Kathryn Lopez
1. Pope Francis today:
#PopeFrancis at morning Mass: Pray for grace to want to do God's will, to know God's will & to actually do it.
— Catholic News Svc (@CatholicNewsSvc) January 27, 2015
#PopeFrancis: People often say "It's not easy" to do God's will. It wasn't easy for Mary. Or Jesus. Or the disciples. Pray for strength!
— Catholic News Svc (@CatholicNewsSvc) January 27, 2015
2. Something I noted while watching pre-storm coverage last night:
Good advice from @ChrisLHayes show: check on your older and alone neighbor. Do we need a blizzard to realize this is a good thing to do?
— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) January 27, 2015
3. Some inspiration from St. Angela Merici:
Today we celebrate St. Angela Merici (1474-1540), the foundress of the Ursuline Sisters, the first and the oldest teaching order of religious sisters in the history of the Church. She was one who from an early age recognized that God was calling her to help form the poor girls of her hometown in the faith so that they might know what God is asking of them and lovingly put it into practice. So she surrounded herself by other young women, eventually forming the Congregation of St. Ursula. Her whole life can be summarized by the entrance antiphon today taken from Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount: “Whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:19). She was one who obeyed God and spent her life forming sisters and with them countless children how to obey God, too. And that’s why today we celebrate her as one of the greatest in God’s kingdom. We prayed at the beginning of Mass that she would help us like she has helped so many students to “hold fast to [God’s] teaching and express it in what we do.” That’s what Jesus came to form us to accomplish. Let us ask him for that grace as we obediently “do this in memory of” him and unite ourselves to his holy holocaust of “ears open to obedience” lived in a body totally given to obedience. Today we say with him, “Here am I, Lord, I come to do your will.”
4. Stop at three? That’s not what the pope said.
5. I laughed:
No Meat on Friday
Typo of the Day: Pope's "Lentil Message"
— Greg Burke (@GregBurkeRome) January 27, 2015
6. From St. Basil the Great today:
He bore our infirmities and endured our sorrows. He was wounded for our sake so that by his wounds we might be healed. He redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse for our sake, and he submitted to the most ignominious death in order to exalt us to the life of glory. Nor was he content merely to summon us back from death to life; he also bestowed on us the dignity of his own divine nature and prepared for us a place of eternal rest where there will be joy so intense as to surpass all human imagination.
How, then, shall we repay the Lord for all his goodness to us? He is so good that he asks no recompense except our love: that is the only payment he desires. To confess my personal feelings, when I reflect on all these blessings I am overcome by a kind of dread and numbness at the very possibility of ceasing to love God and of bringing shame upon Christ because of my lack of recollection and my preoccupation with trivialities.
7.
Pope Francis teaches by example the truth proclaimed by great faiths: Even in rejecting sin, reach out in compassion and love to the sinner.
— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) January 26, 2015
And always remembering I am a sinner!
8. I stopped by the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception today to celebrate Thomas Aquinas (whose feast day is tomorrow) with my alma mater, the Catholic University of America, and the Dominican House of Studies across the street. The annual Mass comes during Catholic Schools Week and is a prayer for second semester as well as a reminder of what Catholic education is all about. Some outtakes:
Be merciful teachers who wake up the world #homilytweet
— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) January 27, 2015
A merciful teacher is humble, prays for the grace to love his students #homilytweet #CatholicSchoolsWeek #ThomasAquinas @CatholicUniv
— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) January 27, 2015
St. Albert the Great saw in STA a gifted genius in love with The Lord who would light up the world with teaching about faith #homilytweet
— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) January 27, 2015
4 #ThomasAquinas goal of studying theol is 2 acquire knowledge 2 direct life 2ward God-John Garvey #oppower pic.twitter.com/68HPmA8p2z
— Kathryn Jean Lopez (@kathrynlopez) January 27, 2015
9. It’s coming:
Cathedral of the Risen Christ prepares for Ash Wednesday. "Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris." pic.twitter.com/iFpSCqa6x9
— James D Conley (@bishop_conley) January 27, 2015
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