The price of being loved by the Almighty is high, as also is the price of growing in His love. The more precious the commodity, the higher the price; the most precious possession in the world is the love of God. You don’t get this, I don’t say for nothing or cheaply; you pay, and you pay dearly.
Can we be more specific? What does God expect of us who claim that we love Him as recompense for His prior goodness to us and as the wages, so to speak, to merit an increase of His bounty on our behalf? He finally expects these two things:
That we are willing to give up whatever pleasant things He may want us to surrender.
That we are willing to take whatever painful things He may want to send us.
Between these two, surrender and suffering,or as I prefer, sacrifice and the cross, lies the whole price range of divine love…. The love of God is paid for as Christ paid for the love of His Father with the hard currency of willing sacrifice and the holy cross.
When I was younger, and I thought, smarter, I didn’t talk quite this way. But experience is a good, though costly, teacher.
August 20th is the Feast Day of St. Bernard of Clairvaux and this year the Cistercians are celebrating an extra-special anniversary for 2013 is the 900th centenary of St. Bernard’s entrance into Citeaux, the Motherhouse of the Cistercians. The date of his entry was either 1112 or 1113 so for the past year the Cistercians have been commemorating this anniversary with a daily prayer for vocations.
Citeaux
Cîteaux Abbey was founded in 1098 by Sts. Robert, Alberic and Stephen Harding, monks from the Benedictine Abbey of Molesme who were seeking to follow the Rule of St. Benedict more closely. St. Bruno also resided in the vicinity of Molesme around the same time (1082) but he left to become the founder of the Carthusians.
When St. Bernard arrived at Citeaux, which hadn’t had a vocation in some time, there were thirty men with him, including his uncle and four of his brothers! When he was only in his twenties, he established a new Cistercian abbey in the Valley of Light or Clairvaux. At the time of his death, 700 men resided at Clairvaux and 68 new abbeys had been founded by him. What a difference one Cistercian made in the life of the Church!
Sr. Jeanette Marie, the Vocation Directress for the Mercedarian Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, was heartened as she said to hear the Holy Father, Pope Francis, describe one of the things that prevents young people from entering religious life. The issue is Commitment!
As everyone knows, the popularity of marriage is in a steep decline. People live together and then move on. It used to be said that “I am living with him/her to see if marriage is in the cards” which it usually wasn’t. Now it is: “I am living with him/her until the next him/her comes along.”
This problem casts its long shadow on religious life and vocational discernment. A religious vocation is to eternity. Sr Jeanette wrote that we live in a culture that fails to see the good of making a lifetime commitment; a culture that says, “I will choose this vocation provided that everything goes OK.”
In his talk, Pope Francis said, “To become priests [or] Religious – is not primarily our choice. I don’t trust the seminarian, the novice who says: ‘I have chosen this path.’ I don’t like this. It’s not right! But it is the response to a call and to a call of love. I hear something within me, which makes me restless, and I answer yes. The Lord makes us feel this love in prayer, but also through so many signs that we can read in our life, so many persons that He puts on our path.”
Sr. Jeanette believes that there are three things you can do to come to a decision about religious life:
learn about religious life and celibacy
pray about your vocation, seeking the guidance of your parents and spiritual advisors
plan to arrive at a firm commitment towards your calling – before it’s too late!
The Mercedarian sisters will have a discernment retreat for young women October 11-13, 2013, in Baton Rouge, LA. Now is the time to test your commitment to follow the Lord in faith!
This month’s issue of Religious Life magazine is devoted in good part to the only approved Marian apparition site in the United States – the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help in Champion, Wisconsin. Our Lady appeared to Adele Brise in 1859 and told her to teach the children their catechism and about the sacramental life of the Church. “Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation.”
in 2009, Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay opened a two-year inquiry into the apparitions. He found that they exhibited a supernatural character and were worthy of belief. The other important act was the entrusting of the Fathers of Mercy as guardians of the shrine. They have seen the number of pilgrims increase from 25,000 a year in 2010 to about 200,000 a year in 2011!
