Aboard the Papal Plane to Brazil by Michael Dubruiel

On politicians who support abortion (from the Washington Post):

The Pope was asked whether he supported Mexican Church leaders threatening to excommunicate leftist parliamentarians who last month voted to legalize abortion in Mexico City.

"Yes, this excommunication was not an arbitrary one but is allowed by Canon (church) law which says that the killing of an innocent child is incompatible with receiving communion, which is receiving the body of Christ," he said.

"They (Mexican Church leaders) did nothing new, surprising or arbitrary. They simply announced publicly what is contained in the law of the Church... which expresses our appreciation for life and that human individuality, human personality is present from the first moment (of life)."

About The Church and Latin American problems (From the Papa Ratzinger Forum):

"The Church as an institution does not do politics, we respect secularity, but the Church indicates the conditions in which social problems can be resolved....The Church's mission is religious, but it opens the way for the solution of important social problems."

About liberation theology (From the Papa Ratzinger Forum):

"There is room in the Church for a legitimate debate on how to create the conditions necessary for human liberation, how to make Church social doctrine effective, and how to indicate the social and human conditions in which the right values can grow."

He added that "The situation has changed profoundly from when liberation theology was born...It is clear that the facile millenarisms that thought they could realize a complete revolution of human life were wrong. Now everyone knows this. Ut the point is what role should the Church play inthe struggle for justice - theologians and sociologists are divided over this."

He noted that when he was at the CDF, "we tried to discern how the church could get rid of these false millenarisms and of politicization."


About El Salvador's martyr bishop Oscar Romero (From the Papa Ratzinger Forum):

"I have no doubt he will be beatified. I know that the cause is proceeding well at the Congregation for the Cause of Saints," but said he did not have precise information.

"He was certainly a great witness for the faith, a man of great Christian virtue who was committed to peace anad against dictatorship." Recalling that Romero was assassinated during the Consecration of the Host, he said it was 'an incredible death.'

On this last comment a note, for those who don't know the Greek word "martyr" means "witness" which hightlights what the pope is saying in regard to Archbishop Romero.

(For more information on the Catholic faith - go here. )

Alligator Alley Closed for Wildfire Smoke

I watched a little of the Marlins game last night and it was so smokey there that I thought they had set off a ton of fireworks...but I guess it was this. Fires all over the country.

Who are Christians?

From the Office of Readings:

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.

And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labour under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives. They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law.

Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonour, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred.

To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments.

Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body’s hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself.

From an Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus (Second Century A.D.)

Magister: Benedict XVI Is in Brazil. But Meanwhile, the "Latinos" Are Invading the North

From www.chiesa.com:

But the boundaries between Latin America and the northern hemisphere are no longer so clear. With 37 million Hispanic immigrants, the United States is now the fourth nation in the world – and soon will be the fourth – by Latin American population, after Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, and ahead of all the other countries in Central and South America. One out of every three Catholics in the United States comes from Latin America, speaks Spanish or Portuguese, and prefers to attend churches where there are other faithful from the South.

Furthermore, almost half of the Hispanic immigrants in the United States identify themselves as Charismatics, exactly as in their countries of origin. And this is perceptibly changing the religious landscape in the United States, and also in regard to the Catholic Church. The Latin Americans are not only revolutionizing the numbers, but they are changing the way in which Catholicism is lived in the leading country in the West.

A survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public life, published in the United States on the eve of Benedict XVI's trip to Brazil, is the first in-depth study of this powerful transformation, which will have repercussions on the future of Catholicism worldwide.

For the report go to Magister's page...

From the Secular Press: Is Phil Spector Possessed?

From Yahoo News, Woman says Phil Spector turned 'demonic' :

Ogden testified Monday that Spector seemed to undergo a personality change as she tried to leave another Spector mansion in Pasadena after a party in 1989.

"He was screaming at me, the F-word," she said. "He wasn't my Phil, not the man I loved. It wasn't him. He was demonic. It scared the hell out of me."

She said he first approached her with a rifle, then picked up a pistol and "he put it all over me, yelling things."

Ogden pointed to various parts of her face to indicate where the gun was pointed.

"It was like he was taken over by something. It wasn't Phillip."

Into the Great Silence

We began watching this last night (movie totals close to 3 hours)and it would be hard to describe it accurately, but I'll try. I think what this movie does, not with words (because there are hardly any) is to immerse you into the silence of the Carthusians. I think you will get more out of this beautiful movie if you first read the excellent book written about the English Carthusians at Parkminster,An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order. This book will make the movie very intelligible to those who do not understand even the basics about monasticism....on the other hand you might watch the movie and then read the book to answer the questions that will inevitably arise from the experience.
And watching this film is an experience. Joseph who watched the early part of the film with me (which takes place during the winter) said, "there isn't much color" and I replied, "not much talking either." He was intrigued as the monks prayed, "kept vigil--watch" in the middle of the night...waiting for the Lord who will return "like a thief in the night"when we least expect so "keep watch" and wondered "do they ever sleep?" This is truly a film unlike any I've ever seen. I joked with Amy that she was about to see the monk's interviews--the camera focuses on them for a few minutes individually, they say nothing and in saying nothing they speak volumes.
Looking for a short retreat?


I once thought and still think that an encounter with monasticism challenges everything that we think about life and our purpose here in the great exile.

Update: Some have questioned how we have this when it hasn't been released yet, the answer is that we have the one-disc version that was available from the Canadians. However...this two disc version that will be available contains a great additional disc that will have some of the things that I felt I wanted to see and didn't in the actual movie...like how they make that liquor they are famous for....

Feast of Our Lady of Pompei

From Vultus Christi:

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 is the Feast of Our Lady of Pompei. In Italy and in places all over the globe the feast will be marked by the solemn recitation at noon of Blessed Bartolo Longo's moving prayer, the Supplica, meaning supplication or petition.

The Prayer of People the World Over

The Supplica is, of Blessed Bartolo Longo's published prayers to the Mother of God, the most famous. Its incandescent words have opened countless souls to the grace of Christ through the all–powerful intercession of His Mother.

The Supplica is a prayer that people have made their own. It is known on every continent; it has been translated into hundreds of languages. No authority ever imposed it, it is not part of the liturgy of the Church, it was never submitted to revision by ICEL, and yet, it has become universal. Sociologists of religion, take note! Translators of liturgical texts, wake up and smell the Italian coffee!

A Prayer of the Heart

Certain rationalistic types disdain the Supplica. They see it as representative of an unenlightened, sentimental, southern Italian piety bordering on superstition. They find its emphases embarrassing, its display of emotion unnerving.

The literary style of Blessed Bartolo Longo is the expression of his own character. He was capable of gentleness and of passion. He was, like all meridionals, rich in sentiment and quick to express it both in song and in tears. He was moved, before all else, by the reason of the heart.

Blessed Longo was a lover of Truth; but his particular grace was the discovery of Truth through love. He found Truth, not in syllogisms and in concepts, but in the Heart and on the Face of the Word Made Flesh in the womb of the Virgin, and held in her arms.

The Prayer of One Delivered From Evil

The Rosary was the means by which, at the age of twenty–eight, a confused and desperate Avvocato Bartolo Longo — a practicing Satanist and medium at the time — was converted to the Truth and delivered from the powers of darkness. He vowed that he would spend his life proclaiming to others the Rosary's liberating and healing power. This is why, at the end of the Supplica, he exclaims: "O blessed Rosary of Mary, sweet chain which unites us to God, bond of love which unites us to the angels, tower of salvation against the assaults of hell, safe port in our universal shipwreck, we shall never abandon you."

Bound to Mary by the Rosary

The Supplica may not be everyone's cup of tea. Even pious folks may find it a bit too baroque, a bit overdone. It may be the southern Italian blood (mixed with Irish) that runs hot in my veins, but I love the Supplica and I plan on saying it with thousands of other people at noon on Tuesday. It is the prayer of a man very like myself: a poor sinner who fears nothing when he holds the Rosary in his hands, knowing that the Mother of God holds her end of the chain, and will not let it go.

