From Pope Benedict XVI, an excerpt

Another figure I wish to remember: Fr Jerzy Popiełuszko, a priest and martyr who was proclaimed Blessed in Warsaw precisely last Sunday. He exercised his generous and courageous ministry beside all those who were working for freedom, for the defence of life and for its dignity. His work at the service of goodness and truth was a sign of contradiction for the regime governing Poland at the time. Love of the Heart of Christ led him to give his life and his witness was the seed of a new springtime in the Church and in society. If we look at history, we can note how many pages of authentic spiritual and social renewal were written with the crucial contribution of Catholic priests, motivated solely by passion for the Gospel and for human beings and for their true freedom, both religious and civil. How many initiatives of integral human promotion have been born from the intuition of a priestly heart!

Dear brothers and sisters, let us entrust all the priests in the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, whose liturgical Memorial we celebrated yesterday, so that they may continue with the power of the Gospel to build everywhere the civilization of love.

HUMAN HISTORY IS A HISTORY OF SALVATION – Psalm 126

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 12, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the Italian-language catechesis Benedict XVI gave today during the general audience held in St. Peter’s Square. The Pope today continued his catecheses on prayer with a reflection on Psalm 126.

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Dear brothers and sisters,

In the previous catecheses, we have meditated on a number of psalms of lament and of trust. Today, I would like to reflect with you on a notably joyous psalm, a prayer that sings with joy the marvels of God. It is Psalm 126 — according to Greco-Latin numbering, 125 — which extols the great things the Lord has done with His people, and which He continues to do with every believer.

The psalmist begins the prayer in the name of all Israel by recalling the thrilling experience of salvation:

“When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,

we were like those who dream.

Then our mouth was filled with laughter,

and our tongue with shouts of joy” (Verses 1-2a).

The psalm speaks of “restored fortunes”; that is, restored to their original state in all their former favorability. It begins then with a situation of suffering and of need to which God responds by bringing about salvation and restoring the man who prays to his former condition; indeed, one that is enriched and even changed for the better. This is what happens to Job, when the Lord restores to him all that he had lost, redoubling it and bestowing upon him an even greater blessing (cf. Job 42:10-13), and this is what the people of Israel experience in returning to their homeland after the Babylonian exile.

This psalm is meant to be interpreted with reference to the end of the deportation to a foreign land: The expression “restore the fortunes of Zion” is read and understood by the tradition as a “return of the prisoners of Zion.” In fact, the return from exile is paradigmatic of every divine and saving intervention, since the fall of Jerusalem and the deportation into Babylon were devastating experiences for the Chosen People, not only on the political and social planes, but also and especially on the religious and spiritual ones. The loss of their land, the end of the davidic monarchy and the destruction of the Temple appear as a denial of the divine promises, and the People of the Covenant, dispersed among the pagans, painfully question a God who seems to have abandoned them.

Therefore, the end of the deportation and their return to their homeland are experienced as a marvelous return to faith, to trust, to communion with the Lord; it is a “restoring of fortunes” that involves a conversion of heart, forgiveness, re-found friendship with God, knowledge of His mercy and a renewed possibility of praising Him (cf. Jeremiah 29:12-14; 30:18-20; 33:6-11; Ezekiel 39:25-29). It is an experience of overflowing joy, of laughter and of cries of jubilation, so beautiful that “it seems like a dream.” Divine help often takes surprising forms that surpass what man is able to imagine; hence the wonder and joy that are expressed in this psalm: “The Lord has done great things.” This is what the nations said, and it is what Israel proclaims:

“Then they said among the nations,

‘the Lord has done great things for them.’

The Lord has done great things for us;

we are glad” (Verses 2b-3).

God performs marvelous works in the history of men. In carrying out salvation, He reveals Himself to all as the powerful and merciful Lord, a refuge for the oppressed, who does not forget the cry of the poor (cf. Psalm 9:10,13), who loves justice and right and of whose love the earth is filled (cf. Psalm 33:5). Thus, standing before the liberation of the People of Israel, all the nations recognize the great and marvelous things God has accomplished for His People, and they celebrate the Lord in His reality as Savior.

