Beauty, chant bring life to monastery

The Mystery of the Holy Trinity

The following comes from Fr. Ray Blake:

In some parishes Trinity Sunday was the time to give a financial report, anything rather than preach on the Most Holy Trinity. The problem is of course that too many Catholics think of the Trinity in terms of algebra or geometry rather than in terms of relationships.

Muslims love to debate with Christians God in terms of  the 1+1+1=1 approach, they are less comfortable with the idea of the God who loves to point of emptying himself of His Divinity to embrace His creation, indeed to dwell within it and suffer with it.

The high point of our prayer is always the doxology, when we address the Father, through the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Indeed when we look at a crucifix we are supposed to, in a sense look through it to the Father, the high point of the Eucharistic prayer is the priest taking up the Sacred Host and addressing the Father saying, "Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour is yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever. Amen."

Although popular devotion might address individual persons of the Trinity, the Church's liturgy, with a few notable exceptions is addressed to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.

The Son is perfect icon of the Father, in His humanity we see revelation of the Father. Perhaps the worst sermon I ever heard on the Trinity was basically, "The Trinity is a mystery we can't comprehend, so let us get on with the Mass!". It was the worst but yet it was also the best, because the Triune God is always mysterious and unknowable, and yet He is revealed totally in the Mass, through the Son, in the Spirit.

True worship always leads us to contemplate the God who is always beyond us, the God who in the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets fall on their faces and worship.

Practically at every Mass I have celebrated over the thirty years I have been ordained I have felt the need 'to break the bread of the word', to preach, except at the Traditional Mass, where all I want to do is adore the Father through the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. I am beginning to believe that if the Word of God does not lead us to worship there is something wrong in its presentation, and if the Mass does not lead us to fall on our knees to be fed by God there is something wrong here too.

Contemplating the Mystery of the Trinity should lead us to be lost in the immensity and beauty of God, realising his greatness and our nothingness, desiring only to abandon ourselves to Him and crying out with Christ, "Father into your hands I commend Spirit".

If this realisation is not the result of worship, perhaps we are not worshipping at all!

Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso, est tibi Deo Patri omnipotenti, in unitate Spiritus Sancti, omnis honor et gloria per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen

Misa Criolla (A Favorite of Pope Francis)

Scott Hahn: The Hour Is Coming

Archbishop Aquila: How Catholic feasts are different

The following comes from the Denver Catholic Register:

The Church has just celebrated the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of Guadalupe’s feast day is on Dec. 12, and we are quickly approaching Christmas. The liturgical year is filled with celebrations, but do we really understand how Catholic feasts are more than religious parties?

It is easy to treat Christmas or other liturgical feasts as only a celebration of Mass, food, family and gifts, so this week I am going to discuss the Catholic understanding of celebrating feast days. I hope that all who read this column will become more engaged in Advent and usher in Christmas with a deeper joy. 

The word “holiday” comes from the Old English expression hālig doeg, which means “holy day.” But over the years it has come to mean anything from taking a vacation to having a day off work. 

The Christian and Jewish understanding of holiday has a deeper meaning and history. It comes from the very first one, which God established when he rested on the seventh day of creation and “hallowed” it, meaning, he set it aside for spiritual purposes. Following God the Father’s example, this is what we do when we celebrate the feast days of saints and events in the life of Christ. 

In the life of the Church, there are three important dimensions to our celebrations that I want to share with you to deepen your joy and your experience, especially at Christmas and Easter.

The first aspect has to do with the message of a feast. You might think of feasts as events that punctuate the calendar year and are filled with food and friends, but faith sees them differently. Before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote about this in his book, “Seeking the Face of God.” Feasts, he said, are an “expression of God’s inexhaustible love, of which we are made aware by an act of memory.” In other words, when we celebrate a feast, we recall the event that tells us of God’s love and immerse ourselves in it as a community or family. We remember God’s miraculous work, connect ourselves to it, and experience the effects of that grace together. 

A second quality of feasts is that they recalibrate our perception of what matters by drawing us out of our everyday existence. When we celebrate holy days, we recall the past events, words and miracles of God, but we also turn our hearts and minds to our future. Doing this reminds us that God loves us, and points us to our ultimate goal in life—living in intimate communion with him forever in heaven. 

