Angel Disguised as Priest Attends to an Auto Accident

This is a beautiful story and beautiful commentary on the Catholic Faith, both in showing where the true grace of Heaven abides and in showing forth the beautiful soul of a young woman so resigned and tranquil under siege. Here she was crushed under all the twisted metal in the wake of a head-on collision, and she was talking about her religion and prayer, even before the "priest" arrived. Certainly this cleric had all the markings of an angel, as you will see.

Full story here...

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Upcoming Film on the Council of Nicea

Following in the tradition of Mel Gibson's ground breaking masterpiece, The Passion of Christ, the film Nicaea promises to be the second in what I hope will be a growing trend in the cinematic presentations of the divine and human drama of the 2000 year history of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Executive Producer and brainchild behind Nicaea is Catholic layman Charles Parlato, a former hedge fund manager and currently, a private investor. One March morning in 1991, he awoke with the idea of capturing the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.), one of the major turning points in the history of Christianity, on film. It's been a long and difficult road, but Parlato is on the threshold of success.

With preliminary production tasks completed, the scheduling for the filming of Nicaea is set for early 2014 at the famed European Cinecitta Studies in Rome, site of the filming of Ben-Hur (1959) and The Passion (2004). Nicaea's distinguished production staff includes Rob Draper, Director, Enzo Sisti, Executive Producer for The Passion and Nicaea, and Francesco Frigeri – Design Producer for The Passion and Nicaea.

Historic Background on Nicaea

While most Christians are acquainted with the Nicene Creed, the profession of the Christian Faith held by the Roman Catholic Church and common also to all Eastern Churches and major Protestant Denominations, details surrounding the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea and its importance in the life of Christianity are not generally well known by the layman, especially the pivotal role played by Emperor Constantine and the almost unimaginable cast of characters ever assembled under one roof for an ecclesiastical event which would define and affirm the basic tenets of Christianity forever. 

(Continued at http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/engel/130808)

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St. Cajetan

Double (1955 Calendar): August 7

The following is taken from the readings for Matins for St. Cajetan's feastday:

Cajetan was born at Vicenza of the noble house of Tiene, and was at once dedicated by his mother to the Virgin Mother of God. His innocence appeared so wonderful from his very childhood that everyone called him 'the saint.' He took the degree of Doctor in canon and civil law at Padua, and then went to Rome, where Julius II made him a prelate. When he received the priesthood, such a fire of divine love was enkindled in his soul, that he left the court to devote himself entirely to God. He founded hospitals with his own money and himself served the sick, even those attacked with pestilential maladies. He displayed such unflagging zeal for the salvation of his neighbour that he earned the name of the 'hunter of souls.'

His great desire was to restore ecclesiastical discipline, then much relaxed, to the form of the apostolic life, and to this end he founded the Order of Regular Clerks. They lay aside all care of earthly things, possess no revenues, do not beg even the necessaries of life from the faithful, but live only on alms spontaneously offered. Clement VII having approved this institution, Cajetan made his solemn vows at the High Altar of the Vatican basilica, together with John Peter Caraffa, Bishop of Chieti, who was afterwards Pope Paul IV, and two other men of distinguished piety. During the sack of Rome, he was most cruelly treated by the soldiers, to make him deliver up his money, which the hands of the poor had long ago carried into the heavenly treasures. He endured with the utmost patience stripes, torture, and imprisonment. He persevered unfalteringly in the kind of life he had embraced, relying entirely upon Divine Providence and God never failed him, as was sometimes proved by miracle.

