THROUGH WORK man must earn his daily bread1 and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives in community with those who belong to the same family. And work means any activity by man, whether manual or intellectual, whatever its nature or circumstances; it means any human activity that can and must be recognized as work, in the midst of all the many activities of which man is capable and to which he is predisposed by his very nature, by virtue of humanity itself. Man is made to be in the visible universe an image and likeness of God himself2, and he is placed in it in order to subdue the earth3. From the beginning therefore he is called to work. Work is one of the characteristics that distinguish man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work. Only man is capable of work, and only man works, at the same time by work occupying his existence on earth. Thus work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons. And this mark decides its interior characteristics; in a sense it constitutes its very nature.
St George is the Patron Saint of England. It is no coincidence that he is a soldier and a nobleman. It is the courage that allowed him to stare the Emperor Diocletian in the face and win the victory over human authority to witness to the divine Authority of Jesus Christ the Lord, gaining for himself the royal crown of martyrdom. We need this same courage today in England.
God's response to any historical situation is to send saints. If you love England, become holy. If you are concerned for the nations future, her welfare, for her citizenry, become a saint! If you are concerned for the future of this world, and want to do the most fruitful and useful thing to help, become a saint!
My the prayers and intercession of St George, all the angels and saints, and the glorious intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Queen of Martyrs, obtain for our age a harvest of holiness, that the Spirit of God may raise up holy men and women in our time.
In the readings for today, we find that Jesus desires us to gaze upon his risen face. There are many things that seek to cloud our vision of God, and contemplating him is an ongoing process.
Firstly we see that he has to walk through our walls. He walked through the walls of the upper room where the apostles were cowering. They did not expect him to be alive and so he said to them, as he says to us, walking through the walls of our fears, anxieties, pretenses, masks and games, saying:
Peace be with you!
At the sight of the one they previously saw tortured, mocked, scourged, scorned, hated, and crucified, he says to them as he says to us, surprised by the novelty of an unmerited visit from the Lord:
In a state of alarm and fright, they thought they were seeing a ghost. But he said, ‘Why are you so agitated, and why are these doubts rising in your hearts?'
This is not a question he actually expects us to answer, even though we may try to come up with excuses and justifications why we feel unworthy or incapable of God's friendship: I am too busy, I am under stress, I don't have anyone to talk to about my problems who understands me, I am afraid. It is a rhetorical question as if he is saying to us, Why are you so upset if I am here for you. Then he invites us to encounter him, Risen from the dead, victorious over our human evil, our fear, our sinfulness saying:
Look at my hands and feet; yes, it is I indeed. Touch me and see for yourselves.
We touch Christ in the Eucharist. The Risen Saviour touches us, or rather invites us by living faith in his presence like the doubting Thomas, to touch his wounds, his scars of love, so that we may know that he is truly alive and wants to show us his love.
The love of Christ then moves us to know ourselves as love. This love, I find, is the only thing that gives us the courage to be honest with ourselves about our state. St Peter spoke of this in the first reading. It sounds at first like he is merely accusing the Jews of rejecting the Christ and his hour of visitation to his people, when in actual fact, we remember that the man speaking denied Jesus at the hour he needed him most. The truth of St Peter's conviction of sin rests firstly with himself. All have sinned and it is not just the Israelites, but all of mankind and each man to whom St Peter speaks:
It was you who accused the Holy One, the Just One, you who demanded the reprieve of a murderer while you killed the prince of life.
These are the effects of sin, to reject God and to not recognize him in our lives. So St Peter's words also apply to us:
Now I know, brothers, that neither you nor your leaders had any idea what you were really doing
This is why Jesus prayed from the Cross and he intercedes for us before the father as St John says about him:
We have our advocate with the Father,Jesus Christ, who is just;he is the sacrifice that takes our sins away,and not only ours,but the whole world’s.
It was this Advocate who prayed for all mankind on the Cross:
Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.
