The Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Goonellabah, Australia, have a rich treasure that has bestowed many blessings on their community. Go to their website to see what it is. You won’t be sorry! (By the way, Goonellabah is an aboriginal word meaning “red flame tree.”)
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Mt 6:21).
The National Catholic Register has an article in the current issue (July 15-28, 2012) about a former Olympian who is now a Franciscan Sister of the Renewal. Sr. Catherine Holum was an American speed-skater at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. Appropriately enough, she is stationed in England where the XXX Olympiad will kick off on July 27th. Her mother Dianne has 4 Olympics medals.
When she was 16, Sr. Catherine had a profound experience of faith while on a pilgrimage to Fatima but fell away from her faith while she attained a degree in photography from the Art Institute in Chicago. However, she was always pro-life and encountering a group of pro-life young people who were on a walk across America changed her life. Here she witnessed joyous, zealous Catholics whose love for Jesus really made a difference in their lives. When she encountered the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal at World Youth Day in Toronto, she felt the same attraction in her heart that she had felt for these young people. She joined the community in 2003.
Heaven, she says, is eternal glory. Winning a gold meal is only brief glory.
Right now, Catholic and Orthodox pilgrims are traveling across Russia with a replica of the icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa on a pilgrimage called “From Ocean to Ocean International Campaign in Defense of Life.” If all goes as planned, the icon will travel across 8 time zones (11,000 miles and 24 countries) ending in Fatima, Portugal, and hopefully from there to America in the Spring of 2013 (boy, do we need her intervention!). The purpose of the pilgrimage in Russia is to invoke the intercession of Our Lady, Ark of the New Covenant, asking her to end the scourge of abortion which has been legal in Russia since 1920 and to restore a culture of life. They have the dubious honor of being the first country in the world to legalize abortion.
Fr. Peter West, of Human Life International, has a very interesting article on Zenit, documenting how Our Lady has helped the Church throughout the ages. Just as the Jews carried the Ark of the Covenant into battle, so we too should carry the Mother of God into battle to fight against the culture of death.The Ark contained the tablets of the law while Mary’s womb contained the Son of God, in Whom the prophets and the law found their fulfillment.
As the icon made its way up a river, one observer noted: “It is hard to describe the reactions of people in boats and ships passing by. They waved to us and in various ways showed their admiration and support.”
Go to the From Ocean to Ocean International Campaign in Defense of Life website to follow the progress in countries such as the Ukraine, Latvia, Croatia, Italy, Germany, Spain, Ireland, etc. Let us pray that the Mother of God will touch all hearts who see her image.
While “nuns on the air conditioned bus/van” are getting a lot of attention in the press these days, I couldn’t help but the notice the contrast between this event and the work of a Salesian sister whom I had never heard of until today.
On November 24, 2012, Ven. Maria Troncatti (1883-1969), a Salesian Sister, will be beatified in Macas, Ecuador. Sister Maria made her first profession in 1908 and left for Ecuador in 1922 where she worked among the Shuar people.
She and two other sisters “faced dangers of every kind, including those caused by the beasts of the forest and by fast-flowing
rivers that had to be waded through or crossed on fragile “bridges” made from creepers or on the shoulders of Indians. Sr. Maria was nurse, surgeon, orthopaedist, dentist – but, above all, catechist and evangelizer, rich in the wonderful resources of her faith, patience, and fraternal love. Her work for the promotion of the Shuar woman bore fruit in hundreds of new Christian families formed, for the first time, on a free personal choice on the part of the young couple.”
Sr. Maria died in an airplane crash in Ecuador in 1969. Her works bore fruit that will last for all eternity, something that escapes notice of the secular press but not of our Heavenly Father. Her community, Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesians) was founded by St. John Bosco and St. Mary Domenica Mazzerello and came to the US in 1908. They are the largest congregation of sisters in the world with over 15,000 sisters and growing!!
The Vatican has issued new guidelines for the recruitment of seminarians with the aim of increasing vocations to the priesthood. I thought the reasons for the decline in vocations was worth noting:
The solution as every one knows lies within the family. Children need to be taught to pray and to see the priesthood as a gift. Obviously, too, involvement in good, solid, orthodox activities for boys are important – altar serving, good Catholic schooling, solid CCD, charity work, introduction to good priests and religious men and women.
For more information, see the Catholic News Service.
The Holy See has unveiled the logo for the Year of Faith which kicks off on October, 11, 2012, the 50th anniversary of the beginning of Vatican Council II. What a beautiful image showing the barque of Peter representing the Church as well as the IHS in the sails, the mast as the cross and the sun representing the Eucharist.