He was a great promoter of assiduity at the divine worship, of the beauty of the House of God, of exactness in holy ceremonies, and of frequent communion. More than once he detected and foiled the wicked subterfuges of heresy. He would prolong his prayer for eight hours, without ceasing to shed tears; he was often rapt in ecstasy and was famous for the gift of prophecy. At Rome, one Christmas night, while he was praying at our Lord’s crib, the Mother of God was pleased to lay the Infant Jesus in his arms. He would spend whole nights in chastising his body with disciplines, and could never be induced to relax anything of the austerity of his life; for he would say, he wished to die in sackcloth and ashes. At length he fell into an illness caused by the intense sorrow he felt at seeing the people offend God by a sedition; and at Naples, after being refreshed by a heavenly vision, he passed to heaven. His body is honoured with great devotion in the church of St. Paul in that town. As many miracles worked by him both living and dead made his name illustrious, Pope Clement X enrolled him amongst the saints.

 

In honor of this Feast of the Founder of the Theatines, the following short biography is taken from Catholic Encyclopedia:

Founder of the Theatines, born October, 1480 at Vicenza in Venetian territory; died at Naples in 1547. Under the care of a pious mother he passed a studious and exemplary youth, and took his degree as doctor utriusque juris at Padua in his twenty-fourth year. In 1506 he became at Rome a prothonotary Apostolic in the court of Julius II, and took an important share in reconciling the Republic of Venice with that pontiff. On the death of Julius in 1523 he withdrew from the court, and is credited with founding, shortly after, an association of pious priests and prelates called the Oratory of Divine Love, which spread to other Italian towns. Though remarkable for his intense love of God, he did not advance to the priesthood till 1516.

Recalled to Vicenza in the following year by the death of his mother, he founded there a hospital for incurables, thus giving proof of the active charity that filled his whole life. But his zeal was more deeply moved by the spiritual diseases that, in those days of political disorder, infected the clergy of all ranks, and, like St. Augustine in earlier times, he strove to reform them by instituting a body of regular clergy, who should combine the spirit of monasticism with the exercises of the active ministry.

Returning to Rome in 1523 he laid the foundations of his new congregation, which was canonically erected by Clement VII in 1524. One of his four companions was Giovanni Pietro Caraffa, Bishop of Chieti (in Latin Theate), afterwards Paul IV, who was elected first superior, and from whose title arose the name Theatines. The order grew but slowly. During the sack of Rome in 1527 the Theatines, then twelve in number, escaped to Venice after enduring many outrages from the heretic invaders. There Cajetan met St. Hieronymus Æmiliani, whom he assisted in the establishment of his Congregation of Clerks Regular. In 1533 Cajetan founded a house in Naples, where he was able to check the advances of Lutheranism. In 1540 he was again at Venice, whence he extended his work to Verona and Vicenza. He passed the last four years of his life, a sort of seraphic existence, at Naples where he died finally of grief at the discords of the city, suffering in his last moments a kind of mystical crucifixion. He was beatified by Urban VIII in 1629, and canonized by Clement X in 1671. His feast is kept on the 7th of August.

Prayer:

O God, you blessed the holy confessor Cajetan with the grace to lead the life of an apostle. may the prayers and intercession of this saint help us to trust in you always and desire only the things of heaven. Through our Lord . . .

Source: 1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missal

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Virtual Tour: National Shrine of St. Therese of Lisieux

For some time I have been hoping to stop by the National Shrine of St. Therese in Darien, IL.  Today I managed to stop by after Mass.  Despite the modernist chapel there, the rest of the museum was beautiful with the traditional and beautiful artifacts from the life of St. Therese.  The Shrine holds several reliquaries with 1st Class relics in addition to numerous 2nd class relics.

Below are images from that Shrine.

O Little Therese of the Child Jesus,
Please pick a rose for me
From the heavenly gardens
And send it to me
As a message of love.

O little flower of Jesus,

Ask God today to grant the favors
I now place with confidence
In your hands.


