It always strikes me how we humans think and where our thoughts seem to tend to today and in past, ie. human sacrifice to 'secure one's future' (not unlike Abortion today perhaps):
St. Thorlak of Iceland: The Scandinavian island nation of Iceland celebrates its national patron, St. Thorlak Thorhallsson, on Dec. 23.
Although Iceland's national assembly declared him a saint in 1198, only five...
Toronto cardinal rebukes Catholic school board members for barring Catechism reading: Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto has rebuked members of the local Catholic school board for refusing to allow a passage of the Catechism of the Catholic Church pertaining to ministry to people with same-sex attraction to be read during a recent meeting.
A 40-minute documentary film which presents the truth of the Catholic Church's teachings on homosexuality with love. Find out more at http://www.whatisthethi...
A 40-minute documentary film which presents the truth of the Catholic Church's teachings on homosexuality with love.Find out more at http://www.whatisthethirdwa...
I think we should all try to calm down. Mind you, that's not altogether easy when one, at least, of our British dailies has for its lead story this morning a large claim that Pope Francis favours "Gay Marriage".
liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com
From: John Charles Schmidt <jc3schmi@hotmail.com> Sent: October 23, 2020 08:58 Subject: Pope civil unions
Give not over your attempts to serve God, though you see nothing come of them. Watch and pray, and obey your conscience, though you cannot perceive your own progress in holiness. Go on, and you cannot but go forward; believe it, though you do not see it. Do the duties of your calling, though they are distasteful to you. Educate your children carefully in the good way, though you cannot tell how far God's grace has touched their hearts. Let your light shine before men, and praise God by a consistent life, even though others do not seem to glorify their Father on account of it, or to be benefited by your example. - Bl. John Henry Newman
Lead cross with an engraving of the crucified Christ
Casted lead pectoral cross, on the face side a Greek inscription ZOE-I(ESU)S-CH(RISTO)S-FOS-NIKA is engraved meaning „Light-Jesus-Christ-Life-Conquers", on the back side there is an engraved motive of the crucified Christ with the protecting hand of an angel. It is the only one cross of this kind found on the whole territory of Great Moravia; it probably belonged to a man from Byzantine religious sphere. It was found in a dwelling being part of the sacral centre connected with the activities of the archbishop Methodius.
Provenance: Uherské Hradiště, site Sady „Špitálky", settlement at the church centre, house n°2. Date: 9th century Size: 4,0x2,7 cm Storage: Moravian Museum, Brno, CZ
A residence hall formerly named for Flannery O'Connor at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore is seen in this undated photo. It is being renamed for Sister Thea Bowman. (CNS/courtesy Loyola University Maryland via Catholic Review)
BALTIMORE —Thirteen years after naming a new residence hall at Loyola University Maryland in honor of the Catholic author Flannery O'Connor, Jesuit Fr. Brian Linnane, the university's president, removed the writer's name from the building.
The structure will now be known as "Thea Bowman Hall," in honor of the first African American member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration.
Bowman, a Mississippi native, was a tireless advocate for greater leadership roles for Black people in the Catholic Church and for incorporating African American culture and spiritual traditions in Catholic worship in the latter half of the 20th century. Her sainthood cause is under consideration in Rome.
O'Connor, a Southern Gothic writer who died of lupus in 1964 at age 39, is recognized as one of the greatest short-story writers of her era, one whose work often examined complex moral questions.
Concerns about her use of racist language in private correspondence prompted more than 1,000 people to sign an online petition asking Loyola to rename the residence hall.
Linnane said it was a difficult decision and that the issue of O'Connor and race is very nuanced.
"I am not a scholar of Flannery O'Connor, but I have studied her fiction and non-fiction writings," he told the Catholic Review, Baltimore's archdiocesan news outlet. "Particularly in her fiction, the dignity of African American persons and their worth is consistently upheld, with the bigots being the object of ridicule."
The priest noted some of the new disclosures about O'Connor's use of racist language date to the 1940s when she was a teenager.
"They don't take into account any evolution in her thinking," he said.
The priest still felt the need to be sensitive to concerns, especially from students, about O'Connor's use of racist language and an admission in her correspondence that she did not like people of color.
"A residence hall is supposed to be the students' home," Linnane said. "If some of the students who live in that building find it to be unwelcoming and unsettling, that has to be taken seriously."
