Tag Archive | Holiness

Farewell Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Cardinals

Feb28

papa

FAREWELL ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
To the Cardinals GENTLEMEN THESE CARDINALS IN ROME

Clementine Hall
Thursday, February 28, 2013

[Video]

Venerable and dear Brothers!

With great joy I welcome you and offer each of you my most cordial greeting. I thank Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who as always, has been able to convey the sentiments of the Board: Cor ad cor loquitur. Thanks Eminence heart. And I would say – taking the reference to the experience of the disciples of Emmaus – that for me it was a joy to walk with you in recent years, in light of the presence of the Risen Lord.

As I said yesterday before the thousands of faithful who filled St. Peter’s Square, your neighborhood and your advice I have been a big help in my ministry. In the past eight years, we lived with faith beautiful moments of radiant light in the path of the Church, along with times when a few clouds in the sky has thickened. We tried to serve Christ and his Church with deep love and total, which is the soul of our ministry. We have given hope that comes from Christ, who alone can light the way. Together we can thank the Lord that made us grow in communion, and pray together to help you grow in this profound unity, so that the College of Cardinals is like an orchestra, where differences – an expression of the universal Church – always contribute to the greater harmony and concord.

I would like to leave you a simple thought, which is close to my heart: a thought on the Church, its mystery, which is for all of us – we can say – the reason and the passion of life. Let me help by an expression of Romano Guardini, written in the year in which the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council approve the Constitution Lumen Gentium, in his latest book, with a personal dedication for me, because the words of this book, I are particularly expensive. Guardini says: The Church “is not an institution devised and built in table … but a living reality … It lives along the course of time, become, like any living being, becoming … Yet in its nature remains the same, and his heart is Christ. ” It ‘has been our experience yesterday, I think, in the square: see that the Church is a living body, animated by the Holy Spirit and truly lives by the power of God, it is in the world, but not of the world is God’s , of Christ, of the Spirit. We saw it yesterday. This is true and eloquent expression of the other famous Guardini: “The Church is awakening souls.” The Church lives, grows and awakens in the soul, which – like the Virgin Mary – accept the Word of God and conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit; offer to God their flesh and in their own poverty and humility, they become capable of birth to Christ in the world today. Through the Church, the mystery of the Incarnation remains present forever. Christ continues to walk through the times and all places.

Let us remain united, dear brothers, in this mystery: in prayer, especially the Eucharist daily, and so serve the Church and all humanity. This is our joy, that no one can take away.

Prior to greet you personally, I want to tell you that I will continue to be close with prayer, especially in the next few days so that you are fully docile to the action of the Holy Spirit in the election of the new Pope May the Lord show you what is willed by Him And by you, including the College of Cardinals, there is also the future Pope which already promise my unconditional reverence and obedience. Therefore, with affection and gratitude, I cordially impart my Apostolic Blessing.

FROM VATICAN WEBSITE: http://is.gd/Z35VQ1

 

BIOGRAPHY OF HIS HOLINESS, POPE BENEDICT XVI

Apr24

BIOGRAPHY OF HIS HOLINESS, POPE BENEDICT XVI

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I always wanted to read the Ratzinger Report. I read the 16 Documents of Vatican II and several Post Consilliar Documents. And, the Summa Theologicae. Yet keeping up on controversial documents helped me to form my staunchly Catholic backbone.

God never let me learn anything, that I would not later use, to Defend the Faith, from a religious perspective or coupled with my science background use my Reason, to Defend the Faith.

Even from someone with a dented up noggin, God can bring forth, fruit.

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI on Easter 2012

Apr7

EASTER VIGIL

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Saint Peter’s Basilica
Holy Saturday, 7 April 2012

[Video]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Easter is the feast of the new creation. Jesus is risen and dies no more. He has opened the door to a new life, one that no longer knows illness and death. He has taken mankind up into God himself. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”, as Saint Paul says in the First Letter to the Corinthians (15:50). On the subject of Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection, the Church writer Tertullian in the third century was bold enough to write: “Rest assured, flesh and blood, through Christ you have gained your place in heaven and in the Kingdom of God” (CCL II, 994). A new dimension has opened up for mankind. Creation has become greater and broader. Easter Day ushers in a new creation, but that is precisely why the Church starts the liturgy on this day with the old creation, so that we can learn to understand the new one aright. At the beginning of the Liturgy of the Word on Easter night, then, comes the account of the creation of the world. Two things are particularly important here in connection with this liturgy. On the one hand, creation is presented as a whole that includes the phenomenon of time. The seven days are an image of completeness, unfolding in time. They are ordered towards the seventh day, the day of the freedom of all creatures for God and for one another. Creation is therefore directed towards the coming together of God and his creatures; it exists so as to open up a space for the response to God’s great glory, an encounter between love and freedom. On the other hand, what the Church hears on Easter night is above all the first element of the creation account: “God said, ‘let there be light!’” (Gen 1:3). The creation account begins symbolically with the creation of light. The sun and the moon are created only on the fourth day. The creation account calls them lights, set by God in the firmament of heaven. In this way he deliberately takes away the divine character that the great religions had assigned to them. No, they are not gods. They are shining bodies created by the one God. But they are preceded by the light through which God’s glory is reflected in the essence of the created being.

