Pope announces Year of St John Mary Vianney 2009-2010


St John Mary Vianney.jpgOn the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the death of the Saint Curé of Ars, John Mary Vianney, His Holiness announced this morning that from June 19, 2009 to June 19, 2010, there will be a special Year of the Priesthood under the theme of “Fidelity of Christ, fidelity of priests.”

 

During this Jubilee Year Benedict XVI proclaimed Saint John Mary Vianney “Patron of all priests of the world.” He will publish a Directory for Confessors and Spiritual Directors together with a collection of writings of the Supreme Pontiff concerning the essential themes of the life and mission of the priesthood today.

 

The Congregation for the Clergy together with the diocesan ordinaries and superiors of religious institutes will collaborate in promoting and coordinating the various spiritual and pastoral initiatives that concern the importance of the life and mission of the spriest in the Church and in contemporary society, the necessity of competent permanent formation of priests and seminarians.

The Pope will opens the special Year on 19 June with Vespers in St. Peter’s Basilica where the relics of the saintly ‘Cure of Ars’ will be brought by Bishop Guy Bagnard of Belley-Ars, France. The pope will conclude the year on 19 June 2010, presiding at a “World Meeting of Priests” in St. Peter’s Square.

 

A video clip of the announcement from H2O News.

Zeal for your house will consume me: 3rd Sunday of Lent 2009

The gospel proclaimed at Mass today (if you are not doing the 3rd scrutiny) comes from Saint John’s gospel which tells us of the Lord cleaning His Father’s house. Many things can be said about the Lord’s righteous anger, but let’s stick to a few salient points. Consider the strong emotion of the Lord in His attempt to evoke and provoke his hearers to make a substantial change in life. The greater good that the Lord is trying to get us to see is what he sees: the immense zeal (fervor) for God the Father’s house is so important that it moved Him (and it should us) to action; this zeal ought to provoke us to cleanse the temple of our hearts, of our minds, of our habits, of our imagination. What Jesus implores us to do is nothing short of making a total heart and mind. Some things to consider:

 


Jesus Cleansing temple.jpg-Do we meet the Lord and others in humility?

-Are we faithful to the Lord as are able?

-Do we take time to know what the Lord is saying through the teaching of the Church, his sacrament on earth?

-When someone has a problem in understanding the faith, as we’ve seen recently in Connecticut S.B. 1098 and now with S.B. 899, do we take the time to understand the matter, look for the correct teaching and teach what the Church offers us for the good of our souls and for happiness?

-Are we deaf to the physical and spiritual, culture and social needs of our brothers and sisters?

-In watching the greed of Bernie Madoff unfold, can we might have to overturn the tables of our own greed?
-What are the sacrileges that we cling to so mightily, blasphemies with names like, hate, indifference, unkindness, gossip, unreasonableness, and inertia?

-Do we know what’s happening in our world well-enough to make changes where we stand? Would we be able to stop war, crime, violence, and abuse?
 
The house of God Jesus cleans is not merely the Temple of long ago; it is our lives, and the areas of our lives that we inhabit, including the Church, politics and society. Is it possible to believe for a moment in the power of Jesus to cleanse the temples of our person? Can we even think of changing our attitudes so totally that we’d never look back to sin? If we don’t have the strength of mind and heart and body and spirit, can we ask for the graces we need carry out the conversion needed to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?

 

If we really believe the Lord’s promises are true, can we rededicate ourselves to God today and accept the fact that the blood of Lamb -Jesus Christ–really saves us and urges us onward?

 

The Lord is not merely asking us to rearrange the furniture in our lives which may feel a bit comfortable TEMPORARILY, He’s asking us to change the color of our room, the bedding, the artwork, and the flooring we stand on PERMANENTLY. But the permanence is only possible if we ask for the grace to follow the Lord. Zeal for God’s house will consume me.

Divine Intimacy

We know by experience that we have not sufficient strength in ourselves to bring to a successful completion our chief Lenten duty, which is to die fully to sin in order to live fully in the risen Christ. But Christ himself, before leaving his own, prayed to his Father to preserve them from evil and from the evil one (John 17:15) – from the seductions of the world and the attacks of Satan.

