what saves, and we ought to scream this from the
roof tops. Well, we actually didn’t yell anything but we walked together in
professing our faith.

The Church of Saint Catherine of Siena NYC will never be the same! Thanks be to God.

Lauda Sion Salvatorem: Corpus Christi a Mysterical renunion

The feast of Corpus Christi has a rich fare to savor: prayers, Bible readings, music, and poetic texts. The point of the Church offering us this opportunity to honor the Eucharistic Presence is to extend in our lives a deeper grace given in Communion theology, to have a closer with the Lord in His promised hundredfold. It is, of course, a deepening in our lives what the Lord Himself did and gave to us on Holy Thursday with Eucharist and the priesthood.

The Sequence (the poetry which follows the second lesson at Mass and directly precedes the Alleluia verse), Lauda Sion Salvatorem, is ideally fitting for the sacred Liturgy. Google this masterpiece of poetry expressing theology in a way that stimulates prayer and deepens one’s faith.

The English priest Father Ronald Knox offers a perspective on what we’re doing in observing the great feast of the Lord’s Body and Blood. The following is taken from his meditation on Corpus Christi:

Like the Jewish Temple, the Christian altar is the rallying point of God’s people. The whole notion of Christian solidarity grows out of, and is centered in, the common participation of a common Table. The primitive Church in Jerusalem broke bread day be day from house to house; its stronghold of peace was not any local centre, but a common meal. Christian people, however separated by long distances of land or sea, still meet together in full force, by a mystical reunion, whenever and wherever the Bread is broken and the Cup blessed.

Corpus Christi 2012

The observance of Corpus Christi, sometimes called Corpus Domini (The Body of the Lord). In places like Rome, the traditional day to observe this feast is Thursday, connecting with Holy Thursday. A portion of the Pope’s homily is noted below (the full text is here).

… the sacredness of the Eucharist. Also here we heard in the recent past of a certain misunderstanding of the authentic message of Sacred Scripture. The Christian novelty in regard to worship was influenced by a certain secularist mentality of the 60s and 70s of the past century. It is true, and it remains always valid, that the center of worship is now no longer in the rites and ancient sacrifices, but in Christ himself, in his person, in his life, in his paschal mystery. And yet, from this fundamental novelty it must not be concluded that the sacred no longer exists, but that it has found its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, incarnate divine Love. The Letter to the Hebrews, which we heard this evening in the Second Reading, speaks to us precisely of the novelty of the priesthood of Christ, “high priest of the good things that have come” (Hebrews 9:11), but it does not say that the priesthood is finished. Christ “is the mediator of a new covenant” (Hebrews 9:15), established in his blood, which purifies our “conscience from dead works” (Hebrews 9:14). He did not abolish the sacred, but brought it to fulfillment, inaugurating a new worship, which is, yes, fully spiritual but which however, so long as we are journeying in time, makes use again of signs and rites, of which there will be no need only at the end, in the heavenly Jerusalem, where there will no longer be a temple (cf. Revelation 21:22). Thanks to Christ, the sacred is more true, more intense and, as happens with the Commandments, also more exacting! Ritual observance is not enough, but what is required is the purification of the heart and the involvement of life.

Pope Benedict XVI

Corpus Christi at the Basilica of St. John Lateran

7 June 2012