Wednesday, May 22, 2019

God’s Holiness Makes Us Uncomfortable

The following comes from the Catholic Exchange:
There is a third human reaction to God’s holiness. It is an evil reaction; it rises from man’s contradictory nature and consists of a feeling of discomfort, irritation, and rebelliousness. A strange manifestation! One is inclined to ask how this can come about if God is the moving Spirit and essence of the universe, and man is His creature — “For in Him we live, and move, and are.”
It is indeed difficult to understand; it springs from the mystery of evil. Sin, ultimately, is resistance to the holiness of God. It would be a mistake to think of this resistance merely as an open rebellion against, or as a denial of, God.
Potentially it is present in all of us — sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker; sometimes quite openly, sometimes in the guise of self-sufficient (rational) culture, or healthy common sense. When resistance, open or otherwise, gains the upper hand, prayer becomes impossible.
We must watch out for signs of it in ourselves; we must face it, try to resolve or still it, or overcome it with firm determination, whichever may be for us the most effective way of dealing with it. Let us leave this and return to the two fundamental motives of prayer already referred to.

Prayer’s first motive: a sense of our own sinfulness

The first motive for prayer springs from man’s awareness of his own unworthiness before the holiness of God. Man recognizes that he is selfish, unjust, deficient, and impure. He acknowledges his own wrongdoings and tries to assess them: not merely those of today or of yesterday, but of the whole of his life. Beyond this he tries to visualize the whole of the human condition with its shortcomings. He realizes sin as it is understood by the Scriptures, sin as it is active in himself. He recognizes that sin is transgression of the moral law and of the natural law.
But even more, he recognizes that sin is contumacy before God’s holiness, that it is, therefore, not only wicked but unholy. He admits it and sides with God against himself; he says, in the words of the Psalm: “For I know my iniquity, and my sin is always before me. Against Thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before Thee: that Thou mayst be justified in Thy words, and mayst overcome when Thou art judged.”

We sometimes despair

A third form of evasion is caused by lack of courage. When man sees that he is constantly transgressing and that evil is deeply rooted in him, when he begins to feel that all is confusion and that there is no way out, he runs the risk of despairing of himself, especially when he is a person wanting in willpower and, perhaps, in logic. To hold out in these circumstances is most difficult because the mind seems to answer to all good intentions, “You’re not going to carry this through; you will do again what you have always done before.” There is only one remedy: to put aside all inner searchings and recriminations, to have done with all hesita­tions, and to put one’s absolute trust in God who “quickeneth the dead; and calleth those things that are not, as those that are.”
From this act of surrender to the Absolute, above and within us, will spring new resolve and new strength. We shall be able to say, “I will and shall, for God the omnipotent wills it.”

God’s forgiveness makes repentance possible

There is another mysterious aspect of God’s power which makes it possible for man to acknowledge his wrong and to admit and confess his sins. Man knows this intuitively, and the Scriptures have revealed it to us. God is not only the prime cause of the good and the fount of all justice; He is the all-renewer. He can give a new beginning to what appears final and He can undo all deeds. The words of St. Paul quoted above point to this mystery. God who is the supreme holiness, which by definition excludes all evil, is willing and able to forgive and to renew.
True forgiveness, the forgiveness which we are seeking and which alone is of benefit to us, is a great mystery. It implies not only that God decides to overlook what has happened and turns lovingly toward the sinner; this would not be sufficient. God’s forgiveness is creative: it makes him who has become guilty free of all guilt. God gathers the guilty man into His holiness, makes him partake of it, and gives him a new beginning. It is to this mystery that man appeals when he acknowledges his sins, repents of them, and seeks forgiveness. This is the first of those two motives of prayer which come into being before God’s holiness.
Editor’s note: This article has been adapted from Romano Guardini’s The Art of Praying, available from Sophia Institute Press. 

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Brother Roger: Kindness builds you up

Kindness builds you up from Taize on Vimeo.

Monday, May 20, 2019

Thomas Merton on Priesthood

If you are afraid to love, never become a priest, never say Mass.  The Mass will draw you down upon your soul a torrent of interior suffering which has only one function:  to break you wide open and let everybody in the world into your heart.  For when you begin to say Mass, the Spirit of God awakens like a giant inside you and bursts the locks of  your private sanctuary.  If you say Mass, you condemn your soul to the torrent of a love that is so vast and insatiable that you will never be able to bear it alone.  That love is the love of the Heart of Jesus, burning within your own heart and bringing down upon you the huge weight of His compassion for all the sinners of the world.

The Centrality of Christ by Bishop Robert Barron

St. Bernardine of Siena and the Holy Name of Jesus




May 20 is the Feast of Bernardine of Siena, a great preacher and teacher of prayer. We could sure use another St. Bernardine today!

