J. Augustine DiNoia, Dominican & Archbishop

J A DiNoia OP.jpgToday, the Holy Father nominated Dominican Father Joseph Augustine Di Noia, 66, as the archbishop secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Disciple of the Sacraments. He is given the archepiscopal dignity and is assigned the Titular See of Oregon City.

A native of New York, a professed member of the Order of Friars Preachers, DiNoia possesses an earned doctorate from Yale and he is an esteemed professor. He is the past editor of the Thomist (a journal of Theological research and opinion). Until now Archbishop-elect DiNoia was the under-secretary for the CDF.
 
Archbishop-elect Joseph Augustine DiNoia, O.P. will be ordained to the episcopacy by His Eminence, William Cardinal Levada at the Basilica Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, DC on 11 July 2009.
Blessings, my friend! May God grant you many years!

Charity is the most important gift

Rouault head of Christ.jpg‘God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God,
and God abides in him’ (1 Jn 4:16). God has poured out his love in our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (cf. Rom 5:5); therefore the
first and most necessary gift is charity, by which we love God above all things
and our neighbor because of him. But if charity is to grow and fructify in the
soul like a good seed, each of the faithful must willingly hear the word of God
and carry out his will with deeds, with the help of his grace; he must
frequently partake of the sacraments, chiefly the Eucharist, and take part in
the liturgy; he must constantly apply himself to prayer, self-denial, active
brotherly service and the practice of all virtues. This is because love, as the
bond of perfection and fullness of the law (cf. Col 3:14; Rom 13:10),
governs, gives meaning to, and perfects all the means of sanctification. Hence the true disciple of Christ is marked by love both of God and of his
neighbor. (Lumen Gentium, 42)

With deifying light let us hear the divine voice

Let us then rise at length, since the Scripture arouse us,
saying: “It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep” (Romans 13:11);
and having opened our eyes to the deifying light, let us hear with awestruck
ears what the divine voice, crying out daily, does admonish us, saying:
“Today, if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Psalm 94[95]:8). And again: “He that hath ears to hear let him hear what the
Spirit says to the churches” (Revelation 2:7). And what doth He say? “Come,
children, hearken unto me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord” (Psalm 33[34]:12). “Run whilst you have the light of life, that the darkness of
death overtake you not” (John 12:35).

From the Prologue of the Holy Rule of our Holy Father Saint Benedict

Cyril Vasil ordained bishop

CVasil arms.jpgAs I noted a few weeks ago, Jesuit Father Cyril Vasil, 44, was nominated by the Pope to be Secretary for the Congregation for the Eastern Churches serving the Church with Cardinal Leonardo Sandri. He was ordained a bishop today in the papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major, across the street from where he resided and taught Eastern Canon Law at the Pontifical Oriental Institute. Today, is also the Archbishop’s 22nd anniversary ordination as a priest and both ordinations were done by the same bishop.

As his coat of arms suggest, Archbishop is “Always Prepared” to serve the Lord and the Church.

May God grant Archbishop Cyril many years!
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Lauda Sion

The Church has been given the gift of the enduring Presence of the Lord in the Eucharist. Last week celebrated Trinity Sunday and today Corpus Christi. This feast dates to when Pope Urban IV (1261-64) inaugurated the Feast of Corpus Christi and asked Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) to compose the the Liturgy for the Church. A striking feature of today’s Liturgy is singing of a poetic called a sequence, one of four done in the current liturgical life of the Church, though historically there were poetics for all the major feast of the Lord and others for saints. Today’s marvelous sequence Lauda Sion,is sung prior to the proclamation of the Gospel. As all sacred texts do, Lauda Sion expresses Catholic faith in the Body and Blood of Christ. The three verses of Lauda Sion are given here but you may pray the entire text by visiting here.

Words a nature’s course derange,

that in Flesh the bread may change

and the wine in Christ’s own Blood.

Does it pass thy comprehending?

Faith, the law of light transcending,

leaps to things not understood.

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Hail! Bread of the Angels, broken,

for us pilgrims food, and token

of the promise by Christ spoken,

children’s meat, to dogs denied!

Shown in Isaac’s dedication,

in the Manna’s preparation,

in the Paschal immolation,

in old types pre-signified.

Jesus, Shepherd mild and meek,

shield the poor, support the weak;

help all who Thy pardon sue,

placing all their trust in You:

fill them with Your healing grace!

Source of all we have or know,

feed and lead us here below.

grant that with Your Saints above,

sitting at the feast of love

we may see You face to face.

Amen. Alleluia.

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I devoutly adore the Presence of Christ



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Hidden God, devoutly I adore Thee, truly present underneath
these veils: all my heart subdues itself before Thee, since it all before Thee
faints and fails.

Not to sight, or taste, or touch be credit hearing only do
we trust secure; I believe, for God the Son has said it- Word of truth that
ever shall endure.

On the cross was veiled Thy Godhead’s splendor, here Thy
manhood lies hidden too; unto both alike my faith I render, and, as sued the
contrite thief, I sue.

Though I look not on Thy wounds with Thomas, Thee, my Lord,
and Thee, my God, I call: make me more and more believe Thy promise, hope in
Thee, and love Thee over all.

O memorial of my Savior dying, Living Bread, that gives life
to man; make my soul, its life from Thee supplying, taste Thy sweetness, as on
earth it can.

Deign, O Jesus, Pelican of heaven, me, a sinner, in Thy
Blood to lave, to a single drop of which is given all the world from all its
sin to save.

Contemplating, Lord, Thy hidden presence, grant me what I thirst for and implore, in the revelation of Thy essence to behold Thy glory evermore, Amen.

Humanity bears the profound mark of the Trinity

trinity.jpg… we contemplate the Most Holy Trinity as Jesus
introduced us to it. He revealed to us that God is love “not in the
oneness of a single Person, but in the Trinity of one substance” (Preface).
He is the Creator and merciful Father; he is the Only-Begotten Son, eternal
Wisdom incarnate, who died and rose for us; he is the Holy Spirit who moves all
things, cosmos and history, toward their final, full recapitulation. Three
Persons who are one God because the Father is love, the Son is love, the Spirit
is love. God is wholly and only love, the purest, infinite and eternal love. He
does not live in splendid solitude but rather is an inexhaustible source of
life that is ceaselessly given and communicated. To a certain extent we can
perceive this by observing both the macro-universe: our earth, the planets, the
stars, the galaxies; and the micro-universe: cells, atoms, elementary
particles. The “name” of the Blessed Trinity is, in a certain sense,
imprinted upon all things because all that exists, down to the last particle,
is in relation; in this way we catch a glimpse of God as relationship and
ultimately, Creator Love. All things derive from love, aspire to love and move
impelled by love, though naturally with varying degrees of awareness and
freedom. “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the
earth!” (Ps 8: 1) the Psalmist exclaims. In speaking of the
“name”, the Bible refers to God himself, his truest identity. It is
an identity that shines upon the whole of Creation, in which all beings for the
very fact that they exist and because of the “fabric” of which they
are made point to a transcendent Principle, to eternal and infinite Life which
is given, in a word, to Love. “In him we live and move and have our
being”, St Paul said at the Areopagus of Athens (Acts 17: 28). The
strongest proof that we are made in the image of the Trinity is this: love
alone makes us happy because we live in a relationship, and we live to love and
to be loved. Borrowing an analogy from biology, we could say that imprinted
upon his “genome”, the human being bears a profound mark of the
Trinity, of God as Love.


(Pope Benedict XVI, 7 June 2009)