Entering the Sacred Triduum

“This is a warning to all Catholics & Orthodox. Holy Week is Serious Business for serious disciples of Jesus Christ. The Sacred Rites (aka “ceremonies”) are not incidentally or accidentally lengthly. They are deliberately lush with the symbols of Worship at the heart of which is the Lord Jesus the Christ Himself. Entering into the Mysteries of the Triduum (Holy Thursday/Good Friday/Holy Saturday) sweeps us from lenten preparation and plunges us into the waters of Baptism where we drown to worldly allurements and arise to Easter Joy. These are deep waters, still waters where the testimony of the apostles and disciples churn among the testimonies of evangelists, martyrs, monks, nuns, and Households in Christ made holy through wives and husbands dedicated to Christian Living among truly heathen tribes and cultures. Here we join this communion of saints to refresh our souls, rededicate our bodily existence to the announcement of the Gospel — In Christ, God and Man are reconciled. May the Blessings of this Holy Week drive from us whatever is insipid and feeble. May it revest us with such Grace that will make us “strong, loving, wise” witnesses to Christ in this place and age.”

Courtesy of Fr. William Seifert

Christians should NOT do a Seder

Lazar Berman’s essay published today on The Times of Israel, “‘Trying to undo history”: A Catholic scholar reflects on Christian Seders“.

Berman and Fr. Murray Watson discuss the reality of the Seder and illustrate why it is inappropriate for Christians to do something so out of context from the their religious experience.

I have long been opposed to Christians performing the Jewish Passover Seder. In fact, I have used the words “outrageous” to express my dismay. Christians who do so, in my considered opinion, are very presumptuous and not too educated in the theology undergirding the Seder and the difference Baptism and belief in Jesus makes for the Christian. Recall that Jesus is the NEW Passover, something rejected by Jews.

In faith, we share some important beliefs with Jews; we should respect their developed theology as they should respect ours. Theological and cultural barbarisms avoided.

If a Christian wants to experience a Seder then that person ought to do the study required to understand AND swing an invitation from a Jewish household to participate in a Passover Seder. Set time aside to sit back and thoughtfully consider educative value of the experience and see know your theology! I appreciate what Berman and Watson are saying. We ought to attend.

Bl. Margaret Castello

I am always very aware of today’s Blessed of the Order of Preachers, Margaret Castello. The liturgical memorial is today. Her holiness is attractive. One biography reads:

Bl. Margaret Castello (1287–1320) was born to noble Italian parents who were awaiting the birth of the child of their dreams. Instead, they bore a daughter who was blind, dwarfed, lame, and hunchbacked. Margaret’s parents were horrified by the physical appearance of their newborn child, so they hid her and kept her existence secret. A servant had her baptized and named her Margaret, meaning, “Pearl.” When she was six years of age she was nearly discovered, so that her father confined her to a cell inside the wall of a church with her necessities given through a window. The parish priest took it upon himself to educate Margaret. She lived in this way until age sixteen, when her parents took her on pilgrimage to a shrine famous for miraculous healings. There they prayed earnestly for their daughter to be cured of her deformities, which they loathed. When no cure came, her parents abandoned her in the streets and returned home, never to see her again. Margaret begged for food and was helped by the town’s poor who took turns sheltering her in their homes. She became a Dominican Tertiary and took up the work of serving the sick, dying, and imprisoned. Margaret was known for her great joy, sanctity, and profound mystical experiences. She died at the age of 33, and hundreds of miracles were credited to her intercession both before and after her death. Her body is incorrupt. She is the patron against poverty, and of the disabled, handicapped, and unwanted.

St Gemma Galgani

For years I have been intrigued by today’s saint, Gemma Galgani. Several of my friends have a devotion to Galgani, yet she has basically remained a name for me until now. It is an interesting event that her feast day this is not on Holy Saturday as when she died, but it is during the week we call great and holy. One striking thing is that St. Gemma was not a professed member of the Passionist Order yet she intimately linked to its spiritual patrimony.

A biographer writes, “St. Gemma Galgani (1878-1903) was born in Italy, the fifth of eight children of a prosperous pharmacist. Her mother and three siblings died of tuberculous when she was young, and when she was 18 her father died as well, leaving Gemma to help care for her younger siblings. She rejected two marriage proposals and became a housekeeper while trying to enter the religious life as a Passionist. She was rejected due to her poor heath, and later became a Tertiary member of the Order. Gemma developed spinal meningitis but was miraculously healed, which she attributed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the intercession of St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. Throughout her life she united herself with the Passion of Christ and experienced great suffering as a result, but not without receiving many remarkable graces as well. She experienced many visions and was often visited by her guardian angel, Jesus, and the Virgin Mary. For this she was known as a great mystic, and, according to her spiritual director, developed the stigmata at age 21. After a selfless life of love given to God for the conversion of sinners, she died on the Vigil of Easter at the age of 25.

She is the patron saint of pharmacists, loss of parents, back illnesses, temptations, and those seeking purity of heart.

