Corpus Christi Blog

I was inspired by the second reading of the Office of Readings from Thursday, September 20 . It's from the final exhortation of Saint Andrew Kim Taegŏn, priest and martyr (Pro Corea Documenta, ed. Mission Catholique Séoul, Séoul/Paris, 1938, vol. 1, 74-75):

My brothers and sisters, my dearest friends, think again and again on this: God has ruled over all things in heaven and on earth from the beginning of time: then reflect on why and for what purpose he chose each one of us to be created in his own image and likeness.

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Last week, the Church celebrated Catechetical Sunday onSeptember 16 with the theme “Enlisting Witnesses for JesusChrist.” Every year, Catechetical Sunday provides a wonderfulopportunity to reflect on the role that each of us plays, by virtueof our Baptism, in handing on the faith and being a witness to theGospel. Catechetical Sunday is an opportunity for all to rededicatethemselves to this mission as a community of faith.

Three weeks ago, I preached at all the Masses about the current scandal in the Church. Several times in that homily (which you can read on the website), I called out those bishops and priests who tried to hide the truth, to call a sin a sin. Now, in reaction to the complacency and silence, the truth is coming out, thanks be to God. Though it is difficult to face, it will set us free and the Church will be healed when we stand for the truth.

Kenneth Hensley, Online Resource & Pastoral Care Coordinator, The Coming Home Network, www.chnetwork.org - August 2018 CHNewsletter

In Part 1, I described how I came to see that the unanimous testimony of the early Church thoroughly supported a Catholic and sacramental view of Baptism. But what about sacred Scripture?

In his Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, the great Church historian Jaroslav Pelikan summarizes the early Church's view of what occurs in Baptism. The early Church believed, Pelikan explains, that Baptism effects "the remission of sins, deliverance from death, regeneration, and the bestowal of the Holy Spirit."

Kenneth Hensley, Online Resource & Pastoral Care Coordinator, The Coming Home Network, www.chnetwork.org - July 2018 CHNewsletter

As a "Bible Christian," I would have said I loved the writings of the Fathers. Of course, what I would have meant is that I loved to read Luther and Calvin and the other heroes of the Reformation. What Christians believed in the early centuries of the Christian era didn't matter too much to me.

And why should it? After all, when it came to determining Christian doctrine, all that really counted was, "What saith the Scriptures?"

This week, we celebrate the feast days of St. Monica on August 27 and her son,St. Augustine on August 28. St. Monica’s persistent prayers are credited for theconversion of her pagan husband and St. Augustine to the Catholic faith. To helpfoster a devotion to St. Monica in asking her intercession for loved ones who havefallen away from the faith, Fr. Chad has commissioned a statue of her that will beplaced in the vestibule of the church. The statue will depict St. Monica holding a Biblethat will have a slot for people to deposit the names of their loved ones on slips ofpaper.

Make no mistake about it, God wants you to be happy. Yes, that's right. And, not just some kind of superficial and fleeting happiness, but a deep and abiding happiness; an inner peace. This is the kind of happiness that is meant to fill that void in your life; to lift you up into that place of all meaning and purpose in your life. So, what does this void-filling happiness look like?

Fr. Robert Spitzer has done extensive research in this area. Fr. Spitzer writes,

"The Greek Philosopher Aristotle (394-322 B.C.) observed that no person deliberately chooses to be unhappy. The purpose and end of man, Aristotle argued, was happiness - for happiness is self-evidently what all men seek and strive for ... it is what he directs all his powers towards. So, this universal quest for happiness defines humanness. 'Happiness,' Aristotle pointed out, 'is the only thing willed by man for its own sake. Everything else is willed for the sake of happiness.'"

This article was taken from the July-August 1996 issue of Catholic Heritage and provided courtesy of Eternal Word Television Network at www.ewtn.com/library/answers/aofmary.htm.

The Assumption is the oldest feast day of Our Lady, but we don't know how it first came to be celebrated.

