Quotes from the Third Century

Just thought I would pass on a couple of great quotes from a Bishop in the early Church named Cyprian:

"I ask you to these facts known to the rest of our fellow bishops...Let all our people fix their minds not on death but rather on immortality; let them commit themselves to the Lord in complete faith and unflinching courage and make their confession with joy rather than in fear, knowing that in the contest the solider of God and Christ are not slain but rather win their crowns."

"This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden, under the shadow of these vines. But if I climbed some great mountain and looked out over the
wide lands, you know very well what I would see - brigands on the high roads, pirates
on the seas; in the amphitheaters men murdered to please applauding crowds; under all roofs misery and selfishness. It is really a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. Yet in the midst of it I have found a quiet and holy people. They have discovered a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasures of this sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are the Christians - and I am one of them. "

Prayer and Joy are the Christians greatest weapons!

Snow in August

We love to talk about the weather! I remember growing up and wanting to be a weatherman. That was a dream around my house. My dad and I would talk about the weather for hours on end. Many people are like this, in fact its one of the most basic conversations a person could have with another...."So, nice day were having, huh?" or, "Man, it is going to be a hot one today!" or "How about that storm last night?"

God, being the Creator of nature, likes to get us talking about the weather. on August 5, during the papacy of Pope Liberius (352-366ad) there was a man who had vision that snow would fall on a place in room where the Lord wanted the Pope to erect a church in honor of our Lady. The Roman patrician's name was John. His wife and him, had no error to their family and vowed to make the Blessed Virgin Mary their heiress. Pope Liberius and the patrician John had similar dreams on the same night and then woke to find an outline of snow on Esquiline Hill in Rome.

I don't know if you check the weather in Rome often, but today's forcast for Rome is 88 degrees Fahrenheit with 100% humidity. A miracle happen in Rome some 1700 years ago! Snow in August! Pope Liberius accepted the sign from God and erected a basilica on the spot which would one day become known as The Basilica of Mary Majors. The legendary events have become known as the story of Our Lady of Snow.

I sure wouldn't mind to have a visit from Our Lady of Snow this august!

Mental Prayer: Friendship with God

This morning, I walked in and knelt down in the dark parish church. As I was trying to pray, I found a few others running about the parish or flipping through the pages of the Liturgy of the Hours. I prayed for 30 minutes, meditating on and then speaking to our Father in heaven about the Gospel of reading of the day. The Holy Mass begins and after a dramatic and encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist, I knelt down to pray a thanksgiving after Mass.

As I knelt down to say thanks, I felt the breeze of those who were scurrying by me to go pray before the tabernacle for the next 30 minutes the beautiful prayers of the Divine Mercy Chaplet and the Rosary. As Catholics, we are really good with vocal prayers like the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet, or praying all the prayers on the back of holy cards. We memorize prayers and say them with great fervor. And these prayers are powerful, especially since they are endorsed by the Church. I pray the Liturgy of the Hours, the Rosary, and the Divine Mercy Chaplet daily and still I find a desperate need for personal and quiet time with our Lord, speaking to Him as a friend.

The type of prayer I am speaking of is what many of the saints have called "Mental Prayer." St Teresa of Avila said, "Mental Prayer in my opinion is nothing else than a close sharing between friend; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us." We see Moses approaching God in this way, "The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend." (Exodus 33:11) And when our Lord says, "No longer do I call you servants...I have called you friends." (John 15:15)

Friendship with God is necessary for the Christian Life, but how do we go about praying in this way. Here is a simple method to help with you pursuing friendship with God

1) Find a good place to prayer - This could be a prayer corner in your room, but the best place to pray is in the church before the Blessed Sacrament
2) Recognize God's Presence - This can best be done by making some sort of act of faith
3) Read a spiritual passage - The best would be the Gospels or other sections of the Bible.
4) Put yourself in the scene
5) Speak to God about what you experience in your prayer - This is the most important part. This is the actually Conversation with Christ!
6) Say a prayer asking for mercy for your weaknesses and sins (this could also be done at the beginning...humility is a good thing!)
7) Make a concrete resolution and write it down!

