Lent healed and inspired Atlas Martyrs

Fifth Sunday of Lent

Gospel, John 12;20-33.

Jesus foretells his passion and explains its sacrifice.

HOMILY by the Redemptorist The Living Word illustrates the Gospel, Jn 12;20-33, by the testimony of the Monks of Tibhirine, Algeria 1996.

“Just as the French monks in the film demonstrate the best of radical discipleship, interfaith peacemaking and universal love, we too are called to serve God and the world. In particular we are called to find our common humanity amidst all that divides people today. Jesus will help us in this, and there will be times when his presence breaks in upon us and becomes so real that we will feel like one of the disciples sitting in his actual presence.”

"lt anyone serves me, my Father will honour him."

Illustration

An award-winning 2010 French film, Of Gods and Men, tells the story of seven French Trappist monks based at a monastery in Algeria. They were kidnapped and beheaded in spring 1996 after being caught up in a bloody conflict between the Algerian government and an extremist Islamic group. The Trappists saw the danger they were in but opted to remain in their monastery. They wanted to continue to serve the local people who were also suffering from the conflict.

They lived simply, praying their liturgies, sharing manual labour, selling honey at the local market, and serving their Muslim neighbours. The monastery was known as a safe place of friendship between Muslims and Christians. Despite warnings for foreigners to leave, the monks maintained their daily witness to peace, offering employment in the monastery gardens and medical care. As the film unfolds, we join their prayer, discussion and discernment. We witness their brave decision to remain with the people and suffer their fate. A "last supper" brings them all together, during which - sipping a glass of wine that already represents their sacrifice - each face reflects the fear of what awaits them, and the serenity of the choice they've made.

After their deaths we learn of an open letter written by the prior, Brother Christian, in which he thanks God for his life and pardons his killers.

Gospel Teaching

Today's Gospel marks a turning point in the life of Jesus. He acknowledges this himself with the words, "Now the hour has come." It is as if everything in his life has been building up to this moment. Some biblical scholars take the view that the visit of the Greeks asking to be introduced to Jesus is a watershed in the Gospel story. At that time, Greeks were considered with suspicion by most Jews, but here are Greeks recognising that Jesus is somebody they should meet. The disciples don't know what to do about the visit, but when they finally decide to tell Jesus he reacts positively. It is as if everything is falling into place, and he and God will at last be glorified.

Another way to put this is that the new covenant that Jeremiah talks about in the first reading - probably from a prison cell - is being realised. God will pursue sinners and people can have a direct relationship with God. Jesus says that the lives he and the disciples have lived and loved up to now will have to be left behind to begin the new life ahead. This new development will bring pain and suffering, but it is necessary, not only for Jesus but for his followers as well. At the end of today's Gospel Jesus says that when he is lifted up from the earth, he will draw all people to himself. With these words Jesus reveals a great truth - that we all belong together, and the basis of our togetherness is that we are all equally loved by God.

Application

To believe and live out that truth of God's love is simultaneously our greatest joy and our greatest difficulty. Christians are not protected from pain and sacrifice. Just as the French monks in the film demonstrate the best of radical discipleship, interfaith peacemaking and universal love, we too are called to serve God and the world. In particular we are called to find our common humanity amidst all that divides people today. Jesus will help us in this, and there will be times when his presence breaks in upon us and becomes so real that we will feel like one of the disciples sitting in his actual presence.

Lent is the season of the year when many Christians give up something as an outward expression of an inward transformation. To give up something is to relinquish it, to lose it, to renounce it. Today Jesus hints at the ultimate loss anyone might experience, to give up life as one might normally live it. There are also losses that are thrust upon us that are totally involuntary, like the death of a loved one, sickness, or getting fired from a job. In giving up, letting go and dying to some things, says Jesus, we can position ourselves to live life all the more fully.

Lent is about changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now. Lent urges us to wake up out of our apathy and complacency and choose a path that gives us life and brings life to others.

St. Cyril of Alexandria - word of 'Fragrance’ Lent 5th Sunday

Nunraw March 2012

Night Office.

‘Fragrance’ word of St. Cyril of Alexandria.

At times the listening the Reading of the Second Nocturn suffers a deaf ear.

The only word picked up was ‘word’.

The about way of the Holy Spirit to prompted me back and read the lesson, -.
“offering himself to God the Father as a fragrant sacrifice for our sake,
“an appeasing fragrance, in the goat .., Christ is also symbolized...”,

FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT Year B

Gospel: John 12:20-33

“And when I am lifted up from the earth,

I shall draw all men to myself." (v33)

From a commentary on Numbers by Saint Cyril of Alexandria (Lib. 2: PG 69, 617-624)

Written sometime after 412, Cyril's "Glaphyra" or "polished explanations," from which this reading is taken, give an allegorical and typological exegesis of selected passages of the Pentateuch. This passage is a meditation on the mystery and paradox of Jesus' atoning death. It emphasizes our oneness with him. Christ, the grain of wheat that dies, is both the promise and sign of the future harvest.

