A Catholic Life

Friday, August 26, 2005

I just checked out a fabulous book called "Novena: The Power of Prayer" by Barbara Clamari and Sandra DiPasqua. It is composed of prayers in three sections: the saints, Marian novenas, and Novenas to God. Each section briefly describes the devotion/person and then lists the novena. It's a great necessity for any devout Catholic, and I would really like to buy one of these books soon.

Rating 10/10

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Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Conditions on Receiving the Eucharist

As we profess, the Eucharist is the Real presence of Jesus Christ: Body, Blood, soul, and divinity. Think about the wonder and joy in receiving the Word made flesh, the Light of the world.

November 14, 1996, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops approved the following guidelines on the reception of communion. These guidelines replace the guidelines approved by the Administrative Committee of the NCCB in November 1986:

For Catholics

As Catholics, we fully participate in the celebration of the Eucharist when we receive Holy Communion. We are encouraged to receive Communion devoutly and frequently. In order to be properly disposed to receive Communion, participants should not be conscious of grave sin and normally should have fasted for one hour. A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to receive the Body and Blood of the Lord without prior sacramental confession except for a grave reason where there is no opportunity for confession. In this case, the person is to be mindful of the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition, including the intention of confessing as soon as possible (canon 916). A frequent reception of the Sacrament of Penance is encouraged for all.

For our fellow Christians

We welcome our fellow Christians to this celebration of the Eucharist as our brothers and sisters. We pray that our common baptism and the action of the Holy Spirit in this Eucharist will draw us closer to one another and begin to dispel the sad divisions which separate us. We pray that these will lessen and finally disappear, in keeping with Christ’s prayer for us “that they may all be one” (Jn 17:21).

Because Catholics believe that the celebration of the Eucharist is a sign of the reality of the oneness of faith, life, and worship, members of those churches with whom we are not yet fully united are ordinarily not admitted to Holy Communion. Eucharistic sharing in exceptional circumstances by other Christians requires permission according to the directives of the diocesan bishop and the provisions of canon law (canon 844 § 4). Members of the Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Polish National Catholic Church are urged to respect the discipline of their own Churches. According to Roman Catholic discipline, the Code of Canon Law does not object to the reception of communion by Christians of these Churches (canon 844 § 3).

For those not receiving Holy Communion

All who are not receiving Holy Communion are encouraged to express in their hearts a prayerful desire for unity with the Lord Jesus and with one another.

For non-Christians

We also welcome to this celebration those who do not share our faith in Jesus Christ. While we cannot admit them to Holy Communion, we ask them to offer their prayers for the peace and the unity of the human family.

For this reason, we must ensure that we are free from mortal sin when we receive:

"Therefore whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice. " (1 Cor. 11:27–28).

Let us show the Lord our love and seek Him out in the Holy Eucharist in adoration and praise; let us receive Him with a forgiven heart full of love for the Light of the World. "Whoever comes to me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life." And, then let us go forth as tabernacles of the Highest and love all others.

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Tuesday, August 23, 2005

St. Rose of Lima

Optional Memorial (1969 Calendar): August 23
Double (1955 Calendar): August 30

St. Rose of Lima (1586 - 1617), a virgin, lived for Jesus Christ. She became the first canonized saint of the Western Hemisphere and was a Dominican lay tertiary who worked to evangelize the Indians. Her parents wanted her to marry, but she wanted to remain single and dedicate her life to Christ. St. Rose not only prayed for hours each day but also took care of orphans and the elderly who needed help. She lived each day for Jesus Christ and her friends, including St. Martin de Porres and St. John Masias.

In her life of penance, many people viewed her highly, and she was even a member of the Third Order of St. Dominic. At age five, St. Rose devoted her life to God and served Him through all of her trials. St. Rose was born to Spanish immigrants and was a beautiful girl. At a young age, she used pepper and lye to ruin her complexion so she would not be viewed as attractive to help her vow of chastity. She had a great devotion to St. Catherine of Siena. St. Rose wore roses around her head, but underneath them was a crown of thorns - it was her penance.

She was tortured physically by the devil and scolded by her family, but she thought of them as treating her better than she deserved. For fifteen years, she suffered spiritual abandonment until her death when she received the companionship of Mary and her guardian angel. St. Rose of Lima even had the invisible stigmata.

