Give Me Your Eyes by Brandon Heath

Pope Benedict reflects on his vocation as he celebrates 60 years of priesthood

The following comes from the CNA:

“Thanks to the Lord for the friendship that he has bestowed upon me,” Pope Benedict said to a packed St. Peter’s Basilica as he celebrated his 60th anniversary of becoming a priest, a day that is also the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.

“Thanks to the people who have formed and accompanied me. And all this includes the prayer that the Lord will one day welcome us in his goodness and invite us to contemplate his joy,” the Pope said.

Pope Benedict was ordained to the priesthood, along with his brother Georg, in the Bavarian town of Freising on June 29, 1951. Georg is with him in Rome today.

Appropriately, the music throughout today’s ceremonies seemed to have a distinctly Germanic feel, with pieces by Mozart, Bach and Handel included.

In his homily, the Pope repeatedly drew upon the words of Christ that were quoted to him by the bishop ordaining him 60 years ago: “I no longer call you servants, but friends.”

“Sixty years on from the day of my priestly ordination, I hear once again deep within me these words of Jesus that were addressed to us new priests at the end of the ordination ceremony by the Archbishop, Cardinal Faulhaber, in his slightly frail yet firm voice.”

“At that moment I knew deep down that these words were no mere formality, nor were they simply a quotation from Scripture. I knew that, at that moment, the Lord himself was speaking to me in a very personal way.”

At today’s Mass, Pope Benedict was wearing red vestments in remembrance of Saints Peter and Paul shedding their blood when they were martyred in Rome during the 1st century. He said that the life of the Christian – and particularly the life of the priest - is one that grows through joys and hardship. He drew upon another analogy of Christ’s – the vine and the branches – noting that for grapes to ripen and produce good wine “sun is needed, but so too is rain, by day and by night.”

“Is this not already an image of human life, and especially of our lives as priests?” asked the Pope as he looked back on his own experiences over the past 60 years.

“We need both sun and rain, festivity and adversity, times of purification and testing, as well as times of joyful journeying with the Gospel.”

“In hindsight,” he said, “we can thank God for both: for the challenges and the joys, for the dark times and the glad times. In both, we can recognize the constant presence of his love, which unfailingly supports and sustains us.”

The Pope said it is a close friendship with Christ that sustains the Christian – priests included – during such moments of darkness.

“What is friendship?” Benedict XVI asked, answering with an ancient Latin maxim.

“Idem velle, idem nolle – wanting the same things, rejecting the same things: this was how it was expressed in antiquity. Friendship is a communion of thinking and willing.”

The Pope then gave advice as to how to deepen that friendship with Jesus.

“The friendship that he bestows upon me can only mean that I too try to know him better; that in the Scriptures, in the Sacraments, in prayer, in the communion of saints, in the people who come to me, sent by him, I try to come to know the Lord himself more and more.”

Today’s papal ceremonies at St. Peter’s also included the bestowal of the pallium upon 41 new metropolitan archbishops from around the world.

The pallium is a white woolen liturgical vestment emblazoned with six black crosses. It symbolizes an archbishop’s pastoral authority and his unity the Pope.

Among the U.S. bishops present were Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle and Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio.

At the end of the Mass the Pope processed out to the applause of the congregation and the strains of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah.

To read Pope Benedict's full homily, visit: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/document.php?n=1002

Eye of the Hurricane by Me in Motion

The video the Pope included in his iPad

The pope has launched a new Vatican website with his iPad, which included a video from ROME REPORTS.

Pope Benedict: Celebrating 60 Years of Priesthood

A PRAYER FOR PRIESTS BY CARDINAL O'CONNER:

Lord Jesus, we your people pray to You for our priests. You have given them to us for OUR needs. We pray for them in THEIR needs.

We know that You have made them priests in the likeness of your own priesthood. You have consecrated them, set them aside, annointed them, filled them with the Holy Spirit, appointed them to teach, to preach, to minister, to console, to forgive, and to feed us with Your Body and Blood.

Yet we know, too, that they are one with us and share our human weaknesses. We know too that they are tempted to sin and discouragement as are we, needing to be ministered to, as do we, to be consoled and forgiven, as do we. Indeed, we thank You for choosing them from among us, so that they understand us as we understand them, suffer with us and rejoice with us, worry with us and trust with us, share our beings, our lives, our faith.

We ask that You give them this day the gift You gave Your chosen ones on the way to Emmaus: Your presence in their hearts, Your holiness in their souls, Your joy in their spirits. And let them see You face to face in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread.

We pray to You, O Lord, through Mary the mother of all priests, for Your priests and for ours. Amen.

March, 1995

Waiting Here For You by Christy Nockels

Vatican hopes iPod can bring silence to Rome’s churches

The following comes from the CNA:

The Vatican has introduced a new way of keeping silence in their churches while also informing tourists – the iPod.

Today is the first full day of a trial which sees pilgrims to the basilica of St. John Lateran given the audio-guide with a special app explaining the 1,700-year history of the church, which serves as the Pope’s cathedral.

“I can easily say that in Italy there are no examples of experiences like this in religious contexts, probably not even those in museums,” Jelena Jovanovic said to CNA. Her company, Antenna International, created the handheld device.

The multi-lingual guide offers audio, video, photos and texts to give an interactive experience to pilgrims. It also provides historical re-enactments narrated by actors.

Tourists can now listen to the experience of their fellow pilgrims from centuries past or even a “first-hand” account of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312, when the Emperor Constantine saw a cross in the sky and converted to Christianity.

But the primary purpose of the guide is not entertainment or even education - it’s prayer and silence.

Bishop Luca Brandolini, the head of Pastoral Care for the Diocese of Rome, explained to CNA that “Unfortunately, our basilicas have become more like noisy meeting places at many times.”

“We need to bring back a place and time for silence. So I think this audio-guide will help achieve that.”

The Managing Director of the Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, the Vatican body that oversees all pilgrim activity in the Diocese of Rome, agrees.

“Those who want to enter into a basilica to pray must be able to pray. So this multimedia guide helps with that,” said Fr. Caesar Atuire.

“Everyone can now do what they have to do without disturbing others.”

There is no charge for the use of the guide, but pilgrims do have to leave a document, such as a passport, as security.

