Kathryn Lopez
1. So today is the memorial of Saint Peter Chrysologus, a bishop and Doctor of the Church. Magnificat kinda blew me away today with its meditation of the day from him. More on that here.
3. Being Seized and Seizing the Kingdom with Joy
4.
"Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting."-St. Peter Chrysologus #catholicmedia #saintquotes pic.twitter.com/9X3sL1Yk1p
— Tekton Ministries (@tekton_1) July 30, 2015
The divine presence of God in Christ is revealed in the great mysteries of the Mass, mysteries that culminates in the gift of the Blessed Sacrament, which is not just a symbol of Christ, but the real presence of the Lord Jesus himself. This presence dwells in the faithful, who carry out into the world in their own bodies the divine life of Christ, but also this presence abides in the holy of holies of the tabernacle, where the divine presence endures and beckons the faithful to adoration and worship.
The purpose of the Church is not simply to advance this or that cause or promote this or that agenda. The purpose of the Church, like that of Israel, is to invite people into an experience of true worship- to call people from the darkness of false gods and into the light of the one, true God. It is from its worship that the life of the Church is sustained and grows. The source and summit of the Christian life is the worship of God in Christ, not our causes, cultures, or agendas.
The worship of the Church is God in Christ’s gift to us, we receive worship from him, we do not make it up for ourselves.
Pope Benedict XVI was apt to point out that the mission of Church can be summed up in three great tasks- worship, evangelization and care for the poor. Of these three, worship has a priority, for without the worship of God in Christ we will not know the God whom we are to invite others to know and we will not know how to love those whom Christ insists that we serve.
6. I tweeted this a year ago today: St. Peter Would Have Tweeted about the #DamnedDevil
7. And the point is driven home here:
"If you jest with the devil, you cannot rejoice with Christ"-St Peter Chrysologus, Bishop Ravenna & Doctor of Church pic.twitter.com/40YUlypBSK
— Terrence Prendergast (@archterentius) July 30, 2015
8. From the Liturgy of the Hours today from a sermon from St. Peter C:
A virgin conceived, bore a son, and yet remained a virgin. This is no common occurrence, but a sign; no reason here, but God’s power, for he is the cause, and not nature. It is a special event, not shared by others; it is divine, not human. Christ’s birth was not necessity, but an expression of omnipotence, a sacrament of piety for the redemption of men. He who made man without generation from pure clay made man again and was born from a pure body. The hand that assumed clay to make our flesh deigned to assume a body for our salvation. That the Creator is in his creature and God is in the flesh brings dignity to man without dishonor to him who made him.
Why then, man, are you so worthless in your own eyes and yet so precious to God? Why render yourself such dishonor when you are honored by him? Why do you ask how you were created and do not seek to know why you were made? Was not this entire visible universe made for your dwelling? It was for you that the light dispelled the overshadowing gloom; for your sake was the night regulated and the day measured, and for you were the heavens embellished with the varying brilliance of the sun, the moon and the stars. The earth was adorned with flowers, groves and fruit; and the constant marvellous variety of lovely living things was created in the air, the fields, and the seas for you, lest sad solitude destroy the joy of God’s new creation. And the Creator still works to devise things that can add to your glory. He has made you in his image that you might in your person make the invisible Creator present on earth; he has made you his legate, so that the vast empire of the world might have the Lord’s representative. Then in his mercy God assumed what he made in you; he wanted now to be truly manifest in man, just as he had wished to be revealed in man as in an image. Now he would be in reality what he had submitted to be in symbol.
And so Christ is born that by his birth he might restore our nature. He became a child, was fed, and grew that he might inaugurate the one perfect age to remain for ever as he had created it. He supports man that man might no longer fall. And the creature he had formed of earth he now makes heavenly; and what he had endowed with a human soul he now vivifies to become a heavenly spirit. In this way he fully raised man to God, and left in him neither sin, nor death, nor travail, nor pain, nor anything earthly, with the grace of our Lord Christ Jesus, who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, now and for ever, for all the ages of eternity. Amen.
9.
"Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives. These three are one, and they give life to each other." St. Peter Chrysologus
— ArlingtonYoungAdults (@CDACatholic) July 30, 2015
10.
The Creator… has made you in his image that you might in your person make the invisible Creator present on earth. – St Peter Chrysologus
— Pat Gohn (@PatGohn) July 30, 2015
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