Ten Catholic Things that Caught My Eye Today (1st Tues. in Lent, 2015)

1.

The fundamental purpose and goal of #Lent is to be restored to the person God created us to be at our Baptism.

— Bishop Paul Loverde (@Bishop_Loverde) February 23, 2015

2. From St. Cyprian in the prayer of the Church today:

The Lord has given us many counsels and commandments to help us toward salvation. He has even given us a pattern of prayer, instructing us on how we are to pray. He has given us life, and with his accustomed generosity, he has also taught us how to pray. He has made it easy for us to be heard as we pray to the Father in the words taught us by the Son.

He has already foretold that the hour was coming when true worshipers would worship the Father in spirit and in truth. He fulfilled what he had promised before, so that we who have received the spirit and the truth through the holiness he has given us may worship in truth and in the spirit through the prayer he has taught.

What prayer could be more a prayer in the spirit than the one given us by Christ, by whom the Holy Spirit was sent upon us? What prayer could be more a prayer in the truth than the one spoken by the lips of the Son, who is truth himself? It follows that to pray in any other way than the Son has taught us is not only the result of ignorance but of sin. He himself has commanded it, and has said: You reject the command of God, to set up your own tradition.

So, my brothers, let us pray as God our master has taught us. To ask the Father in words his Son has given us, to let him hear the prayer of Christ ringing in his ears, is to make our prayer one of friendship, a family prayer. Let the Father recognize the words of his Son. Let the Son who lives in our hearts be also on our lips. We have him as an advocate for sinners before the Father; when we ask for forgiveness for ours sins, let us use the words given by our advocate. He tells us: Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. What more effective prayer could we then make in the name of Christ than in the words of his own prayer?

3. About the newest doctor of the Church, Gregory of Narek

4. Fr. Robert Barron video on Thomas Merton.

5. From a homily for today from Fr. Lawrence Lew:

Authentic prayer, therefore, always involves a surrender, a letting go of ourselves and our wants, so that God can reveal his purposes for us. The first word of the prayer that Jesus teaches us shows us the relationship and attitude that is essential in prayer: Abba, Father. Thus we are like humble children, totally open to whatever our Father wants to give us, and we turn to him in the confident knowledge that our Father never gives us what is bad, ultimately, but only what is good and that will, in the final account, prosper and save us. Prayer, as such, deepens our relationship with God our Father, and it deepens our identification with Christ the Son, who was humble and obedient to the Father’s will. True prayer, therefore, forms us to become more like Christ and unites us to him.
As the Catechism says: “prayer is the living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is good beyond measure, with his Son Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit” (CCC 2565). This is why Jesus can put his words into our mouths because his words are our words too, and, by his grace, his will becomes ours too. When this happens, then, God’s Word will indeed have accomplished God’s purpose in our lives and not left us empty. How could we be empty since true prayer like this fills us up with the Holy Trinity, with God’s own presence? Hence the Catechism says: “the life of prayer is the habit of being in the presence of the thrice-holy God and in communion with him” (ibid.).

Another way in:

Window in Canterbury Cathedral of God as our Father https://t.co/7A22Bba2mS

— Fr Lawrence Lew OP (@LawrenceOP) February 24, 2015

6.

There is no sin that God cannot pardon. All we need to do is ask for forgiveness.#24hoursfortheLord

— PCPNE (@PCPNE_en) February 24, 2015

7.

The Lord's Prayer is one of intimacy with the Lord whom, at his command, we dare to call "OurFather": http://t.co/aXooMpdYP3 #HomilyTweet

— FrJames Bradley (@FrJamesBradley) February 24, 2015

8. From Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J., via Magnificat today:

The Kingdom of God is where humanity is in a state of grace and all things move in divine order. Human needs are met by God’s abundance, human limitations are dissolved by God’s power, human rashness is tamed by God’s discipline–all this is part of the Kingdom of God. It is a quickening in our innermost heart, passing from person to person. It is a silence grace which nevertheless gives impetus to word and deed; it exists both as an action and an order.

9. From a website I just discovered this morning in an e-mail from a friend:

Today is the Memorial of St. Montanus and his companions, eight 3rd century Christians who were martyred during the reign of the Roman emperor, Valerian. They were imprisoned together for many months, deprived of food and water. They comforted one another and were comforted by a series of visions. The martyred Bishop of Carthage, St. Cyprian, came to Montanus, who asked him whether death is painful. Cyprian answered, “The body feels no pain when the soul gives itself entirely to God.” May we ask St. Montanus to help us give ourselves entirely to God.

St. Montanus, pray for us.

10. A Dominican brother points in the right direction:

Friendship with Christ is the vocation before and beneath every vocation. Because vocation isn’t the meaning of our life. Christ is. Vocation is what grows out of our relationship with Him. He is not the spiritual director of our life, for whom we wait to tell us exactly what to do. He is our life. There is no waiting. He is the one who loves us now, and who guides us as we love Him in return. The focus of anyone in love, if he wants to stay in love, is the other person. Not himself.