Urbi et Orbi from Pope Francis

I remember  seeing the painting below a long time ago. I was always struck by how Christ was on the outside, and knocking. No door opened...

http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-urbi-et-orbi-message

Pope Francis highlighted the persecution of Christians in the world as well as the many wars today in his address to the city and to the world.

Pray to the Prince of Peace, today, for a world shattered by hated, ignoring the Lord of Lords.

In this snippet, the Pope refers to the facade of peace.

The Prince of Peace by Harry Anderson

True peace is not a balance of opposing forces. It is not a lovely “façade” which conceals conflicts and divisions. Peace calls for daily commitment, starting from God’s gift, from the grace which he has given us in Jesus Christ.

This facade starts with the personal, with the individual soul. One must forgive and truly love those who hate.

Loving the enemy is not merely an intellectual process of forgiving, but it is turning to the will in order to will to love.

The daily commitment for peace among nations will not occur if people are not peaceful in their own lives.

I find it interesting that while the Pope pleads for peace in the world, the world leaders are silent, on vacation, concentrating on their own countries or on themselves.

If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.
John 15:18 

The leaders of this world, except for the Pope, ignore suffering, especially the suffering of Christians.

But, so too, the people of Bethlehem ignored the suffering of one small family forced into a cave with animals for the Birth of the Lord, the Messiah, the King.

This year has proved to be a year of violence for many across the world, and in other situations. As you all know, three peace-keepers in South Sudan were killed five days ago. Those who seek peace of any kind, whether political or spiritual, are targets.

Remember the word that I said to you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.
John 15:20 

But, we all have grace, tremendous grace. Grace leads us to love while surrounded by hate. Can we say "yes" to this challenge today?

Can we learn to find that peace within in order to create peace without? Remember, peace must be based on following Christ and not on ideologies. Without Christ, there is no true peace.

Understanding the Four Cardinal Virtues in the Hidden Years.

Many good Catholics do not understand the cardinal virtues in daily life. Many can see how these operate in extreme circumstances, such as in martyrdom or the life of holiness. To understand how these virtues operate in the ordinary life of the Catholic, one can look to the Hidden Years of Christ in Nazareth.

God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, existed before time in Eternal Union in the Trinity lived in total worldly darkness, that is, in the unknown, for thirty years.

The Scriptures state, in Luke 2:51-52, that Christ, the Messiah, the Lord, the Son of God lived in subjection to Mary and Joseph, advancing in grace and wisdom before God and man.

Now, as God, Christ had all grace and all wisdom from before time, but as man, this was not manifested but slowly, and finally, in the epiphanies of the Baptism and the Transfiguration, culminating in the showing of His Godhead in the Resurrection.

Christ knew Who He Is from His Conception. In fact, it is a condemned heresy to state that He did not know He was God until His Baptism. One of the points of the narration of Christ being lost in Jerusalem and found explaining the Scriptures to the elders, was to show to all that He knew Who He Is.

But, we can meditate on the four cardinal virtues as lived out by Christ in those hidden years. In the next few posts, I shall go over these virtues, but before I do, I want to revisit St. Ignatius' clear definitions on the differences between sacrifice, penance and temperance, as temperance is the first virtue I want to examine in this context.  Temperance, Ignatius reminds us, is doing away with the superfluous. As in eating, one would not take seconds, for example. This is not the same as penance, which is denying something which we actually need.

Suffering and sacrifice involve penance, but temperance is a daily virtue. It is not extraordinary.

Penance actually causes some pain. Temperance does not. Penance would be feeling and being hungry or sleep deprived in order to pray more, which causes some discomfort.

Temperance is the denial of extras. Our example, of course, is Christ. He gave up all the extras. All the glory due to Him was given up in the Incarnation. Becoming a baby, a child, a man, He experienced the denial of the worship due to Him while He was on earth. He also denied Himself certain power.

Temperance in living the daily life of a carpenter and a poor one at that, would have entailed not having seconds, or large portions of food and working long hours, incurring fatigue, in order to meet His duties as the adopted son of a carpenter.

This is hard for us moderns, who rarely deny ourselves anything, to imagine.

That Christ endured more for us, that merely what was His to restrain or moderate, is obvious in the Passion and Death.

One can hardly imagine the Son of God in the humble home of Nazareth....

to be continued....

More on Catholic Identity

6) Catholics are "Marian".

That is, we understand, we know the place of Mary, the Theotokos, in the Church.
Mary points to Jesus. However, we are not superstitious or Gnostic about private revelations or unapproved apparitions. If we are, we are in danger of separating ourselves from the Church.

