Feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

From Vultus Christi:

Sixty-five years ago today, on August 9, 1942, the Carmelite Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, known in the world as Dr. Edith Stein, met death in the infernal concentration camp of Auschwitz. Edith Stein was a Jew, born into an Orthodox family on October 12th October 1891. It was the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur. For a time, suffering from depression, and determined nonetheless to seek her own truth, she abandoned all outward religious practice. Edith asked for Baptism after reading the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila. "This," she said, "is the truth."

Feast of Saint James the Apostle

From Vultus Christi:

An Eye-Witness of the Transfiguration

When one considers that James was an eye–witness of the Transfiguration, the deeper meaning of today’s First Reading comes into focus. While James looked on, together with Peter and with his brother John, Jesus “was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became white as light” (Mt 17:2). The splendour of Jesus’ Face burned itself indelibly into the heart of James. Contemplating the Face of the transfigured Jesus, James was filled with “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” (2 Cor 4:6). This is the treasure that Saint James carried in a shell of fragile earthenware: his own human weakness.

Gethsemani

The Transfiguration reveals the treasure; the agony in the garden of Gethsemani reveals to us the fragility of the earthen vessels. To Peter, James, and John, Jesus said, “Remain here and watch with me” (Mt 26:38), but after His prayer to the Father, he found them sleeping. Again, a second time, He asked these, his intimate companions, to watch and pray, warning them of the weakness of the flesh, and again He came and “found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy” (Mt 26:43). And so it happened a third time but, by then, the hour of Jesus’ betrayal was already at hand (Mt 26:45). The radiant memory of Jesus transfigured, “the knowledge of the glory of God” (2 Cor 4:6), was held in earthen vessels: in the hearts of men who could not watch even one hour with their Master in his agony.

Discouraged and Weary

Tradition recounts that after Pentecost Saint James went to preach the Gospel in far off Spain. There his work met with little response. In fact, the Apostle found hostility and active resistance to his preaching. James grew discouraged and, in his weariness, began to question his mission. In this, there is not a priest alive who, at certain moments, cannot identify with Saint James.

Also you can read what Pope Benedict XVI says about Saint James in:

Father Mark's Retreat to the Bridgettines in Darien

Nothing Happens Without Your Permitting It

A Beatiful Meditation on the Symbolism of the "Apse" of a Church

From Vultus Christi:

An Opening Onto the Kingdom of God

It was only after several visits to the sanctuary of Our Mother of Perpetual Help that I looked, and saw, and understood the significance of the mosaic in the apse. The apse of a church generally symbolizes an opening onto the Kingdom of God. An apse is, in some way, more window than wall, even when it is solid. This explains the meaning of the images traditionally found in the apse of our churches: Christ in glory; Christ in majesty; Christ seated on a rainbow and on the clouds of heaven. Looking closely at the image in the Church of Sant'Alfonso, I see that, at the heart of the apse that symbolizes the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God, there is another opening: the wound in the Sacred Side of Christ.

Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christ

The iconography of the Church of Sant'Alfonso suggests that every pilgrimage to the image Our Mother of Perpetual Help becomes, by her maternal mediation, a pilgrimage to the wounded Side of Christ and — through the wound in His Side — into the Holy of Holies that is His Sacred Heart. I think that my Redemptorist friend, Father Scott, would agree.

The Open Side of Christ

The Child held fast in His Mother's embrace is the "Beautiful One" (Is 63:1) "clothed in a robe sprinkled with blood, and His Name is called the Word of God" (Ap 19:13). Just as His Mother's Heart was open to receive Him in His littleness and weakness, so is His wounded Side open to receive us in our littleness, in our weakness, and even in our sin. So is His Blood poured out to cleanse, to refresh, and to heal. The way to the Heart of Jesus passes through the Heart of His Mother.

Novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Begins Tomorrow!

Prayed from June 19-27th...(pages 156-159 of The Church's Most Powerful Novenas)

Father Mark reminds his readers at Vultus Christi:

I invite the readers of Vultus Christi to join me in making the Novena in Preparation for the Feast of Our Mother of Perpetual Help on June 27th. This is also the perfect moment to obtain an icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help and put it in in a place of honour in your home. Images of Our Mother of Perpetual Help are readily available from the Redemptorist Fathers nearest you.

Things change when a family, a community, or a person living alone, begin to live under the compassionate gaze of Our Mother of Perpetual Help. By accepting the icon of the Mother of God into our homes, we accept her also into our hearts and so fulfill what is written concerning Saint John, the Beloved Disciple of the Lord: "And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own" (Jn 19:27).

