Monthly Archives: June 2013

News, Women's Communities

BBQ With the Marian Sisters

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For those of you who like to support new and growing communities that are faithful to Magisterium of the Catholic Church, here is your opportunity!

The Marian Sisters of Santa Rosa are hosting, with Bishop Robert Vasa, a barbeque in very elegant surroundings on June 30, 2013, at the Smith Family Ranch in Napa, California. The purpose of the event is to support their growing community and share in the joy of their new vocations.

For those nearby, come share in the delicious meal, fine Napa wines and a raffle courtesy of Ignatius Press. For more information or to make reservations for the BBQ, contact Carole Duncan at (707)944-9540 or email dincan@aol.com.

As Marian Sisters we are animated by a desire to magnify Jesus Christ in and through our lives of consecration to Mary. We strive to communicate the beauty, goodness and truth of the Catholic Faith through our works of joyful evangelization while living the fullness of the Church’s liturgical life.

Cloistered life, Women's Communities

A Daughter of St. Dominic and the Church

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Christendom College has seen an extraordinary number of young women enter religious life. One beautiful story is that of  Sr. Mary Jordan, O.P. (Ida Friemoth, ’05), now a member of the Dominican Monastery of St. Jude in Marbury, Alabama, who made her Solemn Profession as a cloistered Dominican nun in August of 2012.

She chose to attend Christendom College because she desired to learn Truth, especially the truths of Thomistic philosophy and theology. The great Dominican, St. Thomas Aquinas, and his teachings were “an incomparable preparation for our doctrinal study as Dominican nuns, and even more so for understanding and living the virtuous life.”

For Sr. Mary Jordan, her time at Christendom was her first exposure to the Latin Mass and Gregorian Chant. When she visited the Monastery of St. Jude for the first time and heard the Divine Office sung in the traditional Dominican chant, her heart soared; “God was using the liturgical formation I received at Christendom to point out to me where He wished me to be His.”

At Christendom, she learned that the highest use of anything is to dedicate it to God. Now her whole life is dedicated to Him and as such, concerned and praying for the whole world. Every day the nuns at the monastery take turns keeping an Hour of Guard, praying the Rosary before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament as Our Lady’s Guard of Honor. Someone is always there, in the chapel; interceding for the world.

Sr. Mary Jordan said, “I have discovered in the monastery the truth of what Peter Kreeft once said: that perhaps the most powerful warriors in the fight between the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death are the contemplatives spending hours a day in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.”

For more information about the Dominican Monastery in Marbury whose common life includes the solemn celebration of the Liturgy, Eucharistic Adoration and Perpetual Rosary, Marian Consecration, and fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church, visit their website.

Liturgical Year, Saints, Women's Communities

Hearts Like Thine

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The Sister Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus have as part of their charism the mission to spread devotion to the Sacred Heart. This picture was sent to me by one of the sisters whose congregation in 2009 opened a place of prayer in Paray-le-Monial, France, where St. Margaret Mary received the revelations of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. They hope this place of prayer will strengthen their fidelity to their charism and bring them many, holy vocations! May our hearts become more like Thine, O Lord, on this Solemnity devoted to your Sacred Heart!

Long for heaven, fly to the Lord as on wings, and never lose your peace. Cease not to work for the glory of God and the salvation of your soul until the Lord decides to say: “It is time.”

Remember that here you have no lasting city, but are awaiting another. Live then like the traveler or exile who, on returning to the fatherland, takes only what is necessary from earth.   And yet collect heavenly treasures zealously.

Through the Immaculate hands of Mary, entrust all your merits to the Heart of the Lord Jesus.

—St. Joseph Sebastian Pelczar, Founder of the Sister Servants of the Most Sacred Heart  of Jesus

News

Patron Saint of Peace

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Happy Feast of St. Norbert who is the patron saint of peace and the founder of the Norbertine Order.

Why the Patron Saint of Peace?

Well, one day while Norbert was traveling by horseback, he was struck by lightning and lay in a stupor for quite some time. Like Saul, he heard these words as spoken from the Lord: “Turn away from evil, and do good: seek after peace, and pursue it.”

That about sums up the Christian life!

For more information about the life of St. Norbert, visit the EWTN website or the Norbertines of St. Michael Abbey, Silverado, California..

General interest, News

Praying and Living For Priests

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What are the signs that it might be time for a contemplative community to pick up roots and move to another location? How about having a witches coven, nudist colony and New Age B&B as neighbors? Or maybe a gunshot through the chapel window on Holy Saturday? A mountain lion gazing in through the window? A storm that has demolished your greenhouse? All this happened to the Handmaids of the Precious Blood in Jemez Springs, New Mexico.

Last month, the Sisters were pleased to announce their move to a new home in the Diocese of Knoxville, Tennessee. It is rather ironic that they have moved from traditionally Catholic land to the Protestant Bible Belt which is seeing an increasing number of Catholics. How wonderful that the people of east Tennessee will be able to see sisters in habits. This contemplative monastery is a first for the diocese. There are 18 professed sisters with several in formation.