7) Catholics are "Roman" Catholics. Now, there are some American journalists who refuse to use this term.
But, to deny the term, is to deny our identity. We are not Orthodox Catholics. Within this Roman identity is the Universal Church, which is one good reason for encouraging the official language of the Church in Liturgy-Latin.

8) Catholics are not relativists. We do not think that reality comes from our own perceptions and interpretations, but that there is a canon of Truth. We are creedal.

9) To have a Catholic identity means to be counter-cultural. My dad told me this when I was 15. He was literally "stoned" by the Lutheran boys when he walked to his Catholic school in the 1930s, walking through the Lutheran neighborhood. He learned to run fast and ignore the rocks and hurts. This is what the Church Militant is all about. Not being afraid of being Catholic in a pagan, or hostile world.

10) To have a Catholic identity means one believes in a hierarchy of Truth. Some things are infallible, and some are not. It also means that we adults have a duty to pass this Faith and the knowledge of this Faith on to the next generation. From today's First Reading: ‘But take care what you do and be on your guard. Do not forget the things your eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your heart all the days of your life; rather, tell them to your children and to your children’s children.’ Deuteronomy 4:9.

11) Catholic identity includes converting the world. We are a missionary Church. We have been commanded by Christ Himself to teach, baptizing all nations in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. No options here.

12) And, there are more, but this is the last one for today--We are also called to community life, to love one another in Christ, to create real communities. This is part of Catholic identity. However, we are not socialists, as shown on this blog so many times-the Church has condemned this over and over again for the past 150 years. Community is not the same as socialism.

13) A Catholic keeps all the Commandments: again, from today's Gospel.

Matthew 5:17-19

Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete them. I tell you solemnly, till heaven and earth disappear, not one dot, not one little stroke, shall disappear from the Law until its purpose is achieved. Therefore, the man who infringes even one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be considered the least in the kingdom of heaven; but the man who keeps them and teaches them will be considered great in the kingdom of heaven.’

On Catholic Identity Again

I have written about the need for Catholics to reclaim the essence of Catholic identity before. Here is a summary, as I am aware of the nonsense on line and in conversations, which reveals a Protestant mind-set.

1) Anti-intellectualism is NOT Catholic. We have a long tradition of intellectual discussion, as seen in the perfection series on this blog, which covers only a tiny bit of the vast writings of the Doctors of the Church. The Catholic Church, and especially our Pope Emeritus Benedict, have always stressed the need to be rational and enter into rational discourse. Discussion and learning are part and parcel of a Catholic identity.

Those who are anti-intellectual by choice reveal a lack of a Catholic mind-set. We are not a religion based on experience of Christ alone, but on the long history of Tradition and the Revelation of the Old and New Testaments, which we, as adults, must study.

If you are a person who does not want to study your Faith, go be a low Church Protestant and rely on outward manifestations only. This is not the Catholic way.

2) Catholics are basically sacramental in theology and piety. This means that our lay lives revolve around the reception frequently of Confession and Holy Communion.  Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, obviously, is connected to the love of the Sacrament. If we are not basically sacramental, and this may also include the Liturgy of the Hours, which is connected to the Liturgical Year, then we do not have the mind of a Catholic.

Those who busy themselves with other types of activities may be ignoring the life of the sacraments, which is sanctifying grace. Remember, one cannot get sanctifying grace outside the sacraments, unless God chooses to work in an unusual manner. The sacramental life of the Church was established by God, by Christ, while on earth. Actual grace, yes.

3) Love of the clergy and hierarchy are signs of a Catholic mindset. If one finds one's self not honoring God's priests, bishops, cardinals, and those in the religious life, that may betray a non-Catholic mind set.

4) The pursuit of perfection is a sign of a Catholic identity. Why? One of the results of the Protestant Revolt was the dumbing down of the pursuit of holiness. Lutheran-ism stressed that God merely did not see our sins because of the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, not that these were actually taken away. Confession was abolished as well as the Mass, eliminating the two main ways to perfection-repentance and the Real Presence. Holiness became connected to success in the world, the supposed sign of election.

The interior life suffered for the sake of the pursuit of the exterior life. This is not Catholic thinking.

5) Obedience as a main virtue is the mark of a Catholic identity. A person who constantly questions and challenges the teachings of the Church and does not abide by these, that is, a person living in mortal sin, indicates a false belief in the fundamental option. We are NOT once saved, always saved.

