Showing posts with label priesthood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label priesthood. Show all posts

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Third Sunday of Easter

Lord, you know that I love You! St. Peter answers the Lords question with some frustration, and regret, recognizing that Jesus is asking three times to undo the three-fold denial the night before the Crucifixion. Jesus is gentle, of course, leading St. Peter into a deeper conversion of love. The Lord stands before us, too, and asks if we love Him. How we answer must then be lived out!

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

Jesus enters his Own City of Jerusalem to shouts of acclamation. The scribes and Pharisees demand that He silence them, but Jesus responds that the stones will cry out if His disciples do not. Will our hearts cry out to Him, asking Him to save us? Or will they cry out like the crowds did so long ago, rejecting Him as our king, rejecting His salvation, asking for His execution out of our lives and hearts?

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Fifth Sunday of Lent

No matter what we have done, the Lord is willing to forgive, but we must make a commitment to sin no more. We are all sinners, and we remind ourselves that it is not the sin we have done, but the love of the Lord that most defines us!

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Fourth Sunday of Lent

The prodigal father is an extravagant lover of both his sons. But both sons have a fatal flaw in their thinking. The first son, the youngest, asks for his inheritance which is akin to wishing the father dead. He takes the wealth, and squanders it. When it is gone, he realizes his flaw: he forgot his dignity, and though he knows he does not deserve it, he prepares to ask forgiveness and returns home. The Father restores that dignity after running to him. The older son, however, comes in from work. He refuses to recognize his brother. The Father goes to him, begs him. The son complains that he was never giving anything, even after following ever command. He does not know his dignity as son.
The question to us as the listener is not which son we are, but are we able to receive with joy the dignity that the Lord longs to give us, to know that He comes to us to redeem us!

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Third Sunday of Lent

When faced with evil, we might be tempted to blame God, or say that evil happened because the person sinned. Jesus, however, states that this is a cause for conversion, that we will all perish as they did. We need to live our lives prepared. We sometimes play the spiritual game that I only have to be better than 'the other person', but what we really need is to be better, period. We need to respond to the call of God.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Second Sunday of Lent

It is good that we are here! St. Peter recognizes he is the presence of the Holy one of God, and desires to stay. As soon as he says this, though, it passes, as so often the case with spiritual experiences. But the experience stays with him, and allows him to move through the eventual scandal of the Cross to the resurrection.
When we truly experience Christ, we ought to hold on and recall it frequently. When we do, we are more able to respond to our vocations.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

First Sunday of Lent

The Season of Lent is a season of self-denial and penance, when we, like Jesus Christ enter the desert of fasting and prayer. What will we find there? Perhaps a new temptation against which Christ is strengthening us; perhaps a new awareness of His love for us; it might be growth in a virtue. It might be a deeper commitment to our vocation. Whatever it is that Christ has prepared for us, let us walk boldly through this desert of Lent!

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

We might have the temptation, when things do not go well, to sulk, close in on ourselves, and pull away from others. When St. Peter, after a hard night of fishing catches nothing, he is not given the chance, rather, he finds his boat has become the stage of Jesus as he preaches. Jesus rewards his patience by inviting him to go to the deep and cast his nights. There is little protest - Peter is already expressing faith - and they make a mighty catch. Peter, in humility, begs forgiveness.
When we are feeling empty, we need to find Jesus preaching to us, and listen to His invitation to head to the deep water, and to be prepared for a mighty catch!