The Year of Faith is a beautiful complement to the New Evangelization which calls for all Christians to deepened their relationship with Jesus Christ and to be a witness of that faith with others.
What a beautiful time to rediscover the history of the Catholic Church in America. In October, two of our most illustrious blesseds will be canonized: Kateri Tekakwitha and Marianne Cope. One special event that caught my eye will occur on June, 2, 2012, the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, when the Blessed Sacrament will be adored at the same time all over the world. Wow! A billion Catholics adoring Jesus at the same time! If we can muster this strength, we can change the world!
Archbishop Rino Fisichella says, “The crisis of faith is a dramatic expression of an anthropological crisis which has abandoned man to his own devices. We must overcome the spiritual poverty affecting so many of our contemporaries who do no longer perceive the absence of God from their lives as a void that needs to be filled. The Year of Faith, then, is an opportunity which the Christian community offers to the many people who feel nostalgia for God and who desire to rediscover Him.”
We are used to sports figures thanking mothers, coaches, wives and sometimes even God after big wins. However, this appears to be somewhat unique in the current annals of sport – an Italian coach who makes a pilgrimage to a Camaldolese Monastery to thank a group of monks after unexpectedly reaching the Euro 2012 (soccer) quarter-finals in Poland.
The Italian team met with the monks whose historical origins are Italian but have a foundation outside Krakow, Poland, before the tournament. Their coach, Cesare Prandelli, promised to make a pilgrimage to the monastery if the team got out of “Group C.” After their big win, the coach and his staff, at 3:00 AM in the morning, left their team HQ and walked 13 miles to the monastery which took 3 1/2 hours.
The Camaldolese were founded by Saint Romuald (11th C.) and trace their heritage to the 6th century monastic traditions of Saint Benedict and the reforms of Saint Romuald.
The Holy Hermitage of Camaldoli commemorated the 1,000th anniversary of its foundation by St. Romuald on June 19, the saint’s feast day. Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, Pope Benedict’s special envoy for the commemoration, was the principal celebrant at the hermitage’s June 19th Mass.
Drawing upon the Desert Fathers, St. Romuald encouraged some monks to live in solitude as hermits. “Saint Romuald, the father of the Camaldolese monks, striving for eremetic life and discipline, wandered through Italy for many years, building monasteries and tirelessly promoting the evangelical life among monks,” Pope Benedict recalled in his letter for the anniversary.
The US Bishops suggest that the fourteen days from June 21—the vigil of the Feasts of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More—to July 4, Independence Day, be dedicated to this “fortnight for freedom”—a great hymn of prayer for our country.
Maybe at a minimum we can join the bishops in saying this urgent prayer for religious liberty.
Almighty God, Father of all nations,
For freedom you have set us free in Christ Jesus (Gal 5:1).
We praise and bless you for the gift of religious liberty,
the foundation of human rights, justice, and the common good.
Grant to our leaders the wisdom to protect and promote our liberties;
By your grace may we have the courage to defend them, for ourselves and for all those who live in this blessed land.
We ask this through the intercession of Mary Immaculate, our patroness,
and in the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
with whom you live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Click here for the full document on religious liberty and the threats against it in our country.
We, the physicians and future physicians of the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan, met on June 2, 2012, to articulate the vision of the call and contribution of religious women in the redemptive healing ministry of the Church. We also addressed statements issued by the Leadership Conference of Woman Religious (LCWR),various news agencies, and other organizations which have created confusion, polarization, and false representations about the beliefs, activities, and priorities of a significant number of women religious in the United States.
As religious women, our whole life is based in faith. Apart from faith, religious life has no meaning. The doctrinal assessment from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) regarding the LCWR is in the language of faith. The responses of opposition are being expressed using the language of politics. There is no basis for authentic dialogue between these two languages. The language of faith is rooted in Jesus Christ, His life and His mission, as well as the magisterial teaching of the Church. In addition, the language of faith does not contradict reason, but elevates it and secures its integrity. The language of politics arises from the social marketplace. The Sisters who use political language in their responses to the magisterial Church reflect the poverty of their education and formation in the faith.
…We praise the generosity and service of religious women who have gone before us. We see great hope for the future of religious life within the Church and for a continuation of its health care mission in the service of all people. This hope lies in remaining within the deposit of faith and the hierarchical structure of the Church. We cannot separate ourselves from sacred Tradition or claim to advance beyond the Church. There will be new expressions of the faith to meet the needs of this present day, but these will be contained within and directed by the Magisterium of the Church. As Saint Augustine exclaims, “O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new!”