(Vatican Radio) In the first decree of a liturgical nature of this pontificate, Pope Francis has decided that name of St. Joseph should be added to the Eucharistic Prayers II, II and IV, as they appear in the third typical edition of the Roman Missal, after the name of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Below please find the text of the decree issued Wednesday by the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments.

Exercising his paternal care over Jesus, Saint Joseph of Nazareth, set over the Lord’s family, marvelously fulfilled the office he received by grace. Adhering firmly to the mystery of God’s design of salvation in its very beginnings, he stands as an exemplary model of the kindness and humility that the Christian faith raises to a great destiny, and demonstrates the ordinary and simple virtues necessary for men to be good and genuine followers of Christ. Through these virtues, this Just man, caring most lovingly for the Mother of God and happily dedicating himself to the upbringing of Jesus Christ, was placed as guardian over God the Father’s most precious treasures. Therefore he has been the subject of assiduous devotion on the part of the People of God throughout the centuries, as the support of that mystical body, which is the Church.

Read More: http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-adds-name-of-st-joseph-to-eucharistic-prayers

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St. John Paul II? Reliable Reports Affirm Second Miracle, Canonization This Year

By Catholic Online

VATICAN CITY (Catholic Online) – Reliable, but unnamed, sources confirmed on Tuesday, June 18, 2013, that the Board of theologians of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints have attributed a second miracle to the intercession of Blessed John Paul II.

The nature of the miracle is a closely guarded secret but reports are that it will, “amaze the world”.

This would be the awaited confirmation of the second miracle which is needed for canonization. The first miracle was the recovery of a French nun, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, from Parkinson\’s disease. It was confirmed and led to the beatification of John Paul II on May 1, 2011.

Though there is no official confirmation, the same reports indicate that the canonization of Blessed John Paul II will occur in October of 2013, near the 35th anniversary of his election to the Chair of Peter. Blessed John Paul II went home to the Lord in 2005 at the age of 84.

On October 22, the Catholic Church in the United States commemorates the Memorial Feast of Blessed John Paul II. The priest presiding at Holy Mass prays during the Collect at our Liturgy, this prayer “O God, who are rich in mercy and who willed that the blessed John Paul the Second should preside as Pope over your universal Church, grant, we pray, that instructed by his teaching, we may open our hearts to the saving grace of Christ, the sole Redeemer of mankind.”

This date was chosen to memorialize Pope John Paul’s inauguration as Pope, the successor of the Apostle Peter, on October 22, 1978. I vividly remember that day, when a young, vibrant Polish Pope stepped out on to the balcony in St. Peters Square and signaled his mission:

“Be Not Afraid! Open up, no; swing wide the gates to Christ. Open up to his saving power the confines of the State, open up economic and political systems, the vast empires of culture, civilization and development. Be not afraid!”  That homily is included in the Office of Readings for this new memorial, in the Liturgy of the Hours, or breviary.

Along with Bishops conferences throughout the world, the Bishops of the United States sought approval to celebrate this Feast and it was granted. That request clearly reflected the sense of the faithful throughout the whole world.

Blessed John Paul’s magisterium (teaching office) set a framework for what has become under his successors, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Pope Francis,  a new missionary age of the Catholic Church throughout the entire world.

I was privileged to participate in writing a tribute to this marvelous Pope who took the names of his predecessors, to show his own commitment to such continuity.It is offered on Catholic Online. http://www.catholic.org/pope/jp2/

From the moment he stepped out on that balcony, he demonstrated a courageous and heroic faith which did not fear the world but entered into it to continue the loving work of the Savior who came to redeem and transform it from within.

Blessed John Paul II reasserted that the vital mission of the Church is to engage and transform all of human culture, including the arts, politics, the academy, and economic and political realm – because no area of human experience is off-limits to the influence of the Gospel and the Church.

He continually, in word and in deed, called all men and women to the Redeemer, Jesus Christ. He reminded us all that only in Jesus Christ can we discover the purpose and fulfillment of human life. He proclaimed that human existence itself is an invitation to communion with God and with one another.

