Monthly Archives: June 2021

St Peter and St Paul . Tuesday

From a sermon by Saint Augustine

This day has been consecrated for us by the martyrdom of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul. It is not some obscure martyrs we are talking about. Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. These martyrs had seen what they proclaimed, they pursued justice by confessing the truth, by dying for the truth.

Before his passion the Lord Jesus, as you know, chose those disciples of his whom he called apostles. Among these it was only Peter who almost everywhere was given the privilege of representing the whole Church. It was in the person of the whole Church, which he alone represented, that he was privileged to hear, To you will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven. After all, it is not just one man that received these keys, but the Church in its unity. So this is the reason for Peter’s acknowledged pre-eminence, that he stood for the Church’s universality and unity, when he was told, To you I am entrusting, what has in fact been entrusted to all. To show you that it is the Church which has received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, listen to what the Lord says in another place to all his apostles: Receive the Holy Spirit; and immediately afterwards, Whose sins you forgive, they will be forgiven them; whose sins you retain, they will be retained.

There is one day for the passion of two apostles. But these two also were as one; although they suffered on different days, they were as one. Peter went first, Paul followed. We are celebrating a feast day, consecrated for us by the blood of the apostles. Let us love their faith, their lives, their labours, their sufferings, their confession of faith, their preaching.

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A Catholic Journey

‘The Lord of the Rings’: A Catholic journey

Leonard J. DeLorenzo

There are 576,459 words in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy — far too few to contain all that is revealed therein. In his review of the first volume of the three-volume series, C.S. Lewis likened the tale to “lightning from a clear sky … [with] beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron … a book that will break your heart” (“On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature”).

We might not consider ourselves the kind of people who need any more heartbreak, let alone the kind of people who have the time to read so many words for the sake of heartbreak. And yet, the heartbreak of which Lewis speaks is healing, restorative and perhaps even necessary, especially in times such as ours.

Would it be fair to say that, in our times, the powers of the world appear ever on the rise, hope is rather scarce, those who discern patiently and exercise responsibility are few and far between, and the meek continue to be trampled underfoot? Has not a prevailing sense of gloom fallen upon our world? Do we not yearn for a happiness we have forgotten or not yet known?

As Lewis noted in his friend J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece, in “The Lord of the Rings” we are plunged into a darkening world with characters submerged in anguish. But their anguish is of those who desire more than the inevitable doom thrust upon them. They set out on a journey against all odds. And yet, when we have seen them through all their travels and travails across 576,459 words, we, like them, “return to our own life not relaxed but fortified,” as Lewis wrote.

Our Sunday Visitor . OSV Website

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Mary our Mother

Prayer to Mary

by Pope St John Paul II

O Immaculate Virgin, Mother of the true God and Mother of the Church!, who from this place reveal your clemency and your pity to all those who ask for your protection, hear the prayer that we address to you with filial trust, and present it to your Son Jesus, our sole Redeemer.
Mother of Mercy, Teacher of hidden and silent sacrifice, to you, who come to meet us sinners, we dedicate on this day all our being and all our love. We also dedicate to you our life, our work, our joys, our infirmities and our sorrows. Grant peace, justice and prosperity to our peoples; for we entrust to your care all that we have and all that we are, our Lady and Mother. We wish to be entirely yours and to walk with you along the way of complete faithfulness to Jesus Christ in His Church; hold us always with your loving hand.

Grant to our homes the grace of loving and respecting life in its beginnings, with the same love with which you conceived in your womb the life of the Son of God. Blessed Virgin Mary, protect our families, so that they may always be united, and bless the upbringing of our children.

Our hope, look upon us with compassion, teach us to go continually to Jesus and, if we fall, help us to rise again, to return to Him, by means of the confession of our faults and sins in the Sacrament of Penance, which gives peace to the soul.

We beg you to grant us a great love for all the holy Sacraments, which are, as it were, the signs that your Son left us on earth. Thus, Most Holy Mother, with the peace of God in our conscience, with our hearts free from evil and hatred, we will be able to bring to all true joy and true peace, which come to us from your son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Amen

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Image from Church Pop

Nativity of John the Baptist . Thursday

The Voice of one crying in the wilderness

The Church observes the birth of John as in some way sacred; and you will not find any other of the great men of old whose birth we celebrate officially. We celebrate John’s, as we celebrate Christ’s. This point cannot be passed over in silence, and if I may not perhaps be able to explain it in the way that such an important matter deserves, it is still worth thinking about it a little more deeply and fruitfully than usual.