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

St. Paul reminds the Corinthians about the nature of Love, which is much more than an emotional response, but rather is a theological gift that enables one to chose the good of another. It was for love that Jesus Christ took flesh and offered Himself on the Cross. He chooses to love, despite the fury that rose against Him. As we love Him, we offer Him our lives.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Lord declares the time of fulfillment is at hand. He calls people back to God, a new law and way of living! He continues to be the fulfillment of all our desires, so, as St. Paul writes, we should use our gifts for the good of others and become the Body of Christ, the Church.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

In terms of cases, Jesus transformed 50-75 cases of wine (600-900 bottles)! When He works, He does it in abundance - doing nothing half. All was the response to His mother who urged Him and the servers to act. She continues to prompt us to do whatever He tells us, but also prompts Him to act powerfully in our lives.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

Jesus Christ is baptized with John's Baptism of repentance, and in doing so identifies Himself as doing the will of the Father. He transforms the waters of the world, as the Church Fathers proclaimed. In His death and Resurrection, He initiates a new Baptism that causes regeneration in us. Because of our baptism, God initiates us into His family, given us a tremendous vocation that only we can do.

Friday, January 4, 2013

Cardinal Piacenza's Letter to Mothers of Priests and Seminarians

ZENIT - Cardinal Piacenza's Letter to Mothers of Priests and Seminarians:
ROME, January 2, 2013 (Zenit.org).
Here is a translation of the letter sent by Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, to the mothers of priests and seminarians.
* * *
Letter to Mothers of Priests and Seminarians and to all those who Exercise the Gift of Spiritual Maternity in their regard on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Mother of God
Causa nostrae Letitiae – Cause of our Joy!
The Christian People have always venerated the Blessed Virgin Mary with profound gratitude, contemplating in her the Cause of our every true Joy.
Indeed, in welcoming the Eternal Word into her immaculate womb, Mary Most Holy gave birth to the Eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world. In Him, God himself has come to meet man, he has lifted him up from sin and he has given him eternal life; that is, a share in his very own life. By adhering to God’s Will, Mary participated in a unique and unrepeatable way in the mystery of our redemption, thereby becoming the Mother of God, the Gate of Heaven and the Cause of our Joy.
In a similar way, the entire Church looks with admiration and deep gratitude upon all mothers of priests and of those who, having received this lofty vocation, have embarked upon the path of formation. It is therefore with deep joy that I address myself to them.
The sons whom they welcomed and educated, in fact, have been chosen by Christ from all eternity to become his “chosen friends” and living and indispensable instruments of His Presence in the world. Through the Sacrament of Holy Orders, the lives of priests are definitively taken up by Jesus and immersed in him, such that in them it is Jesus himself who walks and works among men.
So great is this mystery that the priest is even called alter Christus – another Christ. His frail humanity, elevated by the power of the Holy Spirit to a new and higher union with the Person of Jesus, becomes a place of encounter with the Son of God who became incarnate, died and rose for us. For when a priest teaches the faith of the Church, it is Christ who speaks to the People through him. When he prudently guides the faithful entrusted to him, it is Christ who shepherds his sheep. And when he celebrates the Sacraments, in an eminent way the Most Holy Eucharist, it is Christ himself who through his ministers continues the work of man’s salvation and makes himself truly present in the world.
Normally it is in the family, in the parents’ love, and in an early education in the faith that a priestly vocation finds that rich and fertile soil in which availability to the will of God can take root and draw the nourishment it needs. At the same time, every vocation also represents for the family whence it comes an irrevocable change that exceeds all human parameters and calls everyone to conversion.
Every member of a man’s family and all those persons closest to him are involved in this change, which Christ brings about in the life of those whom he has chosen and called. But the participation given to mothers of priests is quite unique and special. For unique and special are the spiritual consolations which they derive from having carried in the womb one who has become Christ’s minister. Indeed, every mother cannot but rejoice in seeing the life of her son not only fulfilled but also clothed with a most exceptional divine favor which embraces and transforms it for all eternity.
If an unexpected “distance”, mysteriously more radical than any other natural separation, seems to be created in relation to the life of one’s son through his vocation and ordination, in reality the Church’s two thousand years of experience teaches us that when a man is ordained a priest, his mother “receives” him an a completely new and unexpected way; so much so that she is called to see in the fruit of her own womb a “father” who by God’s will is called to generate and accompany a multitude of brothers and sisters to eternal life. Every mother of a priest mysteriously becomes a "daughter of her son." Towards him, she may therefore also exercise a new motherhood through the discreet yet extremely efficacious and inestimably precious closeness of prayer, and by offering of her own life for the ministry of her son.
This new “fatherhood” - for which the Seminarian is prepared, which the priest has been given, and which benefits all God’s People - needs to be accompanied by assiduous prayer and personal sacrifice, in order that a priest’s free adherence to the divine will may continually be renewed and strengthened, that he may never tire in the battle of faith, and that he may unite his own life ever more completely to the Sacrifice of Christ the Lord.
This work of true support, which has always been essential to the life of the Church, today seems more urgent that ever, especially in the secularized West, which awaits and stands in need of a new and radical proclamation of Christ. Mothers of priests and seminarians thus represent a true and veritable “army”, which from earth offers prayers and sacrifice to heaven, and from heaven intercedes in even greater number so that every grace and blessing may be poured out upon the lives of the Church’s sacred ministers.
Therefore, with all my heart I wish to encourage and offer special thanks to all mothers of priests and seminarians - and along with them to all consecrated and lay women who have received (perhaps through the invitation addressed to them during the Year of the Priest) the gift of spiritual motherhood towards those who are called to priestly ministry. By offering their lives, their prayers, their sufferings and their hardships as well as their joys for the fidelity and sanctification of God’s ministers, they have come to share in a special way in the motherhood of Holy Church, whose model and fulfillment is found in the divine maternity of Mary Most Holy.
Lastly, we raise a special hymn of thanks to heaven - to those mothers who, having already been called from this life, now contemplate in all its fullness the splendor of Christ’s Priesthood in which their sons have become sharers, and who intercede for them in a unique and mysteriously far more efficacious manner.
With heartfelt wishes for a New Year full of grace, I warmly impart to each and every mother a most affectionate blessing, and I ask the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and of Priests, to grant you the gift of an ever more radical identification with her, the perfect disciple and Daughter of her Son.
Mauro Card. Piacenza
Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy
[Translation by Diane Montagna]