As the firstfruits of our renewed humanity, Christ escaped the curse of the law precisely by becoming accursed for our sake. He overcame the forces of corruption by himself becoming once more free among the dead. He trampled death under foot and came to life again, and then he ascended to the Father as an offering, the firstfruits, as it were, of the human race. He ascended, as Scripture says, not to a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the real one, but into heaven itself, to appear in God's presence on our behalf He is the life-giving bread that came down from heaven, and by offering himself to God the Father as a fragrant sacrifice for our sake, he also delivers us from our sins and frees us from the faults that we commit through ignorance. We can understand this best if we think of him as symbolized by the calf that used to be slain as a holocaust and by the goat that was sacrificed for our sins committed through ignorance. For our sake, to blot out the sins of the world, he laid down his life.

Recognized then in bread as life and the giver of life, in the calf as a holocaust offered by himself to God the Father as an appeasing fragrance, in the goat as one who became sin for our sake and was slain for our transgressions, Christ is also symbolized in another way by a sheaf of grain, as a brief explanation will show.

The human race may be compared to spikes of wheat in a field, rising, as it were, from the earth, awaiting their full growth and development, and then in time being cut down by the reaper, which is death. The comparison is apt, since Christ himself spoke of our race in this way when he said to his holy disciples: Do you not say, "Four months and it will be harvest time?" Look at the fields I tell you, they are already white and ready for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving his wages and bringing in a crop for eternal life.

Now Christ became like one of us; he sprang from the holy Virgin like a spike of wheat from the ground. Indeed, he spoke of himself as a grain of wheat when he said: I tell you truly, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains as it was, a single grain; but if it dies its yield is very great. And so, like a sheaf of grain, the firstfruits, as it were, of the earth, he offered himself to the Father for our sake.

For we do not think of a spike of wheat, any more than we do of ourselves, in isolation. We think of it rather as part of a sheaf, which is a single bundle made up of many spikes. The spikes have to be gathered into a bundle before they can be used, and this is the key to the mystery they represent, the mystery of Christ who, though one, appears in the image of a sheaf to be made up of many, as in fact he is. Spiritually, he contains in himself all believers. As' we have been raised up with him, writes Saint Paul, so we have also been enthroned with him in heaven. He is a human being like ourselves, and this has made us one body with him, the body being the bond that unites us. We can say, therefore, that in him we are all one, and indeed he himself says to God, his heavenly Father: It is my desire that as I and you are one, so they also may be one in us.

Nunraw Passiontide Tabernacle

Today’s Collect, new to the Novus Ordo Missale Romanum

Veiled Chapel

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2012/03/wdtprs-5th-sunday-of-lent-his-love-lives-and-works-in-and-through-us-2/

WDTPRS 5th Sunday of Lent: His love lives and works in and through us.