We understand here that God knows that we, who still struggle in this valley of tears, this dominion of the evil one, to be free from sin. Therefore, it is not because of our merits and goodness that God appears to us and reveals himself to us, but for the very reason that we, like St Thomas, doubt the presence of God in our lives. It wasn't the holiest of apostles that Jesus said to touch him and probe the scars that were caused by man's sin and God's desire for our redemption. It was the doubter. It is the same with us. God reveals himself because we need him to.
F.A.C.E
How do we see the Face of Jesus Christ?
Here is a simple acronym to help us see the face of Christ:
F - Faith: to have faith in God's mercy that causes him to reveal himself to us
A - Attentive prayer of the Rosary, where Mary teaches us to contemplate the face of Christ
C - Confession, the great Sacrament where we learn to know the Mercy of God
E - Eucharist, where we actually touch God and he heals us
The holy octave of Easter is a kind of 8 day long feast on the succulent graces, choice merits, and luscious blessings of the Resurrection. Jesus our Food, our Bread, who feeds us of his own divine essence and eternal perfections, spares no expense in giving us the costly fruits of his Passion. In this week every day is a kind of course of the meal and the grand company of apostles, their resurrection speeches and missionary preaching that we find in the epistles of the week feed us lavishly as well. Every day also is a different kind of choice wine from the storehouse of gifts of the Holy Spirit, inebriating us and soothing our souls with the medicine of immortality.
May Our Lady, queen of the Angels, whose song of Alleluia, mightily instructs us to praise, adore, magnify, and laud the Almighty God in joy and thanksgiving.
His Glorious Resurrection is manifested to us in simple ways in human appearance but have a divine effect in our lives. St John, the beloved disciple knew Jesus. He lived with him. That is why when he looked in the tomb and saw the way his friend had folded his garments after rising from the dead, he believed that he was risen. St Peter first met Jesus fishing, so he went back to hope to see him again, and there he appeared in Galilee. God appears to us in our spouses, children, parents, loved ones, families, friends, workplace, in prayer, and in the peace and joy of the moment, but most especially in the ordinary appearance of the Sacraments which bring about a divine effect in our lives.
This is true for all the Sacraments, but most especially for the Most Holy Eucharist, where Jesus, He who IS the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1324) is explains that the Eucharist is the "Source and summit of the Christian life" and
"A memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a Paschal banquet 'in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us."
May Our Lady, the glorious Queen of Angels pray that the living Resurrection of the Lord, presented and offered to us in the Sacraments, help us to live the Easter graces and joys of peace and love of God.
Archbishop Peter Southwark Addresses the Priests
(I am standing between the two bishops on his right)
Yesterday I had the great privilege of attending our Archdiocesan Chrism Mass in which I renewed my priestly commitment to serve God and his people. Here are the words the priests, people, and Archbishop said:
Renewal of Commitment to Priestly Service:
Bishop (addressing the priests): My brother priests today we celebrate the memory of the first Eucharist, at
which our Lord Jesus Christ shared with his apostles and with us his call to the priestly service of his Church.
Now, in the presence of your bishop and God’s holy people, are you ready to renew your own dedication to Christ as priests of his new covenant?
Priests:I am
Bishop:
At your ordination you accepted the responsibilities of the priesthood out of love for the Lord Jesus and his Church. Are you resolved to unite yourselves more closely to Christ and to try and become more like him by joyfully sacrificing your own pleasure and ambition to bring his peace and love to your brothers and sisters?
Priests: I am
Bishop:
Are you resolved to be faithful ministers of the mysteries of God, to celebrate the Eucharist and the other liturgical services with sincere devotion? Are you resolved to imitate Jesus Christ, the head and shepherd of the Church, by teaching the Christian faith without thinking of your own profit, solely for the well-being of the people you were sent to serve?
Priests:I am
Bishop Cordileone (addressing the assembly):
My brothers and sisters, pray for your priests. Ask the Lord to bless them with thefullness of his love, to help them to be faithful ministers of Christ the High Priest, so that they will be able to lead you to him, the fountain of your salvation.
Assembly: Lord Jesus Christ, hear us and answer our prayer.
