Saturday, November 30, 2013

Family Prayers before Advent Wreath

From http://www.catholicdoors.com/misc/adventwreath.htm

THE ADVENT WREATH

Advent is a Christian Festival that can be observed in the home as well as in the Church. This simple ceremony takes place in the home when the family is gathered together during the main meal. It is a time to remember the First Coming of Christ and to anticipate His Second Coming.

THE SYMBOLS

The Circle of the Wreath: God Himself, His eternity and His endless mercy, without beginning, nor end.
The Green of the Wreath: Our hope of newness, renewal and eternal life.
Light of the Candles: The Light of God that came into the world through Christ to bring newness, life and hope.
Lighting the Candles: The progressive departure of darkness from the world as the more and more light is shed through the candles.
Four Candles: The four weeks of Advent, representing the four centuries between the time of the Prophet Malachi and the birth of Christ.
Three Coloured (purple or blue) Candles: A period of waiting, expectation and preparation.
The First Candle: A time of expectation and hope.
The Second Candle: The peace that is to come.
The Pink (or Rose) Candle for the Third Week: It symbolizes joy for the promise is almost fulfilled.
The Fourth Candle: The love of God for mankind.
The Fifth White Candle (if applicable). Called the "Center Candle", it is lit on Christmas Eve or Day to display that the light of Christ has come into the world in fulfillment of the prophecies.






The Blessing of the Advent Wreath

The following is one example of many available ceremonies, prayers and devotions that are associated with the tradition of the blessing of the Advent wreath.

Leader: Our help is in the Name of the Lord.
All: Who has made Heaven and earth.
Leader: Let us pray: "O God, by whose Word all things are made holy, pour forth Your blessing upon this wreath, and grant that we who use it may prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ."
All: Amen.



First Week

Leader: The Lord is our faith and our life.
All: May the Lord's peace be with us all.
Leader: And His love shine in our hearts.
All: Our hope is in the coming of the Lord.
One purple candle is lit (traditionally by the youngest child; however, you may want all of your children to share in this activity). During the rest of the week, this candle is relit at the evening meal or whenever the family gathers together.
Leader: Let us pray: that our faith may be strengthened for the coming of the Lord.
Pause for silent prayer.
Father in Heaven, our hearts desire the warmth of Your love and our minds are searching for the light of Your Word. Increase our longing for Christ our Saviour and give us the strength to grow in our faith so that the day of His coming may find us prepared and filled with joy.
All: Amen.
Suggested Readings from the Holy Bible:
Isaiah 11:1-10
Luke: 1:26-38
Isaiah 7:10-14
Matthew 1:18-24



Second Week

Leader: May the Lord's peace be with us all.
All: The Lord is our faith and our life.
Leader: May His love shine in our hearts.
All: Our hope is in the coming of the Lord.
Two purple candles are lit and allowed to burn as before.
Leader: Let us pray: that we may experience fully the peace of Christ.
Pause for silent prayer.
Father in Heaven, the day draws near when the birth of your Son will make radiant the night of the waiting world. May His quiet coming fill us with true inner peace.
All: Amen.
Suggested Readings from the Holy Bible:
Micah 5:2
Matthew 2:1-2, 9-11
Isaiah 2:1-5
Matthew 3:1-6



Third Week

Leader: May the Lord's love shine in our hearts.
All: And may His peace be with us all.
Leader: The Lord is our faith and our life.
All: Our hope is in the coming of the Lord.
Two purple candles and the rose-colored candle are lit by the mother and allowed to burn as before.
Leader: Let us pray: that we may grow in love for each other as the Lord comes to us.
Pause for silent prayer.
Father in Heaven, may we Your family who look forward to the birthday of Christ experience the joy of Your love and celebrate His birth with a new sense of love for each other.
All: Amen.
Suggested Readings from the Holy Bible:
Isaiah 9:6-7
John 1:19-34
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Philippians 2:1-11



Fourth Week

Leader: Our hope is in the coming of the Lord.
All: May His love shine in our hearts.
Leader: And may the Lord's peace be with us all.
All: The Lord is our hope and our life.
All four candles are lit by the father and allowed to burn as before.
Leader: Let us pray: that the newborn Saviour will bring us His love which lasts forever.
Pause for silent prayer.
Lord, our minds and hearts are filled with hope. We long to hear the voice which tells us of the coming of the Christ Child.
All: Amen.
Suggested Readings from the Holy Bible:
Malachi 3:1-5
Romans 8:18-25
Isaiah 52:7-10
Revelations 21:1-4

Friday, November 29, 2013

The Sword of the Saint, Unsheathed

From http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1113-gardiner

Book of Gomorrah: An Eleventh-Century Treatise Against Clerical Homosexual Practices.  By St. Peter Damian. Translated and edited by Pierre Payer. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. 108 pages. $38.95.