I include the Supplica in my book The Church's Most Powerful Novenas, beginning on page 175, you can also find the text of it at Vultus Christi.

Fr. Z has information on the Indulgences that can be gained by praying this prayer as well as an MP3 of the Supplica.

Israeli Archaeologist Finds Tomb of King Herod

From Fox News:

Haaretz said the tomb was found by archaeologist Ehud Netzer, a Hebrew University professor who has been working at Herodium since 1972. The paper said the tomb was in a previously unexplored area between the two palaces Herod built on the site. Herod died in 4 B.C. in Jericho.

Four New Offerings from Doubleday

Not the Pope book yet....one more week until that is out!

So far, I've only had a chance to browse these four books...but all are very interesting and different in there own way....

1. Mother Angelica's short pithy sayings (compiled by Raymond Arroyo) is an excellent little book that can be read in chunks--or whenever you feel you need a boost in relation to a particular area of your life. By now everyone knows about the little nun from Canton, OH who built an international Catholic network (where many more powerful entitities have failed)...and how she did it with a great deal of Faith in God. So there has to be a lot we can learn from her and there is...for example:

"If you are following God, He never shows you the end. It’s always a walk of faith.”

If you know Mother's story you can see the wisdom in that saying...



2. Anthony DeStefano's Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To: Divine Answers to Life's Most Difficult Problems is an excellent little book that could serve as a primer on what is really important to pray about--namely how God wants me to live my life with all the reality that it brings. Too often prayer is addressed to God in a way that is asking God to make me something else, rather than make me what I am and give me the tools to do it with joy. DeStefano gives a good foundation here and then neatly ties it all together with a prayer at the end of the book that incorporates the "ten" prayers all into one.

3. The Physics of Christianity by Frank J. Tipler would not be a book that I normally would even pick up, but I when I did--I found a wealth of very accessible answers to the big questions that people's faith often hinges upon...like the problem of evil and free will (something that Einstein rejected). I have to think that this book is a must read for anyone involved in apologetics--explaining the faith to a modern world. Great insights here and the possibility of seeing the world in a different light.

4. Scott Hahn's latest offering is an apologetic book, but as he told me a few monthis ago when I asked him about it, not your typical apologetics book. This is a book that helps you through Scott's own story to learn to look for answers as to why do we believe as we do (you might want to also check out Father Benedict Groeschel's little book Why Do We Believe?). Written in the very accessible way that all Hahn books are this will please both longtime fans and those who haven't been exposed to him yet. Faith is not unreasonable, and here Scott gives you a reason to believe!

Catholic Author Karl Schultz

I have worked with Karl Schultz on a number of projects: a pamphlet on the Bible, The How-To Book of the Bible and Praying with the Bible. There is one project that he had been after me to publish ever since I first had contact with him back in the late 1990's--a book that extolled the teachings of Pope Paul VI We never took him up on this offer, but thankfully the book is now published.
Last week the former Univeristy of Michigan basketball player (6'7") presented me with a copy that he autographed. It is a great overview of the teachings of Paul VI, check it out--as well as Karl's new book on Lectio Divina:

Time Magazine's Top 100 Influential People: Pope Benedict

No President Bush in the list...

In the magazine the Pope is on the same page as Osama Bin Laden and Angela Merkel (which makes some sense). I can't help but wonder at the conversation that went behind putting him underneath those two.

The picture they chose is a good one that caused one reader of this blog to ask, when Amy and I had posted the picture last year if it was a picture of George Steinbrenner.

From Time Magazine:

It was never going to be easy to follow a man like Karol Wojtyla, a "Technicolor" Pope, with his unmatched skills as a preacher and an actor. Everyone thought that when Joseph Ratzinger, 80, became Pope, the crowds in St. Peter's Square would greatly diminish and the mass interest in the papacy would disappear. But just the opposite has happened. And therein lies the enigma of Pope Benedict XVI: Why are the faithful (and others) drawn to an intellectual who concedes nothing to the show, who says difficult things (like his September speech about faith and violence in Regensburg, which touched off anger among Muslims), who doesn't bargain with the Gospel? What makes people rush to this fragile man who speaks softly and politely without moving his hands, without ever acting? Evidently, there is a sort of secret attraction, as if many can sense the fascination of the sacred through the witness of Benedict's thoughts and his modest and humble life. After the Slavic sentiment arrives German seriousness—different charismas that confirm that the Catholic Church knows how to make room for every kind of temperament, letting the human qualities of such different men shine through.

Hispanics Bring Catholicism to Its Feet

....in the United States. There is something very natural and reverent about these liturgies...something that when mimiced doesn't work in Anglo parishes. There is a natural flow, where everyone is doing the same thing, the music is of one kind, as well as the preaching.

From the Washinton Post:

"Everyone on their feet!" cried Gladys Cardenas, a stout and fiery Puerto Rican, as a band struck up behind her. "Come on," she shouted in Spanish. "Get ready to celebrate God!"

Lineamenta

For the next Synod of Bishops on the Word of God in the life and mission of the Church.

Pope: We Walk with Mary

From the Regina Caeli:

“After Vatican Council II, which underlined the role of the Most Holy Mary in the Church and in the history of salvation, the Marian cult underwent a profound renewal. And the month of May, coinciding at least in part with the Easter season, is highly propitious to illustrate the figure of Mary as a Mother who accompanies the Community of disciples gathered in unanimous prayer, waiting for the Holy Spirit (cfr Acts 1: 12-14). This month, therefore, could be an opportunity to return to the faith of the early Church, and together with Mary, to understand that today too, our mission is to announce and testify with courage and joy to the crucified and risen Christ, the hope of mankind.”

Pope: We Walk with Mary

From the Regina Caeli:

“After Vatican Council II, which underlined the role of the Most Holy Mary in the Church and in the history of salvation, the Marian cult underwent a profound renewal. And the month of May, coinciding at least in part with the Easter season, is highly propitious to illustrate the figure of Mary as a Mother who accompanies the Community of disciples gathered in unanimous prayer, waiting for the Holy Spirit (cfr Acts 1: 12-14). This month, therefore, could be an opportunity to return to the faith of the early Church, and together with Mary, to understand that today too, our mission is to announce and testify with courage and joy to the crucified and risen Christ, the hope of mankind.”

The Power of the Rosary Against the Devil

From Vultus Christi:

Concerning the Holy Rosary, once while the priest placed a rosary around the neck of the person who was being exorcised, all of a sudden the demon began crying out, "It is crushing me, it weighs on me, it is crushing me, this chain with the Cross on the end of it." The exorcist exclaimed, "From this day forward this sister of ours will pray the Rosary every day."

Immediately the demon replied, "But you are so few who say it (the Rosary), compared to the whole world!" It is just as well for me that it should be so, because it (the Rosary) harms me. You invoke That One (referring to our Lady), you make me remember the life of That One (referring to the life of Jesus meditated in the mysteries of the Rosary).

Another day, while exorcising the demon, the exorcist pulled a rosary out of his pocket; immediately the demon cried out: "Take away that chain, take away that chain!" "What chain?" "The one with the Cross on the end. She whips us with that chain." This, of course is metaphorical language; it makes us understand, all the same, in very concrete terms, the power of the Rosary and how much the devil fears it.

Translated from Possessioni diabolici ed esorcismo by Father Francesco Bamonte (Paoline, 2006)

Was Cho Possessed by the Devil?

Updated: Fr. Tom asked that I include the last paragraph in my excerpt.

