“Where Shall We Go for Our Pope?”

Benedict XVI is a week away from his abdication, and the media is in its normal lather about all things Roman Catholic. When they’re not slamming the Church over sex-abuse, womens’ ordination, married priests or another of their favorite straw-men, they mostly prefer to pretend that Catholics don’t exist, or at best are a quaint bunch of superstitious people who pray to Mary and follow a man in a white hat. That is, until there’s a papal election to cover, and then they fall all over themselves dolanDan-Browning the secrecy, antiquity, and mysterious nature of a ritual that is more spiritual than temporal.

Of course, the most titillating storyline is, who will it be? Vegas bookies already have odds on the top candidates and will happily take your action. I’ve heard all kinds of names bandied about, including one that I’ve been talking about for the last four years, Timothy Cardinal Dolan. I met Cardinal Dolan when he was Archbishop of Milwaukee. He is a big, loud, genial, unpretentious, scholarly, and most of all a very holy man. I could see then that he was a man on whom God had laid His hand for greater service.

We’ll see.

The Italians, who are pretty used to this sort of thing, have a saying that the cardinal who goes into conclave a pope, comes out a cardinal. There is great wisdom in that on many levels. I was a little over one year old when Pope Paul VI was elected, but I do remember the elections of John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. What I have seen and what the media often misses, is that the conclave is a work of the Holy Spirit. The man who stands on that balcony will be the pastor of 1 billion souls. May God have mercy on him!

For those who are interested, here’s a neat little interactive graphic on how popes are elected.

 

The First Station

Antonio_Ciseri_Ecce_HomoJesus is Condemned to Death

Patiently, silently, you stand there, determined to do your Father’s will for love of me. Even though your human nature recoils at the pain and humiliation you have undergone, and have yet to face, you do not waver.

You hear the crowd’s jeers. A few, short days ago, they greeted you with, “Hosanna!” You see the desperation in Pilate’s cringing eyes, so full of fear and confusion. You know he doesn’t have the courage to pronounce you innocent and set you free. He takes the coward’s way and washes his hands of your fate. He wants nothing more to do with you.

Jesus, did you see me hidden in the crowd too? Cursing you, when only a short time ago you healed me of my blindness and sickness. And did you see me in Pilate’s chair, washing my hands of the responsibility for the horror you now face for my sake?

And yet, this is all done according to Your will. Oh have mercy on me Lord, a sinner and a coward!

 

Daily Prayer Project

FoB, Paulist Prison Ministries, is in the midst of a project to produce daily prayer books for distribution in our nation’s prisons and to parishes around the country. You can see a sample below the fold. As of today, they are able to print and deliver ~20,000 copies; however, PPM serves some 650 prison chaplains who will no doubt want these for the men and women they serve which means they’ll need to print a lot more!

It’s also available to the general public! This is a great way to cultivate the habit of praying the hours without the need to learn a lot of complicated rubrics often necessary for using a conventional breviary.

In addition to 31 days of morning, midday, evening, and night prayer, there is a section in the back with more prayers for daily use and special needs. This is a great tool for keeping prisoners connected to God, exercising their faith, and fighting off the temptation to despair. Whether their doing short time or hard time, prison is a miserable place. This little book could be a lifeline thrown to a drowning soul. Please, won’t you consider helping with a donation today?

I was in prison and you visited me.

~ Matt 25:36

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Happy St. Valentine’s Day!

And no, I don’t mean the cheesy version hi-jacked by Hallmark and Flowers.com…

Valentine was a holy priest in Rome, who, with St. Marius and his family, assisted the martyrs in the persecution under Claudius II. He was apprehended, and sent by the emperor to the prefect of Rome, who, on finding all his promises to make him renstvalentineounce his faith ineffectual, commanded him to be beaten with clubs, and afterwards, to be beheaded, which was executed on February 14, about the year 270.

