Eucharistic Adoration: the chapel

This is a picture of Father Michael Skluzacek raising the host at our wedding. Looking back, I believe the liturgy on our wedding day at the Cathedral was a monumental turning point in my faith walk. My understanding of Christ's real and true presence in the Eucharist was brought to a new level of intimacy.

7 years ago I was single, had just bought a new house, and had my first full time job. I went to mass up at Lumen Christi and a young enthusiastic seminarian gave the homily inviting people to sign up for an hour of Eucharistic Adoration in the Chapel. So, I signed up for Tuesday nights, midnight to 1am. We still have that same hour at Lumen Christi.

Only looking back over the years, do I fully see the abundance of grace this hour of adoration has brought me. In all that I have learned about my faith over the past several years, in all the events life has brought me from marriage, to 3 children, to my Mother's death, to many family changes, and the list goes on, the Adoration Chapel has been a place of refuge for prayer and grace. I find that I embrace it more and more as time goes on.

Having this hour of adoration slowing tuned me in to Christ's holy and real presence in the host. Christ instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper and education of my Catholic faith over the years has brought me to new understanding of the sacredness of the priests' consecration of the host. My wedding day was the first time I received the Eucharist on the mouth from the priest (instead of in my hands) and I have not ever gone back. This, actually, was somewhat of a 'mistake' and I only had the priest put it in my mouth because Mike did this and we were up on center stage. But, surprisingly, I appreciated it. There was a reverence and a new level of meaning when I had the priest put Jesus directly in my mouth. It made sense. The next step was as we moved over to St. Agnes, kneeling at the altar railings to receive the Body of Christ. There is a solemness and seriousness to everyone going up to the rail, kneeling, praying and receiving the Eucharist directly from the priest. It is meaningful and life-changing - every time it happens. The Last Supper happens over and over and over again and we reflect on Jesus' sacrifice for us.

When we were married, I remember a friend saying "Oh, it doesn't really matter what church you get married in. God is everywhere." (At that point in time we were scheduled to get married at Lumen Christi and then we switched to the Cathedral 2 weeks before our wedding date!) Well, in a sense it is true that God's handiwork and his mark is everywhere we look. His grace and goodness sustain everything. But, Churches are a special place. It is God's home and his real and true presence is there. They are a refuge from the grind of daily life. They are a place of silence and solitude where I can look for God to speak to me. They are meant to be holy. Jesus experienced this same understanding of a 'Church'. He had the temple. Mary and Joseph were worried sick about him for several days and they found him in the temple, learning from his teachers. He says, "Didn't you know I need to be in my Father's House?". When I go to the Adoration Chapel, St. Agnes Church or any beautiful church, it takes me outside of myself. It lifts my thoughts and spirit to think of the eternal, to think of God and to humble myself before him.

I am so thankful for perpetual Adoration in the 2 churches close to us and the ability to 'stop in' and visit Jesus anytime. Faustina and Jude also like going there now too. They ask to stop by the chapel so they can see Jesus!

Adoration

More from the Better Part

I continue to appreciate The Better Part. I find I especially like the section "Christ in my life" which often has Jesus speaking in the first person.

"Jesus: When I look at you and think of you, which I am always doing, I picture you loving the life I created you to live. I know that now you still struggle and suffer, but this is only a passing stage. You are still recovering from sin. You are still in rehabilitation, and that always hurts. Keep going, keeping seeking my will. Keep getting up every time you fall. I am right at your side. I am leading you to a life that will fill you with more joy and wisdom and love than you can possibly imagine. I am the life, and I want you to spend forever with me."

Our Joseph

On Sunday,Joseph spent the evening with us and I am absolutely smitten to see how enamored the kids are with him! He is hilarious, so kind and gentle and he always says exactly the right thing to the kids to love them, have fun with them and teach them all at the same time. Really, he is such an amazing young man. We didn't see him as much this past spring semester, but we will be more diligent in bugging him next fall after he returns from his summer ventures.

It fills me with much hope to see the fine seminarians that we will soon have as priests to go out to teach and be Christ's presence to our world. May the Lord bless Joseph's education and the work God has for him now and in times to come.