The shrine offers daily mass, confession, spiritual direction, anointing of the sick, meeting rooms for groups, a new cafe (it is pretty remote), and other devotions. It is unlike other apparition shrines in that the countryside looks much as it did 150 years ago. There are no shops, restaurants or secular establishments to speak of anywhere nearby with the exception of a few farms. Hence, it is a beautiful place for quiet reflection.
Fr. Peter Stryker, C.P.M., the Rector of the Shrine, in commenting on the value of their Fathers’ work at the shrine quoted from a 1955 book on the shrine’s history in which it said:
There must be a grave reason and great need for Mary to come so often in our generation. There are great dangers threatening us…these are hurling humanity down the precipice of ruin and destruction….Mary would remind us of the value of suffering, the necessity of sacrifice, and the mercy of our Savior.
Fr. Stryker says that we all have the responsibility to open the door of faith to our family, friends and neighbors. This Year of Faith and the Holy Father’s words at World Youth Day have the same message: Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.
And as someone who has been to the shrine, I am happy to be reminded of what a pilgrimage is all about. Regardless of what we may experience there, a pilgrimage is still, in the words of Father Stryker, “an outward sign of our desire to be on a safe path regarding our ultimate pilgrimage: our journey toward heaven as our true and eternal home!”
Jesus did not say: “if you would like to, if you have the time,” but: “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Sharing the experience of faith, bearing witness to the faith, proclaiming the Gospel: this is a command that the Lord entrusts to the whole Church, and that includes you; but it is a command that is born not from a desire for domination or power but from the force of love, from the fact that Jesus first came into our midst and gave us, not a part of Himself, but the whole of Himself, He gave His life in order to save us and to show us the love and mercy of God.
In 2011, we published an article in Religious Life called “A Century of Zoe” which was the vocation story of Mother Teresa Margaret, foundress of the Carmelite Monastery in Traverse City, Michigan. Baptized with the name Zoe, she said that she never liked the name, thinking it not Catholic enough, until she read that Father John Hardon said that Zoe means sanctifying grace in Greek.
Well, on May 26, 2013, Zoe went to meet, face to face, her heavenly spouse. She had been a cloistered nun for 83 years! She died at the age 101 and had entered the Grand Rapids Carmel when she was 18 years old.
Zoe Julia Armstrong was born in Ohio in 1911. When she first wrote to her first Carmel and received the answer back that they were full and to try elsewhere, she wrote back and said, is anybody going to die soon? She was full of spunk. When she entered the Grand Rapids Carmel, she was so excited that she grasped “old Mother Bernadita” in her arms and spun her around! Zoe had a rough go at first but said, “No I’m not going to go. I’m going to become what they want me to be, to prove my love to Him!”
In all challenges, Mother said we have to remember, “God wouldn’t ask this of me if He didn’t intend to help me with it.”
According to her sisters, Mother transitioned from vigorous activity to old age with remarkable gracefulness. Until her brief final illness, she participated in all the activities of her religious community.
When Father Patrick Allen was ordained by Most Rev. Robert Guglielmone of Charleston on July 7th, his young son Henry wanted to share that moment with his father. What a beautiful picture!
Fr. Allen attended a Presbyterian Seminary but then became attracted to Anglo-Catholicism. He was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in 2001. His pilgrimage of faith ultimately led him and 19 other “pilgrims” into the Catholic Church. They are part of the Corpus Christi Catholic Community, part of the “Anglican Ordinariate,” which meets in St. Mary of the Annunciation in downtown Charleston, SC.
One of the missions of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Wichita (IHM) is to pray for the conversion of sinners. You can help! Using Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s “quick novena” as a model, the sisters are enlisting the help of the laity in this endeavor to pray for sinners and to ask for Our Lady’s help as they build their new novitiate. As of May 13, 2013, they had prayed 71,080 Memoraraes on their way to their goal of 5,000,000!