In his book “Dogma and Preaching,” Cardinal Ratzinger expressed this dimension of feasts beautifully. He wrote, “It means that for the moment he is freed from the stern logic of the struggle for existence and looks beyond his own narrow world to the totality of things. It means that he allows himself to be comforted, allows his conscience to be moved by the love he finds in the God who has become a child, and that in doing so he becomes freer, richer, purer. If we were to try celebrating in this fashion, would not a sigh of relief pass across the world?”

Finally, feast days should be moments of genuine joy. When we celebrate the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the birth of Jesus, Christ’s death and Resurrection or the life of a saint, we are filled with joy because we know through faith that we have been freed from sin and death. All of these moments that we observe throughout the year point to the same fundamental truth: God has freed us from sin and death through his son, Jesus. He has liberated St. Joseph, Mary, St. Francis, St. Frances Cabrini, St. John Paul II, countless unnamed saints, and you and me!

As you prepare for Christmas this Advent, keep in mind the three dimensions of feasts. They are an experience of God’s unfailing love for us, a moment of reorientation to what matters in life, and a time of profound joy.

It is easy to fall into treating holy days as celebrations of material things—a feast for the sake of enjoying ourselves—but this will not satisfy us. When we forget God and the reasons why we celebrate, we begin to lose our joy, our understanding of our purpose in life and our ability to share God’s love with others. When we keep the eyes of our hearts fixed on God’s particular love for us, our hearts are filled with joy. 

May we all enter into this Advent time of preparation with a renewed sense of why we celebrate and experience the lasting joy of Christmas!

A Biblical Walk Through the Mass

Dr. Scott Hahn: Liturgical Worship as Spiritual Warfare

Getting the most out of Holy Mass

Hat tip to the Aggie Catholic on this one:

Q - Mass can be boring. How can I go to Mass and get more out of it?

A - Thanks for your question. First off, I will tell you that your question is all too common. Many people go to Mass with the expectation that they are supposed to "get" a lot out of it. Yet, many don't put much of themselves into it. So, it is very dependent on what kind of changes you are willing to make in your efforts before, during and after Mass.

Let me give you eight pointers that have helped me in the past:

1 - Properly prepare for Mass. 

• Read and study the readings before you go to Mass, and then listen to them (don't read along) while The Word is proclaimed. You can find the Sunday readings here.
• Study the Church's teachings. The more you know about Christ and His Church, the more there is to love. - You can't love what you don't know.
• Go to Confession regularly. This will help prepare you spiritually.
• Pray daily. This too will help your spiritual prep.
• Dress appropriately. You are going to meet the King of Kings. Don't dress the same as you would for a lunch date or class. Make it special.
• Get there early and sit up front. Less distractions and more time for prayer before Mass.
• Once inside, don't talk or people-watch...pray.

2 - Make sure your attitude is adjusted properly

• Don't expect to be entertained. It isn't as much about what God is doing for you, but what you are doing to worship God.
• Look for God in every part of the Mass.
• Don't allow mistakes to distract you.
• Find one nugget in the preaching to take home with you.

3 - Participate

• Sing. Sing loud, even if your voice is bad.
• Respond and pray with gusto. Give it all to God and don't worry about others.
• Remember that this isn't about being social.
• Offer your pain, sufferings, joys and prayers to God.

4 -Listen to the Word and be open to it changing you

• Are you open to letting God change you? If not, then you won’t be changed.
• Listen to the Word proclaimed - don't read along, if you are able.
• Find something in the Homily and apply it for the week.

5 - Know, understand, and proclaim your Faith

• Don’t just recite the Creed - proclaim it like you mean it and understand what you are proclaiming.

6 - Tithe

• If every Catholic tithed...think what we could accomplish in spreading the Gospel.
• Yes, it is our duty to support the Church. But, it does more for our own faith than it does for the Church.
• Most people "tip" not "tithe" - so be a tither, not a tipper.