From Father Tom Euteneuer at Spirit & Life:

Well, first let me say that, as a Catholic priest, I have seen and worked with my share of possessed and obsessed individuals. It’s entirely possible for someone to be at once responsible for his own acts and totally under the influence of the devil in committing them. In this case, Cho pulled the trigger, but the devil was the author of the deed. Does not Jesus call him “a murderer from the beginning”? The devil is the prime mover of all evil in the world, but human beings freely cooperate with him in their evil decisions. No one gets off the hook of responsibility by blaming the devil, but we can’t say that the devil is a detached observer to crimes like this.

The evil work that Cho perpetrated bears the classic marks of a possession that he cooperated in. Four clear signs of serious demonic influence were evident in his life and virtually assured that he would commit some kind of heinous crime against humanity in time. These are the devil’s tactics for the destruction of body and soul: isolate, distort, excite, plot—and then kill.

First, it is not always clear how a demon enters someone, but it is sure that once a demon enters a person, that demon bends all his efforts of mind and will to overtake his host’s life and make it his own. Isolation is the best technique. By all accounts, Cho was an isolated loner whose belonging to his demon was very far advanced. He had no friends to speak of, no significant associates or relationships and certainly no religious practice.

Second, with time and permission, the demon totally perverts all the person’s mental processes in order to translate them into demon-think. Cho’s writings leading up to the crime, and Cho’s now-famous video manifesto, all exhibited signs that the process of demonic perversion of mind and values was complete. He was verbally fantasizing in front of his classmates and teachers about killing people in the most horrible ways. In the end he even blasphemously claimed to be dying like Jesus Christ for the sins of others: this is perverse thinking in the extreme.

Third, a crime of this immensity cannot be accomplished without a person’s total emotional commitment. After reprogramming a person’s thought patterns, the demon excites his passions to do what he wants. Others have very credibly explained how Cho’s pathetic video images imitating the Korean flick, Old Boy, were evidence of his heightened emotions influenced by violent images. He even ranted in imitation of the Columbine killers Harris and Klebold in solidarity for the deed he was about to commit. In other words, it’s very difficult to sustain such an emotional intensity about the evil he planned and carried out without some direct force multiplier. Graphic images provided it.

Finally, he plotted—like all demons from Satan to the perpetrators of the World Trade Center attacks. He bought guns and ammo, he planned the date and times and places of the murder, and he even went regularly at night to work out at the campus gym in order to look the part of a mass murderer. The devil must have been very happy to witness his prey blast his brains out after perpetrating the bloody murders of 32 innocents. That is the ultimate victory for the devil.

As sad as the physical deaths of innocent people are, perhaps the saddest element of the story is the likely loss of Cho Seung-Hui’s immortal soul by this demonic action. The rabbis used to say that the angels weep at the loss of a soul that God created to share in His eternal blessedness; I am sure the angels are weeping now. Let us all commend the innocent victims of this crime, their families and the possessed perpetrator to the Mercy of God and then re-commit ourselves to proclaiming Christ and His victory over evil so that none of God’s children will ever be lost.

You Tube: HUnting Fishing Priest

And Catholic author Father Joe Classen....

Soon to be Ordained Priest Jeff Kirby's Website

With a blog and other interesting stuff included http://www.jeffrey-kirby.com/ Currently Deacon Jeff is the contributor is this two-volume offering:

New Father Benedict Groeschel Book

Released this month:

Rediscovering Jesus

From Asia News Italy:

Christianity is not a theory but an encounter with a person. This principle, which Benedict XVI restated so often, is at the origin of Jesus of Nazareth, the book in which he describes “my personal search for the ‘face of the Lord,” in order to “favour the development of an intense relationship between the reader and Him.”

Which Jesus does the Pope present us with?

Since the 1950s “advances in critical research in history led to increasingly subtler distinctions between the various strata of the tradition,” blurring the image on which the faith stands. Various views of Jesus emerged ranging from the “anti-Roman revolutionary” to the “soft-hearted moralist.” But for Ratzinger the theologian, they reflect more the “views and ideals of their authors than any revelation about an icon, however faded it might have been.”

The “historical facts” about Jesus’ life and the unforeseeable growth of Christianity just a few years after his death show how extraordinary He was. And He cannot be understood without starting from “truly historical” facts, i.e. Jesus’ relationship to God and His union with Him.” “My book is based on this, i.e. on the fact that Jesus is in communion with the Father. This is the core of His personality. Without this communion one cannot understand anything and it is from that that He becomes real to us even today.”

The Gospel Jesus is the Jesus of ‘History’

Since we are talking about an actual living human being, we must rely on the historical method to know him. For Benedict XVII, “faith is based on history as it unfolded on the surface of this earth.” Otherwise, “the Christian faith is eliminated and becomes another religion.” For this reason, the Jesus of the book is necessarily the Jesus of the Gospels: “the ‘historical Jesus’ in its truest sense.”

“I am convinced,” writes Benedict XVI, “and I hope readers realise that this is more logical and more understandable from an historical point of view than any of the reconstructions” offered in the last few decades.

This Jesus is also the “last prophet” as announced in the Old Testament, the “New Moses” to be more precise, who leads His people to “true liberation.” More than Moses who “as a friend spoke face to face with God” but without the power to see Him, Jesus “lives in the presence of God, not only as friend but also as son. He lives in profound unity with the Father.” It is from this that come the answer to questions like “Where did Jesus get His doctrine? Where does the key that explains his behaviour lie.” The Beatitudes are confirmation of this. From the “Sermon on the Mount,” Benedict draws many a detail like the “Mount” itself, whose location is not given in the Gospels, but which is simply the “mount,” the “New Sinai” to the crowd that came from the Galilee to hear Him, i.e. “a strip of land still viewed as half pagan,” but which “is in fact proof of His divine mission” to all the peoples; or the address “the New Torah brought by Jesus,” which “starts again from the commandments on the second tablet and goes deeper into the text without abolishing it.” Indeed, the “paradoxes” that Jesus presents in the Beatitudes—‘Blessed are the poor, those who mourn, those who are persecuted, those who are reviled’—express “what discipleship means.” The Beatitudes’ meaning “cannot be explained by theory alone; they must be proclaimed in the life, suffering and mysterious joy that the disciple experiences when he has fully donated his life to the Lord.”

Torre Loses Job

Sister Torre that is, Joe's sister and a Catholic nun...

From the NY Daily News:

Say it ain't so, Joe - a Torre is about to get a pink slip, but it's not who you think.

Sister Marguerite Torre will soon be out of work after 26 years as the beloved principal of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary School in Ozone Park, Queens.

Her elementary school is being merged with another school - and the sister of Yankees skipper Joe Torre was passed over for the top job overseeing the new school, according to the Diocese of Brooklyn.

The May 5th Date

From the original Motu Proprio of Pope John Paul II:

a Commission is instituted whose task it will be to collaborate with the bishops, with the Departments of the Roman Curia and with the circles concerned, for the purpose of facilitating full ecclesial communion of priests, seminarians, religious communities or individuals until now linked in various ways to the Fraternity founded by Mons. Lefebvre, who may wish to remain united to the Successor Peter in the Catholic Church, while preserving their spiritual and liturgical traditions, in the light of the Protocol signed on 5 May last by Cardinal Ratzinger and Mons. Lefebvre;

Seach Inside of my New Book

SS. Philip and James

On Philip, from Pope Benedict XVI:

There is then another very particular occasion when Philip makes his entrance. During the Last Supper, after Jesus affirmed that to know him was also to know the Father (cf. Jn 14: 7), Philip quite ingenuously asks him: "Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied" (Jn 14: 8). Jesus answered with a gentle rebuke: "Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father: how can you say, "Show us the Father?' Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?... Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me" (Jn 14: 9-11).

These words are among the most exalted in John's Gospel. They contain a true and proper revelation. At the end of the Prologue to his Gospel, John says: "No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known" (Jn 1: 18).