Now, this is only a method. Prayer could be as simple as walking in and knelling before Our Lord and just looking at him and allowing him to look back at you, this simple glance of love could be worth a million words. There are many more methods by great saints such at St Benedict and St Ignatius. And if you are still struggling to find this friendship with God take the advice of St Josemaria Escriva, "You don't know how to pray? Put yourself in the presence of God, and as soon as you have said, "Lord, I don't know how to pray!" you can be sure you've already begun."

Amen!

Humane Vitae: The Real Sexual Revolution

Forty years ago on this past Friday, Humane Vitae (On Human Life), was released by Pope Paul VI. The timing was in the midst of a human crisis. In the midst of the 20th century, we had begun to lose touch with what it means to be a human person. Personhood became a subject that was widely debated and people started to preach the gospel of free will. A "New Pelagianism" was rising in the West and men and women were deciding for themselves that they had no need of a Church to tell them what to do nor some far distant God.

In his meek and courageous way, Paul VI decided to address a greatly debated issue that had been on the minds of scholars and the faithful for some time. In the 1960s, there were rumors flying in the seminaries and in parish churches throughout the western world that the Pope would speak out about certain "changes" the Church would declare, becoming a more democratic and understanding Church that is in touch with modern man. It is interesting to note that there were a commission of bishops that were assign to discuss the subject of artificial contraception at the Second Vatican Council. The Pope found out that this commission was packed with many dissenting bishops and they were planning on making a recommendation that artificial contraception could be used by couples. Paul VI would not have this misguided recommendation be, so he decided he would address this issue himself as the "Supreme Teacher" on faith and morals. This is where his masterpiece on human sexuality first was defended.

There are many today who thinks the teachings of the Church on sexuality are too demanding and too rigid. But it is these same people who look away from the Cross of Christ. It is not that the Catholic Church preaches suffering and hardship of life. The Church recognized that you cannot live life without suffering and hardship. The Church recognizes that suffering is there, but because of the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ, there is a reason for our suffering and pain! There is a reason to choose the harder road, the path less traveled.

That reason is freedom! John Paul II, takes on this questions of sexual ethics and freedom in his great work of Wednesday Audiences now called The Theology of the Body. John Paul II builds upon the foundation set by his predecessor and calls people back out of the darkness of selfishness into the light of self gift. The Law of the Gift became the foundational point to his Theology of the Body. The Law of the Gift is merely that all human people find who they fully are by giving themselves to another, and more particularly giving themselves to the "Other"

During his 26+ year pontificate, John Paul II started to ignite the hearts of young believers in the Church with the message of chastity and true love! Human Vitae is the battle cry of the young in the Church of the John Paul II Generation. Vocations are starting to make a positive swing, more people than ever are traveling to the Holy Father, and young marriages are taking the courageous commitment to live according to the Church and natural law! The time that we live in is full of hope. There is a generation among us that knows the pain of not knowing Christ and desires to find Him and make Him known to all those that they walk with.

Read more about Humane Vitae here:

Hound of Heaven

"I fled Him!" The opening lines of Francis Thompson's famous poem, The Hound of Heaven, is a fitting way to start speaking of a world pursuing joy. The paradox of fleeing something (or in this case Someone) is the very energy needed to pursue something. This act of fleeing is the story of my life.

I often know what is right and run the other way. I flee! I do not desire the pain and suffering that come with the adventure. This is a common mindset of the modern mind. We desire adventure and danger, even heroism, but the suffering that comes with such a life, we would like to disregard all together. So we flee! We run into the darkness, but at least no one will find us out. We parade in our miseries and find comfort in our ambiguity.

And yet, in all our fleeing, we find that we have no more strength to keep up the fight no longer, and in fact who we have been running from and where we started seem to be exactly where we should have fled to right away. And so we find that life is a journey, sought by living questions and pursuing truth. We will not be disappointed in this adventure. It is here that we will find T.S. Eliot's words to be true:

We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.