(Mention your specific requests)


St. Therese,
help me to always believe,
As you did,
In God's great love for me,
So that I might imitate your
"Little Way" each day. Amen

O Glorious St. Therese, whom Almighty God has raised up to aid and inspire the human family, I implore your Miraculous Intercession. You are so powerful in obtaining every need of body and spirit from the Heart of God. Holy Mother Church proclaims you 'Prodigy of Miracles... the Greatest Saint of Modern Times.' Now I fervently beseech you to answer my petition (mention here) and to carry out your promises of spending Heaven doing good on earth...of letting fall from Heaven a Shower of Roses. Little Flower, give me your childlike faith, to see the Face of God in the people and experiences of my life, and to love God with full confidence. St. Therese, my Carmelite Sister, I will fulfill your plea 'to be made known everywhere' and I will continue to lead others to Jesus through you. Amen

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Feast of the Finding of St. Stephen's Relics

SemiDouble (1954 Calendar): August 3rd

This feastday was sadly removed in 1960 and is not found in the 1962 Missal. It is however kept in the older pre-1954 Missal that is still used in some places.

Source for the below (Lives of the Saints):

The second festival in honor of the holy protomartyr St. Stephen was instituted by the Church on the occasion of the discovery of his precious remains. His body lay long concealed, under the ruins of an old tomb, in a place twenty miles from Jerusalem, called Caphargamala, where stood a church which was served by a venerable priest named Lucian. In the year 415, on Friday, the 3rd of December, about nine o'clock at night, Lucian was sleeping in his bed in the baptistery, where he commonly lay in order to guard the sacred vessels of the church. Being half awake, he saw a tall, comely old man of a venerable aspect, who approached him, and, calling him thrice by his name, bid him go to Jerusalem and tell Bishop John to come and open the tombs in which his remains and those of certain other servants of Christ lay, that through their means God might open to many the gates of His clemency.

This vision was repeated twice. After the second time, Lucian went to Jerusalem and laid the whole affair before Bishop John, who bade him go and search for the relics, which, the Bishop concluded, would be found under a heap of small stones which lay in a field near his church. In digging up the earth here, three coffins or chests were found. Lucian sent immediately to acquaint Bishop John with this. He was then at the Council of Diospolis, and, taking along with him Eutonius, Bishop of Sebaste, and Eleutherius, Bishop of Jericho, came to the place. Upon the opening of St. Stephen's coffin the earth shook, and there came out of the coffin such an agreeable odor that no one remembered to have ever smelled anything like it.

There was a vast multitude of people assembled in that place, among whom were many persons afflicted with divers distempers, of whom seventy-three recovered their health upon the spot. They kissed the holy relics, and then shut them up. The Bishop consented to leave a small portion of them at Caphargamala; the rest were carried in the coffin with singing of psalms and hymns, to the Church of Sion at Jerusalem. The translation was performed on the 26th of December, on which day the Church hath ever since honored the memory of St. Stephen, commemorating the discovery of his relies on the 3rd of August probably on account of the dedication of some church in his honor.

Reflection - St. Austin, speaking of the miracles of St. Stephen, addresses himself to his flock as follows: "Let us so desire to obtain temporal blessings by his intercession that we may merit, in imitating him, those which are eternal."

Collect:

O Lord, we celebrate the finding of his body, Stephen, who prayed for his persecutors. May we imitate this saint, whom we revere, and learn from him to love even our enemies. Through our Lord Jesus Christ Your Son . . .

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Little Flowers Family Press in Need of Support After Devastating Fire

In a very sad piece of news, I have learned that Little Flowers Family Press has suffered a devastating fire. The horrific house fire has destroyed their 17yr old traditional catholic publishing business. The family barely got out with their lives and has a tremendous amount of work to rebuild.

From a local news story:

(Updated on July 24, 2013) Lanark Highlands Business Tourism Association is passing along unfortunate news. One of our members, Little Flowers Family Press, experienced a devastating fire on Friday morning and the family’s home and business has been destroyed. Rita and Mark Davidson and their four boys escaped without harm, but they lost everything in the blaze. Rita is also a member of the LHBTA volunteer board.

Photo courtesy of Beth Girdler

Located at 2988 Elphin-Maberly Road (in the former Elphin General Store), the fire consumed everything from personal items to their vehicle. The cause of the fire is still unknown.
Anyone wanting to donate immediately, can do so at any Scotiabank, noting that they want to contribute to the Davidson Trust.