Prayer:

O Almighty God, the Giver of all good gifts, Who didst will that blessed Rose, bedewed with Thy heavenly graces, should blossom forth in the Indies as a lovely flower of virginity and patience: grant to us Thy servants so to run in the odor of her sweetness, that we may be found worthy to become a sweet savor of Christ: Who with Thee liveth and reigneth.

Prayer Source: 1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missal

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Thoughts on God

Today was my first day back to a busy schedule of work and it may be very difficult to see God through everyday life. But He is there. He's in the small joys we see, the pleasant conversations, the joy of getting something done right. God isn't just that sensation but Our Lord and God, who watches out for us and loves us with an infinite love.

He died for you, for me, for your neighbor and everyone else. Even when life gets down, always look up and know that God is there. He is always with us through the trials and joys, and we will all ultimately arrive at the gates of the small eternal city. And what will we say: I forgot to pray; I didn't know how. Just say, "Lord I love you. Have mercy on me. Look at what I have done and look at what I have failed at but know I love you."

Trust in God must be a key factor in all of our lives. I hope it will lead us all to Heaven through the Catholic Church, which Christ has promised, "But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth. For he shall not speak of himself; but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak; and the things that are to come, he shall shew you" (John 16:13)

My apologizes if I am unable to post everyday, but thank you to everyone that will still come back here and hope to read something.

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Monday, August 22, 2005

WYD 2008: Sydney

Well, World Youth Day is over and so is Pope Benedict XVI's first international trip. The next World Youth Day will be in 2008 in Sydney, Australia.

Do you think World Youth Day will bring people to the Church? Greater vocations to the priesthood

Do you think Pope Benedict XVI passed the "test" of being able to connect with the youth?

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Sunday, August 21, 2005

Pro-life Posts

"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish" (Mother Teresa).

Catholic and Pro-life Issues

This is a list of all of my pro-life news & legislation updates to date. (More recent at the top)

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Why did Jesus Institute the Eucharist?

The institution of the Eucharist was at the Last Supper, on the night before Our Lord's death, where He offered us the greatest gift of all - Himself in the Eucharist.

From the Catechism of St. Pius X:

28 Q: Why did Jesus Christ institute the Most Holy Eucharist?

A: Jesus Christ instituted the Most Holy Eucharist for three principal reasons: (1) To be the Sacrifice of the New Law; (2) To be the food of our souls; (3) To be a perpetual memorial of His passion and death and a precious pledge both of His love for us and of eternal life.

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Conclusion of World Youth Day

As I watch now, Pope Benedict XVI is boarding his plane to leave Cologne, Germany from World Youth Day, and I reflect on the closing Mass today. Over 1 million people from over 200 countries attended the Holy Mass in Marienfeld. The Pope encouraged the pilgrims to read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but stated that "books alone are not enough. Form communities based on faith." Read his excellent homily via the Vatican's website.

The next World Youth Day is scheduled for Sydney, Australia in 2008.

Images from the Mass:

AFP/Pier Paolo Cito

AFP

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Saturday, August 20, 2005

The DaVinci Protest

With the release of Dan Brown’s “The DaVinci Code” coming to the big screen, a 61-year-old nun protested outside of the cathedral where it was filmed in London for 12 hours by praying the Rosary on the concrete in reparation for the lies of the movie against Jesus.

Many view this book offensive because it states lies about Christ and the Church including that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, had a child with her, and she started the papacy. Some claim this is fiction and is no harm, but while I watched the program many people talked about how they believe it as the truth! I’m certainly opposed to a movie like this that distorts the truth, and the Only Truth at that, just to make money.

August 2006 Update: Visit Jesus Decoded and my later post on this.

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Let us adore Him

I'm writing this post after the WYD celebrations have concluded but as I put these posts in the archives of my blog I felt that the WYD section would not be complete without Eucharistic Adoration mentioned.

On August 20, 2005, many, many people remained in an all-night Eucharistic Adoration Vigil to adore Our Lord who is truly present (Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity) in the Eucharist. Eucharistic adoration is indeed a great gift and my favorite form of prayer.

Christ-Haunted posted that beautiful photo above of Pope Benedict XVI during Adoration.