What is the creation account saying here? Light makes life possible. It makes encounter possible. It makes communication possible. It makes knowledge, access to reality and to truth, possible. And insofar as it makes knowledge possible, it makes freedom and progress possible. Evil hides. Light, then, is also an expression of the good that both is and creates brightness. It is daylight, which makes it possible for us to act. To say that God created light means that God created the world as a space for knowledge and truth, as a space for encounter and freedom, as a space for good and for love. Matter is fundamentally good, being itself is good. And evil does not come from God-made being, rather, it comes into existence through denial. It is a “no”.

At Easter, on the morning of the first day of the week, God said once again: “Let there be light”. The night on the Mount of Olives, the solar eclipse of Jesus’ passion and death, the night of the grave had all passed. Now it is the first day once again – creation is beginning anew. “Let there be light”, says God, “and there was light”: Jesus rises from the grave. Life is stronger than death. Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is stronger than lies. The darkness of the previous days is driven away the moment Jesus rises from the grave and himself becomes God’s pure light. But this applies not only to him, not only to the darkness of those days. With the resurrection of Jesus, light itself is created anew. He draws all of us after him into the new light of the resurrection and he conquers all darkness. He is God’s new day, new for all of us.

But how is this to come about? How does all this affect us so that instead of remaining word it becomes a reality that draws us in? Through the sacrament of baptism and the profession of faith, the Lord has built a bridge across to us, through which the new day reaches us. The Lord says to the newly-baptized: Fiat lux – let there be light. God’s new day – the day of indestructible life, comes also to us. Christ takes you by the hand. From now on you are held by him and walk with him into the light, into real life. For this reason the early Church called baptism photismos – illumination.

Why was this? The darkness that poses a real threat to mankind, after all, is the fact that he can see and investigate tangible material things, but cannot see where the world is going or whence it comes, where our own life is going, what is good and what is evil. The darkness enshrouding God and obscuring values is the real threat to our existence and to the world in general. If God and moral values, the difference between good and evil, remain in darkness, then all other “lights”, that put such incredible technical feats within our reach, are not only progress but also dangers that put us and the world at risk. Today we can illuminate our cities so brightly that the stars of the sky are no longer visible. Is this not an image of the problems caused by our version of enlightenment? With regard to material things, our knowledge and our technical accomplishments are legion, but what reaches beyond, the things of God and the question of good, we can no longer identify. Faith, then, which reveals God’s light to us, is the true enlightenment, enabling God’s light to break into our world, opening our eyes to the true light.

Dear friends, as I conclude, I would like to add one more thought about light and illumination. On Easter night, the night of the new creation, the Church presents the Mystery of Light using a unique and very humble symbol: the Paschal candle. This is a light that lives from sacrifice. The candle shines inasmuch as it is burnt up. It gives light, inasmuch as it gives itself. Thus the Church presents most beautifully the Paschal Mystery of Christ, who gives Himself and so bestows the great Light. Secondly, we should remember that the light of the candle is a Fire. Fire is the power that shapes the world, the force of transformation. And fire gives warmth. Here too the Mystery of Christ is made newly visible. Christ, the Light, is Fire, Flame, burning up evil and so reshaping both the world and ourselves. “Whoever is close to Me is close to the fire,” as Jesus is reported, by Origen, to have said. And this fire is both heat and light: not a cold light, but one through which God’s Warmth and Goodness reach down, to us.

The great hymn of the Exsultet, which the deacon sings at the beginning of the Easter Liturgy, points us quite gently towards a further aspect. It reminds us that this object, the candle, has its origin in the work of bees. So the whole of creation plays its part. In the candle, creation becomes a bearer of light. But in the mind of the Fathers, the candle also in some sense contains a silent reference to the Church,. The cooperation of the living community of believers in the Church in some way resembles the activity of bees. It builds up the community of light. So the candle serves as a summons to us, to become involved in the Community of the Church, whose raison d’être is to let the Light of Christ shine upon the world.