And Israel echoes the proclamation of the nations, taking it up and repeating it once more — but as the protagonist — as a direct recipient of the divine action: “The Lord has done great things for us”; “for us” or even more precisely, “with us,” in hebrew ‘immanû, thus affirming that privileged relationship that the Lord keeps with His chosen ones, and which is found in the nameEmmanuel, “God with us,” the name by which Jesus would be called, His complete and full revelation (cf. Matthew 1:23).

Dear brothers and sisters, in our prayer we should look more often at how, in the events of our own lives, the Lord has protected, guided and helped us, and we should praise Him for all He has done and does for us. We should be more attentive to the good things the Lord gives to us. We are always attentive to problems and to difficulties, and we are almost unwilling to perceive that there are beautiful things that come from the Lord. This attention, which becomes gratitude, is very important for us; it creates in us a memory for the good and it helps us also in times of darkness. God accomplishes great things, and whoever experiences this — attentive to the Lord’s goodness with an attentiveness of heart — is filled with joy. The first part of the psalm concludes on this joyous note. To be saved and to return to one’s homeland from exile are like being returned to life: Freedom opens up to laughter, but is does so together with a waiting for a fulfillment still desired and implored. This is the second part of our psalm, which continues: (more…)

VATICAN CITY, 6 APR 2011 (VIS) – In his general audience in St. Peter’s Square today, attended by more than 10,000 people, Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis to St. Therese of Lisieux, or St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, “who lived in this world for only twenty-four years at the end of the nineteenth century, leading a very simple and hidden life, but who, after her death and the publication of her writings, became one of the best-known and loved saints”.

“Little Therese“, the Pope continued, “never failed to help the most simple souls, the little ones, the poor and the suffering who prayed to her, but also illuminated all the Church with her profound spiritual doctrine, to the point that the Venerable John Paul II, in 1997, granted her the title of Doctor of the Church … and described her as an ‘expert in scientia amoris’. Therese expressed this science, in which all the truth of the faith is revealed in love, in her autobiography ‘The Story of a Soul’, published a year after her death”.

Therese was born in 1873 in Alencon, France. She was the youngest of the nine children of Louis and Zelie Martin, and was beatified in 2008. Her mother died when she was four years old, and Therese later suffered from a serious nervous disorder from which she recovered in 1886 thanks to what she later described as “the smile of the Virgin”. In 1887 she made a pilgrimage to Rome with her father and sister, where she asked Leo XIII for permission to enter Carmel of Lisieux, at just fifteen years of age. Her wish was granted a year later; however, at the same time her father began to suffer from a serious mental illness, which led Therese to the contemplation of the Holy Face of Christ in his Passion. In 1890 she took her vows. 1896 marked the beginning of a period of great physical and spiritual suffering, which accompanied her until her death.

In those moments, “she lived the faith at its most heroic, as the light in the shadows that invade the soul” the Pope said. In this context of suffering, living the greatest love in the littlest things of daily life, the Saint realised her vocation of becoming the love at the heart of the Church”.

She died in the afternoon of 30 September, 1897, uttering the simple words, “My Lord, I love You!”. “These last words are the key to all her doctrine, to her interpretation of the Gospel”, the Pope emphasised. “The act of love, expressed in her final breath, was like the continued breathing of the soul … The words ‘Jesus, I love You’ are at the centre of all her writings”.

St. Therese is “one of the ‘little ones’ of the Gospel who allow themselves to be guided by God, in the depth of His mystery. A guide for all, especially for… theologians. With humility and faith, Therese continually entered the heart of the Scriptures which contain the Mystery of Christ. This reading of the Bible, enriched by the science of love, does not oppose academic science. The ‘science of the saints’, to which she refers on the final page of ‘The Story of a Soul’, is the highest form of science”.

“In the Gospel, Therese discovers above all the Mercy of Jesus … and ‘Trust and Love’ are therefore the end point of her account of her life, two words that, like beacons, illuminated her saintly path, in order to guide others along the same ‘little way of trust and love’, of spiritual childhood. Her trust is like that of a child, entrusting herself to the hands of God, and inseparable from her strong, radical commitment to the true love that is the full giving of oneself”, the Holy Father concluded.

