Death March – a Homily Worth Sharing

The death penalty is being debated in New Mexico.  “It’s quite a debate” according to my pastor who finds irony in the fact that this debate rages while the death penalty is in fact “the most common penalty”  known to man. “Every single one of us is under a sentence. We are born, so to speak, with a noose around our necks.”

“Our death is an absolute certainty..no second chances, no reincarnation!…  ‘Human beings die once, and then the Judgment.’ Hebrews 9:27 ”  What our pastor finds absolute madness, “insanity to the highest degree,” is that most people on this “Death March” to the grave, never ever stop to consider their end.  “If we die in a state of grace, we shall live for all eternity.  If we die in mortal sin, we shall be damned for all eternity.”  No do-overs!

“The only guarantee of dying a holy death is living a holy life,” Monsignor Raun concluded.

Lenten Plan – Day 1 – Ash Wednesday

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Day 1 Lenten Reading Plan here.

The Lite version of the Plan

Compiled by Church Year. Net

2009 Date Day in Lenten Fast Lite Reading
2/25 1 Epistle to Diognetus: 1-6
2/26 2 Epistle to Diognetus: 7-12
2/27 3 St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter To the Ephesians: 1-7
2/28 4 St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter to the Ephesians: 8-14
3/2 5 St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter To the Ephesians: 15-21
3/3 6 St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter To the Magnesians: 1-5
3/4 7 St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter To the Magnesians: 6-10
3/5 8 St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter To the Magnesians: 11-15
3/6 9 St. Justin Martyr: First Apology: 1-7
3/7 10 St. Justin Martyr: First Apology: 8-14
3/9 11 St. Justin Martyr: First Apology: 15-21
3/10 12 St. Justin Martyr: First Apology: 22-29
3/11 13 St. Justin Martyr: First Apology: 30-37
3/12 14 St. Justin Martyr: First Apology: 38-45
3/13 15 St. Justin Martyr: First Apology: 46-53
3/14 16 St. Justin Martyr: First Apology: 54-60
3/16 17 St. Justin Martyr: First Apology: 61-68
3/17 18 St. Cyprian: On the Unity of the Church (Treatise I): 1-9
3/18 19 St. Cyprian: On the Unity of the Church (Treatise I): 10-18
3/19 20 St. Cyprian: On the Unity of the Church (Treatise I): 19-21
3/20 21 St. Athanasius: Life of Anthony: 1-9
3/21 22 St. Athanasius: Life of Anthony: 10-16
3/23 23 St. Athanasius: Life of Anthony: 17-25
3/24 24 St. Athanasius: Life of Anthony: 26-33
3/25 25 St. Athanasius: Life of Anthony: 34-41
3/26 26 St. Athanasius: Life of Anthony: 42-49
3/27 27 St. Athanasius: Life of Anthony: 50-58
3/28 28 St. Athanasius: Life of Anthony: 59-66
3/30 29 St. Athanasius: Life of Anthony: 67-73
3/31 30 St. Athanasius: Life of Anthony: 74-81
4/1 31 St. Athanasius: Life of Anthony: 82-89
4/2 32 St. Athanasius: Life of Anthony: 90-94
4/3 33 St. Cyril of Jerusalem: Catechetical Lectures: Lecture XX
4/4 34 St. Cyril of Jerusalem: Catechetical Lectures: Lecture XXII
4/6 35 St. Cyril of Jerusalem: Catechetical Lectures: Lecture XXIII (1-11)
4/7 36 St. Cyril of Jerusalem: Catechetical Lectures: Lecture XXIII (12-23)
4/8 37 St. Ambrose of Milan: Concerning the Mysteries: 1-4
4/9 38 St. Ambrose of Milan: Concerning the Mysteries: 5-9
4/10 39 St. Leo the Great: Sermon XLIX (On Lent XI): complete
4/11 40 St. Leo the Great: Sermon LXXII (On the Lord’s Resurrection): complete

Compilation of Lenten readings.

Printer-Friendly Version of Outline: Church Fathers Lenten Reading Plan PDF

This is the Day The Lord Has Made!