Well, that declaration which is made by the Evangelist is taken up and confirmed by Jesus himself, but with a fresh nuance. In fact, whereas John's Prologue speaks of an explanatory intervention by Jesus through the words of his teaching, in his answer to Philip Jesus refers to his own Person as such, letting it be understood that it is possible to understand him not only through his words but rather, simply through what he is.

To express ourselves in accordance with the paradox of the Incarnation we can certainly say that God gave himself a human face, the Face of Jesus, and consequently, from now on, if we truly want to know the Face of God, all we have to do is to contemplate the Face of Jesus! In his Face we truly see who God is and what he looks like!

Feast of St. Joseph the Worker

Shrine of St. Joseph the Worker

From Pope Benedict:

Today, we are beginning the month of May with a liturgical memorial very dear to the Christian people: that of St Joseph the Worker; and you know that my name is Joseph. Exactly 50 years ago it was established by Pope Pius XII of venerable memory to highlight the importance of work and of the presence of Christ and the Church in the working world. It is also necessary to witness in contemporary society to the "Gospel of work", of which John Paul II spoke in his Encyclical Laborem Exercens. I hope that work will be available, especially for young people, and that working conditions may be ever more respectful of the dignity of the human person.

I am thinking with affection of all workers and I greet those gathered in St Peter's Square who belong to many associations. In particular, I greet the friends of the Christian Associations of Italian Workers, who this year are celebrating the 60th anniversary of their foundation. I hope that they will continue to live their choice of "Christian brotherhood" as a value to embody in the field of work and of social life, so that solidarity, justice and peace may be the pillars on which to build the unity of the human family.

Just Click and Confess

I'm working on A Pocket Guide to Confession and if you read this story, I think you'll see why the Sacrament is about to make a big comback....

From the Miami Herald:


The confession appears at ivescrewedup.com, a website launched by the Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City. It's one of a growing number of such sites across the country -- some secular and others church-sponsored -- that offer a place to spill out ugly secrets or just make peccadilloes public.

''I think it helps people understand . . . that we're not here to point out people's screw-ups, that we're here to help them,'' said lead Pastor Troy Gramling, whose nondenominational church launched the site on Easter weekend. ``The church is made of skin and flesh and people that have made mistakes.''

The 6,500-member church created the site as part of a 10-week series on the ways people mess up -- in marriage, parenting, finances and more. The goal of the series is to help congregants learn from their mistakes.

Pope's Book Passes 1 Million in Sales

From Catholic World News:

The Italian edition of Jesus of Nazareth has sold 510,000 copies, while the German edition has sold 480,000, and the Polish edition 100,000, the latest figures show. The book went on sale on April 16, the Pope's 80th birthday.

St. Pius V and the Motu Proprio Watch

This is the "new" feast of St. Pius V...rumor has it that on the "traditional" feast date (later this week that the motu proprio on the Tridentine Mass will be released). For all of you who don't understand (attention media types), Amy has prepared a Motu Proprio Tip Sheet.

The Church in the South: Growing Pains

I consider myself something of an expert on this matter, having migrated from the North (where the Church was receeding) to the South in 1976 when the Church was still very much a minority player in the south. I watched this expansive growth that largely took place after Vatican II--and therefore was truly a "Vatican II" church, not as much the renovation church of the North.

From St. Anthony's Messenger, my office neighbor is quoted:

A Southerner who moved North 15 years ago to assume the job of associate publisher at Our Sunday Visitor Publishing House in Huntington, Indiana, Msgr. Owen Campion has a clear perspective on differences between the Northern and Southern Church. His family goes back generations in Nashville, Tennessee, where he used to edit the diocesan newspaper, The Tennessee Register.

The city of Nashville is now five percent Catholic, but was only two percent Catholic when he was growing up, he tells me in a phone interview last January. But there the Catholic Church provided a protective, closed system of its own.

Owen attended a Catholic elementary school staffed by the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia. “Most of the sisters were from Tennessee, and I think that was rather important because they conveyed a certain sense of ownership in the local Church.” Owen went on to attend what was then the only Catholic high school for boys in Nashville, administered and taught by diocesan priests. (Later as a young priest he would teach history there.) “The Diocese of Nashville was unique among Southern dioceses because there were no foreign-born priests, and there were very few priests who were not born in Tennessee.”

Because his family knew the families of the priests and nuns, as a young man he was never afraid of them. He says he could always separate their personality from their role.
Msgr. Campion remembers an incident when he first started serving Mass in sixth or seventh grade at his parish. The servers were new and “the boy beside me and I didn’t know what to do next, bring up the cruets or the Latin responses or whatever. We started whispering back and forth. After Mass, the celebrant, who was recently ordained, just exploded at us. He told us our constant talking had been so distracting that he had almost forgotten where he was, that this was so disrespectful. I went home really shaken.

“I shared that with my dad and told him, ‘You know, Father was just so angry this morning and flew off the handle, and I don’t know if I ever want to go back.’ And I remember my dad said, ‘Now, don’t worry about that. That is the way everyone in his family is. I played baseball with his father and his uncle and, if they missed a pitch, they’d get so angry sometimes they’d walk off the baseball field....Father is a good man, a good priest, and our families have been friends for years. They are even distantly related to us.’

“The point I am making,” Msgr. Campion continues, “is that this old network of family and acquaintances put that priest and others into human dimension. And after I went on to the seminary and then was ordained, this priest became one of my best friends. And I watched him lose his temper on many occasions, and I always remembered what Dad said when he painted it as some genetic trait in that family.”

Msgr. Campion went on to college at St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman, Alabama, where about 30 percent of the students came from Tennessee and about 30 percent from Alabama, and then to St. Mary’s Seminary near Baltimore to study for the priesthood. At that time St. Mary’s had more than 20 students from Tennessee. He was ordained in 1966.

In his opinion, Southern communities that had a Catholic institution like St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville have had an easier time dealing with the new growth. St. Thomas Hospital, still run by the Daughters of Charity, gave Catholics a source of pride and presented a public face of the Catholic Church as a caring and generous institution where everyone was treated, which impressed non-Catholics. “Good medical care was combined with caring in the human sense. Such institutions, like St. Vincent’s Hospital in Birmingham or Providence in Mobile or Saint Joseph’s in Atlanta, allowed the Catholic Church to have visibility in society far beyond what its numbers would predict. I think it is a pity that health care is changing.”

He thinks the new growth of the Catholic Church is not considerable among African-Americans because of the legacy of segregation and the Catholic Church’s late embrace of the civil-rights movement. His high school was the first in the South to integrate, and graduated its first four-year integrated class in 1958. But in general, Msgr. Campion believes, “The way that the institutional Church either treated or was indifferent to African-Americans is shameful.”

On the plus side, he notes that the Franciscans often served parishes peopled by blacks. He has high praise for Archbishop James F. Lyke, O.F.M., of Atlanta, one of the first African-American bishops, who died in 1992.

Seven Year Old A Catholic Wiz Kid

Got a Catholic question? Boy, 7, has the answers (from USA Today)

Office of Readings Podcast

I've hit a bump in the road...mainly being on the road for over a week. I was able to record the readings throughout my time away, but alas I haven't been able to do the next week as I'm way behind on a number of things including sleep. So I think, I'll start working on getting everything going in a few days--but none for most of this week. Sorry.

Bulletin Insert in Florida

Its the first time I've walked into a Catholic bookstore and seen one of my books featured...and praised. The manager was effusive with her praise (and she didn't even know that I was the author)!

Here is the book:

Oceanside in California

Near San Clemente, CA...a week ago, I was here--then most of the past week I was in Florida...now I'm back in Indiana. One of the strangest things about my short jaunt in California was this....


Its an Metrolink train, right off the beach on the Pacific Ocean.

A Unique Florida Church

Yesterday the Vicar General of the St. Petersburg Diocese gave me a short tour of a truly unique church (in Florida anyways). St. Mary's. Even though I'd been to St. Petersburg quite a few times, I'd never noticed this beautiful church before.