 

He had taught them to ask: lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (Matthew 6:13). Obviously he did not intend that his disciples be spared every kind of temptation and danger, for this would be impossible in this life; besides, God himself permits it to test our virtue, but he wanted to assure them sufficient strength to resist. The evil from which he desired to free them was sin, the only real disaster, because it separates us from God.

 

Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, OCD

Divine Intimacy

CT.gov: Religion and Politics

Tom Hoopes at the National Catholic Register opened my eyes this morning with a brief article on the State of Connecticut’s intrusion into matters of faith, doctrine and Church.

Last week had SB 1098; now we have to contend with SB 899. This new bill being proposed is wide reaching and very intrusive and just plain wrong, not just in matters of faith but culture, government and parenting.

The problem is education: the lack of it retards greater freedom and happiness for which we are made for by God: beatitude.

What is Ignatian Spirituality?

Ignatian spirituality is a method of prayer bequeathed to the Church by the 16th century Basque saint, Ignatius of Loyola. It is a spirituality grounded in the fundamental idea that God labors for us, that He is active in the daily life of man and woman. This spirituality is rooted in the Gospel and in the heart of the Catholic Church. This is a radical theological concept because, for instance, Muslims think it’s heretical to think that God became man (that the Incarnation is a fact) and that  we could (a) know the will of God; (b) that we could have a personal relationship with Him (in Jesus & the Holy Spirit) and (c) that God is always present to us. So, what does Ignatius give us? He wants “above all…you to increase the pure love of Jesus Christ in the desire of His glory and the salvation of the souls which He has redeemed.” This is a spirituality that trains us to “find God in all things.”

Ignatius wrote the Spiritual Exercises as a lay man with the singular intention of drawing others to Christ. The Exercises are guideposts, that is, notes for a spiritual director to use in orienting a retreatant on his or her retreat and are not meant to be read as one would read a novel. As other spiritualities are, the Ignatian way is unique for its constant attention to one’s intimate  relationship with Jesus and discerning the will of God in each person’s life. It is not merely a technique for making good decisions; for that you can seek the counsel of your favorite philosopher; it is a personal way of living graces given to us God. You may say that Ignatian spirituality is way of acknowledging and living the happiness that God’s wills for each of us. I find Ignatius’ method to be a practical spirituality that’s particularly suited to the needs and desires of Christians today.

Ignatian spirituality sees God as actively involved in the world and intimately involved with us in every moment and place. We therefore say that God is in the center of reality, in the mess of history redeeming humanity. We can say with Saint Ignatius that “God’s love is poured forth lavishly like a fountain spilling forth its waters into an unending stream.”Withdrawing from the world into a quiet place in order to find God is understandable but withdrawing from the world is not particularly “Ignatian” for the long haul. That is why Ignatius spoke of those who follow the Exercises as living a life contemplation in action. It is perfectly acceptable to spend an 8-day retreat in the quiet of a monastery or a secluded retreat house. Nevertheless, the virtue of this type spirituality is that is God encountered everywhere –in our work and our relationships, in our family and friends, in our sorrows and joys, in the sublime beauty of nature and in the mundane details of our daily lives. One caution: our work, relationships, family, friends and any other possible detail doesn’t replace our relationship with God,nor does it replace the sacraments, Mass, personal prayer and sacrifice. That is, you can’t hold that “my work is my prayer” and think you are actually following an authentic spirituality. But it is true that God is present to us and we are present to God through all these things (the daily grind of our lives) because of the Incarnation.

From history we know that Loyola is the founder, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, of the Society of Jesus, a religious order of priests and brothers called to preach Jesus Christ in communion with the Pope under the standard of the Cross. Since the 1960s a Jesuit defined himself as a sinner redeemed (loved) by Christ. The motto of the Jesuits is Ad maiorem Dei gloriam (To the greater glory of God) which is based on the Benedictine motto of Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus (That in all things God may be glorified, 1 Peter 4:11): hence, the work of Ignatian spirituality is a life spent glorifying God using everything God has given us in order to live in communion with Him.