Update:  Old Bishop, New Priest

I’ll be off in a bit to attend the ordination of Jeffrey Steenson.  I can only imagine what is going on in his heart and head at this moment.  Please say a prayer for Jeff, his family, and his church family, both  Anglican and Catholic.

New directions bring mixed blessings for partings are hard.  For Jeff, the need to explain his conscientious decision is an integral part of moving forward.  “Forward” in God’s grace and plan means continuing to put your hands to the plow and looking back only with gratitude for the gift of the past.  Friends, mentors, and teachers, all helped to prepare Jeff for this day.  Now  is a time of celebration.  Now, with the Laying on of Hands, Jeffrey becomes a priest of the Roman Catholic Church.  He  enters on a new path on the road home.  God bless you, soon-to-be, Rev. Fr. Jeffrey Neil Steenson!

Making the Connection – My Rosary, My Weapon

The Anchoress had an encounter with Mystery.  Seems the little children of Fatima, Jacinta and Francisco,  now beatified by John Paul II, want to get the word out;  the Rosary is our weapon!

Indeed, it is!  If you remember, the apparitions at Fatima occurred immediately before the Bolshevik Revolution.  Russia had little world power.  No one saw it as a menace when the Blessed Virgin Mary gave us her prophetic message,  that WW I would soon end but a far worse war would follow if our Lady’s warning was not heeded and Russia consecrated to her Immaculate Heart:

You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.

The whole world is still at risk and in error.  Those who faced down the enemies of Faith have clung to their rosaries.  In Ukraine, blood and beads battled for the soul of that country. The Ukrainian Bishop of Lutsk, Markijam Trofimiak, wrote: A Monument to Heroism in Ukraine. He recounts:

Once at a symposium, I was asked: “Should it ever be decided to erect a monument in the Ukraine  to the person who has made the greatest contribution to safeguarding the faith in this land, to whom would it be justly dedicated?”. I pondered awhile before answering. In a flash, the faces of well-known priests who survived the concentration camps, Soviet prisons and years of physical and moral terror passed before my eyes. The witness to faith of these priests surpasses what we are accustomed to call “heroism”. Although remembering their undeniable merits, I answered: The monument would have to be dedicated to an elderly woman with the Rosary in her hands“.


LENT for the Soul

Message From Pope Benedict XVI for LENT 2009

“He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry” (Mt 4,1-2)

“The practice of fasting is very present in the first Christian community. The Church Fathers, too, speak of the force of fasting to bridle sin, especially the lusts of the “old Adam,” and open in the heart of the believer a path to God. Moreover, fasting is a practice that is encountered frequently and recommended by the saints of every age. Saint Peter Chrysologus writes: “Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others, you open God’s ear to yourself.”

…………………………..

Dear brothers and sisters, it is good to see how the ultimate goal of fasting is to help each one of us, as the Servant of God Pope John Paul II wrote, to make the complete gift of self to God (Encyclical Veritatis splendor.)  May every family and Christian community use well this time of Lent, therefore, in order to cast aside all that distracts the spirit and grow in whatever nourishes the soul, moving it to love of God and neighbor. I am thinking especially of a greater commitment to prayer, lectio divina, recourse to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and active participation in the Eucharist, especially the Holy Sunday Mass. With this interior disposition, let us enter the penitential spirit of Lent. May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Causa nostrae laetitiae (Cause of our joy,) accompany and support us in the effort to free our heart from slavery to sin, making it evermore a “living tabernacle of God.”

A Fly on the Vatican Wall

Oh, to have been the proverbial fly on the wall when Pope Benedict XVI met privately with Madam Speaker Pelosi.  Actually,  if I were the fly, I’d have perched myself on Nancy’s nose as she posed Speakerential.  The Pope is cool, kind, and slendorously Poperific so he’ll continue fighting for her soul while she’s stuck in radical wrong-headed feminism.

From Whispers in the Loggia, the Vatican statement:

Following the General Audience the Holy Father briefly greeted Mrs Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, together with her entourage.

His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.