He told an age bent on ‘self fulfillment’ that true human fulfillment only comes from giving ourselves in love to God and to one another. He called us to live a unity of life, wherein the implications of the Christian faith inform the entirety of life with no contradiction or separation.

He confronted, exposed and opposed the culture of death, wherein the human person is treated as an instrument to be used rather than an unrepeatable gift to be received. He proposed a different way, building a new culture of life where every human person, at every age and stage, is recognized as having an inviolable dignity and right to life, freedom and love.

He charted a path to peace and solidarity, proclaiming to all the nations that we are all our brothers’ keeper and that we owe an obligation in solidarity to one another and, most especially, to the poor in all of their manifestations. He wrote of authentic freedom as a freedom for and not just a freedom from, a freedom whose exercise must be bounded by truth and lived in accordance with the moral understanding of our obligation to choose to do what is right.

He also exposed in his monumental Encyclical, The Gospel of Life, a counterfeit notion of freedom as a raw power over others. This lies at the root of the Culture of Death. And, as he so aptly proclaimed, procured abortion is only its cutting edge.

He countered a false notion of the autonomy of the individual as the measure of a freedom to do whatever one wants by insisting that the path to human flourishing is communion and solidarity. He repeatedly reminded us that true freedom must be exercised with reference choosing what is true – and what is good – lest it become a counterfeit, an abuse of freedom, leading to the slavery of sin.

He proclaimed a new and true humanism, reaffirming that we were created in the Image of God and called to love as God loved. We are being re-created, in Jesus Christ. We Love Incarante in Jesus Christ in whom the Father is revealed and man is revealed in his most high calling.

He insisted that through properly applying the treasury of the authentic social teaching of the Catholic Church – in our relationships with one another, in our families, in our societies, our nations and in the global community – authentic justice and freedom can actually be achieved.

Entrusted for twenty six years with serving the Church and the world from the Chair of Peter, Blessed John Paul II was a prophetic Pope in both word and deed. From his first encyclical letter entitled The Redeemer of Man”to his last, the Church of the Eucharist he proclaimed the splendor of truth. His profound Encyclical Letter on the Moral Life, bears than name. In it he laid the groundwork for what continues in a renewal of Moral Theology in the Catholic Church and beyond.

He called for reconciliation among separated Christians in his powerful encyclical letter “May They Be One” and proposed for a model of full communion with the Church which helped lay the groundwork for the creation of Anglican Ordinariates under His Holiness Benedict XVI.

With deep love for what one of his letters called the Light of the East  he helped Eastern and Western Christianity to rediscover their dependence upon one another in order that the entire Body of Christ might once again breathe with “two lungs” and present the whole Jesus Christ to a world that needs to be liberated.

On April 2, 2005 at 9:37 p.m. Blessed John Paul II died in the Lord while the whole world watched, prayed and wept. Almost immediately upon his passing throngs of the faithful gathered in St Peters Square and began a chant which continues in the hearts of millions throughout the world “Santo Subito”, Sainthood Now!

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI signed a decree recognizing the late Pope John Paul II’s life of heroic virtue on December 19, 2009 and the late Pope was given the title of Venerable. In April of 2009 Pope Benedict XVI, told Pilgrims gathered in Rome “With you, I pray for the gift of beatification”.  That prayer was answered.

On Friday, January 14, 2011 the Holy See released the “Decree for the Beatification of the Servant of God John Paul II”. Sunday, January 16, 2011, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, announced “On 1 May I will have the joy of proclaiming the Venerable Pope John Paul II, my predecessor, as a blessed. The date chosen is very significant because it will, in fact, be the second Sunday of Easter which he himself dedicated to Divine Mercy and on the eve of which his earthly life came to an end. Those who knew him, those who respected and loved him cannot but share in the Church’s joy at this event.”