By the time he published the Book of Gomorrah around A.D. 1049, St. Peter Damian had been preaching for some time against homosexuality. He told Pope St. Leo IX, to whom he directed this work, that he needed his support against those who despised him for this preaching. While others in authority remained silent, he lamented, homosexuality kept spreading: “Vice against nature creeps in like a cancer and even touches the order of consecrated men.”

That homosexuality was indeed a problem at that time may be inferred from the fact that the vice was addressed at the Council of Rheims (A.D. 1049) in the canon de sodomitico vitio. Also, Damian received, in reply to his treatise, what he had requested from Leo IX, “a decretal writing as to which of those guilty of these vices ought to be deposed irrevocably from ecclesiastical orders; and to whom, truly taking the view of discretion, this office can be mercifully granted.”

In the Book of Gomorrah Damian says he has preached against this sin “with a whole fountain of tears” because the sinner he addresses sheds none at all: “O miserable soul, I weep for you with so many lamentations because I do not see you weeping. I prostrate myself on the ground for you because I see you maliciously standing up after such a grave fall, even to the point of trying for the pinnacle of an ecclesiastical order.” Damian weeps from “fraternal compassion” because he sees a “noble soul made in the image and likeness of God and joined with the most precious blood of Christ” cast down from a great height of dignity and glory. Any Christian who commits sodomy, he explains, surpasses in sin the men of Sodom, for he “defies the very commands of evangelical grace.”

Damian reports that he has endured persecution for preaching against this sin, and he begs the Pope to use his sacred authority to quiet “the complaint of perverse men” who reason that “a statement brought forward by one person…is rejected by others as prejudice.” At one point he addresses the dissenters as men “who are angry with me and who hate to listen to this writer.” He tells the Pope that some of them “accuse me of being a traitor and an informer on the crime of a brother,” while others think it “valid to attack me who am on the attack” and to “accuse me of presumptuous prattle.” They also denounce him for not being “afraid of picking on Christians.”

No surprise, Damian observes, that he is not believed and that his “admonition is rejected,” since God’s own command is “taken lightly by the puffed-up heart of the reprobate.” His opponents even ignore the scriptural verses that condemn homosexuality because “the rashness of the complainers [does not] give in to divine testimony.” Still, he hopes that when the Pope speaks out, “the sick Church” will rise once again to her “rightful vigor.”

In his reply, Leo IX gives Damian his full support and warns those who would dare to criticize or question his papal decree concerning sodomy that they will be putting themselves in danger of being deposed from their rank. He agrees with Damian that severity against this sin is needed, that he who does not attack it encourages it, and that silence about it is rightly thought to incur guilt.

In this remarkable treatise, Damian condemns priests in authority who have been too indulgent with these sinners. As a result of their laxity, priests who have “fallen into this wickedness with eight or even ten other equally sordid men” have remained in their ranks. And so the sin has come “to be committed freely” without its practitioners fearing the loss of their priestly faculties. Damian calls this negligence rather than love because it allows a wound to spread in a neighbor’s heart, a wound “from which, I have no doubt, he dies cruelly.” Therefore, Damian himself will not “neglect to cure” that wound with the “surgery of words,” for if he remains silent, he too will deserve punishment. Rather than “fear the hatred of the depraved or the tongues of detractors,” Damian fears God, who warns him through the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel, “If you see your brother doing evil and you do not correct him, I will require his blood from your hand” (3:20). Damian will not be silenced, no matter how many tell him to put the sword of his tongue in the sheath of silence: “Who am I to see such a harmful outrage growing up among the sacred orders and, as a murderer of another’s soul, preserve the stricture of silence, and to dare to await the reckoning of divine severity? Do I not begin to be responsible for a guilt whose author I never was?”

