Category Archives: News

Men's communities, News

From the Ashes…

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Archbishop John Barwa, SVD, a Divine Word Missionary in India, knows what persecution is like firsthand. In 2008, in his own Archdiocese of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, Hindus went on rampage that killed 100 people, destroyed 18 churches and displaced some 5000 people. His own niece, a nun, was gang-raped.

While he was not the archbishop of the diocese at the time, he accompanied Cardinal Telesphore Toppo to the area during the first wave of persecutions, a experience he said was both painful and frightening. But Cardinal Toppo encouraged the people by saying, “From these ashes a new church will come about, so let us pray to God for the possibility for going through this suffering.”

With the help of the SVD Missionary Center in Techny, Illinois (which has an incredibly beautiful chapel in the main building), most of the churches and homes have been rebuilt. Some of those who took part in the violence, says the Archbishop, have had a change of heart. “Those who took part in the persecution realized that it was fruitless. They asked for pardon and forgiveness.”

The threats on his life are very real but God has been with him. “They can kill me only once. If that happens, then I will die for my people.” Such dying to self has reaped astounding benefits. Last year, the Archbishop ordained 33 young men to the priesthood. In the town where the persecution began, he ordained 5 deacons and 3 priests.

Who knows, maybe the next Pope will come from India. I have adopted (been assigned) a Cardinal to pray for before and during the conclave. His name is Oswald Gracias and he is from the Indian Archdiocese of Mumbai (Bombay) and also happens to be the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India. If you “wish to contribute through the power of your prayers so that the Holy Spirit may guide, protect and enlighten our Cardinals when they determine the next successor of St. Peter,” you can adopt one too!  To have a Cardinal assigned to you visit //adoptacardinal.org/.

News

Fostering Vocations in Your Children

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Sr. Jeanette Marie of the Mercedarian Sisters in Cleveland explains how you can foster a vocation in your children and help them to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Sr. Jeanette Marie is the vocation director of the Mercedarian Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, a teaching order founded in Mexico which was aggregated in 1925 to the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy.

Sister tells parents: “I hope you realize what a great blessing God has bestowed upon you, whether your children are yours by birth or if they are adopted. But blessings come with duties and responsibilities, and the main responsibility of parents is to guide their children to heaven and therefore be happy with and in Him forever.”

Sister Jeanette’s mother prayed that Jeanette would find a good husband. “And God answered her prayers far beyond her wildest expectations! She was not thrilled at the beginning, especially because she thought I was too young to make such a transcendental decision (I was only 16 years old when I entered the convent); but as the years passed, and she saw how happy I was and what a ‘good spouse’ Jesus was, she thanked God for my religious vocation.”

Her order, the Mercedarian Sisters, have as their pillars of spirituality the presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist and the maternal presence of Our Lady of Mercy. In the United States, they teach catechism from grammar schools to the adult level in Cleveland, OH; San Diego, CA; and San Antonio, TX. In Baton Rouge, LA, they operate a prayer center for the sick.

Learn more about the Mercedarian Sisters at www.MercedarianSisters.org, or on their Facebook page. If you feel you may have a calling to the religious life as a Sister, the Order invites you to “Test Your Call.” You will receive a personal reply from Sr. Jeanette.

News

IRL Midwest Regional Meeting

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On Saturday March 16, 2013, the Institute on Religious Life will host a Regional Meeting at the Franciscan Prayer Center in Independence, MO, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm.

The theme of the day is “The Year of Faith: A Faith Professed, Celebrated, Lived & Prayed.” As our Holy Father Emeritus said, we pass through the door of faith at Baptism, which sets us on a journey that will last over our entire life, until we pass from death into enternal life. The Year  of Faith “is a summons to an authentic and renewed coversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the world.”

Featured speakers will be Fr. Thomas Nelson, O.Praem., Rev. Matthew Habiger, OSB, and Dr. Jeremy Sienkiewicz, Ph.D. Everyone – priests, religious, laity – are welcome to attend. Holy Mass will be celebrated by Most Rev. Robert W. Finn.

For more information visit our website or call (816)252-1673.

News, Papal Address

May God Bless Pope Benedict XVI

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Pope Benedict’s legacy will be felt for generations to come.

The National Catholic Register has an article about Pope Benedict XVI’s impact on priestly vocations. Under his watch, the number of priests ministering to the Church worldwide has risen by 6000 men. The Archdiocese of Washington’s new seminary is almost filled to capacity. Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, Md. has more vocations than they have seen in years.

