Resources

Truth & Life New Testament – FREE APP

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For those of you hoping to find something special to listen to during Lent, here it is! The Truth & Life New Testament (Revised Standard Version – Catholic Edition) on CD! It is a dramatization of the entire New Testament voiced by internationally-renowned actors including: Sean Astin, Michael York, Julia Ormond, Stacey Keach, Malcolm McDowell and many more.

To get a sampling of this beautiful work, a FREE app is available! It includes the entire written text of the RSV-CE New Testament along with the fully-dramatized two hour audio presentation of the Gospel of Mark. This free app is available in formats for a variety of mobile devices at www.truthandlifeapp.com.

I played the Gospel of Matthew at home, intending to listen to a few minutes of it and found myself still glued to my seat 90 minutes later. It was amazing how the Gospel leaped to life in a new and riveting way.

The entire set is available for purchase. It includes a forward by Pope Benedict XVI and an Imprimatur from the Vatican. It is the perfect Confirmation or RCIA gift or something wonderful to listen to during Holy Week.

 

General interest

The Role of the Church in Society

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Anna Williams writes an amazingly wonderful article which appears in the Tucson Citizen about the positive role of the Catholic Church in society.  While it seems that many people believe that taking care of the poor is someone else’s responsibility, Ms. Williams says that there is one group of people who  strive “to live out St. Paul’s ‘more excellent way’ of love. They don’t argue about poverty; they try to alleviate it.” This group of people are Catholic religious and priests whose “primary inspiration for both living in poverty and serving the poor is, of course, Jesus Christ.”

Well worth a read.

Anna Williams is an editorial page intern at USA TODAY . Her older sister is a novice in the Sisters of Life.

 

 

Cloistered life, Liturgical Year, Women's Communities

Perpetual Fasting and Lent: The Poor Clares “Extra-ordinariness”

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The following is a letter from a fictional novice of the Poor Clare Colettine Nuns in Rockford, IL.

Dear Family,

Praised be Jesus Christ and His Holy Mother! I’m looking forward to my second Lent in the monastery. What a wonderful surprise was in store for me before Ash Wednesday — three days of more solemn and lengthy Eucharistic Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. You remember from our brochures that we do have Exposition every day, but this was special with a capital “S.” So many hours of prayer and adoration.

You may wonder what Lent is like in an Order that already keeps a perpetual Lenten fast and abstinence even outside of the liturgical season. Believe it or not, we do make a few changes that reflect even more the austerity of this season. Beginning with Ash Wednesday, the organ is silent. The Liturgy of the Hours and Holy Mass are sung a capella except on Laetare Sunday and Solemnities. You remember that there is no correspondence or visiting until Easter. The community prays an offering of the Precious Blood together nine times a day and on Saturdays we pray the chaplet of Our Lady’s Seven Sorrows, just to mention a couple of Lenten practices. Meals are simple without many condiments but, I assure you, healthy and quite sufficient. Oh, and so much more to tell you, but I’ll have to do that some other time!

Until next time, I am off to the Lenten desert!

Sincerely,

Sister Mary Neophilus

News, Saints, Women's Communities

St. Clare Relic Goes On Pilgrimage

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For the first time in 800 years, the relic of St. Clare has gone on pilgrimage from Italy, coinciding with the 800th anniversary of the founding of the Order of St. Clare. The fortunate recipient is the country of the Philippines where the relic, a bone from St. Clare’s cranium, will travel to 29 monasteries and other Catholic locations.

The Clarian year began on April 16, 2011, the vigil of Palm Sunday, and will reach its climax on March 18, 2012 , the 800th anniversary of Saint Clare’s Profession. It will conclude on August 12, 2012.

It was on the night of Palm Sunday, March 20, 1212, that Saint Clare left her home and traded her elegant dress for a simple brown tunic. Saint Francis cut off her hair, preserved to this day in a reliquary in Assisi, as she made a pledge to serve Christ. She died in 1253.

Cloistered life, Women's Communities

A Vision & a Dominican Community in the Heart of the South

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A beautiful description of the life of a cloistered community of nuns, actually one of the newest IRL Affiliate Communities, can be found in the The Clanton Advertiser (2/27/12).

The Dominican Monastery of St. Jude in Marbury, Alabama, was founded in 1944 after Mother Mary of Jesus, a Dominican sister in Maryland, saw a vision of “a crowd of angry black people with clubs in hand engaged in a violent struggle.” She also saw St. Martin de Porres who “passed among them. The crowd quieted. The clubs were replaced with rosaries. Martin pointed to a monastery on a hill. There she saw Dominican sisters of all races praying with arms outstretched…She felt God was indicating his desire that there should be an interracial community where any young woman who wished to live the cloistered, contemplative life would be welcome.”

The 5 sisters and 1 novice have given their whole lives to God and his people.  May God bless all of the cloistered nuns who pray for us and our world.

Resources

Religious Vocations and Educational Debt

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The National Religious Vocation Conference (NRVC) in collaboration with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University recently published the results of a study on religious vocations and educational debt.