Bernardine of Siena came from the noble Sienese family of the Albizeschi. He was born at Massa Marttima, where his father was governor, on September 8th, 1380. He was left an orphan at age six and was brought up by his aunts. At school in Siena he was remarkable for intelligence and a general popularity. He was known for his outstanding goodness and purity. When he was seventeen, he joined a Marian confraternity at the La Scala hospital and began a secluded religious life. In the year 1400 he willingly emerged to become the successful organizer of the hospital services during a severe outbreak of the plague. Although he escaped infection, he fell ill through exhaustion and never entirely recovered.

In 1402 he joined the Franciscans, throwing in his lot with the 'Observant' reform-party. Their spectacular growth during this period owes much to his influence. He was for twelve years their vicar general. His ordination in 1404 was followed by a dozen years of hidden life, but the rest of his career is a record of tireless preaching journeys, usually on foot, all over Italy. He was the greatest popular preacher of his time, a worthy successor to St. Vincent Ferrer, a true 'apostle of Italy.'

His regular topics were the need for penance and denunciation of prevalent vices, especially civil and political strife, usury, gambling and 'vanity' in dress and social behavior. He treated these worn themes in a fresh manner, using stories and illustrations, holding vast crowds for hours and bringing about incredible conversions.

Bernardine will be remembered for his promotion of the devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, of Mary as dispenser of the graces merited by her divine Son, and of St. Joseph. He was accustomed to preach holding a board on which were the first three letters of the Savior's name in its Greek form--'IHS'--surrounded by rays, and he persuaded people to copy these plaques and erect them over their dwellings and public buildings. His last sermons--on Inspirations--show him to have been a profound psychologist on the mystical way and a great teacher of contemplative prayer.

He died, worn out from missionary work, on May 20th, 1444, at Aquila in the Abruzzi, and was buried there. The miracles at his tomb induced Nicholas V to canonize him only six years later. The preaching of St. Bernardine, especially the verbatim versions of his popular sermons in Italian, still deserves attention in an age no longer much addicted to preaching. Modern readers will at least admire his direct approach and the earthiness of his style. They will applaud his social awareness and the eminently practical methods he adopted to drive his lessons home and make them permanent. Let's pray for more great saints like Bernardine for our own time!


Learn more about him here.

Mother Teresa’s Special Law of Love

The following comes from Heather King:

In solitude on the Central Coast of California recently, I read a book called The Love That Made Mother Teresa by David Scott. Scott happens to be Vice Chancellor for Communications at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the book is subtitled “How Her Secret Visions and Dark Nights Can Help You Conquer the Slums of Your Heart.”

The book is simply written, accessible, and anecdotal. Scott beautifully captures the strangeness and paradox of the life of a saint. Mother Teresa lived to see the global reach of the internet and social media, yet the biographical details of her own youth and even adult life remain shrouded in mystery. She shunned the limelight but suffered the intrusions of photographers and TV cameras, offering up her discomfort for love of the poor. She kissed the leper, and she also dined with and accepted money from dictators. 

Like Christ, in other words, she resisted identifying herself with either the right or the left. Like Christ, she fed the poor and she also knew that man does not live by bread alone. “Visiting one of her missionary outposts in Nezahualcóyotl, Mexico, a slum where people lived in huts of corrugated metal and plywood and breathed the foul stench of factory waste and diesel fumes, she asked the people what their greatest need was. One man spoke for the rest. ‘La palabra de Dios,’ he said simply—the Word of God.”

Like many of us, perhaps, I struggle with the meaning of the New Evangelization. Evangelize to what? I sometimes wonder. Evangelize to whom? What does conversion even mean? I can be following the rules to a T, but when was the last time I wept at the trill of a bird, or a branch against the sky at dusk, or an unfurling leaf? When’s the last time I forgave someone? When’s the last time I apologized to someone? How intensely does my heart yearn? How willing am I to suffer? Those are things that can’t be measured or analyzed or reduced to a stat.


Read the rest here.

Saturday, May 18, 2019

Testimony of Samia Zumout: Medjugorje, Conversion and Giving Everything to God


Testimony of Samia Zumout in 2010 prior to her diagnosis with primary progressive Multiple Sclerosis in 2011. She talks about her conversion story in Medjugorje and the journey that our Lord Jesus Christ took her on to leave her career as an attorney to become a missionary of his healing love.

Monday, May 13, 2019

Our Lady of Fatima

Our Lady of Fatima is the title given to the Blessed Virgin Mary after she appeared to three shepherd children at Fátima, Portugal on the 13th day of six consecutive months in 1917, starting on 13 May. The three children were Lucia dos Santos and siblings Blessed Francisco and Blessed Jacinta Marto. The title of Our Lady of the Rosary is also sometimes used in reference to the same apparition because the children related that the Lady in the apparition specifically identified Herself as "the Lady of the Rosary."

