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Featured Article
Oct
30
Speaking with God must be a progression in and for ourselves - a progression in the literal sense of the word, that brings us forward, that moves us toward God and away from ourselves. When we neither convert into action nor simply carry around in ourselves all that oppresses us, smothers us in anxiety, deprives us of freedom and happiness, all that we wish for, desire, intend, demand, when we convert them into prayer, express and discuss them in God’s presence, then our prayer enters into a value system, confronts a criterion, by which it can be measured, directed, purified. For petitions to God are challenges to ourselves. The petitions of the Our Father point out the way we must: “Forgive us as we have forgiven” - how often have we fallen silent and blushed at this petition! “Hallowed be thy name” - for which of us is this petition about the defiled and reviled name of God a matter of personal concern? The next to the last petition (”Lead us not into temptation…”) always reminds me of Augustine’s admission in the Confessions that he prayed constantly for chastity even in his Sturm und Drang days, but always with reservation: “But please don’t give it to me yet.” And the last petition: “Deliver us from evil, from malum“. What, exactly, is bad, “evil”, for us? And what is the salutary exigency that must remain? Perhaps the truth of the matter is often the opposite of our wishes. What pleases us can be the product of evil and what hurts us can become our salvation. There are other prayers, too, that can become models for us, can discipline us, can force us to examine our conscience, can purify us. I shall mention here only the simple, yet great, prayer of Nicholas of Flue: “My Lord and my God, take from me all that keeps me from you; give me all that brings me to you.” What a purification of our wishes an honest recitation of this petition presumes!
From:Doma und Verkundigung, pp.125ff
Oct
30
St. John Chrysostom
Filed Under The Wisdom of the Saints | Leave a Comment
Grace can do nothing without the will and the will can do nothing without grace.
– St. John Chrysostom
Oct
30
Luke 13: 18 - 21
Filed Under Today's Gospel | Leave a Comment
18 He said therefore, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it?
19 It is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his garden; and it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”
20 And again he said, “To what shall I compare the kingdom of God?
21 It is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”
Oct
29
SGsK Sayawan Sa Village
Filed Under Events | Leave a Comment
| November 11, 2007 | ||
| 5:00 pm |
The Simbang Gabi sa Katedral Steering Committee
in cooperation with the
Filipino Pastoral Ministry of Our Lady of
cordially invites you to the fund raising dance
SGsK SAYAWAN SA VILLAGE
Sunday 5:00 p.m.
November 11, 2007
Fr. Demo Hall
Our Lady of
DJ Music BCV
Donation $ 10.00
For more information
Please contact the FPM office c/o Fr. Romy (212) 727 0214 or
Fr. Joseph Marabe (212) 753 2261 ext 251
or the Members of the Simbang Gabi sa Katedral
Steering Committee
Directions to Our Lady of
Take A,B,C,D,E,F or ,V trains to West 4,
(
at
Source: www.simbanggabinyc.com | Dload Flyer
Oct
29
The Magisterium of the Church protects the faith of the simple, of those who cannot write books or speak on television or compose lead articles for the newspapers - that is her democratic mandate. She must give voice to those who are without voice. But something else must be said here. It is not just the people of a certain place, of a certain bishopric, of a certain country, who belong to the Church but the faithful of the whole world. That is why the Church must always be on her guard against a private development of the Faith held by the whole.
In his current bishopric, a bishop represents the whole Church; that is his mandate as representative. But that is not all. Those also belong to the Church who have lived before us, the whole communion of saints. It would be false to say that they were the Church; they are the Church. That is why the whole community of believers must always be represented in the Church. If priests and bishops, at their ordination, consecrate themselves solemnly to the Tradition of the Church, and if this consecration is the real content of the sacrament, this means that they are thereby bound to represent this whole Church, to be the voices of the dead, who are truly the living.
But we have still to consider the most crucial point. As a living organism, the Church, as Saint Paul expresses it, is composed of both Head and body. The body without the Head is no longer a body but a corpse. But the Head of the Church is Christ. That is the most profound substance of the sacrament, its most profound nature, that over and above all opinion polls there must be represented the One without whom the Church and humanity would be just a corpse. His word was by no means so trite, so meek, so unambiguous as a false Jesus-Romanticism would have us believe. It had the cutting sharpness of a true love that does not let itself be separated from the truth, and, in consequence, it brought him to the Cross. It was too much opposed to the public opinion of all ages. And this has not changed. In the Church there must be represented over and over again as the commonly accepted opinion that the claim of Jesus Christ himself must be represented, and that can occur only through union with the sacrament, through union with the common form of the Faith as it is given us in sacrament.
