Category Archives: WDTPRS

EXCERPT:
By our baptism and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we can be admitted to Holy Communion. It is by our baptism that we are enabled to participate at Mass with “full, conscious, and active” participation, with what I call “active receptivity”. “Active participation” reaches its perfection in a good Holy Communion. Communion, however, is never to be isolated from the rest of our lives. Read More →

EXCERPT:
We are living in very difficult times. In wealthy countries there is a pervasive undercurrent of selfishness and self-centeredness. We live in a time when “I… me… my… mine…” permeates the common worldview. Have we come to the point also in which we as comfortable Catholics are saying, “Gimme!” in reference to the Eucharist? Of course, you say, “I now take!” need not be “Gimme!” But observe. If anything were needed today, it seems to me, is a way of underscoring even to the extent of using even dramatic physical gestures, what we believe taking/reception of the Body and Blood of the Lord really is for us. In a time when to kneel is considered lowly, then kneeling is a dramatic gesture. It is counter-cultural. It is a “sign of contradiction” in the face of “I… me… my… mine….” By kneeling my body cries out: “You…. You… Your… Your….” Read More →

EXCERPT:
Depictions of things help to illuminate our minds. A picture is, as they say, worth a thousand words. The paintings of Beato Angelico are repleat with a luminuous radiance which help to illustrate for us the mysteries they depict. Thus, they illumine also our hearts and minds, given us a grasp of something that words fail to offer. Music and painting are similar in this respect: physical things (the medium of paint and surface, the sound waves and harmonics) bring a different part of our power to apprehend to bear on the object, the affective together with the intellective. So, in his holiness of life, Beato Angelico became God’s canvass, upon which He drew (and drew forth) His virtues, His beauty, so that it could radiate into the hearts and minds of those around him. By his intercession, we ask that God will do the same for us. Read More →

EXCERPT:
Kindly pour into us, O Lord,
the dutiful love of the blessed brethren,
by which they most devotedly venerated the Mother of God
and they guided to You Your people. Read More →

In the Martyrologium Romanum on this day we find that this is the commemoration of St. Onesimus: 1. Commemoratio beati Onesimi, quem sanctus Paulus Apostolus servum fugitivium excepit et in vinculis utpote Christi in fide filium genuit, sicut ipse domino … Read More →

EXCERPT:
Our Blessed Lord during His earthly life instituted the seven sacraments we enjoy today. Knowing that we are human creatures and not angelic creatures, he gave us outward signs with these sacraments so that we could understand when the invisible and interior reality was being conferred. He thus took simple, but vastly important created things from our ordinary lives and raised them to a new sacramental reality. Even the need to tell our troubles to a friend, so common but so important for our well-being, he raised to a sacrament. The longing of a man and woman to be together, instituted as a holy union from the beginning of our race, was elevated making of the very bodies of the spouse something new and holy. The struggle at the end of life or when we are in mortal peril was taken by Christ and given back to us as a sacrament and the daily and common yet life-supporting substance oil was his vehicle for giving us grace. Read More →

EXCERPT:
Benedict asked her what she had done and she replied, “I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen. So now go off, if you can, leave me and return to your monastery.” Read More →

EXCERPT:
“These men seized her also and by repeated blows broke all her teeth. They then erected outside the city gates a pile of fagots and threatened to burn her alive if she refused to repeat after them impious words. Given, at her own request, a little freedom, she sprang quickly into the fire and was burned to death.” Read More →