WARSAW, Poland (CNS) — Chinese Catholic priests are studying at a Benedictine
monastery in Germany in what at least one expert on the Chinese church hopes will lead to Chinese contemplative orders. “They’re sampling our spirituality and community life … and will later be returning to their homes in different Chinese provinces in May,” said Martin Wind, press officer at St. Ottilien monastery near Munich, Germany. “There’s no (current) Christian tradition of monasticism in China, so we wanted to show them what it’s like to live in a monastery. Although it isn’t our aim, we would be glad if they decided to found a monastic community when they go back.” The eight priests have been undergoing “practical training” at St. Ottilien since September 2007, Wind told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview, noting that the visit was “sensitive” and the priests would not be speaking to the media directly. “They haven’t talked openly about the possibility of being allowed to set up monastic structures in China, but they wouldn’t have come if there was no interest in the monastic life there,” said Wind.
The just shall flourish: the witness of Saint John the Baptist
“This great man after a long agony of captivity, ended his life on earth with the shedding of his blood. He who preached the freedom of heavenly peace was thrown into captivity by wicked men. He who was called a burning and shining light by Christ the light, was imprisoned in darkness: he who was granted the privilege of baptizing the Redeemer of the world was given baptism in his own blood” (Saint Bede the Venerable).
We beseech Thee, O Lord, may the holy festival of Saint John the Baptist, Thy Precursor and Martyr, obtain for us help unto salvation.
Pilgrimage to the Filippini Sisters, Newark Abbey & the Friars of the Renewal
This morning, August 28th, began with the Sacrifice of the Mass offered by Father Jeremiah, a monk of Saint Mary’s Abbey, at Villa Walsh, The Institute of the Religious Teachers Filippini. The monks of Saint Mary’s Abbey have offered Mass for the sisters for many decades. We had a modest and delightful breakfast with Sister Betty Jean, the Provincial of the Filippini sisters and some other sisters. The sisters’ patience with me was grand because I had so many questions about the Congregation; I had never met a Filippini sister before and I was intrigued by their charism.
The vocation of a Filippini sister, based on what Saint Lucy Filippini and Cardinal Mark Anthony Barbarigo gave to the Church is your fundamental living of the Gospel being a contemplative in action, that is, A Filippini sister has a life of prayer with her life of ministry. Sounds like the Jesuits and other orders founded since the 16th century; and you can see these sisters are serious about their vocation when you meet them. Saint Lucy and the Cardinal founded schools of Christian Doctrine for girls in Italy, ministered to the poor and the sick, conducted retreats and guided the women preparing for marriage. What more does the Church need?
Later in the morning, Father Jeremiah and I ventured to Newark Abbey and Saint Benedict Prep
to visit with the Benedictine monks, particularly Brothers Maximilian and Patrick. We prayed Mid-day prayer in a beautiful abbey church, toured the school, Saint Mary’s Parish and the abbey. Newark Abbey is the original site of the Benedictine monks of the American-Cassinese Congregation sent by Archabbot Boniface Wimmer in 1857 to Newark. It is from this abbey that Saint Anselm’s Abbey and later college where founded in Manchester, NH, and Saint Mary’s Abbey in Morristown, NJ. Brothers Maximilian and Patrick were very gracious hosts and great fun. We lunched at The Tops Diner (East Newark) and visited Newark’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart. You would not believe the beauty of this cathedral church! Even Pope John Paul II made a visit here and former President William Clinton remarked how surprised he was to see such a magnificent in Newark, New Jersey. A brief video was produced in 2007 by the NJ Star Ledger on the Newark Abbey monks, have a look.
The last treat of the day was the afternoon visit to the Community of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal based at the Friary of the Blessed Sacrament (Newark, NJ). This is the group founded by Father Benedict Groeschel and seven other Capuchin friars in 1987. The friary was the former the Monastery of Saint Dominic (nuns of the 2nd order of the Order of Preachers). It was indeed a privilege to visit the friary: it was peaceful, prayer-filled and beautiful (much work has been in the 4 years since the coming of the friars). When the nuns moved to other monasteries, their dead were exhumed and reburied in a local cemetery, including the incorrupt body of an extern sister known for holiness, Sister Mary of the Blessed Sacrament who died in 1899. Our host at the friary was Father Richard who graciously illustrated for us the life of the friars: their simple life, their prayer and their clear witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What I experienced was genuine and one which I have confidence is made by God for service in the Church.
What a day! Say a prayer for the Filippini sisters, the monks of Newark and the Friars of the Renewal: they need our moral and spiritual solidarity, indeed they need we ought to be in friendship with them. Perhaps more accurately, we need their witness!
Catholics need to know: The KofC’s Headline Bistro
The Knights of Columbus launch a new Catholic internet news service, Headline Bistro. Stay linked!
