The Anchoress is right on. This is cool indeed! A priest with a heart for the poor brings doodling celebs into the picture to do good with their pictures. The big bucks their art brings are really great when they’re turned into loaves and fish.
Tag Archives: Culture
Oh Happy Day!
THE ORDINATION OF JEFFREY NEILL STEENSON TO THE SACRED PRIESTHOOD
SATURDAY,THE TWENTY-FIRST OF FEBRUARY,TWO THOUSAND AND NINE
At SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS CATHOLIC CHURCH, RIO RANCHO, NEW MEXICO
Procession of the Cross
The Candidate for the Sacred Priesthood – Jeffrey Neill Steenson
Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan
Calling and Presentation of the Candidate for the Priesthood Jeffrey Neill Steenson
Prostration and Litany of the Saints
Ordained and Invested
Kiss of Peace
Greeting by Rev. Fr. Scott Mansield
Presentation of the Gifts by the Steenson Family
Eucharist
A Few Words
Recessional – Rev. Fr. Jeffrey Neill Steenson
Recessional and Blessing by Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan
Thanks Be To God!
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!
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.”
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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.”
You Are My Hiding Place
The Anchoress reminded me of a verse from the Evening Prayer of the Divine Office for Thursday Week I.
So let every good man pray to You
in the time of need.
The floods of water may reach high
they shall not reach him.
You are my hiding place, O Lord;
you save me from distress.
You surround me with cries of deliverance. (Psalm 32: 6-7)
When I read the words, “You are my hiding place,” Corrie ten Boom’s story,”The Hiding Place” came to mind. I was also reading Immaculee Ilibagiza’s book, “Left To Tell, Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.” Both Corrie’s story and Immaculee’s book leave vivid images of the faithfulness of God not only in the mind, but in the heart, . Neither tells the story of the proverbial rose garden that we all want. Corrie and Immaculee lose the people they love. Their homelands become unrecognizable.
Corrie introduces us to her sister, Betsie, who dies in the concentration camp. What I loved about Betsie was how she made a home in the midst of the horrific circumstances of the camp; cheery dish towels hung at the window. Betsie’s actual home was the hiding place she made in the heart of God. Betsie was prepared to die.
Immaculee’s book describes an actual hiding place, a bathroom that became a haven for her and seven other women for ninety-one days. It was here they hid, and silently prayed, while hundreds of crazed, “machete-wielding” neighbors sought to butcher them. Again, God proved to be the real hiding place.
The triumph of their stories is told by the transformed hearts of these women of faith. Their books are a witness to God’s faithfulness in times of desperation.
The Problem of Evil
These verses from Chapter 51 of Imitation of Christ speak to my prayer vs world experiences and fluctuations:
“My Son, thou art not always able to continue in very fervent desire after virtues, nor to stand fast in the loftier region of contemplation; but thou must of necessity sometimes descend to lower things because of thine original corruption, and bear about the burden of corruptible life, though unwillingly and with weariness. So long as thou wear a mortal body, thou shalt feel weariness and heaviness of heart. Therefore thou ought to groan often in the flesh because of the burden of the flesh, inasmuch as thou canst not give thyself to spiritual studies and divine contemplation unceasingly.”
“At such a time it is expedient for thee to flee to humble and external works, and to renew thyself with good actions; to wait for My coming and heavenly visitation with sure confidence; to bear thy exile and drought of mind with patience, until thou be visited by Me again, and be freed from all anxieties. For I will cause thee to forget thy labors, and altogether to enjoy eternal peace. I will spread open before thee the pleasant pastures of the Scriptures, that with enlarged heart thou may begin to run in the way of My commandments. And thou shalt say, ‘The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.‘”
Be Holy! 