Lúcia described seeing the lady as "brighter than the sun, shedding rays of light clearer and stronger than a crystal glass filled with the most sparkling water and pierced by the burning rays of the sun." According to Lúcia's account, the lady confided to the children three secrets, known as the Three Secrets of Fatima. She exhorted the children to do penance and to make sacrifices to save sinners. The children wore tight cords around their waists to cause pain, abstained from drinking water on hot days, and performed other works of penance. Most important, Lúcia said that the lady asked them to say the Rosary every day, reiterating many times that the Rosary was the key to personal and world peace.

Friday, May 10, 2019

Saint of the day: Damien of Molokai

The following comes from The American Catholic site:

When Joseph de Veuster was born in Tremelo, Belgium, in 1840, few people in Europe had any firsthand knowledge of leprosy (Hansen's disease). By the time he died at the age of 49, people all over the world knew about this disease because of him. They knew that human compassion could soften the ravages of this disease.

Forced to quit school at age 13 to work on the family farm, Joseph entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary six years later, taking the name of a fourth-century physician and martyr. When his brother Pamphile, a priest in the same congregation, fell ill and was unable to go to the Hawaiian Islands as assigned, Damien quickly volunteered in his place. In May 1864, two months after arriving in his new mission, Damien was ordained a priest in Honolulu and assigned to the island of Hawaii.

In 1873, he went to the Hawaiian government's leper colony on the island of Molokai, set up seven years earlier. Part of a team of four chaplains taking that assignment for three months each year, Damien soon volunteered to remain permanently, caring for the people's physical, medical and spiritual needs. In time, he became their most effective advocate to obtain promised government support.

Soon the settlement had new houses and a new church, school and orphanage. Morale improved considerably. A few years later he succeeded in getting the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, led by Mother Marianne Cope (January 23), to help staff this colony in Kalaupapa.

Damien contracted Hansen's disease and died of its complications. As requested, he was buried in Kalaupapa, but in 1936 the Belgian government succeeded in having his body moved to Belgium. Part of Damien's body was returned to his beloved Hawaiian brothers and sisters after his beatification in 1995.

Damien was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 11, 2009.

When Hawaii became a state in 1959, it selected Damien as one of its two representatives in the Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.

Sunday, May 5, 2019

Prayer of Padre Pio for after receiving holy Communion: Stay with me, Lord!



Prayer of St. Padre Pio

Stay with me, Lord, for it is necessary to have
You present so that I do not forget You.
You know how easily I abandon You.

Stay with me, Lord, because I am weak
and I need Your strength,
that I may not fall so often.

Stay with me, Lord, for You are my life,
and without You, I am without fervor.

Stay with me, Lord, for You are my light,
and without You, I am in darkness.

Stay with me, Lord, to show me Your will.
Stay with me, Lord, so that I hear Your voice
and follow You.

Stay with me, Lord, for I desire to love You
very much, and always be in Your company.

Stay with me, Lord, if You wish me to be faithful to You.
Stay with me, Lord, for as poor as my soul is,
I want it to be a place of consolation for You, a nest of love.

Stay with me, Jesus, for it is getting late and the day is coming to a close, and life passes; death, judgment, eternity approaches. It is necessary to renew my strength, so that I will not stop along the way and for that, I need You.
It is getting late and death approaches, I fear the darkness, the temptations, the dryness, the cross, the sorrows.  O how I need You, my Jesus, in this night of exile!

Stay with me tonight, Jesus, in life with all its dangers. I need You.
Let me recognize You as Your disciples did at the breaking of the bread,
so that the Eucharistic Communion be the Light which disperses the darkness,
the force which sustains me, the unique joy of my heart.

Stay with me, Lord, because at the hour of my death, I want to remain united to You, if not by communion, at least by grace and love.

Stay with me, Jesus, I do not ask for divine consolation, because I do not merit it, but the gift of Your Presence, oh yes, I ask this of You!

Stay with me, Lord, for it is You alone I look for, Your Love, Your Grace, Your Will, Your Heart, Your Spirit, because I love You and ask no other reward but to love You more and more.


With a firm love, I will love You with all my heart while on earth and continue to love You perfectly during all eternity. Amen.

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Archbishop Fulton Sheen on the Resurrection of Jesus

“What is most peculiar about Easter is that although the followers of Jesus had heard Him say He would break the bonds of death, when He actually did, no one believed it…The followers were not expecting a Resurrection and, therefore, did not imagine they saw something of which they were ardently hoping. Even Mary Magdalene, who within that very week had been told about the Resurrection when she saw her own brother raised to life from a grave, did not believe it. She came on Sunday morning to the tomb with spices to anoint a body – not to greet a Risen Savior. On the way, the question of the women was who will roll back the stone? Their problem was how they could get in; not whether the Savior would get out.” 


Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Way to Inner Peace)