Kathryn Lopez
1.
The Most Important Words Ever Uttered – http://t.co/mY9q9MxneJ
— Fr. Roger Landry (@FrRogerLandry) May 7, 2015
2.
"In the face of so many wounds, we are called to dive into the sea of prayer." #PopeFrancis #NationalDayofPrayer pic.twitter.com/eMHZKeOi4p
— American Catholic (@AmericnCatholic) May 7, 2015
3. Fr. Steve Grunow:
The way of life that the Lord Jesus is a way that insists that guarantees that Christians will find themselves moving against cultural mainstreams. Christians are, like Christ, signs of contradiction, not signs of accommodation. Christians will always be different.
The Christian way of life also insists that we open ourselves of offering our friendship to people we don’t know; being generous to people who can’t pay us back; speaking with people who disagree with us; forgiving people who have wronged us; telling a culture truths it doesn’t want to hear; worshipping with total strangers; and sharing our way of life with people who are very different, if not strange.
In all this we are accepting that the Lord Jesus is the Messiah who offers all people an opportunity to know him, to love him and serve him. None of this is easy, and many Christians, indeed many parishes, finding this too difficult, close themselves off, and become more like clubs for a select few, rather than the gathering of the nations into communion with God in Christ.
Parishes becoming clubs is what Pope Francis means when he warns against a “self-referential” Church. It is what happens when Christians prioritize things like ideology and ethnicity as the main drivers of a parish’s ethos, rather than introducing people to Christ and helping each other to love and serve him.
Considering all this, it may just be that we are not as far as we might think from the very same controversies that confounded and confused the earliest Christians.
And we might think more deeply about our faith in the Lord Jesus as the Messiah who isn’t just our Messiah, but the Messiah of the world…
4.
Jesus, stay with me, and be so in me, that all my life may only be a radiance of yours.
Bl. John Henry Newman
— Fr. Patrick Brennan (@Pathound) May 7, 2015
5.
"Remain in my love" – getting there, staying there, returning there: http://t.co/mwp9x3PlIe #HomilyTweet
— Fr James Bradley (@FrJamesBradley) May 7, 2015
7. Pope Francis’ homily today.
8. A saint named Gaudentius (of Brescia) is in the liturgy of the hours today on the Eucharist:
One man has died for all, and now in every church in the mystery of bread and wine he heals those for whom he is offered in sacrifice, giving life to those who believe and holiness to those who consecrate the offering. This is the flesh of the Lamb; this is his blood. The bread that came down from heaven declared: The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. It is significant, too, that his blood should be given to us in the form of wine, for his own words in the gospel, I am the true vine, imply clearly enough that whenever wine is offered as a representation of Christ’s passion, it is offered as his blood. This means that it was of Christ that the blessed patriarch Jacob prophesied when he said: He will wash his tunic in wine and his cloak in the blood of the grape. The tunic was our flesh, which Christ was to put on like a garment and which he was to wash in his own blood.
Creator and Lord of all things, whatever their nature, he brought forth bread from the earth and changed it into his own body. Not only had he the power to do this, but he had promised it; and, as he had changed water into wine, he also changed wine into his own blood. It is the Lord’s Passover, Scripture tells us, that is, the Lord’s passing. We are no longer to look upon the bread and wine as earthly substances. They have become heavenly, because Christ has passed into them and changed them into his body and blood. What you receive is the body of him who is the heavenly bread, and the blood of him who is the sacred vine; for when he offered his disciples the consecrated bread and wine, he said: This is my body, this is my blood. We have put our trust in him. I urge you to have faith in him; truth can never deceive.
When Christ told the crowds that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood, they were horrified and began to murmur among themselves: This teaching is too hard; who can be expected to listen to it? As I have already told you, thoughts such as these must be banished. The Lord himself used heavenly fire to drive them away by going on to declare: It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
9. On Junípero Serra, Pope Francis, and mercy.
Would you take advice from a nun named Sister Augustine?
10.
My past, O Lord, to your mercy. My present, to your love. My future, to your providence.
St. Pio of Pietrelcina
— Fr. Patrick Brennan (@Pathound) May 7, 2015
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