Benedict’s interpretative lens of Vatican II, according to Edward Oakes

Jesuit Father Edward T. Oakes, a Mundelein Seminary Theology professor explains Pope Benedict’s VERY clear reasons for putting to bed the ex communications of the SSPX bishops while delving into the acceptance of (or not) “Vatican II theology.” What Vatican II said is a bone of contention of many, for a very long time….

You’ve got to read the article, Benedict’s Vatican II Hermeneutic in First Things!

Enticing things to grow with nature to help (at the abbey)

Spreading…makes life more interesting, or a least it makes the flowers grow. Yesterday Gail, the abbot’s administrative assistant, brought me a gift, a token of appreciation. Well, I requested it so it’s technically not a gift. Gail brought me a feed bag of mature horse manure from her own horses; it’s mature manure I am assured. I got a phone call from Brother Anthony saying that I had a bag of … manure on the front steps. Not wanting to offend guests I quickly moved the bag to the Saint Francis garden.

Mon flower.jpg

Before the night rain fell and after vespers but before the total loss of daylight, I made a mad-dash to the garden to spread the “garden tea.” I couldn’t help but remember -and laughing riotously– at what a senior Jesuit friend of mine said of Jesuits and horse manure: if you keep Jesuits together they stink; if you spread them around, they fertilize. I think you get the point. Besides hoping for the cooperative intercession of Saint Francis, I am expecting the manure to heighten the garden’s capacities.

Much of last week I had my friend Brother Michael visiting me. It was nice to have him here. As it is said, “Hospes venit, Christus venit.”  A stranger comes, Christ comes. This saying is part of the Rule of Saint Benedict and we often find it on signs at Benedictine monasteries:  “Let every stranger be received as Christ himself.” Brother Michael is not a stranger to me but he was to members of the community for a very short time. The others we edified by his presence and I got a chance to share life with a friend.

Last Saturday we had the privilege of welcoming back to the Abbey and the College Father Dwight Longenecker, an Oblate of Saint Benedict, to speak to interested parties on Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and her “little way” as a fitting approach to living Lent. His blog, Standing on My Head is a popular read.

These last days have been interesting and boring at the same time. More painting is taking place. This time we’re doing the Compline room, the place where Night Prayer is prayed; it badly needed some fresh paint on the walls. We also did some garden work in a neglected area of the monastery gardens and we did some odds-and-ends.

One of the postulants decided to leave the abbey thus ending his discernment in following a monastic vocation. Mary, Help of Christians – Belmont Abbey is much the poorer. Andrew is 24 and a recent grad of Belmont Abbey College and Saint John’s in Annapolis. We wish him well and many blessings.

My fun reading this week is a book on the Solesmes and Dom Gueranger: 1805-1875 (Paraclete Press, 1996).

Out of service.jpgLife in a monastery is fun. Oh, yea, the flowering trees are working hard to push out the color!!!! AND now I need more manure.

Lincoln, a drama


ALincoln.jpgA new drama about the life of Abraham Lincoln and the role that his fourteen years in Spencer County, Indiana, played is being planned for the bicentennial of his birth in 2009.

 

LINCOLN premieres June 12, 2009

 

 

Benedict XVI & Israel’s Chief Rabbinate

In the published comments of Pope Benedict to the distinguished representatives of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Catholic delegates he said in part:

 

The Church recognizes that the beginnings of her faith are found in the historical divine intervention in the life of the Jewish people and that here our unique relationship has its foundation. The Jewish people, who were chosen as the elected people, communicate to the whole human family, knowledge of and fidelity to the one, unique and true God. Christians gladly acknowledge that their own roots are found in the same self-revelation of God, in which the religious experience of the Jewish people is nourished.

 

I sit choir with a group of monks and other Christians praying the Scritpures on a daily basis and I’m coming to understand (judge, evaluate) more and more the connections, i.e., the reality that exists between Jewish and Catholic theology/liturgy. This is especially true in the Psalms but no less with the daily readings from Pentateuch and the Prophets. One of the books I am re-reading selections from these days is Father Richard Veras’ book, Jesus of Israel: Finding Christ in the Old Testament (Servant Books, 2007), who speaks about the promises made to us down through the ages by the Lord, promises of the hundredfold, promises of life, liberation and communion with the Lord as they are revealed in the sacred Scriptures.