Blindly following

Sometimes in our spiritual life, we come to a halt because we insist on understanding and searching into God's plans for our soul. A faithful soul, on the other hand, does not linger to inquire about God's actions; even though not fully understanding them, it believes, following blindly, if necessary, the manifestations of the divine will. This is pleasing to God who does not ask us to understand, but only to believe with all our strength.

- The Four Church Fathers and the Virgin of Seven Sorrows with Saints
GUARDI, Francesco

Happy Mother's Day....to Mary!

What better role model to think about on Mother's Day than Jesus' mother. This picture doesn't do the beautiful statue justice - but it truly is gorgeous. I was there when the guy was installing her. He said it was the third statue of her he installed since the family was not happy with the other 2 he had put in!

Quite possibly my favorite Scripture is the Wedding at Cana. I love it for a few reasons.

- it is a joyful wedding celebrating marriage! It is a very real event that we all have experience with and Jesus was right there with everyone else celebrating with everyone else.

- It is Jesus' first miracle

- It is awe inspiring to think of the servants and their wonder at seeing Jesus turn the water into wine. They were the first to know what happened because they actually filled the jars with water themselves and then, all of a sudden it was wine!

- The wine Jesus gave them was far better than the earthly wine they were drinking before. It makes sense to me that as I figure out God's will for me - it is far better than anything I could come up with.

- Mary was the first to be aware that they were running out of wine. Like so many women aware of their surroundings, she appealed to Jesus and asked him to help.

- Jesus listened to his Mother even though he said "It was not yet his time".

- Jesus and Mary seem to have this unspoken understanding of each other. There is an intimacy, trust, and gentleness there. Spouses, family member, and friends experience this and it is clear that Mary and Jesus are a holy example of that intimacy.

I like this quote from "The Better Part":

"Jesus treated his mother with love and respect. He sees her not only as God's chosen instrument, but also as the woman who brought him into the world, took care of him when he was a helpless infant, and taught him to speak, to pray, to work, and to live. Both Jesus and Mary were free from sin, but that made them more human, not less. And so the natural incomparable bond that forms between a mother and her son was deeper, purer, and more binding in their case than in any other case in human history."

The Better Part

A few years ago, my SIL gave me this book The Better Part as a birthday gift. I had lent it to a friend for awhile, so I have only just been using it during prayer times. It goes carefully through each of the Gospels and for each passage there are four categories to reflect on: Christ the Lord, Christ the Teacher, Christ the friend, and Christ in my Life.

I am going through the Gospel of John and today's passage was on John the Baptism seeing and recognizing Christ for the first time. The catagory "Christ the Friend" is a paragraph written from Jesus' perspective in the first person. I particularly appreciated today's.

"Christ the Friend - John saw "Jesus coming toward him."

Jesus: How much I love to do this. I never force my way into anyone's life, but I come towards everyone. I want to attract their attention because I want their friendship and happiness. I am always taking the first step. Isn't that what happened with you and me? Don't you remember? I caught your attention. Even before that, I had been coming toward you in many ways. It's like when you are in love, and you go out of your way to run into the person you love, just to get a glimpse of them, just hoping that they will stop and talk to you. I love you like that. I even come right up to your heart and knock, hoping you will let me in. I always have more to give you, more to teach you, more for us to do. My love never runs out of words, attention, encouragement, projects - my love never run out, period. Keep welcoming me, keep looking out for me. I am still coming toward you, and I will never stop coming toward you."

I was struck by the power of the message of love in this passage. Reflecting on this passage coupled with the book I am reading by C.S. Lewis "The Four Loves" - it is mind boggling to try to comprehend God's love for us and what that looks like. A good way to start the day.

To Keep in Mind

Do not fear what may happen tomorrow. The same loving Father who cares for you today will care for you tomorrow and everyday. Either he will shield you from suffering or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace then and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginings. ~St. Francis de Sales

Divine Mercy in La Crosse

Last Saturday night we called up some family friends at 11pm at night (Mike was sure they were still awake!) and asked them if they wanted to accompany us to the Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine in La Crosse, Wisconsin. They, in fact, did want to join us so we all piled in to our mini van at 7:30am the next morning for the 2 hour drive. 4 adults and 4 carseats! Saint Maria Faustina (whom we named our little girl after)received revelations into God's divine mercy and Pope John Paul II made the Sunday after Easter - Divine Mercy Sunday - a special day to renew ourselves in God's goodness and his mercy.