Also, please visit the “Our Community Cares” Facebook page (click here) and request to join to learn more about what items are still needed by the family.

The following is taken directly from the family:

My friends it is with a heavy heart beyond words, I share that we lost our home, our business, our entire livelihood last Friday (July 19th 2013) with a fire.

We barely got out with our lives. Just 45 min later our entire house was done. We are thankful God found reason to spare us and our 4 boys, three with autism. The devil was mighty upset for our work i guess.

I’m hope you don’t mind my posting this and asking for your prayers and support. We had no insurance and rebuilding our lives will be a huge job. Rebuilding ‘Little Flowers Family Press’ will be an even larger job. But, if God wills it, this won’t be the last from us.

As we try to make sense of our life, we cling to God, who is our ‘all’ now that all our earthly possessions have been stripped away. In His mercy, He has saved us from destruction, for a purpose.

Please find it within your heart to join their Facebook Page and offer any help that you may be able to offer them.  Prayers are needed.

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August's First Friday Devotion

Today is the First Friday of August. Because today is the first Friday of the Month, many Catholic parishes will have special Masses today for the First Friday Devotion.

Beginning on December 27, 1673, through 1675, Our Lord appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque asking her to receive Him in Holy Communion on the first Friday of every month and to meditate on His passion from 11:00 PM to 12:00 midnight each Thursday. He also revealed to her twelve promises for all who are devoted to His Sacred Heart; he asked for a Feast of the Sacred Heart to be instituted in the liturgical calendar of the Church. Our Lord appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque with twelve promises for those devoted to His Most Sacred Heart.

Promises for those devoted to the Sacred Heart:

1. "I will give them all the graces necessary in their state of life."
2. "I will establish peace in their homes."
3. "I will comfort them in their afflictions."
4. "I will be their secure refuge during life, and above all in death."
5. "I will bestow a large blessing upon all their undertakings."
6. "Sinners shall find in My Heart the source and the infinite ocean of mercy."
7. "Tepid souls shall grow fervent."
8. "Fervent souls shall quickly mount to high perfection."
9. "I will bless every place where a picture of My Heart shall be set up and honored."
10. "I will give to priests the gift of touching the most hardened hearts."
11. "Those who shall promote this devotion shall have their names written in My Heart, never to be blotted out."
12. "I promise thee in the excessive mercy of My Heart that My all-powerful love will grant to all those who communicate on the First Friday in nine consecutive months, the grace of final penitence; they shall not die in My disgrace nor without receiving the Sacraments; My Divine heart shall be their safe refuge in this last moment."

Prayer of Reparation:


O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore thee profoundly. I offer thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He is offended. By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of thee the conversion of poor sinners. Amen.

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Virtual Tour: Cathedral Basilica of Ss Peter and Paul in Philadelphia

Continuing a trend with my recent posts here and here, I wish to share these images from a recent visit of mine to Philadelphia. These images are of the Catholic Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

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Analysis of Pope Francis's First Encyclical in Light of Catholic Tradition

Is Pope Francis' first encyclical, Lumen fidei, in line with Tradition? DICI examines the text and gives some conclusions.  The following is directly quoted from that source.

Lumen fidei [published on June 29, 2013] claims to be “in continuity with all that the Church’s magisterium has pronounced”;  thus there is an explicit reference—but only in a footnote—to Chapter 3 of the Constitution Dei Filius of the First Vatican Council (no. 7, note 7).  It is also about the “faith [that is] received from God as a supernatural gift” (no. 4), and it specifies that faith is a “theological” and “supernatural” virtue given by God (no. 7). Similarly we read:

Since faith is one, it must be professed in all its purity and integrity” (no. 48); not a single article of the Creed can be denied;  there is a need for vigilance to ensure that the deposit of faith is passed on “in its entirety (no. 48).

But those are the only traces of the traditional teaching.