I also made a visit to the Cathedral bookstore--where the bookstore manager told me how much she loved one of Our Sunday Visitor's new books and couldn't keep it on the shelves. The book? "A Pocket Guide to the Mass" She was surprised when I told her that I was the author.

On another front, I received an email from a teacher in Iowa yesterday who said that she is using The How to Book of the Mass with her youth group. They talked about one section of it last night and said that the kids were the most interested they have ever been about any subject--the session ran an hour over!

I made a quick visit to my parents last night in upper Florida. My brother in law made an early bold prediction that Kentucky will beat Florida in football (he's from Kentucky). Since he and my sister moved to Florida--the Gators have won three national champions....and the last time that we were in Lexington together the Gators were actually losing 21-0 in the fourth quarter (the Zook era)but ended up winning...I reminded him of that...we'll see.

Meanwhile, I'm tired of being on the road.

Pope on Origen

Our catechetical journey through the early Church brings us to the remarkable figure of Origen of Alexandria. This great teacher of the faith was highly esteemed by his students not only for his theological brilliance, but also for his exemplary moral conduct. His father, Leonides, was martyred during the reign of Septimius Severus. Though Origen himself always had a deep yearning to die a martyr’s death, he decided that the best way to honour his father and glorify Christ was by living a good and upright life. Later, under the emperor Decius, he was arrested and tortured for his faith, dying a few years later. Origen is best known for his unique contribution to theology: an "irreversible turn" which grounded theology in Scripture. He emphasized an allegorical and spiritual reading of the word of God, and demonstrated how the three levels of meaning—the literal, the moral, and the spiritual—progressively lead us to a deeper prayer life and closer relationship with God. Origen teaches us that when we meditate on God’s word and conform our lives to it, we allow the Holy Spirit to guide us to the fullness of truth. May we follow Origen’s example by praying with scripture, always listening attentively to God’s word.

Co-Adjutor Named for Minn.-St. Paul

Mons. John Clayton Nienstedt

Benedict on Augustine

One wonders if the pope sees in his election as pope a similar path when he says this of Augustine's ordination "The beautiful dream of the contemplative life disappeared, Augustine's life fundamentally changed. Now he had to live with Christ for all." No Bavarian retreat to contemplate the truth, but a mission to share the truth to the world!

From Zenit:

Benedict XVI illustrated Augustine's path to conversion, recalling the "three conversions" that the saint experienced, which "in fact were a single great conversion in seeking the face of Christ and then walking together with him."

First conversion

"The first fundamental conversion was the interior road to Christianity, toward the 'yes' of faith and baptism," he explained. According to some historians, Augustine's baptism took place on Easter in 387.

Augustine "was always tormented by the question of truth. He wanted to find truth," the Holy Father explained.

"He always believed -- sometimes rather vaguely, sometimes more clearly -- that God exists and takes care of us," the Pontiff said. "But to truly know this God and Jesus Christ and come to say 'yes' to him with all the consequences this entails -- this was the great interior struggle of his youth.

"He tells us that, by means of Platonic philosophy, he accepted and recognized that 'in the beginning was the Word,' the Logos, creative reason. But philosophy did not show him any road to reach this Word; this Logos remained distant and intangible.

"Only in the faith of the Church did he find the second essential truth: The Word was made flesh. And in this way he touches us and we touch him."

Augustine's "second conversion" took place after his baptism in Hippo, in Africa; he founded a small monastery and by popular demand was ordained a priest by force, the Pope explained.

Second conversion

Benedict XVI continued: "The beautiful dream of the contemplative life disappeared, Augustine's life fundamentally changed. Now he had to live with Christ for all.

"He had to translate his knowledge and sublime thoughts into the thought and language of the simple folk of his city.

"The great philosophical work of a lifetime, which he had dreamed of, remained unwritten. In its place we were given the gift of something more precious: the Gospel translated into the language of daily life."

"This was the second conversion that this man, struggling and suffering, had to undergo," the Pope added. "He must always be there for everyone; always with Christ he must give his own life so that others might find Christ, the true Life."

Third conversion

St. Augustine's third conversion took place when he discovered that "only one is truly perfect and that the words of the Sermon on the Mount are completely realized only in one person: in Jesus Christ himself," the Holy Father said.

He added: "On the other hand, the whole Church -- all of us, including the apostles -- must pray every day: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, St. Augustine wrote.

"Augustine saw the final step of humility -- not only the humility of inserting his great thought into the faith of the Church, not only the humility of translating his great knowledge into the simplicity of proclamation, but also the humility of recognizing that the merciful goodness of a God who forgives was necessary for him and the whole pilgrim Church.

"And we make ourselves resemble Christ, the perfect one, to the greatest extent possible, when we become merciful persons like him."

Benedict XVI concluded with this exhortation: "In this hour let us thank God for the great light that radiates from the wisdom and humility of St. Augustine and let us pray to the Lord that he give all of us the necessary conversion each day and thus lead us to the true life."

Mass with the Pacific as a Backdrop

I went to Mass here last night...St. Edward the Confessor.

In the Arms of Mary Foundation Benefit

I am speaking at this event to promote The Gift of Faith by Father Tadeusz Dajczer tommorrow. For more infomation go here.

The Roman Springtime of Pope Benedict XVI

Today is his Second Anniversary as pope, here is the frontpage editorial of the L'Observatorio Romano via the Papa Ratzinger Forum:

Two Petrine occasions being lived together as a single intense celebration: The joy of the People of God over the 80th birthday of Benedict XVI continued and was manifest yesterday on a sunny spring morning at the General Audience, on the eve of the second anniversary of his Pontificate.

A spring that is not only 'metereological' but above all, spiritual and ecclesial, enveloped St. Peter's Square with its radiant light. A spring that pulsated with faith and interior joy on this particular Wednesday, still resounding with the loving wishes of all around the world who wished him Happy Birthday and the tens of thousands of pilgrims who had come again to be near the Successor of Peter, honoring him with overflowing filial affection.

Spring is the climate in St. Peter's Square where more than ever today, the heart of the Church beats. Springlike are the colors on the Square which are a palette of the variegated liveliness of the faithful in all their affection and warmth.

'Let us praise and thank God for the gift of Papa Benedetto' says one of the many many streamers enthusastically raised on the Square. A few words with the simple and boundless echo of a universal prayer.

And springlike is the spirit of youthful freshness with which the Pope is experiencing these days. Springlike is this season of his heart and his life. Springlike is the spirit of this '80-year-old youth' who - with the gentle smile and sense of fatherhood that he conveyed to the world from the first day of his pontificate - has guided the helm of Peter's boat without sparing himself.

"Most beloved Holy Father, we are with you always with joy and love in the vineyard of the Lord", another streamer reads. The prayerful affection of a celebratory people accompanies the intrepid Helmsman of the Church at every step along his way.

Superstar Cult Continues Around the Pope

News that seldom gets reported in the US papers...

Superstar-Kult um den Papst ist ungebrochen, from Die Welt (translated by Teresa at the Papa Ratzinger Forum):

Wolfgang Beinert, parish priest of Pentling,has a theory.

"The Pope at 80 is in excellent form because he feels that he is loved."

Beinert, who was once a student and then a university assistant to Joseph Ratzinger, says Benedict draws real joy from the office he performs and the goodwill and affection that the faithful give him.

Beinert is right that the people love the Pope. More than that, they celebrate him. And yet, when he was elected two years ago, no one expected anything like this.

Cardinal Ratzinger had the reputation of a backward-looking Catholic and his name was a symbol for conservatism. How will he deal with people, many asked. And what about the media?

But as if he had become another man altogether overnight, Benedict became almost from the very beginning, a cult figure. A million youth celebrated him in Cologne in Augustt 2005. A teenage magazine distributed a poster that said BENEDICT SUPERSTAR.

