We little fishes, after the example Christ

For Christians Eastertide has multiple associations: the Resurrection of Jesus, new life, enlightenment, the Holy Spirit, birth of the Church, and Baptism. During this week, Baptism has caught our attention.

Thinking about Baptism we are led by Tertullian (AD 160-240?), a prolific, bombastic, and brilliant Roman North African who lived in Carthage. He left his mark on the Church until this age. He is the Father of Latin Christian Literature. He famously said, “I believe [in Christ] because it is absurd.”

On Baptism:

Happy is our sacrament of water, in that, by washing away the sins of our early blindness, we are set free and admitted into eternal life! …The consequence is, that a viper of the Cainite heresy, lately conversant in this quarter, has carried away a great number with her most venomous doctrine, making it her first aim to destroy baptism. Which is quite in accordance with nature; for vipers and asps and basilisks themselves generally do affect arid and waterless places. But we, little fishes, after the example of our ΙΧΘΥΣ Jesus Christ, are born in water, nor have we safety in any other way than by permanently abiding in water; so that most monstrous creature, who had no right to teach even sound doctrine, knew full well how to kill the little fishes, by taking them away from the water!

On Baptism

More on the person of Tertullian, please listen to this brief podcast by a friend, Mike Aquilina, you won’t be disappointed: Tertullian and the Theology of Sarcasm

The Orthodox Church in the Time of COVID-19

“The Orthodox Church in the Time of COVID-19”

The Wheel Journal (@wheeljournal) has an extraordinary online Symposium “The Orthodox Church in the Time of COVID-19” is available on YouTube.

The conversation is moderated by Joseph Clarke. The panelists include: Archpriest Alexis Vinogradov, Sister Vassa Larin, Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun, Father Peter Scorer, Dr. Gayle Woloschak, Archpriest Andrey Kordochkin, Deacon Nicholas Denysenko.

I highly recommend listening the symposium. It will open up some new perspectives.

The Gospel Proclaimed in Greek at St Peter’s, 2020

The Gospel Proclaimed in Greek at Pope’s Easter Mass doesn’t seem newsworthy unless you have a special concern for the catholic Church’s Sacred (Divine) Liturgy. Yesterday caught our attention.

If you watched Pope Francis’ Easter Mass at St Peter’s Basilica yesterday, then you may have noticed the very moving gospel of the Resurrection sung in Greek. The deacon, Gianpiero Vaccaro, from the Italo-Albanian Eparchy of Lungro (Calabria, Italy, is also a student of the Pontifical Greek College in Rome.

It was a good thing to see this “tradition” for Easter as it gives one the sense of greater universality of the Catholic Church. As you know, the Church is much more that Latin; for that matter, it is much larger than the Greek Churches, too. We do have the Armenian, Chaldean, Coptic, and Syriac families! Wouldn’t be nice to hear the Gospel sung in liturgical Armenian or Syriac (or Aramaic)?

In the meantime, let us pray for Deacon Gianpiero Vaccaro and his ministry for the Eparchy of Lungro.

https://www.facebook.com/fr.d.duvelius/videos/10158199961882512/UzpfSTY5MTA2MzY2NToxMDE1NzM4MDU3MDMwODY2Ng/

Jesus dies upon the Cross

“From noon until the third hour in the afternoon there was darkness over all the earth. At the third hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Hearing this, some of those who were present said,“He is calling upon Elijah.” And suddenly one of them ran to fetch a sponge and, soaking it in vinegar, he stuck it on a reed and gave him to drink. The others said, “Let be; let us see if Elijah comes to save him!” And Jesus, with a loud groan, gave up the spirit.”

We are sinners and the death of Christ saves us. The death of Christ makes good whatever our past may be, but our past is full of that shadow we call sin. And it is the death of Christ that saves us. We cannot recognize Christ upon the cross without immediately understanding and feeling that this cross must touch us too, that no longer may we make any objection to sacrifice; no more objection to sacrifice, now that Lord has died.

Through that same gaze of ours fixed upon the cross – where He looks upon us with the constant eye of eternity, constant in pity and the will to save us, having pity upon us and our nothingness – through that gaze fixed constantly upon the cross, what would otherwise be something so strange as to seem to us detached from reality, arbitrary, senseless, becomes an experience of redemption. It is by keeping our gaze fixed upon the cross that we learn to perceive, by direct experience, the penetrating Presence and the ineluctable necessity of grace for the perfecting of our lives, for the joy of our lives. In Our Lady our heart’s adoration finds its exemplar and form. In fact the cross is not just for Christ: the death of Christ upon the cross saves the world, but not merely as an isolated event, in itself. Not by Himself alone does Christ save the world, but also by the cleaving of each one of us to suffering and the cross. Saint Paul says so: “I make up in my human flesh what is lacking in the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross – in the passion of Christ.”

