We are so blessed to be part of the Catholic Church, especially at this time when we have the opportunity to do great things for Our Lord in a world that needs Him so much.
This video highlights some of the momentous happenings in 2013.
2013: The Year that Rocked the Church
December 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Pope Francis Issues New Document. Calls for Missionary Church.
November 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment
I dream of a “missionary option”, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium
Pope Francis has issued a beautiful new document, called an Apostolic Exhortation, and a wonderful exhortation it is.
Needless to say, the popular press has already begun issuing their skewed interpretations of what he said.
I think the reasons for this constant re-writing of the Holy Father’s message is twofold. First, they are literally putting words in the pope’s mouth to advance their own social/political agendas. Second, the drive to pick out the most compelling headline and pull readers into their publication leads them to sensationalize Pope Francis’ statements.
I’m not going to write in detail about Evangelii Gaudium until after Thanksgiving. We’ve all got turkey on the brain right now. I’ve been steam cleaning and dusting and vacuuming. Then I’ve got to start preparing food for a small army of hungry family and friends.
That’s why I put the quote above. I can’t take the time to analyze the Holy Father’s statements until after Thanksgiving, but I can, and have, let him summarize himself.
The Holy Father did not, as one press report I’ve read claims, call for the dissolution of Vatican authority in the Church. What he did do was call each and every one of us to our universal Christian vocation of living for Christ and sharing the Gospel with the world. It’s a beautiful document that spoke to my heart as I read it.
He’s so right about what ails us and what we have to do to live out our vocation as Christian evangelists in this fallen world. Those of us who live in the post Christian West have our own unique challenges. Our first challenge — and it appears to be a tough one for most Christians — is to know and to believe that we live in a culture that is hostile to Christ and His message and to us as Christians. We have to choose this day whom we will serve. That choice has eternal consequences.
A lot of us don’t want to believe that uncomfortable fact. We don’t want to chose and make people mad at us by our choice. We want to slip by without incurring the wrath of the culture and still slide home to heaven after it’s all done.
We’d rather compromise our faith than face the wonderful fact that we are a new First Century generation, called to evangelize a libertine and openly anti-Christ culture. We have been entrusted with the gift of being able to stand up for Jesus and take a couple of verbal brickbats for him from our child-sacrficing, marriage-and-family-destroying, women-and-children-selling culture.
Our grandparents didn’t have the opportunity to stand for Him that we’ve got. They lived in the days of ez-pz faith in a country where saying you were a Christian opened doors instead of shutting them.
But we can stand for Jesus in a way that makes a difference. That is the challenge of, and the gift to, our generation.
Pope Francis is all about issuing that call to stop hiding our light and make a stand for Jesus. He is leading us to give up passively sitting in the pews and watching self-absorbed priests wave around incense and preach feel-good homilies that don’t address the human meat market world in which we live. We are, all of us, from the bishops on down, being challenged by a pope who sees the problem and knows that the solution is us and our fidelity to Christ.
The time for lukewarm ministers, politically correct bishops and social club laity is past. It is no longer a get out of jail free card to be a Christian. In fact, proclaiming your faith in Christ and the teachings of His Church will get you reviled, mocked and attacked.
Pope Francis has written a wonderful, much-needed document calling you and me, our bishops, priests and all the religious to our true vocation, which is proclaiming the Gospel of Christ by how we live, what we say, and what price we are willing to pay.
You can find Evangelii Gaudium: On the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World here.
First Month as Pope: What We’ve Learned About Francis
April 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In his first month in office, Pope Francis has shown us that he is a man of:
1. Simplicity
2. Approachability
3. Continuity and Fidelity to the Magisterium
4. Tenderness
5. Service
Dominican Sisters Hear about the Election of Pope Francis
April 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment
While rehearsing for a new album (which will be coming out this summer) the Dominican Sisters hear that there is white smoke …
Pope Francis’ First Words as Pope
March 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment
We’ll get the chance to learn more about our new Holy Father next week, when Vatican Television Center releases a documentary about him, Francis: The Election of a Pope from the Ends of the Earth.
Probably because of the slanderous gossip that has been promoted in some circles, they’ve given us a spoiler. Cardinal Begoglio’s words on his election were: I am a great sinner confident in the patience and mercy of God. In suffering, I accept.