A year later, Germany celebrated his homecoming to Bavaria. More TV cameras were set up in Bavaria than for the World Cup championships a few months earlier. Never were a Pope's words so omnipresent in Germany. His books, and books about him, fill the best-seller lists.

In the past year, Benedict attracted almostt 4 million people to St. Peter's Square, easily double the figure drawn by his predecessor at the height of his popularity.

Perhaps even more important, since Benedict became Pope, the number of Catholics leaving the Church inGermany has dropped, while the humber of converts and returnees is rising.

Marktl, the little town where he was born, is all abuzz. Bakeries still turn out marzizpan miters and Benediktschnitten (cake). Visitors from Italy and Poland come away with bonbonnierres with the Pope's face on it, as it is on glasses and on souvenir spoons. Devotional stores do booming business.

The town square, where the Holy Father stepped down last September to greet the people, has a four-meter bronze Benedict-pillar showing scenes of his life, and his saying, "he who believes is never alone, in life or in death."

Marktl now has eight bus parking lots, 15 new work-generating business enterprises and a four-language Internet center.

But the whole of Bavaria has seen a rise in tourism - 100,000 more visitors last year than in 2005. The Marian shrine at Altoetting has seen 20 million pilgrims this year, about 10% more than at any time in the past 10 years.

"Some visitors stand before the baptismal font where the Pope was baptized and weep," says one tour operator.

The 'birth house' will now be a community cente, where people can meet, pray and engage in social activities.

Monday morning, to mark the Pope's birthday, parish priest Josef Kaiser was scheduled to say a prayer in the room where the Pope was born at the exact time he was born, 4:18 A.M. and then lead a candelight procession to St. Oswald where he was baptized.

Later in the day, children from Marktl and surrounding towns were to release 800 white and yellow balloons, and in the afternoon, Market Square was to be formally renamed Papst-Benedikt XVI Platz

Aleksej II wants to meet the Pope

but there are “no concrete steps” in that direction yet, says the Russian Orthodox leader

A Day in the LIfe of the Bavarian Pope

All in German, but an inside look at Pope Benedict in his papal apartment, chapel, study and even watching some television.

Video

And an Italian version that is longer that includes some of the same footage...

Video

Overview of Pope's New Book

"And He Appeared in Their Midst: “Jesus of Nazareth” at the Bookstore"...check out the quote at the end of the citation...about the Antichrist...


By Sandro Magister:

The first chapter is dedicated to the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. Immersing himself in the water, Jesus “accepts death for the sins of humanity” – while the voice from heaven that proclaims him the beloved Son of God “is an anticipation of the resurrection.” The trajectory of his life is already drawn. Chapter two: the temptation of Jesus. In order to save humanity, Jesus must overcome the main temptations that, in different forms, threaten men in every era. And by transforming them into obedience, he reopens the way to God, to the true Promised Land that is the “kingdom of God.” The third chapter is dedicated to the Kingdom of God, which is the lordship of God over the world and over history, but is identified with the very person of Jesus, living and present here and now. In Jesus, “God comes to meet us – he reigns in a divine way, meaning without worldly power; he reigns with a love that endures ‘to the very end‘.” Chapter four: the sermon on the mount. In this, Jesus appears as the “new Moses,” who brings to fulfillment the Torah, the law. The Beatitudes are the hinge of the new law and, at the same time, a self-portrait of Jesus. He himself is the law: “This is the point that demands a decision, and thus it is the point that leads to the cross and the resurrection.” Chapter five: the Lord’s prayer. Having become a follower of Jesus, the believer can call upon the Father with the words that Jesus taught him: the Our Father. Benedict XVI explains this point by point. Chapter six: the disciples. Their fellowship with Jesus gathers the disciples into the “we” of a new family, the Church, which is in turn sent out to bring his message to the world. Chapter seven: the parables. Benedict XVI illustrates the nature and purpose of these, and then comments on three of them, all from the Gospel of Luke: the parable of the good Samaritan, the one about the two brothers and the good father, and the one about the rich pleasuremonger and the poor Lazarus. Chapter eight: the great Johannine images – water, the vine and wine, bread, the shepherd. The pope comments on these one by one, after having explained who the evangelist John was. Chapter nine: the confession of Peter and the transfiguration. Both of these events are decisive moments for Jesus, and also for his disciples. These clearly show what is the true mission of the Son of God on the earth, and what is the fate of those who want to follow him. Jesus, the Son of the living God, is the Messiah awaited by Israel who, through the scandal of the cross, leads humanity to the kingdom of God, to definitive freedom. Chapter ten: Jesus’ statements about himself. Benedict XVI comments on three of these: “Son of Man,” “Son,” and “I Am.” The last of these is the mysterious name with which God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush, and through which the Gospels provide a glimpse of the fact that Jesus is that same God. Here ends the first volume of the pope on Jesus on Nazareth. But the final appendix, in which the author guides the reader through the limitless resources on this subject, is also interesting. For each of the ten chapters, Ratzinger cites the main books to which he refers, and which can be read for further study. Furthermore, he points out “some of the most important recent books about Jesus,” including those of Joachim Gnilka, Klaus Berger, Heinz Schürmann, Thomas Söding, Rudolf Schnackenburg, and John P. Meier. Of the last of these, a work in three thick volumes entitled “A Marginal Jew. Rethinking the Historical Jesus,” he writes: “This multi-volume work by an American Jesuit represents in many ways a model of historical-critical exegesis, and clearly displays both the importance and the limitations of this discipline. It is worth reading Jacob Neusner’s review of the first volume, ‘Who needs the historical Jesus?’, in Chronicles, July 1993, pp. 32-34.” Benedict XVI dedicates this passage of his book, in the chapter on the temptation of Jesus, to the interpretation of Scripture: “To lure Jesus into his trap, the devil quotes Sacred Scripture, [...] he appears as a theologian. [...] Vladimir Soloviev took up this theme in his ‘Tale of the Antichrist’: the Antichrist receives an honorary degree in theology from the University of Tubingen; he is a great expert in the Bible. With this story, Soloviev wanted to express in a drastic way his skepticism toward a certain type of erudite exegesis in his time. This doesn’t mean a ‘no’ to the scientific interpretation of the Bible as such, but rather a very healthy and necessary warning over the incorrect paths that this can take. The interpretation of the Bible can essentially become a tool of the Antichrist. It is not only Soloviev who says this; it is what is affirmed implicitly in the account of the temptation itself. The books most destructive toward the figure of Jesus, the ones that demolish the faith, have been woven together with presumed results of exegesis.”

Wish the Pope a Happy Birthday

Vatican

Give to Catholic Radio

I'm on a Sharathon this morning on Redeemer Radio, you can listen live and donate....please do!

Johnnette Benkovic's Husband has Died

Heidi Hess Saxton has the news. In the "strange" department, I was thinking of Anthony Benkovic last night, right after dinner and went up to my office and spent several moments checking out Johnnette's web sites to see if there were any updates. I found none and didn't find any news from this month about him on the blogs either, but then I thought Heidi Saxton would know, so I searched for her blog and alas no news there either. This morning I had a note from Heidi saying that he had died last night around 7:00 p.m.--right about the time I had been searching her blog for information about his status.

I'd been praying, as others have for the intercession of Archbishop Fulton Sheen for Anthony's healing, but alas he has received the final healing--the one we celebrate this week--the Octave of Easter. Eternal Rest Grant onto him, O Lord and let perpetual light shing upon him, Amen.

Please pray for Johnnette and her daughters as they grieve their great loss.

