Ten Catholic Things that Caught My Eye on St. Mark’s Feast Day (April 25, 2015)

Ten Catholic Things that Caught My Eye on St. Mark’s Feast Day (April 25, 2015) April 25, 2015

Woke up with Coptic Christians at the persecuted on my mind today on the feast day of St. Mark.

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3. From St. Caesarius of Aries (c. 543), thanks to Magnificat today (subscribe here):

Through the goodness of Christ, dearly beloved, may you so receive the sacred text with an eager and thirsting heart that you may give us spiritual joy as the result of your faithful obedience.
If you want the sacred writings to become sweet to you nd the divine precepts to profit you and the divine precepts to profit you as they should, withdraw from worldy occupations for several hours to reread the divine words in your homes and to dedicate yourselves entirely to God’s mercy. Then will happily be fulfilled in you what is written concerning the blessed, that On the law of the Lord he shall meditate day and night. Moreover, Blessed are they that search his testimonies: that seek him with their whole heart, and: Your words have I hidden in my heart, that I may not sin against you.
Just as the man who hides God’s words in his heart does not sin, as you have heard, so the one who does not hide them does not cease to sin. Now, it is not enough for merchants to acquire profits from just one source of income; they provide more means of increasing their substance, and farmers try to sow different kinds of seeds in order to be able to provide enough food for themselves and their family. How much more, then, should it not suffice for your spiritual profit that you hear the divine lessons in the church, but among your company at home you should engage in sacred reading, even several hours, at night, when the days are short.
Thus, in the storehouse of your heart you may be able to prepare spiritual wheat and to store pearls of the Scriptures in the treasury of your souls. Then, when we come before the tribunal of the eternal Judge on the last day, as the Apostle says: We shall be found clothed, and not naked.

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5. From the treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus, in the Liturgy of the Hours for today:

The Church, which has spread everywhere, even to the ends of the earth, received the faith from the apostles and their disciples. By faith, we believe in one God, the almighty Father who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became man for our salvation. And we believe in the Holy Spirit who through the prophets foretold God’s plan: the coming of our beloved Lord Jesus Christ, his birth from the Virgin, his passion, his resurrection from the dead, his ascension into heaven, and his final coming from heaven in the glory of his Father, to recapitulate all things and to raise all men from the dead, so that, by the decree of his invisible Father, he may make a just judgement in all things and so that every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth to Jesus Christ our Lord and our God, our Savior and our King, and every tongue confess him.

The Church, spread throughout the whole world, received this preaching and this faith and now preserves it carefully, dwelling as it were in one house. Having one soul and one heart, the Church holds this faith, preaches and teaches it consistently as though by a single voice. For though there are different languages, there is but one tradition.

The faith and the tradition of the churches founded in Germany are no different from those founded among the Spanish and the Celts, in the East, in Egypt, in Libya and elsewhere in the Mediterranean world. Just as God’s creature, the sun, is one and the same the world over, so also does the Church’s preaching shine everywhere to enlighten all men who want to come to a knowledge of the truth.

Now of those who speak with authority in the churches, no preacher however forceful will utter anything different—for no one is above the Master—nor will a less forceful preacher diminish what has been handed down. Since our faith is everywhere the same, no one who can say more augments it, nor can anyone who says less diminish it.

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7. Fr. Steve Grunow:

Christ’s teaching on the Eucharist is one of many “hard sayings” of Christ, teachings that will not and cannot be adjusted or changed because we find them difficult to do or troubling to believe. All the “hard sayings” of the Lord Jesus indicate to us that essential to an encounter with Christ is that we have to change- our minds, our behaviors, our emotions, indeed our whole of way life.
No one who encounters Christ is ever meant to be the same and in that encounter, Christ does not just “accept us as we are” but reveals to us greater and more important possibilities for our lives than we would ever dare to consider.
Perhaps we would prefer a Christ who would change for us and a Church that would serve merely to give sanction to our qualifications of the Lord’s teachings, but such a Christ would be an anti-Christ and such a Church would be an anti-church.
It is a Christ who demands little of us that is most assuredly a fake and it would be a Church that would oppose itself to the Lord that would most assuredly be a fraud.
We either accept the Lord’s teachings or we refuse him. The Gospel presents Christ to be as relentless in its pursuit of us as it is as demanding in the clarity of the Lord’s expectation.
In response to the Lord’s teachings we will either give our lives over to Christ or we will take leave of him.
There is no other option. There is no other way.

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10. Also from the Liturgy of the Hours today:

O God, who raised up Saint Mark, your Evangelist,
and endowed him with the grace to preach the Gospel,
grant, we pray,
that we may so profit from his teaching
as to follow faithfully in the footsteps of Christ.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
– Amen.


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