7 - When you receive Jesus in the Eucharist - understand what it is you are doing

• You are taking the Body, blood, soul, and divinity of GOD into you
• You are joining in heaven on earth
• You are becoming one with The Body of Christ
• Be reverent
• Realize that He is in everyone else that received Him as well.

8 - Tell other people about Him

• You are now empowered to evangelize - which is what the Church exists for

"If we really understood the Mass, we would die of joy." - Saint Jean Vianney

Pope Francis: rediscover a 'sense of the sacred'

(Vatican Radio) To rediscover the sense of the sacred, the mystery of the Real Presence of God in the Mass: that was Pope Francis’ invitation during the Eucharistic celebration this morning at Casa Santa Marta.
The first Reading of the day speaks about the “theophany” of God in the time of Solomon the king. The Lord came down like a cloud upon the temple, which was filled with the glory of God. The Lord, the Pope said, speaks to His people in many ways: through the prophets, the priests, the Sacred Scriptures. But with the theophanies, He speaks in another way, “different from the Word: it is another presence, closer, without mediation, near. It is His presence.” This, he explained, happens in the liturgical celebration. The liturgical celebration is not a social act, a good social act; it is not a gathering of the faithful to pray together. It is something else. In the liturgy, God is present,” but it is a closer presence. In the Mass, in fact, “the presence of the Lord is real, truly real.”
“When we celebrate the Mass, we don’t accomplish a representation of the Last Supper: no, it is not a representation. It is something else: it is the Last Supper itself. It is to really live once more the Passion and the redeeming Death of the Lord. It is a theophany: the Lord is made present on the altar to be offered to the Father for the salvation of the world. We hear or we say, ‘But, I can’t now, I have to go to Mass, I have to go to hear Mass.’ The Mass is not ‘heard’, it is participated in, and it is a participation in this theophany, in this mystery of the presence of the Lord among us.”
Nativity scenes, the Way of the Cross... these are representations. The Mass, on the other hand, “is a real commemoration, that is, it is a theophany: God approaches and is with us, and we participate in the mystery of the Redemption.” Unfortunately, too often we look at the clock during Mass, “counting the minutes.” This, the Pope said, is not the attitude the liturgy requires of us: the liturgy is God’s time, God’s space, and we must place ourselves there, in God’s time, in God’s space, and not look at the clock”:
“The liturgy is to really enter into the mystery of God, to allow ourselves to be brought to the mystery and to be in the mystery. For example, I am sure that all of you have come here to enter into the mystery; however, someone might say: ‘Ah, I have to go to Mass at Santa Marta, because on the sight-seeing tour of Rome, each morning there is a chance to visit the Pope at Santa Marta: it’s a tourist stop, right?’ All of you here, we are gathered her to enter into the mystery: this is the liturgy. It is God’s time, it is God’s space, it is the cloud of God that surrounds all of us.”
The pope recalled that, as a child, during the preparation for First Communion, there was a song that spoke about how the altar was guarded by angels to give “a sense of the glory of God, of God’s space, of God’s time.” And when, during the practice, they brought the hosts, they told the children: “Look, these are not the ones you will receive: these count for nothing,” because they have to be consecrated. So, the Pope concluded, “to celebrate the liturgy is to have this availability to enter into the mystery of God,” to enter into His space, His time, to entrust ourselves to this mystery:
“We would do well today to ask the Lord to give to each of us this ‘sense of the sacred,’ this sense that makes us understand that it is one thing to pray at home, to pray in Church, to pray the Rosary, to pray so many beautiful prayers, to make the Way of the Cross, so many beautiful things, to read the Bible... The Eucharistic celebration is something else. In the celebration we enter into the mystery of God, into that street that we cannot control: only He is the unique One, the glory, the power... He is everything. Let us ask for this grace: that the Lord would teach us to enter into the mystery of God.”

Heather King: Why I Kneel

The following comes from Heather King:

Genuflect: late Latin genuflectere, from Latin genu, knee, and flectere, to bend. Date: 1630. 1.a. to bend the knee. b. to touch the knee to the floor or ground especially in worship.