The Vatican will monitor the experiment at St. John Lateran until December. Then officials will decide whether or not to roll the scheme out to other basilicas and churches in the Diocese of Rome.

Closer by Shawn McDonald

Pope Benedict: The Eucharist is the antidote to modern ills

The following comes from the CNA:

The Eucharist is the medicine which can heal our individualist society, Pope Benedict XVI said in his midday Angelus address on Corpus Christi Sunday.

“In an increasingly individualistic culture in which Western societies are immersed - and which is tending to spread throughout the world - the Eucharist is a kind of ‘antidote’ which operates in the minds and hearts of believers and is continually sowing in them the logic of communion, of service, of sharing - in other words, the logic of the Gospel,” said Pope Benedict to pilgrims in St. Peters Square on June 26.

Catholics believe that the bread and wine offered by Christ at the Last Supper literally became his body and blood - and that this same miracle is repeated by priests at every Mass since. Hence the name of today’s festivity – ‘Corpus Christi’ Sunday or ‘Body of Christ’ Sunday. 

“From the Eucharist,” observed the Pope, “the Risen Christ is truly present among his disciples and working with the power of the Holy Spirit. And in the following generations through the centuries, the Church, despite the limitations and human errors, has continued to be a force for communion throughout the world.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the Eucharist as the “source and summit” of Christian life. As the Pope bluntly put it today, “without the Eucharist, the Church simply does not exist.”

The Pope noted this belief in the centrality of the Eucharist has manifested itself throughout the history of the Church, beginning with the earliest Christian communities in Jerusalem who shared all possessions in common.

“From what came all this? From the Eucharist that is the Risen Christ, truly present among his disciples and working with the power of the Holy Spirit.”

He then drew upon the example of the fourth century Abitene martyrs from North Africa who chose to die rather than deprive themselves of Sunday Mass in the face of Roman persecution. They proclaimed “Sine Dominico non possumus’ - without the ‘Dominicum’ - without the Sunday Eucharist, we cannot live.” 

Pope Benedict concluded by urging all pilgrims to turn to the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, who was described by Pope John Paul II as the “Woman of the Eucharist.”

“At her school, our lives become fully ‘Eucharistic’, open to God and others, capable of transforming evil into good with the power of love, striving to promote unity, fellowship, brotherhood.”

Coach John Wooden on True Success

Someone Worth Dying For by MIKESCHAIR

Corpus Christi

The following comes from the Women of Faith and Family site:

The Solemnity of Corpus Christi commemorates the institution of the Holy Eucharist, paralleling Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday) commemorating Our Lord's institution of the Eucharist. Corpus Christ was introduced in the late 13th century to encourage the faithful give special honor to the institution of the Holy Eucharist to the Blessed Sacrament. The official title of this Solemnity was changed in 1970 to The Body and Blood of Christ (Latin: Sollemnitas Sanctissimi Corporis et Sanguinis Christi); and it is still on the Roman Missal’s official Calendar for the universal Church on Thursday after Trinity Sunday; however, where it is not a day of obligation (as in the United States) it is usually celebrated on the Sunday following Trinity Sunday.

Corpus Christi became a mandatory feast in the Roman Church in 1312. But nearly a century earlier, Saint Juliana of Mont Cornillon, promoted a feast to honor the Blessed Sacrament. From early age Juliana, who became an Augustinian nun in Liége, France, in 1206, had a great veneration for the Blessed Sacrament, and longed for a special feast in its honor. She had a vision of the Church under the appearance of the full moon having one dark spot, which signified the absence of such a solemnity. She made known her ideas to the Bishop of Liége, Robert de Thorete, to the Dominican Hugh who later became cardinal legate in the Netherlands, and to Jacques Panaléon, at the time Archdeacon of Liége and who later became Pope Urban IV. Bishop Robert de Thorete ordered that the feast be celebrated in his diocese.

Pope Urban IV later published the Bull Transiturus (September 8, 1264), in which, after having extolled the love of Our Savior as expressed in the Holy Eucharist, ordered the annual celebration of Corpus Christi on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. More than four decades later, Pope Clement V published a new decree which embodied Urban IV's decree and ordered the adoption of the feast at the General Council of Vienna (1311). Pope John XXII, successor of Clement V, urged this observance.

The processions on Corpus Christi to honor the Holy Eucharist were not mentioned in the decrees, but had become a principal feature of the feast's celebration by the faithfl, and became a tradition throughout Europe. These processions were endowed with indulgences by Popes Martin V and Eugene IV.

30 Years of Apparitions at Medjugorje

I found this video at In God's Company 2 and was reminded of this significant anniversary for Medjugorje!

A Miracle for Father Peyton's Cause?

The following comes from the CNA:

A possible miraculous cure attributed to Catholic media pioneer Fr. Patrick Peyton, C.S.C., could advance the beatification cause of the “Rosary Priest” known for his motto “The family that prays together, stays together.”

A tribunal based in the Diocese of Albany has investigated the alleged miracle and will forward its findings to Rome on June 28.

The details of the possible miracle cannot be shared at this point, explained Fr. John Phalen, C.S.C., president of Holy Cross Family Ministries. However, he did report that the case involves a man in his sixties who was admitted to the hospital with “life-threatening, multiple organ failure.”

“His family prayed to Father Peyton and they strongly felt that he was healed through intercessory prayer. The medical community has offered information to support this belief,” Fr. Phalen said.

The man’s family is from the Albany area and was “very well aware” of the famous local priest, said Susan Wallace, director of external relations at Holy Cross Family Ministries.

“We all love Fr. Peyton dearly. There are many people who tell me every day ‘Oh he’s a saint, he doesn’t need all that paperwork,” she told CNA on June 23.

“But it is important for us to move this forward. Any time we make any progress, we celebrate. We’re very, very pleased. We’re excited to be moving forward and meeting these milestones.”

Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany and Dr. Andrea Ambrosi, the postulator of Fr. Peyton’s cause, asked the tribunal to conduct a thorough review of all aspects of the possible miracle. The tribunal findings will be forwarded to the Congregation of the Causes of the Saints in Rome.

Bishop Hubbard will celebrate a closing liturgy for the tribunal at Albany’s St. Vincent de Paul Church at noon on June 28.

Fr. Phalen said Holy Cross Family Ministries, which Fr. Peyton founded, hears frequently from people around the world who believe they were healed by the priest’s intercession.