In the last ten centuries of Church history no Pope has beatified his predecessor. From the beginning of Pope Benedict’s pontificate it had been clear that he longed for this day. On April 3, 2011 at another Angelus, he told the faithful who gathered of his memories of the late John Paul II, “I remember him in prayer with affection as I think of you all. While we journey through Lent and prepare for the feast of Easter, we come with joy to the day when we will also venerate as a saint this great pope and witness of Christ, and rely even more on his intercession.”

The choice of the Feast of Divine Mercy, May 1, 2011 for the beatification of Blessed John Paul II was intentional. Pope John Paul II had a deep devotion to his fellow Pole Sr. Faustina Kowalska and to the Divine Mercy devotion identified with her. In August 2002, in Lagiewniki, Poland where Sr. Faustina lived and died, John Paul II entrusted the entire world “to Divine Mercy, to the unlimited trust in God the Merciful.”

The Decree of Beatification noted, “Since the beginning of his pontificate, in 1978, John Paul II often spoke in his homilies of the mercy of God. This became the theme of his second encyclical, Rich in Mercy, in 1980. He was aware that modern culture and its language do not have a place for mercy, treating it as something strange; they try to inscribe everything in the categories of justice and law. But this does not suffice, for it is not what the reality of God is about.”

Blessed John Paul II was a man so filled with Jesus Christ that, like the Apostle Paul, he no longer lived but “Christ lived in him.” (Galatians 2) The sentiment of the faithful expressed on the day on which his body was processed through the streets of Rome, Santo Subito has echoed as the Church has discerned the cause of his canonization.

He was raised to the Altar on the Feast of Divine Mercy and the faithful now call him “Blessed John Paul II.” Now, the final step to his canonization, an attested second miracle, has reportedly been confirmed.

In an interview with the ZENIT news service in 2011, Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the postulator for the cause of the late Pope was asked whether other miracles were revealed during the process. He replied:

“There were so many graces and also alleged miracles. Some were examined more in-depth, because this is the practice. Before carrying out a study on a miracle, a prior study is done which in some way guarantees the process itself. In some cases we did further studies and the preliminary statements were good, but we did not continue to study them because the study on the miracle that had been chose was already under way.”

He was asked a follow up question “Can you tell us in what countries these miracles happened?” Monsignor Oder replied “They were verified in France, in the United States, in Germany and in Italy.” The postulator expressed what impressed him most about the inquiry into the life and ministry of the late Pope, “The aspect that amazed me, which also happens to be the most important aspect of his life, was the discovery that the source and origin of his extraordinary activity, of his generosity in acting, of the depth of his thought, was his relationship with Christ.”

“What came to light was certainly a mystic. A mystic in the sense that he was a man who lived in the presence of God, who let himself be guided by the Holy Spirit, who was in constant dialogue with the Lord, who built his whole life around the question [asked to Peter]: “Do you love me?” His life was the answer to this essential question posed by the Lord. I think this aspect is the greatest treasure of the process.”

We will soon affirm what the multiplying miracles attributed to his continued intercession confirm – and his extraordinary witness in life and death so beautifully demonstrated – Blessed John Paul II is a Saint.

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TOULOUSE, France (AFP) –  Flash floods in southwestern France killed an elderly woman as the inundated grotto at the Roman Catholic pilgrimage site of Lourdes remained closed for a second day on Wednesday.

The woman in her 70s was washed away overnight by the floodwaters after getting out of her submerged car at Saint Beat near Lourdes, the local prefecture said in a statement. Her husband was rescued by firefighters.

About 2,000 people in the region were evacuated, some of them by helicopter. A bridge at Saint-Laurent-de-Neste was washed away by a tributary of the Garonne river.

The shrine at Lourdes, where the Virgin Mary reportedly appeared to a peasant girl in 1858 and whose water many believe has curative powers, remained closed on Wednesday.

Tourists in the town were relocated from hotels bordering the Gave de Pau to an area on higher ground.

On Tuesday afternoon, there was already 1.40 metres (4.5 feet) of water in the Lourdes cave and the Gave de Pau river nearby was 3.50 metres above its normal level.