He said he hoped the decision is not viewed as a wholesale repudiation of O'Connor's legacy and noted that professors will continue to assign the study of her writings.
"We were looking to name the building for someone who reflects the values of Loyola and its students at the present time and whose commitment to the fight for racial equality — from an intellectual point of view and from a faith perspective — would be more appropriate for the residence hall."
Loyola is undergoing a larger review of all the names of its buildings and a university committee advised him on the renaming proposal.
Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor is seen in an undated photo. (CNS photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via AP, courtesy "Flannery"/Floyd Jillson)
Angela Alaimo O'Donnell, a former Loyola professor who currently serves as the associate director of the Francis and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University in New York, is spearheading an effort for the university to reconsider its decision.
O'Donnell, an expert on O'Connor's life and writings, who recently wrote the book, "Racial Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O'Connor," agrees that one of Loyola's buildings should be named in honor of Sister Thea, but that O'Connor's name should not be banished.
She said O'Connor grew up in the virulently racist culture of the American South and could not help but be influenced by that culture. She also said the writer should be celebrated for opposing that culture and racism in her writings.
Over the course of her career, O'Connor became more bold and more outspoken in her opposition to the "inburnt beliefs" of her fellow Southerners and Americans, O'Donnell said.
"I find it ironic that her name would be removed from a Catholic, Jesuit university," added O'Donnell, saying the author portrayed America and the human soul as deeply divided, broken and flawed, and "much in need of conversion and repentance."
O'Connor held herself, her racist white characters and all white people up for judgment, O'Donnell said.
"She lays claim to America's original sin of racism, seeks atonement, and she atones," O'Donnell added, noting that even on her deathbed, O'Connor was working on a story about white racists who arrive at the difficult knowledge of their sin.
The Fordham professor wrote a letter to Linnane signed by more than 80 authors, scholars and other leaders, urging the priest to keep O'Connor's name on the building. Among the signatories are leading American authors, including Alice Walker, Richard Rodriguez and Mary Gordon. Auxiliary Bishop Robert E. Barron of Los Angeles, who is chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis, also signed it.
A July 27 statement from Walker is included in the letter saying that "we must honor Flannery for growing."
"Hide nothing of what she was, and use that to teach," the well-known African American novelist said.
The letter asserts that very few, if any, of the great writers of the past can survive the "purity test" to which they are currently being subjected.
"If a university (Catholic or otherwise) effectively banishes Flannery O'Connor, why keep Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoevsky and other writers who were marked by the racist, misogynist, and/or anti-Semitic cultures and eras they lived in the midst of? No one will be left standing," it said.
O'Donnell took issue with a recent article in The New Yorker magazine about O'Connor and race, which she believes provided a "very incomplete" portrayal of the writer's stance on race and which has fanned much of the outrage against the Southern author.
The Fordham professor also was critical of the online petition to rename the building, which asserts that "recent letters and postcards written by Flannery O'Connor express strong racist sentiments and hate speech."
"How could O'Connor have written 'recent' post cards and letters when she's been dead for 56 years?" O'Donnell said. "I wonder how many of the people who signed the petition have studied O'Connor's work or have read any of her writings? How many of them have any connection to Loyola?"
Linnane said most people in the Loyola community have responded "very positively" to the name change. He also praised Sister Thea's efforts to eliminate racism and her work for justice.
Fr Nicolai Dubinin has become the first Russian to be appointed a Catholic bishop since the fall of communism.
Last Thursday, Pope Francis appointed the 47-year-old Conventual Franciscan as auxiliary bishop for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Moscow and designated him the Titular See of Acque di Bizacena.
Since Church institutions were re-established after the fall of communism, no Russian nationals had been appointed Latin Rite bishops before now.
The appointment of Fr Dubinin is seen as an important step in the spiritual renewal of the country’s 700,000-strong Catholic community, which has a small but significant presence across the country’s vast terrain.
The new bishop was born over a thousand kilometres from Moscow in the Southern Russian mining city of Novoshakhtinsk on May 27, 1973.
In 1993, he became one of the first seminarians at the Moscow major seminary, where his cohort’s prayerful actions were instrumental in returning the city’s Catholic cathedral to religious use in the 1990s.