“Many others simply share stories of being touched by his holiness,” Fr. Phalen explained. “While they may already consider him a saint, we are all pleased to see progress in his cause.”

Wallace said Fr. Peyton’s entire ministry was rooted in the Family Rosary prayed in his home growing up.

“He knew how strong that made his family,” she said, deeming his motto about family prayer to be “still relevant and powerful.”

“There’s a great need for families to come together and pray,” she added.

Fr. Peyton emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1928 at the age of 19. Ordained to the priesthood in 1941, he founded the Family Rosary apostolate in Albany, New York the following year. He conducted Rosary crusades in 40 countries and drew 28 million attendees.

In 1947 he created Family Theater Productions, which has produced about 600 radio and television programs featuring hundreds of actors and celebrities. More than 10,000 of these programs have been broadcast.

The priest died in 1992 and was declared a Servant of God in 2001.

Holy Cross Family Ministries runs a website about Fr. Peyton and his cause for beatification at http://www.fatherpeyton.org.

This is Country Music by Brad Paisley

Fr. Robert Barron: on the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church

All Consuming Fire by Jesus Culture

Pope Benedict calls Youth to Purity

The following comes from Zenit.org:

Calling on the example of a saint renowned for his chastity, Benedict XVI today invited young people to esteem evangelical purity.

The Pope mentioned Tuesday's feast of St. Aloysius Gonzaga (1568-1591) in his customary conclusion of the general audience, when he greets youth, the sick and newlyweds.

"May the example and the intercession of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, whose memorial we celebrated yesterday, spur you on, dear young people, to esteem the virtue of evangelical purity," the Holy Father said.

"May he help you, dear sick, to face suffering by finding comfort in Christ Crucified," the Pontiff added, "and may he lead you, dear newlyweds, to an ever more profound love of God and of one another."

Pope Benedict and the Psalms

The following comes from the CNA:

The Book of Psalms can teach people how to pray and is the “prayer book ‘par excellence,’” Pope Benedict XVI said in his June 22 audience with pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square.

“These inspired songs teach us how to speak to God, expressing ourselves and the whole range of our human experience with words that God himself has given us.”

The book of psalms consists of 150 prayers traditionally ascribed to the authorship of King David.

The Pope explained that a whole range of human emotions are found in the Pslams, ranging from “joy and suffering” to the “fullness of life to fear of dying.”

“In these prayers, the Psalms are manifestations of the soul and faith, in which everyone can recognize and communicate the experience of a special closeness to God to which every man is called,” observed the Pope.

The Pope said it was significant that Jewish tradition refers to the Psalter as “Tehillim,” which means “praise” in Hebrew. This makes the Psalms “ultimately a book of praise.”

“Despite the diversity of their literary forms, the Psalms are generally marked by the two interconnected dimensions of humble petition and of praise addressed to a loving God who understands our human frailty,” he said.

But the Psalms are also quite different from the other books of the Old Testament, Pope Benedict noted. Instead of being narratives with a specific meaning or purpose, he explained, they “are given to the believer just as text for prayer.”

In fact, the Pope urged pilgrims to pray using the Psalms, suggesting that in “praying the Psalms we learn to pray. They are a school of prayer.” He explained himself by drawing an analogy with how children learn to express themselves.

A child initially “learns to express their feelings, emotions and needs with words that do not belong to him,” but instead “he learns innately from his parents and those who live around him.” Very quickly “the words become his words” and those feelings, emotions and needs of his are then duly expressed, said the Pope.

He concluded by suggesting that the Psalms ultimately point people towards Jesus.

“Many of the Psalms are attributed to David, the great King of Israel who, as the Lord’s Anointed, prefigured the Messiah. In Jesus Christ and in his paschal mystery the Psalms find their deepest meaning and prophetic fulfillment.”

“Christ himself prayed in their words. As we take up these inspired songs of praise, let us ask the Lord to teach us to pray, with him and in him, to our heavenly Father.”

This was the seventh Wednesday audience delivered by Pope Benedict on the topic of prayer. His previous theme – the lives of the saints – took two years to complete.

Two Things

Hold Me by Jamie Grace

The Edge of the Earth

The Edge of the Earth - DOCUMENTARY from Eric Dennis on Vimeo.

Fr. Robert Barron on Athiesm and Apologetic Tradition

The following comes from Real Clear Religion:
The CNN Belief Blog, which has graciously featured a few of my pieces, just celebrated its first anniversary, and for the occasion, its editors reflected on 10 things that they've learned in the course of the year. The one that got my eye was this: that atheists are by far the most fervent commentators on matters religious.

This completely coincides with my own experience as an internet commentator and blogger. Every day, my website and YouTube page are inundated with remarks, usually of a sharply negative or dismissive nature, from atheists, agnostics, and critics of religion.

In fact, some of my YouTube commentaries have been specifically targeted by atheist webmasters, who urge their followers to flood my site with "dislikes" and crude assessments of what I've said. And one of my contributions to the CNN site -- what I took to be a benign article urging Christians to pray for Christopher Hitchens -- excited literally thousands of angry responses from the haters of religion.

What do we make of this? I think we see, first, that atheists have come rather aggressively out of the closet. Following the prompts of Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Bill Maher, and many others, they have found the confidence to (excuse the word) evangelize for atheism. They are no longer content to hold on to their conviction as a private opinion; they consider religion dangerous and retrograde, and they want religious people to change their minds.

This fervor has led them, sadly, to employ a good deal of vitriolic rhetoric, but this is a free country and their advocacy for atheism should not, of course, be censored. But it should be a wake-up call to all of my fellow religionists. We have a fight on our hands, and we have to be prepared, intellectually and morally, to get into the arena.

Most of the new atheists employ variations of the classical arguments of Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, namely, that religion is a pathetic projection born of suffering, that it is an infantile illusion, that it is de-humanizing, etc.

How well do Christians know the theories of our intellectual enemies? Can we identify their blind-spots and the flaws in their logic? Have we read the great Christian apologists -- G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Ronald Knox, Fulton Sheen -- and can we wield their arguments against those who are coming at us?

In my own Catholic Church, we sadly jettisoned much of our rich apologetic tradition in the years after Vatican II, convinced that it would be better to reach out positively to the culture. Well, at least part of that culture has turned pretty hostile, and it is high time to recover the intellectual weapons that we set aside.