FRANCISCO DE ZURBURÁN
ST. FRANCIS KNEELING

The first time I went to Mass, in trembling and fear, I was shocked to see people kneeling. In the middle of Los Angeles, in the middle of the day. I felt like I’d stumbled upon a group of folks sitting on the toilet, or having sex. Right out there in the open, for anyone who wandered in to see, they were asking for help. They were admitting that they didn’t know. They were saying “I adore you.”

I have a theory that prayer is the answer to itself. The very fact that we’re praying means we’re already receiving what our hearts long for. To open ourselves to reality. To move away from isolation and toward communion. To die to self-reliance and come alive in wonder and mystery. Acknowledging our vulnerability, we’re in solidarity with every other sick, suffering, broken person in the world. With our heads bowed, our ears are closer to our hearts. On our knees, we’re the same height as children.

I once stayed at a Catholic retreat house where something seemed off. Why was there no body on the cross?  Why had the Penitential Rite, the Intercessionary Prayers, the Responsorial Psalm—thePsalms!!!— been excised? The Mass had been sanitized and euthanized. The Mass had beenemasculated. After awhile it dawned on me that at no time during Mass did the members of the community kneel: nary a genuflection before or after Mass; not during the Eucharistic Prayer or Agnus Dei (the chapel had no kneelers, so none of us could kneel except on the floor).

One afternoon I crept into the chapel, peered beneath the pews and spied the tiny holes on either end that had once held screws. Just as I’d suspected, they had taken out the kneelers. They had taken out the kneelers. This resistance to kneeling, in conjunction with the whole liturgically-diluted, inert atmosphere of the place, struck me as disturbing and even dangerous. What were we there for but to worship, to give thanks, to kneel before Someone greater than ourselves? What lover of Christ, before a re-presentation of the Crucifixion, would not instinctively be moved to assume a posture of grief, sorrow, awe, praise, trembling supplication? Where was the blood, the anxiety, the majesty, the sublime paradox, the resurrectional joy?

I’m the first to admit I sometimes over-react but I think this is a serious point. I’m weak but I'm not so delicate that I can’t understand that Christ, in agony on the cross, is a reflection of the human condition. I don't need to be shielded from the knowledge that before the Resurrection comes a long, painful journey. I kneel because someone else consented to tell, live and die the truth. I kneel because for a long time I knelt before nothing but my own desperate self-centered desires and I lived in the fires of hell. I kneel to ask for help because I want to be able to welcome the next shipwrecked soul who stumbles, dazed and bleeding, onto shore.

I kneel because I know that someday—maybe today—I’m going to die. 

FRANCISCO DE ZURBURÁN
 THE LAMB OF GOD

Oh, Love That Will Not Let Me Go: On My Conversion to Catholicism

It seems ironic that a free spirit like me -- who doesn't like hierarchy, routine, and structure -- ended up in the Catholic tradition.

The following comes from Karen Beattie at the Catholic Channel:

There is no way to "return to the faith of your childhood," not really, not unless you've just woken from a decades-long and absolutely literal coma . . . If you believe at fifty what you believed at fifteen, then you have not lived—or have denied the reality of your life. ~ Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss

The first few months after our then two-and-a-half-year-old foster daughter was placed in our home, she resisted affection. When I rocked her to sleep at night, she would wiggle away from me, never snuggling face-to-face or chest-to-chest. I would hold her tighter until she gave up and leaned against me.

One night, when my husband David was out of town, D's grief at her previous losses (of her birth parents, of her former foster family) seemed too much for her to bear. She had a meltdown when I told her that she had to stop brushing her teeth (she had been brushing for ten minutes, rather than go to bed). She threw her Barbie toothbrush across the slate bathroom floor and started wailing so loudly that I feared the neighbors would think I was torturing her. I tried to pick her up, all thirty-five pounds of her toddler chubbiness, but she was too strong and she pounded my chest until I let her go.

I followed her around the condo for thirty minutes, trying to calm her down. Finally, I corralled her into her bedroom and closed the door. I sat on her pink flowered rug and once again tried to hold her. She was so exhausted that she let me squeeze my arms around her chubby brown limbs. Still, she squirmed, but I held her tight, I felt the pounding of her heart, and the sweat on her cheek.