The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

From Vultus Christi:

The gates forbiddenbecame the open portal,the lover’s embrace,the safeway, the only way, for no one comes to the Father (cf. Jn 14:6)except through this door’s thresholdof given-flesh and outpoured-blood.Here David’s song reveals the mystery:the house become a heart,the heart become a house.“It was there that Your people found a home,prepared in Your goodness, O God, for the poor” (Ps 67:11).
“Go out quickly to the streetsand lanes of the city,and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame” (Lk 14:21).“Go out to the highways and hedges,and compel people to come in” (Lk 14:23)that my house, my heart, may be filled.“The lost I will seek out,the strayed I will bring back,the injured I will bind up,the sick I will heal” (Ez 34:16).
Cross the threshold by night with faith’s unseen feet;with hope a lamp for your steps,enter by desire;dwell therein by love,and with John the beloved and those of his lineage“have power to comprehendwhat is the breadth and lengthand height and depth,and know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledgeto be filled with all the fullness of God” (cf. Eph 3:18-19).
The pierced Heartis Love’s last proof.“For while we were still weak,while we were yet sinners” (cf. Rom 5:6, 8),the door was opened in Love’s side.Plunge then, fearless, into the tide of water and of blood.Wash your soul’s disfigured facein the torrent of purity that to the image restores likeness,giving loveliness to the unlovely,There every bruise is bathed in love;there, every old, unsightly thingmade fresh, and new.This is love’s reparation,for only love can repair what Love has made.“Behold,” Love says, “I make all things new” (Rev 21:5).
Love’s joy is the one sheepsought and found and prized above all others“on a day of clouds and thick darkness” (Ez 34:12),Love’s joy is Love’s Heartopened for the sake of all, inhabited by the foolish to shame the wise,and by the weak to shame the strong (cf. 1 Cor 1:27).Love chose “what is low and despised in the world,even things that are not” (1 Cor 1:28)and in these is the mercy of His Heart displayed.
Others come knocking, saying, “Lord, Lord, open to us”but their greatness, their shining certitudes,not their sins, prevent their entering in.“Truly, I say to you, I do not know you” (Mt 25:12)who have not known my Heart of mercy,who have not needed my repairing,nor known nor believed in love (cf. 1 Jn 4:16).
Only this one thing does Love ask:that, “out of the depths” (Ps 129:1), we believe in Love,and, preserved by Love,never despair of Mercy’s Heart.These are “thoughts of His Heart to all generations” (Ps 32:11).Come, then, to the water that washes every impurityand quenches every thirst. Come, be repaired, restored in the Blood.If you would be delivered from death, come (cf. Ps 32:19).If you would be fed in famine, come (cf. Ps 32:19).If you would be loved, come.

Feast of Saint Anthony

Dom Marco reports on his visit to a Roman Church dedicated to the saint:

Together with two good friends I went on a little pilgrimage this morning to the Basilica of Sant'Antonio on the Via Merulana. The church was full of devotees of Saint Anthony. There were lines at all the confessionals. At the entrance to the basilica was a Franciscan priest with an aspergillum, giving a blessing to the faithful as they entered. Blessed lilies were much in evidence but they were artificial ones in cellophane packaging! I said the Gloria Patri seven times in honour of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost in the life and works of Saint Anthony. And like the other pilgrims gathered around the statue of Saint Anthony in festal array, I presented my petitions to the glorious Wonderworker. Viva Sant'Antonio!

Back to Ordinary Time (8th Week)

But not so in the old days, as Father Mark points out, in an excellent post on the "suppression" of the "Octave of Pentecost" (similar to the Octave of Christmas and Easter) that was celebrated up unto 1969, He includes this anectdote:

The story goes that on the Monday after Pentecost in 1970 His Holiness Pope Paul VI rose early and went to his chapel for Holy Mass. Instead of the red vestments he expected, green ones were laid out for him. He asked the Master of Ceremonies, "What on earth are these for? This is the Octave of Pentecost! Where are the red vestments?" "Your Holiness," replied the Master of Ceremonies, "this is now The Time Throughout the Year. It is green, now. The Octave of Pentecost is abolished." "Green? That cannot be," said the Pope, "Who did that?" "Your Holiness, you did." And Paul VI wept.

Paul VI did not weep alone. Many wept with him. It was reported that Catherine de Hueck Doherty of Madonna House was inconsolable. Faithful the world over were speechless at the brutal removal of one of the Church Year’s most cherished moments. In some countries the hierarchy were frightfully embarrassed: the civil calendar had retained the Monday and Tuesday after Pentecost as holidays, while the Church had erased them from hers. Little by little, the voices of those seeking the restoration of the Pentecost came to be heard in high places.

Solemnity of Pentecost

From Vultus Christi

Those lacking in understanding

find themselves standing under tongues of fire.

Those once dark are illumined from within;

the flame over every head dances its way into every heart

and faces once abashed shine as they have never shone before.

Unveiled now, they “behold the glory of the Lord” (2 Cor 3:18)

and in every mouth there is the taste of new wine

and the sound of a new song: “Alleluia!”