Today's atheists also eagerly use the findings of contemporary science -- especially in evolutionary biology and quantum physics -- to undermine the claims of religion. Are the advocates of the faith ready to meet that challenge? How carefully have we read the scientific critics? And have we bothered to study the works of such deeply religious scientists as Fr. John Polkinghorne, Fr. George Coyne, Fr. Stanley Jaki, and Fr. Georges Le Maitre, colleague of Einstein and the formulator of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins?

We shouldn't imitate the Internet atheists in their nastiness, but we should certainly imitate them in our willingness to come forward boldly and showing some intellectual teeth. But the fierce and vocal presence of so many atheists on the CNN Belief Blog and so many other religious sites also speaks to what I call the Herod Principle.

The Gospels tell us that Herod Antipas arrested John the Baptist because the prophet had publicly challenged the King. Herod threw John into prison but then, we are told, the King loved secretly to listen to the prophet, who continued to preach from his cell.

St. Augustine formulated an adage that beautifully sums up the essentials of Christian anthropology: "O Lord, you have made us for yourself; therefore our hearts are restless until they rest in you." A basic assumption of Biblical people is that everyone is hard-wired for God in the measure that everyone seeks a fulfillment that cannot be had through any of the goods of this world. Long before Augustine, the psalmist prayed, "only in God is my soul at rest."

My wager, as a person of faith, is that everyone -- at that includes Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher, and Richard Dawkins -- implicitly wants God and hence remains permanently fascinated by the things of God. Though the fierce atheists of today profess that they would like to eliminate religious speech and religious ideas, secretly they love to listen as people speak of God. This goes a long way, it seems to me, toward explaining their presence in great numbers on religious blogs.

So I say to Christians and other believers: be ready for a good fight, and get some spiritual weapons in your hands. And I say to the atheists: I'll keep talking -- because I know, despite all of your protestations and sputtering, that your hearts are listening.

The Redeemer by Sanctus Real

Pope Benedict: Love within the Trinity overflows into forgiveness for man

The following comes from the CNA:

The love that exists within the Holy Trinity overflows into love and forgiveness for man, as shown by Christ’s death on the cross. That was the message of Pope Benedict XVI in his Trinity Sunday sermon during his visit to the tiny European state of San Marino June 19.

“So, in the mystery of the cross, there are three Divine Persons,” he told the 25,000 strong congregation at the country’s Serravalle Stadium.

“The Father, who gave his only begotten Son for the salvation of the world, the Son, who carries out the will of the Father to the very end and the Holy Spirit - poured out by Jesus at the moment of his death - who comes to render us participants in divine life, to transform our lives, so that our lives are animated by divine love.”

San Marino is situated in the north-eastern part of the Italian peninsula and is one of just three independent states in the world to be completely surrounded by another country, in this case Italy. It has a population of only 30,000. Pope John Paul II also visited San Marino back in 1982. That visit was for just one day, as is Pope Benedict’s today.

“The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one, because God is love: the Father gives everything to the Son, the Son receives everything from the Father with gratitude, and the Holy Spirit is like the fruit of this mutual love between the Father and Son,” said the Pope describing the Holy Trinity – the Christian proposition that God is three persons but one divine nature - as the “first and greatest mystery of our faith.”

To illustrate the Holy Trinity’s mercy for man, the Pope drew upon the first Bible passage read at today’s Mass. It recounted the disobedience of the Jewish people who, after being led out of slavery in Egypt by Moses, wanted a golden idol instead of God.

“All seems lost, all friendship broken,” said the Pope.

“Yet, despite having committed the gravest of sins, God, through the intercession of Moses, decides to forgive His people and calls Moses to ascend the mountain once more to receive His law, the Ten Commandments.”

God then describes himself to Moses as “a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” In these words, said the Pope, “there can be no clearer revelation” of the Trinity’s benevolence towards man.

“We have a God who renounces the destruction of the sinner and wants to show His love in an even more profound and surprising way right in front of the sinner in order to always offer the possibility of conversion and forgiveness.”

The culmination of this divine offer said the Pope, drawing upon today’s Gospel reading, is the incarnation of God-made-man in the person of Jesus Christ.

“The evangelist John refers to this statement of Jesus: ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life’.”

So while some may presume a God who would “come to judge the world, to destroy evil, to punish those who work in darkness” instead, said the Pope, “He shows He loves the world, He loves man, despite his sinfulness, and sends what is His most precious possession: His only begotten Son.”

San Marino claims to be the oldest surviving sovereign state and constitutional republic in the world. It was founded in the early 4th century by two missionaries, Marino and Leo, who were fleeing anti-Christian persecution in what is now Croatia.

The Pope noted how “Marino and Leo with their faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ, brought new perspectives and values to the local context, resulting in the birth of a culture and a civilization centered on the human person.”
And he urged the people of St. Marino to stay true to the ancient Christian faith of Marion and Leo.

“The temptation has crept in to believe that the wealth of man is not the faith, but his personal and social power, his intelligence, his culture and his ability to manipulate scientific, technological and social realities.”

“Thus, in these lands, the Christian faith and values have begun to be replaced ​​with a presumed wealth, which in the end reveals itself inconsistent and incapable of containing the great promise of truth, goodness, of beauty and justice, which for centuries your ancestors identified with the experience of faith.”

Later on today the Pope will venerate the relics of St. Marino at the local cathedral before travelling back into Italy for a meeting with young people in the nearby town of Pennabili. He’ll then return to the Vatican by helicopter tonight.

Fr. Robert Barron: On Eucharistic Adoration

Move by MercyMe

Saint of the day: Romuald

The following comes from the Catholic Online site:

St. Romuald was born at Ravenna about the year 956. In spite of an infinite desire for virtue and sanctity, his early life was wasted in the service of the world and its pleasures. Then one day, obliged by his father, Sergius, to be present at a duel fought by him, he beheld him slay his adversary. The crime made such an impression upon him that he determined to expiate it for forty days, as though it were entirely his own. For this purpose he retired to a Benedictine monastery of St. Apollinare, near Ravenna, where he became Abbot. After founding several monasteries, he laid the foundations of the austere Order of Camaldoli in Tuscany. Like all the saints, he fought a lifelong battle against the assaults of devils and men. In the beginning of his spiritual life he was strongly assailed by numerous temptations, which he conquered by vigilance and prayer. More than one attempt was made on his life, but Divine Providence enabled him to escape from the danger. Like many servants of God, he also became the victim of calumny, which he bore in patience and silence. In his old age, he increased his austerities instead of diminishing them. After a long life of merit, he died in the monastery of Castro, which he founded in Marquisate of Ancona. His death occurred on June 19, about the year 1027. His feast day is June 19th.

