Friday 31 October 2014

November month is dedicated to the Souls in Purgatory. Pope's Intentions



November, 2014 - Overview for the Month
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The month of November is dedicated to the Souls in Purgatory, whose feast is celebrated on November 2. With the exception of the last Sunday, November falls during the liturgical season known as Ordinary Time and is represented by the liturgical color green. The last Sunday, which marks the beginning of the Advent season, the liturgical color changes to purple, representing a time of penance.
The Holy Father's Intentions for the Month of November 2014
General: That all who suffer loneliness may experience the closeness of God and the support of others.
Missionary: That young seminarians and religious may have wise and well-formed mentors. (See alsowww.apostleshipofprayer.net)
Feasts for November
The feasts on the General Roman Calendar celebrated during the month of November are:
1. All SaintsSolemnity
2. All SoulsFeast
3. Martin de PorresOpt. Mem.
4. Charles BorromeoMemorial
9. Lateran BasilicaFeast
10. Leo the GreatMemorial
11. Martin of Tours; Veterans Day (USA)Memorial
12. JosaphatMemorial
13. Frances Xavier CabriniMemorial
15. Albert the GreatOpt. Mem.
16. Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary TimeSunday
17. Elizabeth of HungaryMemorial
18. Churches of Peter and Paul; Rose Philippine Duchesne (USA)Opt. Mem.
21. Presentation of MaryMemorial
22. CeciliaMemorial
23. Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe Solemnity
24. Andrew Dung-Lac and CompanionsMemorial
25. Catherine of AlexandriaOpt. Mem.
30. First Sunday of AdventSunday
Focus of the Liturgy
The Gospel readings for the first four Sundays in November 2014, are taken from St. John and St. Matthew and are from Year A, Cycle 2. The last Sunday in November 2014 is taken from St. Mark and is from Year B, Cycle 1.
November 2nd - All Souls
Everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life and Jesus says He will raise him on the last day.
November 9th - Lateran Basilica
Jesus said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.”
November 16th - 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
This Gospel recounts the parable of the talents.
November 23rd - Solemnity of Christ the King
Jesus says "Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me."
November 30th - First Sunday of Advent
In this Gospel, Jesus warns us to be watchful because we don't know when the Lord is coming.
Highlights of the Month
During November, as in all of Ordinary Time (Time After Pentecost), the Liturgy signifies and expresses the regenerated life from the coming of the Holy Spirit, which is to be spent on the model of Christ's Life and under the direction of His Spirit. As we come to the end of the Church year we are asked to consider the end times, our own as well as the world's. The culmination of the liturgical year is the Feast of Christ the King. "This feast asserts the supreme authority of Christ over human beings and their institutions.... Beyond it we see Advent dawning with its perspecitive of the Lord's coming in glory."— The Liturgy and Time, A.G. Mortimort
This month the main feasts are the Solemnity of All Saints (November 1), All Souls (November 2), St. Martin de Porres (November 3), St. Charles Borromeo, (November 4), Lateran Basilica (November 9), St. Leo the Great (November 10), St. Martin of Tours, (November 11), St. Josaphat (November 12), St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (November 13), St. Albert the Great (November 15), St. Elizabeth of Hungary (November 17),Presentation of Mary (November 21), St. Cecilia (November 22), the Solemnity of Christ the King(November 23), St. Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions (November 24),St. Catherine of Alexandria(November 25), and.
The feasts of Sts. Margaret of Scotland and Gertrude (November 16), Sts. Clement I and St. Columban(November 23), and St. Andrew (November 30) are superseded by the Sunday Liturgy.
Thanksgiving
The national holiday (USA) of Thanksgiving also falls on the last Thursday of November. There is a special liturgy which may be used on this day. (Read morehere.)   

Gospel November 2, 2014 All Sinners Day Fr. William Grimm MM Today's Video

YOUTUBE:
All Souls Day
Gospel November 2, 2014   
Published on 29 Oct 2014
The feast might be called All Sinners Day, for it is a day to recall that though we are called to sanctity and eternal life, we are not the saints we might be, the saints we hope to become.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT9GIANKECs&list=UUMayAjaz97zSpOXBD4FfJ0g  