Bishop:
Pray also for me, that despite my own unworthiness I may faithfully fulfill the office of apostle which Jesus Christ has entrusted to me. Pray that I may become more like our High Priest and Good Shepherd, the teacher and servant of all, and so be a genuine sign of Christ’s loving presence among you.
Assembly: Lord Jesus Christ, hear us and answer our prayer.
Bishop:
May the Lord in his love keep you close to him always, and may he bring all of us, his priests and people, to eternal life.
Catholicism – An adult’s study formation programme in the Catholic Faith.
Wednesday evenings starting 18 April 2012 at St Patrick’s Church in Soho running for eight consecutive Wednesday’s from 7.00pm – 9.00pm. There will also be one Saturday session in May. We will start to gather from 6.30 pm for light refreshments, giving us a time of fellowship.
Catholicism is a programme of 10 films made by Fr Robert Barron from the Archdiocese ofChicago as part of the “Word on Fire” on-line ministry of Catholic evangelisation (seewww.wordonfire.org). Fr Barron presents a modern-day pilgrimage to places across the globe where God has touched the earth and revealed something of His mystery.
Do you want to understand your faith better? Do you want to equip yourself to explain it to friends and colleagues? Do you want to discover the relevance of your faith in daily life? This study programme will help you to do just that. Sessions combine DVD, catechesis and group discussion to help you understand the Faith thoroughly and apply it to your everyday life.
You are warmly invited to register for the Catholicism series and bring a friend! Please get in touch, for further info and registration, contact: Deanna at stpatcatholicism@gmail.com or on 0207 434 9965.
Jesus has chosen you. In doing so, "he who created the heavens and spread them out, who gave shape to the earth and what comes from it, who gave breath to its people and life to the creatures that move in it," bestows on you all the gifts described in the first reading. He not only "opens the eyes of the blind," and "frees captives from prison and those who live in darkness from the dungeon," but he "appoints you as covenant of the people and light of the nations." Such a rich inheritance is mightily overwhelming. In return we are indebted to choose Jesus, to give him all of our gifts as he has richly endowed us.
Mary Magdalene is a sign of the Church. Redeemed and gifted by Christ with undeserved gifts, graces, and blessings, she gives him the costly ointment of all of her temporal riches. As her hair wiping his feet was the sign of the deepest part of her womanhood, the Church offers to Christ the deepest sacrifice of her inmost heart, her all. Unworthy do we approach the feet of the Redeemer, his lowliest part, to give back to him that which he gave to us.
This anointing prepared Jesus for sacrificing himself on the Cross. From this point on, his Sacred Humanity was consumed in the fires of divine charity for the redemption of all mankind. So we should also be consumed this week in a spirit of interior recollection, praise, adoration, thanksgiving, reparation, blessing, intercession, and worship of the Christ, our God.
The Immaculate Virgin Mother of God's Heart was ablaze too with the desire to offer herself in union with him. We ask her to pull us close as she did with the beloved disciple that we may not flee the ignominy of the Cross, but faithfully stand firm in test and trial to witness the great love of God made man.
There has been a shift in Lent in Week 5. We veil the statues in purple and veil our senses in the purple of the Blood of the Lamb. The mood intensifies, the Church settles in for the holiest week of the year.
Why? Why Jesus, do you choose to leave heaven and unite yourself with those who suffer? Why does love suffer? Why is it that when we draw near to God he permits us to be purified by the Passion of His Son?
"You're not listening to me. I don't like your tone of voice. How dare you speak to me that way. We are going to the shop and your going to buy me this and you're going to do it now."
Sound like an adult speaking to a child? No. It was a little boy speaking to his mother. It is what is called a satanic inversion.
When a person tries to be God and tell God what to do, it is a wicked inversion of roles, where good is seen as evil and evil, good. Yet the mystery of iniquity is at work in our hearts: rebelliousness, arrogance, resistance to grace, and so on. Do not be afraid if you find this in your hearts, but turn and submit this sinfulness to the power of the Cross, where Jesus overcame our pride by his humiliation. We need to drink of his humility every day to be washed free of our arrogant tendencies.