Posted on 24 March 2012 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Traditionally this Sunday is called First Passion Sunday.  “Passiontide” begins.  It is also known as Iudica Sunday, from the first word of the Introit of Mass (from Ps 42/41), and sometimes Repus (from repositus analogous to absconditus, “hidden”) because crosses and other images in churches are to be veiled.  From today, in the Extraordinary Form the “Iudica” psalm is no longer said during the prayers at the foot of the altar and the Gloria Patri at the end of certain prayers is not said.   This pruning of our liturgy during Lent, and the hiding of images in Passiontide, symbolizes how Holy Church is undergoing liturgical death.
Today’s Collect, new to the Novus Ordo Missale Romanum, comes originally from the Mozarabic Rite.
Quaesumus, Domine Deus noster,
ut in illa caritate, qua Filius tuus
diligens mundum morti se tradidit,
inveniamur ipsi, te opitulante, alacriter ambulantes.
Opitulor, a deponent verb, means, “to bring aid; to help, aid, assist, succor.”
LITERAL VERSION:
O Lord our God, we beg that,
You assisting us, we ourselves may be found walking swiftly
in that selfsame sacrificial love by which Your Son,
loving the world, handed Himself over to death .
In some respects our Lenten Collects are similar to those of Advent.  There are images of motion, of pilgrimage.  We are moving toward a great feast of the Church but we are more importantly moving definitely toward the mysteries they make present to us.
Taking a page from St. Augustine of Hippo (d 430), we the baptized who are the Body of the Mystical Person of Christ, the Church, are on a journey with the Lord, the Head of the Church, toward Jerusalem: the Jerusalem of our own passion and the new Jerusalem of our Resurrection.  Christ made this journey so that we could make it and be saved in it.
OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):
Father, help us to be like Christ your Son,
who loved the world and died for our salvation.
Inspire us by his example, who lives and reigns….
In the bad old days, ICEL regularly reduced phrases like Domine Deus noster to the stark “Father”. The translators apparently thought we were too dense to figure out which prayers were addressed to the First Person of the Trinity.
The obsolete ICEL versions also relied heavily on the catch-all word “help”, as in the quintessential parody of an obsolete ICEL prayer: “Father, you are nice.  Help us to be nice like you.”  I used the word “assisting” in my literal version (above), though I could have accurately used “helping”.  We should make distinctions about how ICEL used “help” it in the old versions.
God “helps” us.  No question. What we must avoid (and the obsolete ICEL prayers did NOT), is the suggestion that we can do what we are praying for on our own, but, it could be helpful if God would give us a hand now and then.  That attitude is redolent of the ancient heresy Pelagianism.
Pelagianism, fended off in the 4th and 5th centuries especially by St Augustine, is the false notion that Original Sin did not wound human nature and that our will is still capable of choosing good and salvation without the help of God’s grace. Thus, our first parents “set a bad example” for humanity to follow. Adam’s sin did not have the other consequences imputed to Original Sin (wounding of the intellect and will, appetites, etc.). For Pelagians, Jesus sets the good example which counteracts Adam’s bad example. We can, on our own, choose to live by the help of Jesus’ perfect example.  For Pelagians, we humans retain full control and responsibility for our own salvation.  Now read the obsolete ICEL version again.
Keep this in mind if you meet someone who is still stirring discontent about the new, corrected translation.  The new translation, while not stylistically perfect, is theologically less dodgy than the obsolete translation.  The Latin original is even better.
CURRENT ICEL (2011):
By your help, we beseech you, Lord our God,
may we walk eagerly in that same charity
with which, out of love for the world,
your Son handed himself over to death .
“Help” here is acceptable because we go on to pray about being “in” Christ’s charity, sacrificial love.
In our liturgical worship the one, whole Mystical Christ is on a Lenten journey.  Each year during Lent, Christ, in us, travels that road of the Passion and we, in Him, travel the road marked out by Holy Mother Church and her duly ordained shepherds.  We must unite ourselves in heart, mind and will with the mysteries expressed in the liturgy.  Our passion, our road to Jerusalem, is in our examination of conscience and good confessions, our self-denial and works of mercy.
Our Lenten discipline continues for another fortnight.  Make your well-prepared and thorough sacramental confession.

Lent: March 20th - St. Photina

The most comprehensive treatment of the Liturgical Year available online: daily reflections, saints, seasons, calendars, prayers, activities, and recipes.

Daily Readings for: March 20, 2012
(Readings on USCCB website)

Collect: May the venerable exercises of holy devotion shape the hearts of your faithful, O Lord, to welcome worthily the Paschal Mystery and proclaim the praises of your salvation. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

RECIPES

• Ensalada de Escarola

PRAYERS

• Prayer for the Fourth Week of Lent
• Lent Table Blessing 4
• Litany of Humility
• Annunciation Novena
• Novena for the Annunciation

LIBRARY

• None

» Enjoy our Liturgical Seasons series of e-books!

Lent: March 20th

Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent Old Calendar: St. Photina (Hist)

Move to: Previous Day | Next Day

The theme of life and light has colored the Liturgy of this week. Before leading the catechumens into the Mystery of Christ's Passion and Death, the Church presents Christ to them once more as the Light of the world who has power to open man's eyes to his Light. He will veil it for a while during his Passion but it will burst forth in full splendor again on Easter morning.
Historically today is the feast of St. Photina, the Samaritan woman at the well.
Stational Church

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Meditation
We must forgive our neighbor always. This fraternal charity is the source of strength among the members of the Mystical Body: "If two of you shall consent upon earth concerning anything whatsoever they shall ask, it shall be done to them by my Father". This charity should animate us in giving fraternal correction, which should always be free from all vanity, self-love and desire to humiliate and defame.
The Church dispenses Christ's forgiveness through the power of the keys: "whatsoever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed also in heaven". Christ's pardon of us is limitless. Just as the small quantity of oil, increasing miraculously at the word of Elias, enabled the poor widow to pay all her debts, so the infinite merits of Christ enable us to expiate all our sins.
Love of God and of neighbor imposes on us constant self-denial and self-mastery. Only love working through mortification will enable us to ascend the "holy hill" and dwell in "God's tabernacle". — The Cathedral Daily Missal by Right Rev. Msgr. Rudolph G. Bandas
Things to Do:

