Magdi Cristiano Allam speaks of his conversion to Christ

Given that today’s feast is of a saint who brought thousands to Christ, I thought reprinting a recent article about a rather high profile baptism this past year. It is no small thing that a Muslim accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior and lives to tell about it. Magdi Allam’s story is unique.

 

Converted Muslim Tells Story Behind Papal Baptism

 

By Luca Marcolivio

Zenit.org

December 1, 2008

The high-profile baptism of Magdi Cristiano Allam at the Easter Vigil ceremony presided over last year by Benedict XVI has a story behind it. According to Allam himself, his conversion journey was possible because of great Christian witnesses.

One of the directors of the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, he spoke about his conversion and the experiences that led to it when he met with university students of Rome last week to tell the story of his path to Catholicism.

Starting from the Easter Vigil of 2008 — which Allam called the “most beautiful day of my life” — when he received baptism from Benedict XVI in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Italian-Egyptian journalist spoke of his life journey and the reflections that brought him to embrace “a new life in Christ and a new spiritual itinerary.”

Allam.jpg“This journey,” he recalled, “began apparently by chance, [but] in truth was providential. Since age four, I had the chance to attend Italian Catholic schools in Egypt. I was first a student of the Comboni religious missionaries, and later, starting with fifth grade, of the Salesians.

“I thus received an education that transmitted to me healthy values and I appreciated the beauty, truth, goodness and rationality of the Christian faith,” in which “the person is not a means, but a starting point and an arriving point.”

“Thanks to Christianity,” he said, “I understood that truth is the other side of liberty: They are an indissoluble binomial. The phrase, ‘The truth will make you free’ is a principle that you young people should always keep in mind, especially today when, scorning the truth, freedom is relinquished.”

The journalist continued: “My conversion was possible thanks to the presence of great witnesses of faith, first of all, His Holiness Benedict XVI. One who is not convinced of his own faith — often it’s because he has not found in it believable witnesses of this great gift.

“The second indissoluble binomial in Christianity is without a doubt that of faith and reason. This second element is capable of giving substance to our humanity, the sacredness of life, respect for human dignity and the freedom of religious choice.”

The journalist affirmed that the Holy Father’s 2006 speech in Regensburg — which caused uproar within the Muslim community — was for him a reason to reflect.

Allam said: “An event, before my conversion, made me think more than other events: the Pope’s discourse in Regensburg. On that occasion, citing the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, he affirmed something that the Muslims themselves have never denied: that Islam spreads the faith above all with the sword.”

He added: “There is a greater and more subliminal danger than the terrorism of ‘cut-throats.’ It is the terrorism of the ‘cut-tongues,’ that is, the fear of affirming and divulging our faith and our civilization, and it brings us to auto-censorship and to deny our values, putting everything and the contrary to everything on the same plane: We think of the Shariah applied even in England.

Allam2.jpg“The one called ‘a great one,’ that is, to always give to the other what he wants, is exactly the opposite of the common good, perfectly indicated by Jesus: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ That evangelical precept confirms for us that we cannot want good for the rest if we do not first love ourselves. The same is true for our civilization.

“Contrary to that principle is indifference and multiculturalism that, without any identity, pretends to give all kinds of rights to everyone. A result of multiculturalism was the imposition of social solidity and the development of ghettos and ethnic groups in perpetual conflict with indigenous populations.”

The journalist recounted: “This led me to consider the third great binomial of Christian civilization: that regarding rules and values, a key for a possible ethical rescue of modern Europe. The old world, nevertheless, is a colossus of materiality with feet of clay. Materialism is a globalized phenomenon, unlike faith, which is not.”

Responding to a question about a possible compatibility between faith and reason in Islam, Allam contended that “unlike Christianity, the religion of God incarnate in man,” Islam is made concrete in a sacred text that, “being one with God, is not interpretable.”

“The very acts of Mohammed, documented by history, and which the Muslim faithful themselves do not deny, testify to massacres and exterminations perpetrated by the prophet. Therefore, the Quran is incompatible with fundamental human rights and non-negotiable values. In the past, I tried to make myself the spokesman of an Islam moderate in itself.”

Regarding interreligious dialogue between Christians and Muslims, Allam said that it is possible only “if we are authentically Christian in love, including toward Muslims. If we make dialogue relative, we will instigate our questioners to see us as infidels, and therefore as land to be conquered.”

The journalist emphasized for the students the importance of an education that goes back to transmitting “an ethical conception of life, with values and rules at the center of everything.” A negation of such principles, he contended, “is wild capitalism, which, paradoxically, has its maximum development in communist China.”

