lent – Page 8 – Communio

Melkite and Maronite Churches begin Lent today

The Byzantine Catholic Church, along with the Maronite
Church, begin the Lenten observance. The Byzantines call today Clean Monday,
the first day of the Great Fast. Maronites call today “Ash Monday.” The
Byzantine Orthodox Church will open their Lent on Monday, February 27.

The Latin Church begins her Lent on Wednesday, 22 February.

Among
the Byzantines the traditional liturgical practice is to celebrate Great
Compline, which will include the singing of a portion of the Great Canon of
Saint Andrew of Crete. Find a Melkite parish near you to celebrate
Compline tonight.

Continue reading Melkite and Maronite Churches begin Lent today

Pope urges concern for others, reciprocity and personal holiness for lenten lessons

The Pope’s lenten message for the Church is rooted in the Letter to the Hebrews by which he develops three aspects of Christian life: concern for others, reciprocity and one’s holiness. As he says at the start, Hebrews tells us to have confidence in, trust in, Jesus who is our high priest. The presentation of the message is made by Cardinal Robert Sarah.

Lent begins February 22 with the imposition of ashes beginning a 40 day season of fasting, prayer and almsgiving. In some segments of the Church, spiritual preparations have begun with observing the preparatory Sundays –the pre-Lent– whereby Christians begin engaging more and more in acts of penance. The Church recommends a gradual acceptance of penance rather than a full scale plunge. One of my favorite narratives in the Gospel is the Transfiguration of Christ. Here Giovanni Bellini does a terrific job in developing my Catholic imagination in helping me to focus on Christ rather than myself. With the assistance of Pope Benedict’s lenten message we can help grace become more and more part of our own humanity whereby we are transfigured from doing sinful things to doing things of true Charity.

“Let us be concerned for each other, to stir a response in love and good works”

(Hebrews 10:24)

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Lenten season offers us once again an opportunity to reflect upon the very heart of Christian life: charity. This is a favourable time to renew our journey of faith, both as individuals and as a community, with the help of the word of God and the sacraments. This journey is one marked by prayer and sharing, silence and fasting, in anticipation of the joy of Easter.

This year I would like to propose a few thoughts in the light of a brief biblical passage drawn from the Letter to the Hebrews: “Let us be concerned for each other, to stir a response in love and good works”. These words are part of a passage in which the sacred author exhorts us to trust in Jesus Christ as the High Priest who has won us forgiveness and opened up a pathway to God. Embracing Christ bears fruit in a life structured by the three theological virtues: it means approaching the Lord “sincere in heart and filled with faith” (v. 22), keeping firm “in the hope we profess” (v. 23) and ever mindful of living a life of “love and good works” (v. 24) together with our brothers and sisters. The author states that to sustain this life shaped by the Gospel it is important to participate in the liturgy and community prayer, mindful of the eschatological goal of full communion in God (v. 25). Here I would like to reflect on verse 24, which offers a succinct, valuable and ever timely teaching on the three aspects of Christian life: concern for others, reciprocity and personal holiness.

Continue reading Pope urges concern for others, reciprocity and personal holiness for lenten lessons

Christ’s love is both horizontal and vertical

Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said to fulfill the Scripture: “I thirst.” A bowl full of vinegar stood there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished”; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

“I thirst.” “It is finished.” With these two phrases Jesus, looking first to humanity and then to the Father, bequeaths to us the burning passion at the heart of his person and mission: love for man and obedience to the Father. His is a love both horizontal and vertical: in the shape of the cross! And at the intersection of this twofold love, at the place where Jesus bows his head, the Holy Spirit wells up, the first fruits of his return to the Father.

This final breath which brings Jesus’ life to completion evokes the work of creation, which now is redeemed. But it is also a summons to all of us who believe in him to “bring to completion in our own flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions”. That all may be complete!

Lord Jesus, who died for our sake!
You ask, that you may give,
you die, that you may leave a legacy,
and thus you make us see that the gift of self
opens a space for unity.
Pardon the gall of our rejection and unbelief,
pardon the deafness of our hearts
to your cry of thirst
which echoes in the suffering of our many brothers and sisters.

