Saturday, January 3, 2015
Feast of the Day: Holy Name of Jesus
Today is the celebration of the Holy Name of Jesus!The following comes from the Women of Faith and Family site:
From apostolic times, the Church has professed that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil 2:10-11). Through the particular efforts of St. Bernardine of Siena, devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus was promoted through the inscription of the monogram of the Holy Name (IHS) and the addition of the name of Jesus to the Hail Mary. Pope Sixtus V first granted an indulgence for the uttering of the phrase used so often by the late Holy Father, John Paul II and included among the pious invocations of the current Enchiridion Indulgentiarum: "Praised be Jesus Christ!"
Beautiful Name from Catholic Media House on Vimeo.
Friday, January 2, 2015
Be Not Afraid
If you analyze any human problem–any human sin–any human negativity–any human perversion–any violence or lust or greed or self pity you will find beneath them all the foundational fear.
The beauty of a dynamic Catholic faith is that the Holy Spirit is given which is NOT the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. This particular verse reveals an understanding of human psychology which is so profound and wise that it confirms the inspiration of Scripture. Who could have seen the depths of these few words?
This Spirit we have received–if we yield to it completely and live within the life of faith–will bring us into the graced condition of living with power, love and a sound mind. Without the Spirit we decline into the spirit of fear and we live with the opposite of these three gifts. If we descend into the ever deepening and ever narrowing spiral of life without the Spirit then we will live in weakness not power; hatred not love; and madness not a sound mind.
However, if we live within the Holy Spirit day by day, then we will, bit by bit, discover a new kind of power, a new kind of love and a new clarity of thought and vision. We will be truly powerful with a Divine power within us. We will be truly and genuinely loving–not trying hard to be nice people, but truly concerned and compassionate and loving towards others. We will be truly amazingly and dynamically of sound mind.
This is what we witness in the lives of the saints. They are not just good people. They are not just pious people. They are not just energetic or intelligent people. Instead they manifest in their lives a supernatural power, a supernatural love and a supernatural sanity.
Those, on the other hand, who refuse to move further and further into this Spirit of God–into the power, the love and the sanity–will move further and further into helplessness, hatred and insanity.
I have seen the saints. I have met them so I know this is true. I have also seen those who refuse the life of the Spirit and descend further and further into the dark. I am thinking not of the depraved and wicked sinners who have done so–even though they do show us the descent of the human spirit into the dark–but I am thinking of the “nice” respectable Christian people who, despite their Christian profession and practice, actually do not live in the Spirit, but live by the standards of the world.
They too, ever so gently but surely, also descend into increasing helplessness, hatred, distrust and insanity. I have seen them disintegrate. I have seen their worlds collapse. I have seen them act in desperation as the money they trusted disappears, as the friends they have trusted betray them and as the worldly mindset they have accepted without question has proven to be ephemeral and empty.
But let us turn instead to contemplate the lives of the saints, for they radiate the glory and light of eternity–which far outweighs the narrow alleyways and the ever decreasing downward spiral of those who live without the Spirit.
And how is this transformation accomplished? It is done simply and surely through the sacramental life of the church. To attend Mass with a pure heart, to go to confession for forgiveness of sins, to read the Sacred Scriptures, to discipline the flesh, give alms to the poor, visit the poor and helpless. Through this regular, simple and studied life we open the very depths of our soul to the Divine Mercy–for if the sickness was a primal fear–a nameless and inchoate fear at the deepest level, then the remedy is to receive unconditional and totally supernatural love for “perfect love casts out fear.”
When this infusion of the Divine Love–the Divine Mercy fills our souls, then we begin to be transformed from the foundation level up. It is as if the foundations of the house were weak and rotten and the Master Builder drills down to the depths and pours in the solid concrete of unconditional love. Once this transaction takes place the soul is set to receive the continued graces that bring about conversion of life.
This is what the Christian religion is about–all the prayers, all the works, all the faith, all the activity of study and worship is to bring about this conversion and eternal transformation.
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Read the Bible in a Year!
As you prepare for the new year, why not commit to reading the entire Bible in 2015? It’s not as hard as you might think.
The Bible contains somewhere around 775,000 words. The average adult reads 250 words per minute. That means if you read the Bible for just 30 minutes per day, you’ll get through the whole thing in a year—three times over! (If you read just 10 minutes a day, you’ll still make it through once.)
But once committing to read the whole Bible, people generally have two questions: which translation should I use, and how should I do it?
Which Translation to Use?
Regarding translations, there’s a few things to keep in mind. First, make sure your Bible is complete. Protestant translations (NIV, ESV, TEV, etc.) do not contain the seven deuterocanonical books that the Catholic Church accepts as Sacred Scripture. You’re going to want those books in your Bible (they’re really good!).