“We cannot conceive of the person in ‘business’ terms,” he concluded, “and we have to find rules of co-existence that are not founded on materialism. We should redefine our society based on being and not on having.”

Antonio Gramsci reverted to Catholicism before death

The Catholic News Agency reports that the founder of the Italian Communist Party, Antonio Gramsci, reverted to the Catholic faith before his 1937 death. Why is this important?

Gramsci’s version of communism in Italy was a bit more sophisticated than that of other countries. One central difference is that while communism wanted to kill off the Catholic Church Gramsci’s method was to do so from within by persuading Catholic families to renounce their faith and to get the clergy to slowly reject matters of belief and practice which would impact life in the Church and in culture. His was a brand of “cultural hegemony,” meaning that one can reduce faith, reason and culture to ideology. The reduction of faith, reason and culture is also a reduction of personhood, in virtue and values, a reduction of human dignity, work and beauty which eventually lead to nihilism. A person can’t thrive in a system where life is built on false premises and therefore, life is lived without meaning and seriousness.

The story is here.

Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, pray for us!

Kindly Mother of the Redeemer

A new liturgical season calls for a new Marian antiphon. So with Advent beginning at First Vespers last Saturday until the Purification of Mary (February 2nd), the monks are singing Alma Redemptoris Mater as the Marian hymn following the Office of Vigils. This hymn dates at least to the 11th century and is said to have been composed by Herman the Cripple. The popularity of Alma Redemptoris Mater is demonstrated by the fact that it is found in the “The Prioress’ Tale” in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.


BVM with child Gozzoli.jpg

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli
Porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti,
Surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti,
Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem
Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore
Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.

Kindly Mother of the Redeemer, who art ever of heaven
The open gate, and the star of the sea, aid a fallen people,
Which is trying to rise again; thou who didst give birth,
While Nature marveled how, to thy Holy Creator,
Virgin both before and after, from Gabriel’s mouth
Accepting the All hail, be merciful towards sinners.

(translated by Cardinal John Henry Newman)

What the vocation requires…Metropolitan Jonah tells

In a recent talk to the students, staff and faculty of Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, the newly
Metropoliotan Jonah2.jpgelected Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church in America, Jonah, said:

 

“All leaders of the Church, who take up the yoke of Christ must have a clear vision of theological education, which consists in four things: first, we must present the gospel of Jesus Christ; second, we have a mission to evangelize all people, regardless of color, ethnicity, or socio-economic status; third, we must bring integrity to the gospel message; and fourth, we must take up the task of bearing the presence of Jesus Christ to those around us.”

 

Apparently, he is big on the need to imitate the sacrificial path of Christ and his mother, the Virgin Mary. “To become the living presence of God, the living temple of God, requires us to crush our ego and shatter our will,” he said, “so that we might conceive God within us and become his presence in this world.”

 

“Seminarians,” he asserted, “do not come to theological schools to become ‘professionals’ and to be ‘respected,’ but rather to be crucified and thereby shine forth the light of Christ.” His Beatitude reminded the seminarians that his own title of “episkopos” means not “master of the house,” but “slave of slaves.”

 

This guy has a backbone. Watch out. I predict we’re going to hear more good things from His Beatitude. Are YOU on board with this view of Church, formation, and service?

Saint Edmund Campion & his Brag

The blood of the holy martyrs was poured out upon the earth for Christ; therefore

Thumbnail image for St Edmund Campion3.jpgthey have won rewards everlasting.

 

Saint Edmund Campion, martyr for the Roman Primacy, obtain for us, but especially for the Church’s bishops and priests, such obedient loyalty to the Vicar of Christ that like you, they will not be afraid to proclaim the truth and like you, they will be willing to shed their blood for Jesus Christ.

 

Some info on Campion can be read here and here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saint Edmund Campion (1540-1581) wrote the “Challenge to the Privy Council” but is commonly called today “Campion’s brag.” Some scholars say the Challenge is likely to be the earliest defense of the Catholic faith to appear in English at the time of the Reformation. No doubt Saint Edmund Campion takes 1 Peter seriously: give a reasoned defense for what you’re believing. The duty and responsibility of Campion to act as a priest and a vowed Jesuit concerned for the spiritual welfare of the English is clear; reading the Brag you quickly know that he is not ashamed of the Gospel and desires to bring his listeners to the Truth. His style of speaking and acting is direct but courteous offered in friendship.

 

My favorite line is the last of section 8: “The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God; it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted: So it must be restored.”

 

To the Right Honourable, the Lords of Her Majesty’s Privy Council:

 

Whereas I have come out of Germany and Bohemia, being sent by my superiors, and adventured myself into this noble realm, my dear country, for the glory of God and benefit of souls, I thought it like enough that, in this busy, watchful, and suspicious world, I should either sooner or later be intercepted and stopped of my course.

