Pardon the pun – it’s a little late and it seemed a good title at the time. And mea culpa, I should have posted this earlier than now.
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Agnes, Virgin and Martyr. In lieu of laying out her story here, I direct you to Fr. Z’s most thorough post on the subject. As one who gave her life rather than betray her vow of virginity, her intercession is needed more than ever these days. I thought some small quote from Dom Gueranger would not be out of place here.
Dear Child! innocent even in the capital of pagan corruption, and free of heart even amidst a slavish race, we see the image of our Emmanuel in thee. He is the Lamb; and thou art simple, like him: he is the Lion of the Tribe of Juda; and like him thou art invincible. Truly these Christians, as the pagans said, are a race of beings come from heaven to people this earth! A family that has martyrs and heroes and heroines like thee, brave Saint! that has young virgins, filled, like its venerable pontiffs and veteran soldiers, with the fire of heaven, and burning with ambition to leave a world they have edified with their virtues, is God’s own people, and it can never be extinct. Its martyrs are to us the representation of the divine virtues of our Lord Jesus Christ. By nature they were as weak as we; they had a disadvantage which we have not – they had to live in the very thick of paganism, and paganism had corrupted the whole earth; and notwithstanding all this, they were courageous and chaste.
Have pity on us and help us, O thou, one of the brightest of these great Saints! The love of Jesus is weak in our hearts. We are affected and shed tears at the recital of thy heroic conduct; but we are cowards in the battle we ourselves have to fight against the world and our passions. Habitual seeking after ease and comfort has fastened upon us a certain effeminacy: we are ever throwing away our interest upon trifles; how can we have earnestness and courage for our duties? Sanctity! we cannot understand it; and when we hear or read of it, we gravely say that the Saints did very strange things and were indiscreet, and were carried away by exaggerated notions! What must we think, on this thy feast, of thy contempt for the world and all its pleasures, of thy heavenly enthusiasm, of thy eagerness to go to Jesus by suffering? Thou wast a Christian, Agnes! Are we too Christians? Oh! pray for us that we may love like Christians, that is, with a generous and active love, with a love which can feel indignant when asked to have less detachment from all that is not God. Pray for us, that our piety may be that of the Gospel, and not the fashionable piety which pleases the world, and makes us pleased with ourselves. There are some brave hearts who follow thy example; but they are few; increase their number by thy prayers, that so the Divine Lamb may be followed, whithersoever he goeth in heaven, by a countless number of virgins and martyrs.
For the Catholic and/or book geek. Reports are Pope Benedict XVI has finished work on the manuscript of the second book in his study in Christology. If it is anything like his Jesus of Nazareth it’s sure to move the world of Catholic Biblical scholarship, from the scholar to the average person in the pew.
For the tech geek. Dom Bettinelli posted on the new technology mashup he and a coworker put together for the Diocese of Boston as they participate in the March for Life in Washington DC. Now that is putting technology to good use.
As I’ve said many times here, my brain is wired a little funny. I’m just curious if anyone else noticed this little … oddity … from one of the options for the readings this past Sunday, the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus. The alternate reading comes from Isaiah 40, and in Is 40:3 we read:
A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
As Catholics, and I’d assume most good Bible Christians, we make the direct correlation to the description of John the Baptist, e.g. in Mark 1:3:
A voice of one crying out in the desert: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.’
Now I recognize that Hebrew does not use the punctuation style we take for granted in English, but it does leave me to wonder – just what can we get out of the difference between “a voice of one crying out in the desert” and “a voice cries out: in the desert”? In one the voice crying out is in the desert; in the other the one spoken to is in the desert.
So…am I over-thinking this, or just maybe is this a providential difference from which we can glean some additional insight? Let me know what you think. Please. The comboxes are lonely. 😉
Fr. Phillip Powell, OP has a simply superb homily (and would you expect anything less from a Dominican?) for yesterday’s Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. I do think St. Dominic would be proud. A small snip:
We start our life-long regime at The Jesus Gym on the day we are baptized. From that moment on, “the grace of God has appeared, saving all and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age. . .” As Catholics, we don’t have any trouble understanding grace as divine help, a gift from God to assist us when we need it. What we do have trouble understanding sometimes is that the help we get isn’t always the help we want. Like the skinny 18 year old freshman who wants ripped abs in a week to impress his girlfriend, we sometimes approach the throne in prayer and ask not for assistance to accomplish some goal, but rather we ask God to accomplish the goal for us, instead of us. The freshman is very disappointed to hear that his six-pack will take a semester or two with lots of hard work. And we are no less disappointed to learn that grace does not prevent us from traveling the ways of the godless nor desiring what the world would have us desire. Instead, grace trains us how to be godly men and women. The hard work of chiseling out a ripped spiritual six-pack is all ours. But we do not work alone.
Earlier I was finally getting around to reading the Pope’s Urbi et Orbi message for Christmas 2009 (see, I told you I was behind on things) and came across this little gem.
God loves to light little lights, so as then to illuminate vast spaces.
Remember that the next time you are faced with some seemingly massive problem. God knows what He’s doing.
The Papal MC, Msgr. Guido Marini’s talk on a host of liturgical issues (many thanks to NLM for posting the text) has been making the rounds throughout much of St. Blog’s. It is a relatively long presentation so it has taken me some time to get through, and I’m pretty sure I’ll need to go through it again to get it all, but I wanted to post here before it got away from me any further. One thing that struck me:
“My Lord and my God,” we have been taught to say from childhood at the moment of the consecration. In such a way, borrowing the words of the apostle St. Thomas, we are led to adore the Lord, made present and living in the species of the holy Eucharist, uniting ourselves to Him, and recognising Him as our all. From there it becomes possible to resume our daily way, having found the correct order of life, the fundamental criterion whereby to live and to die.