All the rest of the Encyclical buries these all-too-rare allusions in a context that is quite foreign to them. This context connects the idea of faith with the idea of experience and personal encounter, which establishes a relation between man and God, without making it clear whether this is the intellectual relation of knowledge[1] or the affective relation of love.[2] Nor is it very clear whether this personal encounter corresponds to the profound requirements of nature or whether it surpasses them by introducing man into a specifically supernatural order.[3] The problem is compounded by the failure to cite the classical notions of natural and supernatural in describing this relation: it is above all a question of existence.[4]

The central idea is that faith is first of all existential, the product of an encounter with the living God that reveals love and leads to communion (no. 4, no. 8).  It is essentially dynamic, openness to the promise of God and memory of [that promise about] the future (no. 9), openness to love (no. 21, no. 34), attachment to the source of life and of all fatherhood (no. 11), an experience of love (no. 47)…. It consists of “the willingness to let ourselves be constantly transformed and renewed by God’s call” (no. 13).

There is no definition of what a theological virtue is, and the reader will search in vain for a specific definition of the three theological virtues, which consequently are mixed up. Never is faith related to the authority of God who reveals (the word “authority” appears once, in no. 55, but in reference to another subject). The revealed deposit of faith is mentioned only in no. 48, but it is not defined—particularly the fact that it was completed at the death of the last apostle.

No. 18 recalls that “Christian faith is faith in the incarnation of the Word and his bodily resurrection; it is faith in a God who is so close to us that he entered our human history.” But it must be admitted that it is quite difficult to recite the act of faith on the basis of the considerations proposed here, according to which faith relies not on the authority of God who can neither deceive nor be deceived, but rather on the “utter reliability of God’s love” (no. 17), and on the reliability of Jesus “based… on his divine sonship” (ibid.). In other words: I believe in God because he is love and not because he is truthful.

We find in footnote 23 an excerpt from Dei Verbum that speaks about “[willing assent] to the revelation given by God”, which requires

the grace of God, anticipating it and assisting it, as well as the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, and opens the eyes of the mind and makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth (no. 29).

Yet further on the Encyclical reads:

The creed does not only involve giving one’s assent to a body of abstract truths; rather, when it is recited the whole of life is drawn into a journey towards full communion with the living God (no. 45).

The necessity of faith in order to be saved is presented in a non-directive manner: the beginning of salvation is “openness to something prior to ourselves, to a primordial gift that affirms life and sustains it in being” (no. 19). Or else:  “Faith in Christ brings salvation because in him our lives become radically open” (no. 20). This is far from the Gospel clarity:

Go ye into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creation.  He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved:  but he that believeth not shall be condemned (Mark 16:15-16).

On the contrary, no. 34 says:

The light of love proper to faith can illumine the questions of our own time about truth…. As a truth of love, it is not one that can be imposed by force; it is not a truth that stifles the individual. Since it is born of love, it can penetrate to the heart, to the personal core of each man and woman. Clearly, then, faith is not intransigent, but grows in respectful coexistence with others.

Incidentally, one might wonder about the catechetical effectiveness of the definition of the Decalogue given in no. 46:

The Decalogue is not a set of negative commands, but concrete directions for emerging from the desert of the selfish and self-enclosed ego in order to enter into dialogue with God.

In short, faith, as it is presented in Lumen fidei, is first of all an experience of life and of love, fully realized in the “encounter with Christ” (no. 30): “Faith knows because it is tied to love, because love itself brings enlightenment” (no. 26). Jesus is said to be the one savior because “all God’s light is concentrated in him, in his ‘luminous life’ which discloses the origin and the end of history” (no. 35)….

It is much too early to propose, based on a first encyclical, a key to reading the teaching of Pope Francis; the next encyclical—which is said to be dedicated to poverty—will be more personal and will enlighten us more precisely. We will simply be so bold as to point out that Lumen fidei is indeed in line with post-conciliar teaching. Vatican II wanted to open up the Church to the modern world, which is characterized by its rejection of the argument from authority. Thus the Council claimed to be pastoral, avoiding all dogmatic definition so as not to give the impression of coercing contemporary minds.