Citing St. Paul’s condemnation not only of those who commit sodomy but also of those who “approve” it in others (Rom. 1:32), Damian observes that his adversaries’ silence can be interpreted as consent: Anyone who would “censure me when I dispute against mortal vice,” he says, should consider that Damian is trying to “promote fraternal salvation, lest while he persecute the reprover he might seem to favor the delinquent.” Although maligned and threatened for accusing his brothers, Damian refuses to be intimidated: “I would rather be cast innocent into the cistern with Joseph, who accused his brothers to his father for a terrible crime, than to be punished by the vengeance of divine fury with Eli, who saw the evils of his sons and was silent.” He even summons others to join him in his all-out battle to reform the clergy: “Whoever sees himself as a soldier of Christ should fervently gird himself to confound this vice, and not hesitate to wipe it out with all his strength. He should pierce it with the sharpest verbal arrows wherever it is found and try to slay it.” He will thus free the captive from “bonds by which he is held in slavery.”

Although it is “clearer than light” that homosexuals should not serve as priests, Damian says, some might plead “imminent necessity” and argue that there is “no one to perform a sacred function in a church.” In reply, he says that making shepherds of such “carnal men” will “result in the destitution of a whole people.” Their “burning ambition” to be priests is sure to “ensnare the people of God” in their own ruin. Although they may seem useful for their learning, they will lead the flock astray: “If the right order of ecclesiastical discipline is confused in a learned man, it is a wonder it is kept by the ignorant.” By the example of their presumption, these sinners lead the simple onto the “path of error” on which they walk with the “swollen foot of pride.”

What fruitfulness can be expected from men engulfed by “thick, dark blindness”? They have lost their “interior eyes” and cannot see the gravity of what they have done. Like the men of Sodom who tried to break into Lot’s house and seize the angels whom they mistook for young men, these carnal men “try to break in violently on the angels” by approaching God “through the offices of sacred orders.” Damian warns them: Take care lest you “provoke more sharply by your very prayers the one you offend openly by acting evilly.”

At one point in his treatise, Damian refers to the ancient Council of Ancyra (A.D. 314), which dealt with homosexuality in two canons. In canon 16 the Church Fathers declared that laymen who had committed sodomy before the age of 20 were not to receive communion for 20 years; and those who had committed it after the age of 20, for 30 years. Damian comments that if laymen in the early Church had to wait decades before receiving communion again, how can a priest who commits the same sin in his own day “be judged worthy not only to receive but even to offer and to consecrate the sacred mysteries themselves?”

In canon 17 of the same Council, the Fathers ordered those who had committed this sin to pray among the “demoniacs.” Damian comments: “When a male rushes to a male to commit impurity, this is not the natural impulse of the flesh, but only the goad of diabolical impulse. This is why the holy fathers carefully established that sodomists pray together with the deranged since they did not doubt that the sodomists were possessed.” Lamenting that this sin “evicts the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart,” the saint warns that it also “gnaws the conscience as though with worms” and “sears the flesh as though with fire.”

Even so, like a good pastor, Damian encourages these sinners to hope in God’s mercy through repentance. He rallies them to take a bold stand “against the importunate madness of lust. If the flame of lust burns to the bones, the memory of perpetual fire should extinguish it immediately.” He urges them not to let the “present satisfaction of one organ” cause them to be cast body and soul into everlasting fire. Calling them his brothers, he summons them to conversion: “If you were unable to spend time with Abraham far from the Sodomites, it is permitted to migrate with Lot, urged on by the destructive burning which is near at hand.”

The Book of Gomorrah demonstrates that it was no easier a thousand years ago than it is today to speak out against this vice and to bring active homosexuals to repentance, to an acknowledgement of the natural law, and to the practice of purity. In his little treatise, St. Peter Damian warns us against keeping silence in the face of such a growing evil and thus becoming complicit. He offers us a needed model of how to speak out fearlessly against the corruptions of our age.

St. Peter Damian, pray for us!