A love of God fixed deep in the heart: remembering Saint Augustine
Today is the great feast of Augustine, the convert (at age 32 at the hands of St. Ambrose in Milan) who was ordained a priest in 391 and elected bishop of Hippo in 395. His life and work are remarkable to say the least. In addition to Saint
Thomas Aquinas, Saint Augustine is one of the Church’s most significant theologians.
Calling Augustine “the greatest Father of the Latin Church,” Pope Benedict spoke on three occasions in January 2008 to the gathered people in Vatican City about Augustine’s life, his thought and his pastoral ministries. The texts of the Pope are found here:
In the meantime, I offer a 1930 text by Pope Pius XI on Augustine together for our reading pleasure right now.
For to begin with the queen of all the virtues, our Saint, leaving all else aside, made the love of God so completely the goal of his desires and efforts, and fed its flame so steadfastly in his soul, that he is fittingly portrayed as holding in his hand a burning heart. No one, who has even once turned the pages of the “confessions,” can forget the conversion between mother and son, at the window of the house in Ostia. The narrative, with its lifelike charm, makes us feel that we see Augustine and Monica there, side by side, absorbed in the contemplation of heavenly things. He writes: “Alone together we held most sweet converse. Forgetting the things that lay behind and stretching out to those that were before, we questioned each other, in the presence of Truth, which Thou art, about the nature of the eternal life of the Saints, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the mind of man to conceive. Mentally with parted lips we hung over the supernal rills of Thy fountain–the fountain of life with Thee–if happily we might be refreshed, so far as our condition would allow, and in some sort ponder so profound a mystery… And while we conversed with eager longing, with the heart’s supreme effort we made some approach thereto. We sighed and there left fettered the firstlings of the spirit, then to return to the sound of our voices, where the word begins and ends. Yet what bears any likeness to Thy Word, who is our Lord, who abides within Himself and ages not, who makes all things new?”
We must not imagine that it was an exceptional thing for Augustine thus to lift mind and heart above the life of the body. Any time he could spare from his daily duties and tasks, he devoted to meditation on the Sacred Scriptures he knew so well, that he might draw thence the relish and the light of truth. Rising on thought’s pinions from a consideration of the works and mysteries that reveal God’s surpassing love for us, he was borne aloft little by little to the Divine perfections themselves, into which he plunged–if we may so speak–as deeply as the heavenly grace given him allowed.
“Often I do this [he says, sharing with us his secret], this is my delight, and withdrawing from such activity as necessity imposes, I take refuge in this kind of pleasure. In all the things traversed by my mind, while I confer with Thee, I find no safe place for my soul except in Thee. In Thee are linked in unison my wandering strains. From Thee may nothing of mine depart. Sometimes, too, Thou dost admit me to a deep and unwonted interior emotion, to an indescribable sweetness. If that he brought to its perfection within me, I know of nothing which that life will not contain.”
Hence it was that he cried: “Too late have I loved Thee, O beauty so ancient, yet so new! Too late have I loved Thee!”
Again, how lovingly he contemplated the life of Christ, striving to reproduce an ever more
perfect image of it in himself and to repay love with love. In his counsel to virgins, he impressed on them the same lesson: “Let Him be fixed deep in your heart, who for you was fastened to the cross.” As his love of God burned with a more ardent flame as days went on, so too did he make incredible progress in the rest of the virtues. No one can refuse his admiration to a man–whom all venerated, extolled, consulted, hearkened to for his lofty genius and sanctity–both in his writings destined for publication and in his letters, making it his great concern not only to refer to the Author of all good the praise offered himself, as being due to God alone, and to encourage and praise others, as far as truth allowed, but also to lavish honor and reverence on his colleagues in the episcopate. These were especially his mighty forerunners, such as Cyprian and Gregory of Nazianzus, Hilary and John Chrysostom, Ambrose–his master in the Faith–whom he revered as a father and whose teaching and life he was wont to recall. But especially there shone with luster in our Saint the love of souls, a love inseparable from love of God, of those souls particularly who were committed to his pastoral care.
Pope Pius XI, Ad Salutem Humani (On Saint Augustine), 20 April 1930
Work for sake of the Gospel
This is the summary of the Pope Benedict’s catechesis on Saint Paul for Wednesday, 27 August 2008. Here is the full text of the catechesis as published on Zenit.
Online resources for the Year of Saint Paul can be found at the Vatican website, the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, the U.S. Bishops Committee on Divine Worship and from Our Sunday Visitor.