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November 2014 Saturday 1
All Saints Day
During the year the Church celebrates one by one the feasts of the saints. Today she joins them all in one festival. In addition to those whose names she knows, she recalls in a magnificent vision all the others "of all nations and tribes standing before the throne and in sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands, proclaiming Him who redeemed them in His Blood."
The feast of All Saints should inspire us with tremendous hope. Among the saints in heaven are some whom we have known. All lived on earth lives like our own. They were baptized, marked with the sign of faith, they were faithful to Christ's teaching and they have gone before us to the heavenly home whence they call on us to follow them. The Gospel of the Beatitudes, read today, while it shows their happiness, shows, too, the road that they followed; there is no other that will lead us whither they have gone.
"The Commemoration of All Saints" was first celebrated in the East. The feast is found in the West on different dates in the eighth century. The Roman Martyrology mentions that this date is a claim of fame for Gregory IV (827-844) and that he extended this observance to the whole of Christendom; it seems certain, however, that Gregory III (731-741) preceded him in this. At Rome, on the other hand, on May 13, there was the annual commemoration of the consecration of the basilica of St. Maria ad Martyres (or St. Mary and All Martyrs). This was the former Pantheon, the temple of Agrippa, dedicated to all the gods of paganism, to which Boniface IV had translated many relics from the catacombs. Gregory VII transferred the anniversary of this dedication to November 1.
Things to Do:
·         Visiting a cemetery and praying for the dead during the Octave of All Saints' Day (November 1 through November 8) will gain a plenary indulgence that can be applied only to the souls in purgatory. On other days, this work gains a partial indulgence.
·         Spend a little time after Mass thanking God for all the unnamed saints, some of whom could be our own relatives.
CatholicCulture/org 

Baldwin of Ford (?-c.1190), Cistercian abbot The Sacrament of the altar

Baldwin of Ford (?-c.1190), Cistercian abbot   

The Sacrament of the altar, 3, 2 ; SC 94
Towards the fulfilment of the sabbath
Moses said : « The rest of the sabbath day shall be sacred to the Lord. » The Lord loves rest; he loves to rest in us that thus we may rest in him. But there is, too, a rest of the times to come, of which it is written: “From now on, says the Spirit, let them find rest from all their labors.” And there is a rest of the present time of which the prophet says: “Cease to do evil.”

We come to the future rest by means of the six works of mercy enumerated in the Gospel in the place where it is said : « I was hungry and you gave me food », etc…. For “there are six days when work should be done”; then comes the night, that is death, “when no one can work”. After those six days comes the Sabbath day when every good work is completed. This is the rest of the soul.

(Biblical references: Ex 31,15; Rv 14,13; Is 1,16; Mt 25,35f; Lk 13,14; Jn 9,4)  


Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 14:1-6.
On a sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and the people there were observing him carefully.
In front of him there was a man suffering from dropsy.
Jesus spoke to the scholars of the law and Pharisees in reply, asking, "Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?"
But they kept silent; so he took the man and, after he had healed him, dismissed him.
Then he said to them, "Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?"
But they were unable to answer his question. 

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 6:30-35.

The crowd said to Jesus: «What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do?
Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'”
So Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.
Copyright © Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, USCCB
Commentary of the day :
Baldwin of Ford (?-c.1190), Cistercian abbot
The Sacrament of the altar II, 3 ; SC 93
“The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world”
Christ is “the bread of life” for those who believe in him: to believe in Christ is to eat the bread of life, to possess Christ within one, to possess eternal life…
“I am the bread of life,” he says; “your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and they are dead” (Jn 6,48f). By this is to be understood spiritual death. Why are they dead? Because they believed in what they saw and did not understand what they could not see… Moses ate manna, Aaron ate it and many others, too, who pleased God and are not dead. Why are they not dead? Because they understood in a spiritual fashion, they were spiritually hungry, they tasted the manna spiritually so that they might be spiritually satisfied. “This is the bread that came down from heaven: whoever eats it will never die” (v.50).
This manna – that is to say, Christ, who himself spoke like this…, was prefigured by the manna but was able to do more than manna could. For manna could not of itself prevent dying spiritually… But the righteous saw Christ in the manna, they believed in his coming, and Christ, of whom manna was the symbol, grants to all who believe in him that they should not spiritually die. Hence he says: “This is the bread come down from heaven; whoever eats it will never see death.” Here on earth, here now, before your eyes, your eyes of flesh: here is to be found the “bread from heaven” (v.51). The “bread of life” we spoke of a moment ago is now called “living bread”. Living bread because it contains within itself the life that abides and can deliver from spiritual death and bestow life. First he said: “Whoever eats it will never die”; now he speaks clearly concerning the life he gives: “Whoever eats this bread will live for ever” (v.58).
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Thursday 30 October 2014

Received William's response to the Chapter Talk of Br. Barry. As Columba Marmion wrote ‘when in choir, we bear a twofold personality, that of our misery, our frailty, our faults but also that of members of Christ’s Mystical Body’.