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More on St. Therese can be found here

Also click here for a Novena to St. Therese

No surprise to readers and listeners of Discerning Hearts (especially those who follow the teachings of Deacon James Keating)….”Silence is Golden”! Pope Benedict XVI has chosen “Silence and Word” as the theme for World Communication Day.

Don’t you just love it…earlier we heard from Vatican Radio that the symposium of former theological students of the Holy Father that met with him this past summer reflected on what exactly is meant by the “new evangelizaation”. As reported it ultimately comes down to HUMILITY  (click here to read and to listen to more on this report).

“Silence and Word” is the path to humility? It works for me!

From Vatican Radio:

[powerpress = Vatican-Radio]

The Pontifical Council for Social Communications on Thursday announced the theme for the 2012 World Communications Day: Silence and Word: path of evangelization. Below is the text of a communique from the Council explaining the theme in context:

Statement from the Pontifical Council for Social Communications on the theme for the 2012 World Communications Day

The extra-ordinarily varied nature of the contribution of modern communications to society highlights the need for a value which, on first consideration, might seem to stand in contradistinction to it.

Silence, in fact, is the central theme for the next World Communications Day Message: Silence and Word: path of evangelization. In the thought of Pope Benedict XVI, silence is not presented simply as an antidote to the constant and unstoppable flow of information that characterizes society today but rather as a factor that is necessary for its integration.

Silence, precisely because it favors habits of discernment and reflection, can in fact be seen primarily as a means of welcoming the word. We ought not to think in terms of a dualism, but of the complementary nature of two elements which when they are held in balance serve to enrich the value of communication and which make it a key factor that can serve the new evangelization.

It is clearly the desire of the Holy Father to associate the theme of the next World Communications Day with the celebration of the forthcoming Synod of Bishops which will have as its own theme: The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith.

World Communications Day, the only worldwide celebration called for by the Second Vatican Council (Inter Mirifica, 1963), is celebrated in most countries, on the recommendation of the bishops of the world, on the Sunday before Pentecost (in 2012, May 20).

The Holy Father’s message for World Communications Day is traditionally published in
conjunction with the Memorial of St. Francis de Sales, patron of writers (January 24).

VATICAN CITY, 14 SEP 2011 (VIS) –

This morning the Holy Father travelled by helicopter from the Apostolic Palace at Castelgandolfo to the Vatican, where he held his weekly general audience in the Paul VI Hall. In his catechesis he dwelt on the first part of Psalm 22, focusing on the theme of prayers of supplication to God.

The Psalm, which remerges in the narrative of Christ’s Passion, presents the figure of an innocent man persecuted and surrounded by adversaries who seek his death. He raises his voice to God “in a doleful lament which, in the certainty of faith, mysteriously gives way to praise”.

The Psalmist’s opening cry of “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is “an appeal addressed to a God Who appears distant, Who does not respond”, said the Holy Father. “God is silent, a silence that rends the Psalmists heart as he continues to cry out incessantly but finds no response”. Nonetheless, he “calls the Lord ‘my’ God, in an extreme act of trust and faith. Despite appearances, the Psalmist cannot believe that his bond with the Lord has been severed entirely”.

The opening lament of Psalm 22 recurs in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark in the cry the dying Jesus makes from the cross. This, Benedict XVI explained, expresses all the desolation the Son of God felt “under the crushing burden of a mission which had to pass through humiliation and destruction. For this reason He cried out to the Father. … Yet His was not a desperate cry, as the Psalmist’s was”.

Violence dehumanises

Sacred history, the Pope continued, “has been a history of cries for help from the people, and of salvific responses from God”. The Psalmist refers to the faith of his ancestors “who trusted … and were never put to shame”, and he describes his own extreme difficulties in order “to induce the Lord to take pity and intervene, as He always had in the past”.

The Psalmist’s enemies surround him, “they seem invincible, like dangerous ravening beasts. … The images used in the Psalm also serve to underline the fact that when man himself becomes brutal and attacks his fellow man, … he seems to lose all human semblance. Violence always contains some bestial quality, and only the salvific intervention of God can restore man to his humanity”.