Lent is the time for repentance, the time when we are able to look at ourselves and have the courage to change. It is the time not to distance ourselves from the idolatrous Israelites and prideful Pharisees but identify ourselves with them. It is the time when we allow Jesus the divine Physician to begin to heal us by first giving us the diagnosis of our sins.
May the Immaculate and Penitent Hear to Mary pray for us and intercede for us sinners, that we may turn to God and find salvation and healing.
The glory and sublime vocation of St Joseph rest on the fact that he was the protector and guardian of the God-man and of the Immaculate Virgin Mary. Such a person would need to be necessarily equipped with excellent graces, merits, and gifts to be the head of such an exalted family.
Yet we remember that this family had to live in poverty, exile, under worry of violence and death, and how docile St Joseph had to listening to the promptings of angels who spoke to him only in dreams. We learn from him silence, contemplation, service and imitation of Jesus and Mary, and how to consistently humble ourselves before God and his holy plan.
St Teresa of Avila said that she had never been refused anything from his intercession on his feast day. Let us therefore ask God through his intercession for protection, guidance, and defense of holy Mother the Church, and for every good intention in accordance with God's will.
The first reading for today, taken from 2nd Chronicles, describes why the Israelites were exiled by God to Babylon, because by their sin they had exiled God from their moral conscience, "adding infidelity to infidelity." They felt themselves estranged, alone, orphaned from their fatherland. Even the great St Padre Pio prayed, "O Lord forgive me for may many infidelities." How could a saint who was so close to God feel this way? It is because saints are the ones who truly know they are sinners and are fully aware of Christ's salvation. It is the one who has sin caked over his eyes that he thinks he does no wrong. "If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." (1 John 1:10) When God's light shines in us we see our sinfulness - dead, exiled, separated from God and very very alone. Yet, according to the second reading taken from Ephesians
"Even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ -by grace you have been saved-, raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus"
And this is the ingenious thing about the Cross, that that which had formerly caused us separation with God, our sin, has now become through the pardon of Jesus Christ through his blood, the very thing which unties us closest to God. This is what Jesus was referring to when he told Nicodemus
"Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."
When we gaze upon the Crucified we see two things. First what our sin does: kills the presence of God in our moral conscience. One mortal sin separates us eternally from God and for it we deserve and justly merit eternal punishment. The effects of this in our souls is obvious: depression, sadness, fear, anxiety, even insomnia and psychological problems. We see that our sin kills the life of God in us, i.e. sanctifying grace. However, the second and more important thing we see is that by our sin God has revealed his great love, showing us that God is love and he loves us without condition or measure. Undeserving of his love, this woos us, wins over our hearts, to discover the novelty of being loved by God without having deserving it so that we can boast only of our weakness and the wisdom of our loving God.
This is the experience every time we go to Jesus in the Sacrament of confession. The Lord Jesus gave the power to forgive sin to his apostles in the upper room when he said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven" (John 20:23). The psychological effects of receiving the actual pardon of God sacramentally are quite dramatic: emotional healing, peace, happiness, and freedom.
May Our Lady help us to experience the salvation of Christ in a powerful way this Lent.
If we seek to recognize the hidden Resurrection, he who is the Bread of Life, we will seek the hidden Resurrection, the seed of eternal life, in every encounter with the Living Jesus Christ in the poor.
There is one thing of which we may be most certain, that our judgment about other's value is often askew and inaccurate. We do not know what another has been through, what upbringing or education they have had, what their interior experience is, what graces they have been given or have not been given. We only know that our capacity to weigh them is woefully lacking. Because we are most certain of our own incapacity to judge their subjective experience and how often we are erroneous about it, we can be certain that is wise to not trust our judgments, but instead to be generous in the way in which we might measure. In fact it is best to not measure at all. Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, "If we judge others we have no time to love them."
