There are quite a few places you can find coverage of the Pope Benedict’s visit to the Holy Land. I did not know that he’ll on be the 3rd Pope to make this pilgrimage. Peter was first, then Pope John Paul II and now our current Pope.
Vatican
Catholic News Service, their blog, their Twitter feed
Florida Catholic
EWTN
I just came across this link that shows Opus Dei locations around the world via Google Maps. There are several pages of links that provide address and contact information.
On a recent trip to Atlanta, GA my wife Cindy and I attended daily Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the downtown area. I meant to post this a couple weeks ago but better late than never.
We are in the heart of downtown Atlanta, Georgia. Our parish is 128 years young and is alive with history, cultural and socioeconomic diversity, and spirit! The downtown area is experiencing a rebirth and renewal. We welcome new and existing residents of this area, as well as visitors from neighboring hotels and convention centers.
We invite you to worship with our community, to live as a good steward of the gifts God provides through any of our outreach ministries, to strengthen your faith through our varied educational programs, and to join with other parishioners for one of our social activities.
I am a power Twitter user in my business and have never had as many problems with the service as I have in creating and using an account for PathToHoliness.com. My Twitter profile is twitter.com/PathToHoliness. Today it says my account has been suspended for too many login attempts. I’ve got a support ticket going and am keeping my fingers crossed.
Since I don’t have these problems on other accounts I manage it makes me wonder is someone is trying to shut the account down. I know that sounds paranoid but stranger things have happened.
This morning when you go to my profile you get one for someone with an ID of kakoui. Maybe Twitter is just having some serious problems. However, I’ve checked all my other accounts and they seem to be working fine.
So, I just thought I’d let you know. Very irritating to say the least.
I just got home from a trip to our Nation’s Capitol where I was able to attend daily Mass at St. Dominic’s. This is the stained glass window over the entrance to the church with the morning sun streaming through.
It was an interesting time to be in Washington, DC with all the news about the North American flu, also called H1N1 flu. I was in a meeting with our U. S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, who was bemoaning the fact that this has been mis-labeled as swine flu. It is not something that should make you worry about pigs and you can’t get it from eating pork. There are a lot of facts out now although you’re still hearing it referred to by the misnomer. That name is causing havoc with our farmers and not just those raising hogs.
To get some good facts about this new disease check these resources:
Center For Disease Control & Prevention
World Health Organization
USDA
I’ve seen news stories that are taking this whole situation to extremes as they try to scare people in the name of ratings. Regular influenza causes many more problems and to date not enough is known about this strain to make the “sky is falling” comments and convince people to take precipitous action.
Here’s some more ignorance gone to seed as a good friend of mine like to put it. This group, Catholic Climate Covenant, has bought into the notion that man is creating climate change on such a vast scale that the poor people of the world are being “hit hardest.” Their slogan, “What’s Under Your Carbon Footprint?” is a sick joke. This full page ad in Our Sunday Visitor shows a dark colored foot print showing a couple of supposedly poor African? people. So they’re resorting to emotional images to try to get you to feel sorry and donate. I say don’t on the donate thing.
They’re also making liberal use of quotes from our Pope and St. Francis. I find that disturbing. I’m all for the responsible use of our natural resources but there’s too much evidence that scientists are in wide disagreement on this issue. In fact, there’s ample evidence that instead of global warming, the opposite is true.
Nothing I’m saying suggest we shouldn’t support the poor. But we have plenty of opportunities and avenues to do that. This shouldn’t be one of them.
Path To Holiness is now on Twitter. It’s about time I got started there.
I’ve got the feed from the website updating the Twitter feed but I’ll also be posting to it separately and more frequently I’m sure.
So feel free to follow along.
BTW. Path To Holiness contributor, Chelsea Zimmerman, is also on Twitter. You can find her here.
Very funny:
Happy Easter! May you all encounter our living and true God and experience His infinite mercy and love.
image: “He is Risen” by Greg Olsen
For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps. (1 Peter 2:21)
Archbiship Chaput has a wonderful reflection on what it means to follow Christ that we should think about this Good Friday, from his book Render Unto Ceasar:
Jesus accepted every measure of suffering on the cross. He did it freely. He chose it. The Father made this sacrifice for us through his Son because he loves us. There is nothing weak or cowardly or life-denying about that kind of radical love – and any parent who has suffered along with a dying child instinctively knows it. The question we need to ask ourselves, if we call ourselves Christians today, is this: Do we really want to follow Jesus Christ and love as he did, or is it just too inconvenient? We can choose differently. We can choose the kind of routine, self-absorbed, halfhearted anesthetic Christianity for which Nietzsche had such contempt. It is certainly easier. It also costs less…
[R]eal discipleship always has a cost. We can’t follow Jesus Christ without sharing in his Cross…Discipleship demands more than reading about the Catholic faith or admiring the life of Jesus. Christ didn’t ask for our approval or agreement. He doesn’t need either. He asked us to follow him – radically, with all we have, and without caveats or reservations.
Following Christ means paying the same price out of love for others that Jesus paid to redeem us. (pp.39, 45)
Ave verum Corpus natum
de Maria Virgine:
Vere passum, immolatum
in Cruce pro homine.
Cuius latus perforatum
fluxit aqua et sanguine:
Esto nobis praegustatum
mortis in examine.
O Iesu dulcis!
O Iesu pie!
O Iesu fili Mariae.