Come, Holy Spirit,
parting gift of the Son who dies for us:
may you be the guide who “leads us into all the truth”
and “the root which sustains us in unity”!

Spy Wednesday: dancing with the devil?

Here we are: Spy Wednesday, the eve of the sacred Triduum. Lent is about to end and we’re entering into a liturgical period and facing the Paschal Mystery of Christ. The term “Spy Wednesday” is not heard often these but we get the point: the struggle between life and death, sin and grace, friendship and betrayal, good and evil.

Jesus shares the Passover meal his closest collaborators, he was having “Communio” with his friends and not strangers and one among them has already set in motion the process of betrayal. The intimacy once shared vigorously is now betrayed; it is one of the most terrible experiences any person can live through.

Spy Wednesday is not a day to point the finger at someone else’s problem. It’s a day to examine the soul to understand the ways we’ve betrayed Christ in simple and also likely profound ways. There is portion of Judas in all of us. While we may not have used 30 pieces of silver but perhaps we’ve opened the door to evil.

How different are you going to live today?

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

The marvelous glory and power of the cross, St Leo says

All week many of us who work in a parish have kept the events of Holy Week in front of us. Mostly because of the work that needs to be done in preparing the sacred Liturgy. Sadly, not enough time for prayer. Reminder: Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion is this weekend, it is not only the liturgical memorial of the Lord’s move to Jerusalem, it is also our hour of judgment. Jesus is not one among many saviors. Jesus is THE Messiah, the Son of Man, the Son of God who opens the door to God the Father and redeems us. No one, absolutely no one, can avoid the Lord’s hour of supreme love and self-giving in dying on the cross. It is, for us Christians, the tree of life.

Too many people these days have difficulty in accepting a positive view of Christ dying on the cross. Far from their hearts are Pope Leo’s words: “How marvelous the power of the cross; how great beyond all telling the glory of the passion.” Here’s Pope Saint Leo the Great’s
Sermon on the Passion:

Our understanding, which is enlightened by the Spirit of
truth, should receive with purity and freedom of heart the glory of the cross
as it shines in heaven and on earth. It should see with inner vision the
meaning of the Lord’s words when he spoke of the imminence of his passion: The
hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

Afterward he said: Now my
soul is troubled, and what am I to say? Father, save me from this hour. But it
was for this that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your Son. When the voice
of the Father came from heaven, saying, I have glorified him, and will glorify
him again, Jesus said in reply to those around him: It was not for me that this
voice spoke, but for you. Now is the judgment of the world, now will the prince
of this world be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw
all things to myself.

How marvelous the power of the cross; how great beyond
all telling the glory of the passion: here is the judgment-seat of the Lord,
the condemnation of the world, the supremacy of Christ crucified.

Lord, you
drew all things to yourself so that the devotion of all peoples everywhere
might celebrate, in a sacrament made perfect and visible, what was carried out
in the one temple of Judea under obscure foreshadowings.

Now there is a more
distinguished order of Levites, a greater dignity for the rank of elders, a
more sacred anointing for the priesthood, because your
cross is the source of all blessings, the cause of all graces. Through the
cross the faithful receive strength from weakness, glory from dishonour, life
from death.

The different sacrifices of animals are no more: the one offering of
your body and blood is the fulfillment of all the different sacrificial
offerings, for you are the true Lamb of God: you take away the sins of the
world. In yourself you bring to perfection all mysteries, so that, as there is
one sacrifice in place of all other sacrificial offerings, there is also one
kingdom gathered from all peoples.

Continue reading The marvelous glory and power of the cross, St Leo says

A new possibility of human existence: learning from Lazarus

The raising of Lazarus from the dead not only restores Lazarus to life, a life with his family and friends, but he begins a new life on earth because of his relationship with Jesus. The gaze of his friend Jesuson Lazarus is one of profound emotion and penetrating teaching. There’s no question that something unique happened to Lazarus because on the Lord’s journey to Jerusalem to face his own passover from life to Life. This is a final act of Jesus before he walks the via Dolorosa. But what does Lazarus’s new new life and Jesus’ own resurrection say to us today?