COMMENT from William - appreciated
                                                 Br. Barry

On Thursday, 30 October 2014, 14:40, 
William ....> wrote:

Dear Father Donald,
What an amazing homily at Chapter, and a privilege for me to share! Br Barry is a deep thinker, and expresses himself with honesty and with remarkable perspicacity. Is it not the case that the silent ones are the wise ones! When he has given me a lift as I leave Nunraw, I consider it a privilege to share that time with him.

To say 'look at our Nunraw misjudgements as an example' in illustration of the Rule, is stunning in its honesty and its humility! I hope it may have been taken in good part by all present. It seems to me that Nunraw must be a personally deeply centred community in order to fulfil its vocation AND to be a beacon of the Church to the surrounding neighbourhood, "a local or particular or individual church". The monastery of Atlas was just that, exceptionally: whilst you are not constrained by such physical hostility, you [we all] are surrounded by the negativism of disaffection. As an expression, as Nature's beautiful sunrises of this season towards Advent, one day will be revealed the wonder of the eternal dawn...

I recognize Br Barry's point of 'monasticism' being often misconstrued as a way of expressing one's religion regardless of one's religion. As I often speak to those to whom I may of Nunraw, describing it in the first place as being a monastery 'towards Scotland', I am often asked 'is that the Buddhist monastery on the border?' One like another, "a part of a wider inter religious monastic culture"? It is often of Zen that they first imagine that I speak, but then they react (excuse the pun) in quite a xenophobic way!

"When the monastery is seen as an individual church, the Divine Office.. is carried out not just on behalf of the Church but as a means, second only to the Eucharist, to deeper communion with the Church"...and "in Lectio these two, monk and Church, coincide.." It is as I quite recently read in the introduction to 'The Cloud' by William Johnston SJ, using an expression of Teilhard de Chardin (a writer whose thinking I understand has influenced Br Barry) of the 'cosmic Christ', the thrust of contemplative consciousness towards 'Omega' leaves no corner of the universe untouched, resulting in the great paradox that in monasticism you should help people precisely by 'forgetting' (being removed from) them... something that is known only to the experience of faith. Nunraw as a community is a unique Church, part of the universal Church, but distinct in its cosmic and social dimension of contemplation.

What a delight for me to enter into these thoughts, thank you - and please, thank you to Br Barry. How greatly I am missing this autumn his lift back to Haddington.

From my own little cell of appreciation,
with my love in Our Lord,
William
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----Original message----
From : nunrawdonald   ....
Date : 30/10/2014 - 12:58 (GMTST)
Subject : IPad of Br. Barry at Chapter
Br.Barry - Wednesday Chapter Talks 29 October 2014

Fw: Chapter Sixty Four - Rule of St. Benedict
On Thursday, 30 October 2014, 
Br.Barry ...

Chapter Sixty Four.

Chap. 64 of the Rule is entitled ‘The Election of an Abbot’. Verses 3 -6 give an indication of how St. Benedict viewed the monastery’s relation to the local Christian community.  .....  

Br.Barry - Wednesday Chapter Talks 29 October 2014

BBC Documentary - Br. Barry at Melrose Abbey

Fw: Chapter Sixty Four - Rule of St. Benedict
On Thursday, 30 October 2014, 
Br.Barry ...