Monday, November 11, 2013

21 Things We Do When We Make the Sign of the Cross

From http://catholicexchange.com/21-things-cross

 The Sign of the Cross is a simple gesture yet a profound expression of faith for both Catholic and Orthodox Christians. As Catholics, it’s something we do when we enter a church, after we receive Communion, before meals, and every time we pray. But what exactly are we doing when we make the Sign of the Cross? Here are 21 things:
1. Pray. We begin and end our prayers with the Sign of the Cross, perhaps not realizing that the sign is itself a prayer. If prayer, at its core, is “an uprising of the mind to God,” as St. John Damascene put it, then the Sign of the Cross assuredly qualifies. “No empty gesture, the sign of the cross is a potent prayer that engages the Holy Spirit as the divine advocate and agent of our successful Christian living,” writes Bert Ghezzi.
2. Open ourselves to grace. As a sacramental, the Sign of the Cross prepares us for receiving God’s blessing and disposes us to cooperate with His grace, according to Ghezzi.
3. Sanctify the day. As an act repeated throughout the key moments of each day, the Sign of the Cross sanctifies our day. “At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign,” wrote Tertullian.
4. Commit the whole self to Christ. In moving our hands from our foreheads to our hearts and then both shoulders, we are asking God’s blessing for our mind, our passions and desires, our very bodies. In other words, the Sign of the Cross commits us, body and soul, mind and heart, to Christ. (I’m paraphrasing this Russian Orthodox writer.) “Let it take in your whole being—body, soul, mind, will, thoughts, feelings, your doing and not-doing—and by signing it with the cross strengthen and consecrate the whole in the strength of Christ, in the name of the triune God,” said twentieth century theologian Romano Guardini.
5. Recall the Incarnation. Our movement is downward, from our foreheads to our chest “because Christ descended from the heavens to the earth,” Pope Innocent III wrote in his instructions on making the Sign of the Cross. Holding two fingers together—either the thumb with the ring finger or with index finger—also represents the two natures of Christ.
6. Remember the Passion of Our Lord. Fundamentally, in tracing out the outlines of a cross on ourselves, we are remembering Christ’s crucifixion. This remembrance is deepened if we keep our right hand open, using all five fingers to make the sign—corresponding to the Five Wounds of Christ.
7. Affirm the Trinity. In invoking the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we are affirming our belief in a triune God. This is also reinforced by using three fingers to make the sign, according to Pope Innocent III.
8. Focus our prayer on God. One of the temptations in prayer is to address it to God as we conceive of Him—the man upstairs, our buddy, a sort of cosmic genie, etc. When this happens, our prayer becomes more about us than an encounter with the living God. The Sign of the Cross immediately focuses us on the true God, according to Ghezzi: “When we invoke the Trinity, we fix our attention on the God who made us, not on the God we have made. We fling our images aside and address our prayers to God as he has revealed himself to be: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
9. Affirm the procession of Son and Spirit. In first lifting our hand to our forehead we recall that the Father is the first person the Trinity. In lowering our hand we “express that the Son proceeds from the Father.” And, in ending with the Holy Spirit, we signify that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, according to Francis de Sales.
10. Confess our faith. In affirming our belief in the Incarnation, the crucifixion, and the Trinity, we are making a sort of mini-confession of faith in words and gestures, proclaiming the core truths of the creed.
11. Invoke the power of God’s name. In Scripture, God’s name carries power. In Philippians 2:10, St. Paul tells us that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” And, in John 14:13-14, Jesus Himself said, “And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
12. Crucify ourselves with Christ. Whoever wishes to follow Christ “must deny himself” and “take up his cross” as Jesus told the disciples in Matthew 16:24. “I have been crucified with Christ,” St. Paul writes in Galatians 2:19. “Proclaiming the sign of the cross proclaims our yes to this condition of discipleship,” Ghezzi writes.
13. Ask for support in our suffering. In crossing our shoulders we ask God “to support us—to shoulder us—in our suffering,” Ghezzi writes.
14. Reaffirm our baptism. In using the same words with which we were baptized, the Sign of the Cross is a “summing up and re-acceptance of our baptism,” according to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
15. Reverse the curse. The Sign of the Cross recalls the forgiveness of sins and the reversal of the Fall by passing “from the left side of the curse to the right of blessing,” according to de Sales. The movement from left to right also signifies our future passage from present misery to future glory just as Christ “crossed over from death to life and from Hades to Paradise,” Pope Innocent II wrote.
16. Remake ourselves in Christ’s image. In Colossians 3, St. Paul uses the image of clothing to describe how our sinful natures are transformed in Christ. We are to take off the old self and put on the self “which is being renewed … in the image of its creator,” Paul tells us. The Church Fathers saw a connection between this verse and the stripping of Christ on the cross, “teaching that stripping off our old nature in baptism and putting on a new one was a participation in Christ’s stripping at his crucifixion,” Ghezzi writes. He concludes that we can view the Sign of the Cross as “our way of participating in Christ’s stripping at the Crucifixion and his being clothed in glory at his resurrection.” Thus, in making the Sign of the Cross, we are radically identifying ourselves with the entirety of the crucifixion event—not just those parts of it we can accept or that our palatable to our sensibilities.
17. Mark ourselves for Christ. In ancient Greek, the word for sign was sphragis, which was also a mark of ownership, according to Ghezzi. “For example, a shepherd marked his sheep as his property with a brand that he called a sphragis,” Ghezzi writes. In making the Sign of the Cross, we mark ourselves as belong to Christ, our true shepherd.
18. Soldier on for Christ. The sphragis was also the term for a general’s name that would be tattooed on his soldiers, according to Ghezzi. This too is an apt metaphor for the Christian life: while we can be compared to sheep in the sense of following Christ as our shepherd we are not called to be sheepish. We instead are called to be soldiers of Christ. As St. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6, “Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. … take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
19. Ward off the devil. The Sign of the Cross is one of the very weapons we use in that battle with the devil. As one medieval preacher named Aelfric declared, “A man may wave about wonderfully with his hands without creating any blessing unless he make the sign of the cross. But, if he do, the fiend will soon be frightened on account of the victorious token.” In another statement, attributed to St. John Chrysostom, demons are said to “fly away” at the Sign of the Cross “dreading it as a staff that they are beaten with.” (Source: Catholic Encyclopedia.)
20. Seal ourselves in the Spirit. In the New Testament, the word sphragis, mentioned above, is also sometimes translated as seal, as in 2 Corinthians 1:22, where St. Paul writes that, “the one who gives us security with you in Christ and who anointed us is God; he has also put his seal upon us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a first installment.” In making the Sign of the Cross, we are once again sealing ourselves in the Spirit, invoking His powerful intervention in our lives.
21. Witness to others. As a gesture often made in public, the Sign of the Cross is a simple way to witness our faith to others. “Let us not then be ashamed to confess the Crucified. Be the Cross our seal made with boldness by our fingers on our brow, and on everything; over the bread we eat, and the cups we drink; in our comings in, and goings out; before our sleep, when we lie down and when we rise up; when we are in the way, and when we are still,” wrote St. Cyril of Jerusalem.