At this point, death begins to take hold of the Psalmist. He describes the moment with dramatic images “which we come across again in the narrative of Christ’s Passion: the bodily torment, the unbearable thirst which finds an echo in Jesus’ cry of ‘I am thirsty’, and finally the definitive action of his tormenters who, like the soldiers under the cross, divide among themselves the clothes of the victim, whom they consider to be already dead”.

At this point a new cry emerges, “which rends the heavens because it proclaims a faith, a certainty, that is beyond all doubt. … The Psalm turns into thanksgiving. … The Lord has saved the petitioner and shown him His face of mercy. Death and life came together in an inseparable mystery and life triumphed. … This is the victory of faith, which can transform death into the gift of life, the abyss of suffering into a source of hope”. Thus the Psalm leads us to relive Christ’s Passion and to share the joy of His resurrection.

In closing, the Pope invited the faithful to distinguish deeper reality from outward appearance, even when God is apparently silent. “By placing all our trust and hope in God the Father, we can pray to Him with faith at all moments of anguish, and our cry for help will turn into a hymn of praise”.

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Published by VISarchive 02 – Wednesday, September 14, 2011

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Prayer of Pope Benedict XVI at Ground Zero

“We ask you, in your compassion to bring healing to those who, because of their presence here that day, suffer from injuries and illness. Heal, too, the pain of still-grieving families and all who lost loved ones in this tragedy. Give them strength to continue their lives with courage and hope.

“We are mindful as well of those who suffered death, injury, and loss on the same day at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Our hearts are one with theirs as our prayer embraces their pain and suffering.

“God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world: peace in the hearts of all men and women and peace among the nations of the Earth. Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred.

“God of understanding, overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy, we seek your light and guidance as we confront such terrible events. Grant that those whose lives were spared may live so that the lives lost here may not have been lost in vain. Comfort and console us, strengthen us in hope, and give us the wisdom and courage to work tirelessly for a world where true peace and love reign among nations and in the hearts of all.” AMEN

2011-08-31 Vatican Radio

On Wednesday Pope Benedict XVI challenged the men and women of today’s world to recover the deepest meaning of art, in its multitude of expressions, but particularly as the path of beauty which leads to God. And in doing so he also shared personal memories of how art had moved him to God with the five thousand pilgrims gathered for the general audience in the tiny village of Castel Gandolfo.

He said “On several occasions during this period, I have recalled the need for every Christian to find time for God, for prayer, amid the many occupations of our daily lives. The Lord Himself gives us many opportunities to remember Him. Today I will touch briefly on one of these channels that can bring us to God and also be of help in encountering Him: it is the path of artistic expression, part of that “path of Beauty “, of which I have spoken several times and which man today should recover in its deepest meaning”.

Pieta

Pope Benedict continued “perhaps sometimes, before a sculpture, a painting, a few verses of a poem or a song, you have experienced deep within an intimate emotion, a sense of joy, that is, you have clearly perceived that in front of you there was not only mere matter, a piece of marble or bronze, a painted canvas, a series of letters or a combination of sounds, but something bigger, something that speaks, capable of touching the heart, of communicating a message; of elevating the soul. ”

“Works of art are the fruit of human creativity, which question the visible reality, trying to discover its deep meaning and to communicate it through the language of shapes, colours, sounds.” The work of art, in short, “is an open door on the infinite,” which “opens the eyes of the mind, of the heart.”

