10 Catholic Things that Caught My Eye Today (July 2, 2015)

10 Catholic Things that Caught My Eye Today (July 2, 2015) July 2, 2015

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4. I’ve sometimes called this church home:

5. Yesterday I posted this on Junipero Serra. Here’s more:

Catholic missionaries laid the first sign of the cross in North America.
Catholic faith is a faith that goes out into the world. We have in Jesus Christ a life that simply cannot be kept to ourselves as a secret. Our faith compels us to show what God has accomplished for us in Jesus Christ by inviting others to join in the great mission of his Church.
Let us pray that Junipero Serra will intercede for us today, and help us to give testimony to Christ and his Church.

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8. Magnificat today has a reflection from John Paul II. Check that out (you subscribe, don’t you?) and read more from that same 1979 pastoral visit talk:

Jesus Christ is present in the midst of you all to confirm daily in this way the salvific presence of God. Here there are certainly immense material, economic, and social needs; but, above all, there exists the need of this salvific power which is in God and which Christ alone possesses. It is this power that frees man from sin and directs him towards good, in order that he may lead a life really worthy of man: that married couples, parents, may give their children not only life, but also an upbringing, a good example; that real Christian life may flourish here, so that hatred, destruction, dishonesty and scandal may not prevail; that the work of fathers and also of mothers may be respected, and that this work may create the indispensable conditions to maintain the family; that the fundamental requirements of social justice may be respected; that real culture may be developed, beginning with the culture of everyday life.

9. Mass readings today.

10. St. Jerome in the Liturgy of the Hours:

As the deer longs for running water, so my soul longs for you, my God. Just as the deer longs for running water, so do our newly baptized members, our young deer, so to speak, also yearn for God. By leaving Egypt and the world, they have put Pharaoh and his entire army to death in the waters of baptism. After slaying the devil, their hearts long for the springs of running water in the Church. These springs are the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jeremiah testifies that the Father is like a fountain when he says: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, to dig for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. In another passage we read about the Son: They have forsaken the fountain of wisdom. And again, John says of the Holy Spirit: Whoever drinks the water I will give him, that water shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life. The evangelist explains that the Savior said this of the Holy Spirit. The testimony of these texts establishes beyond doubt the three fountains of the Church constitute the mystery of the Trinity.

These are the waters that the heart of the believer longs for, these are the waters that the heart of the newly baptized yearns for when he says: My heart thirsts for God, the living fountain. This is not a weak, faint desire to see God; rather the newly baptized actually burn with desire and thirst for God. Before they received baptism, they used to ask one another: When shall I go and see the face of God? Now their quest has been answered. they have come forward and they stand in the presence of God. They have come before the altar and have looked upon the mystery of the Savior.

Having received the body of Christ, and being reborn in the life-giving waters, they speak up boldly and say: I shall go into God’s marvelous dwelling place, his house. The house of God is the Church, his marvelous dwelling place, filled with joyful voices giving thanks, and praise, filled with all the sounds of festive celebration.

This is the way you should speak, you newly baptized, for you have now put on Christ. Under our guidance, by the word of God you have been lifted out of the dangerous waters of this world like so many little fish. In us the nature of things has been changed. Fish taken out of the sea die; but the apostles have fished for us and have taken us out of the sea of this world so we could be brought from death to life. As long as we were in the world, our eyes looked down into the abyss and we lived in filth. After we were rescued from the waves, we began to look upon the sun and look up at the true light. Confused in the presence of so much joy, we say: Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, in the presence of my savior and my God.


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