Sources include: The Sign of the Cross, by Bert Ghezzi, and Signs of Life, by Scott Hahn

Vatican to put St Peter’s relics on display for first time

From http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2013/11/11/vatican-to-put-st-peters-relics-on-display-for-first-time/

For the first time, the bones traditionally believed to be the relics of St Peter the Apostle will be on public display for veneration.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation, said the veneration of the relics at the Vatican was a fitting way to conclude the Year of Faith on November 24.
Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the archbishop, whose office organised many of the Year of Faith events, said millions of pilgrims marked the Year of Faith by making a pilgrimage to St Peter’s tomb and renewing their profession of faith there.
“The culminating sign” of the year, he said, “will be the exposition for the first time of the relics traditionally recognized as those of the apostle who gave his life for the Lord here.”
The bones were discovered during excavations of the necropolis under St Peter’s Basilica in the 1940s near a monument erected in the fourth century to honor St Peter.
No pope has ever declared the bones to be authentic. However, after scientific tests were conducted on the bones in the 1950s and 60s, Pope Paul VI said in 1968 that the “relics” of St Peter had been “identified in a way which we can hold to be convincing”.

Friday, November 1, 2013

November 1st:Feast of All Saints


Halloween Festivities Violate Church Teaching

The Catholic Register October 30, 2013:
A Polish archbishop has cautioned that Halloween celebrations violate church teaching and urged Catholics not to take part "even in playful form."
"This is a fundamentally anti-Christian festival," said Archbishop Marek Jedraszewski of Lodz. "Parents and teachers should protect youngsters against its images of terror and dread, especially when many already associate it with the cult of Satan."
Polish Catholic leaders have been trying to foster alternatives to Halloween, which has been marked in Poland since the 1989 collapse of communist rule.
In a pastoral letter to his archdiocese, Archbishop Jedraszewski said Poland was "already seeing a clear reversion in the Western world, as well as in Poland, to pagan practices." He said the Nov. 1 All Saints' Day and Nov. 2 All Souls' Day had "long traditions" in Poland and were worthy Christian occasions for "praising God and honoring those who came before."
"Introducing children, and sometimes adults, to Halloween practices is a violation of church teaching. Christians should not take part, even in playful form," he said.
He added that, instead of celebrating Halloween, local Catholics should commemorate up to 20,000 youngsters who died at the only Nazi concentration camp for children, which operated in Lodz from 1942 to 1945.
A Catholic presenter with Polish Radio, Malgorzata Glabisz-Pniewska, told Catholic News Service data suggested that Poles' interest in Halloween was now declining.
"Post-communist countries like ours went through a phase when everything from the West seemed better," she told Catholic News Service interview Oct. 30. "Many people dislike Halloween now, not because of any link with Satanism, but because it's an imported custom alien to our culture. It would be better if the church just left it to die naturally."