CNA/EWTN News has details:
.- The Vatican Television Center will release the documentary “Francesco” next week, providing an intimate look at the historic events that led to the election of Pope Francis, including his first words after his election.
“I am a great sinner confident in the patience and mercy of God. In suffering, I accept,” said Monsignor Dario Edoardo Vigano, director of Vatican Television, as he recounted the moment when the Pope was asked if he accepted the results of the voting.
The film, titled “Francis: The Election of a Pope from the Ends of the Earth,” will be distributed throughout Italy as a supplement to the April 2 edition of the national newspaper Il Corriere della Sera.
It follows the historic events that have occurred at the Vatican, beginning with Benedict XVI renouncing the papacy on Feb. 11 and concluding with the March 23 meeting between Pope Francis and his predecessor at Castel Gandolfo.
The documentary reconstructs the pivotal moments of the period using interviews with four cardinals – Cardinal Angelo Comastri, archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica; Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture; and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals. (Read more here.)
How Do You Do Lent in a Time of Feasting?
March 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment
It’s still Lent.
We’ve got a week and a half of the deepest, darkest passage in human history to relive. Jesus arrested, betrayed, beaten, tortured, shamed and murdered; that’s what lies ahead of us in these next days.
We are approaching the depths of Lent; the remembrance of humanity’s greatest crime against innocence in the flesh. And we are almost there.
But how do you do lent in a time of feasting?
Last week, the Papal Conclave elected the first non-European pope in 1200 years, the first American pope and the first Jesuit pope in history. That conclave turned the Catholic world upside down … and left it unchanged.
Pope Francis is the continuation of an unbroken line of popes going back to the moment when Jesus said “I will call you Peter.” The Church as a conduit of grace, a connection to the divine and a highway to heaven is untouched, unchanged and unchangeable. Despite the rancorous demands from some quarters that the Church re-write 2,000 years of Christian teaching to excuse the fashionable sins of our day, it will never do that. It has never done that; not for kings and princes, not for tanks and guns.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. His Church, despite its human failings, is like Him in that. Nothing that matters, nothing that’s central to what the Church is, changes, has changed, or will change.
Last week, we elected a pope. Yesterday, he celebrated his inaugural mass. It has been a week of spiritual feasting, a time to get drunk on the Spirit and wave flags, cheer and experience the jubilation of this proof of His continued presence in our lives.
How do we come down from that to Passion Week and the awful reality of the crucifixion?
Perhaps, we do it the same way Peter, James and John did when they came down from the mount of Transfiguration. They saw something that no one had ever seen before or since, at least not in this life. They saw the transfigured Christ in His glory, conversing with Moses and Elijah — the law and the prophets. They saw the promise of what is to come, of the meaning on the other side of the cross that they were to preach for the rest of their days.
We saw a glimpse of that same promise in this election and inauguration. Not the transfiguration, of course, but the promise of what it meant when Jesus told us “I am with you until the end of the world.” He was promising us that when we are lost, He will call us without ceasing. When we are found, He will walk with us through whatever we must face. He will speak to us through the Holy Spirit in our deepest hearts. He will come to us in the Eucharist and forgive us in confession. In all the years of our lives, he will never leave us without a shepherd to guide us and teach us and show us the way to Him.
This past week of two living popes and one unchanging church has not been the same mountain-top view of the Transfiguration that the three chosen Apostles experienced. But it has been the Transfiguration that the whole wide world needed at this time in history.
Now, we must, as the Apostles had to, come down from the mountaintop and turn our faces toward Jerusalem. It is Lent, and the way we do Lent in a time of feasting is to face the magnitude of our sins and the unbelievable mercy that God has shown us.
This year, like no other, we have been given our own view of Transfiguration.
Habemus Papem. We have a pope!
March 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment
This video captures my feelings perfectly.
Pope Says He Took Name from St Francis of Assisi, Explains Why
March 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
After all the chitter chatter about the Holy Father’s choice of Francis as his name, we now have an explanation from someone who knows.
Pope Francis explained his name choice today. He verified that he chose the name because of St Francis of Assisi. He said that the intention of choosing the name Francis “came to my heart” as the voting showed that he would probably be elected pope.