We had an excellent brunch at the Shrine, walked the mile up to the Church and went to mass, confession, and then said the Divine Mercy Chaplet. Last time we were here it was the summer of '09 while I was pregnant with Jude and my Mom was sick. We were headed out to Michigan and visited the shrine for the first time. Life is certainly very different a few short years later. It was fun to visit it again - perhaps we will make it a tradition on Divine Mercy Sunday.

The monks make delicious food at their cafe. Everything is made from fresh ingredients and full of flavor. It really is very good.


The priest at mass sounded like he just got off a plane from Russia. Thick accent, almost hard to understand.He gave a stellar homily.


Here is our Faustina by the picture of Saint Faustina and a first class relic of Saint Faustina. The art work in the Church is breath taking.





Faustina and Belle in front of a bronze statue of Our Lady appearing to Juan Diego.




They have a beautiful 'rosary walk'. They have pictures of each mystery in blue and white tile on a wall.

Easter!

Good Friday

As our family gets older, more and more traditions are being established. It is most certainly one of the greatest joys of parenthood to see our young, very young, kids learn about their faith and internalize it.

Today we spent a good amount of the day at church between morning prayers, confessions, and the Good Friday prayer service.

We also attended the prayer vigil at the new Planned Parenthood. It was a peaceful prayer vigil with meditations interspersed as people walked around praying and many many people praying the rosary. I was overjoyed at how many young people were there and involved, there were more young people than older people there.



Jude was tired by the end. He is not sleeping, he just wanted some quiet time. :)

As I start to think about Lent....

Lent is not for a few weeks, but it is time for me to start thinking about what I can do. I find the following article on Mother Teresa incredibly inspiring. This list of 15 ways to increase humility may be a good Lenten challenge. What a beautiful woman - she seems to just glow with goodness in such pictures as the following.
Good article on Blessed Mother Teresa here.

Mother Teresa’s Humility List

1. Speak as little as possible about yourself.
2. Keep busy with your own affairs and not those of others.
3. Avoid curiosity.
4. Do not interfere in the affairs of others.
5. Accept small irritations with good humor.
6. Do not dwell on the faults of others.
7. Accept censures even if unmerited.
8. Give in to the will of others.
9. Accept insults and injuries.
10. Accept contempt, being forgotten and disregarded.
11. Be courteous and delicate even when provoked by someone.
12. Do not seek to be admired and loved.
13. Do not protect yourself behind your own dignity.
14. Give in, in discussions, even when you are right.
15. Choose always the more difficult task.

In the Spirit of the Season

As I placed part of Jude's lunch before him, without any prompting, he was ready to bless the food. Can't find much cuter of a picture than this.

A healthy detachment

This Advent season the Christian message "Being in this world, but not of this world" has been on my heart. I have heard it during Mass, read it myself many a time in Scripture, meditated on it, read commentary on it, etc. After all, it is a fairly basic message. For me, I have always understood it in light of things of this world - being careful to not be too materialistic, too attached to wealth, money, reputation, or ideas.

John 17, John 15:19, Romans 12 are a few Scripture passages that talk about this. John 17, particularly strikes me this Advent season as Jesus discusses PEOPLE being in this world, leaving this world, or being 'of' this world. Here, Jesus is not talking about THINGS he, he is talking about PEOPLE. Jesus talks about how he will not always be present on earth with his disciples, but he prays for them.

During the Christmas Season, we celebrate God's incarnation in this world as a baby. Why does God come as a human? He comes to save us - to give us eternal life! To show us the way. How amazing is that?

This Advent season as I (or Mike and I) go through different fun and trying stages with our two little children and excitedly await our third - I find it important to remember that these little people are gift to us and we have the responsibility to train them and teach them. I cannot control them, my happiness cannot depend on them, they will fall at times and I will not be able to help them and that is okay. In other words, I cannot be too emotionally attached to them. As the Christmas Season is so much about family and friends, I need to remember to have a healthy detachment from adult relationships as well.

Sunday night at a book club discussion on Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, this idea again came to light for me as we discussed Lady Marchmain's character. As the woman of the household and the mother figure, she can at times give the perception of being cold or too detached from her family. Although there are good arguments pointing out her faults, I think she has something right. She pursues God before people and relationships and spends much time with the sacraments. Given human emotions, it could be easy for me at times to pursue people before truth.

