-
-
Featured Article
Aug
16
St. John Vianney
Posted By reynor | Filed Under The Wisdom of the Saints | Leave a Comment
If something uncharitable is said in your presence, either speak in favor of the absent, or withdraw, or if possible stop the conversation.
– St. John Vianney
Aug
15
Co-Workers of the Truth 8/15
Posted By reynor | Filed Under Co-Workers of the Truth, Pope Benedict XVI | Leave a Comment
The dogma of the assumption of Mary, body and soul, into the glory of the heavenly Kingdom is more confusing than otherwise for us today. Practically every word of it sounds foreign to our ears and without comprehensible meaning: Mary - heaven - glory. The only word we can really understand is body. What is said here constitutes a recognition of the body and consequently of the earth, a recognition of matter and of the future of all of these. Read more
Aug
15
Luke 1: 39 - 56
Posted By reynor | Filed Under Today's Gospel | Leave a Comment
39 In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah,
40 and she entered the house of Zechari’ah and greeted Elizabeth.
41 And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit
42 and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!
43 And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
44 For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy.
45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
46 And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed;
49 for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
50 And his mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,
52 he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.
54 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
55 as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity for ever.”
56 And Mary remained with her about three months, and returned to her home.
Aug
15
St. Teresa of Avila
Posted By reynor | Filed Under The Wisdom of the Saints | Leave a Comment
See then that you keep Him company right after receiving Him. He who is your master will not fail to teach you, though you understand it not; but if you immediately fix your thoughts on something else and do not esteem Him who is within you, then complain of no one but yourself for making little progress.
– St. Teresa of Avila
Aug
14
Co-Workers of the Truth 8/14
Posted By reynor | Filed Under Co-Workers of the Truth, Pope Benedict XVI | Leave a Comment
The holy day, which is something quite different from the holiday, is the Church’s gift to man. The mere not-having-to-work does not constitute a holy day. This is one of the problems of contemporary society: that it is, on the one hand, thoroughly sated with the worship of work but, on the other hand, cannot find the alternative - which would be freedom, a break with routine - and hence comes gradually to find freedom more threatening and more uncomfortable than work.
But what makes a day a holy day? Precisely the fact that it is not dependent on our own decision; that it is, as it were, not homemade but ordained; that it is based on a precept we have not decreed. There is nothing arbitrary about a holy day. We do not make it; we receive it. Even more: a holy day possesses a reality that is lasting and by reason of which it is transformed from a pause in our occupations into a reality of another kind.
A third fact must be mentioned here: a holiday can become a holy day, in the true sense of the word, only if it stems from a precept that it be celebrated as such. The holy day, on the other hand, is an expression of the fact that we receive our time not just from the movement of the stars but from those who have lived, love, and suffered before us - in other words, that man’s time is human time. Even more significantly, it is an expression of the fact that we receive our time from him who sustains the universe. It is the invasion of the quite Other into our lives - the sign that we are not alone in this world. For its part, the the holy day has engendered art, beauty for its own sake, which we find so endlessly comforting precisely because it has no compulsion to be useful, because it does not owe its existence to a leisure that we have devised for ourselves.
We might begin here to reach into history and to ask: What would a world be like if the prescribed holy days man does not ordain for himself were to disappear in favor of the holidays he did so ordain? What would a world be like in which there no longer existed that beauty that was awakened by faith? But let us speak of the present. Every liturgy ought, in reality, to be a kind of holy day, should have about it something of the cheerful, liberating purposelessness of a geuine holy day, liberation from the compulsion of what we plan for ourselves in favor of the answer that already awaits us and that we have only to hear and accept. If that is the case, we must surely say: the Church will have to learn again how to celebrate holy days, how to radiate the brightness of a holy day. Her obeisance to t he rational world has been much too deep in latter years; she has thereby let herself be robbed of a piece of herself. The Church should invite us to the holy days she has preserved in faith. In doing so, she will enable those to rejoice for whom her glad tidings are inaccessible because they are viewed too rationally.
See: Principles of Catholic Theology, pp. 82-83
Aug
14
John 15:12-17
Posted By reynor | Filed Under Today's Gospel | Leave a Comment
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
17 This I command you, to love one another.
Aug
14
St. Maximillian Kolbe
Posted By reynor | Filed Under The Wisdom of the Saints | Leave a Comment
No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?
– St. Maximillian Kolbe
Aug
13
Public Square Rosary - Bryant Park
Posted By reynor | Filed Under Events | Leave a Comment
| October 11, 2008 | ||
| 12:00 pm |
Join the Catholic Filipino Young Adults (CFYA) on a Public Square Rosary on October 11, 2008 at Bryant Park, NYC.
Currently, the United States is suffering from the sins of abortion, homosexuality, impure fashions and immoral laws. Moreover, secularism attempts to remove God from society. But without God, where will our leaders get the wisdom to solve the great problems we face? We must counter today’s immoral and secularist trends with our public prayers. We must ask God, through the Rosary of His Most Holy Mother to save America.
Public Square Rosary Rallies
is organized by www.americaneedsfatima.org , it takes place each year, on the Saturday closest to October 13, the day of the Fatima miracle of the sun, we hold thousands of Public Square Rosary Rallies. America Needs Fatima’s Rally Captains gather people in a group in highly visible places to pray the Rosary, beg God’s pardon, sing hymns and make public witness for the Fatima message. For info please contact the Rally Captain: Reynor 848-203-9490 or Reynor@katoliko.org
Aug
13
Co-Workers of the Truth 8/13
Posted By reynor | Filed Under Co-Workers of the Truth | Leave a Comment
One who sees the deserts of stone in our growing metropolitan areas, who detects the surrender to that anonymity and manipulation that all but suffocate both physically and psychically those who live in them, such a one might well say: if there did not already exist the idea of cathedrals, of a space for reflection, for stillness, if there did not already exist a finger pointing to the mysterious, the eternal - then we should have to invent them because we have need of them.
As Christians, we need a place for recollection, which, generally speaking, cannot exist unless we ourselves are interiorly recollected. If Christians are to pray together, they must first be able to separate themselves from all the distractions of this world and to enter into the stillness that does not separate but unites. For nowhere is man so totally near to self and to the manifestation of self to others, as in shared silence then yields to meaningful speech.
Where the silent prayer of the faithful no longer exists, we might as well close the churches because they are becoming unsafe. Open churches were once the common property of all Christendom, the breath of the Eternal One in the midst of our busy world; they benefited the whole Church in a way that is indefinable but real. A church that merely “functions”, that is merely “functional”, no longer provides what was special to it: a space in which to be, a space in which to leave the world of goals and to enter ino the freedom of God. To erect such spaces is, especially today, a rewarding task that becomes all the more pressing the more we are isolated in the towering domiciles of our cities.
From: Dogma und Verkundigung, pp.266ff.
Aug
13
Matthew 18: 15 - 20
Posted By reynor | Filed Under Today's Gospel | Leave a Comment
15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.
16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.
20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