The French interior and ecology ministers were due to visit Lourdes later Wednesday to assess the damage in the area, home to 22 shrines.

By Catholic Online

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic online) – Father Heilman was in need of finding a better way to tend to the needs of his 800-family flock. After 25 years in the ministry, Heilman believes Catholics could do with a bit more priest-and-me time, at least once a month.

“Maybe more often if you’re dealing with repetitive sin,” Heilman told reporters. “A lot of us aren’t in a state of grace and confessions help that grace flow freely.”

One of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, confession usually occurs in an enclosed booth where priest and parishioner can chat through a lattice to keep anonymity. After the repentant list out their sins, the priest offers forgiveness and suggests a penance.

However, the number of Catholic priests in America has declined over the years. Heilman, in charge of three Madison-area parishes, with five Masses to recite every weekend, says that by factoring in baptisms, weddings and funerals, you’ve got one very busy priest.

“It’s challenging sometimes for priests to find time for confession because they have work to do,” Heilman said. “And parishioners are trying to go easy on Father because they see us trying to handle multiple things.”

Scheduling an appointment for confession takes away the veil of anonymity. “We don’t want this to be awkward or embarrassing,” Heilman said.

The My Confessor app is very simple. A red status box means “Father is OUT.” A green status box means “Father is IN.” Priests also have a special log in that lets them easily update their statuses and even post messages, according to app developer Mary Hoerr.

The app has a section explaining the sacrament of confession, as well as another place where users can read priests’ bios.

The only priest on the app for now, Heilman has been paying all the development costs out of his own pocket. But he says several other priests have reached out and asked to get involved. The app currently serves people in the Madison area. Heilman see the app going national.

He envisions an app that has a Google map with markers that point out where the nearest priest is. So if you’re driving by and you realize that there’s a burden on your back that you need to unload, users of My Confessor will know exactly where to go.

“I want people to not feel uncomfortable asking about confession,” Heilman said. “We want everybody ignited in the Holy Spirit.”

© 2013, Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

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In Imitation of St. Joseph, Model of Fathers of Families

By Catholic Online

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) – It may be said that fatherhood is the vocation of all men.  Though “Father’s Day” focuses on the fathers of human families, fatherhood itself is a broader concept.  Fatherhood is, in fact, a highly analogical word.  That is one reason the term can be applied to God the Father, from whom all fatherhood, in heaven and on earth, is named.  (Cf. Eph. 3:14-15)

Fatherhood is a relationship that is much more than biological fatherhood.  We understand that when we commonly acknowledge St. Joseph to be a father to Jesus, though he was not his biological father.  As Pope Benedict XVI noted in 2009, St. Joseph “is not the biological father of Jesus, whose Father is God alone, and yet he lives his fatherhood fully and completely.”

In this article, we will focus on the qualities of St. Joseph, who is often called the Umbra Patris, the “Shadow of God the Father,” to try to understand the characteristics of human fatherhood which find their origin in God and the Father, and which are honored by Americans on this day.

Drawing from the traditional Litany of St. Joseph and the writing of the Popes on St. Joseph, we hope to sketch some of the virtues of human fatherhood.  As Leo XIII said in his encyclical on St. Joseph Quamquam pluries (No. 4), “Fathers of families find in Joseph the best personification of paternal solicitude and vigilance.”  This was confirmed by Blessed John Paul II, who in a meditation on St. Joseph, observed that St. Joseph is “a perfect incarnation of fatherhood in the human and at the same time holy family.”

A father acts justly.  Justice is one of the four cardinal virtues which every father must nourish and practice.  A father treats those with whom he comes in contact, in particular those who are members of his household with justice.  St. Joseph, the Scriptures say, was a “just man” (Matt. 1:9), and so sought a way to handle Mary’s “‘astonishing’ motherhood” with justice.  (JP II, Redemptoris custos, No. 3)  While just, St. Joseph was also open to the equities of mercy.  He was also aware that, in applying justice, the just man must consider all extenuating circumstances, even the most unexpected circumstance of Mary’s conception by the Holy Spirit.