Let us pray to the Lord at this time that he may grant us to experience the joy of his light; let us pray that we ourselves may become bearers of his light, and that through the Church, Christ’s Radiant Face may enter our world (cf. LG 1). Amen.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/homilies/2012/documents/hf_ben-xvi_hom_20120407_veglia-pasquale_en.html

(FYI: Pope Benedict XVI did not have a homily, during Easter Sunday’s Morning Mass on April 8, 2012. He must have been tired, or something. Pray for the Pope).

MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Apr5

MASS OF THE LORD’S SUPPER
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Basilica of St John Lateran
Holy Thursday, 5 April 2012

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

Holy Thursday is not only the day of the institution of the Most Holy Eucharist, whose splendour bathes all else and in some ways draws it to itself. To Holy Thursday also belongs the dark night of the Mount of Olives, to which Jesus goes with his disciples; the solitude and abandonment of Jesus, who in prayer goes forth to encounter the darkness of death; the betrayal of Judas, Jesus’ arrest and his denial by Peter; his indictment before the Sanhedrin and his being handed over to the Gentiles, to Pilate. Let us try at this hour to understand more deeply something of these events, for in them the mystery of our redemption takes place.

Jesus goes forth into the night. Night signifies lack of communication, a situation where people do not see one another. It is a symbol of incomprehension, of the obscuring of truth. It is the place where evil, which has to hide before the light, can grow. Jesus himself is light and truth, communication, purity and goodness. He enters into the night. Night is ultimately a symbol of death, the definitive loss of fellowship and life. Jesus enters into the night in order to overcome it and to inaugurate the new Day of God in the history of humanity.

On the way, he sang with his disciples Israel’s psalms of liberation and redemption, which evoked the first Passover in Egypt, the night of liberation. Now he goes, as was his custom, to pray in solitude and, as Son, to speak with the Father. But, unusually, he wants to have close to him three disciples: Peter, James and John. These are the three who had experienced his Transfiguration – when the light of God’s glory shone through his human figure – and had seen him standing between the Law and the Prophets, between Moses and Elijah. They had heard him speaking to both of them about his “exodus” to Jerusalem. Jesus’ exodus to Jerusalem – how mysterious are these words! Israel’s exodus from Egypt had been the event of escape and liberation for God’s People. What would be the form taken by the exodus of Jesus, in whom the meaning of that historic drama was to be definitively fulfilled? The disciples were now witnessing the first stage of that exodus – the utter abasement which was nonetheless the essential step of the going forth to the freedom and new life which was the goal of the exodus. The disciples, whom Jesus wanted to have close to him as an element of human support in that hour of extreme distress, quickly fell asleep. Yet they heard some fragments of the words of Jesus’ prayer and they witnessed his way of acting. Both were deeply impressed on their hearts and they transmitted them to Christians for all time. Jesus called God “Abba”. The word means – as they add – “Father”. Yet it is not the usual form of the word “father”, but rather a children’s word – an affectionate name which one would not have dared to use in speaking to God. It is the language of the one who is truly a “child”, the Son of the Father, the one who is conscious of being in communion with God, in deepest union with him.

If we ask ourselves what is most characteristic of the figure of Jesus in the Gospels, we have to say that it is his relationship with God. He is constantly in communion with God. Being with the Father is the core of his personality. Through Christ we know God truly. “No one has ever seen God”, says Saint John. The one “who is close to the Father’s heart … has made him known” (1:18). Now we know God as he truly is. He is Father, and this in an absolute goodness to which we can entrust ourselves. The evangelist Mark, who has preserved the memories of Saint Peter, relates that Jesus, after calling God “Abba”, went on to say: “Everything is possible for you. You can do all things” (cf. 14:36). The one who is Goodness is at the same time Power; he is all-powerful. Power is goodness and goodness is power. We can learn this trust from Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives.

Before reflecting on the content of Jesus’ petition, we must still consider what the evangelists tell us about Jesus’ posture during his prayer. Matthew and Mark tell us that he “threw himself on the ground” (Mt 26:39; cf. Mk 14:35), thus assuming a posture of complete submission, as is preserved in the Roman liturgy of Good Friday. Luke, on the other hand, tells us that Jesus prayed on his knees. In the Acts of the Apostles, he speaks of the saints praying on their knees: Stephen during his stoning, Peter at the raising of someone who had died, Paul on his way to martyrdom. In this way Luke has sketched a brief history of prayer on one’s knees in the early Church. Christians, in kneeling, enter into Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives. When menaced by the power of evil, as they kneel, they are upright before the world, while as sons and daughters, they kneel before the Father. Before God’s glory we Christians kneel and acknowledge his divinity; by that posture we also express our confidence that he will prevail.

