Tag Archives: Catholic

Pervasive Darkness – Everlasting Light – Benedict XVI

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Sometimes the blindness of those who forgo God leaves me speechless.  There is simply too much to say about God, Life and Eternity that silence and prayer must suffice, especially when you know that no one is actually asking the questions that might turn on the lights and light up their life.

Here is an email I received that begs God’s grace and an answer:

“By the way, besides my atheist status I am a full out Liberal ready to take everyone’s extra money to feed hungry children so watch out! 😉 I get in as much trouble for my Liberal Democrat status as my non faith in mainstream religion. I am spiritual and giving but don’t recognize religion as something that works for me. That’s the difference.  So many people proclaim their loyalty and belief in a god but are not good people, I try to be good without the need of a god’s blessing or promise of eternal life. In other words, I try to be good for nothing…… joke here.”

I thought I would answer by bringing  in the Big Guns for the really Big Picture:

From Jesus of Nazareth by ‘Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI:

“At the heart of all temptations… is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive Him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives, constructing a world by our own lights without reference to God, building on our own foundation, refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything beyond the political and material, while setting God aside as an illusion that is the temptation the threatens us in many varied forms.  Moral posturing is part and parcel of temptation. It does not invite us directly to do evil; no, that would be far to blatant. It pretends to show us a better way, where we finally abandon our illusions and threw ourselves into the work of actually making the world a better place.  It claims moreover to speak for true realism; what’s real is what’s right there in front of us, power and bread.  By comparison, the things of God fade into unreality, into a secondary world that no one really needs.

God is the issue.  Is He real, reality Itself or isn’t He?  Is He good or do we have to invent the good ourselves?  The God question is the fundamental question, and it sets us down right at the crossroads of human existence. What must the Savior of the world do, or not do that is the question the temptations of Jesus are about.”

Alfred Delp, a German theologian, executed by the Nazi’s said:

“Bread is important.  Freedom is more important, but what is most important of all is unbroken fidelity and faithful adoration.”

Benedict XVI continues:

“When this ordering of goods is no longer respected, but turned on its head, the result is not justice or concern for human suffering the result is rather ruin and destruction even of material good themselves.  When God is regarded as a secondary matter that can be set aside temporarily, or permanently, on account of more important things, it is precisely these supposedly more important things, that come to nothing. It is not just the negative outcome of a Marxist experiment that proves this, the aid given by the West to developing countries has been purely technically and materially based.  It has not only left God out of the picture but has driven men away from God. and this aid proudly claiming to know better is itself what first turned the Third World into what we now mean today by that term.It has thrust aside indigenous religious , ethical and social structures and filled the resulting vacuum with its technocratic mindset.  The idea was that we can turn stones into bread; instead our aide has only given stones in place of bread.  The issue is the primacy of God.”

New Adam

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I read these lines from the 33 Day of Total Consecration to Jesus by St. Louis Marie de Montfort:

Our Blessed Lady is the true terrestrial paradise of the New Adam, and the ancient paradise was but a figure of her. In this earthly paradise we have riches, beauties, rarities and inexplicable sweetness, which Jesus Christ, the New Adam has left here; it was in this paradise that He took His complacence for nine months, worked His wonders and displayed His riches with the magnificence of a God. It is in this earthly paradise that there is the true tree of life, which has borne Jesus Christ, the Fruit of Life, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which has given light unto the world. There are, in this divine place, trees planted by the hand of God, and watered by His Divine Unction, which have borne and daily bear fruit of divine taste. It is only the Holy Ghost, Who can make us know the hidden truth of these figures of material things. The Holy Ghost, by the mouth of the Fathers, also styles the Blessed Virgin the Eastern Gate, by which the High-Priest, Jesus Christ, enters the world, and leaves it. By it, He came the first time, He will come the second, by it.

They inspired these thoughts, though I haven’t touched on Mary yet:

Where on this Earth has Jesus passed that flowers failed to bloom?
What on Earth has Jesus passed that succumbed to Adam’s doom.
When on this sad Earth did Jesus pass and desert’s dust remain.
Only if our fallen wills prevail, can Jesus come in vain.

When Jesus passed did flowers bloom and birds begin to sing?
When Jesus passed did children run to jump into his arms?
When Jesus passed did fallen men find strength to rise again?
When Jesus passed and left this world, once worst for Adam’s Sin,
Did Gates fling wide at Sin’s stemmed tide and Paradise begin again?

Joann Nelander

Adoration for Reparation for Sexual Abuses by Priests – Vatican

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John Thavis posted in Catholic News Service:

The Vatican is hosting two hours of  Eucharistic Adoration “in reparation for abuses committed by priests and for the healing of this wound within the church.”The service in St. Peter’s Basilica this Saturday will feature an hour of silent adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, an hour of prayer and meditation, and a solemn blessing at the end.

The unusual initiative was organized by Catholic university students in Rome. Sources said the event was originally planned for the small Church of St. Anne inside Vatican City, but that it was moved to St. Peter’s at the suggestion of Cardinal Angelo Comastri, who is archpriest of the basilica.

“Forgiveness Does Not Replace Justice”

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“The attacks on the Pope and the Church do not just come from outside, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin that is in the Church,” Pope Benedict XVI said.  “This has always been known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way: The greatest persecution of the Church does not come from external enemies, but is born from the sin in the Church.

“And the Church, therefore, has the profound need to learn penance again, to accept purification, to learn on one hand forgiveness, as well as the need for justice. Forgiveness does not replace justice.” from remarks of Pope Benedict XVI on board Alitalia’s Airbus 320, at the start of his trip to Portugal.

Read More in an article by Jesús Colina in Zenit.org

Listen here at Transalpine Redemptorists

The Eucharist is the Lord’s Passover

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From a treatise by Saint Gaudentius of Brescia, bishop

The Eucharist is the Lord’s Passover

One man has died for all, and now in every church in the mystery of bread and wine he heals those for whom he is offered in sacrifice, giving life to those who believe and holiness to those who consecrate the offering. This is the flesh of the Lamb; this is his blood. The bread that came down from heaven declared: The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. It is significant, too, that his blood should be given to us in the form of wine, for his own words in the gospel, I am the true vine, imply clearly enough that whenever wine is offered as a representation of Christ’s passion, it is offered as his blood. This means that it was of Christ that the blessed patriarch Jacob prophesied when he said: He will wash his tunic in wine and his cloak in the blood of the grape. The tunic was our flesh, which Christ was to put on like a garment and which he was to wash in his own blood.

Creator and Lord of all things, whatever their nature, he brought forth bread from the earth and changed it into his own body. Not only had he the power to do this, but he had promised it; and, as he had changed water into wine, he also changed wine into his own blood. It is the Lord’s passover, Scripture tells us, that is, the Lord’s passing. We are no longer to look upon the bread and wine as earthly substances. They have become heavenly, because Christ has passed into them and changed them into his body and blood. What you receive is the body of him who is the heavenly bread, and the blood of him who is the sacred vine; for when he offered his disciples the consecrated bread and wine, he said: This is my body, this is my blood. We have put our trust in him. I urge you to have faith in him; truth can never deceive.

When Christ told the crowds that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood, they were horrified and began to murmur among themselves: This teaching is too hard; who can be expected to listen to it? As I have already told you, thoughts such as these must be banished. The Lord himself used heavenly fire to drive them away by going on to declare: It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.