A father is chaste.  We call St. Joseph “the most chaste spouse” for a reason, and he exhibited heroic chastity.  However, all men are called to chaste living.  Chastity in marriage means, above all, conjugal fidelity to one’s wife.  More broadly, however, it means also rigorous conformity with the Church’s teaching of human sexuality, including rejection of the modern ills of unnatural sex, artificial contraception, and pornography, as these are destructive of the marital relationship and the family and are intrinsically anti-life and so unbefitting to a virtuous man.  This purity is spiritually required, as only the pure in heart shall see God.  (Matt. 5:8)

A father exercises prudence.  St. Joseph, we pray in the Roman Missal at the Preface for the Solemnity of his feast, was placed “at the head of his family, as a faithful and prudent servant.”  Prudence, which might be defined as “right reason in action,” is called by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bernard of Clairvaux the auriga virtutum or charioteer of virtues.  It is a habitual disposition to dispose “practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it.”  CCC § 1806.  For its proper exercise, it obviously requires maturity, discipline, obedience to the natural moral law, and openness to God.

A father exhibits strength.  The strength exhibited by a father is not necessarily physical strength, but moral and spiritual strength, that is, the internal power, force, vigor, and moral stamina of human character required to do right when difficult and avoid evil when temptation beckons.  In short, a father has the virtues of fortitude, the strength to do good in adversity, and temperance, the strength to avoid evil when tempted.

A father is obedient to God and to his family.  Obedience to God, is, of course, essential to any human life.  There is also a sort of obedience that a father owes his family.  Though the father is the head of his family (Eph. 5:21-25), it is important to recall that such authority is ordered to giving one’s self up for the benefit of the body, as Christ to the Church.  Obedience to this duty gives rise to the subjection by the father of his own good for that of his wife and family.  He gives of himself in an act of “complete self-sacrifice,” like St. Joseph, who gave to Mary “a husband’s ‘gift of self,’” without reserve.  (Redemptoris custos, No. 20).

A father is faithful to God and to his family.  Joseph remained faithful to God, and scrupulously complied with all his religious and familial obligations.  As Pope John Paul II put it: “In the course of that pilgrimage of faith which was his life, Joseph . . . remained faithful to God’s call until the end.”  Fidelity, along with offspring and the sacrament, is, of course, one of the goods of marriage, and the father will honor that with all the strength of his being.  He has promised that fidelity until death parts him and his wife, and he abides by such promise with great fidelity.

A father is patient.  Here, we might do no better than quote Fr. Francis Xavier Lasance and his book on Patience: “The patience of St. Joseph was tried by a series of tribulations, and in the midst of it all, Joseph was calm and re­signed. He understood that tribulations are the crucible in which God purifies the virtue of those whom He loves, that the way of the cross is the only one which leads to heaven, that all the just must pass along it, and that Jesus never visits a soul without taking His cross with Him.”

A father loves poverty.  Things, things, things will not be at the forefront of a father, who will reject consumerism and materialism.  Fired by the “bond of charity,” a bond cemented by love of God and of his family, a father will have spiritual poverty, and so imitate the Holy Family’s “poverty of Bethlehem, then in their exile in Egypt, and later in the house of Nazareth.”  (Redemptoris custos, No. 21).  St. Joseph shows us that material wealth is not life’s end; rather, material wealth is to support the spiritual part of man.  “Joseph, content with his slight possessions, bore the trials consequent on a fortune so slender.”  (Quamquam pluries, No. 4).

A father works.  What Blessed John Paul II said of St. Joseph should be said of all fathers: “He is a man of work.”  “Work,” for the father, is “the daily expression of love.”  Whether one is a carpenter, as was St. Joseph, or a financier, or anything in between, the value of hard work, of labor, of its role as a “human good which transforms nature and makes man in a sense more human,” will be recognized.  (Redemptoris custos, No. 22.)