Jesus Tomb Film Scholars Backtrack

From the Jerusalem Post:

Several prominent scholars who were interviewed in a bitterly contested documentary that suggests that Jesus and his family members were buried in a nondescript ancient Jerusalem burial cave have now revised their conclusions, including the statistician who claimed that the odds were 600:1 in favor of the tomb being the family burial cave of Jesus of Nazareth, a new study on the fallout from the popular documentary shows.

The Latest Motu Proprio Date

This has become some kind of joke...with these endless dates being proposed, but in case you are wondering, the Italian press is reporting yet another date...this upcoming Monday, from Father Z:

The Italian daily Il Tempo has published an unsigned article claiming in the headline that the Motu Proprio will be issued next Monday, 16 April, after the celebration for the Holy Father’s 80th Birthday.

Pope's Wednesday Audience

From the Vatican:

In this Easter Octave, the liturgy speaks to us of the appearances of the Risen Lord to the disciples. The Fathers of the Church give us many valuable insights into these stories, which help us to understand more profoundly the great truth of the Resurrection. When Peter and John go running to the tomb, each trying to arrive there first, they show us the one form of competition that is legitimate between believers: zeal in the search for Christ. The disciples on the road to Emmaus recognize the Lord because they see him at table with them. We recognize him, because we are granted an even more intimate encounter with him: we see him in our hearts. To Mary Magdalen, the Lord says: Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. This is surprising, since to Thomas, he actually says: "Put your finger here, place your hand in my side." But there is an important difference here. Mary Magdalen wanted to embrace the Lord as if nothing had happened, as if he had returned to the same life that he had lived before. No, he has passed through death to a new life, and the wounds of his Passion are the sign of that definitive victory over death.

I greet all the English-speaking visitors present at today’s Audience, including the groups from Britain and Ireland, Sweden, Australia and the United States. I extend a special welcome the newly ordained deacons and the Golden Jubilarians from Ireland. I pray that the Risen Lord will fill your hearts with joy and that he will inspire you to proclaim to the world the good news of the Lord’s Resurrection! Happy Easter to you all!

Cardinal Geoge Back at Work

Joking after fall, from the Chicago Sun Times:

Cardinal Francis George was back working Monday after a weekend mishap, joking "I feel good except when it hurts.''

The 70-year-old George, who fell Saturday at a Northwest Side church, said he expects to recover from a fractured femur in about six to eight weeks.

The spiritual leader of Chicago Roman Catholics worked Monday from his residence on North State Pkwy., said Archdiocese of Chicago spokesman James Accurso.

In a radio interview, George lamented that the fall caused him to miss Easter mass at the cathedral for the first time in 10 years. He was blessing children's Easter baskets at St. Ferdinand parish when "I got some water on the marble floor and I slipped,'' he told WGN-AM.

New Book is Now Available

For those who want to learn more about the Mass, but don't have a whole lot of time....
For those who want to learn the Bibliical basis for the prayers we say at Mass...
For those who want to know why we stand, sit, and kneel at Mass...
ANSWERS!

Pope's Regina Caeli Message

From Asia News Italy:

Addressing a visibly enthusiastic crowd in the courtyard of Castel Gandolfo’s Apostolic Palace where he arrived for a brief period of rest, the Pope said that “like the women who stayed with Jesus during the Passion, the Risen One says to us not to be afraid, making us messengers who announce His Resurrection.”

“Whoever encounters and gives himself over to the Risen Jesus has nothing to fear,” he said. “Such is the message Christians are asked to bring to the farthest corners of the world. The Christian faith is born not in a doctrine’s acceptance but in an encounter with a Person, the dead and risen Christ. In our day-to-day existence, dear friends, there are so many opportunities to pass on our faith to others in a simple and convincing manner. It is something urgent for the men and women of our times to know and encounter Jesus so that, thanks to His example, they can let themselves be won over by Him.”

Together with the mission to the farthest corners of the earth, Benedict XVI underlined another characteristic of this liturgical period, namely joy or “spiritual elation.” In joking with the festive and noisy crowd of pilgrims, the Pope said “that one day” for Easter “was not enough for so much joy.” Hence, “the liturgy does not set aside just one day for this mystery . . . but instead dedicates 50 days, i.e. the whole Easter period up to Pentecost.” The Pope further explained that “with Easter Monday, today’s feast day, Easter Sunday is an absolutely special day, lasting this whole week till next Sunday, which is the Octave of Easter.”
The Pontiff brought his short reflection to a conclusion by highlighting the Easter joy of Mary, Mother of Jesus, who is a pillar for Christians and their mission.

“The Gospel,” Benedict XVI noted, “says nothing about Mary, but according to the Christian tradition She was happier than anyone else when she was able to embrace her divine Son again, the same one She held when he was taken down from the Cross. Now, after the resurrection, the Redeemer’s Mother rejoices with Jesus’ ‘friends’ who are the nascent Church. As I renew my heartfelt Easter greetings to all of you, I call upon Her, the Regina Caeli, to keep alive our faith in the Resurrection and make us messengers of hope and of the love of the Risen Christ.”

Man Seeks sainthood for South Georgia Martyrs

For more on the Georgia Martyrs, visit the Friends of the Georgia Martyrs site.

From Star News Online:

Friar Pedro de Corpa had spent a decade before his death in the late 16th century as a missionary converting Indians to Christianity in Spanish Florida, which then included the 100-mile Georgia coast.

De Corpa was assigned to a mission near present-day Darien, Ga., when he infuriated the nephew of a Guale chieftain who planned to take a second wife. The friar admonished the nephew, a baptized Christian named Juanillo, and told him polygamy violated God's law.

On Sept. 14, 1597, Juanillo led warriors smeared in war paint to de Corpa's hut, where he was preparing for morning Mass. They killed the friar with stone clubs, severed his head and displayed it on a pike by a nearby river landing.The warriors killed four more friars - Blas Rodriguez, Miguel de Anon, Antonio de Badajoz and Francisco de Verascola - at St. Catherines Island and other nearby missions over the next several days.

Friar Pedro Fernandez de Chozas wrote to the Spanish governor at St. Augustine, Fla., on Oct. 4, 1597: "How they must have been lonely, Senor General, these little lambs, at the moment of martyrdom."

Beatification by the church, a lengthy process likely to take many years, would entitle the five friars to be called "blessed." But it requires proof of a miracle or martyrdom, meaning they died willingly at the hands of religious persecutors.

Harkins said it should be "an open and shut case."If he's right, the friars would join a very short list of only three Christians the church recognizes as having been martyred within U.S. borders - fewer than half the number of U.S. saints.

The U.S. can claim just eight Catholic saints. Among them are the only beatified martyrs slain on American soil: three Jesuit priests killed in the 1640s by Iroquois Indians near present-day Auriesville, N.Y.

"In North America, we haven't had periods of persecution," said Lawrence Cunningham, a University of Notre Dame theology professor and author of the book A Brief History of Saints. "You're not going to find any martyrs in the U.S. after the period of early exploration."

On the Radio This Morning

On KVSS in Omaha, NE...you can listen on their website. I'll be on at 9:00 A.M. Eastern time, 8 Omaha time.

May You Have a Blessed Easter!

To the City and the World--Urbi et Orbi Message of the Pope

To a doubting world, the pope offer the witness of a doubting apostle--and a reminder from St. Peter, from the Vatican:

Dear Brothers and Sisters throughout the world,Men and women of good will!

Christ is risen! Peace to you! Today we celebrate the great mystery, the foundation of Christian faith and hope: Jesus of Nazareth, the Crucified One, has risen from the dead on the third day according to the Scriptures. We listen today with renewed emotion to the announcement proclaimed by the angels on the dawn of the first day after the Sabbath, to Mary of Magdala and to the women at the sepulchre: “Why do you search among the dead for one who is alive? He is not here, he is risen!” (Lk 24:5-6).