Trinity Sunday

The voice of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, Carmelite and Mystic (Via Living Scripture):

I penetrate ever more deeply in this profundity. There is where the solitude resides in which God wants to attract the soul to speak to it, as the prophet sang. In order to understand this word full of mystery, we must not stop so to say, at the superficial. Instead, we need to go deeper into the divine Being through recollection. We must allow ourselves to slide down the slope with a confidence full of love.

Fr. Robert Barron: on the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church

Saint of the day: Jude Thaddaeus

Today is the Fest of St. Jude Thaddaeus in the Eastern Church. The following comes from the Catholic Online site:

St. Jude, known as Thaddaeus, was a brother of St. James the Less, and a relative of Our Saviour. St. Jude was one of the 12 Apostles of Jesus.

Ancient writers tell us that he preached the Gospel in Judea, Samaria, Idumaea, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Lybia. According to Eusebius, he returned to Jerusalem in the year 62, and assisted at the election of his brother, St. Simeon, as Bishop of Jerusalem.

He is an author of an epistle (letter) to the Churches of the East, particularly the Jewish converts, directed against the heresies of the Simonians, Nicolaites, and Gnostics. This Apostle is said to have suffered martyrdom in Armenia, which was then subject to Persia. The final conversion of the Armenian nation to Christianity did not take place until the third century of our era.

Jude was the one who asked Jesus at the Last Supper why He would not manifest Himself to the whole world after His resurrection. Little else is known of his life. Legend claims that he visited Beirut and Edessa; possibly martyred with St. Simon in Persia.

Jude is invoked in desperate situations because his New Testament letter stresses that the faithful should persevere in the environment of harsh, difficult circumstances, just as their forefathers had done before them. Therefore, he is the patron saint of desperate cases and his feast day is October 28. Saint Jude is not the same person as Judas Iscariot who betrayed Our Lord and despaired because of his great sin and lack of trust in God's mercy.

Hold Me Together by Royal Tailor

Fr. Robert Barron: Answering the Skeptics Part 6

Andrew Jackson and Our Lady of Prompt Succor

The following comes from the American Catholic site:

When one thinks of Andrew Jackson, Our Lady of Prompt Succor and the Ursuline nuns do not spring to mind, but they should.

In 1814 the War of 1812 was going badly for the United States. With the abdication of Napoleon, hordes of British veteran troops were sent across the Atlantic to teach the Yankees a lesson. The burning of Washington in August 1814 was part of the lesson, and the American government had intelligence that a mighty British fleet and army were on their way to seize New Orleans. In August 1814 a British fleet established a base, with the consent of the Spanish government, at Pensacola, Florida, and used it to supply Indians hostile to the US. On November 7, 1814, Jackson seized Pensacola, chased the British troops out and destroyed the fortifications. The British fleet sailed off and Jackson marched to New Orleans. Jackson arrived at New Orleans with his rough frontier army of militia and regulars on December 2, 1814. Space in a blog post does not allow me to detail the very interesting moves and counter-moves of the British commander General Edward Pakenham, brother in law of the Duke of Wellington and a peninsular war veteran, and Jackson. Suffice it to say that at the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815, Jackson and his men, heavily out-numbered, handed the British the most lopsided defeat in their history, inflicting a little over 2000 casualties, including the slain General Pakenham, in exchange for 71 American casualties.


The Battle of New Orleans is sometimes called a useless battle because it was fought before news of the treaty of Ghent ending the war, which had been signed on December 24, 1814, reached America. This view is erroneous. The battle was a shot in the arm to American morale after a lack-lustre war, ensured that the British would abide by the terms of the treaty and not attempt to retain a captured New Orleans, and gave the British something to ponder on the few occasions during the nineteenth century when America and Britain again came close to war.


That a force of around 4,000, most of them relatively untrained militia, could hand a British army of 11,000 well-trained veteran regulars such a defeat has long been thought to be a military miracle. Perhaps the term “miracle” is the correct one to use. The night before the battle, at the Ursuline Chapel in the Ursuline Convent in New Orleans, the nuns, joined by many of the faithful in New Orleans, prayed throughout the night for an American victory.

On the morning of January 8, 1815, Mass was said at the altar on which a statue of Our Lady of Succor had been placed. The Prioress of the Convent, Mother Marie Olivier de Vezin made a vow to have an annual Mass of Thanksgiving said if victory was granted to the Americans. At the moment of communion, a courier ran into the chapel announcing the American victory. After the battle Old Hickory came to the convent to thank the nuns for their prayers. “By the blessing of heaven, directing the valor of the troops under my command, one of the most brilliant victories in the annals of war was obtained.” In after years, whenever Jackson visited New Orleans, he always made a point of also visiting the Ursuline Covent. The Mass of Thanksgiving has been faithfully observed each year since 1815 by the Ursulines.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen interviews Pastor Wurmbrand

Fulton Sheen interviews Pastor Wurmbrand from Schwarz Report on Vimeo.

The following comes from Wikipedia:

Richard Wurmbrand (March 24, 1909 – February 17, 2001) was a Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent. He was a youth during a time of anti-Semitic activity in Romania, but it was later, after becoming a believer in Jesus Christ as Messiah, and daring to publicly say that Communism and Christianity were not compatible, that he experienced imprisonment and torture for his beliefs. After serving five years of a second prison sentence, he was ransomed for $10,000. His colleagues in Romania urged him to leave the country and work for religious freedom from a location less personally dangerous. After spending time in Norway and England, he and his wife Sabina, who had also been imprisoned, emigrated to America and dedicated the rest of their lives to publicizing and helping Christians who are persecuted for their beliefs. He wrote more than 18 books, the most widely known isTortured for Christ. Various of his works have been translated into more than 60 languages. He founded the international organization Voice of the Martyrs, which continues to aid Christians around the world who are persecuted for their faith.