A father glorifies in home life.  A father will see home life as the life of the “domestic church,” as Vatican II’s Lumen gentium wonderfully put it.  Indeed, here also, a father can imitate St. Joseph, who, as custodian of the “divine house which [he] ruled with the authority of a father, contained within its limits the scarce-born Church.”  (LXIII, Quamquam pluries, No. 3)  It is this, indeed, which makes St. Joseph the patron of the universal Church.

A father guards virginity.  In his encyclical on St. Joseph, Pope Leo XIII described St. Joseph as “the model and protector of virginal integrity.”  (LXIII, Quamquam pluries, No. 3)  By his example, and by his custody, St. Joseph, the most chaste spouse, guarded and protected his own virginity and the virginity of Mary and of Jesus.  Through his example, we learn that virginity is a great good, not because marriage or properly-ordered sex is evil, but because it is a voluntary giving up of a great good for an even greater good.

A father is the pillar of the human family.  Nothing in the family will occur without his being present.  He will gives solace to those who suffer in the family.  He will offer hope and care to those who are ill.  He will love those in his charge unto death.

A father provides his family with physical sustenance.  Like St. Joseph, who “regularly by his work . . . earned what was necessary . . . for nourishment and clothing,” a father will provide for the physical needs of his family.  (LXII,Quamquam pluries, No. 3)  A father who, though capable, fails to provide for his family, is “worse than an infidel,” as one translation of St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy put it.  (1 Tim. 5:8).

A father provides his family with spiritual sustenance.  Like St. Joseph, a father should develop a “deep spiritual closeness arising from marital union and the interpersonal contact between man and woman,” one that has its “definitive origin in the Spirit, the Giver of Life.”  (Redemptoris custos, No. 19).  Like St. Joseph, a father should listen to God’s direction.  He must develop a sense of silence and learn the art of contemplation.  “In the silence of daily events,” Pope Francis said recently in a catechetical address on the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, “St. Joseph, together with Mary,” had “one common center of attention: Jesus.”  St. Joseph learned to contemplate God, which is to recognize the Lord’s “constant presence in our lives,” together with the ability to “stop and converse” with the Lord, and “give him space in prayer.”

—–

Andrew M. Greenwell is an attorney licensed to practice law in Texas, practicing in Corpus Christi, Texas.  He is married with three children.  He maintains a blog entirely devoted to the natural law called Lex Christianorum.  You can contact Andrew at agreenwell@harris-greenwell.com.

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The CD’s heavenly sounds continue to mesmerize listeners

Atlanta, GA, June 13, 2013 – ANGELS AND SAINTS AT EPHESUS from the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles is No. 1 on Billboard magazine’s Classical Traditional Music Chart for the fifth straight week. The sacred CD from the Missouri-based nuns also earned the No. 11 spot on Billboard’s Overall Classical Music Chart.

ANGELS AND SAINTS AT EPHESUS once again topped a group of classical albums that includes Fifty Shades of Grey: The Classical Album and Downton Abbey: The Essential Collection.

In addition to the CD, the album is available as a digital download for all devices at a variety of online retailers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the iTunes Store.

“To have the music of the Benedictines of Mary topping Billboard’s Classical Traditional Chart is nothing short of miraculous,” said Monica Fitzgibbons, cofounder of De Montfort Music. “Their music is making its way into the hearts and homes of many who have repeatedly related experiences of peace and beauty resulting from time spent listening. What a gift the Sisters are to the world.”

De Montfort enlisted nine-time International Grammy® winning producer Christopher Alder, who hails from Germany, and two-time Grammy® winning engineer Mark Donahue to record and capture the Sisters in their contemplative environment singing all of ANGELS AND SAINTS AT EPHESUS.

The Sisters’ debut album, ADVENT AT EPHESUS, with De Montfort Music/Decca, remained on Billboard magazine’s Classical Traditional Music Chart this week, coming in at No. 10.

Order the album here!