• Discuss the idea of forgiveness with your children — emphasizing with today's Gospel that Christ's forgiveness is limitless to those who humbly repent of their offenses against Him. Ask them ways in which they practice this virtue every day, with their sisters and brothers, with their parents, and with their friends.
• Throughout this fourth week of Lent, often the time when children begin to lose focus or weary of this penitential season, give them something tangible to work on, such as a Lenten Scrapbook, an ongoing activity that will engage their minds and stretch their creativity in putting their faith into pictures.

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St. Photina
St. Photina was that Samaritan woman whom our Lord met at Jacob’s Well. When He disclosed the secret of her profligate life, she believed in Him at once as that Messiah which was to come, and began spreading the Gospel among the Samaritans, converting many. Later, she and her son Josiah and her five sisters went to Carthage to preach and then to Rome. Another son, Victor, was a soldier and had already come to Emperor Nero’s attention as being a Christian. The Emperor summoned the whole family and with threats and tortures tried to force them to renounce their faith in Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, when Nero’s daughter Domnina came in contact with Photina (the Lord Himself had given her the name, meaning “resplendent” or “shining with light”), she, too, was converted. The enraged emperor had the heads of the sons and sisters cut off; Photina was held in prison for a few more weeks before being thrown into a well, where she joyously gave her soul to the Lord.
Excerpted from Orthodox America

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The Station today is in St. Lawrence's in Damaso—a church built by Pope St. Damascus in honor of the martyred deacon. It was one of the first parish churches in Rome and was rebuilt in the late 15th century by Bramante, and has since been restored several times. Pope St. Damasus' relics are beneath the altar. Today the church is part of the Cancelleria, or the chancery, and houses the Holy Father's Tribunals: the Roman Rota, Apostolic Signatura, and Apostolic Penitentiary.

The Benedictine Daughters of the Divine Will - 2011

http://www.benedictinesofdivinewill.org/  

The Benedictine Daughters of the Divine Will

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Welcome

The Benedictine Daughters of the Divine Will

are a new Catholic religious community
in the Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro, Italy.
Established in 2011, under his Excellency, Bishop Luigi Negri, the community
is devoted to living life according to the Rule of St. Benedict,
and applying the writings of the Servant of God, Luisa Picaretta within this Benedictine context.
Eucharistic Adoration
and devotion to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts of Jesus and Mary,
the glorious St. Joseph,
and spiritual childhood,
form the cornerstone of this new life,
which, in the end,
is not new at all,

for it is simply life at Nazareth,
and is all about. . .
 LOVE. 

St. Joseph: Patron saint of three popes

VATICAN INSIDER 

03/18/2012  
St. Joseph: Patron saint of three popes

http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/the-vatican/detail/articolo/san-giuseppe-saint-joseph-san-jose-papa-el-papa-pope-13596/ 

PORTRAIT OF ST. JOSEPH BY GUIDO RENI

The feast of St. Joseph, Mary’s husband, is linked to the lives of three great Popes

MICHELANGELO NASCAROME

In a letter written to his grand-daughter in April 1949, during his time as Apostolic Nuncio to Paris, Mgr. Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, defined St. Joseph as “the diplomat saint who knows when to keep quiet and speaks with moderation and always with great generosity.” This definition or rather, the main programmatic aspect that influenced the lives of Roncalli and the future John XXIII. As the Catholic Catechism (no. 2156) recalls: The patron saint provides a model of charity; the baptised person is assured of his intercession. Thus, in Roncalli and also Joseph Ratzinger, one can clearly make out characteristics of their respective patron Saints. In April 1947, Bishop Roncalli wrote to his brother: “There was never a time when St. Joseph did not listen to my prayers. Looking closely at my life, it bears similarities to his. Amongst these scribes and Pharisees – as you call them – I have the task of presenting and defending the Lord. Is that not so?”

A few years ago, Benedict XVI illustrated the experience of Christian prayer with the image of “inner silence”, recalling the figure of St. Joseph: “His, is a silence permeated by contemplation of the mystery of God, entrusting himself totally to divine will. In other words, St. Joseph’s silence is not the sign of a hollow interior, but of the fullness of faith which he carries in his heart and which guides all his thoughts and actions [...] It was from his “father” Joseph that Jesus learnt - on a human level – that strong interiority which is a condition for authentic justice, that “superior justice” He would one day teach his disciples (see Matthew 5:20).”