Pope said:
Today’s catechesis presents the life of Saint Paul, the great missionary whom the Church
honours in a special way this year. Born a Jew in Tarsus, he received the Hebrew name “Saul” and was trained as a “tent maker” (cf. Acts 18:3). Around the age of twelve he departed for Jerusalem to begin instruction in the strict Pharisaic tradition which instilled in him a great zeal for the Mosaic Law. On the basis of this training Paul viewed the Christian movement as a threat to orthodox Judaism. He thus fiercely “persecuted the Church of God” (1 Cor 19:6; Gal 1:13; Phil 3:6) until a dramatic encounter on the road to Damascus radically changed his life. He subsequently undertook three missionary journeys, preaching Christ in Anatolia, Syria, Cilicia, Macedonia, Achaia, and throughout the Mediterranean. After his arrest and imprisonment in Jerusalem, Paul exercised his right as a Roman citizen to appeal his case to the Emperor. Though Luke makes no reference to Nero’s decision, he tells us that Paul spent two years under house arrest in Rome (cf. Acts 28:30), after which–according to tradition–he suffered a martyr’s death. Paul spared no energy and endured many trials in his “anxiety for all the churches” (2 Cor 11:28). Indeed, he wrote: “I do everything for the sake of the Gospel” (1 Cor 9:23). May we strive to emulate him by doing the same.
Saint Monica: THE example of perseverance
[Monica] is the unflagging prayer, the piety that does not fall asleep. She knows no great fluctuations in prayer. She is very much surrendered to God and also to the Church. The intensive dimension of her prayer lies above all in its perseverance. She is able to repeat one and the same prayer for the longest time with the same energy. Vocal prayer, for her, never becomes merely something mouthed with the lips. She possesses in fact the prayer of children, those who are able to pray in a very intensive way, but without knowing an answer will come from God, without even expecting such an answer, but also without at all thinking that no answer will come. One simply brings before God what one has to say to him, with the greatest possible love. There is not much more to it than this. (Adrienne von Speyer, Book of All Saints.)
Let us pray. O God, the comforter of the sorrowful and the salvation of them that hope in Thee, Who had merciful regard to the pious tears of blessed Monica in bringing about the conversion of her son Augustine: grant us by their united intercession to grieve over our sins and obtain Thy merciful pardon. Through Christ our Lord.
Meeting of the Friendship of Peoples: CL & Rimini
Communion and Liberation,
Meeting of the Friendship of Peoples
The attention of many this summer will be the Olympic games, or the political party Conventions in the United States. There are two events of the summer that will not receive as much publicity in the media in the United States: World Youth Day, held in July in Sydney, Australia, AND the Communion and Liberation Meeting of the Friendship of Peoples in Rimini, Italy, a large cultural gathering in Rimini, Italy, held this week that will require 2,400 volunteers to help with the 700,000 participants who will show up.
This year’s meeting, happening right now so get to Italy fast, is built around the theme of “Either Protagonists or nobodies,” seeking to reflect on the concept of the person.
In the past leaders of science, the arts, politics, economics, and the Church have gathered, including Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the founder of the Neo-Catechumenal Way, Kiko Arguello; Nobel winning scientists, leaders in economics, heads of state, and last year United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
Pope John Paul II described the Meeting of Rimini as “explicit and conscious echo of the great mystery that the whole Church is reliving during the Jubilee year: the incarnation of the Son of God.”
A defender of human reason, Father Luigi Giussani had a deep knowledge of literature and of music, and accorded great value to art as a road that leads to the Mystery. Followed by those belonging to the Movement he founded, now spread in many countries of the world, listened to with respect by many people a various faiths and various professional responsibilities, I like to remember him as a master of humanity and defender of the religiosity inscribed in the heart of the human being (Pope John Paul II).
Speaker Pelosi & Senator Biden got it wrong: being faithful means assenting to Truth!
Let’s start where Archbishop Charles Chaput concludes his letter to Colorado Catholics: “the duty of the state and its officials is to serve the common good, which is always rooted in moral truth. A proper understanding of the ‘separation of Church and state’ does not imply a separation of faith from political life. But of course, it’s always important to know what our faith actually teaches.”
There seems to be a few people who, shall we say, are ignorant about what the Church teaches about abortion; some people seem invincibly ignorant when it comes to reasonable thinking on life issues and basic human rights as they think it is a matter of personal opinion and that the Church has never really and consistently that human life begins at conception. Listening to Madame Speaker Pelosi on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” and in other places Senators Obama and Biden in their political rhetoric, one knows pretty quickly that what they offer is thin gruel. Those who dissent from Catholic teaching ought to be honest and state that they in fact dissent from teaching rather than claim they are “good Catholics.” Contrary to Pelosi, the Church is not still making up her mind on matters pertaining to life. The fact is that Speaker Pelosi and Senator Biden, as Catholics, have not embraced the teaching and discipline of the Church. Their position, political and religious, is to publically dissent from the Church’s teaching on matters of life and therefore they ought to refrain from the reception of Holy Communion until they repent. Would that the Diocesan Ordinaries of these politicians who claim to be Catholic would do their job and teach and correct error! The salvation of souls is at stake.
