Every year at Easter Wednesday Mass we hear St. Luke’s account of Our Lord’s appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.
This Gospel passage brings to mind the Eucharistic “amazement” that Pope John Paul II sought to rekindle in the faithful through his final encyclical letter, Ecclesia de Eucharistia: Continue reading The Road to Emmaus
The Franciscan University of Steubenville has announced that its chancellor and past president Father Michael Scanlan, T.O.R. will be retiring on June 30, 2011. As most of our readers know, Fr. Mike–with the powerful assistance of the Holy Spirit–was the driving force behind the incredible renewal of Franciscan University, making it an internationally recognized center of “dynamic orthodoxy” in recent decades.
As a graduate theology student at Franciscan University in the 1990s, I’m personally grateful for Fr. Mike’s leadership and the friendship he showed me and so many other people who have stepped on the Steubenville campus.
While he deserves some well-deserved rest from his labor, I am sure he’s especially gratified that the torch has been successfully passed to Fr. Terence Henry, T.O.R. and the rest of the current administration. Catholic families are still able to count on the university’s fidelity to its Catholic–and Franciscan–principles.
For more, see this article, courtesy of Catholic News Agency.
I just came across a story on Catholic News Service on Domus Dei, a company owned by the Sister Disciples of the Divine Master. With more than 30 artisans and specialists in architecture, mosaics, stained glass, sculpture and liturgical objects and furnishings under one roof, “[Domus Dei] can do a complete church from the building itself to the chalice on the altar.”
The company is especially busy these days, as many churches and communities are wanting statues as well as chapels and monuments to honor the soon-to-be-beatified John Paul II. Before that, they created the bronze statues for this year’s Stations of the Cross with the Holy Father in Rome.
What struck me Continue reading How to Build God’s House
Here is a translation of the sermon delivered by Father Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap., preacher of the Pontifical Household, at the Good Friday liturgy in St. Peter’s Basilica in 2008.
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“When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four shares, a share for each soldier. They also took his tunic, but the tunic was without seam, woven in one piece from the top down. So they said to one another, ‘Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it will be,’ in order that the passage of Scripture might be fulfilled that says: ‘They divided my garments among them, and for my vesture they cast lots'” (John 19:23-24).
It has always been asked what the evangelist John wanted to say with the importance that he gives to this particular detail of the Passion. One relatively recent explanation Continue reading Meditation for Good Friday
Today, as we celebrate Christ’s institution of the New Covenant priesthood at the Last Supper, I thought I would share with our readers this brief video on the spiritual fatherhood of priests by Dr. Scott Hahn and Fr. C. Eugene Morris.
This is just one of a host of engaging, vocation-related videos at the For Your Vocation website, an initiative of the United States Conference of the Catholic Bishops.
For further reading on the subject of priests as “fathers,” check out Scott Hahn’s article “The Paternal Order of Priests.”
Only weeks before the beatification of Pope John Paul II, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints issued some new procedures for beatification ceremonies that will help distinguish them from canonizations, in which the Pope infallibly declares a Servant of God to be a “saint.”
During the first Christian millennium, the cult of martyrs and other holy men and women was regulated by local Church authorities. In the 11th century, however, the principle that as universal Pastor of the Church the Roman Pontiff alone has the authority to prescribe a public devotion began to gain prominence. With a Letter to the King and Bishops of Sweden, Alexander III asserted the Pope’s authority to confer the title of Saint and the relevant public cult. This norm became a universal law with Gregory IX in 1234.
In the 1300s, the Holy See began to authorize devotions limited to specific places and to certain Servants of God whose cause for canonization had not yet been initiated or had not yet reached its conclusion. This concession, with a view to future canonization, led to the preliminary stage known as beatification, in which a holy man or woman is declared a “Blessed.”
The Vatican document highlights the essential differences between a canonization and beatification: Continue reading A Blessed Affair
Tired of all the bad news on TV and the Internet? If so, I have something just for you! Check out the following vocation-related stories from the past week:
Monastic Chic (St. Louis Today) EWTN’s Colleen Carroll Campbell reviews Of Gods and Men. A fascinating take on the appeal of movies about the monastic life.
Inspiration to teach came from English nuns, says Utah educator portrayed in Hallmark movie (Intermountain Catholic)
Vietnamese nuns build a community in Houston (Houston Chronicle) Heartwarming story of group of sisters from the Mary Immaculate Province of the Vietnamese Dominican Sisters who, despite a devastating hurricane and fire, continue to provide preschool education to 1,500 low-income children.
After decades of struggle, Ohio priest overcomes stutter to celebrate Mass (The Republic) Msgr. John Cody has served as a parish priest for 38 years and apparently now is an eloquent, confident homilist.
Students step forward to join Catholic Church (Catholic Star Herald) Thirteen students from St. Mary Magdalen Regional School in Millville, New Jersey have entered the Church this academic year.
Free conference for pastors, religious, and communications office personnel (Benedictine College) NFP Outreach Summer Institute to pastors, religious, lay leaders, and communications personnel to be held Wednesday, July 13, 2011, at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. Presenters include Archbishop Joseph Naumann, former National Catholic Register editor Tom Hoopes, and Fr. Matthew Habiger, O.S.B., among others.
The Priest who became the Pope’s secretary (Sunday Catholic Weekly) Here’s what Msgr. Georg Ganswein, secretary to Pope Benedict, had to say about the role of his family in discovering his vocation:
“I am the oldest of five children. Our house did not differ much from other houses in the town. My parents, like my grandparents, were practicing Catholics, people of faith. So we were growing up in an atmosphere of faith and trust in God. We celebrated all ecclesiastical feasts with great internal and external involvement.”
On Holy Thursday, or more likely one day earlier this week, the bishop of each respective Catholic diocese throughout the world, in the company of his priests, will celebrate the Chrism Mass. This Mass typically takes place at the cathedral or some other central location that will accommodate a large number of concelebrants. At this Mass, the bishop blesses the oil of the sick, the oil of catechumens, and most notably the chrism that will be used throughout the diocese in the coming year.
Our family likes to attend this Mass when possible. Not only does it prepare us for the rest of the Holy Week liturgies, but it is a singularly beautiful manifestation of the local Church in all its splendor and richness.
If you are unable to attend this year, it still might be fruitful to privately contemplate some of the prayers and blessings used at this Mass. Just to give you a taste, here is just one of the forms of the consecratory prayer used in blessing the chrism: Continue reading Merry Chrism Mass!
Servant of God Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., the founder of the Institute on Religious Life, summarized it this way:
“A religious vocation is a special grace that God gives to certain persons, calling them to a life of the evangelical counsels.”
I spent a couple wonderful years with a religious community in the 1980s as I was discerning a possible vocation to the priesthood and religious life. One day, they brought in a well-known retreat master to give the two dozen or so seminarians a day of recollection.
The first words of the priest to begin the day of recollection really startled me. He bluntly said, “None of you are called to the priesthood.” I looked around the room at all the postulants and said to myself, “Boy, Father Tom (the community’s vocation director) sures knows how to pick ‘em!”
The priest then explained that our vocation is “now,” that we must respond wholeheartedly to the Lord right here, right now by being holy seminarians. In five or six years, God willing, the bishop will lay hands on some of us, and then–and only then–would we truly be called to the priesthood.
As it turned out, I wasn’t one of the men called to become a priest. Yet, this important lesson has always stayed with me as a lay Catholic.
Continue reading Right Here, Right Now