But what does that look like to love someone unconditionally and with your whole heart, but give a person freedom to make his or her own choices? How was Mary able to bear watching her son being crucified on the cross? How was Abraham able to even be willing to kill his only son Isaac?

Well, I think that is the paradox. And therein lies the desperate need for constant prayer, I guess.

For me, I consider myself very lucky that I believe I have a model which I can think of in regard to these ideas which makes sense to me. When I was 15 years old, my own mother was very concerned about me. Years later she had a conversation with me and told me why she was concerned about me at the age of 15, but that the Lord made clear to her that she needed to 'let me go'. She described how and why that was hard for her, but that she was able to do it. And on my part, I distinctly remember that my relationship with her improved when I was 15 years old and on. She gave me a freedom yet at the same time a motherly love that spoke truth.

What exactly did this 'detached' motherly love look like? Well, it is hard for me to clearly articulate, but with my Mom I always had the feeling of unconditional love, I respected her, she did not push ideas or opinions on me ever, she mainly listened, she told me she prayed for me, she had a gentleness about her, she accepted my downfalls, and she was always just 'there' for me.

As I think of Christ coming to the stable manger December 25th, I think of his godly love for us humans. We only had Christ here on earth with us for 33 years! But, thankfully, we do have the opportunity to spend eternity with him, which is his ultimate desire for us.

Feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel

The is such an awesome picture... I love the images of Saint Michael being victorious over the enemy.

I especially appreciate days commemorating the guardian angels and archangels. Thank goodness for the reminders that we are certainly not alone.

And Saint Michael is my dear husband's namesake - it's a good one!

Alas, one of my favorite prayers:

"Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him we humbly pray. And do though, O Prince of the Heavenly Hosts, by the Divine power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen."

Our Lady of Perpetual Help

The Message of the Icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help

The child Jesus has just seen the angels who have shown him the instruments of his passion. St. Michael the Archangel holds the lance and gall-sop. St. Gabriel the Archangel holds the Cross and the nails. Frightened by the sight, Jesus has run to his mother’s arms so quickly that he almost lost one of His tiny sandals. It dangles from his foot. Mary holds Him lovingly but her eyes look at us - pleading with us to avoid sin and love Her Son.

His hands are in hers to show that, as a child, Jesus placed Himself in Mary’s hands for protection and to remind us that He now has placed into Her hands all graces, to be given to those who turn to His mother and ask.

The star on Mary’s veil shows her to be the one who brought the light of Christ to the darkened world - the beacon that leads the way to Heaven.

The falling sandal symbolizes a soul clinging to Christ by one last thread--devotion to Mary.

The golden background is symbolic of Heaven and shines to show the heavenly joy Jesus and His mother can bring to tired human hearts.
- from the blog www.catholicfire.blogspot.com

I am so thankful that today is a special day to honor Mary. Some days I just need a bit of extra grace - it happened to be one of those nights and here she is, as always.

"Of all that is seen and unseen"

The last several weeks I have been struck by the following line in bold when saying the Nicene Creed.
"I believe in One God the Father the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
Of all that is seen and unseen."

It is right at the beginning of the prayer and I have come to love this line more and more as I realize how little I know the Lord and what the Lord's Will is for me and our family at any given time. In one sense it can be frustrating because I want to believe that I make progress and do, in fact, know the Lord more intimately all the time - but it is also exhilarating to know that his goodness is infinite and there are infinite ways for me to know him more! I find myself praying for specific things that I think are good or blessings that I think would make sense. Sometimes the Lord answers in ways that I recognize, want or in ways that fulfill my emotional desires, but more often than not he asks me to trust him and be patient and let my life unfold according to his own design. And so I keep going back to the line "Of all that is seen and unseen." I meditate on how powerfully the Lord works and moves people's hearts and minds and my own that other individuals will never know about - but it is a reality. And thus, "I believe in all that is seen and unseen."

Today is the feast day of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Rosary has become a sort of foundation in my prayer over the last several years, so today is a special day to honor Mary as we celebrate her visiting Elizabeth.