Lazarus’ human life is not permanent even after divine intervention for he will definitively die at the proper time. But the gift of new life –in a normal sense– gives us the awareness that life is anything but ordinary for those who know the Lord. It identifies our own aspiration for eternal life with Him. We are changed by meeting the Lord “which breaks through and overcomes every barrier! Christ breaks down the wall of death, and in Him there resides the fullness of God, which is life, eternal life. Therefore death had no power over Him; the resurrection of Lazarus is a sign of his full dominion over mortal death, which is like sleep before God.”

Continue reading A new possibility of human existence: learning from Lazarus

Lætáre Jerúsalem — Rejoice, O Jerusalem

Rejoice, O Jerusalem: and come together all you that love her: rejoice with joy you that have been in sorrow: that you may exult, and be filled from the breasts of your consolation.

Lætáre Jerúsalem :et convéntum fáciteómnes qui dilígitis éam: gaudéte cum lætítia, qui in tristítia fuístis: ut exsultétis, et satiémini abubéribus consolatiónis véstræ.

Psalm verse: I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: we shall go into the house of the Lord.

Lætátus sum in his quæ dícta sunt míhi: in dómum Dómini íbimus.

The Mass prayers and Divine Office for today was written particularly for Laetare Sunday and for the Roman Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (Holy Cross in Jerusalem). You can go to Jerusalem without having to leave Rome when you visit this basilica! I had the great joy of spending a month with the Cistercian monks of Santa Croce in 2007 and celebrating today’s feast with them. The monks pastorally administer the basilica which contain the relics of the Holy Passion of Lord and the mortal of remains of the Servant of God, Nenolina Melo.

Continue reading Lætáre Jerúsalem — Rejoice, O Jerusalem

Lent asks us to live in simplicity

We can’t live in abstractions. Reality as it is, God in Himself, is revealed in the concrete. The temptation is to let ourselves be consumed by what is non-essential, with things that burdensome or just plainly a pain. God is not known in the abstract; God is only revealed in the concreteness of life: in love, goodness, beautiful things, friendship, prayer, the sacred Liturgy, the proclamation of the Word, the sacred Tradition of the Church, and the like. Lent for some people is an abstract time of the Church’s calendar because they don’t necessarily know the aim, the goal, the necessity and the personal. What we all should bear in mind is that Lent is a simple time for getting back to basics so that these basics become virtue and virtue becomes a permanent way of looking at things in front of us. A little girl who does religious education following the method of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS) focusses our attention in how she experiences this period of conversion. “What is Lent? Lent is a time of reflection, of preparing ourselves for the resurrection of Our Lord… by doing something that takes a great effort… a time of sharing and giving ourselves, body and soul to God and the Holy Spirit” (Jessica, 9 years old, Chihuahua Mexico, Journals of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, 1984 – 1997, p.149).

Jessica’s rather simple declaration hopefully gives you pause during the day to give heart and the mind the space to do something other than work. Lent, like Advent, is a fitting to time of the liturgical year to reflect on the meaning of the Cross and the our Lord’s resurrection (this is what we call the Paschal Mystery). In what concrete ways does God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit capture our imagination –our heart? The founder of the CGS movement Sofia Cavalletti writes: “Simplicity also imposes a kind of asceticism, but it is an asceticism that is joyful, happy, dynamic, and opens out to spaces that are always becoming wider. It is an asceticism that is invigorating, filling the lungs with fresh air that empowers us to keep climbing toward the summit, where the space we will stand on might have become smaller, but the space before us, the panorama we view, will have opened out on the infinite” (“Holy Simplicity,” Journals of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, 2003 – 2008, p. 4).

You, Lord, have shown every mercy

O God, author of every mercy and of all goodness, who in fasting, prayer and almsgiving have shown us a remedy for sin, look graciously on this confession of our lowliness, that we who are bowed down by our conscience may always be lifted by your mercy.