He then joined the Conventual Franciscans: the same order as his seminary tutor, Fr Grzegorz Cioroch, a Polish missionary who had been one of first to serve in Russia in the post-Soviet era.
Dubinin went on to receive further priestly formation from the Franciscan friars in Poland, with whom he made his solemn profession on October 3, 1998, before being ordained to the priesthood on June 24, 2000.
He then lived for a number of years in Italy, where he undertook research at the Pastoral Liturgy Institute of Santa Giustina in Padua, whilst also pastoring to a number of parishes entrusted to the Conventual Franciscans.
In 2004, Fr Grzegorz Cioroch died aged 42 in a car accident on his way from Poland to Russia. Fr Dubinin proceeded to continue the work of his mentor.
In 2005, he took on Fr Cioroch’s former role as custodian of the Franciscan Province of Russia in 2005. Then in 2008 he was appointed deputy editor of the Russian Catholic Encyclopaedia, which Fr Grzegorz Cioroch had previously established. The same year, Fr Dubinin became a professor at the Major Catholic Seminary of Mary Queen of Apostles in St Petersburg, a post he has held to this day.
Empress Augusta, Porphyrius the General, the 50 philosophers and the 200 Soldiers martyred with the Great Martyr Catherine
As we read in the life of Saint Catherine, the Emperor Maximian ordered 50 of the Empire's most learned philosophers and rhetoricians to dispute with Great Martyr. As a result of her eloquent testimony, however, they embraced the Christian faith and were summarily burned alive by Maximian's order, after Saint Catherine made the Sign of the Cross over them.
Thereafter, the Empress Augusta, who had heard much about Catherine, wanted to see her. She prevailed upon the military commander Porphyrius to accompany her to the prison with a detachment of soldiers. The Empress was deeply impressed by the tenacious faith displayed by Saint Catherine, whose face was radiant with divine grace. After she had explained the Christian teaching to them, they too embraced the Christian faith.
The next day, Catherine was again brought to the judgment court where, under the threat of being broken on the wheel, she was urged to renounce the Christian Faith and offer sacrifice to the gods. She steadfastly confessed Christ and she herself approached the wheels, but an angel smashed the instruments of execution, which shattered into pieces. Having beheld this wonder, the Empress Augusta, Porphyrius and the detachment of 200 soldiers publicly confessed their faith in Christ. Enraged, Maximian again tried to entice Catherine to renounce her faith, proposing marriage to her, but again she refused his offer and firmly confessed her fidelity to the heavenly Bridegroom Christ. After offering a prayer to Him, she herself laid her head on the block beneath the executioner's sword and was beheaded, as was the Empress Augusta, Porphyrius and the 200 soldiers.
In 1240, some Carmelite brothers from Palestine started a monastery in Toulouse, France. The great Carmelite priest, St. Simon Stock, passed through Toulouse twenty-five years later. A devout woman asked to see him. She introduced herself simply as Joan. She asked the priest earnestly, "May I be part of the Carmelite order as an associate?" St. Simon Stock was the head of the order. He had the authority to grant the woman's request. He said "yes." Joan became the first lay associate. She received the habit of the Carmelite order. In the presence of St. Simon Stock, Joan made a vow of perpetual chastity.
Joan continued her quiet, simple life right in her own home. She tried to be as faithful as possible to the rules of the Carmelites for the rest of her life. Joan went to daily Mass and devotions at the Carmelite church. She filled the rest of the day with visits to the poor, the sick and the lonely. She trained the altar boys. She helped the elderly and infirm by performing useful tasks and running errands. Joan prayed with them and brightened many lives with her cheerful conversations.
Blessed Joan carried a picture of the crucified Jesus in her pocket. That was her "book." Every now and then, she would pull out the picture and gaze at it. Her eyes would light up. People said that Joan read some new and wonderful lesson every time she studied the picture.
Cheerful conversation can brighten many lives. What difference does it make to others?
If the world was to ask us what St Charbel famous for what would we answer? He did not come from a noble family and was not a renowned theologian or philosopher. No dignitaries were present at his funeral.
What is it that makes St Charbel so special? Holiness! Plain and simple holiness. This holy man who is the very blood of our blood and bones of our bones, achieved sainthood by living the simplest life in prayer, humility and work. His eyes were always gazing at the floor but his heart, mind and soul were always lifted to the Lord. He did not concern himself with what the world would think of him, rather he concerned himself only with the Lord.