The Pope’s words emphasise St. Joseph the Patriarch’s main vocational identity. It would be wrong to consider Mary’s husband as a marginal presence in Christ’s educational growth. Joseph is called - together with the Mother of God – to look after and raise the Son of God, through a very personal act of obedience. It is Joseph who helps us understand to what lengths God will go to ask his creations to surrender themselves completely to His will.

The task Joseph is called to fulfil, is that of making space for God, because it is through his personal “authorisation” that the mystery of salvation can be accomplished through the incarnation of Christ. St. Joseph’s fertility is essentially his willingness to give himself up and to embrace God’s will, in its entirety. 

Another great Pope – renowned for his personal devotion to Mary - also bears St. Joseph’s name: the Blessed John Paul II.

In his writings, Pope Wojtyla often referred back to the spiritual benefits which the charisma of Carmel had given him during his vocational growth. We also know that Pope Wojtyla always carried the Brown Scapular he was consecrated with, wherever he went. But there is another, perhaps less known detail which confirms the spiritual attention that linked John Paul II to Carmelite history. On 16 October 2003, Karol Wojtyla gave his papal ring as a gift to the convent - founded by the Carmelitan Raffaele Kalinowski - in his home town Wadowice, where the Pope often used to pray. He did so in order to decorate the picture of St. Joseph, whose name he bears (Karol Józef Wojtyła was the name the Pope had been baptised with). Wojtyla recognised St. Joseph as the second patron saint of his Baptism, devotedly praying to him “every day.”

John Paul II’s papal bull reads: “[...] In the city where I was born, St. Joseph, the Patron Saint of my Baptism, bestowed his protection on the People of God in the Discalced Carmelite Church ‘on the hill’, where his painting is venerated above the high altar, the Pope wrote. “I offer the papal ring, in the 25th year of my pontificate, for a similar decoration of the painting of him who nourished the Son of God, venerated in the Carmelite Church, Wadowice. May this ring”, he added, symbol of married love, which will be placed on the hand of St. Joseph in the painting of Wadowice, remind his devotees that the Head of the Holy Family is ‘that just man of Nazareth who possesses the clear characteristics of a husband….and remained faithful to God’s call until the end….and received the same love, through whose power the Eternal Father has predestined us to be His adopted children through Jesus Christ.” (Redemptoris Custos, 1: 17-18).

“May the Discalced Carmelites, faithful custodians of the church of Wadowice, in accepting my gratitude for all that I received from the Carmelitan school of spirituality during my childhood, following the example of their Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus, contemplate in St. Joseph, the perfect model of the intimacy with Jesus and Mary, Patron of inner prayer and of tireless service to one’s brothers (see Vita, 6: 6-8 ; 32, 12). ”

l meeting with the faithful

Station at St. Paul without-the-walls

Lent: March 21st 

 Stational Church  

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Suffering Servant

Meditation - On the Compassion of Some Women of Jerusalem
A goodly number of the women of Jerusalem (not disciples of Jesus) met this saddest of funeral processions. No doubt their weeping and sobbing and loud wailing, however sincere, was not in real accord with the sorrow that was straining Jesus' heart to the breaking point-His sorrow, namely, over their refusal to accept the truth of His Messiahship and of His supreme royalty as the promised Christ and Savior. Still, the heart of Jesus was deeply affected by the sympathy of these women. Contrasted with all else that was poured into His ears, it was very acceptable and was gratefully received.

But what lastingly gives this incident its chief significance is the fact that, even here in His greatest misery, Jesus is thinking predominantly of the doom of the Holy City and its temple, now practically sealed. Evidently His heart is aching at the vision of the horrors that will soon overtake it and the whole Jewish race, for its criminal blindness to His divine credentials and its obstinate refusal to profit by His teaching and His Precious Blood. For the days are near, when the barren among the Jewish women will be called blessed; when death, sudden and terrible though it be, will seem preferable to life. Try, therefore, to look deep into Jesus' Sacred Heart in its very keen sympathy for these women, and especially for their children. For of the children here present in the procession, or carried in the arms of their mothers, many no doubt were to be witnesses and victims of the abomination of desolation coming upon Jerusalem not forty years hence (Luke 19:41-44)

Excerpted from Our Way to the Father by Leo M. Krenz, S.J.

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The Station today is at St. Paul without-the-walls. On this day the catechumens were subjected to a new examination and, if approved, were registered for Baptism. The beginning of the four Gospels was read to them, and the Creed and the Our Father was "given," or explained to them. Today's Mass has a decided Baptismal character. The joys of this day were anticipated on Laetare Sunday.

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2012-03-21#station