Fisher and More

“… many stood for Christ against the State, and they were felled for it – martyred for Faith in Jesus Christ and for clinging to the Truth he taught – Truth handed on faithfully from generation to generation by Christ’s holy Church. But of the hundreds who were martyred for the Catholic Faith from 1535 onwards, two are especially eminent, and they were the first to be canonised by Pope Pius XI in 1935. St John Fisher was the saintly Bishop of Rochester, Chancellor of Cambridge University, Tutor to Henry VIII, Confessor to Lady Margaret,  mother of Henry VII. Erasmus considered him to be “incomparable for uprightness of life, for learning and for greatness of soul.” In short, he was an luminary of the Church. St Thomas More was a luminary of the State. He was Lord High Chancellor of England, a noted Humanist philosopher and lawyer, and a Scholar.

The combination of these two Saints reminds us that neither spiritual nor temporal lords could stand against the State and the will of the Crown. Nevertheless, both men remained steadfast in upholding the Truth of the Gospel, particularly concerning the indissolubility of Christian marriage. For their fidelity to Christ’s Word, they were executed in 1535, St John Fisher on this day (22 June), and St Thomas More on 6 July.

In our own time, the teaching of Christ on the permanence of Christian marriage, and thus the refusal to accept divorce, is largely seen as irrelevant or outdated. And, it appears, that some, even within the Catholic Church, regard this stance to be “rigid” and lacking in “mercy”. And yet, today’s Saints clung to the perennial teaching of Christ, and they were willing to die for this Truth. They died not simply as ‘conscientious objectors’ but, more fundamentally, as witnesses to the Truth of the Gospel. Truth is everlasting and it is not changed to suit us, but rather, we must conform to the Truth, above all, to the Person of Jesus Christ and to his teachings. Today’s Martyrs taught this with their lives.

Fr Lawrence Lew, OP
excerpt, homily for the feast of Ss. John Fisher and Thomas More, 2017

Joseph Absi new Melkite Patriarch

Archbishop Joseph Absi, Patriarchal Vicar for Damascus, has been elected as the new Melkite Patriarch. Axios!‬

His Beatitude succeeds Patriarch Gregory.

The new Patriarch celebrated his 71st birthday yesterday. He is 44 years a priest and 15 years a bishop and a member of the Melkite Paulist Order.

His Beatitude is an American citizen, since 1990. His mother and older brother live in California.

Eis pollá eti Déspota!

Itala Mela beatified

On Saturday, June 10th, Itala Mela (1904-57) was beatified in La Spezia, Italy, her home town. Cardinal Angelo Amato, the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, offered Mass and declared Mela a Blessed of the Church in the presence of 3000 people.

The liturgical memorial of Blessed Itala Mela will be April 28, the day prior to her anniversary of death so not to conflict the feast of St. Catherine of Siena, one of the patron saints of Italy.

In previous posts on Mela, I noted she was an Italian laywoman who eventually found her vocation not as a Benedictine nun but as a Benedictine Oblate.

Itala Mela was a well-known mystic of the Church, her popularity certainly grew following her death. She was the author of several theological writings that focused on the Blessed Trinity.

In his June 11th, Trinity Sunday Angelus Address, Pope Francis said that Blessed Itala Mela was not raised in the Catholic Faith, and in fact she identified herself as an atheist following her brother Enrico’s death at the age of nine in 1920. The tragic loss sent her in a tail-spin.

She later converted to Christ, however, following an intense spiritual experience on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (1922) at the age of 18. This sudden reawakening of her faith prompted her to say with conviction: “Lord, I shall follow You unto the darkness, unto death.” Her mission was to assist Catholic university students in developing their God-given, human desires through an emphasis on the spiritual life.

Mela’s own spiritual path was not straight but she eventually recognized that consecrated life was not her vocation; then she became a Benedictine Oblate in 1933 of the Abbey of Saint Paul outside the Walls in Rome and undertook a mystical journey focused on the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity taking the name Maria of the Blessed Trinity. Among her guides were Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, OSB (1880-1954), a Benedictine monk (of St Paul’s in Rome) who later became the Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan and Blessed Paul VI, also of Milan and later the Roman Pontiff.

Typically, Oblates promise the three Benedictine vows of Conversatio, Obedience and Stability, yet she also made a fourth vow of consecration to the Holy Trinity which she considered as her mission in the Church and world.

It was very fitting that Mela was beatified on the solemnity of the Holy Trinity. The Pope also said that “The testimony of the new Blessed encourages us, during our journeys, to often direct the thoughts to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit who dwells in the cell of our heart.”

Blessed Itala Mela now becomes a sign of holiness not only for the entire Church, but in particular for the laity. In fact, Cardinal Amato said in his homily, “Society needs secular holiness, education, economics, family, politics. The world needs lay saints.”

Blessed Itala, pray for us.

Bee Blessing

Dominican Father Jonathan Kalisch​ blessing the bees and the hives at Our Lady of Grace Monastery, North Guilford. For us, asking for God’s blessings upon things helps to remember God’s goodness and constant care for us. As a gardener, I am keenly reminded that without the bees we would not be eating too well, plus the honey produced by the bees is part of our diet and good health since it has curative properties. As a Catholic I can’t help not remembering the references to bees in the Exultet sung at the Paschal Vigil. There we hear:

This is the night of which it is written:

The night shall be as bright as day, dazzling is the night for me, and full of gladness. The sanctifying power of this night dispels all wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners, drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty. On this, your night of grace, O holy Father, accept this candle, a solemn offering, the work of bees and of your servants’ hands, an evening sacrifice of praise, this gift from your most holy Church.