 

Wherefore, providing for all events, and uncertain what may become of me, when God shall haply deliver my body into durance, I supposed it needful to put this in writing in a readiness, desiring your good lordships to give it your reading, for to know my cause. This doing, I trust I shall ease you of some labour. For that which otherwise you must have sought for by practice of wit, I do now lay into your hands by plain confession. And to the intent that the whole matter may be conceived in order, and so the better both understood and remembered, I make thereof these nine points or articles, directly, truly and resolutely opening my full enterprise and purpose.

 

1. I confess that I am (albeit unworthy) a priest of the Catholic Church, and through the

St Ignatius & Paul III.jpggreat mercy of God vowed now these eight years into the religion [religious order] of the Society of Jesus. Hereby I have taken upon me a special kind of warfare under the banner of obedience, and also resigned all my interest or possibility of wealth, honour, pleasure, and other worldly felicity.

 

2. At the voice of our General, which is to me a warrant from heaven and oracle of Christ, I took my voyage from Prague to Rome (where our General Father is always resident) and from Rome to England, as I might and would have done joyously into any part of Christendom or Heatheness, had I been thereto assigned.

 

3. My charge is, of free cost to preach the Gospel, to minister the Sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reform sinners, to confute errors–in brief, to cry alarm spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance, wherewith many of my dear countrymen are abused.

 

4. I never had mind, and am strictly forbidden by our Father that sent me, to deal in any respect with matter of state or policy of this realm, as things which appertain not to my vocation, and from which I gladly restrain and sequester my thoughts.

 

5. I do ask, to the glory of God, with all humility, and under your correction, three sorts of indifferent and quiet audiences: the first, before your Honours, wherein I will discourse of religion, so far as it toucheth the common weal and your nobilities: the second, whereof I make more account, before the Doctors and Masters and chosen men of both universities, wherein I undertake to avow the faith of our Catholic Church by proofs innumerable–Scriptures, councils, Fathers, history, natural and moral reasons: the third, before the lawyers, spiritual and temporal, wherein I will justify the said faith by the common wisdom of the laws standing yet in force and practice.

 

6. I would be loath to speak anything that might sound of any insolent brag or challenge, especially being now as a dead man to this world and willing to put my head under every man’s foot, and to kiss the ground they tread upon. Yet I have such courage in avouching the majesty of Jesus my King, and such affiance in his gracious favour, and such assurance in my quarrel, and my evidence so impregnable, and because I know perfectly that no one Protestant, nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries (howsoever they face men down in pulpits, and overrule us in their kingdom of grammarians and unlearned ears) can maintain their doctrine in disputation. I am to sue most humbly and instantly for combat with all and every of them, and the most principal that may be found: protesting that in this trial the better furnished they come, the better welcome they shall be.

 

7. And because it hath pleased God to enrich the Queen my Sovereign Lady with notable gifts of nature, learning, and princely education, I do verily trust that if her Highness would vouchsafe her royal person and good attention to such a conference as, in the second part of my fifth article I have motioned, or to a few sermons, which in her or your hearing I am to utter such manifest and fair light by good method and plain dealing may be cast upon these controversies, that possibly her zeal of truth and love of her people shall incline her noble Grace to disfavour some proceedings hurtful to the realm, and procure towards us oppressed more equity.

 

8. Moreover I doubt not but you, her Highness’ Council, being of such wisdom and discreet in cases most important, when you shall have heard these questions of religion opened faithfully, which many times by our adversaries are huddled up and confounded,

Thumbnail image for IHS.jpgwill see upon what substantial grounds our Catholic Faith is builded, how feeble that side is which by sway of the time prevaileth against us, and so at last for your own souls, and for many thousand souls that depend upon your government, will discountenance error when it is bewrayed [revealed], and hearken to those who would spend the best blood in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are lifted up to heaven for you daily by those English students, whose posterity shall never die, which beyond seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you heaven, or to die upon your pikes. And touching our Society, be it known to you that we have made a league–all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practice of England–cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God; it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted: So it must be restored.

 

9. If these my offers be refused, and my endeavours can take no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you good, shall be rewarded with rigour. I have no more to say but to recommend your case and mine to Almighty God, the Searcher of Hearts, who send us his grace, and see us at accord before the day of payment, to the end we may at last be friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.

 

 

The Pope’s Prayer Intention for December 2008

How do we begin to prayer? We start by saying “O God come to my assistance. O Lord,
Pope Benedict at Advent Vespers 2008.jpgmake haste to help me.

 

What is the goal of our life of prayer? Saint Augustine says: “Desire without ceasing the happy life, which is none other but eternal life.”

