Tag: Communion and Liberation

Father Julián Carrón to receive honorary doctorate from CUA

Julian Carron of CL.jpg

Father Julián Carrón will be receiving an honorary degree from the Catholic University of America on Saturday, May 12, 2012.  It is the 123rd commencement for CUA. This is a wonderful sign of esteem both for Fr. Carrón and for lay ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation here in the US. It ought to be noted that a number of US bishops would have had to have voted to grant him such an honor. 

 

For those who would like and are within close enough range, there will be an open assembly with Father Carrón on the School of Community text, At the Origin of the Christian Claim, and on the “Page One” of the recent issue Traces, “Self-Awareness: the Reawakening Point.”  It will take place that same day, Saturday, May 12th, 2012 at 3:00pm in a place to be announced in Washington, DC. 


His Eminence, Timothy Michael Cardinal Dolan, PhD will receive the President’s Medal and address the graduates.


Also among those receiving honorary degrees from CUA are Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University’s Sterling Professor of Humanities for Italian literature, the philanthropist Carmen Ana Casal de Unanue and her husband and former head of Goya Foods Joseph A. Unanue.

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What we hold most dear — the Communion and Liberation response to the HSS mandate


The US leadership of the Catholic lay ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation issued a flyer on the recent events concerning the HSS mandate to curb religious freedom. The flyer is written in light of recent US bishops’ statement on religious liberty. As you might expect, what’s at the center of the controversy is our witness that Christ is the way, the truth and the life.

What is at stake in this moment of our history is not
just the possibility for religious groups to continue to give their own
original contribution to American society, but also the possibility for any man
or woman to gain access to the truth of life. For this reason, we will not give
up the right to publicly witness to the world, through our lives and our work,
what we hold most dear. With the words of the Russian writer Vladimir Soloviev,
we repeat today what Christians have been repeating for 2,000 years.


“In the
grieved voice the Emperor addressed them: ‘Tell me yourselves, you strange
people…you Christians, deserted by the majority of your brothers and leaders:
what do you hold most dear in Christianity?’ At this Elder John rose up and
said in a quiet voice: ‘Great sovereign! What we hold the most dear in
Christianity is Christ Himself – He in His person. All the rest comes from Him,
for we know that in Him dwells bodily the whole fullness of Divinity.'”

The entire statement can be read here: What we hold most dear – a CL flyer 2012.pdf

Communion and Liberation opens cause for beatification and canonization for Luigi Giussani today

LGiussani.jpgFather Julián Carrón, the President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, the ecclesial movement founded Father Luigi Giussani (who died 7 years ago today) and which was approved by the Church 30 years this past February 11, gave the preliminary research to Angelo Cardinal Scola, Archbishop of Milan, to open the diocesan phase of investigating the eventual beatification and canonization of Father Luigi Giussani.

30th anniversary of Communion and Liberation

“On the 30th Anniversary of the Pope’s recognition of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, we ask the Lord for the gratitude for the meeting with Father Giussani’s charisma to become a renewed responsibility every day for our Destiny and that of all our human brothers, in our indomitable faithfulness to the Church in history’s joyous and tragic events. So let us say a special prayer for the Holy Father, invoking upon him the comfort of the Holy Spirit in this moment of great chaos.”

Mass intention for the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, 2012

Christ is something that is happening to me now –our engagement with Giussani’s At the Origins of the Christian Claim


Fraternity CL Logo.JPGThose who follow the lay ecclesial movement, Communion
and Liberation, and attend the weekly School of Community, know that we’ve come
to end of our work on Father Luigi Giussani book, the The Religious Sense. For the
coming year we will be working on Giussani’s At the Origin of the Christian
Claim. On January 25, 2012, at the Teatro degli Arcimboldi, Milan, Father Julián
Carrón’s made a presentation of Father Luigi Giussani’s book. 


That presentation
is noted here: Christ is something that is happening to me now.pdf


Quoting Don Giussani, 

Et incarnatus est-Father Giussani says-“is singing at its purest,
when all man’s straining melts in the original clarity, the absolute purity of
the gaze that sees and recognizes. Et incarnatus est is contemplation and
entreaty at the same time, a stream of peace and joy welling up from the
heart’s wonder at being placed before the arrival of what it has been waiting
for, the miracle of the fulfillment of its quest. […]

As we approach the 30th anniversary of papal approval of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation on February 11th, let’s call on the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes and Saint Benedict, co-patrons of the Movement to guide our way to the Word Made Flesh.

Communion & Liberation of Connecticut meets for Mass

CL 2012-1.jpgAn annual Mass is celebrated for the repose of the soul of Father Luigi Giussani (+February 22, 2005) and the good of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation. We are a small but faithful group of friends who help each other to follow Christ and love the Church; we live our Baptism.

The anniversary of the Church’s approval of the charism of Communion and Liberation is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, 11 February.

Our friend, Bishop Peter Rosazza, an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Hartford celebrated the Sacrifice of the Mass with another friend concelebrating, Father Sal Rosa.
The 2012 Mass was held at Our Lady of Pompeii Church (Route 80, East Haven, CT) was the host thanks to Father John Lavorgna.
The CL movement asks us to live our lives in communion with the Vicar of Christ, the Pope. This communion, this fidelity to the sacred Scripture and sacred Tradition is expressed with concrete expressions of communion with the bishop of the diocese in which we live and therefore marking a gesture of communion with the Pope. Hence, by praying the Mass celebrated by Bishop Peter we demonstrate that we are in communion with him and Archbishop Henry Mansell (successors of the apostles) who are in communion with Pope Benedict XVI.
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A Hope that is Stronger than the Recession

The Italian daily Il Avvenire published a story by Giorgio Paolucci, “A Hope that is Stronger than the Recession,” an interview with the President of Communion and Liberation, Father Julián Carrón.