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The Mystical Marriage of Mary with God

By Deacon Antonio Sandoval

There are three stages in Christian spiritual life:  the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive stages.  In the purgative stage the Christian believer strives for moral purification, so as to break his attachment with everything sinful and to discipline himself to desire only what is good.  In the illuminative stage the Christian believer strives, with the grace of God, to perceive and live in the world by the light of Christ.  In the unitive stage the Christian believer rests in the presence of God with an ardent openness to receive the gift of union with God.  “The term mystical marriage is employed by St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross to designate that mystical union with God which is the most exalted condition attainable by the soul in this life.” It is also called a transforming union, consummate union, and deification“. (www.newadvent.org).

As we have mentioned before in a previous article, God is neither male nor female, neither masculine nor feminine.  These categories apply only to some physical creatures (Masculine and Feminine By Deacon Antonio Sandoval).  Therefore, a mystical marriage of a Christian contemplative with God has nothing to do with gender.  It resembles a human marriage in that lover and beloved love each other with agape love, that is, they give the gift of self to each other, and the two, while remaining personally distinct, become one.  (This, ideally, is also the goal of spouses in Christian marriage.)

In mystical marriages of Christian believers with God, the believers freely choose to accept God’s will in its totality.  They desire to will only what God wills, and in as much as a creature is capable, to love as God loves.  They are guided in their actions by the Spirit of God.  You could say that they choose to be willing and docile instruments in the hands of God.  They use all their powers to fully cooperate with God’s designs for them.

This was the case with the Blessed Virgin Mary, “the handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1: 38). She has always had a mystical marriage with God from the moment of her conception.  She is the faithful spouse of the Holy Spirit.  Her will is, and always will be, in perfect unity with the will of God.  But Mary didn’t have to experience the purgative stage in her spiritual journey.  Because she is the Immaculate Conception and has always been full of grace; she was always morally pure from both Original and personal sin, and perfectly illumined by the Light of Christ.  Her spiritual progress consisted in going from a state of fullness of grace to an even greater state of fullness of grace in her union with God.

“Furthermore many Fathers and Doctors of the Church have seen the woman announced in the Protoevangelium (Genesis 3: 15) as Mary, the mother of Christ, the New Eve” (Catechism of the Catholic Church #411).  She is the spiritual mother of all the children of the New Creation redeemed by Christ, the New Adam, and joined to his Mystical Body.  We receive all the graces gained for us by Christ through her.  (Didn’t Christ himself come to us through her?)  Just as in the Old Creation we received our human life through Eve, so in the New Creation we receive our spiritual life from God through Mary.

Mary, the mystical spouse of God and the very best of mothers, desires the very best for her children, namely, our union with God.  Rather than detracting from our relationship with God, she facilitates it.  This is why devotion to Mary is the most direct way to the heart of God.

Read more from Deacon Antonio here

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Pope visits with sick children

news.va - A message of love and hope: this is what Pope Francis had for a group of children, who are patients at the pediatric oncology ward of the famed Agostino Gemelli hospital here in Rome. “Jesus loves [you] very much,” Pope Francis told the 22 boys and girls, who came to visit him in the Domus Sanctae Marthae residence. After a “Hail, Mary!” prayed together, Pope Francis offered his blessing, which, he explained, is “like a hug from God.” The children were accompanied by their parents and by volunteers of UNITALSI, the organisation that offers care and transport to the ill and those with special needs.

Read More: http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-receives-sick-children

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Illinois Same-Sex Marriage Bill Provides Worst Religious Liberty Protections in U.S.

Thomas More Society Cites Grave Bipartisan Concerns
May 30, 2013 (SPRINGFIELD, IL) Yesterday, Thomas More Society attorneys issued a letter to members of the Illinois House of Representatives warning that Illinois’ pending same-sex marriage bill (SB 10) provides a disaster for religious liberty, no matter which side of the same-sex marriage debate that one supports.
The letter states: “Law professors on both sides of the marriage issue agree that Senate Bill 10 provides the worst religious liberty protections of any same-sex marriage bill in the country.”