But now we know the praises of this pillar, which glowing fire ignites for God’s honor, a fire into many flames divided, yet never dimmed by sharing of its light, for it is fed by melting wax, drawn out by mother bees to build a torch so precious.

BLESSING OF BEES

P: Our help is in the name of the Lord.
All: Who made heaven and earth.

P: The Lord be with you.
All: And with your spirit.

Let us pray.

Lord God almighty, who made the heavens and the earth, and all living things in the air and on land for the use of mankind; You hold all creation in the palm of your hands. With compunction, we pray to You, O all-good One: as in ancient times You granted the Israelites a land flowing with milk and honey, and as you were well-pleased to nourish Your baptizer John in the wilderness with wild honey. You ordered, through the ministers of holy Church, that candles made from the industry of bees should be lighted during the solemn mystery in which the most sacred body and blood of Jesus Christ, your Son, is confected and consumed; send your blessing + upon these bees and these beehives. Let none of these hives which You have fashioned be deprived of bees, but let them always be filled with honeycomb causing them to multiply, to produce and to be kept from harm, so that their yield of wax can be turned to your honor, to that of the Son and Holy Spirit, and to the veneration of the blessed Virgin Mary; through Christ our Lord.

All: Amen.

~ Our Lady of Grace, pray for us.
~ St. Ambrose, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and Blessed Solanus Casey, pray for us.
~ Blessed Simon Bellachi, pray for us.

The bees and the hives are sprinkled with holy water.

There are several pieces of sacred Scripture that reference honey and bees. My favorite is: “The bee is small among flying creatures, but what it produces is the best of sweet things” (Sirach 11:3). AND the 4th century author of The Apostolic Constitutions, one of the early documents of the Church writes: “Or else go to the bee, and learn how laborious she is, and her work how valuable it is, whose labors both kings and mean men make use of for their health. She is desirable and glorious, though she be weak in strength, yet by honoring wisdom she is improved, etc.”

The Church, the body of Christ, is a lot like a beehive: everyone has a God-given mission, a particular job to do for the Lord and the Kingdom.

Trinity Sunday

“The person of the Holy Spirit was of such authority and dignity, that saving baptism was not complete except by the authority of the most excellent Trinity of them all, that is, by the naming of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and by joining to the unbegotten God the Father, and to his only-begotten Son, the name also of the Holy Spirit.”      ~ Origen

I was looking for something to reflect upon with regard today’s solemnity and I went to Pope Benedict to see what he said. Here is an excerpt from his June 7, 2009 Angelus address:

Today 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!”

Finally, I would suggest that at Sunday Mass (or later in a quiet place) when contemplating the awesome gift of the Eucharist, let us be united with the Church when the priest prays: May the reception of this sacrament, O Lord our God, and also the confession of our faith in the holy everlasting Trinity and of the undivided Unity of the same, profit us for the salvation of body and soul. (Post Communion prayer, trans. JZ)

Husar was remarkable

Last week the Catholic Church lost the former head and father of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the person of Lubomyr Cardinal Husar, the emeritus patriarch of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

After years of diminishing health, the Patriarch-cardinal-monk was called home to the Father at the age of 84. Many have said Husar was the voice of the voiceless, and friend to many, and moral conscience in the reawakening of Ukraine. Of the many things written of His Beatitude recently I think George Weigel’s piece in the National Review is a very good one to sit with, and reflect upon, to offer a prayer in gratitude for Lubomyr Husar.

I recommend “The Remarkable Life of Lubomyr Husar.”

Eternal Memory, Your Beatitude. Pray for us.

Have you received the Holy Spirit?

How do you know whether you have received the Holy Spirit? Question your heart. If you love your brother and sister, the Spirit of God abides in you. Examine yourself before the eyes of God; see if there is in you a love of unity of peace, and a love for the church spread throughout the whole world.

Take care not to love only the person in front of you: we do not see many sisters and brothers, but we are united to them in the unity of Spirit. What cause is there to marvel that they are not with us? We are in one body; we have one head in heaven.

So, if you want to know if you have received the Holy Spirit, ask your heart: if fraternal charity is there, you can rest easy, for there can be no love without the Holy Spirit. As St. Paul says, the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us. (Romans 5:5)

Easter Meditations From the Vita Christi
Ludolph of Saxony
Quoted in “Your Hearts Will Rejoice”

Life by his Spirit – Pentecost

Creation, now marked by the saving sign of the Cross, has been enveloped in the redeeming love of the Holy Trinity. Now through Pentecost, and by the grace of the Holy Spirit (who becomes our divine mother in holy Baptism), nature has been transformed, and our humanity has taken-on the gifts of divine grace. Thus, we no longer know ourselves by the physical qualities of our existence in this world; but rather by the saving love of Christ who said: “I will not leave you orphans,” opening for us the gateway to Heaven, and transforming our lives through his Holy Spirit — into the newness of the Life with the Divine Trinity.

Father Steve Bonian, S.J.

Nature’s new life

 

My friend Iliana posted this picture of a robin’s nest & eggs, found while weeding the lower bed of her extensive garden. I hope mama Robin hasn’t abandoned them…