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph

THe Feast of the Holy Family gives us reason to reflect on how important family is to God's plan of salvation. He formed a family for His Son, uniting them in chaste love, pouring His full grace on the sinless Blessed Mother, and blessed St. Joseph with the grace enough to be a husband and father. Do we ask for the grace needed to live our vocations?

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Blessed are you who believed that what the Lord promised would be fulfilled. Elizabeth pronounces this blessing on the Blessed Mother. She was probably aware of the fact that her own husband, despite his seeing the angel Gabriel who announced the conception of her son, doubted. Perhaps she was aware that in her own prayer that she had placed faith in the promise.
Are we blessed to believe the promises of the Lord ourselves?

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Third Sunday of Advent

What should we do? The question is asked of John the Baptist as people become aware of the nearness of the Christ. John responds to all with a common theme - acts of charity and morality. This advent, we, too, are invited too respond to God's call in our lives.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Second Sunday of Advent

Prepare the way, make straight the path. John the Baptist's message is clear, but it is not about the physical preparations of roads. It is about spiritual paths. Lower the mountains of pride and anxiety. Raise the valleys of despair and lack of charity. Straighten the paths to our hearts. Of course, it is the grace of God working in us that make this possible. When we do, we are able to respond more readily to the Lord.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

The Solemnity of Christ the King

Jesus Christ is King, but not in the way in which we so often reduce kings. He is King, but not of a political or geographical kingdom. Rather, He is King of those who hail Him as Lord of their lives and hearts, and the time is coming when He will be made king of all creation, subjecting everything to Himself and offering it to His Father for all eternity. We are already subjects of that good King, and we are invited to proclaim Him for all to hear. Viva Christa Rey!

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

We do not know when, but we do know that this world will end. It will be a day beyond all comprehension, awesome and terrifying. But for the faithful, of those that do the will of God, it will be a day that does not bring horror, but of confidence. We need to live our lives in conformity to that day, that when it comes, we can stand before the Son of Man with hearts free from sin and attachment to sin.