However, he added, “there are artistic expressions that are true paths to God, the supreme Beauty, indeed they help nurture our relationship with Him in prayer. These are works that are born of faith and express faith. One example of this is when we visit a Gothic cathedral; we are enraptured by the vertical lines that shoot up towards the sky and draw our eyes and our spirits upwards, while at the same time, we feel small, and yet eager for fullness … Or when we enter a Romanesque church: we are spontaneously invited to recollection and prayer. We feel as if the faith of generations were enclosed in these splendid buildings. Or, when we hear a piece of sacred music that vibrates the strings of our heart, our soul expands and helped to turn to God. A concert of music by Johann

Conductor Leonard Bernstein

Sebastian Bach, in Munich, directed by Leonard Bernstein, again comes to my mind. Afterthe last piece of music, one of the Cantate, I felt, not by reasoning, but in my heart, that what I heard had conveyed to me truth, something of the truth of the great composer’s faith and this pressed me to praise and thank the Lord and beside me was the Lutheran Bishop of Munich and spontaneously, feeling this, I said to him, you know, its true, a faith and beauty so strong and irresistibly expresses the presence and truth of God”.

Pope Benedict then turned spoke of how certain artists have touched our lives : “How many times have paintings or frescoes, the fruit of the faith of the artist, in their forms, their colours, their light, encouraged us to direct our thoughts to God and nourished in us the desire to draw from the source of all beauty. What the great artist, Marc Chagall, once

Marc Chagall: Solitude

wrote remains true, that for centuries painters have dipped their paintbrush in that coloured alphabet that is the Bible. How many times, then can artistic expressions be occasions to remind us of God, to help our prayer or for the conversion of the heart! Paul Claudel, a poet, playwright, and French diplomat, in the Basilica of Notre Dame in Paris, in 1886, while he was listening to the singing of the Magnificat at Christmas Mass, felt God’s presence. He had not entered the church for reasons of faith, but to in search of arguments against Christians, and instead the grace of God worked in his heart”.

The Holy Father concluded: “I invite you to rediscover the importance of this path for prayer, for our living relationship with God. The cities and towns all over the world preserve works of art that express the faith and remind us of our relationship with God. Visiting places of art, it is not only an occasion for cultural

Vatican Museum

enrichment, but above all it can be a moment of grace, an encouragement to strengthen our relationship and our dialogue with the Lord, to stop and contemplate, in the transition from simple external reality to a deeper reality, the ray of beauty that strikes us, that almost wounds us in our inner selves and invites us to rise towards God. “

And then he greeted all English speaking pilgrims present: I am pleased to greet the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors here today, especially those from Scotland and Malta. Today we reflect on the need to draw near to God through the experience and appreciation of artistic beauty. Art is capable of making visible our need to go beyond what we see and it reveals our thirst for infinite beauty, for God. Dear friends, I invite you to be open to beauty and to allow it to move you to prayer and praise of the Lord. May Almighty God bless all of you!

Leave it to Vatican Radio to give us a fascinating interview with Fr. Twomey on the orgins and the results of this summer’s “Schuelerkreis”. The “New Evangelization”…what does it really mean?  Believe it or not…in a real way…it’s all about humility (gotta luv it)!

[powerpress]

From Vatican Radio

What does New Evangelisation actually mean? How does the Church – universally and locally – envision its concrete application? Is there any ‘master plan’? And what did they really talk about at the Ratzinger Summer School? These are some of the questions that Emer McCarthy put to Fr. Vincent Twomey SVD., Professor emeritus of Moral Theology at Maynooth seminary in Ireland, and one of the founding members of the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis.

Recently convened for their annual meeting in Castel Gandolfo (Aug. 25-28), the group of 40 former theology and philosophy students of then Professor Joseph Ratzinger were given the task of discussing this sometimes ‘nebulous’ term. Added to their ranks were academics who have chosen to study the thought and writings of Joseph Ratzinger – a suggestion first put forward by Fr. Twomey himself – creating a veritable ‘think-tank’, with some surprising results.

Fr. Twomey speaks of how the concept of New Evangelisation is a thread that runs throughout the teaching and writing of Pope Benedict XVI, then Professor Ratzinger. He brings us back to their first meeting over 40 years ago, when as a young Irish missionary priest, he sought out the ‘promising and brilliant theologian’ in his ‘simple’ Bavarian home to ask to study under him. Fr. Twomey takes us on a journey from the Münster and Tübingen years, through the establishment of Ratzinger’s first ‘Doctoral colloquium’, to the Regensburg years and finally, Rome. He speaks about why the New Evangelisation calls for ‘God’s humility’ and why – contrary to popular belief – secularisation is not wholly negative

August 2011 [powerpress = devotionals-prayers]

General Intention: That the World Youth Day taking place in Madrid may encourage all the young people of the world to root and found their lives in Christ.

