Traces – Communio

Trappistine nuns in Syria

The mostly Italian group of Trappistine nuns forming a monastic colony in Syria are not moving, even in the face of violence.

Since 2005, Mother Marta Luisa Fagnani and the other nuns have committed themselves to prayer and work in a country in crisis. Their witness at the Monastery of Blessed Mary of Font of Peace (in Arabic, Dier al Adrha Yanbu’a-s-Salam), is a foundation of the Valserena Monastery in Guardistallo, Italy.

They write a blog, Ora pro Siria, in Italian and not frequently updated, but you can get a sense of their witness there. BUT, the monastic project of the nuns is explained here, which also asks the reader to help with prayer, friendship and money.

Yesterday, the daily Il Sussidiario published an English translation of an interview with one of the nuns.

Two years ago today, Traces magazine published a story, “The Sisters of Syria,” where the nuns talk about their call to make a monastic foundation in Syria, what freedom, the Encounter with the Lord and others and silence means. Few know, for example, that the Middle East had 11 monasteries of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (the Trappists) but dissolved due to the Islamic invasion. This is something to think and pray about. Do you have the same commitment to the Lord and to missionary zeal as these nuns?

Through the Church Christianity is new life

“Christianity is a new life, it’s a new way of living, which is to say of perceiving, of judging, of feeling, of reacting and of manipulating things. It is a new way of life, a new way of living, not individually but essentially as a community. So, that the Church is present in an environment means that in that environment the Christian community is present as life, that the Christians live the life of that environment in everything, honestly, in every detail, lives the interests that make up that environment, but from another point of view.”

Father Luigi Giussani, to GS students, 1964. Printed in the July/August 2005 Traces

Traces magazine: there’s an app for it on iPad

Great news with you: Traces is now available for iPad users and users of Apple’s latest OS, Lion. All that is necessary is to go to the App Store and enter “Traces” and you will find it.

There are many, pretty obvious, advantages to this new form, including receiving Traces as soon as it’s published, paying less for a subscription and the ability to easily tell friends who have an iPad.

I hope all of you Apple and iPad users will sign up, immediately, and tell your friends!

Traces magazine

During this giving season, we hope you will consider
subscriptions for Traces magazine for your family, friends, and
associates. Traces (Litterae Communionis) is the official magazine of the international Movement of Communion and Liberation and it is published in several languages. This unique gift broadens our horizons of awareness and personal
conversion (conversion spoken of by Christ and strongly encouraged by Pope
Benedict XVI).

The articles in Traces encourages us to make an evaluation on history, literature, politics, education, medicine, law, science and
culture and describes our life in the Church in new and incisive
ways, ways which help us to be more fully engaged in our own lives and in the
society. Traces helps us life more fully our Catholic Faith.

As Father Julián
Carrón, head of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation (CL) suggested at a
meeting with CL leaders this summer in La Thuile (Italy): “You must take
the initiative that your life be pervaded by God because the substance of our
happiness is this infinite enormous Love which inclined itself over our
nothingness.”

Subscribe today … bringing the words and experiences of
“that which we hold most dear” into the hearts and homes of others!

For
more information, contact Suzanne at stanzi@clhac.com.

Follow Traces on Facebook.

Attacking the Pope (and the Catholic faith)…an annual sport — Communion and Liberation responds

No Catholic should be surprised that there is filth in the
Church for Our Lord Himself told us that this would be so in the parable of the
weeds among the wheat (Matthew 13:24-30). AND it’s no surprise that the
Church is full of sinners, sinners who commit grave sin. And yes, some
who claim to follow Christ commit evil and everything possible must be done to
stem the evil and to make amends for that pain generated by that evil.

Furthermore,
no Catholic should be surprised that the Faith should once again be attacked
during Easter because this is an annual event. However, this year’s
annual Easter attack on the Faith has taken the form of one upon the person of
the Pope, Benedict XVI, himself.

What truly saddens me, however, is that there
are many within the Church herself, those who should know better, that are once
again attempting to create a Christianity without Christ. But if we
forget Christ, if we do away with the wholly different measure that He
introduces into the world now, through the Church, then we no longer have the
terms on which to judge the Church.

Continue reading Attacking the Pope (and the Catholic faith)…an annual sport — Communion and Liberation responds