Pope Julius I is said to have built a church near Ponte Mole to his memory, which for a long time gave name to the gate now called Porta del Popolo, formerly, Porta Valetini. The greatest part of his relics are now in the church of St. Praxedes.

His name is celebrated as that of an illustrious martyr in the sacramentary of St. Gregory, the Roman Missal of Thomasius, in the calendar of F. Fronto and that of Allatius, in Bede, Usuard, Ado, Notker and all other martyrologies on this day.

To abolish the heathens lewd superstitious custom of boys drawing the names of girls, in honor of their goddess Februata Juno, on the fifteenth of this month, several zealous pastors substituted the names of saints in billets given on this day.

You can read more about St. Valentine here. Below is my Valentine to all of you…

Continue reading “Happy St. Valentine’s Day!”

Ya Got a Little Shmuts There…

ashwednesdayToday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent in the Roman Catholic Church and others (for our Orthodox brethren, Great Lent begins at the end of February this year; the 27th I believe).

For those who aren’t Roman Catholic, it’s easy to tell what day it is because suddenly there are a bunch of people walking around with smudges on their foreheads. So what’s up with that?

Continue reading “Ya Got a Little Shmuts There…”

Arithmetic

arithmeticWhen I was a boy in school, I used to love arithmetic. It gave such a sense of satisfaction when you found the correct solution to a problem. Ya know? I still feel that way. Let’s try some simple equations together:

75 – 52 = 23

See? That was easy. Let’s do a harder one:

75 / 52 = 1.44

That means that 75 is 44% MORE than 52. Why, that’s almost half again as much! Neat huh?

Continue reading “Arithmetic”

Catholic is Not Christian? Part II

There was a very good comment on the previous post that I felt deserved its own treatment rather than the necessarily abbreviated comment/reply format. It doesn’t specifically address the point of the article, but rather points to a common objection to all such stories of faith interrupted and revived.

For those who didn’t read it, here it is:

…mulling over your post from today. To me it seems, as people age, regardless of the path the middle of their lives took, many do reflect on lessons learned and experiences from their early life, thus why so many, as you stated return to the faith of their youth, that they may have wandered from or questioned as young adults. I can understand that orbicular path some follow, but doesn’t that also hold true for those who were taught less positive lessons in youth? For some wouldn’t it be just as natural to revert to negatives as it is to someone else’s positives? Learned lessons in life are learned lessons in life. Fortunate are the ones who received early nurturing and positive lessons that left them feeling safe and secure Someone who didn’t, even after many decades of trying to convince themselves otherwise, may find in the end, they weren’t successful after all.

There is a good deal of truth in this comment but there is one thing I, and others like me, had going for us. The most powerful influence was not our parents, or our education, or our experiences, but the supernatural grace of Baptism. In the sacrament of Baptism, God confers on us His adoption, making us sons and daughters, and therefore heirs with Christ. This powerful grace works in our life at all times, regardless of the path we take, always calling us and leading us back to our Father’s house.

It is true that some who are baptized leave the Father never to return. It is an awful tragedy, but one that God must risk because He has given us a free will. To force us into a relationship would break the bond of love which means that God would have to renounce Himself. That is an impossibility. Therefore, it is ultimately up to us to stay in loving relationship with Him, or to reject our patrimony altogether.

The commenter asks, “For some wouldn’t it be just as natural to revert to negatives as it is to someone else’s positives? Learned lessons in life are learned lessons in life.”

Yes, I suppose that’s true as far as it goes. But I believe that there isn’t a single, solitary soul on this planet, now, or in the past, or that will ever live, who does so outside the providence of their Creator. The God who sees a little sparrow fall, will not avert his gaze, or fail to notice the sufferings and strivings of the least of his creatures, let alone a single human soul, baptized or not.

To the commenter I say, God is bigger than our failures, our hurts, our suffering, and our pusillanimous view of ourselves. There is nothing and no one He cannot and will not redeem.