Saint of the day: Albert Chmielowski

The following comes from the Patron Saints Index:

Born to a wealthy aristocratic family, he initially studied agriculture in order to manage the family estate. Involved in politics from his youth, he lost a leg at age 17 when injured while fighting in an insurrection. In Krakow, he became a popular, well-known and well-liked artist. His interest in politics and art made him keenly aware of the human misery around him. A gentle and compassionate soul, he felt called to help those in need. After years of reflection, he understood that this desire was how God was calling him to service and Himself.

Franciscan tertiary, taking the name Albert. He abandoned painting, and began a life of working with and for the poorest of Krakow. In 1887 he founded the Brothers of the Third Order of Saint Francis, Servants of the Poor, known as the Albertines (named for him) or the Gray Brothers (after their rough gray habits). In 1891 he founded the women's congregation of the Order (Gray Sisters). The Albertines organized food and shelter for the poor and homeless.

Albert preached that the great calamity of our time was that so many refused to see and voluntarily relieve the suffering of their miserable brothers and sisters. The "haves" lived away from the "have-nots" in order to ignore them and leave their care to others.

In 1949, Pope John Paul II wrote a well-received play about Albert; the work was filmed in 1997, released as Brother of Our God. Albert was the spiritual teacher of Blessed Maria Bernardina Jablonska.

Fr. Robert Barron: Answering the Skeptics Part 5

I Lift My Hands by Chris Tomlin

Pope Benedict: Reach out to fallen away Catholics

The following comes from Zenit.org:

The biggest challenge for the Church today, above all in countries with deep Christian roots, is to reintroduce the beauty of Christianity to those who consider it an obstacle to happiness, says Benedict XVI. 

The Pope said this Monday at the Basilica of St. John Lateran when he addressed the opening session of Rome's 2011 Diocesan Convention, which is under way through Thursday.

The diocesan convention concludes the pastoral year of the Diocese of Rome. The theme of the meeting is "The Joy of Nurturing Faith in the Church of Rome -- Christian Initiation."

In his address, the Holy Father reflected that drawing close to those who have fallen away from the faith has become "especially urgent today," and that the Church needs "a new evangelization addressed to all those who, although they have heard talk of the faith, no longer appreciate, no longer know the beauty of Christianity; on the contrary, at times they even view it as an obstacle to achieving happiness."

In the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome, which was filled to capacity, Benedict XVI quoted a letter addressed personally to him from theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988): "Faith must never be presupposed but proposed."

"This is just how it is," the Pope stated. "Faith is not kept by itself in the world, it is not automatically passed on to the human heart, but must always be proclaimed."

The Holy Father added that if "the proclamation of faith is to be effective it must stem in turn from a heart that believes and loves, a heart that adores Christ and believes in the power of the Holy Spirit!"

"If people forget God," he continued, "it is partly because the Person of Jesus is often reduced to that of the figure of a wise man and his divinity weakened, if not denied."

Benedict XVI noted that thinking of Christ with only "human ideas" is an "obstacle to understanding the radical newness of Christianity."

"Therefore," he stated, "may there be a growing commitment to a renewed season of evangelization, which is not only the task of some of the members of the Church but rather of them all."

The Pope said that mission of evangelization that the Church must carry out is "to proclaim the newness of the Gospel," to "show the beauty and reasonableness of faith," and to "carry God's light to the people of our time, with courage, with conviction, with joy."

"There are many people who have not encountered the Lord," the Holy Father added. "Special pastoral care should be dedicated to them."

"Beside the children and young people of Christian families who ask to begin the process of Christian initiation," he continued, "there are adults who have not received baptism or who have drifted away from the faith and from the Church. This pastoral attention is especially urgent today and asks us to commit ourselves with confidence, sustained by the certainty that God's grace works in the human heart today too."

Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity: Prayer to the Trinity

O my God, Trinity whom I adore; help me to forget myself entirely that I may be established in You as still and as peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity. May nothing trouble my peace or make me leave You, O my Unchanging One, but may each minute carry me further into the depths of Your mystery. Give peace to my soul; make it Your heaven, Your beloved dwelling and Your resting place. May I never leave You there alone but be wholly present, my faith wholly vigilant, wholly adoring, and wholly surrendered to Your creative Action.

O my beloved Christ, crucified by love, I wish to be a bride for Your Heart; I wish to cover You with glory; I wish to love You...even unto death! But I feel my weakness, and I ask You to "clothe me with Yourself," to identify my soul with all the movements of Your Soul, to overwhelm me, to possess me, to substitute yourself for me that my life may be but a radiance of Your Life. Come into me as Adorer, as Restorer, as Savior.

O Eternal Word, Word of my God, I want to spend my life in listening to You, to become wholly teachable that I may learn all from You. Then, through all nights, all voids, all helplessness, I want to gaze on You always and remain in Your great light. O my beloved Star, so fascinate me that I may not withdraw from Your radiance.

O consuming Fire, Spirit of Love, "come upon me," and create in my soul a kind of incarnation of the Word: that I may be another humanity for Him in which He can renew His whole Mystery. And You, O Father, bend lovingly over Your poor little crature; "cover her with Your shadow," seeing in her only the "Beloved in whom You are well pleased."

O my Three, my All, my Beatitude, infinite Solitude, Immensity in which I lose myself, I surrender myself to You as Your prey. Bury Yourself in me that I may bury myself in You until I depart to contemplate in Your light the abyss of Your greatness.

Fr. Robert Barron: Answering the Skeptics Part 4

Pope Benedict: Without God, man falls into idolatry

The following comes from the CNA:

“When God disappears, man falls into the slavery of idolatry,” Pope Benedict XVI said at the June 15 General Audience in St. Peter’s Square.

This phenomenon, he said, is clearly “shown by the totalitarian regimes of our time and with various forms of nihilism, which make man dependent on idols and idolatry, which enslave.”

The Pope said that this “seduction” of “the illusion of being able to ‘serve two masters’” has been a “constant temptation to believers” throughout salvation history.

To make his case, Pope Benedict drew upon the Old Testament story of the prophet Elijah. He lived in the kingdom of Israel in the 9th century B.C. , during a time of famine. As a result, King Ahab and most people worshiped both God and the idol Baal who, they believed, brought life and fertility to both humanity and nature.