Its origin is lost in those days when Jerusalem was restored as a sacred city, at the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine (c. 285-337). By then it had been a pagan city for two centuries, ever since Emperor Hadrian (76-138) had leveled it around the year 135 and rebuilt it as <Aelia Capitolina> in honor of Jupiter.

For 200 years, every memory of Jesus was obliterated from the city, and the sites made holy by His life, death and Resurrection became pagan temples.

The sacrament that you receive is effected by the words of Christ.

We see that grace can accomplish more than nature, yet so far we have been considering instances of what grace can do through a prophet's blessing. If the blessing of a human being had power even to change nature, what do we say of God's action in the consecration itself, in which the very words of the Lord and Savior are effective? If the words of Elijah had power even to bring down fire from heaven, will not the words of Christ have power to change the natures of the elements? You have read that in the creation of the whole world he spoke and they came to be; he commanded and they were created. If Christ could by speaking create out of nothing what did not yet exist, can we say that his words are unable to change existing things into something they previously were not? It is no lesser feat to create new natures for things than to change their existing natures.

Fr. Rey was ordained on July 16, 1993. His 25th anniversary celebration took place in the Parish Center on July 21 where he shared the following story of his vocation journey.

"Why did you become a priest, Fr. Rey?" I always encounter this question. For me, priesthood is a gift and a mystery. It is a mystery because it is only God who knows the answer to why I became a priest in spite of my weaknesses. It is a gift given, and once it is a gift it is always embedded with mystery. The receiver doesn't know the inner motive of the giver.

This week is Natural Family Planning Awareness Week. It corresponds with the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae (July 25) which articulates Catholic beliefs about human sexuality, conjugal love and responsible parenthood. In 1998 Pope John Paul II wrote a letter to Dr. Anna Cappella, director of the Center for Research and Study on the Natural Regulation of Fertility at Rome's Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. The occasion was a convention commemorating Humanae Vitae. Excerpts are reprinted below.

I hope that everyone will benefit from a closer study of the Church's teaching on the truth of the act of love in which spouses become sharers in God's creative action.

(The following comes from a transcript of a video in which Brant Pitre explains the Mass readings from last week.)

Let's look for a few moments at an issue that is really, frankly, rather a big issue for a lot of Catholics, and that is the whole reference to the brothers of Jesus. I don't know about you, but I remember being a young Catholic and hearing this particular passage, Mark’s gospel in particular, read at Sunday Mass and wondering, “well wait, I thought Mary was perpetually virgin, who are these so-called brothers of Jesus?” What is the gospel referring to here? And it doesn't just mention his brothers, it even mentions his sisters as well. So who are all these brothers and sisters of Jesus, are they the children of Mary?

This Wednesday, July 11, is the feast of St. Benedict, who is considered the founder of Western monasticism. The only authentic record of his life comes from the second book of Pope St. Gregory I's "Dialogues." It consists mostly of accounts of the various miracles attributed to St. Benedict during his life.

Benedict was born in Nursia, Italy (now known as Norcia) around the year 480. He was the son of a Roman noble and had a twin sister, St. Scholastica. He went to school in Rome, but once he reached the higher level of studies, he left school, tired of the immorality and corruption that was endemic of the city at the time.

Excerpts from Pope St. John Paul II’s Homily on Sunday, October 8, 1985 during his Apostolic Journey to the United States:

“America has always wanted to be a land of the free. Today, the challenge facing America is to find freedom’s fulfillment in the truth: the truth that is intrinsic to human life created in God’s image and likeness, the truth that is written on the human heart, the truth that can be known by reason and can therefore form the basis of a profound and universal dialogue among people about the direction they must give to their lives and their activities.”

“...President Abraham Lincoln asked whether a nation ‘conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal’ could ‘long endure.’ President Lincoln’s question is no less a question for the present generation of Americans. Democracy cannot be sustained without a shared commitment to certain moral truths about the human person and human community. The basic question before a democratic society is: ‘how ought we to live together?’ In seeking an answer to this question, can society exclude moral truth and moral reasoning?
Can the Biblical wisdom which played such a formative part in the very founding of your country be excluded from that debate?”