A mediation in the Magnificat captures much of what I have been thinking about and it was a joy to stumble upon it today:

"The events of today's mystery bring before the faithful in a peculiar manner the fact that our God is a hidden God, and that his power works in the soul a secret and impenetrable manner. Four people are concerned in the occurrence we are celebrating: Jesus and Mary; Saint John and his mother Saint Elizabeth. Now, it is most remarkable that of all these sacred personages the only one who seems to perform no particular action is the Son of God himself. Elizabeth, enlightened from on high, acknowledges the Blessed Virgin's dignity and humbles herself deeply before her: "When is this to me?" (Lk 1"43). John, even within Elizabeth's womb, feels his Divine Master's presence, and shows his joy in a wonderful way: he "leaped for joy". Mary, marveling at the great effects of divine omnipotence in herself, exalts the holy name of God and declares his munificence in her behalf, with her whole heart. But all this time Jesus himself, hidden beneath his Mother's breast gives no sensible sign of his presence. He, who is the cause of the whole mystery, takes no active part in it.
Strange as this may seem, it is not really surprising. Our Lord here hides his power intentionally, to show us how is the invisible force that moves all things without moving himself, and directs all things without showing his hand. Hence, we shall find that though he may seem to be passive on this occasion, his influence is fully apparent in the actions of the rest, whose movements are really inspired by him alone. One of the greatest mysteries of Christianity is the holy union that the Son of God forms with us, and his secret way of visiting us...When God deigns to look upon us, we can but learn from Elizabeth how to reverence his supreme greatness by fully recognizing our own nothingness, and to acknowledge his benefits by confessing our own unworthiness."
-Bishop Jacques Benigne Bossuet (died 1704)

Blessed John Paul II

Homily, Pope Benedict XVI, Rome 1 May 2011

During the Mass in which Pope Benedict XVI beatified his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, he gave the following homily.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Six years ago we gathered in this Square to celebrate the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Our grief at his loss was deep, but even greater was our sense of an immense grace which embraced Rome and the whole world: a grace which was in some way the fruit of my beloved predecessor’s entire life, and especially of his witness in suffering. Even then we perceived the fragrance of his sanctity, and in any number of ways God’s People showed their veneration for him. For this reason, with all due respect for the Church’s canonical norms, I wanted his cause of beatification to move forward with reasonable haste. And now the longed-for day has come; it came quickly because this is what was pleasing to the Lord: John Paul II is blessed!


I would like to offer a cordial greeting to all of you who on this happy occasion have come in such great numbers to Rome from all over the world – cardinals, patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches, brother bishops and priests, official delegations, ambassadors and civil authorities, consecrated men and women and lay faithful, and I extend that greeting to all those who join us by radio and television.
Today is the Second Sunday of Easter, which Blessed John Paul II entitled Divine Mercy Sunday. The date was chosen for today’s celebration because, in God’s providence, my predecessor died on the vigil of this feast. Today is also the first day of May, Mary’s month, and the liturgical memorial of Saint Joseph the Worker. All these elements serve to enrich our prayer, they help us in our pilgrimage through time and space; but in heaven a very different celebration is taking place among the angels and saints! Even so, God is but one, and one too is Christ the Lord, who like a bridge joins earth to heaven. At this moment we feel closer than ever, sharing as it were in the liturgy of heaven.


"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe" (Jn 20:29). In today’s Gospel Jesus proclaims this beatitude: the beatitude of faith. For us, it is particularly striking because we are gathered to celebrate a beatification, but even more so because today the one proclaimed blessed is a Pope, a Successor of Peter, one who was called to confirm his brethren in the faith. John Paul II is blessed because of his faith, a strong, generous and apostolic faith. We think at once of another beatitude: "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven" (Mt 16:17). What did our heavenly Father reveal to Simon? That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Because of this faith, Simon becomes Peter, the rock on which Jesus can build his Church. The eternal beatitude of John Paul II, which today the Church rejoices to proclaim, is wholly contained in these sayings of Jesus: "Blessed are you, Simon" and "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe!" It is the beatitude of faith, which John Paul II also received as a gift from God the Father for the building up of Christ’s Church.