When Pope Benedict assumed the papacy  in 2005, Michael Roche was working at an accounting firm. These words from the Holy Father gave him the courage he needed to pursue his priestly vocation: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. … Open wide the doors to Christ — and you will find true life.  “That was pivotal in my life,” the now-Father Roche told the Register. “I can’t say I had been afraid of Christ, but I was not convinced that a vocation to the diocesan priesthood could be lived in this day and age.” It could and it is.

To see Pope Benedict’s final Apostolic blessing on the crowd in St. Peter’s square (and I can’t write these words without a lump in my throat), click here.

“There were also times when the water was rough and the wind against us,as in the whole history of the Church, and the Lord seemed to sleep. But I always knew that the Lord is in the boat, and I always knew that the boat of the Church is not mine, not ours, but it is His. And He will not let her sink, it is He who leads it, certainly also through the men he has chosen, because so He has willed it. This was and is a certainty, that nothing can obscure. And that is why today my heart is filled with gratitude to God because He has never left me or the Church without His consolation, His light, His love.”

His final words from Castel Gandolfo….

Dear friends, I’m happy to be with you, surrounded by the beauty of creation and your well-wishes which do me such good. Thank you for your friendship, and your affection. You know this day is different for me than the preceding ones: I am no longer the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church, or I will be until 8 o’clock this evening and then no more.

I am simply a pilgrim beginning the last leg of his pilgrimage on this Earth. But I would still … thank you … I would still with my heart, with my love, with my prayers, with my reflection, and with all my inner strength, like to work for the common good and the good of the church and of humanity. I feel very supported by your sympathy.

Let us go forward with the Lord for the good of the church and the world. Thank you, I now wholeheartedly impart my blessing. Blessed be God Almighty, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Good night! Thank you all!”

It is 1:11 PM on Thursday, February 28, 2013. The doors at Castel Gandolfo have just closed, the papal flag has been taken down. Pope Benedict XVI’s life of prayer has begun.

Men's communities, News

Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter

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Pope Benedict XVI & Fr. John Berg, Superior General

It has been awhile since I looked at the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter’s website so I was happy to see that they have the largest class of tonsurandi in their history. The term tonsurandi was new to me so I was glad that they provided an explanation. The Rite of Tonsure is administered early in the second year of formation, and is the point at which a seminarian is invested with the cassock and surplice.

The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, an IRL Affiliate, was founded in 1988 in Switzerland, though they established their Motherhouse in Wigratzbad, Germany, shortly thereafter. They were blessed in 1990 to have a visit from the then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, who celebrated mass in the Traditional rite and has been a good friend to them from their beginnings. I’m sure they will miss his paternal support.

In a statement released after the announcement of Pope Benedict’s abdication the Fraternity said: “We offer our sincere gratitude to the Holy Father for his tireless efforts to guide the barque of St. Peter along the path set out for Her by God. We thank him, in particular, for his kindness and paternal solicitude, especially on behalf of the faithful attached to the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite, which he universally restored to its honored place in the Church by his Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum in 2007.”

The Fraternity seminary in the Unites States, one of two that they operate, is located in Denton, Nebraska, which when it opened in 2000 welcomed 50 seminarians! They have many parishes throughout North America and Europe and Australia as well as missions in Nigeria and Brazil. Today, they have an astounding 397 members (11/2012) according to their website.

News, Women's Communities

A Milestone in North Dakota

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This year, the Sisters of St. Francis of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Hankinson, North Dakota, are celebrating their 100th anniversary in America. Also known as the Dillingen Franciscans, the sisters arrived in Collegeville, Minnesota, from Germany in the summer of 1913 and served in the community there until 1958. In 1921, they opened a parochial school in North Dakota where the Motherhouse was built and still is today.

There are many Franciscan communities around the world , many of them new foundations. The charism of St. Francis of Assisi has remained new and vibrant for lo these many hundreds of years. The Sisters however are one of the very ancient communities for they can trace their beginnings back to 1241 in Germany (just 15 years after the death of St. Francis himself!). In the early 1300’s they became affiliated with the Friars Minor of the Strasburg province and they received the Third Order Rule of St. Francis. To survive almost 800 years in the middle of Europe is incredible.

