2cornucopias

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”

In 06 Scripture & Theology on 2016/01/14 at 12:00 AM

What is a merciful woman like?  First of all, she is not like the morphine addict who slowly poisons herself, becoming completely unaware of the insidious and deadly effects of selfishness on the soul.

The merciful woman is one who is determined to help and support others in a kind and disinterested way.  Recognizing that her own nature is flawed, and loving God in others requires her to begin over and over again, she prays for perseverance.  Her loving heart is vigilant over the needs of others and on guard to protect those entrusted to her care as well as whomever God sends her way.  She generously goes about doing good to others wherever she sees a need, be it spiritual or material, emotional or practical.

Above all, she is a forgiving person and not only disarms by her merciful ways those who have offended her, but does so in a manner that her forgiveness leads the offender to reconsider.  The merciful woman knows that by nature it is easier for her to indulge her desires and plans rather than her duties which she at times looks at with anxiety and impatience.  She is able to be merciful because she is very aware of this natural tendency to prefer her own plans rather than be self-giving,  and thus she makes the effort to relinquish her plans and help those who have erred.  In particular, she is conscious that everything she does has repercussions, and no action is without its impact on those which whom she deals.

In particular, she is not afraid to use opportunities that arise to gently correct family members and friends when they need to be alerted to the dangers of the ways and ideas that are contrary to what is true and right.  Seek to understand others even when they seem to be unaccepting.   By being a friend can cause other to open their hearts so be prepared to help them.

Show mercy and kindness to those who are sad, dejected, ill, or lonely.  Comfort the grieving and the sorrowing.  Never act indifferently to a suffering person; rather spend time with those who need physical or spiritual consolation.  Never seek repayment or praise; that your are doing it for God in your neighbor is a rich enough reward.

We will only have mercy in our hearts when we offer mercy, when we forgive, our enemies from the example and with the help of Christ. Mercy is not simply a matter of giving alms to the poor, but also of being understanding of other people’s defects, overlooking them, helping them not only to cope with them but to love them despite whatever defects they may have. Mercy  suffers and rejoices with others.

Your love of God can be measured by the way you treat those who need help.  Follow Jesus’ example who was always motivated by mercy and always acted out of mercy.  Lead others to turn to Our Lord and His Blessed Mother for solace, peace, and mercy.

 

 

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Baptism of the Lord

In 05 Homilies by Fr. Reid on 2016/01/14 at 12:00 AM

 