"Are you sad?" I asked. She nodded her head as she continued to sob.

"You're safe here," I said. "You have so many people who love you. So many people. I will hold you tight until you believe it."

During the year following her placement with us, we tried to keep a regular schedule. We put her into a good structured daycare. At home we created routines and rituals. We ate lunch at noon, had naptime at 2:00, and bedtime was strictly at 8:00 pm. The bedtime rituals were always the same.

Within the combination of our embrace and solid structure, she didn't have to worry about what was coming next. She had the boundaries she needed in order to thrive. A container to work out her grief. A safe place to feel what she needed to feel.

It's not just hurting children who thrive in structure. What might seem like stifling limitations at first can be a path to freedom. Poets work within structure. Writers have a word count they need stay within. Artists learn the rules of painting realistically before they can launch into abstraction.

I think of this when I try to explain to people why I became Catholic.

There are many reasons why I converted. But it seems ironic that a free spirit like me, who doesn't like hierarchy, routine, and structure ended up in the Catholic tradition.

But I changed. And circumstances changed.

The non-denominational churches that I had attended for years, and where I had learned so much and found deep community, were now like a baggy, shapeless coat. While I once thrived in unstructured, ever-changing worship services, now they left me feeling empty and bored and anxious. While at one time I craved long exegetical sermons that fed my intellectual hunger, now I felt I would never get all of my questions answered—and that God was a total mystery to me. Where I once longed for the newest and latest, I now longed for the depth and stability of tradition.

Read the rest here.

Catholic Church Architecture: Sacred Images

Young Evangelicals Going Roman Catholic

The following comes from The Christian Pundit:

A friend of mine attended a Christian college where almost all of the students, including her, grew up in non-denominational, evangelical Protestant churches. A few years after graduation, she is the only person in her graduating class who is not Roman Catholic,  high Anglican or Lutheran. The town I live in has several “evangelical” Protestant colleges: on Ash Wednesday you can tell who studies at them by the ash crosses on their foreheads.

Young Christians are going over to Catholicism and high Anglicanism/Lutheranism in droves, despite growing up in low Protestant churches that told them about Jesus. It’s a trend that is growing, and it looks like it might go that way for a while: people who grew up in stereotypical, casual evangelicalism are running back past their parents’ church to something that looks like it was dug out of Europe a couple hundred years ago at least. It’s encouraged by certain emergent leaders and by other “Christian” authors whose writings promote “high” theology under a Protestant publisher’s cover.

Ten or fifteen years ago, it was American evangelical congregations that seemed cutting edge. They had the bands, the coolest youth pastor, professional babysitting for every women’s Bible study, and a church library full of Christian novels. But now, to kids who grew up in that context, it seems a bit dated or disconnected—the same kind of feeling that a 90′s movie gives them. Not that it’s not a church; it’s just feels to them the way that 50′s worship felt to their parents. So they leave. If they don’t walk away from Christianity completely, they head to Rome or something similar.

In a way, it’s hard to understand. Why would you trade your jeans, fair-trade coffee, a Bible and some Getty songs for formal “church clothes”, fasting, a Bible and a priest? It makes no sense to want to kneel on a stone floor instead of sit in a comfy chair. And if you’re hearing about Jesus anyway, why does it really matter?

In another way, it’s very obvious why these kids are leaving and going where they are. In her recent article, “Change Wisely, Dude”, Andrea Palpant Dilley explains her own shift from Presbyterianism to apostacy to generic evangelicalism to high church: “In my 20s, liturgy seemed rote, but now in my 30s, it reminds me that I’m part of an institution much larger and older than myself. As the poet Czeslaw Milosz said, ‘The sacred exists and is stronger than all our rebellions.’ Both my doubt and my faith, and even my ongoing frustrations with the church itself, are part of a tradition that started before I was born and will continue after I die. I rest in the assurance that I have something to lean against, something to resist and, more importantly, something that resists me.”