Second, make sure your Bible translation strikes a good balance between precision and readability. For serious study, avoid paraphrase translations (such as The Message). Instead, go with a more literal (i.e., “word for word”) translation that is still easy to read. Here are my personal recommendations, in order. All of them have been officially approved by the Church for personal study:
- Revised Standard Version – 2nd Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE) – The top choice for many Catholic Bible scholars. It’s a Church-approved translation and is literal but still very readable.
- New American Bible – Revised Edition (NAB-RE) – This is the translation used during the Mass, although it does contain some questionably translated passages and some even worse footnotes. But if you want to sync your reading to the liturgy, this is your best choice.
- New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) – Solid translation although it contains “gender inclusive language”, changing “brothers” to “friends” or “brothers and sisters” and removing instances of the divine “He”.
- Douay-Rheims Version (DR) – This was the standard Bible for English-speaking Catholics from 1609 until the twentieth century. It’s a trusted version but some readers find it turgid, similar to the King James Version.
There are also Bibles on the market that are specifically designed for a one-year reading plan. For instance, there’s the My Daily Catholic Bible (NAB) which divides all of Scripture into 365 segments, one for each day of the year. It features two small, manageable readings for each day, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament, along with an insightful quote from a saint for every day. The best part is that the readings are all grouped together sequentially so you don’t have to flip back and forth each day between the Old and New Testaments.
There’s also the Catholic One Year Bible which uses the Catholic Living Bible translation, a less-then-literal translation but one that many readers find looser and more accessible.
In the end, what matters most is that you find a translation you’ll actually read. If you pick one that is cumbersome or inaccessible, then it doesn’t really matter whether it’s accurate. Your best bet is to sample a few translations online and then choose one you feel most comfortable reading each day.
What’s the Best Plan?
Similar to the translation question, the answer here is whichever plan you’ll follow. Unfortunately, many people make the mistake of starting with Genesis and trying to plow straight through to Revelation, linearly. The problem is that some of the early Old Testament books are meticulous, such as Leviticus and Numbers, and most people get bogged down, wiping out before finishing even half the Old Testament.
What’s a better strategy? To follow a carefully designed reading plan that will take you through the right books, at the right pace. Some of these plans alternate between Old and New Testament readings, while some intersperse the Psalms throughout the year to add variation.
Here are some of my favorite Bible reading plans for Catholics. Choose your Bible, then choose one of the plans below and make 2015 the year you finally finish the whole Bible:
Read the Bible and the Catechism in a Year – This plan, created by the Coming Home Network, is definitely my favorite. Not only does it take you through the whole Bible (the Catholic Bible, including the deutero-canonical books), but it also gets you through the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church. Each day you read about three chapters of Scripture and fifteen paragraphs of the Catechism. You’ll knock out both assignments in about thirty minutes each day.
Mary, Mother of God
The following comes from the Women of Faith and Family site:On New Year's Day, the octave day of Christmas, the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Holy Mother of God. The divine and virginal motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a singular salvific event: for Our Lady it was the foretaste and cause of her extraordinary glory; for us it is a source of grace and salvation because "through her we have received the Author of life".
The solemnity of the 1 January, an eminently Marian feast, presents an excellent opportunity for liturgical piety to encounter popular piety: the first celebrates this event in a manner proper to it; the second, when duly catechised, lends joy and happiness to the various expressions of praise offered to Our Lady on the birth of her divine Son, to deepen our understanding of many prayers, beginning with that which says: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us, sinners".
In the West, 1 January is an inaugural day marking the beginning of the civil year. The faithful are also involved in the celebrations for the beginning of the new year and exchange "new year" greetings. However, they should try to lend a Christian understanding to this custom making of these greetings an expression of popular piety. The faithful, naturally, realize that the "new year" is placed under the patronage of the Lord, and in exchanging new year greetings they implicitly and explicitly place the New Year under the Lord's dominion, since to him belongs all time.
A connection between this consciousness and the popular custom of singing the Veni Creator Spiritus can easily be made so that on 1 January the faithful can pray that the Spirit may direct their thoughts and actions, and those of the community during the course of the year.
New year greetings also include an expression of hope for a peaceful New Year. This has profound biblical, Christological and incarnational origins. The "quality of peace" has always been invoked throughout history by all men, and especially during violent and destructive times of war.
The Holy See shares the profound aspirations of man for peace. Since 1967, 1 January has been designated "world day for peace".
Popular piety has not been oblivious to this initiative of the Holy See. In the light of the new born Prince of Peace, it reserves this day for intense prayer for peace, education towards peace and those value inextricably linked with it, such as liberty, fraternal solidarity, the dignity of the human person, respect for nature, the right to work, the sacredness of human life, and the denunciation of injustices which trouble the conscience of man and threaten peace.
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