Chapter Sixty Four.
Chap. 64 of the Rule is entitled ‘The Election of an Abbot’. Verses 3 -6 give an indication of how St. Benedict viewed the monastery’s relation to the local Christian community.
If a monastery elects a man who ‘goes along with its own evil ways’ then the local Christians have not only the right but the duty to intervene in that monastery’s affairs: ‘they may be sure that they will receive a generous reward for this’; ‘they may be sure that to neglect to do so is sinful’.
Specifically, the local bishop, other religious superiors as well as ordinary Christians are urged to keep an eye on what the monastery is doing.
There was, of course, quite a dramatic example of this here at Nunraw a couple of months ago. The community reversed its decision to build a new Guest House after considering the forthright views of other individuals and religious communities.
Be that as it may, these verses of the Rule and those recent events at Nunraw do highlight the monastery as a local or particular or individual church, in the sense that St. Paul refers to ‘the church of God in Corinth’ or ‘the church in Thessalonika’.  A ‘local’ church usually refers to a diocese so we won’t use that term.
Our Constitutions state: ‘The monastery is an expression of the mystery of the Church’.  Monastic profession is often described as a deepening or strengthening of the Sacrament of Baptism.
 When the various aspects of monastic life are seen as primarily the practises of an individual church then they take on a different perspective.
One advantage of this perspective is that it guards against the danger of seeing Xtian monastic life as mainly a part of a wider inter religious monastic culture. In that view, Xtian or Catholic monks are regarded as having more in common with Bhuddist and Hindu and other forms of monasticism than they do with baptised Christians. It is quite a common view in a certain type of monastery–devotee. It is also perhaps present in some monks: Thomas Merton was, I think, probably guilty of this at one point in his life.
Another Cistercian writer, in the 1990’s, constantly contrasts ‘monastics’ with ‘the baptised’, as if the former were not included in the latter. Although, to be fair, it is obviously unintentional.
The Eucharist is the source and the summit of the Christian life so it follows that the monastic community is most clearly a church at its Eucharistic celebration and a monk is most a monk when he participates in the celebration of the Eucharist.
When the monastery is seen as an individual church, the Divine Office, even the littlest of the Little Hours, is carried out not just on behalf of the Church but as a means, second only to the Eucharist, to deeper communion with the Church. As Columba Marm
ion wrote ‘when in choir, we bear a twofold personality, that of our misery, our frailty, our faults but also that of members of Christ’s Mystical Body’.
Lectio Divina becomes not just a traditional monastic practise but principally a sharing in the Church’s calling to receive the Word of God. Mary, the Mother of God, is traditionally the model of the monk in this regard, ‘pondering these things in her heart’.
Mary is also the model of the Church: ‘the whole mystery of the Church is inseparably bound up with the mystery of Mary’, as someone expressed it. So in Lectio these two, monk and Church, coincide and by means of his reading the monk goes deeper into the Church.
But what is the Church?
As in the Word Incarnate, the divine and human are present but cannot be separated so in a similar  way the Church is made up of visible and invisible elements that are inseparable. We see the visible in the Church’s organisation, its hierarchy, its members, its worship, its activity and its buildings.
The invisible is accessible to faith: the Holy Spirit, the soul of the Church; Christ, its Head; the Father, of whom St. Paul says ‘to the church in Thessalonika which is in God the Father’.
All these are present in the little church which is a monastic community and its monastery.
These verses of the Holy Rule illustrate that the monastery is nothing but part of the Universal Church.

Wednesday 29 October 2014

Saint Braulio of Saragossa -Night Office Reading


   



 Patristic Reading, 29/10/2014
http://saints.sqpn.com/saint-braulio-of-saragossa/

Wednesday 30th Week Ord. TimeYear II
First Reading Wisdom 4:1-20
Second Reading (Alternative)
From a letter by Braulio of Saragossa (Epistola 3O:PL 80, 677)
Daily becoming empty for the living
O bitter terms of death; without Christ is all our life vain. The tears escape, the very life is oppressed with heaviness, my dictation quavers, and for grief the words do not come in correct order. She has gone, she has gone whom we loved, in whom you had the ties of love and all consolation, while to me she brought distinction and was an example of charity. She was your glory, our praise, your ornament, and our source of exultation. Who would believe that she would depart so early in life, when she appeared to be God's provision for your old age, to refresh you when weary and to comfort you when anxious amid the cares of the world? But what we did not expect has occurred and what we did not even think of has come. Alas for mortal life, daily becoming empty for the living!

What can we do, since such is the condition of mortals? Let us be consoled in the Lord, in whom is the consolation of a far better life and, as true faith holds, let us not cease to hope that she has been carried to a better place and released from the misery of this life. I doubt if one could find a single person who enjoys living in the face of all the evils that constantly arise; if one could, he would prove to be either foolish or stupid. Therefore, since our Creator and Redeemer, who both sees the future and holds the present, has seen what was best for her soul, I think she was carried away because he loved her, and lest wickedness of the world should pervert her mind, sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Therefore, let us rejoice, rather than mourn; not because we have lost, but because we have had such a one, you a wife and I a sister.

Because it is a part of your wisdom to live in such a way that you will not incur reproof from your enemies, be consoled and magnanimously avoid grief; to express it very briefly, you should hold within yourself both love for her who is gone and a reasonable consolation. I think that will become easier as time passes, but you must begin now, for everything that is thought over and meditated frequently becomes easier, no matter how dreadful it may seem. Therefore, most illustrious of men, use all your efforts to console yourself and your family; at her death, you must not forget those whom you and she both loved, lest you seem to have lost the affection you had through her when she was alive.
May Almighty God fill your heart with his grace and take away your sorrow and allow you, after a long time, to share immortal life with her.


            . Responsory   1 In 4:9.16b; In 3:16
God's love for us was revealed when he sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. + God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in God and God lives in him.
V. God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. + God is love ...


   Youtube ...