Gemma Galgani was beatified in 1933, and canonized in 1940.

The week we call great and holy

We call the week great, not because it has a greater number of hours – other weeks having many more hours, after all – not because it has more days, there being the same number of days in this and the other weeks, of course. So why do we call this week great? Because in it many ineffable good things come our way: in it protracted war is concluded, death is eliminated, curses are lifted, the devil’s tyranny is relaxed, his pomps are despoiled, the reconciliation of God and man is achieved, heaven is made accessible, human beings are brought to resemble angels, those things which were at odds are united, the wall is laid low, the bar is removed, the God of peace having brought peace to things on high and things on earth. This, then, is the reason we call the week great, because in it the Lord lavished on us such a plethora of gifts. This is the reason many people intensify their fasting as well as their sacred watching and vigils, and practice almsgiving, thus showing by their behavior the regard they have for the week. After all, since the Lord in this week has regaled us with such great goods, how are we not obliged to demonstrate our reverence and regard as far as we can?”

St. John Chrysostome

Palm Sunday

Christ the King

“Let us confidently acknowledge and openly proclaim that Christ was crucified for our sake, declaring it with joy and pride, not with fear and shame. In this, the apostle Paul saw reason for boasting. He could have told us many great and holy things about Christ: how as God he shared with his Father the work of creation, and how as man like us he was Lord of the world. But he would not glory in any one of these marvelous things: ‘God forbid that I should boast of anything’, he said, ‘except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.’” (St Augustine)

Enmity with God poisons

Enmity with God is the source of all that poisons man; overcoming this enmity is the basic condition for peace in the world. Only the man who is reconciled with God can also be reconciled and in harmony with himself, and only the man who is reconciled with God himself can establish peace around him and throughout the world.

But the political context that emerges from Luke’s infancy narrative as well as in Matthew’s Beatitudes indicates the full scope of these words. That there be peace on earth (cf Lk. 2:14) is the will of God and, for that reason, it is a task given to man as well.

The Christian knows that lasting peace is connected with men abiding in God’s eudokia, his “good pleasure.” The struggle to abide in peace with God is an indispensable part of the struggle for “peace on earth”; the former is the source of the criteria and the energy for the latter.

When men lose sight of God, peace disintegrates and violence proliferates to a formerly unimaginable degree of cruelty. This we see only too clearly today.

Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth

St Amos

14 Bible Historiale, The Call of Amos Artwork: Amos as shepherd Artist: UNKNOWN; Illustrator of Petrus Comestor’s ‘Bible Historiale’, France, 1372 Date: 1372 Technique: Miniature Location: Museum Meermanno Westreenianum, The Hague Notes: From Petrus Comestor’s “Bible Historiale” (manuscript “Den Haag, MMW, 10 B 23”). According to Museum Meermanno’s database, the picture depicts Joel. We do not know about Joel’s earlier profession, and it seems more probable that the picture depicts Amos. Subject: The Call of Amos Hosts: Museum Meermanno and Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague: Interactive Presentation of Handwritings [IMAGE]
The Novus Ordo Liturgy does not liturgically commemorate OT prophets but the older form of the Mass does, as well as the Byzantine Liturgy. The Roman Martyrology lists Amos as the first saint of the list for March 31: “At Thecua, in Palestine, the holy prophet Amos, whom the priest Amasias frequently scourged, and whose temples Ozias, that priest’s son, pierced with an iron spike. Being carried half dead to his native place, he expired there and was buried with his forefathers” (Roman Martyrology).

As you know, the Book of Amos is one of the twelve minor prophets. The name Amos means “Burden” in Hebrew. Amos’ biography says that he lived in the 700s B.C. during the reigns of King Uzziah of Judah and King Jeroboam II of Israel, that he was a contemporary of the holy prophet Jonah, and he exercised his prophetic ministry prior to God’s call of Isaiah.

The prophetic book reveals that Amos was a herdsman and dresser of sycamore trees. The Holy Prophet Amos calls for the restoration of Israel under the Messianic Dynasty of King David rejecting Israel’s grievous immorality and the warning of God’s wrath.

St Amos, pray for us as we make our way through Lent shedding sin and asking for God’s grace.

Fourth Sunday of Lent

Today in the Novus Ordo Mass for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (Laetare Sunday) there is a distinct the of light. In contrast to the darkness of sin and death, light illumines the soul, wipes out the shadows, it is curative, and reveals that which is previously concealed. Theologically we follow what is revealed in sacred Scripture that Jesus is the Light of the Nations. Our enduring prayer ought to be the Father: send us the grace of Light, allow us to receive the Light of your Son, Jesus.

St. John Paul II once said: “The man born blind represents the man marked by sin, who wishes to know the truth about himself and his own destiny, but is impeded by a congenital malady. Only Jesus can cure him: He is “the light of the world” (John 9:5). By entrusting oneself to him, every human being, spiritually blind from birth, has the possibility of ‘coming to the light’ again, that is, to supernatural life.“