 On our baptismal font is an inscription in mosaic that reads: Here a people of godly race are born of heaven; the Spirit gives them life in the fertile waters.
 This is part of a longer quote that Pope Sixtus III had inscribed in the baptistery of St. John Lateran, the mother Church of all Christendom, that continues: The Church-Mother, in these waves, bears her children like virginal fruit she has conceived by the Holy Spirit. Hope for the kingdom of heaven, you who are reborn in this spring, for those who are born but once have no share in the life of blessedness. Here is to be found the source of life, which washes the whole universe, which gushed from the wound of Christ. Sinner , plung e into the sacred f ountain to w ash a w a y y our sin. The w ater receiv es the old man, and in his place makes
the new man rise. Y ou wish to become innocent; cleanse y ourself in this ba th, w ha tev er y our b urden ma y be, Adam’s sin or your own. There is no difference between those who are reborn; they are one, in a single baptism, a single Spirit, a single faith. Let none be afraid of the number of the weight of their sins: those who are born of this stream will be made holy.
 Remarkable, isn’t it? In baptism we are reborn to new life; we are prepared for Heaven! Whatever sins we may enter with into the baptismal font are washed away so that we may become like Christ Himself! It is to this remarkable sacrament that we turn our eyes today.
 Throughout the course of every Christmas Season, we celebrate the very mysterious fact that some 2000 years ago, God became man and dwelt among us.
 While His birth in the obscurity of a stable in the backwater town of Bethlehem may seem counterintuitive for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, we know by faith that simply in choosing to be born for us, God chose to be known by us (St. Peter Chrysologus).
 The invisible and infinite Lord became visible, and we have seen His glory, the glory of the Father’s only begotten Son, full of grace and truth.
 And so it was that his earliest visitors were not only shepherds and farm animals, but also 3 kings from the East who, through the guidance of a wondrous star, came to adore Him and present Him with gifts befitting His sovereignty: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
 In this rather strange and astonishing event in the early life of Jesus, which we celebrated last Sunday with the Feast of the Epiphany, we recalled how God’s hidden presence as a tiny babe born to the Virgin Mary was made manifest to the whole world!
 Today, we celebrate a further manifestation of Christ’s divinity as He is baptized in the Jordan River by St. John the Baptist.
 For today we hear God the Father Himself attest to Jesus’ divinity as He says from Heaven: “You are my beloved Son; with You I am well pleased.”
 And Jesus’ divinity is made manifest to us not simply to show us that God desired to be one of us. Our Lord’s divinity is made manifest to us so that we might know for certain Who He Is and become like Him! And becoming like Christ begins in baptism.
 Just as a dove came to Noah in the ark, announcing that the flood waters washing away the sins of humanity had receded from the earth, so too now in Christ’s baptism do we witness another dove, the Holy Spirit, announcing that man’s shipwreck has come to an end (cf. Peter Chrysologus)!
 As water was the means for purifying the earth in the days of Noah, through the baptism of our Lord, water becomes once again the means of washing away humanity’s sins so that a new and eternal covenant with God can be formed.
 Though He was in no need of the healing and regenerative power of baptism, by being baptized Jesus shows us the way to eternal life! And as we step into those healing waters imbued with the power of the Holy Spirit, we enter into a life-giving covenant with our Lord.
 Throughout the course of the Old Testament we read time and time again of how our Lord formed covenants with His chosen people, the Israelites. And we read time and time again of how those covenants were broken through the sins of the Israelites.
 The Old Testament history of the Israelites is a story of promises made between God and man, and of those promises sadly and selfishly broken by man. It is a story of sin and its consequences, of mercy and redemption.
 Through it all, through all the terrible sins and infidelities of the Israelites, we see the constant willingness of God to take them back and to renew His covenant of love with them.
 Truly, their history is our history.
 For in Christ’s death and resurrection, a new and eternal covenant was formed with man, a covenant that we enter through the Sacrament of Baptism. Thus, our baptism is the inauguration of our relationship with Christ, opening to us a life of sanctifying grace.
 Through the grace of this sacrament and all the other sacraments, we are given everything we need to grow in a life of genuine holiness – for that is our call as Christians!
 To profess and practice the Christian faith, which begins with our baptism, is a vocation to holiness. So everyone who has been baptized is called to holiness; we are called to be saints!
 As St. Paul wrote to St. Titus in our second reading today, God’s grace is given to us so that we might “reject godless ways and worldly desires, and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age.”
 Through the “bath of rebirth,” we have been cleansed and saved, so that we might be God’s own people, “eager to do what is good.”
 And we are called to be saintly not simply for our own salvation, but that we might be “a light for the nations,” that we might “open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.”
 Indeed, holiness is never a gift solely for the one who is holy. Holiness is meant to be shared. We must be willing to encourage others to a life of holiness by living saintly lives.
 So, my dear brothers and sisters, as we delve into this new year with all sorts of resolutions, let us make the resolution to be a saint! In our baptism we were given the gifts of faith, hope, and charity. We were made members of the Body of Christ, and so we are His co-heirs: sons and daughters of God the Father with Jesus!
 Calling upon the graces of our baptism that are strengthened and renewed through our worthy reception of the sacraments, may we live our baptismal promise of obedience to the Lord well so that we may indeed be saints.
 And in choosing to be saints, may we each be another manifestation of Christ in the world!
13 January 2013 © Reverend Timothy Reid Fr. Reid is the pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church, Charlotte, NC Homilies from June 17, 2012 onward have audio. To enable the audio, lease go directly to Fr. Reid’s homily homilies and select the matching date. Link to Homilies: http://stanncharlotte.org/content/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&id=8&Itemid=61

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Fisher of Men

In 12 Converts on 2016/01/14 at 12:00 AM

By Mark Judge

Fr. C. John McCloskey recently returned home to Washington, D.C. to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his priesthood. A somewhat shy man, McCloskey has been responsible for many conversions to the Catholic Church, including Judge Robert Bork, Newt Gingrich, Lawrence Kudlow and Dr. Bernard Nathanson. (Before his conversion, Nathanson had been a NARAL founder and abortionist who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of babies.)