“While claiming to follow the Lord, God, invisible and mysterious, people also sought safety in a god who was understandable and predictable,” the Pope observed.

In response to Israel’s divided allegiance to God, Elijah proposed a contest to be held on Mount Carmel. Two altars were built on top of the mountain and Elijah challenged the priests of Baal to bring down fire upon the prepared sacrifice. The rival priests resort to even spilling their own blood to convince Baal to send fire, but to no effect.

Elijah then ordered that the altar to God be drenched with water three times and asked him to accept the sacrifice. Fire fell from the sky, and Elijah prayed intently for rain to fall to end the famine.

“In response to Elijah’s prayer, God reveals his fidelity, mercy and saving power through the consuming fire sent down from heaven. He also enables the people to turn back to him and to reaffirm the covenant made with their fathers,” said the Pope.

The story of Elijah, he said, should also remind people to pray for the conversion of others.

“As we look to Elijah’s example, let us be ever more convinced of the power of intercessory prayer, so that we can help all people to know the one true God, to turn away from every form of idolatry, and to receive the grace offered to us on the wood of the Cross and in the fire of the Holy Spirit.”

This was the sixth Wednesday audience delivered by Pope Benedict on the topic of prayer. His previous theme – the lives of the saints – took two years to complete.

Pope Benedict: New evangelization must begin with the heart

The following comes from the CNA:

The effort to renew the evangelization of mankind begins in the human heart, Pope Benedict XVI told the clergy, religious and laity of the Diocese of Rome, June 13.

“To be effective the proclamation of faith must begin with a heart that believes, hopes, loves, a heart that loves Christ and believes in the power of the Holy Spirit!” the Pope told those gathered at St. John Lateran Cathedral for the Rome diocese’s annual convention.

The Pope pointed to how St. Peter’s proclamationof Jesus’ resurrection at Pentecost was “not confined to a simple list of facts” but “cut to the heart” of those who heard him.

“The resurrection of Jesus was able and is able to illuminate human existence. In fact, this event has seen a new understanding of the dignity of man and his eternal destiny.”

Mindful of his responsibility to lead the 2.5 million Catholics in the Diocese of Rome, Pope Benedict told those in St. John Lateran that there was a real danger to the health of the Church if it downplays the divinity of Jesus Christ.

“If people forget God it is also because the person of Jesus is often reduced to that of a wise man and his divinity is weakened, if not denied. This way of thinking prevents people from grasping the radical novelty of Christianity, because if Jesus is not the only Son of the Father, then God never came to visit the history of man.”

This message was crucial to renewing Christianity within the ancient See of Rome, the Pope recalled, saying it is “the task not only of some, but all members of the Church” to proclaim it.

“In this hour of history, is this not the mission that God entrusts to us: to announce the permanent newness of the Gospel, as Peter and Paul did when they came to our city? Do we not also need to show the beauty and the reasonableness of faith, bringing the light of God to man in our time, with courage, conviction, and joy?”

He particularly urged that the teaching of the Christian faith – known as catechesis – be undertaken not only with children and young people but also with “adults who have not received baptism, or who distanced themselves from the faith and the Church.”

The consequence of people lacking such an intellectual and spiritual formation is that they can sometimes acquire a distorted view of Jesus Christ and Christianity.

Such people “do not know the beauty of Christianity, indeed, sometimes they even consider it an obstacle to happiness,” Pope Benedict said.

He finished his address by urging all present to pray to his predecessor Blessed Pope John Paul II, “who until his last strove to preach the gospel in our city and loved its young people with particular affection.”

Fr. Robert Barron: Answering the Skeptics Part 3

New Media: A re-focus of online efforts in the Church needed?

What are the trends regarding Catholicism and the internet? The post by Christopher Kerzich at Fr. Robert Barron's site. The following comes from the Word on Fire blog:

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) recently published an interesting blog post exploring the question Is Interest in Catholicism falling online? The Georgetown University center explored the frequency that the word “Catholic” was searched from 2004 to 2011 in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia as well as its translated variants in Germany, France, Italy and Brazil. This researche is based primarily on statistics derived from Google Insight, the search engine’s measure for determining the frequency words are searched on the site. Through this research CARA reveals “some new and perhaps disturbing evidence about the intersection (or lack thereof) of faith and new media.” Despite significant search increases around the death of Blessed John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI there is a downward trend in the term being searched. These statistics lead to a general pattern, “searches for anything Catholic reach a low point each summer and peak in two weeks each year—weeks for Ash Wednesday and Christmas.” These trends must be explored to more fully understand their impact on internet evangelization as well as determining how Catholics gain information about their faith via the internet.

Obviously, Google is the most popular search engines to date and dominates the volume of searches on the internet; thus, this is an appropriate vehicle to research the frequency a term is searched. Obviously, the difficulty with using Google Insight is determining how many of the people searching the term “Catholic” are actually Catholics. Therefore, one must also look into the general behaviors of Catholics online to answer whether or not they heavily use the internet as a primary avenue for growing in knowledge about their faith or simply to find the times for Sunday Mass? To better understand these behaviors one can look to the Pew Internet and American Life Project's study Faith Online. According to the study, only 20% of Catholics seek information online about their own religion compared to Protestants (30%) and Evangelicals (36%). Additionally, Protestants (60%) and Evangelical Protestants (69%) are more likely than Catholics (51%) to “use the internet for personal religious and spiritual purposes.” In the realm of finding religion news online Catholics (32%) are closer to Protestants (35%) but differ greatly from Evangelicals (41%). Therefore, CARA’s observation seems to be correct that Catholics are less likely to use the internet for religious purposes, and possibly only for finding Mass times as seen by the increased searches around Ash Wednesday and Christmas. The Pew study not only looked at how each group uses the internet for religious purposes but also explored each group’s overall internet usage. The study concludes, “Protestants (both overall and the Evangelical subgroup) to be lighter Internet users than Catholics.” Interestingly, Catholics as a group who frequently use the internet are less likely to use this tool for enhancing their understanding of Catholicism.