I am happy to say that the IRL played a part in this happy marriage between the diocese and the sisters. It was at an IRL event that Mother Marietta met Bishop Richard Stika, the Bishop of Knoxville. Cardinal Raymond Burke and our Executive Director, Mike Wick, spread the word among the bishops that the sisters were contemplating a new home. At one point, they were communicating with 9 dioceses. After much discernment and prayer, the sisters were delighted to hear from Bishop Sticka who said that the diocese had been given a great gift and he was able to offer the sisters a home.

The Handmaids of the Precious Blood were founded in 1947 by Father Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald, sP, who opened his door one day to a homeless person only to discover that the man was a priest who had left the Church because of personal problems. This inspired him to found a religious order whose mission is to pray for the sanctification of all priests. Mother Marietta said, “These Sisters don’t just pray for priests, they live for them.” Their beautiful habits reflect their life of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. The wine red color symbolizes the Precious Blood and the white veil symbolizes the Eucharist.

Bishop Sticka said, “Their prayers and many sacrifices as a silent proclamation of the Gospel are the very “soul and leaven” of the Church’s evangelization efforts and works of mercy. Indeed, cloistered religious are truly indispensable co-workers in the mystery of redemption.”

See the complete story in the East Tennessee Catholic.

Liturgical Year

Journal of a Soul

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Today, the Church remembers Pope John XXIII who died on this date in 1963.  For a man who was devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, it is a wonderful coincidence that this year the date of his death falls during the week when the Church celebrates the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. This feast day is always celebrated 19 days after Pentecost, hence, it always falls on a Friday.This year it is celebrated on June 7th.

“It is to the Heart of Jesus that I dare go for the solution of all my problems.”

– Pope John XXIII in Journal of a Soul

The Holy Father had another devotion that was near and dear to his heart. Pope John wrote in an Apostolic Letter that his family used to recite the Litany in Honor of Jesus in His Most Precious Blood every day in July. On February 24, 1960, this devotion was promulgated by him for use by the whole Church. With this devotion, the bishops of the Church and all people are asked by St. Paul to remember: “Keep watch, then, over yourselves, and over God’s Church, in which the Holy Spirit has made you bishops; you are to be the shepherds of that flock which He won for Himself at the price of His own Blood” (Acts 20:28). It is appropriate to recite this devotion on Corpus Christi and/or any other day when one would like to meditate on the Blood shed by Our Lord as the price for our salvation. It is fitting that we pray this Litany during the week following Corpus Christi and prior to the Sacred Heart. Both feasts are a vivid reminder of Who we are receiving into our hearts during Holy Communion.

On his deathbed, the Holy Father, Bl. Pope John XXIII was heard to whisper these words of Peter twice: “Lord, you know that I love you.”

Let us love Him too with our whole hearts.

 

Liturgical Year

St. Juliana, Saint of Corpus Christi

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This Sunday, at least in the Unites States, we celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi. As with all special feast days in the Church, this one has a special history that was highlighted by Pope Benedict XVI in a 2010 homily.

The impetus behind this celebration was St. Juliana de Cornillon (d. 1258) who as a young orphan lived with Augustinian Nuns in a convent where she later became a sister herself. Graced at the age of 16 with mystical visions, she saw a “moon in its full splendour, crossed diametrically by a dark stripe. The Lord made her understand the meaning of what had appeared to her. The moon symbolized the life of the Church on earth, the opaque line, on the other hand, represented the absence of a liturgical feast for whose institution Juliana was asked to plead effectively: namely, a feast in which believers would be able to adore the Eucharist so as to increase in faith, to advance in the practice of the virtues and to make reparation for offenses to the Most Holy Sacrament. ”

Bishop Robert Torote of Liège was the first to introduce the Solemnity of Corpus Christi in his diocese. Later other Bishops followed his example. Vision of St. JulianaPope Urban IV, the once Archdeacon of  Liège, in 1264 instituted the Solemnity of Corpus Christi on the Thursday after Pentecost as a feast of  the universal Church. Pope Urban wrote, “Although the Eucharist is celebrated solemnly every day, we deem it fitting that at least once a year it be celebrated with greater honor and a solemn commemoration.”

This year, in fact, Pope Francis celebrated the feast on Thursday, May 30, 2013, while in the US we will celebrate it on Sunday, June 2, 2013. It was Pope Urban who asked St. Thomas Aquinas  to compose the texts of the Liturgical Office for this great feast which are still in use in the Church today. St. Julliana herself was canonized in 1869 by Pius IX.

Pope Benedict closed out his homily by saying : The Saints never failed to find strength, consolation and joy in the Eucharistic encounter. Let us repeat before the Lord present in the Most Blessed Sacrament the words of the Eucharistic hymn “Adoro te devote”: [Devoutly I adore Thee]: Make me believe ever more in you, “Draw me deeply into faith, / Into Your hope, into Your love”.