Holy Innocents

Today is the feast of Innocent Martyrs, the children who in Bethlehem of Judas were killed by the unholy King Herod. Their shed blood was for the Son of God and Savior, and for us.

The Holy Innocents have been honored by the Church as martyrs since the first centuries. Today, their import keeps us vigilant on threats to human life, from conception to natural death. The Innocents are the witnesses to the Pro-Life work we are engaged in. They bring us into relationship with Christ and humanity at a deeper level.

Let the final word be just as Saint Thérèse would have it: Nisi efficiamini sicut parvuli  (Unless you become like unto little children. Mt 18:3)

NB: The Byzantine Church (UGCC) this feast on December 29.

Christmas

Today we celebrate the Nativity of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus. Son of God, Son of Mary. The Prince of Peace.

In an era of great confusion and unrest due to natural disasters, presence of refugees, political and religious distractions, our celebration of the birth of the Lord hopefully will re-focus our attention on the desire that God has for us: that His Divine Presence will change our lives. This is my hope.

Blessed Christmas!

Living in order to be happy

How must we live in order to be, or to become, capable of happiness? The question is one which ought to occupy us nowadays more than ever before. Man should take his happiness as seriously as takes himself. And he ought to believe God and his own heart when, even in distress and trouble, he has an intuitive feeling that he was created for happiness.

But this entails certain clear convictions. For a full and satisfying life man must know what it is all about. He must have no doubts about being on the right road with all the saints to back him up, and divine strength to support him. Such a life is a dedicated one, conscious of being blessed and touched by God himself.

Prison Meditations of Fr. Alfred Delp
Alfred Delp, SJ

Mary, the Immaculate Conception

“Who are you, O Immaculate Conception?” asks St Maximillian Maria Kolbe, the 20th century martyr and saint who founded a Marian movement. Accordingly, he teaches us, based on his prayer and experience, that the perfect love of the Holy Trinity meets an adequate response in the perfect love of the Immaculate, which is the name St Maximilian gives to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In another place he says, “In the union of the Holy Spirit with her, not only does love bind these two beings, but the first of them [the Holy Spirit] is all the love of the Most Holy Trinity, while the second [the Blessed Virgin Mary] is all the love of creation, and thus in that union heaven is joined to earth, the whole heaven with the whole earth, the whole of Uncreated Love with the whole of created love: this is the vertex of love.”

St Maximillian gave us a mature perspective of Mary under this title.

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was declared and defined by Bl. Pius IX in 1854: “The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.” (Ineffabilis Deus )

Since Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception let us pray for our nation today.

St Ambrose

Today is the liturgical memorial of St. Ambrose reputed to be the greatest Archbishop of Milan (at a time it was the center of the Roman Empire). Ambrose was elected bishop when he was still a catechumen who was competent in civil and ecclesial administration but he’s also known for his acumen in theology and hymnody. It is his relationship with the Holy Trinity that orients our attention, especially with regard to the Incarnation. If we don’t get the Incarnation of the Eternal Word of God correct, nothing else in our Catholic life will be correct. In this period of preparation for the Nativity of the Lord, Ambrose sets our meditation in a way no other can.

He wrote of the Son of God: “And the Word was with God. This that he said is to be understood thus: The Word was just as was the Father; since He was together with the Father, He was also in the Father, and He was always with the Father. […] It is of the Word to be with the Father; it is of the Father to be with the Word, for we read that the Word was with God. So if, according to your opinion, there was a time when He was not, then, according to your opinion, He too was not in the beginning with whom was the Word. For through the Word I hear, through the Word I understand that God was. For, if I shall believe that the Word was eternal, which I do believe, I cannot doubt about the eternity of the Father, whose Son is eternal” (The Sacrament of the Incarnation of our Lord (III, 15-18, from the Vatican web site).

And again, Ambrose says, “He lay in the crib, that you might stand at the altar. He came to earth, that you might come to the stars” (Exposition of Luke 2.41).

St Nicholas Day

 

Blessed feast day of St Nicholas!

 

Thy just works have shown Thee to thy flock as an example of faith, an image of meekness and a teacher of abstinence. By humility Thou didst achieve exaltation, and by meekness, riches. O Father Bishop Nicholas, intercede with Christ our God to save our souls.

(Troparion for St. Nicholas)

St John of Damascus

Today being the feast of Saint John of Damascus, it is crucial that we think of the Trinity:

“Think of the Father as a spring of life begetting the Son like a river and the Holy Ghost like a sea, for the spring and the river and sea are all one nature. Think of the Father as a root, and of the Son as a branch, and the Spirit as a fruit, for the substance in these three is one. The Father is a sun with the Son as rays and the Holy Ghost as heat.”

Eternal Kingdom and the dignity of its King

The glory and nobility of God’s eternal Kingdom have to be estimated from the dignity of its King, since a king is not derived from a kingdom but a kingdom from a king. And he indeed is King who has on his garment and on his thigh a name written: King of kings and Lord of lords (Apoc. 19:16), whose power is everlasting power that shall  not be taken away (Dan. 7:14), whose kingdom will not be destroyed and whom all tribes ad peoples and tongues (Apoc. 7:9) will serve throughout eternity. He is truly a peaceable (1 Chron. 22:9) King, whose countenance both heaven and all the earth desire to look upon  (1 Kings 10:24).

In this eternal kingdom, all good and perfect gifts come down in plenty and abundance from the Father of Lights (James 1:17) through Jesus Christ, who is the super-essential Ray and who since he is one, can do all things, and renews all things (Wisdom 7:27).

St. Bonaventure
The Tree of Life

Blessing the Truly Blessed

Today is the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary into the Temple. Latin Catholics and the new calendar Eastern Christians (Catholic and Orthodox) celebrate a feast with the biblical basis in a book that is not part of the canonical Scriptures, the Proto-Evangelium of James.

The meditation by Sister Vassa Larin herein asks a good question in our participating in liturgical services, or merely paying lip-service to the Divine Majesty, the Mother of God or the saints when we do not have our spiritual life put in order or at least trying to live rightly. The spiritual life is a journey, one that we need to take seriously. As Mary lived so ought we…

The mediation:

“Blessed are the blameless in the Way, who walk in the law of the Lord.” (Ps 118/119: 1, Septuagint)

Is it pointless for us to “bless” and praise “the blameless” (οἱ ἄμωμοι, непорочнии), for example, the Theotokos, whose Entry into the Temple is celebrated today on the “New” Calendar; or the archangels and angels, whose feast is celebrated today on the Older Calendar,– if we ourselves are not “blameless”? No, of course not. Because by celebrating the “blameless” in the law of the Lord, we are reminded of the kind of “celebrity” that is truly praise-worthy in God’s eyes, and are inspired to desire it for ourselves. This is particularly counter-cultural in our day, when so much press is wasted on, and “lip-service” paid to, celebrities both famous and infamous.

Lord, let me not bless, nor desire to be like, those who have the dubious “blessing” of our press. Let me rather bless those who are blessed in Your “press,” in Holy Scripture: “Blessed is the man that has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the pestilent.” (Ps 1: 1)