The IHM sisters have a special devotion to Our Lady of Fatima. When their religious institute was founded in Spain in 1848 by Fr. Joaquin Masmitija, he placed it under her protection. It was in Fatima that the Blessed Mother told Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta to “pray much and make sacrifices on behalf of sinners, for many souls go to hell because there is no one to make sacrifices for them.” When they made such a sacrifice, she told them to pray: “O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”
Their mission and the beloved name of Mary held by the sisters encourages them to partake of this work for the sake of the world. Anyone can pray the quick novena which is 9 Memoraraes said in petition and 1 said in thanksgiving for a total of 10. You can pray all at once or scatter them throughout the day. If you do this daily for 14 weeks, you will have said 980 Memorares! Add 2 more days and you will have said a thousand. You can help the sisters reach 5 million prayed for the conversion of the world!
The sisters sent us a postcard that can be used as a daily tally which is to be mailed back to them after 1000 Memoraraes are said. They will then present them to Our Lady of Fatima at her shrine on their property each year on May 13th and October 13th—the anniversary of her first and last apparition at Fatima in 1917.
On July 18, 2013, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) celebrated its 25th anniversary. Founded in 1988 by former members of the Society of St. Pius X, it has enjoyed spectacular growth, with 240 priests and 140 seminarians worldwide.
Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre formed the Society of St. Pius X in response to the liturgical abuses that developed after Vatican II. But when he consecrated four bishops against the wishes of Pope John Paul II, Fr. Josef Bisig and 11 other priests along with many seminarians left the organization on order to be obedient to the Holy Father. Founding an order that retains the traditional Latin liturgy was done with humility and fealty to the Church.
With the support of the then-Cardinal Ratzinger, Bishop Joseph Stimpfle of Augsburg, Germany gave the Fraternity a home in Wigratzbad, a Marian shrine in Bavaria, that is now the Fraternity’s European seminary. Fr. Bissig was the first Superior General, a position he held until 2000.The FSSP’s mission is twofold: “formation and sanctification of priests in the cadre of the traditional liturgy of the Roman rite, and secondly, the pastoral deployment of the priests in the service of the Church.”
The fraternity’s missionary work is worldwide with more than 50 locations in North America alone. To find a parish near you, click here! Their US seminary is in Denton, Nebraska where their Chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe was consecrated in 2010.
It is always interesting, when reading the lives of the saints, to discover that different saints’ lives often intertwined. It’s as if one were attending class in a schoolroom and sitting next to you was St. Catherine of Siena and in front of you was St. Ignatius of Loyola. Of course, there is the other moment in history when Poland had in their midst St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Faustina and Bl. Pope John Paul II and yet they did not personally know one another!
Today, we celebrate the great saint Bonaventure, Cardinal-Bishop and Minister General of the Franciscan Order, Doctor of the Church known as the Seraphic Doctor who, with St. Thomas Aquinas, studied in Paris. Born in c. 1218, Bonaventure was given the name John. When he was 4 years old, according to tradition, his mother threw herself at the feet of St. Francis of Assisi begging that her son John be delivered from a serious illness. He was cured and St. Francis, foreseeing the “Divine graces” in store for the child cried out ,”O buona ventura!” (Good Fortune!).
At age 22, Bonaventure entered the Order of St. Francis. Sent to Paris to study, he was asked by St. Thomas Aquinas where he had acquired his knowledge. St. Bonaventure pointed to the crucifix and said: “This is the source of all my knowledge. I study only Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”
While attending the Council of Lyons in 1274, St. Bonaventure took ill and died on July 14th. Amazingly enough, St. Thomas Aquinas died en route to the same council. The humble Franciscan who rose to the highest ranks of the Church and the celebrated Dominican who said at the end of his life, “All that I have written seems like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me,” were like bookends in a glorious chapter of the Church.
Pope Benedict XVI (March 17, 2010) describes the two Doctor’s definition of the ultimate goal of mankind:
St Thomas and St Bonaventure define the human being’s final goal, his complete happiness in different ways. For St Thomas the supreme end, to which our desire is directed is: to see God. In this simple act of seeing God all problems are solved: we are happy, nothing else is necessary.
Instead, for St Bonaventure the ultimate destiny of the human being is to love God, to encounter Him and to be united in His and our love. For him this is the most satisfactory definition of our happiness.
In the words of St. Bonaventure, “Let us therefore say to the Lord Our God: ‘Lead me forth, Lord, in Thy way, and let me step in Thy truth; let my heart be glad, that it fears Thy name.'”