He explained that he chose the name because St Francis was “the man of the poor. The man of peace. The man who loved and cared for creation and in this moment we don’t have such a great relationship with the Creator. The man who gives us this spirit of peace, the man who wanted a poor church.”
The following article from The Guardian has details:
Pope Francis described on Saturday how he was inspired to take the name of Saint Francis of Assisi by the importance of helping the poor.
At his first press conference in the Vatican, Pope Francis broke from his prepared comments to describe the final hours of the conclave that elected him pope. He said: “Let me tell you a story.”
Francis said he was comforted by his friend, Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, as it appeared the voting was favouring him and it seemed “a bit dangerous” that he would reach the two-thirds necessary to be elected.
“He hugged me. He kissed me. He said don’t forget about the poor,” Francis recalled. “And that’s how in my heart came the name Francis of Assisi.”
He said some people have asked why he took the name, Francis, since it also could suggest references to other figures including the co-founder of the pope’s Jesuit order, Francis Xavier. But he said his intention came to his heart as an inspiration immediately after the election. St. Francis of Assisi, the pope said, was “the man of the poor. The man of peace. The man who loved and cared for creation and in this moment we don’t have such a great relationship with the creator. The man who gives us this spirit of peace, the poor man who wanted a poor church.”
He then joked that some other cardinals suggested other names: Hadrian VI, after a great church reformer, a reference to the need for the pope to clean up the Vatican’s messy bureaucracy. Someone else suggested Clement XV, to counter Clement XIV who suppressed the Jesuit order. (Read the rest here.)
Pope Francis: Doing it His Way
March 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Deacon Greg Kendra posted a wonderful article by John Thavis about Pope Francis this morning.
Our new Holy Father is his own man and he’s doing things his way. It turns out that his way is one of simplicity and humility that truly befits one who wears the shoes of the fisherman.
Our pope is the son of an immigrant railway worker who evidently suffered illness early in his life serious enough to require the removal of a lung. He comes from a third world country and has seen his share of human suffering.
Experiences like that change people. They can make them bitter, avaricious and mean. But when the light of this kind of experience shines through the prism of the Gospels and you get humility, love and an understanding that the trappings of this world are dust and ashes.
I’m going to pick up the entire article from Deacon Greg because it is so beautiful and inspiring to me that I want to share it with you in total.
From John Thavis:
One of the first things a new pope hears is, “Holy Father, it’s always done this way.”
In his first 24 hours in office, Pope Francis has already given indications that he may not be intimidated by those words, as he creates his own style of being pope.
That was clear from the moment he put on his papal robes, donning the simple white cassock but declining to wear the ermine-trimmed red cape known as the mozzetta, which was left hanging on the wardrobe in the Room of Tears.
To Vatican officials who offered him an elaborate gold pectoral cross to wear around the neck, he said he’d prefer to keep his very simple cross that he’s worn as a bishop. He accepted the congratulations of cardinals not seated on a traditional throne-like chair, but standing up and greeting them one by one.
After his blessing last night to the crowd in St. Peter’s Square and to the world, Vatican aides told the pope a limousine was waiting to take him to his temporary quarters in the Vatican’s residence building. The new pope said he’d rather take the bus back with the cardinals – and he did.
This morning, the pope’s first act was to leave the Vatican for an impromptu visit to the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in central Rome. No doubt someone told him: “But Holy Father, we need time to plan these visits very carefully.” He wisely didn’t listen. Yes, his presence snarled traffic and caused a major stir, but the Romans loved it.
Instead of taking the main car in the papal fleet, a Mercedes with the “SCV 1” license plate, he rode in a more modest sedan.
On the way inside the basilica, he stopped to wave to high school students across the street. After praying before a popular icon of Mary, he told confessors at the church to “be merciful, the souls of the faithful need your mercy.”
Three Interviews with Cardinal Dolan about Pope Francis
March 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Cardinal Dolan’s been talking about Pope Francis and how it felt inside the Conclave. I love what he’s had to say. If you have the time on this busy Thursday, take a moment and watch these. Cardinal Dolan, who obviously can barely contain his happiness, will cheer your soul.
Cardinal Dolan Talks to ABC News about Electing Pope Francis.
Cardinal Dolan: Don’t Look to Francis to Change Church Doctrine.
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