From this perspective, the considerations on faith in Lumen fidei are somewhat reminiscent of what the immanentist philosopher Maurice Blondel wrote:

If faith increases our knowledge, it is not initially and principally inasmuch as it teaches us certain objective truths by authorized testimony, but rather inasmuch as it unites us to the life of a subject, inasmuch as it initiates us, through loving thought, to another thought and another love. (M. Blondel in A. Lalande, Dictionnaire technique et critique de la philosophie [Paris: PUF, 1968], 360, emphasis added.)

It is not learning objective truths, but becoming united to the life of a subject and being initiated by loving thought to another thought and another love. Hence a problem arises: how can one be content to propose to modern minds, which are smitten with autonomy, what the authority of divine revelation imposes on us? And how can we do this without giving the impression to those minds that the authority of divine revelation is contrary to their aspirations to autonomy? And without diluting the revealed deposit itself either or diminishing its authority? These are the difficulties with which the Magisterium has been struggling for fifty years.

In a recent article, Fr. Jean-Dominique, O.P., recalls the interest with which the Protestants of Taize welcomed the non-dogmatic teaching of Vatican II:

The Council’s intention is to drop an excessively static and notional language so as to adopt resolutely a dynamic, living language. This whole magnificent document [Dei Verbum, the conciliar document on Revelation—Editor’s note] will consider Revelation as the living Word that the living God addresses to the living Church composed of living members…. This whole document on Revelation will be dominated by the foundational evangelical themes of word, life and communion.  The Word of God, is the living Christ whom God gives to mankind so as to establish between him and them the communion of the Spirit in the Church.

Thus the Church gave up “speaking about the acceptance of revelation in terms of submission to authority” so as to speak primarily about a “personal faith that accepts God’s revelation” (Roger Schutz and Max Thurian, La Parole vivante au Concile [Les Presses de Taize, 1966], 77-78, cited by Fr. Jean-Dominique, “Concile ou révolution?” in Le Chardonnet [July 2013]: 6).

This intention no longer to resort to dogmatic definitions is deplored by the Declaration of the bishops of the Society of St. Pius X dated June 27, 2013:

We are truly obliged to observe that this Council without comparison, which wanted to be merely pastoral and not dogmatic, inaugurated a new type of magisterium, hitherto unheard of in the Church, without roots in Tradition; a magisterium resolved to reconcile Catholic doctrine with liberal ideas; a magisterium imbued with the modernist ideas of subjectivism, of immanentism and of perpetual evolution according to the false concept of a living tradition [which is also found in the writings of Maurice Blondel—Editor’s note], vitiating  the nature, the content, the role and the exercise of ecclesiastical magisterium.”  (See DICI no. 278, dated July 5, 2013).

(DICI no. 279 dated July 19, 2013)

Footnotes

[1] Recall: Faith  is defined as the adherence of our intellect to the truths revealed by God, because of the authority of God who reveals them. The spiritual life has faith as its principle, which receives from revelation its properly intellectual and therefore conceptual knowledge of the mystery. Without denying the fact that faith must be enriched by charity and flourish in loving knowledge, we must firmly maintain that, in order to be united in the actual spiritual life, faith and charity must remain formally distinct in their definition, in the eyes of the Magisterium and of theology.

[2] “Believing means entrusting oneself to a merciful love which always accepts and pardons, which sustains and directs our lives, and which shows its power by its ability to make straight the crooked lines of our history” (no. 13). “Faith transforms the whole person precisely to the extent that he or she becomes open to love. Through this blending of faith and love we come to see the kind of knowledge which faith entails, its power to convince and its ability to illumine our steps. Faith knows because it is tied to love, because love itself brings enlightenment. Faith’s understanding is born when we receive the immense love of God which transforms us inwardly and enables us to see reality with new eyes” (no. 26). “Faith transforms the whole person precisely to the extent that he or she becomes open to love. Through this blending of faith and love we come to see the kind of knowledge which faith entails, its power to convince and its ability to illumine our steps. Faith knows because it is tied to love, because love itself brings enlightenment. Faith’s understanding is born when we receive the immense love of God which transforms us inwardly and enables us to see reality with new eyes” (no. 32).