 

The General Intention
That, faced by the growing expansion of the culture of violence and death, the Church may courageously promote the culture of life through all her apostolic and missionary activities.

The Missionary Intention
That, especially in mission countries, Christians may show by gestures of brotherliness that the Child born in the grotto in Bethlehem is the luminous Hope of the world.

 

What is the cost of Discipleship?

The feast of Saint Andrew sparks the question in my heart about the nature –cost of discipleship. What is “discipleship” and what is its cost? Why is there a cost? Truth be told, obedience to the Gospel is not easy. Following the Lord is not easy when there are pressures from within and from without that say “go the other way” or “don’t be bothered, no one else is.” If one really wants to walk the path that leads to happiness, how does one do this? The monastic life which I am now trying to lead asks the same questions. There are days that the life is beautiful; there are days in which it’s a nuissance (to say the least). Doing the will of God must be easy, clear and satisfying for some people. I can’t always say the same. I think of the call of Andrew and Peter and what they must have felt and thought and did…

 


St Andrew and Peter's calling.jpgThe Cost of Discipleship

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

The call of Jesus goes forth, and is at once followed by the response of obedience. The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus. How could the call immediately evoke obedience?

 

The story of the call of the first disciples is a stumbling-block to our natural reason, and it is no wonder that frantic attempts have been made to separate the two events. By hook or by crook a bridge must be found between them. Something must have happened in between, some psychological or historical event. Thus we get the stupid question: Surely the disciples must have known Jesus before, and that previous acquaintance explains their readiness to hear the Master’s call. Unfortunately our text is ruthlessly silent on this point, and in fact it regards the immediate sequence of call and response as a matter of crucial importance. It displays not the slightest interest in the psychological reasons for a person’s religious decisions. And why? For the simple reason that the cause behind the immediate following of call by response is Jesus Christ himself. It is Jesus who calls, and because it is Jesus, the disciple follows at once.

 

This encounter is a testimony to the absolute, direct, and unaccountable authority of Jesus. There is no need of any preliminaries, and no other consequence but obedience to the call. Because Jesus is the Christ, he has the authority to call and to demand obedience to his word. Jesus summons us to follow him not as a teacher of a pattern of the good life, but as the Christ, the Son of God. In this short text Jesus Christ and his claim are proclaimed to the world. Not a word of praise is given to the disciple for his decision for Christ. We are not expected to contemplate the disciple, but only him who calls, and his absolute authority. According to our text, there is no road to faith or discipleship, no other road -only obedience to the call of Jesus.

 

And what does the text inform us about the content of discipleship? Follow me, run along behind me! That is all. To follow in Christ’s steps is something which is void of all content. It gives us no intelligible programme for a way of life, no goal or ideal to strive after. When we are called to follow Christ, we are summoned to an exclusive attachment to his person. The grace of his call bursts all the bonds of legalism. It is a gracious call, a gracious commandment. It transcends the difference between the law and the gospel. Christ calls the disciples follows; that is grace and commandment in one.

 

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, English trans. R. H. Fuller, London, 1959, pp. 48-9.)

 

Saint Andrew


St Andrew2.jpgOne of the two who followed the Lord was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, alleluia.

 

V. Their sound goes forth to all the earth.

 

R. And their speech to the end of the world.

 

We humbly beseech Thy majesty, O Lord, that blessed Andrew the Apostle was both a preacher and ruler of Thy Church, so that he may unceasingly intercede for us with Thee.

 

 

  

 

Let pray, on this feast of Saint Andrew, for the unity of the Christian Churches, for the See of Constantinople and the See of Rome!

Advent: the time of our Salvation is nearer

Behold, the great Prophet shall come; and He shall renew Jerusalem, alleluia.

 

A thrilling voice by rings

Rebuking guilt and darksome things:

Vain dreams of sins and visions fly;

Christ in His might shines forth on high.

 



St John the Baptist.jpgNow let each torpid soul arise

That sunk in guilt and wounded lies;

See, the new Star’s refulgent ray

Shall chase disease and sin away.

 

The Lamb descends from heaven above

To pardon sin with freest love:

For such indulgent mercy shown

With tearful joy our thanks we own.

 

That when again He shines revealed

And trembling worlds to terror yield,

He give not sin its just reward

But in His love protect and guard.

 

To God the Father, God the Son,

And God the Spirit, Three in One,

Praise, honor, might and glory be

From age to age eternally. Amen.

 

V. The voice of one crying in the desert: make ready the way of the Lord.

R. Make straight His paths.

 

We beseech Thee, O Lord, show forth Thy power and come, that we may deserve to be rescued from the ever-threatening danger of our sins, and be saved by Thy deliverance.