St Charbel Statue in Annaya, Lebanon. Copyrighted to Living Maronite
St Charbel's life may seem to the world unremarkable. He was born on 8 May 1828 in the village of Bekaafra, high in the mountains of Lebanon. His Maronite parents Antoun Makhlouf and Brigitta Chidiac named him Youssef Antoun Makhlouf. His father died when he was 3 years old, leaving Brigitta a widow with five children. She later remarried a man who joined the priesthood and became the parish priest of the village.
In 1851 at age of 23, Youssef left his family and entered the Lebanese Maronite Order at the Monastery of Our Lady of Mayfouq. It is at that monastery that the famous Maronite icon of Our Lady of Elige is located. One could imagine Youssef spending many nights praying before an icon, seeking the intercession of Our Lady. Later, Youssef transferred to the Monastery of St Maroun in Annaya, where he took the name Charbel, after the Christian martyr, Saint Charbel of Edessa.
St Charbel church in Annaya, Lebanon. Copyrighted to Living Maronite.
Charbel then began studies at the Monastery of Saints Cyprian and Justina in Kiffan. One of his professors at the seminary was Father Nehmtallah Kassab, who later became the Maronite saint, Nehmtallah Hardinie.
Charbel was ordained a priest in 1859 at 31 years of age. He was sent back to the Saint Maroun Monastery, where he lived a life of asceticism. In 1875, Charbel was given permission to live as a hermit at the hermitage of Saints Peter and Paul. He lived for the next 23 years as a solitary hermit.
St Charbel's Room in Annaya, Lebanon. Copyrighted to Living Maronite
On Christmas eve, 1898, while serving the liturgy, Charbel collapsed at the altar and died from a stroke at the age of 70. His death was a quiet affair and his funeral was attended by only four monks. It was only long after his death, when many miracles were attributed to him, that St Charbel became known. He was canonized as the first Maronite Saint on 9 October 1977, by Pope Paul VI.
For those not familiar with the area, Baakafra, where St Charbel grew up, is located above the Qadisha valley in North Lebanon. Nearby, in Becharre, are located the Cedars of God. Over time, this entire secluded area has become a refuge and sanctuary for many Maronites and the perfect place to search for God. It is no surprise that St Charbel, who was born high in Baakafra, developed a love of silence. St Charbel did not rely on words to attain sainthood. He would have come to know silence well in his 23 years in solitude at the hermitage of Saints Peter and Paul. It is that great simple, contemplative silence which has marked Maronite asceticism for generations and it is that silence which the world needs now more than ever.
Ba'kafra, Lebanon where St Charbel grew up. Copyrighted to Living Maronite.
The desire to want nothing (not even words), but to be with our Lord, has been the way of the Syriac monastics from the beginning. No doubt, if St Charbel was here with us now, he would inspire us to turn off social media and phones and all the many distractions of our time and grasp just a moment to build up our souls in contemplation of God.
Contemplation is not only for monks, like St Charbel we can look to detach from the things in this world, the things keeping us away from God. We can all regularly abstain and fast and moderate the things of the flesh. We can be inspired by St Charbel to have a preparedness to pilgrim to a place of holiness deep within ourselves where in solitude we can just be with God and be 'wakeful and pray'. (Matt. 26:41). We all need to carve out our own space and our own time and find silence in the noise of each day.
St Charbel's robe. Copyrighted to Living Maronite
St Charbel died while serving the liturgy and there can be no doubt that the liturgy would have been the centre of St Charbel's life. God uses the physical to make known the intelligible. God the Son clothed himself in humanity so we may come to know him. In the same way, the liturgy raises our mind to the spiritual realities. Like the incarnation in which the invisible Word of God became visible, our liturgy inspires us to deepen the spiritual dimensions of our lives. Be inspired by St Charbel to visit the liturgy regularly. The liturgy is our ladder to salvation and at its summit is the life-giving Eucharist.
Burial place of St Charbel, Annaya, Lebanon. Copyrighted to Living Maronite
So as the Maronite Church celebrates this great feast and the bells in the mountains of Baakafra ring out in joy to the rest of the world, we look to St Charbel to inspire the world by his example of simplicity and humility to strive for holiness.