According to science and faith (two legitimate ways of knowing), abortion is killing an
unborn human being is not a matter which is left to one’s mere opinion. In the face of evidence, it is doubtful that anyone can say with conviction that abortion doesn’t kill. Clearly the act of abortion revolves less around the choice of a woman to make decisions about “her” body than the fundamental idea which posits the possibility to abort a pregnancy so that a woman to be relieved of a problem or a mistake. There seems to be no reasonable way to argue with people who advocate for abortion until they see/hear the heart beat or feel the kick. The evidence, that is, the biological activity in a woman demonstrates the existence of life at conception. Just wait a month or later in a pregnancy and you will see confirmation that human existence is a fact. AND that fact is defined as a person, not a thing, nor a problem, nor a mistake.
So the Church has been correct for two millennia when she teaches that “Abortion kills an unborn,
developing human life. It is always gravely evil, and so are the evasions employed to justify it. Catholics who make excuses for it – whether they’re famous or not – fool only themselves and abuse the fidelity of those Catholics who do sincerely seek to follow the Gospel and live their Catholic faith.”
Read what Archbishop Chaput teaches his people and apply it to your circumstance. The teaching is correct and objective, faithful and brilliant.
Avery Robert Cardinal Dulles, SJ: Vir Ecclesiasticus
Today is the 90th birthday of His Eminence, Avery Cardinal Dulles. At Fordham University’s
Chapel about 175 people gathered to thank God for his many blessings and to offer Thanksgiving for the life and work of this great man of the Church: The Sacrifice of the Mass was offered by the Cardinal’s fellow Jesuits and some non-Jesuit priests. Family and friends, the high and the lowly and everyone in between came to celebrate with Cardinal Dulles. His longtime friend and Assistant, Sister Anne-Marie Kirmse, O.P. made today a wonderful event for many friends. No one could want nor hope for a better friend than Sister Anne-Marie!
THE most heart-filled gesture was seeing Edward Cardinal Egan, the Archbishop of New York, pushed Cardinal Dulles in and out of the Chapel. What a perfect example of humanity!!! Later, Cardinal Egan joked at a reception that he doesn’t regularly push Jesuits around much less Jesuit Cardinals, but he said it was his honor to push Dulles because of their longtime friendship and esteem; they are classmates in the College of Cardinals.
The Church gave us this prayer for the 21st Sunday Through the Year to praise God; it also
speaks to the person and work of Cardinal Dulles.
O God, You who make the minds of the faithful to be of one will,
grant unto Your people to love that thing which You command,
to desire that which You promise,
so that, amidst the vicissitudes of this world,
our hearts may there be fixed where true joys are.
(trans. Fr. John Zuhlsdorf)
I first met then Father Dulles in September 1997 at a Communio Circle in Easton, CT, hosted by the remarkable Maria Shrady. Never did I imagine what has happened to all of us since then: some that group became better theologians, some pastors of souls, some have met the Lord face-to-face, some have moved to new work and some have reached 90 years of life as a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. Another terrific thing happened today: the opportunity to renew friendships with many whom I esteem as people and as theologians. While our Communio group has disbanded for now, we decided in 2009 to reconstitute ourselves to work on theological matters of importance under the inspiration of Dulles and under the inspiration of another venerable cardinal, Hans Urs von Balthasar (a former Jesuit I might add who died 28 June 1988).
Cardinal Dulles himself in this way:
“Although I cannot rival the generous dedication of St. Paul and Ignatius of Loyola, I am, like them, content to be employed in the service of Christ and the Gospel, whether in sickness or health, in good repute or ill. I am immesurably grateful for the years in which the Lord has permitted me to serve him in a society that bears as its motto: Ad maiorum Dei gloriam. I trust that his grace will not fail me, and that I will not fail his grace, in the years to come” (A Testimonial of Grace, 50th anniv. edition).
The silent but very present witness of Avery Dulles is powerful and a strikingly stark approach than what we see in many parts of our society where the infirmed are moved to the margins of life. On the contrary, these are the people that most make present the beautiful of Jesus Christ. Personal purification and suffering continues to witness, at least to me, to the value of life and powerful presence of the Infinite. Dulles said of himself in the 39th McGinley Lecture, 21 April 2008:
The good life does not have to be an easy one, as our blessed Lord and the saints have
taught us. Pope John Paul II in his later years used to say, “The Pope must suffer.” Suffering and diminishment are not the greatest of evils, but are normal ingredients in life, especially in old age. They are to be accepted as elements of a full human existence. Well into my 90th year I have been able to work productively. As I become increasingly paralyzed and unable to speak, I can identify with the many paralytics and mute persons in the Gospels, grateful for the loving and skillful care I receive and for the hope of everlasting life in Christ. If the Lord now calls me to a period of weakness, I know well that his power can be made perfect in infirmity. “Blessed be the name of the Lord!”