The letter highlights that other states which have legalized same-sex marriage, such as Connecticut, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, and Washington, have recognized the importance of protecting religious liberty and have added specific language in their respective same-sex marriage bills to protect “services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges…related to the solemnization of a marriage.”

The letter warns that, should the current same-sex marriage bill be voted into law, Illinois’ religious hospitals, religious schools, organizations such as the Knights of Columbus, and businesses owned by people of faith would face an onslaught of court battles: “SB 10 will force religious people and organizations into years of legal fights, likely against the Illinois government, to defend their rights to practice their faith.”

“SB 10 would make Illinois the most hostile state in the country to the religious freedoms of people of faith,” said Peter Breen, vice president and senior counsel of the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm. “SB 10 would generate years of litigation and cause those who faithfully practice their religion to be mislabeled as ‘discriminators,’ stripped of government benefits, and subjected to fines and penalties simply because they abide by their sincerely held beliefs. Legal scholars have urged on a bipartisan basis that SB 10 in its current form be rejected. Illinois legislators should heed this bipartisan call.”

The letter cites numerous examples of businesses and organizations that are being sued around the country for actions taken in compliance with their religious beliefs. The letter concludes by stating that, “Instead of being a ‘Religious Freedom’ bill, SB 10 will devastate the liberties of individuals, businesses, religious organizations, and religious charities all across our State of Illinois.”

Read the letter here. http://www.scribd.com/doc/144513165/Religious-Liberty-Implications-of-Engrossed-IL-Senate-Bill-0010

About the Thomas More Society
The Thomas More Society is a national not-for-profit public interest law firm whose mission is to restore respect in law for life, marriage, and religious liberty. Headquartered in Chicago, the Society fosters support for these causes by providing high quality pro-bono professional legal services from federal, state, and local trial courts all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. www.thomasmoresociety.org

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May 30, 2013 / Maria news

Christian triumphalism passes through human failure

news.va – Christian triumphalism passes through human failure. Letting oneself be tempted by other kinds of triumphalism, by a worldly brand of triumphalism, means giving in to the temptation of conceiving a “Christianity without a cross”. Pope Francis’ reflection at the Mass he celebrated this morning, Wednesday 29 May, in the Chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, was centred on humility.

Today’s Gospel (Mk 10:32-45) says: the disciples “were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. Determined”. Reflecting on the restive sentiments seething in the hearts of the “dismayed” and “fearful” disciples, the Holy Father highlighted the conduct of the Lord who revealed the truth to them. The Son of man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and kill him; but on the third day he will rise.

The disciples underwent the same temptation that Jesus had faced in the wilderness, “when the devil” challenged him to work “a miracle”, the Pope said. Such as throwing himself down from the temple and saving himself in such a way that all might see it and be redeemed.

Today, the Pope said, we risk succumbing to the “temptation of a Christianity without a cross”. And “there is another temptation”: that of “a Christianity with the cross but without Jesus”; the Pope explained that this was the “temptation of triumphalism”. “We want triumph now”, he said, “without going to the cross, a worldly triumph, a reasonable triumph”.

“Triumphalism in the Church halts the Church. The triumphalism of us Christians halts Christians. A triumphalist Church is a half-way Church”. A Church content with being “well organized and with… everything lovely and efficient”, but which denied the martyrs would be “a Church which thought only of triumphs and successes; which did not have Jesus’ rule of triumph through failure. Human failure, the failure of the cross. And this is a temptation to us all”.

Concelebrating with the Holy Father were Bishop Valério Breda of Penedo, Brazil, and Bishop José Manuel Garcia Corderon of Bragança-Miranda, Portugal. Taking part in the Mass among others were the staff of the workshops and installations service, Fr Dario Edoardo Viganò, Director of the Vatican Television Centre, and Mons. Francesco Ceriotti, for decades involved in the area of communications of the Italian Episcopal Conference who today is celebrating the 70th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood.

Read more: http://www.news.va/en/news/the-triumphalism-of-christians

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