Speaking of the Year of Faith called by Benedict, Father Carrón stated: 
“Today, too, a new beginning is therefore necessary to testify to how reason and freedom find their fulfillment in faith, making evident that Christianity is something that is humanly worth our while. In this sense, the Year of Faith is directed first of all to Christians, but, in the degree to which we live a ‘new beginning,’ it can benefit everyone, according to the method chosen by Jesus: give the grace to some so that through them it can reach everyone who is open to accepting it.”
I find that the interview is beautiful and striking. Read it and see why I say so, but don’t let skew your impression.

The temptation of Christmas

Nativity of the Lord JFlanders.jpg

Have we finished the Christmas season in good order? Have we exceeded our expectation to live the season of Christmas differently from what secular culture has given us? Or, have we given up and just given ourselves over to the mediocrity of the the world around us with regard to Christian Faith?  What follows is a very interesting commentary on our Christian observance of the Birth of Jesus, the Nativity of God-Man by Father Julián Carrón. While the today brings to a close the Church’s yearly observance of Christmastide, we have work to do before we put to rest the nagging questions: what difference does this Child make in my life? AND Do we really believe that God is in our midst?


In order to describe our humanity and to see ourselves properly at this moment in the world’s history, it is hard for us to find more appropriate words than those contained in this passage by the Prophet Zephaniah. “Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel!”. Why? What reason is there to rejoice, with all that is happening in the world? Because “the Lord has taken away the judgments against you”.

The first repercussion that these words produced in me was surprise at how the Lord looks at us: with a gaze that succeeds in seeing things that we shall not be able to recognize unless we participate in his same gaze at reality. “The Lord has taken away the judgments against you”: in other words, your evil does not have the last word over your life; the usual way you look at yourself is not the right one; the look with which you constantly reproach yourself is not true. The one true look is the Lord’s look. And it is precisely by this look that you will be able to understand that he is with you: if he has taken away the judgment against you, what can you fear? “You shall fear evil no more”. An inexorable positiveness prevails over life. For this reason, the biblical passage continues, “do not fear, O Zion, do not let your hands grow weak” Why? Because “The Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory”. There is no other source of joy than this: “he will rejoice over you with gladness. He will renew you with his love, he will exult over you with loud singing” (3:14-17).

Continue reading The temptation of Christmas

Are we engaged in reality?


This blog is dedicated to communion theology. What brings us a Christians–Catholics– in communion of the Trinity, the Church and one another. The trusted witness of another gives me certitude that Faith in Jesus Christ and His the Sacrament, the Church, is real and worthy of belonging, not just following. The head of the Communion and Liberation in the USA, Chris Bacich, wrote the following letter to us today. I offer it for your reflection in these days of Advent. Emphasis given is mine.

Dear Friends,

I’ve been wanting to write to you for some time (since
mid-November, really) about the opportunity I had to be with Fr. Carrón and a
few other friends from around the world in Italy.

He invited us to a
“mini-vacation” over a weekend and we spent a good amount of time
speaking about the Movement and the radical nature of its proposal.  In
particular, Fr. Carrón wanted to hear from us what change the work on the
school of community on chapters 10 and 11 of the Religious Sense and the flyer produced in Italy on
the crisis had wrought in us.  He pointed, in particular, to the very
recent death (it had happened less than a week before we were with him) of a
young man from the CLU [Communion & Liberation University Students] in
Italy who had died in a motorcycle accident.  He held an assembly with the
university students, regarding this event, where he boldly insisted that
reality is always positive. (This assembly will be featured in the next
issue of Traces.) 
Indeed, the theme of the CLU Spiritual Exercises in Italy will be “The
Inexorable Positivity of Reality.” His boldness in front of such a
tragic event, as well as the insistence of our charism at this time that the
crisis in which the world has fallen at this moment is something positive
encapsulates for me the clash of mentality that exists between us and the
mentality generated by the popular culture that so often rules our hearts and
minds, as well.

Continue reading Are we engaged in reality?

Defining the Church’s charitable mission

Today, Pope Benedict spoke to the volunteers who work with the Cor Unum group led by Cardinal Robert Sarah. He defines very clearly charitable work. Pay attention Communion and Liberation people!!!

I am grateful for the opportunity to greet you as you meet under the auspices of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum” in this European Year of Volunteering.

Let me begin by thanking Cardinal Robert Sarah for the kind words he has addressed to me on your behalf. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to you and, by extension, to the millions of Catholic volunteers who contribute, regularly and generously, to the Church’s charitable mission throughout the world. At the present time, marked as it is by crisis and uncertainty, your commitment is a reason for confidence, since it shows that goodness exists and that it is growing in our midst. The faith of all Catholics is surely strengthened when they see the good that is being done in the name of Christ (cf. Philem 6).

For Christians, volunteer work is not merely an expression of good will. It is based on a personal experience of Christ. He was the first to serve humanity, he freely gave his life for the good of all. That gift was not based on our merits. From this we learn that God gives us himself. More than that: Deus Caritas est – God is love, to quote a phrase from the First Letter of Saint John (4:8) which I employed as the title of my first Encyclical Letter. The experience of God’s generous love challenges us and liberates us to adopt the same attitude towards our brothers and sisters: “You received with paying, give without pay” (Mt 10:8). We experience this especially in the Eucharist when the Son of God, in the breaking of bread, brings together the vertical dimension of his divine gift with the horizontal dimension of our service to our brothers and sisters.

Continue reading Defining the Church’s charitable mission