March 28th - St. Braulio, Bishop of Saragossa d. 651 

AT the college founded in Seville by St. Isidore, one of the more promising of the alumni was a boy of noble birth called Braulio, who grew up to be so eminent a scholar that Isidore regarded him as a friend and disciple rather than a pupil, and used to send him his own writings to correct and revise. Braulio prepared for the priesthood and was ordained, and when in 631 the see of Saragossa became vacant at the death of his brother Bishop John, the neighbouring prelates assembled to elect a successor and their choice fell upon Braulio. They are said to have been assisted in their selection by the appearance of a globe of fire which rested above Braulio's head, whilst a voice pronounced the words, "Behold my servant whom I have chosen and upon whom my spirit rests". 

As a pastor, St. Braulio laboured zealously to teach and encourage his people, and at the same time to extirpate the Arian heresy which continued to flourish even after the conversion of King Reccared. He kept in close touch with St. Isidore, whom he assisted in his task of restoring church order and regularizing ecclesiastical discipline. A small portion of the correspondence between the two saints has survived to this day. So great was St. Braulio's eloquence and his power of persuasion, that some of his hearers asserted that they had seen the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, resting On his shoulder and imparting in his ear the doctrine he preached to the people. 

Jerusalem - Dominus Flevit Thursday 30th Oct 2014

Thursday  30th Oct 2014 Facebook
 https://www.facebook.com/goodnewsofjesuschrist/timeline?filter 

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 13:31-35.
...
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling! 
Behold, your house will be abandoned. (But) I tell you, you will not see me until (the time comes when) you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'"
Commentary of the day : 

Saint John-Paul II, Pope from 1978 to 2005 
Apostolic Letter “Redemptionis anno”, April 1984 

“Jerusalem…
How often have I wanted to gather your children together”

In addition to its renowned and magnificent monuments, Jerusalem has living communities of believing Christians, Jews and Muslims, whose presence is a pledge and a source of hope for the nations, which in all parts of the world look towards the Holy City as towards a spiritual patrimony and a sign of peace and of concord. Yes, as the homeland of the heart of all the spiritual descendants of Abraham who have a deep love for it, and as a place where, for the eyes of faith, God’s infinite transcendence and created things meet, Jerusalem is a symbol of gathering, of union and of peace for the whole human family. The Holy City thus includes a firm call for peace to all of humankind and in particular to all who adore the one great God, the merciful Father of all peoples. Alas! We have to admit that Jerusalem continues to be a reason for rivalry, violence and territorial claims.

This situation and these thoughts bring to our lips the words of the prophet: “For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet. Until her vindication shines forth like the dawn and her victory like a burning torch.” (Isa 62:1) We think of the day, and we await it with impatience, when we shall all truly be “taught by God” (Jn 6:45), so that we might hear his message of reconciliation and peace. We think of the day when Jews, Christians, and Muslims will be able to share with one another in Jerusalem the greeting of peace, which Jesus addressed to his disciples after his resurrection: “Peace be with you.” (Jn 20:19)

Quick Information

The chapel was built by the Italian Antonio Barluzzi in 1955, recalls weeping of Jesus over the city of Jerusalem.

Detailed Information

Before Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, he looked up from the Mount of Olives to the city. He wept over it, because he foresaw the disaster that would make the Jewish people, because it would not recognize him as the Messiah (Lk 19.41 to 44).
19,37ff Luke 37 And when he was already close to the slope of the Mount of Olives, began the whole multitude of the disciples, with joy to praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, 38 saying, Blessed is he who comes, the king, in the name of the Lord! Peace be in heaven and glory in the highest! 39 And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him: Teacher, but thy disciples rightly! 40 He answered and said, I tell you, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. Jesus weeps over Jerusalem 41 And when he was come near, he beheld the city andwept over it , 42 saying: If you, even you knew at that time, which make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.43 For the time will come upon you when your enemies are around you a Wall pose, surround you and hem you in on every side 44 and you raze and thy children in thee, and no stone on the other, can be in you, because you did not recognize the time in which you were afflicted. 



The "Dominus Flevit Church" recalls today that event. Since the 16th century, this place is set with the grief of Jesus about the fate of Jerusalem in connection.
1881 acquired the Franciscans of this site, which was on a procession from the Mount of Olives to the Holy Sepulchre . Establishing this church came when the Franciscans at this point unearthed an old cemetery and it came across the remains of a monastery and a church dating from the 5th century. Built in 1955 by the Italian architect Antonio Barluzzi the new chapel, the original mosaics there were left where they had found it. The roof was the shape of a teardrop. Instead eastward, as required by the rule, the church is oriented to the west. The Dominus Flevit Church is primarily known for their interior shots: Through a window behind the altar has a unique view of the Old City and the Temple Mount.