Highlights from the 477 respondents include:

  • There are currently about the same number of men as women in initial formation. Institutes of men are more likely than institutes of women to have more than ten in initial formation.
  • Institutes with at least one serious inquirer in the last ten years report that for about a third of these inquiries (32 percent) the person had educational debt.  The average amount of debt was $28,000.
  • Religious institutes with at least three serious inquirers in the last ten years who had educational debt at the time of their inquiry, seven in ten (69 percent) turned away at least some inquirers because of their educational debt.
  • Although there are a small number of organizations that provide funds to assist candidates with educational debt, most responding religious institutes (or their candidates) have not received funds from any of these sources.

The IRL collaborates closely with two organizations that do assist with educational debt. They are The Labouré Society and the Mater Eccelsiae Fund for Vocations.  The Mater Ecclesiae Fund for Vocations has helped 67 men and women follow their vocations (and have helped another 39 to try their vocations). The Labouré Society has assisted over 220 individuals into priestly and religious formation since 2003 while currently helping over 30 men and women pursue their vocation.

Please support these organizations who do so much to support the priesthood and religious life.

News

World Youth Day Logo – Brazil

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The new logo for World Youth Day, which will be held in Rio de Janiero, July 23-28, 2013, was unveiled earlier this month.

It is so beautiful that it it worth reflecting on the image. Featuring Christ the Redeemer, the statue that overlooks the city’s harbor, it also incorporates the four colors of the Brazilian flag: green, white, blue and yellow.

Before beginning his creation, the winning artist, Gustavo Huguenin, 25, read the chapter of the Gospel of Matthew from where the motto of the WYDRio2013 was taken: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”(Mt 28:19). From those words he received the inspiration for the image.

“It brings me great happiness to know that my work will be used in the greatest Catholic event in the world, with our Holy Father, and that this image will be associated with the personal encounter the youth of the whole world will have with Jesus Christ during the WYDRio2013”, said Gustavo.

I pray for all the people who will journey to Brazil. May the young people especially, recognize the call that God has placed in their hearts.

 

Women's Communities

“Fiddling” For the Roof!

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Sr. Marie Antoinette, PCPA, was a professional violinist before she entered the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration in 1984, one of the early sisters who joined Mother Angelica’s new community in Birmingham, Alabama.

Now she is using her talents to raise money for the restoration of the Monastere Notre Dame des Anges, their cradle monastery, in Troyes, France.   Their foundress, Mother Marie of St. Claire Bouillevaux, is buried in the monastery garden.

The chapel was renovated and reopened in 2007. In order to raise funds to repair the roof, Sister Marie Antoinette has recorded a CD of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and a Sonata by Veracini. The sisters hope to sell hundreds of the CDs to pay for part of the expenses. As Sister said, “You could say I was ‘fiddling’ for the roof!”

Read the complete article in the National Catholic Register (2/26/12). To order the CD, visit the EWTN website or call (800)854-6316.

Resources

Lord of the Harvest

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The latest publication of the Institute on Religious Life is the Lord of the Harvest, the messages of Pope John Paul II for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations.This 48-page booklet compiles his messages issued 1979 through 2005.

Cardinal-elect Timothy Dolan, who wrote the Forward, says that many vocations were the result of the witness and words of Pope John Paul II. It is his hope that this booklet “might provide the grace needed so that young people prayerfully discern their calling to total service of the Kingdom.”

When one feels helpless in the fight against the assaults on religious liberty in our country, it is good to remind ourselves that the Lord has: 1) already won the battle, and 2) given us the most powerful weapons in heaven and on earth: the Mass and our prayers. Let us pray for vocations to the priesthood and religious life to build up the army of the faithful.

Lord, send laborers into Your harvest and do not allow humanity to lose its way for a lack of pastors, missionaries and people vowed to the cause of the Gospel.  Pope John Paul II, 1987

See our website to order. The cost is $3.95 but bulk discounts are available.

 

News, Women's Communities

The Benedictine Nun and Elvis

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If you tune into the February, 26, 2012 Oscars’ telecast, you may see a most unusual, well-clothed sight – a Benedictine nun whose story is part of a short documentary, God is the Bigger Elvis, that is up for an Academy Award.

Mother Dolores Hart of Regina Laudis Abbey was a well-known movie star of the 1950’s/60’s whose co-stars included Elvis Presley, Montgomery Clift and George Hamilton. I recently saw one of her movies and was impressed by the depth and integrity she brought to the role.

A film crew was invited into the cloister to give the outside world a glimpse of her religious life in the abbey. Thirty-eight other nuns call her Mother Prioress. “I know what I have here is the best thing I will ever have,” Mother says.

Mother said that she adored Hollywood but there was another call pulling at her heart, one even stronger than the love she had for her fiance. “I left Hollywood at the urging of a mysterious thing called vocation. It’s a call that comes from another place that we call God because we don’t have any other way to say it. It’s a call of love.”

For the complete story, visit USA Today.