Here is the reason why everything in the liturgical act, through the nobility, the beauty, and the harmony of the exterior sign, must be condusive to adoration, to union with God: this includes the music, the singing, the periods of silence, the manner of proclaiming the Word of the Lord, and the manner of praying, the gestures employed, the liturgical vestments and the sacred vessels and other furnishings, as well as the sacred edifice in its entirety. It is under this perspective that the decision of his Holiness, Benedict XVI, is to be taken into consideration, who, starting from the feast of Corpus Christi last year, has begun to distribute holy Communion to the kneeling faithful directly on the tongue. By the example of this action, the Holy Father invites us to render visible the proper attitude of adoration before the greatness of the mystery of the Eucharistic presence of our Lord. An attitude of adoration which must be fostered all the more when approaching the most holy Eucharist in the other forms permitted today.
Read the whole thing, there is a lot more where that came from. There is so much damage to recover from in so many areas, but the Pope has already begun the great work. Some day, perhaps, we will talk of this indeed as his Great Work.
Or really, for anyone who wants to get a better grasp on the readings from Mass. Mike Harrison operates the Daily Word Google Group which provides the readings and the commentary from the The Navarre Bible, which is I think without a doubt a (perhaps the) premier Catholic Bible Commentary.
Thanks to the much-maligned decision to transfer the celebration of the Solemnity of the Epiphany to a Sunday many people don’t realize that today, Jan. 6 is the actual date of the great feast. Then again, many people don’t even realize that it is indeed the Christmas season, so there’s plenty of re-education to go around. All that crotchety-ness aside, I thought a quote from Dom Gueranger’s The Liturgical Year would be in order:
The Magi, the first-fruits of the Gentile world, have been admitted into the court of the great King whom they have been seeking, and we have followed them. The Child has smiled upon us, as he did upon them. All the fatigues of the long journey which man must take to reach his God – all are over and forgotten; our Emmanuel is with us, and we are with him. Bethlehem has received us, and we will not leave her again: for in Bethlehem we have the Child and Mary his Mother. Where else could we find riches like these that Bethlehem gives us? Oh! let us beseech this incomparable Mother to give us this Child of hers, for he is our light, and our love, and our Bread of life, now that we are about to approach the Altar, led by the Star of our faith. Let us at once open our treasures; let us prepare our gold, our frankincense, and our myrrh, for the sweet Babe, our King. He will be pleased with our gifts, and we know he never suffers himself to be outdone in generosity. When we have to return to our duties, we will, like the Magi, leave our hearts with our Jesus; and it shall be by another way, by a new manner of life, that we will finish our sojourn in this country of our exile, looking forward to that hapy day when life and light eternal will come and absorb into themselves the shadows of vanity and time which now hang over us.
Yes, it’s cheating, but I’ve had these tabs hanging around my Firefox window without posting about them for far too long. Since my chief New Year’s resolution is to stop my constant procrastinating (an extension of my “just stop being 5 minutes late for everything” initiative) now is as good a time as any to git ‘er done.
First, Fr. Philip Neri Powell in light of the then-pending Christmas holiday (told you they were hanging around too long!) posted an excellent summation of the Nativity, what it is and why what we say we believe about it matters. Being around it so much sometimes you forget to ask those questions…
Following that, Biblical Archaeology Review has posted a fine explanation of how Christmas came to be celebrated on December 25th. I’ll admit it, I always enjoy bringing this one up because it ruffles the feathers of fellow Catholics who have forgotten that traditional piety isn’t always without historical, philosophical and theological basis.
Next, Nancy Pelosi has decided to grace us with her far-wiser-than-the-Pope theological musings once again. Really, given how smug and condescending she is I’d think she were a politician. *ahem* Seriously though, this reminds us just how desperately we need to pray for our politicians because, among other reasons, they are a favorite target of the Enemy.
In my “quote of the week” even though it was two weeks ago, there is this post from a guest blogger for Fr. V at Adam’s Ale. This one made me think a good long time: “Grace can’t be bought, but it appears that it still needs to be paid for.”
Finally, Fr. Z reminds us of something we all ought to know better by now: never, ever stop praying for priests. It goes beyond without saying, but then so many of the things that do, aren’t, so we don’t. So stop what you’re doing. Now. And pray.Here are some to get you started if you can’t think of anything.
There. That took all of about 15 minutes. All this not-procrastinating might not be so bad after all…
Ubi Petrus ibi ecclesia, et ibi ecclesia vita eterna. Where there is Peter there is the Church,where there is the Church there is life eternal! — St. Ambrose of Milan
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If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot. -- Jeremiah 20:9
The Magi, the first-fruits of the Gentile world, have been admitted into the court of the great King whom they have been seeking, and we have followed them. The Child has smiled upon us, as he did upon them. All the fatigues of the long journey which man must take to reach his God – all are over and forgotten; our Emmanuel is with us, and we are with him. Bethlehem has received us, and we will not leave her again: for in Bethlehem we have the Child and Mary his Mother. Where else could we find riches like these that Bethlehem gives us? Oh! let us beseech this incomparable Mother to give us this Child of hers, for he is our light, and our love, and our Bread of life, now that we are about to approach the Altar, led by the Star of our faith. Let us at once open our treasures; let us prepare our gold, our frankincense, and our myrrh, for the sweet Babe, our King. He will be pleased with our gifts, and we know he never suffers himself to be outdone in generosity. When we have to return to our duties, we will, like the Magi, leave our hearts with our Jesus; and it shall be by another way, by a new manner of life, that we will finish our sojourn in this country of our exile, looking forward to that hapy day when life and light eternal will come and absorb into themselves the shadows of vanity and time which now hang over us.