[3] “The life of faith, as a filial existence, is the acknowledgment of a primordial and radical gift which upholds our lives. We see this clearly in St. Paul’s question to the Corinthians: ‘What have you that you did not receive?’ (1 Cor 4:7)” (no. 19). Does this refer to the gift of creation or to the gift of grace? “In accepting the gift of faith, believers become a new creation; they receive a new being, as God’s children”; this is well put, but it does not specify whether this newness is part of the natural order and in continuity with creation or whether it surpasses it.

[4] “The light of faith is unique, since it is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence” (no. 4). “For those early Christians, faith, as an encounter with the living God revealed in Christ, was indeed a ‘mother’, for it had brought them to the light and given birth within them to divine life, a new experience and a luminous vision of existence for which they were prepared to bear public witness to the end” (no. 5). “The Second Vatican Council enabled the light of faith to illumine our human experience from within, accompanying the men and women of our time on their journey. It clearly showed how faith enriches life in all its dimensions” (no. 6). “Thus wonderfully interwoven, faith, hope and charity are the driving force of the Christian life as it advances towards full communion with God” (no. 7). “Believing means entrusting oneself to a merciful love which always accepts and pardons, which sustains and directs our lives, and which shows its power by its ability to make straight the crooked lines of our history” (no. 13). “The beginning of salvation is openness to something prior to ourselves, to a primordial gift that affirms life and sustains it in being” (no. 19). “Those who believe are transformed by the Love to which they have opened their hearts in faith. By their openness to this offer of primordial Love, their lives are enlarged and expanded” (no. 21). “The realization that God is light provided Augustine with a new direction in life and enabled him to acknowledge his sinfulness and to turn towards the good” (no. 33).

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Prayers to our Lady of Good Counsel for Virtue and Victor

Most Glorious Virgin, chosen by the Eternal Counsel to be the Mother of the Eternal Word made flesh, thou who art the treasurer of Divine graces, and the advocate of sinners, I, thy most unworthy servant, have recourse to thee; be thou pleased to be my guide and counselor in this vale of tears. Obtain for me through the Most Precious Blood of thy Divine Son, the forgiveness of my sins, the salvation of my soul, and the means necessary to obtain it. In like manner, obtain for Holy Mother the Church victory over her enemies, and the spread of the kingdom of Jesus Christ upon the whole earth. Amen.

Many popes have been great champions of Our Lady of Good Counsel and her image. Paul II first approved devotion to her. Popes Urban VIII, Pius IX and John XXIII all made trips to the church in Genarazzo to honor her. Pope Benedict XIV established the Pious Union of Our Lady of Good Counsel in 1753, which has included among its members the popes Pius VIII, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius XII, who placed his papacy under her maternal care. He later composed this prayer to Our Lady of Good Counsel, which can be used as a novena:

O Holy Virgin, to whose feet we are led by our anxious uncertainty in our search for and attainment of what is true and good, invoking you by the sweet title of Mother of Good Counsel, we beseech you to come to our assistance, when, along the road of this life, the darkness of error and of evil conspires towards our ruin by leading our minds and our hearts astray. O Seat of Wisdom and Star of the Sea, enlighten the doubtful and the erring, that they be not seduced by the false appearances of good; render them steadfast in the face of the hostile and corrupting influences of passion and of sin. O Mother of Good Counsel, obtain for us from your Divine Son a great love of virtue, and, in the hour of uncertainty and trial, the strength to embrace the way that leads to our salvation. If your hand sustains us, we shall walk unmolested along the path indicated to us by the life and words of Jesus, our Redeemer; and having followed freely and securely, even in the midst of this world's strife, the Sun of Truth and Justice under your maternal Star, we shall come to the enjoyment of full and eternal peace with you in the haven of salvation. Amen.

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