With you, O Mary, we see that the renunciation of our lives that is required of us is not punishment, but is necessary for their salvation, their exaltation, their growth. Mary, let our offering, the offering of our lives, be of help to the poor world, this poor world, to enrich itself with the knowledge of Christ and to rejoice in the love of Christ.

~Meditation of the Servant of God Father Luigi Giussani on the Rosary

Good Friday 2020

The cross is a paradox of radiance. In Jesus, God places divinity in the midst of the worst darkness and suffering to reveal that nothing — no hell of our own or another’s creation — can ultimately block out the transfiguring light of God’s unfathomable light. The hope contained in the cross of Christ is not literally a payment for a cosmic sin that has kept humanity shackled ever since our first parent’s fall. It is rather the revelation of the extent God will go to make us understand the real nature of his love. That realization is what saves us.

New Skete Monastery
29 May 2019

HOLY THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 2020

O my Lord, you only are our King; help me, who am alone and have no helper but you, for my danger is at hand. . . .You, O Lord, did take Israel out of all the nations. . .for an everlasting inheritance. . . .And now we have sinned before you, and you have given us into the hands of our enemies, because we glorified their gods.  You are righteous, O Lord! . . .Remember, O Lord; make yourself known in this time of affliction and give me courage. (Esther 14:3-7)

Blessed Celestyna Faron

On the liturgical calendar of the Church in Poland today is Blessed Celestyna Faron, IHM (1913 – 1942) a Religious Sister of the Congregation of the Little Sister Servants of the Immaculate Conception. Within the Congregation she served variously as a teacher and catechist. In history she was known as Katarzyna Stanisława Faron 24 April 1913 born in Zabrzez, Malopolskie, [southern] Poland and died on Easter morning, 9 April 1944 in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Blessed Celestyna’s biography reveals that before her first profession of vows, she wrote to the Mother General saying, “Through my vows I long to belong entirely to Jesus Christ as a total sacrificial offering. I always desire to walk the way of love and devotion so that I can approach the Immaculate Lamb.”

Faron is remembered for her charity and courage, even in the face of death. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II with other 107 other Polish Martyrs of World War II on 13 June 1999. The collective feast day of the martyrs is 12 June.

The Little Sister Servants of the Immaculate Conception published this brief reflection on Blessed Celestyna AND  there is this biographical note on the Blessed which includes some witnesses on the Blessed making her person better known.

I didn’t know about Blessed Celestyna until this morning when my friend Bill brought her to my attention.

As a side note, the Little Sister Servants of the Immaculate Conception (USA) have  several witnesses of holiness from their ranks: 5 sisters who cause for canonization is being studied, in addition to the founder Blessed Edmund Bojanowski and Blessed Celestyna. Let’s pray for Edmund and Celestyna’s canonization.

May Blessed Celestyna intercede for us before the Throne of Grace asking for the gifts of charity, courage, poverty of spirit and the ability to sacrifice ourselves for the Lord of Life. Blessed Celestyna, pray for us.

The Call of the Benedictine Oblate

Whenever we try to rigidly define an experience or a call we often come up short. Words fail and sometimes a little confusion enters into our awareness. These days I am reading in the School of Community (the weekly catechesis of Communion and Liberation) Luigi Giussani’s Generating Traces in the History of the World (2010) and there he writes of Baptism’s character: the birth of a new creature. This particular section is quite good and hopeful. Giussani reminds us that beginning with Christ we have baptism leading to a companionship. Noting what Paul VI said (realize that Paul was formerly Giussani’s bishop in Milan) that with Baptism we become a “People that make history” and in another place he says we are a “new people who make history…” The event of Baptism “implies the participation of my person in the Mystery of Christ’s person –my person is incorporated into the Mystery of Christ’s person.”

Coupled with St John Henry Newman’s teaching that each of us given a mission, a work that is non-transferable and unique to each person, I was thinking of the Oblate vocation and the following  paragraph came to mind on place of oblates in the witness of the Benedictine monastery. Several years ago, the English Benedictines formed their thinking of how to understand the vocation of the laity in relation to monastic way of life.

“Lay oblates are a particular way in which a monastic community is able to share the fraternal communion of its life with lay people who seek to leaven the dough of their ordinary lives and their service of the mission of the local church with the yeast of Benedictine wisdom. They have responded to a call, been through a process of discernment and formation, and have made a promise to witness to Benedictine life in their homes, at work and in the local church. The part that oblates play in the individual communities where they make their oblation varies, but the mutual witness of prayer and the sharing of the testimony of lives that look to the Rule to support them is an encouragement to the monastic communities, and is a sign of the vitality of Benedictine life in the local churches.”

Excerpt from TO PREFER NOTHING TO CHRIST, paragraph 116
The Monastic Mission of the English Benedictine Congregation
The Catholic Truth Society, Publishers to the Holy See, London 2015