From: L’Osservatore Romano, 10, no.3 (1980), p.10
Oct
29
St. Gerard Majella
Filed Under The Wisdom of the Saints | Leave a Comment
Who except God can give you peace? Has the world ever been able to satisfy the heart?
– St. Gerard Majella
Oct
29
Luke 13:10-17
Filed Under Today's Gospel | Leave a Comment
10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.
11 And there was a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years; she was bent over and could not fully straighten herself.
12 And when Jesus saw her, he called her and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.”
13 And he laid his hands upon her, and immediately she was made straight, and she praised God.
14 But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be healed, and not on the sabbath day.”
15 Then the Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger, and lead it away to water it?
16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?”
17 As he said this, all his adversaries were put to shame; and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.
Oct
28
Outrage as reality-TV project stoops to mocking disabled
Filed Under News & Current Events | Leave a Comment
The Australian Catholic Disability Council is outtraged by a reality TV-style program which mocks and ridicules people with intellectual disabillities.
The Council said that the research project involving the production entitled Laughing with the Disabled; Creating Comedy that Confronts, Offends and Entertains, is unethical and degrading, The Catholic Weekly reported, despite the Queensland University of Technology granted it ethics appproval.
The work of PhD candidate Michael Noonan, the project features two men with intellectual disabilities who are put in a situation where they are mocked and ridiculed.
Mr Noonon said the film is a study in the sometimes uncomfortable art of negotiating the line between laughing with people with a disability and laughing at them.
However Australian Catholic Disability Council chair Michele Castagna has called on the university to rethink its approval of the project. Read more
Oct
28
Indonesia: Philosophy as a means to combat Islamic fundamentalism
Filed Under Quotes & Excerpts | Leave a Comment
(With photo of Professor Franz Magnis-Suseno SJ)
In conversation with the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Professor Franz Magnis-Suseno SJ, who lectures in philosophy at the Catholic University of Jakarta, has expressed his belief that philosophy can be “a means of combating Islamic fundamentalism”. The German Jesuit, who has been living in Indonesia for over 40 years, believes it is vital to include Muslims in the philosophical debate, since they then “see Islam in a different light”. We need people who can think critically and all-embracingly, in short “We need philosophers!” he emphasised. It is a matter, he says, of “the courage to learn how to think”.
It was observable, he said, that many Muslims who study philosophy and the humanities tend to have a broader horizon, whereas those who incline towards fundamentalism tend rather to have studied the natural sciences. Such people, he feels, tend to develop an inferiority complex, since they perceive “a total superiority of the Western world”. This was especially the case with Muslims who studied abroad. Father Magnis-Suseno deplored the fact that in Western universities there is a strong tendency towards financial cuts in the humanities. One should reflect, he warned, that this could contribute to a strengthening of Islamic fundamentalism. Read more
Oct
28
by Dr. Jeff Mirus, October 24, 2007
After writing last week’s column (Authority and the Logic of Revelation) I was distressed to read Gilbert Meilaender’s article in the November issue of First Things, entitled “Conscience and Authority”. Meilaender is a learned and deeply religious man who teaches Christian Ethics at Valparaiso University. But Meilaender is also a Lutheran and, on Protestant grounds, the task of explicating the relationship between conscience and authority is not merely Herculean. It is impossible.
The Protestant Solution
The article looks squarely at three imperatives which Meilaender takes as givens: the need for the “Church” to speak with authority in order to preserve and transmit Christianity; the need for the individual Christian to respect that authority; and the need for the Christian to form his conscience ultimately through a direct personal relationship with God. As the author rightly notes, these givens necessarily create a tension which cannot be completely resolved. After struggling for some 5,000 words to maintain both the authority of the “Church” and the primacy of the individual conscience, Meilaender concludes that when the individual Christian feels bound to disagree with the “Church”, he may do so only while acknowledging that he cannot claim “Church” authority for his decision. Read more