Here is the address of Pope Benedict XVI for the youth vigil:

Dear young friends,

In our pilgrimage with the mysterious Magi from the East, we have arrived at the moment which St Matthew describes in his Gospel with these words: "Going into the house (over which the star had halted), they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him" (Mt 2: 11). Outwardly, their journey was now over. They had reached their goal.

But at this point a new journey began for them, an inner pilgrimage which changed their whole lives. Their mental picture of the infant King they were expecting to find must have been very different. They had stopped at Jerusalem specifically in order to ask the King who lived there for news of the promised King who had been born. They knew that the world was in disorder, and for that reason their hearts were troubled.

They were sure that God existed and that he was a just and gentle God. And perhaps they also knew of the great prophecies of Israel foretelling a King who would be intimately united with God, a King who would restore order to the world, acting for God and in his Name.

It was in order to seek this King that they had set off on their journey: deep within themselves they felt prompted to go in search of the true justice that can only come from God, and they wanted to serve this King, to fall prostrate at his feet and so play their part in the renewal of the world. They were among those "who hunger and thirst for justice" (Mt 5: 6). This hunger and thirst had spurred them on in their pilgrimage - they had become pilgrims in search of the justice that they expected from God, intending to devote themselves to its service.

Even if those who had stayed at home may have considered them Utopian dreamers, they were actually people with their feet on the ground, and they knew that in order to change the world it is necessary to have power. Hence, they were hardly likely to seek the promised child anywhere but in the King's palace. Yet now they were bowing down before the child of poor people, and they soon came to realize that Herod, the King they had consulted, intended to use his power to lay a trap for him, forcing the family to flee into exile.

The new King, to whom they now paid homage, was quite unlike what they were expecting. In this way they had to learn that God is not as we usually imagine him to be. This was where their inner journey began. It started at the very moment when they knelt down before this child and recognized him as the promised King. But they still had to assimilate these joyful gestures internally.

They had to change their ideas about power, about God and about man, and in so doing, they also had to change themselves. Now they were able to see that God's power is not like that of the powerful of this world. God's ways are not as we imagine them or as we might wish them to be.

God does not enter into competition with earthly powers in this world. He does not marshal his divisions alongside other divisions. God did not send 12 legions of angels to assist Jesus in the Garden of Olives (cf. Mt 26: 53). He contrasts the noisy and ostentatious power of this world with the defenceless power of love, which succumbs to death on the Cross and dies ever anew throughout history; yet it is this same love which constitutes the new divine intervention that opposes injustice and ushers in the Kingdom of God.

God is different - this is what they now come to realize. And it means that they themselves must now become different, they must learn God's ways.

They had come to place themselves at the service of this King, to model their own kingship on his. That was the meaning of their act of homage, their adoration. Included in this were their gifts - gold, frankincense and myrrh - gifts offered to a King held to be divine. Adoration has a content and it involves giving. Through this act of adoration, these men from the East wished to recognize the child as their King and to place their own power and potential at his disposal, and in this they were certainly on the right path.

By serving and following him, they wanted, together with him, to serve the cause of good and the cause of justice in the world. In this they were right.

Now, though, they have to learn that this cannot be achieved simply through issuing commands from a throne on high. Now they have to learn to give themselves - no lesser gift would be sufficient for this King. Now they have to learn that their lives must be conformed to this divine way of exercising power, to God's own way of being.

They must become men of truth, of justice, of goodness, of forgiveness, of mercy. They will no longer ask: how can this serve me? Instead, they will have to ask: How can I serve God's presence in the world? They must learn to lose their life and in this way to find it. Having left Jerusalem behind, they must not deviate from the path marked out by the true King, as they follow Jesus.

Dear friends, what does all this mean for us?

What we have just been saying about the nature of God being different, and about the way our lives must be shaped accordingly, sounds very fine, but remains rather vague and unfocused. That is why God has given us examples. The Magi from the East are just the first in a long procession of men and women who have constantly tried to gaze upon God's star in their lives, going in search of the God who has drawn close to us and shows us the way.

It is the great multitude of the saints - both known and unknown - in whose lives the Lord has opened up the Gospel before us and turned over the pages; he has done this throughout history and he still does so today. In their lives, as if in a great picture-book, the riches of the Gospel are revealed. They are the shining path which God himself has traced throughout history and is still tracing today.