How can we interpret the fact that Catholics are using the internet but are less likely to use it for religious purposes? In one sense this is problematic in that an effective tool for learning and communicating (the internet) is not adequately being used for evangelization and catechesis. Additionally, substantive internet evangelization efforts may go unused by Catholics because they may not know about them or their local parish web site does not promote these efforts. It seems one consequence of this missed opportunity can be seen through the lens of the 2010 Pew Research Center’s U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey. The study presented members of mainline religious groups and “movements” a survey “about their own faiths and about other religions.” The study concluded, “Atheists and Agnostics (averaging 20.9 correct answers), Mormons (20.3) and Jews (20.5) perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education.” One could more plainly see the effect of this missed opportunity for catechesis when the study reports Catholics as a whole performed worse on the survey, answering only 14.7 questions correctly.

CARA concludes its post by posing an interesting question, “Do we need a Catholic YouTube? No. Do we need Catholics on YouTube? Yes.” This seems to be a call for using existing new media arenas for spreading the Gospel, something not foreign to Word on Fire. Thus, the overarching message emanating from these studies is the need for focused efforts for engaging, educating and bringing people to Christ and his Church via the internet. How can Catholics practically engage these new technologies for spreading the truth?

First, there needs to be a refocused effort to enhance Catholic web sites to used them as tools for evangelization and catechesis. Many parish web sites today simply provide information about Mass times and parish events, but do not provide tools for evangelizing their local community and catechizing parishioners. How often do web sites or promotional materials of Catholic institutions lack any information about the tenants of Catholicism or the teachings of Jesus Christ? As CARA points out the utilitarian nature of many Catholic web sites results in a situation where, “Catholics appear to use the Internet in a very utilitarian fashion—either for looking up Mass times or looking for a Catholic charity after a disaster.”


Second, websites and social media venues need to be used to more fully communicate Catholicism’s vibrancy. As the Pew Research Center points out “64% of the nation’s Internet users have done things online that relate to religious or spiritual matters.” Thus, if parishes and Catholic organizations are not present on the internet or if they present an antiquated image of their community, what incentive does one have to engage that community? Positive examples of parishes that have dedicated resources to not only simplify and visually enhance their websites but also to use the sites as tools for evangelization can be found here, here, and here. A refocus and simplification of parish websites not only increases website traffic but can also lead to new inquiries by people looking to join a parish.

Third, not only are many Catholic websites visually unappealing but they often provide out-dated information. I experienced this reality one sub-zero winter morning after pounding on a church trying to get in for what their web site incorrectly communicated was a 8:30am daily Mass. After learning that Mass time was canceled years prior but the website was never updated to reflect the change, I came to realize the breath of this situation facing many Catholics today.

It is clear from these studies Catholics should use these technologies for spreading the Gospel, bringing people to Christ and communicating the vibrancy of Holy Mother Church. Let us pray for the intercession of Blessed John Paul II and follow the challenge in his final Apostolic Letter, The Rapid Development, “Do not be afraid of new technologies - which God has placed at our disposal to discover, to use and to make known the truth.”

Christopher Kerzich is an intern at Word on Fire and a second-year theologian at Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois.

Courageous by Casting Crowns

St. Alphonsus Liguori on Attaining Perfection

Hat tip to the Sinners Guide on this one:

Maxims for Attaining Perfection by Saint Alphonsus Liguori

1. To desire ardently to increase in the love of Jesus Christ.
2. Often to make acts of love towards Jesus Christ. Immediately on waking, and before going to sleep, to make an act of love, seeking always to unite your own will to the will of Jesus Christ.
3. Often to meditate on his Passion.
4. Always to ask Jesus Christ for his love.
5. To communicate often, and many times in the day to make spiritual Communions.
6. Often to visit the Most Holy Sacrament.
7. Every morning to receive from the hands of Jesus Christ himself your own cross.
8. To desire Paradise and death, in order to be able to love Jesus Christ perfectly and for all eternity.
9. Often to speak of the love of Jesus Christ.
10. To accept contradictions for the sake of Jesus Christ.
11. To rejoice in the happiness of God.
12. To do that which is most pleasing to Jesus Christ, and not to refuse him anything that is agreeable to him.
13. To desire and to endeavor that all should love Jesus Christ.
14. To pray always for sinners and for the souls in purgatory.
15. To drive from your heart every affection that does not belong to Jesus Christ.
16. Always to have recourse to the most holy Mary, that she may obtain for us the love of Jesus Christ.
17. To honor Mary in order to please Jesus Christ.
18. To seek to please Jesus Christ in all your actions,
19. To offer yourself to Jesus Christ to suffer any pain for his love.
20 To be always determined to die rather than commit a willful venial sin.
27. To suffer crosses patiently, saying, “Thus it pleases Jesus Christ.”
22. To renounce your own pleasures for the love of Jesus Christ.
23. To pray as much as possible.
24. To practice all the mortifications that obedience permits.
25. To do all your spiritual exercises as if it were for the last time.
26. To persevere in good works in the time of aridity.
27. Not to do nor yet to leave undone anything through human respect.
28. Not to complain in sickness.
29. To love solitude, to be able to converse alone with Jesus Christ.
30. To drive away melancholy [i.e. gloom].
37. Often to recommend yourself to those persons who love Jesus Christ.
32. In temptation, to have recourse to Jesus crucified, and to Mary in her sorrows.
33. To trust entirely in the Passion of Jesus Christ.
34. After committing a fault, not to be discouraged, but to repent and resolve to amend.
35. To do good to those who do evil.
36. To speak well of all, and to excuse the intention when you cannot defend the action.
37. To help your neighbor as much as you can.
38. Neither to say nor to do anything that might vex him. And if you have been wanting in charity, to ask his pardon and speak kindly to him.
39. Always to speak with mildness and in a low tone.
40. To offer to Jesus Christ all the contempt and persecution that you meet with.
41. To look upon [religious] Superiors as the representatives of Jesus Christ.
42. To obey without answering and without repugnance, and not to seek your own satisfaction in anything.
43. To like the lowest employment.
44. To like the poorest things.
45. Not to speak either good or evil of yourself.
46. To humble yourself even towards inferiors.
47. Not to excuse yourself when you are reproved.
48. Not to defend yourself when found fault with.
49. To be silent when you are disquieted [i.e. upset].
50. Always to renew your determination of becoming a saint, saying, “My Jesus, I desire to be all Yours, and You must be all mine.