John, it seems, has been inserted as a kind of boundary between the two Testaments, the Old and the New. That he is somehow or other a boundary is something that the Lord himself indicates when he says, The Law and the prophets were until John. So he represents the old and heralds the new. Because he represents the old, he is born of an elderly couple; because he represents the new, he is revealed as a prophet in his mother’s womb. You will remember that, before he was born, at Mary’s arrival he leapt in his mother’s womb. Already he had been marked out there, designated before he was born; it was already shown whose forerunner he would be, even before he saw him. These are divine matters, and exceed the measure of human frailty. Finally, he is born, he receives a name, and his father’s tongue is loosed.

John is the voice, but the Lord in the beginning was the Word.
John is a voice for a time, but Christ is the eternal Word from the beginning.

from a sermon by Saint Augustine

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Prayers and Intercessions

God our Father, you chose John the Baptist
to announce the kingdom of Christ to all men.
Joyfully we pray, therefore:
– Lord, guide us in the way of peace.

Even in his mother’s womb you chose John to prepare the way for your Son;
give us the faith to know Christ, and to make him known.
– Lord, guide us in the way of peace.

You inspired the Baptist to recognize the Lamb of God:
through us, let the world recognize your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
– Lord, guide us in the way of peace.

You disposed your prophet to give way before Christ;
give us the humility to let his light shine in the world.
– Lord, guide us in the way of peace.

You called John even to die for you;
grant that we may share his burning zeal for the truth.
– Lord, guide us in the way of peace.

Remember the dead who have walked in the path of life:
bring them to new life, cleansed from all stain of sin.
– Lord, guide us in the way of peace.

Our Father …

Almighty God and Father,
you sent Saint John the Baptist to the people of Israel
to make them ready for Christ the Lord.
Give us the grace of joy in the Spirit,
and guide the hearts of all the faithful
in the way of salvation and peace.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

Father’s Day

Reflections on Father’s Day
by Fr Boniface Hicks OSB

Rod Dreher proposed “The Benedict Option” as a way to move forward in our challenging times. He described how the Rule of Saint Benedict provides the culture-changing wisdom that could create a leaven to transform our world from the ground up. In my own reflections, it seems to me that Saint Benedict actually promotes “The Joseph Option.” His wisdom for monasteries helps them to become another Nazareth where we live the lives of Mary and Joseph always in the presence of Jesus. In Nazareth, the Gospel principles were lived out in such an unremarkable way that the locals were shocked when Jesus declared himself to be the Messiah (cf. Luke 4). And yet the Gospel principles were lived out in such a powerful way that God himself was always fully present, and it became the starting place of a new creation.

We can see the connections of Benedict and Nazareth in several ways. A Benedictine monastery is founded on the vow of stability so that the collective holiness from living out God’s will steadily permeates the place and it becomes an oasis of peace for visitors. I like to imagine that Nazareth was quite a peaceful place to visit and that the Holy Family was a wonderful model of hospitality in the decades they dwelt there. In a Benedictine monastery, the keynote is found in chapter 19 of the Rule: “We believe that the divine presence is everywhere . . .” and the orientation of everything in the monastery fosters greater awareness of that fact. In Nazareth, Mary and Joseph helped each other remember that their little boy was the Incarnate Word of God and they did everything in the divine presence. Saint Benedict described the monastery as a “school for the Lord’s service” (RB Prologue 45) and Pope Saint Paul VI described Nazareth as “the school in which we begin to understand the life of Jesus. It is the school of the Gospel” (Homily 5 January 1964 in Nazareth).

At Saint Vincent, we have another Nazareth where countless people have come in the last 175 years to enter into the divine presence. In the peace that comes from the first moments on the grounds to encounters with the various residents and finding a high point in the Basilica and the liturgy, hearts are changed, love grows, the Gospel is internalized and our world is improved a little bit at a time. It is providential that the Year of Saint Joseph coincides with our 175th anniversary. As we approach Father’s Day let us invoke our fathers Saint Joseph and Saint Benedict to help us foster another Nazareth and bring Jesus more tangibly into our world, so that “in all things God may be glorified!” (Rule 57:9; based on 1 Peter 4:11).

Image by Portraits of Saints . Website