English:
Hail, true body,
born of the Virgin Mary:
Truly suffered,
died on the cross for mankind:
From who pierced side
flowed water and blood!
Be for us a foretaste
of death in the last hour!
O gentle Jesus!
O holy Jesus!
O Jesus, Son of Mary!
Other Good Friday related posts:
The Paradox of the Cross
Christ Teaches Us How to Die
Welcome to Holy Week 2009. Although I was on the road last week I did make it home in time to attend our Chrism Mass.
This is a photo from right after all the priests in our diocese went up on the Altar for the blessing of the holy oils by our Bishop Gaydos.
It’s a beautiful Mass and I’m glad I had the opportunity to attend. Here’s a description of the purpose of Chrism (holy oil) from Wikipedia:
Chrism is essential for the Catholic Sacrament of Confirmation/Chrismation, and is prominently used in the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Orders. Those to be confirmed or chrismated, after receiving the laying on of hands, are anointed on the head by the bishop or priest. In baptism, if the person baptized is not to be immediately confirmed or chrismated, the minister anoints them with chrism. Newly ordained priests are anointed with chrism on the palms of their hands, and newly ordained bishops receive an anointing of chrism on their foreheads. It is also used in the consecration of objects such as churches and altars.
In former times, chrism was used to consecrate patens and chalices as well. A Cross would be formed with the chrism into the chalice and paten on the interior parts where the Eucharist would rest; the Cross would then be smeared to cover the entire interior parts. The chalice and paten would need to be consecrated with the chrism again if they are re-gilded, and this ritual may only be performed by a Bishop or a priest with the faculties to do so. However, this is no longer the practice, and a simple blessing by a priest suffices.
Chrism is usually olive oil (although other plant oils can be used in cases when olive oil is unavailable) and is scented with a sweet perfume, usually balsam. Under normal circumstances, chrism is consecrated by the bishop of the particular church in the presence of the presbyterium at the Mass of the Chrism, which takes place on Holy Thursday. The oil of catechumens and the oil of the sick are also blessed at this Mass.
These holy oils are usually stored in special vessels known as chrismaria and kept in a cabinet known as an ambry. When the oils are distributed to a priest for him to use in his ministy they are kept in a smaller vessel with three compartments, known as an “oil stock”. There is also a type of oil stock that is shaped like a ring, to make the anointing easier. The “jewel” of the ring is a container with a removeable lid.
Last week when I was working in Washington, DC I was lucky enough to be staying a couple blocks from the Cathedral of St. Mathew The Apostle.
I’ve been able to attend Mass here a number of times over the years. It’s one of the places that Pope Benedict said Mass when he visited the United States.
Established in 1840, St. Matthew’s originally was located at 15th and H Streets, NW. Construction of the present church began in 1893 under the direction of Monsignor Thomas Sim Lee. The first Mass was celebrated on June 2, 1895. The church was dedicated in 1913 and designated a cathedral in 1939 when the Archdiocese of Washington was established.
The Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle, which honors the patron saint of civil servants, plays a major role in the Catholic life of the nation’s capital. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Washington.
Last week I was in Danville, KY for some project work and attended Mass at Saints Peter and Paul Church.
This is a pretty little church in downtown Danville.
This weekend I made my annual retreat which was held at the Sojourn Center in Dittmer, MO. The weather started out sunny and warm but changed to rain and snow. That didn’t dampen our enthusiasm.
The facility is a new one to us who have been making Wespine Study Center retreats for many years. It’s really set up nicely to conduct a retreat with a beautiful little pond and trail around it and through some adjoining woods.
The annual retreat is part of my plan of life and very important to my continued development of my interior life. It’s a time to “recharge the spiritual batteries” and I highly recommend it to everyone.
This is a phrase Pope Benedict XVI used in a homily prior to being elected as Pope. So what is relativism? I heard it on my annual retreat and realized that I couldn’t define it easily even though I have heard it often. Here’s a definition you can find on Wikipedia:
Relativism is the idea that some elements or aspects of experience or culture are relative to, i.e., dependent on, other elements or aspects.
Basically its an idea that says there aren’t any absolute truths. Kind of like saying, “What’s true for you many not be true for me.” Looking at our society in America today you can see this exhibited by the fact that we allow the legal murder of innocent human beings while agonizing over what color cars should be (California is considering outlawing black cars to “save” energy). How can we be so concerned about something as meaningless as the color of an automobile while we allow and I dare say, some even encourage, taking innocent life?
Getting back to Pope Benedict, here’s the text out of which the title of this post comes:
How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves ¬ thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Eph 4, 14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching”, looks like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires. However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an “Adult” means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today’s fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth.
There are absolute truths that we can’t deny. I think it’s very interesting that so many people today profess the need for “tolerance,” which I think is a way to hide their belief in relativism, but then they become very intolerant of you when you believe differently than they do. They are acting irrationally by saying and doing the very thing they claim you shouldn’t say or do.
There is such a thing as a natural law and a natural moral law. Faith is real and so is God. He made us and we need to trust in Him. That is why a regular reading of sacred scriptures is so important. To get to know Him better and do our best to follow His truth.
I completely missed seeing the announcement of a day long conference on the life of St. Josemaria Escriva which will be taking place in McLean, VA on April 4th.
Appropriately named the “St. Josemaria Conference,” it is being held to celebrate 60 years of Opus Dei in the United States and 80 years in the Church.
The theme is also appropriate, “Passionately Loving The World.”
You can find registration information, program and list of speakers on the website.