The kids who leave evangelical Protestantism are looking for something the world can’t give them. The world can give them hotter jeans, better coffee, bands, speakers, and book clubs than a congregation can. What it can’t give them is theology; membership in a group that transcends time, place and race; a historic rootedness; something greater than themselves; ordained men who will be spiritual leaders and not merely listeners and buddies and story-tellers. What the kids leaving generic evangelicalism seem to want is something the world can never give them–a holy Father who demands reverence, a Saviour who requires careful worship, and a Spirit who must be obeyed. They are looking for true, deep, intellectually robust spirituality in their parents’ churches and not finding it….

Read the rest here.

Fr. Robert Barron and Dr. Scott Hahn on Biblical Interpretation and The Liturgy

Restoring the Sacred

The following comes from the NCR:

Christmas and Easter — those beautiful holy days when regular Mass attendees are squashed by the masses into the middle of the pews. What an annoyance.

Really? More like, what an opportunity!

It’s an opportunity we get to reach out to those masses at the Masses. As Matthew Kelly has pointed out in both Rediscover Catholicism and his latest book, Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic: Almost all of our "clientele" are in one place at one time. People come to Mass for Christmas and Easter. It's an influx of people who may — or may not — be there for an encounter with Christ. So, how do we keep them coming? What are we doing that could be more appealing? How can we be more relevant to what they need? 

These questions are important ones to ask. However, they can quickly lead down a slope toward sloppy standards and diluted doctrine. When we try new-fangled ideas to be “more” of something, it does not necessarily inspire people or lead them to Christ.

As a matter of fact, it can cause them to assume that, just as they always suspected, we are out of touch with culture. So out of touch that, to reach them, we'll have to soften the "hard edges" of our doctrine and "tone down" our distinctive Catholic heritage. The Church needs to "get with the times," after all, especially if we want Mass attendance to be higher, keep our young people involved, and be part of everyone's weekly regime. Right?

WRONG

When we do any of these things — lower our standards, soften our doctrines, tone down who we are and what we stand for — we replace the sacred with the mundane. We bleed the mystery out of our faith…and there goes our relationship with God.

When we're just like everyone else, the special part of how we live out our faith is, well, nothing special.

Our goal isn't to be like everyone else. Not only would that be boring, but it's watering down something so essential, so critical, so much a part of who we are.

Boring is the real reason people leave the Catholic Church. Want proof? Look at an example of just the opposite being put into play in Omaha, Nebraska. When you're NOT boring — but instead celebrate Catholic traditions out loud —the glory, the mystery and the beauty naturally draw people to them.

How could they not?

This pastor took the sacred and made it the core part of his parish. He wasn't afraid to take hold of the traditions that are time-tested.

And the response of this parish (which had spent 40 years in decline) to the sacred, the beautiful, the mystery of our faith, is unusual, even surprising.

Maybe that's not because we've lost our taste for awe and wonder, but simply because we've settled for less. The sacred mystery of our faith is not old, not out of touch, not boring. May God lead more parishes to explore this beauty to the fullest — and may we see our churches filled to capacity every Sunday, in worship of our Risen Lord who inspires it all.

PS: We interviewed Don Carey, the CEO of Storytel about this documentary today on Register Radio. This documentary is also scheduled to air on EWTN on April 30th, 6:30 Eastern.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker: Why Pope Benedict Mattered to Me

In all the drama of today’s farewell to Pope Benedict XVI, and amidst all the high level comment, intellectual analysis and historical accounting of his legacy, here are the very personal reasons why Benedict mattered to me.

1. He granted the dispensation from the vow of celibacy that opened the door for my ordination as a Catholic priest.

2. He established the Anglican Ordinariate. While I am not a priest in the Ordinariate, I have great interest in the ordinariate and its progress. I believe history will show Benedict XVI to have been a revolutionary pope when it comes to ecumenism–showing new ways for Christians to come into full communion with the Holy See.

3. He showed the way of truly Christian Biblical scholarship. He did not reject the findings of modern Biblical critics as fundamentalists do, nor did he adopt modernism and promote it. Instead was truly Catholic in his approach. He gleaned from all Biblical scholars what was true and good, and he also rejected that which was inconsistent, heretical, merely theoretical and unsubstantiated. His Biblical scholarship was thorough and erudite, yet fully within the magisterium of the church.