It is not difficult to imagine the feelings of these women at that moment: feelings of sadness and dismay at the death of their Lord, feelings of disbelief and amazement before a fact too astonishing to be true. But the tomb was open and empty: the body was no longer there. Peter and John, having been informed of this by the women, ran to the sepulchre and found that they were right. The faith of the Apostles in Jesus, the expected Messiah, had been submitted to a severe trial by the scandal of the cross. At his arrest, his condemnation and death, they were dispersed. Now they are together again, perplexed and bewildered. But the Risen One himself comes in response to their thirst for greater certainty. This encounter was not a dream or an illusion or a subjective imagination; it was a real experience, even if unexpected, and all the more striking for that reason. “Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘peace be with you!’” (Jn 20:19).

At these words their faith, which was almost spent within them, was re-kindled. The Apostles told Thomas who had been absent from that first extraordinary encounter: Yes, the Lord has fulfilled all that he foretold; he is truly risen and we have seen and touched him! Thomas however remained doubtful and perplexed. When Jesus came for a second time, eight days later in the Upper Room, he said to him: “put your finger here and see my hands; and put out your hand and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing!” The Apostle’s response is a moving profession of faith: “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:27-28).

“My Lord and my God!” We too renew that profession of faith of Thomas. I have chosen these words for my Easter greetings this year, because humanity today expects from Christians a renewed witness to the resurrection of Christ; it needs to encounter him and to know him as true God and true man. If we can recognize in this Apostle the doubts and uncertainties of so many Christians today, the fears and disappointments of many of our contemporaries, with him we can also rediscover with renewed conviction, faith in Christ dead and risen for us. This faith, handed down through the centuries by the successors of the Apostles, continues on because the Risen Lord dies no more. He lives in the Church and guides it firmly towards the fulfilment of his eternal design of salvation.

We may all be tempted by the disbelief of Thomas. Suffering, evil, injustice, death, especially when it strikes the innocent such as children who are victims of war and terrorism, of sickness and hunger, does not all of this put our faith to the test? Paradoxically the disbelief of Thomas is most valuable to us in these cases because it helps to purify all false concepts of God and leads us to discover his true face: the face of a God who, in Christ, has taken upon himself the wounds of injured humanity. Thomas has received from the Lord, and has in turn transmitted to the Church, the gift of a faith put to the test by the passion and death of Jesus and confirmed by meeting him risen. His faith was almost dead but was born again thanks to his touching the wounds of Christ, those wounds that the Risen One did not hide but showed, and continues to point out to us in the trials and sufferings of every human being.

“By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pt 2:24). This is the message Peter addressed to the early converts. Those wounds that, in the beginning were an obstacle for Thomas’s faith, being a sign of Jesus’ apparent failure, those same wounds have become in his encounter with the Risen One, signs of a victorious love. These wounds that Christ has received for love of us help us to understand who God is and to repeat: “My Lord and my God!” Only a God who loves us to the extent of taking upon himself our wounds and our pain, especially innocent suffering, is worthy of faith.

How many wounds, how much suffering there is in the world! Natural calamities and human tragedies that cause innumerable victims and enormous material destruction are not lacking. My thoughts go to recent events in Madagascar, in the Solomon Islands, in Latin America and in other regions of the world. I am thinking of the scourge of hunger, of incurable diseases, of terrorism and kidnapping of people, of the thousand faces of violence which some people attempt to justify in the name of religion, of contempt for life, of the violation of human rights and the exploitation of persons. I look with apprehension at the conditions prevailing in several regions of Africa. In Darfur and in the neighbouring countries there is a catastrophic, and sadly to say underestimated, humanitarian situation. In Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo the violence and looting of the past weeks raises fears for the future of the Congolese democratic process and the reconstruction of the country. In Somalia the renewed fighting has driven away the prospect of peace and worsened a regional crisis, especially with regard to the displacement of populations and the traffic of arms. Zimbabwe is in the grip of a grievous crisis and for this reason the Bishops of that country in a recent document indicated prayer and a shared commitment for the common good as the only way forward.

Likewise the population of East Timor stands in need of reconciliation and peace as it prepares to hold important elections. Elsewhere too, peace is sorely needed: in Sri Lanka only a negotiated solution can put an end to the conflict that causes so much bloodshed; Afghanistan is marked by growing unrest and instability; In the Middle East, besides some signs of hope in the dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian authority, nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees. In Lebanon the paralysis of the country’s political institutions threatens the role that the country is called to play in the Middle East and puts its future seriously in jeopardy. Finally, I cannot forget the difficulties faced daily by the Christian communities and the exodus of Christians from that blessed Land which is the cradle of our faith. I affectionately renew to these populations the expression of my spiritual closeness.

Dear Brothers and sisters, through the wounds of the Risen Christ we can see the evils which afflict humanity with the eyes of hope. In fact, by his rising the Lord has not taken away suffering and evil from the world but has vanquished them at their roots by the superabundance of his grace. He has countered the arrogance of evil with the supremacy of his love. He has left us the love that does not fear death, as the way to peace and joy. “Even as I have loved you – he said to his disciples before his death – so you must also love one another” (cf. Jn 13:34).

Brothers and sisters in faith, who are listening to me from every part of the world! Christ is risen and he is alive among us. It is he who is the hope of a better future. As we say with Thomas: “My Lord and my God!”, may we hear again in our hearts the beautiful yet demanding words of the Lord: “If any one serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there shall my servant be also; if any one serves me, the Father will honour him” (Jn 12:26). United to him and ready to offer our lives for our brothers (cf. 1 Jn 3:16), let us become apostles of peace, messengers of a joy that does not fear pain – the joy of the Resurrection. May Mary, Mother of the Risen Christ, obtain for us this Easter gift. Happy Easter to you all.

Holy Saturday

Holy Face Association

A Heart of Flesh

Following the Way of the Cross tonight, Pope Benedict remarked to the crowd:

"Following Jesus on the way of His Passion," the Pope said, "we see not only His passion but that of everyone who suffers in the world. This is the profound intention of the prayers of the Via Crucis - to open our hearts and help us see with the heart."

The Fathers of the Church, said the Pope,"considered that the greatest sin of the pagan world was insensitivty and hardness of heart. That is why they loved the prophet Ezekiel, who said, 'I will take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.'"

To convert to Christ, he said, meant "to receive a heart of flesh, sensitive to the passion and suffering of others." "

Our God is not a remote God, who is untouchable in His beatitude. He has a heart of flesh, He took on flesh precisely to be able to suffer with us and be with us in our sufferings. He became man to give us a heart of flesh and reawaken in us the love for the suffering and the needy."

Earlier in the day at St. Peter's Basilica the Pope began ths service prostrate:

I could be wrong, but the carpet looks much like the one that Pope John Paul's coffin rested on at his funeral.

He held up the cross for veneration (a very good image with St. Helena in the background):

Then removed his shoes, to venerate the cross:

Good Friday

Divine Mercy Novena Begins Today

St. Faustina recounts that Jesus asked not only for a Feast of Divine Mercy, which the Servant of God, Pope John Paul II declared during his pontificate (and ironically died on two years ago on April 2nd--the Feast is movable, this year will be celebrated on April 15th), but also that Our Lord asked that a novena (nine days of prayer) to be prayed by the faithful starting on Good Friday and ending on the Feast of Divine Mercy (the Second Sunday of Easter).


I explain the history of this novena as well as include the prayers for it in The Church's Most Powerful Novenas. Thankfully, you can now search inside this book to sample not only that novena, but other unique novenas such as Mother Teresa's "express or quick novena"--when you don't have nine days to wait for an answer (like all the novenas in the book the history behind it is also included).


The Divine Mercy Novena is a beautiful way to begin the Easter season by reflecting upon the great love that God has for us, expressed by Jesus on the cross. The prayers dictated to St. Faustina by Jesus--express His love for all of us for whom He died and reminds us that none of us, no matter how far we think we have fallen are outside of the reach of His love, forgiveness--His Mercy.