 

For what it’s worth, Pope Benedict said the following 19 years ago when he was still known as Joseph Ratzinger, the CDF Prefect:

 

Abraham, father of the people of Israel, father of faith, thus become the source of blessing, for in him all the families of the earth shall call themselves blessed. The task of the Chosen People is, therefore, to make a gift of their God – the one true God – to every other people; in reality, as Christians we are the inheritors of their faith in the one God. Our gratitude, therefore, must be extended to our Jewish brothers and sisters who, despite the hardships of their own history, have held on to faith in this God right up to the present, and who witness to it in the sight of those peoples who, lacking knowledge of the one God, dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Down through the history of Christianity, already-strained relations deteriorated further, even giving birth in many cases to anti-Jewish attitudes, which throughout history have led to deplorable acts of violence. Even if the most recent, loathsome experience of the Shoah was perpetrated in the name of an anti-Christian ideology, which tried to strike the Christian faith at its Abrahamic roots in the people of Israel it cannot be denied that a certain insufficient resistance to its atrocity on the part of Christians can be explained by an inherited anti-Judaism present in the hearts of not a few Christians.

Perhaps it is precisely because of this latest tragedy that a new vision of the relationship between the Church and Israel has been born: a sincere willingness to overcome every kind of anti-Judaism, and to initiate a constructive dialogue based on knowledge of each other, and on reconciliation. If such a dialogue is to be fruitful, it must begin with a prayer to our God, first of all that he might grant to us Christians a greater esteem and love for that people – the people of Israel – to whom belong the adoption as sons, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; theirs are the patriarchs, and from them comes Christ according to the flesh, he who is over all, God, blessed forever. Amen. And this not only in the past, but still today, for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable. In the same way, let us pray that he may grant also to the children of Israel a deeper knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth, who is their son, and the gift they have made to us. Since we are both awaiting the final redemption, let us pray that the paths we follow may converge.

It is evident that, as Christians, our dialogue with the Jews is situated on a different level than that in which we engage with other religions. The faith witnessed to by the Jewish Bible (the Old Testament for Christians) is not merely another religion to us, but is the foundation of our own faith. Therefore, Christians – and today increasingly in collaboration with their Jewish sisters and brothers – read and attentively study these books of Sacred Scripture, as a part of their common heritage. (Excerpts from Cardinal Ratzinger’s “The Heritage of Abraham: The Gift of Christmas,” L’Osservatore Romano, 29 December 2000)

 

In light of all of this public speaking I think today’s allocution by the Pope reveals a consistent line of teaching not only by a man with a keen intellect and a profound faith in the Divinity but also consistent with magisterial teaching of the Holy See. Hence, I don’t think that Benedict’s thoughts today are not throw away lines to ease tensions, real or imaginary between the Catholic Church and the Jewish leadership. Moreover, I also don’t think it’s a political ploy before a papal visit to the Holy Land in May.

 

My sense is that the Pope is rather genuine in his judgment that Christians and Jews need each other because each provide an interpretative key in self-identity and the theological journey we both make toward our destiny. For Christians we need to grasp what is being done (the action) and what is said (the content) in order to take seriously our own faith in Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior and Brother. So no, these remarks today aren’t lines denoting mere policy, mechanical ways to engage a touchy politic serving a group’s interests. These lines reflect not only this pontiff’s thinking but the Church’s self-understanding and theological grounding. Nostra Aetate (1965) and Dabru Emet (2000) like documents demonstrate a commitment from which to work with each other in an effort to know, love and serve the Almighty while coming to understand a common theological and liturgical history. Consequently, Jews and Catholics should not only work on projects that serve the common good but also work for greater understanding in the process of dialogue leading to the eternal.

 

Some will say that the Pope made a nice gesture by speaking honestly with the Jews. But that would be yet another example of a tyranny of the “nice,” and we don’t need more “nice.” What we need is true honesty, faith and reason before reality. What I believe the Pope is indicating to us is the profound need because it is reasonable as people of faith to draw deeply from the common faith experience in order to discern our relationship with the Lord and to foster a deeper communion between Jews and Christians. We need to understand the reality that’s in front of us, the gift of friendship in faith with others on a similar path to destiny.