4. He turned upside down the media’s stupid portrayal of him as “God’s Rotweiller.” Almost immediately after his election that slur vanished as he revealed himself to be just what he said he was, “a humble worker in the Lord’s vineyard.” He showed the world that he was a gentle, scholarly, quiet man who did not avoid the onerous duties laid upon him by the Lord.

5. Benedict XVI took the name Benedict. I have loved St Benedict for a long time and seek to follow him in what humble way I can as a Benedictine oblate. When he took the name “Benedict” I immediately felt a connection with him. He was not only they holy father, but a kind of universal abbot. Now that he has retired to the monastic life it all seems a perfect ending.

6. He visited England and the United States. My heart is in both lands, and to witness his visit to both countries drew me closer to him and his courageous ministry.

7. He beatified Bl. John Henry Newman. Nuff said.

8. He taught the “hermeneutic of continuity” reminding us that the second Vatican Council did not overturn centuries of tradition, but renewed them and brought them forward with new meaning and insight and relevance. He was not ashamed, in his dress and liturgical style to renew the liturgy by drawing on its deep roots in the past.

9. He managed to combine a contemplative, inward gazing personality with an active and dynamic papacy. He showed the world that quiet men can be leaders too, and that “in quietness and confidence is much strength.”

10. He wore those red shoes.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on the Liturgy

The real "action" in the liturgy in which we are all supposed to participate is the action of God himself. This is what is new and distinctive about the Christian liturgy: God himself acts and does what is essential. 

                                            Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

Pope Benedict: Liturgy teaches us to hear God's voice

The following comes from the CNA:

Pope Benedict XVI told thousands gathered in St. Peter's square Jan. 27 that marking Sunday as a day of rest and engaging in the liturgy can teach us to listen to the voice of God.

“Before we can speak of God and with God, we need to listen, and the liturgy of the Church is the 'school' of this listening to the Lord who speaks to us,” he said during his weekly Angelus address.

Exploring the day's reading from the Gospel of Luke, the Pope recounted how Jesus went to the synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath.

“As a true believer, the Lord does not avoid the weekly liturgical rhythm and joins the assembly of his fellow citizens in prayer and in listening to the Scriptures.”

This passage from scripture, Pope Benedict said, “makes us think about our way of life on Sunday as a day of rest and for the family.”

Sunday, he noted, is the “first day to devote to the Lord by participating in the Eucharist in which we're nourished by the Body and Blood of Chirst and his Word of life.”

“In our scattered and distracted era, this Gospel invites us to ask ourselves about our ability to listen, ” he emphasized.

“Every moment can be a 'today' moment for our conversion and become a day of salvation because salvation is a story that continues for the Church and for every disciple of Christ,” he said, adding that the “the Christian meaning of 'carpe diem' is to seize the day in which God is calling you to give you salvation.”

During his remarks on Sunday, the pontiff also recognized International Holocaust Remembrance Day, created by the United Nations in memory of the Holocaust victims of Nazism.

“It must be a constant reminder to all so that the horrors of the past, which exceeds all forms of hatred and racism, are not repeated,” he said, as well as a reminder “to promote respect and dignity of the the human person.”

Pope Benedict also noted that this Sunday “marks a special day of intercession” for peace in Holy Land. “I thank those who promote it in many parts of the world and I greet in particular those present here,” he said.

During the angelus a young boy and girl freed two doves, as symbols of peace, from the window of his Apostolic Palace after reading a message of Acr di Roma, an Italian lay association with over half a million members.

The Boys of the Catholic diocese of Rome, who celebrate annually a “Caravan of Peace” at the end of January, were also at St. Peter's Square.

On Jan. 27 this year, the Church also celebrates the 60th World Day of Leprosy.

“I express my closeness to those who suffer from this disease and encourage researchers, health professionals and volunteers, particularly those who are part of Catholic organizations and the Association of Friends of Raoul Follereau,” the Pope said.