A few years ago, McCloskey was assigned by his order, Opus Dei, to Chicago. So he was only back for a visit. He has been missed. Many of us are still wondering what he is doing in Chicago.

Fr. C. John, as he is known by his many friends, is partly responsible for me being a somewhat free man. Although I had heard about him for years prior, I met Fr. McCloskey about ten years ago. I had just finished my book Damn Senators (2003), about my grandfather who was a baseball player for the Washington Senators. I had also reverted to Catholicism a few years before the book came out.

I came across Fr. McCloskey the way I suspect many people at the time did — by accidentally stumbling across the Catholic Information Center, where he was the director. The CIC is a book store and small chapel that sits between a bank and a fitness club on K street, about two blocks from the White House in one direction and the Washington Post in the other.

It’s easy to walk past it and not even know it’s there. K street is a clean, broad avenue where lobbyists work and where one tends to focus the eyes forward. Unless looking directly at the store — where a life sized cutout of Pope Benedict XVI greets visitors — it’s easy to miss.

When I first came into the CIC, I knew I had found the equivalent of the medieval monasteries where culture was preserved during the Dark Ages. The bookstore is filled with titles from Fr. McCloskey’s “Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan,” volumes of timeless wisdom from Teresa of Avila, Chesterton, and Dietrich von Hildebrand.

I walked into Fr. McCloskey’s office and introduced myself. Within minutes were talking like old friends and wondering how we had missed meeting each other growing up in D.C. The priest who baptized me? Fr. C. John had graduated with him at seminary. A famous actor who was making a movie about Jesus? Father had just talked to him. My grandfather was a baseball player? Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn was a friend.

I began to read some of the books on Fr. McCloskey’s reading plan. The effect was intoxicating. Reading Chesterton, Dorothy Day, John Paul II and other brilliant theologians and philosophers, I began to understand the concept of what George Weigel calls “genuine freedom.” In the modern age, freedom has come to mean freedom to choose where you live, what you guy, who you marry, and what your philosophy about life is. But this kind of freedom can become a trap that actually decreases our freedom.

Freedom to be sexually promiscuous is not a real type of freedom. Neither is freedom to consume. Last year I bought a new imac computer and itouch, and within weeks I was getting emails from Apple telling me about the “next generation” imacs and ipods that were soon coming out. Being a slave to the next new gadget is not being free. Genuine freedom involves growing in virtue by making wise decisions based on faith, reason and conscience.

I also began to meet a lot of D.C. Catholics. Fr. C. John is one of the great networking facilitators of all time.

Pope John Paul II said it took him years to learn how to listen well. Fr. C. John often emphasizes the importance of simply listening. This no doubt is one of the primary reasons he has been responsible for so many conversions. At his 30th anniversary party, he told me that during a conversion he just waits and listens. God provides the grace.

This is not to suggest that Fr. C. John is a stoic. He is a wonderful conversationalist and has a strong will. My first book signing at the Catholic Information Center was in 2003, when my book Damn Senators came out. Fr. McCloskey introduced me, and I still remember the first thing he said: “The Catholic Information Center is a place of Catholic prayer and study and fellowship, and Damn Senators is a book about baseball. But I am the director here, so I dictate the policy.” It was said with a smile, and got a laugh.

I wrote earlier in this piece that Fr. McCloskey was responsible for me being a “partly” free man. As he knows, none of us are truly and fully free until our restless heart rest in God. But Fr. C. John has helped countless pilgrims make that journey to ultimate truth and love more compelling, rewarding — and fun!

Mark Judge is a columnist for RealClearReligion and author, most recently, of A Tremor of Bliss: Sex, Catholicism, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Reprinted with permission….©CatholiCity Service http://www.catholicity.com

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