We work out our salvation in fear and trembling.

To be continued...as there is more on the Catholic mind-set or way of thinking.

The Importance of the Vatican State

Scene from Becket, the Movie, Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton, 1964

It is crucial for the entire world that the Papacy remains independent of any other country or nation. St. Thomas Becket knew this. St. Catherine of Siena knew this, which is why she begged Pope Gregory XI to leave Avignon, and she succeeded, as the Holy Spirit was guiding her and him. Since I have set up this blog again, I have had the national anthem of the Vatican Papal State on the right-hand side to show my support for the physical nation which is the heart of the Catholic Church. As Catholics, we have always believed in the "visible Church", decrying the ultra-Protestant idea of the "invisible Church" as a heresy. Last week, David Quinn's article on Mirror of Justice, a site which I have on my blog list, eloquently reviews the importance of the Papal States. Here is a section of Quinn's argument, which is timely, most timely:

The reason the Papal States evolved was to try and preserve the independence of popes although even these couldn't always offer protection because rulers could still invade them if strong enough, as Napoleon did.

One reason the popes opposed the unification of Italy was because they feared that if the Papal States were destroyed so would their independence. They feared they would be dominated by the new Italian state.

After a standoff lasting several decades, Mussolini agreed to recognise the independence of the Holy See, the successor to the Papal States.

The reason the Holy See seeks diplomatic ties with as many countries as possible is to solidify the place of the Holy See in Italy -- something that couldn't be taken as a given for a long time -- and to solidify its place in the world.

The alternative to an independent Holy See is a pope who lives in the Italian state and is subject ultimately to the whim of the Italian state and to whatever laws it passes. The possibility of a strongly anti-clerical government being elected in Italy in the future can never be ruled out, nor can the passage of politically correct 'human rights' laws such as exist in places like Canada where the simple expression of church teaching on issues like homosexuality could end up being deemed a 'hate crime'.

Pope St. Pius IX: And, We are a Physical Church, as Well as a Spiritual One

There is more good stuff at Mirror of Justice, which, in these times of certain tyrants pushing the envelope against religious freedom, is a great site to check out daily. Remember that many of the martyrs died for the independence of the Papacy, and the list is long. St. Thomas Becket, pray for us.

I have suggested before here, all reading Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World, for another perspective on the importance of the independent Papacy, until the end of time. 

Tebow "in" Ireland

There cannot be a mom in America who would not be proud to have Tebow for a son. He works hard, he is articulate, he is generous, he is pro-life, he prays, he loves Jesus Christ, His Lord and Savior. And, today, he "made" it into the bulletin of our local church. I have an excuse to use some of the photos I have been collecting of this young man. Today's Gospel from Mark 1:14-20 in the NO is the calling of the disciples. I use Matthew for my references here. Now, granted, not all, as St. Paul points out in his epistles, are called to be apostles. Paul was, as he notes in 1 Corinthians 1:1-Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.

Some of us are called to be teachers, mothers, wives, husbands, doctors, engineers, lawyers, fathers, priests,  prophets, or athletes. Wherever we are called, we are to witness to Christ's love and mercy in our lives. 

St. Josemaria Escriva wrote,

In order to love and serve God, it is not necessary to do extraordinary things. Christ asks all men without exception to be perfect as His heavenly Father is perfect (cf. Mt 5: 48). For the great majority of men, to be holy consists of sanctifying their work, to sanctify themselves in their work, to sanctify others with work, and also to find God on the road of their life.

And from Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 4 almost identical to Mark we hear today:

And Jesus walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea (for they were fishers).

    ¹⁹And he saith to them: Come ye after me, and I will make you to be fishers of men.

    ²⁰And they immediately leaving their nets, followed him.

    ²¹And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets: and he called them.

    ²²And they forthwith left their nets and father, and followed him.

The radical call to be an apostle is the call of the priest. Most of us are called to discipleship, to learn, to follow, to witness in the ordinariness of our daily lives. Let us look at Tebow and not forget what type of impact we can have on the world, even if ABC, NBC or CNN are not filming us. God knows our hearts. Some of us have left the nets, some of us still fish daily, some of us cook the fish...do whatever in and with the Love of Christ. I pray that Tebow, through his example of manly discipleship, will inspire a young man today in the Catholic Church to become a priest. We need more apostles to lead us disciples.

By the way, pray for Abdullah al-Sabah of Kuwait (probably not his real name), who has just converted and become a disciple of Jesus Christ. For some, this decision is the loss of fame and fortune, and maybe more.