Missionary Intention: That Christians of the West, docile to the action of the Holy Spirit, may re-encounter the freshness and enthusiasm of their faith.

 

JULY 2011 [powerpress = devotionals-prayers]

General Intention: That Christians may contribute to alleviating the material and spiritual suffering of AIDS patients, especially in the poorest countries.

Missionary Intention: For the religious who work in mission territories, that they may be witnesses of the joy of the Gospel and living signs of the love of Christ.

 

THE PSALMS: THE BOOK OF PRAYER PAR EXCELLENCE

T

THE POWER OF INTERCESSION: THE PROPHET ELIJAH’S PRAYER
VATICAN CITY, 15 JUN 2011 (VIS) – In his general audience, held this morning in St. Peter’s Square, the Pope resumed his series of catecheses dedicated to the subject of prayer, focusing today on the Prophet Elijah “whom God sent to bring the people to conversion”.

The Holy Father explained how “upon Mount Carmel Elijah revealed himself in all his power as intercessor when, before the whole of Israel, he prayed to the Lord to show Himself and convert people’s hearts. The episode is recounted in chapter 18 of the First Book of Kings”.

“The contest between Elijah and the followers of Baal (which was, in fact, a contest between the Lord of Israel, God of salvation and life, and a mute and ineffective idol which can do nothing for either good or evil) also marked the beginning of a confrontation between two completely different ways to address God and to pray”. The oblations of the prophets of Baal “revealed only the illusory reality of the idol … which closed people in the confines of a desperate search for self”.

On the other hand, Elijah “called on the people to come closer, involving them in his actions and his prayer. … The prophet built an alter using ‘twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob’, … to represent all Israel. … Elijah then addressed the Lord calling Him Lord of the fathers, thus implicitly recalling the divine promises and the history of choice and alliance which had indissolubly united the Lord to His people”.

The prophet’s request “was that the people might finally and fully come to know and understand Who their God is, and make the decisive decision to follow only Him. Only in this way could God be recognised as Absolute and Transcendent”. Only in this way would it be clear that “no other gods could be placed at His side, as this would deny His absoluteness and relativize Him”.

Benedict XVI highlighted how

“believers must respond to the absoluteness of God with absolute and total love, a love involving all their lives, their energies, their hearts. … In his intercession, Elijah asked of God what God Himself wished to do: to show Himself in all His mercy, faithful to His nature as Lord of life Who forgives, converts and transforms”.

“The Lord responded unequivocally, not only burning the offering but even consuming all the water that had been poured around the altar. Israel could no longer doubt: divine mercy had responded to its weakness, to its doubts, to its lack of faith. Now Baal, the vain idol, was beaten and the people, who seemed lost, had rediscovered the way of truth, they had rediscovered themselves“.

The Holy Father concluded by asking himself what this story has to tell us today.

“Firstly”, he said, “is the priority of the first commandment of God’s Law: having no god but God. When God disappears man falls into slavery, into idolatry, as has happened in our time under totalitarian regimes and with the various forms of nihilism which make man dependent on idols and idolatry, which enslave”. Secondly, he continued, “the main objective of prayer is conversion: the fire of God which transforms our hearts and makes us capable of seeing God and living for Him and for others”. Thirdly, “the Church Fathers tell us that this story is … a foretaste of the future, which is Christ. It is a step on the journey towards Christ”.

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Published by VIS – Holy See Press Office – Wednesday, June 15, 2011

[powerpress = “vatican-radio”]

EVANGELISATION IS A TASK FOR ALL MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH

 

UPDATED – complete text in English from Vatican.va

[powerpress feed = “devotionals-prayers”]

JUNE 2011

General Intention: That priests, united to the Heart of Christ, may always be true witnesses of the caring and merciful love of God.

Missionary Intention: That the Holy Spirit may bring forth from our communities numerous missionary vocations, willing to fully consecrate themselves to spreading the Kingdom of God.