My venerable Predecessor Pope John Paul II, who is with us at this moment, beatified and canonized a great many people from both the distant and the recent past. Through these individuals he wanted to show us how to be Christian: how to live life as it should be lived - according to God's way. The saints and the blesseds did not doggedly seek their own happiness, but simply wanted to give themselves, because the light of Christ had shone upon them.

They show us the way to attain happiness, they show us how to be truly human. Through all the ups and downs of history, they were the true reformers who constantly rescued it from plunging into the valley of darkness; it was they who constantly shed upon it the light that was needed to make sense - even in the midst of suffering - of God's words spoken at the end of the work of creation: "It is very good".

One need only think of such figures as St Benedict, St Francis of Assisi, St Teresa of Avila, St Ignatius of Loyola, St Charles Borromeo, the founders of 19-century religious orders who inspired and guided the social movement, or the saints of our own day - Maximilian Kolbe, Edith Stein, Mother Teresa, Padre Pio. In contemplating these figures we learn what it means "to adore" and what it means to live according to the measure of the Child of Bethlehem, by the measure of Jesus Christ and of God himself.

The saints, as we said, are the true reformers. Now I want to express this in an even more radical way: only from the saints, only from God does true revolution come, the definitive way to change the world.

In the last century we experienced revolutions with a common programme - expecting nothing more from God, they assumed total responsibility for the cause of the world in order to change it. And this, as we saw, meant that a human and partial point of view was always taken as an absolute guiding principle. Absolutizing what is not absolute but relative is called totalitarianism. It does not liberate man, but takes away his dignity and enslaves him.

It is not ideologies that save the world, but only a return to the living God, our Creator, the guarantor of our freedom, the guarantor of what is really good and true. True revolution consists in simply turning to God who is the measure of what is right and who at the same time is everlasting love. And what could ever save us apart from love?

Dear friends! Allow me to add just two brief thoughts.

There are many who speak of God; some even preach hatred and perpetrate violence in God's Name. So it is important to discover the true face of God. The Magi from the East found it when they knelt down before the Child of Bethlehem. "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father", said Jesus to Philip (Jn 14: 9). In Jesus Christ, who allowed his heart to be pierced for us, the true face of God is seen. We will follow him together with the great multitude of those who went before us. Then we will be travelling along the right path.

This means that we are not constructing a private God, we are not constructing a private Jesus, but that we believe and worship the Jesus who is manifested to us by the Sacred Scriptures and who reveals himself to be alive in the great procession of the faithful called the Church, always alongside us and always before us.

There is much that could be criticized in the Church. We know this and the Lord himself told us so: it is a net with good fish and bad fish, a field with wheat and darnel.

Pope John Paul II, as well as revealing the true face of the Church in the many saints that he canonized, also asked pardon for the wrong that was done in the course of history through the words and deeds of members of the Church. In this way he showed us our own true image and urged us to take our place, with all our faults and weaknesses, in the procession of the saints that began with the Magi from the East.

It is actually consoling to realize that there is darnel in the Church. In this way, despite all our defects, we can still hope to be counted among the disciples of Jesus, who came to call sinners.

The Church is like a human family, but at the same time it is also the great family of God, through which he establishes an overarching communion and unity that embraces every continent, culture and nation. So we are glad to belong to this great family that we see here; we are glad to have brothers and friends all over the world.

Here in Cologne we discover the joy of belonging to a family as vast as the world, including Heaven and earth, the past, the present, the future and every part of the earth. In this great band of pilgrims we walk side by side with Christ, we walk with the star that enlightens our history.

"Going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him" (Mt 2: 11). Dear friends, this is not a distant story that took place long ago. It is with us now. Here in the Sacred Host he is present before us and in our midst. As at that time, so now he is mysteriously veiled in a sacred silence; as at that time, it is here that the true face of God is revealed. For us he became a grain of wheat that falls on the ground and dies and bears fruit until the end of the world (cf. Jn 12: 24).

He is present now as he was then in Bethlehem. He invites us to that inner pilgrimage which is called adoration. Let us set off on this pilgrimage of the spirit and let us ask him to be our guide. Amen.

© Copyright 2005 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Other Images:

(AP Photo/Thomas Kienzle)
The purple areas are the youth in attendance:

(AP Photo/WJT, Hacky Hagemeyer)

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