Jesus struggles with the Father. He struggles with himself. And he struggles for us. He experiences anguish before the power of death. First and foremost this is simply the dread natural to every living creature in the face of death. In Jesus, however, something more is at work. His gaze peers deeper, into the nights of evil. He sees the filthy flood of all the lies and all the disgrace which he will encounter in that chalice from which he must drink. His is the dread of one who is completely pure and holy as he sees the entire flood of this world’s evil bursting upon him. He also sees me, and he prays for me. This moment of Jesus’ mortal anguish is thus an essential part of the process of redemption. Consequently, the Letter to the Hebrews describes the struggle of Jesus on the Mount of Olives as a priestly event. In this prayer of Jesus, pervaded by mortal anguish, the Lord performs the office of a priest: he takes upon himself the sins of humanity, of us all, and he brings us before the Father.

Lastly, we must also pay attention to the content of Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives. Jesus says: “Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet not what I want, but what you want” (Mk 14:36). The natural will of the man Jesus recoils in fear before the enormity of the matter. He asks to be spared. Yet as the Son, he places this human will into the Father’s will: not I, but you. In this way he transformed the stance of Adam, the primordial human sin, and thus heals humanity. The stance of Adam was: not what you, O God, have desired; rather, I myself want to be a god. This pride is the real essence of sin. We think we are free and truly ourselves only if we follow our own will. God appears as the opposite of our freedom. We need to be free of him – so we think – and only then will we be free. This is the fundamental rebellion present throughout history and the fundamental lie which perverts life. When human beings set themselves against God, they set themselves against the truth of their own being and consequently do not become free, but alienated from themselves. We are free only if we stand in the truth of our being, if we are united to God. Then we become truly “like God” – not by resisting God, eliminating him, or denying him. In his anguished prayer on the Mount of Olives, Jesus resolved the false opposition between obedience and freedom, and opened the path to freedom. Let us ask the Lord to draw us into this “yes” to God’s will, and in this way to make us truly free. Amen.

Click here for the Video and Text of the Holy Father’s Holy Thursday Homily

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI FOR LENT 2012

Feb21

 

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS
BENEDICT XVI
FOR LENT 2012

“Let us be concerned for each other,
to stir a response in love and good works” (Heb 10:24)

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Lenten season offers us once again an opportunity to reflect upon the very heart of Christian life: charity. This is a favourable time to renew our journey of faith, both as individuals and as a community, with the help of the word of God and the sacraments. This journey is one marked by prayer and sharing, silence and fasting, in anticipation of the joy of Easter.

This year I would like to propose a few thoughts in the light of a brief biblical passage drawn from the Letter to the Hebrews:“ Let us be concerned for each other, to stir a response in love and good works”. These words are part of a passage in which the sacred author exhorts us to trust in Jesus Christ as the High Priest who has won us forgiveness and opened up a pathway to God. Embracing Christ bears fruit in a life structured by the three theological virtues: it means approaching the Lord “sincere in heart and filled with faith” (v. 22), keeping firm “in the hope we profess” (v. 23) and ever mindful of living a life of “love and good works” (v. 24) together with our brothers and sisters. The author states that to sustain this life shaped by the Gospel it is important to participate in the liturgy and community prayer, mindful of the eschatological goal of full communion in God (v. 25). Here I would like to reflect on verse 24, which offers a succinct, valuable and ever timely teaching on the three aspects of Christian life: concern for others, reciprocity and personal holiness.

1. “Let us be concerned for each other”: responsibility towards our brothers and sisters.

Read the rest of the Holy Father’s Lenten Message for 2012 on the Vatican.va website: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/lent/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20111103_lent-2012_en.html

Pope Receiving Ashes on Ash Wednesday

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For More Information about Catholicism, Ash Wednesday and the Liturgical Season of Lent check out this link: http://catholicism.about.com/od/holydaysandholidays/a/2012_Lent_Cal.htm

Lent

Saint Francis of Assisi, ‘Giant of Holiness,’ honored Oct. 4 :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

Oct4

Saint Francis of Assisi, ‘Giant of Holiness,’ honored Oct. 4 :: Catholic News Agency (CNA).

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Saint Francis of Assisi is Patron Saint of Animals. Pets are blessed on his Feast Day; every October 4. Contact your local Catholic Church, to see which Parish is Doing It, this Year.