In 1803, the government confiscated all of their land and buildings. The sisters were allowed to remain in the convent until their deaths but no new postulants were allowed to enter the community. By 1828, there were only 5 sisters  left but it was enough for a new beginning. By1847, there were 53 sisters and by 1968 there were over 2300! The Lord uses even the smallest seed to grow a large, fruitful orchard. The sisters today serve in Germany, Brazil, India and the US. In North Dakota they care for the elderly and sick, teach young people, visit the imprisoned, support pro-life causes, run a retreat house, produce altar breads and do other evangelical activities.

Commenting on the German sisters who came to foreign soil in Minnesota, Sr. Ann Marie Friedrichs, OSF, said, “I am filled with an immense amount of joy and pride every time I think of the courage and vision it took for our German sisters to leave their homeland…not familiar with the American customs and totally unable to speak English. What trust in God they had to say ‘yes'”!

 

News

The Lost Sheep and the Shepherd

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I was thinking about the image of a shepherd’s crook recently and remembered a homily that I heard long ago about the symbolism of the crosier (pastoral staff) as conferred to a bishop when he receives his Episcopal consecration. The priest said that the crook was used by shepherds to draw in wayward sheep that had left the flock.  The image that came to mind was a sheep standing on the edge of a precipice with the shepherd drawing him back to safety, maybe unbeknownst to the sheep. The Catholic Encyclopedia says that the episcopal staff is the symbol of that doctrinal and disciplinary power of bishops in virtue of which they may sustain the weak and faltering, confirm the wavering in faith, and lead back the erring ones into the true fold.

When I was in the Holy Land driving around the desert in a rental car with a friend and a priest in tow, we passed a gas station in the middle of nowhere that was a popular stop for trucks. The noise and the fumes were tremendous. But in the corner of the gas station parking lot was a shepherd and around him, in a perfect concentric circle, were his sheep. You couldn’t have gotten a piece of tissue paper between them, they were packed in that tightly together .

What struck me was that they couldn’t have been terrorized because then they would have been dashing about in a frenzy. The shepherd must have given them a command and so they formed in around him. They had perfect trust in their shepherd to protect them in what had to be a hostile and unnerving environment.

I thought of that image yesterday when I heard of Pope Benedict’s retirement. My first reaction was one of anxiety— Who would be our shepherd? I realized how much I had come to trust in this shepherd. The Lord said, “And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd” (Ezekiel 34:33).

In the Gospel of Matthew, it says:  “When Jesus saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:26).  Jesus also said to Peter: “And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). This was the thought that comforted me as we await the announcement of our new shepherd. God will not abandon His Church. May God grant Pope Benedict the days of prayer he so longs for.

News

Canons and Canonesses

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One day, I received a call asking what a canoness was. I confess I could not answer the question except that I supposed that they were associated with canons. The only canonesses I know of are members of the flourishing and rapidly growing community (they are building a convent to house 48 sisters) of Norbertine Canonesses in Tehachapi, California. According to a Catholic dictionary, a canoness is  a woman who lives a vowed religious life according to the Rule of St. Augustine followed by the Canons Regular.

The next obvious question is: what is a Canon Regular? Canons regular are a community of men following the Rule of St. Augustine who seek to fulfill the Church’s obligation and privilege to worship God through the public celebration of the Divine Liturgy. Hence, canons are usually priests and associated with a particular church. There are also Canons Secular who do not profess vows and may own their own property. St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusians, was a Secular Canon of the Cathedral in Rheims, France.

Pope Pius X, when approving the Constitutions of the Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception said: “This type of priestly life that unites the pastoral ministry and the religious life, is truly admirable and is to be commended. Far from being opposed to each other they strengthen and fortify each other … to the great advantage of the people.”

St. Thomas Aquinas says: “The Order of Canons Regular is necessarily constituted by religious clerics, because they are essentially destined to those works which relate to the Divine mysteries, whereas it is not so with the monastic Orders,” The clerical state is what distinguishes the Canons Regular from monks who may or may not be priests.

Canonesses are also asked to lend “their voices to Him and to His entire mystical body so that Heaven’s eternal canticle may resound also on earth. Therefore, they dedicate themselves to an individual Church of their order.” The Norbertine canonesses are associated with St. Michael’s Abbey in Silverado, California. Their life is one of sacrifice and prayer, especially liturgical prayer, ie, the Mass and Divine Office. For a history and current status of Norbertine canonesses around the world, check out the Norbertine website in Chelmsford, England.

There are four IRL Affiliate Communities that are composed of Canons Regular.

May the Canons Regular and canonesses, by their prayers and witness, strengthen parish and family life across our country.