This does not mean that we render ourselves morally incapable of judging moral acts, because the law of God always measures these objective criteria perfectly, forming our way of assessing a situation. It means that we refrain from assigning and thus condemning the interior culpability or fault that is due to others in that situation. Love doesn't not blind us to sin, but reveals it and sharpens our vision, yet at the same time illicits our pity and compassion on those who have sinned. In this way we relate to others as our heavenly Father does fulfilling Jesus' words, "Be compassionate as your heavenly Father is compassionate."
The Immaculate Heart of Mary is free of any trace of judgment. If you find yourself imprisoned by a heart that tends towards judging others rashly and therefore imprisoning them. She can help you grow in humble love and service to tend more to free others of accusations rather than making them, to excuse rather than accuse.
The three children of Fatima, Portugal saw a vision:
"At the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!'."
This was interpreted by the then Prefect of the Congregation of Doctrine of Faith, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who said that Our Lady held up to the angel all of the penance of the faithful. Lent is a season of penance and therefor a season of light, where we are illumined in the ways in which we are not pleasing to God and given the grace to change our lives. It is a season of hope, where God affirms us in the capacity to cease doing evil and learn to do good.
This is the light of Jesus face in the Gospel, which shines forth even brighter when we see his light in our darkness. The light of the baby at Christmas is that God is with us. How much more resplendent is that light and the fact that God is with us when we are in the midst of temptation, suffering, isolation, abandonment, and fear! Blessed Pope John Paul has said that the light of Mt Tabor is the same as the light at Mt Calvary as St Faustina, the Divine Mercy nun, has said that the light of Jesus in his resurrection and in his divine Mercy is the same light that issues forth from the face of Christ Crucified.
The light of God is that the Father has given his dearly beloved Son over to temptation for our sake, that we may not say that he does not know what it is like and what we are going through. In fact, he took all our temptation upon himself and suffered it himself, conquering all our temptations personally in his own time in the desert. Just like the first reading where Abraham suffered the test of God, God suffers our testing, trials, and questioning hearts, so that we may not doubt that he is with us in trial and pain.
The Eucharistic Lord illumines us brightly. The Eucharistic Miracle of Santarem reveals this. A woman went to a witch in order to cast a spell on her unfaithful husband. The witch told her that she needed a consecrated host. The woman went to Church and stole a host at communion time. It began to bleed so she locked it in a chest. In the middle of the night, a light greater than the sun illumined the whole village, until the people asked where the light came from. A priest took the host and placed it in Church, where it remains to this day. The Eucharist contains our God and Lord, Jesus Christ, who is brighter than any light of the sun and when we receive him he consumes us in the rays of his love giving us the light and the love we need to change our sinful ways and begin to become pleasing to God.
This Lent, may the light of Christ bring us to a true communion of the Most Holy Trinity, who was manifest on Mt Tabor in the Father's voice to listen to the glorious Son, and the mysterious cloud of the Holy Spirit. May the Immaculate Virgin Mary, whose love is like pure water in the midst of our aridity, refresh us and help us grow and change to become more like her glorious Son, Jesus Christ the Lord.
We are allowed to fall and fail in lesser things that the foundation of that which is greater may be laid, for the charity can grow only like a tree in greatness inasmuch as the depth of it being rooted in humility. Do not be discouraged then if you find yourself failing in your Lenten obligations and promises. Often times the Lord reveals in them our frailty and his unfailing faithfulness in always staying by our side.
When Jesus says to his disciples, as he says in today's readings, "This is how you are to pray" he is saying that there is a specific way that God desires to be worshiped. The Sacred Liturgy is the Father's Gift to us, that we might offer to him from our lips and hearts the very Word by which he is infinitely pleased, which comes forth from his throne and achieves its efficacious fruitfulness.
Lent must be real. It must change you. It is a battle. The liturgy and the Holy Spirit prepare us and guide us, just as the Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, he drives us deeper into self-mastery and conversion.
There are three traditional practices that aid us in our Lenten journey: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These help us overcome the temptations and weakness of pride, lust and greed.