He also invoked the intercession of St. Damien de Veuster, “who gave his life” for those afflicted with the disease, as well as St. Marianne Cope, who was canonized in Rome in October of last year. Both worked with leprosy sufferers in a colony in Hawaii in the 19th century.

Deacon Greg on Communion Rails and Restoring a Sense of the Sacred

Deacon Greg has had a change of heart on altar rails:

Okay. I've changed my mind. It's time to bring back the altar rail.Hey, I'm as surprised as anyone else that I feel this way.Two years ago, I rhapsodized on the Feast of Corpus Christi on the theology behind standing to receive communion, and defended it. And why not? I've received that way for most of my adult life; I even remember the Latin church's experiment with intinction back in the '70s. Standing and in-the-hand always seemed to me sensible, practical and—with proper catechesis—appropriate. 

But now, after several years of standing on the other side of the ciborium—first as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, now as a deacon—and watching what goes on, I've had about enough.  

I've watched a mother receive communion, her toddler in tow, then take it back to the pew and share it with him like a cookie. 

At least four or five times a year, I have to stop someone who just takes the host and wanders away with it and ask them to consume it on the spot.  

Once or twice a month I encounter the droppers. Many are well-intentioned folks who somewhere, somehow drop the host or it slides out of their hands and Jesus tumbles to the floor.  

A couple times a year I get the take-out crowd. They receive the host properly, and then pull out a hanky and ask if they can take another one home to a sick relative. 

Beyond that, I'm reminded week after week that people have no uniform way to receive in the hand. There's the reverent "hands-as-throne" approach; there's the "Gimme five," 

one-hand-extended style; there are the notorious "body snatchers" who reach up and seize the host to pop into their mouths like an after-dinner mint; and there are the vacillating undecideds who approach with hands slightly cupped and lips parted. Where do you want it and how??  

After experiencing this too often, in too many places, under a variety of circumstances, I've decided: it's got to stop. Catechesis is fruitless. We've tried. You can show people how it's done; you can instruct them; you can post reminders in the bulletin and give talks from the pulpit. It does no good. Again and again, there is a sizable minority of the faithful who are just clueless—or, worse, indifferent.  

The fact is, we fumbling humans need external reminders—whether smells and bells, or postures and gestures—to reinforce what we are doing, direct our attention, and make us get over ourselves. Receiving communion is about something above us, and beyond us. It should transcend what we normally do. But what does it say about the state of our worship and our reception of the Eucharist that it has begun to resemble a trip to the DMV 

Our modern liturgy has become too depleted of reverence and awe, of wonder and mystery. The signs and symbols that underscored the mystery—the windows of stained glass, the chants of Latin, the swirls of incense at the altar—vanished and were replaced by . . . what? Fifty shades of beige? Increasingly churches now resemble warehouses, and the Body of Christ is just one more commodity we stockpile and give out.  

Can kneeling to receive on the tongue help alleviate some of this? Well, it can't hurt. And for this reason: to step up to a communion rail, and kneel, and receive on the tongue, is an act of utter and unabashed humility. In that posture to receive the Body of Christ, you become less so that you can then become more. It requires a submission of will and clear knowledge of what you are doing, why you are doing it, and what is about to happen to you.  

Frankly, we should not only be humbled, but intimidated enough to ask ourselves if we are really spiritually ready to partake of the sacrament. Kneeling means you can't just go up and receive without knowing how it's properly done. It demands not only a sense of focus and purpose, but also something else, something that has eluded our worship for two generations. 

It demands a sense of the sacred. It challenges us to kneel before wonder, and bow before grace. It insists that we not only fully understand what is happening, but that we fully appreciate the breathtaking generosity behind it. It asks us to be mindful of what "Eucharist" really means: thanksgiving. 

I don't see that much today. It's gone. We need to reclaim it. Pope Benedict XVI seems to agree. He has decided he will only give communion at papal Masses to those who kneel and receive on the tongue. He was gently making a liturgical point. Are we paying attention?  

After what I've seen, I agree with him. We need to get off our feet, and on our knees.Bring back the communion rail. It's time. 

He makes a lot of good points.  What are your thoughts in this regard?