Fatima at 100

On May 13, 1917, Mary, the Mother of God, known also by a title of “Our Lady of Fatima,” revealed herself to  three shepherd children in a small town in Portugal. 100 years later we firmly recognize and follow the lead Jacinta, Francisco, and Lucia who gave us a renewed opportunity to enter into deeper communion with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through His Mother.

Saint John Paul II tells us that “the message of Fatima is, in its basic nucleus, a call to conversion and repentance as in the Gospel.”

At Fatima we were told to “Pray the Rosary, every day, in order to bring peace to the world.”

Hence, we pray for ourselves, indeed, all sinners, as we say the prayer Our Lady of Fatima asked to be added after each mystery of the Rosary: “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fire of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those who are most in need of Thy mercy.” During the six monthly apparitions in 1917, Mary instructed Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco to pray the Rosary daily for peace, and to make sacrifices for sinners, saying that “many souls go to hell, because there are none to sacrifice themselves and pray for them.”

So, today we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Fatima with special solemnity, as we mark the 100th anniversary of her first apparition.

Sing Alleluia, Christian

After all our trials have ceased, our life will be taken up entirely with God’s praises. Therefore, it is our custom to commemorate this peaceful and blissful state by chanting Alleluia more frequently and joyfully during these fifty days.

In the book of Revelation, John the Evangelist says that he heard the throngs of heavenly powers singing this word. And the venerable father, Tobit, perceiving something of the glory of the citizens on high and the splendor of the heavenly Jerusalem, described it with these mystical words:

All the streets shall be paved with white and clean stones,and, Alleluia shall be sung in its streets. (Tobit 13:22)

St. Bede the Venerable
Quoted in: Your Hearts Will Rejoice
Ludolph of Saxony, Carthusian

Solanus Casey to be beatified

Capuchin Father Solanus Casey is pictured in an undated file photo. Admirers of Father Casey, a doorkeeper at Franciscan houses in New York and Detroit, are hoping for his beatification. In 1995 he was declared venerable, one of the first steps toward canonization. (CNS photo) (July 31, 2007) See DETROIT-SOLANUS July 31, 2007.

Father Casey becomes the newest American to be beatified.

 
GREAT NEWS, at Noon in Rome today, it was announced that the Venerable Servant of God Solanus Casey, Capuchin, will be beatified. The Congregation for Saints as acknowledged that a miracle was attributed to Casey’s intercession.
 
Born: 25 November 1870 and died 31 July 1957. He was a professed member of the Capuchin Franciscans and a priest.
 
Thanks be to God.

Recommended to St Joseph

“To other Saints Our Lord seems to have given power to succor us in some special necessity—but to this glorious Saint, I know by experience, He has given the power to help us in all. Our Lord would have us understand that as He was subject to St. Joseph on earth—for St. Joseph, bearing the title of father and being His guardian, could command Him—so now in Heaven Our Lord grants all his petitions. I have asked others to recommend themselves to St. Joseph, and they, too, know the same thing by experience . . .”

Saint Teresa of Avila
Autobiography, VI, 9

Bear the mark of Jesus

In the Gospel it is revealed that Jesus breaks bread on the road to Emmaus. This 12th century monastic author teaches:

“Break yourself, then, by the labor of obedience, by the humiliation of repentance. Bear in your body the marks of Jesus Christ by accepting the condition of a servant, not of a superior. And when you have emptied yourself, you will know the Lord through the breaking of bread.”

St Catherine of Siena

“The soul, who is lifted by a very great and yearning desire for the honor of God and the salvation of souls, begins by exercising herself, for a certain space of time, in the ordinary virtues, remaining in the cell of self-knowledge, in order to know better the goodness of God towards her. This she does because knowledge must precede love, and only when she has attained love, can she strive to follow and to clothe herself with the truth. But, in no way, does the creature receive such a taste of the truth, or so brilliant a light therefrom, as by means of humble and continuous prayer, founded on knowledge of herself and of God; because prayer, exercising her in the above way, unites with God the soul that follows the footprints of Christ Crucified, and thus, by desire and affection, and union of love, makes her another Himself.”

— St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena, p.1

Mercy is central

Indeed, mercy is the central nucleus of the Gospel message; it is the very name of God, the Face with which he revealed himself in the Old Covenant and fully in Jesus Christ, the incarnation of creative and redemptive Love. May this merciful love also shine on the face of the Church and show itself through the sacraments, in particular that of Reconciliation, and in works of charity, both communitarian and individual. May all that the Church says and does manifest the mercy God feels for man, and therefore for us. When the Church has to recall an unrecognized truth or a betrayed good, she always does so impelled by merciful love, so that men and women may have life and have it abundantly (cf. Jn 10:10). From Divine Mercy, which brings peace to hearts, genuine peace flows into the world, peace between different peoples, cultures and religions.

Pope Benedict XVI
Regina Caeli message,
Divine Mercy Sunday, March 30, 2008

The 8th Day of the Resurrection

Today is Thomas Sunday. Also known by other names, Low Sunday and now Divine Mercy Sunday. The Church asks to make connections between what we commemorate in the Incarnation and the Resurrection. Today is a fitting day to account for our faith in what the Lord said and did was true.

St. Thomas gives witness: what do we believe and what do we do? St. Thomas also opens for us the new mission given my the Lord Himself began when the Father missioned Him. Consider a few things taught in the Catechism we read:

“Jesus is often addressed as “Lord” in the gospels as a sign of respect and trust. In the encounter with the risen Jesus, this title becomes adoration: “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20.28) and “It is the Lord!” (Jn 21.7). (CCC 448)

“When his visible presence was taken from them, Christ did not leave his disciples orphans but remained with them to the end of time by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. As a result, our communion with Jesus has become in a way more intense.” (CCC 788).

AND

“Jesus is the Father’s Emissary, the one the Father has sent. Jesus, in turn, chooses and sends out the Twelve to preach in his name (Mk 3.13-14). These are his emissaries (Greek apostoloi), in whom Christ continues his own mission: “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (Jn 20.21) and “He who receives you receives me” (Mt 1.40; Lk 10.16). (CCC 858).

The full appreciation of the Paschal Mystery maintains a connection with the Feast of the Nativity. Archbishop DiNoia recently preached the following:

The Resurrection of Christ is in a real sense the fulfillment of the Annunciation when Mary’s fiat opened the way to our redemption, and her own. The body of our risen Lord—the same body he offered in sacrifice on the cross—was the body he received from Mary in the womb. What is more, Easter has made her what we hope to be as well. “Welcoming the risen Jesus, Mary is … a sign and anticipation of humanity which hopes to achieve its fulfilment through the resurrection of the dead” (Pope St. John Paul II, General Audience, 21 May 1997). Our Lady is the first one to share in the resurrection of her Son, the first fruits, as it were, of Easter: assumed into heaven and now reigning as Queen of Heaven, she anticipates the resurrection of our bodies and the life of bliss to come. How easy it is to imagine with Sedulius that she who was “the way by which he once came to us, might also signal his return.”

At Easter, we call on Mary to rejoice—Regina coeli, laetare—thus “prolonging in time the ‘rejoice’ that the Angel addressed to her at the Annunciation” (Pope St. John Paul II, General Audience, 21 May 1997). While the (probably Franciscan) author of this wonderful antiphon is unknown, there is a beautiful legend that Pope St. Gregory the Great—as he followed barefoot in procession with St. Luke’s icon of Mary—heard angels singing the first lines, and added what would become the antiphon’s concluding line: “Ora pro nobis Deum, Alleluia.”

Archbishop J. Augustine DiNoia, O.P.
April 16, 2017
DHS