Our thoughts turn to yet another beatitude, one which appears in the Gospel before all others. It is the beatitude of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer. Mary, who had just conceived Jesus, was told by Saint Elizabeth: "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord" (Lk 1:45). The beatitude of faith has its model in Mary, and all of us rejoice that the beatification of John Paul II takes place on this first day of the month of Mary, beneath the maternal gaze of the one who by her faith sustained the faith of the Apostles and constantly sustains the faith of their successors, especially those called to occupy the Chair of Peter. Mary does not appear in the accounts of Christ’s resurrection, yet hers is, as it were, a continual, hidden presence: she is the Mother to whom Jesus entrusted each of his disciples and the entire community. In particular we can see how Saint John and Saint Luke record the powerful, maternal presence of Mary in the passages preceding those read in today’s Gospel and first reading. In the account of Jesus’ death, Mary appears at the foot of the cross (Jn 19:25), and at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles she is seen in the midst of the disciples gathered in prayer in the Upper Room (Acts 1:14).
Today’s second reading also speaks to us of faith. Saint Peter himself, filled with spiritual enthusiasm, points out to the newly-baptized the reason for their hope and their joy. I like to think how in this passage, at the beginning of his First Letter, Peter does not use language of exhortation; instead, he states a fact. He writes: "you rejoice", and he adds: "you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls" (1 Pet 1:6, 8-9). All these verbs are in the indicative, because a new reality has come about in Christ’s resurrection, a reality to which faith opens the door. "This is the Lord’s doing", says the Psalm (118:23), and "it is marvelous in our eyes", the eyes of faith.


Dear brothers and sisters, today our eyes behold, in the full spiritual light of the risen Christ, the beloved and revered figure of John Paul II. Today his name is added to the host of those whom he proclaimed saints and blesseds during the almost twenty-seven years of his pontificate, thereby forcefully emphasizing the universal vocation to the heights of the Christian life, to holiness, taught by the conciliar Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium. All of us, as members of the people of God – bishops, priests, deacons, laity, men and women religious – are making our pilgrim way to the heavenly homeland where the Virgin Mary has preceded us, associated as she was in a unique and perfect way to the mystery of Christ and the Church. Karol Wojtyła took part in the Second Vatican Council, first as an auxiliary Bishop and then as Archbishop of Kraków. He was fully aware that the Council’s decision to devote the last chapter of its Constitution on the Church to Mary meant that the Mother of the Redeemer is held up as an image and model of holiness for every Christian and for the entire Church. This was the theological vision which Blessed John Paul II discovered as a young man and subsequently maintained and deepened throughout his life. A vision which is expressed in the scriptural image of the crucified Christ with Mary, his Mother, at his side. This icon from the Gospel of John (19:25-27) was taken up in the episcopal and later the papal coat-of-arms of Karol Wojtyła: a golden cross with the letter "M" on the lower right and the motto "Totus tuus", drawn from the well-known words of Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort in which Karol Wojtyła found a guiding light for his life: "Totus tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt. Accipio te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria – I belong entirely to you, and all that I have is yours. I take you for my all. O Mary, give me your heart" (Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, 266).


In his Testament, the new Blessed wrote: "When, on 16 October 1978, the Conclave of Cardinals chose John Paul II, the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, said to me: ‘The task of the new Pope will be to lead the Church into the Third Millennium’". And the Pope added: "I would like once again to express my gratitude to the Holy Spirit for the great gift of the Second Vatican Council, to which, together with the whole Church – and especially with the whole episcopate – I feel indebted. I am convinced that it will long be granted to the new generations to draw from the treasures that this Council of the twentieth century has lavished upon us. As a Bishop who took part in the Council from the first to the last day, I desire to entrust this great patrimony to all who are and will be called in the future to put it into practice. For my part, I thank the Eternal Shepherd, who has enabled me to serve this very great cause in the course of all the years of my Pontificate". And what is this "cause"? It is the same one that John Paul II presented during his first solemn Mass in Saint Peter’s Square in the unforgettable words: "Do not be afraid! Open, open wide the doors to Christ!" What the newly-elected Pope asked of everyone, he was himself the first to do: society, culture, political and economic systems he opened up to Christ, turning back with the strength of a titan – a strength which came to him from God – a tide which appeared irreversible. By his witness of faith, love and apostolic courage, accompanied by great human charisma, this exemplary son of Poland helped believers throughout the world not to be afraid to be called Christian, to belong to the Church, to speak of the Gospel. In a word: he helped us not to fear the truth, because truth is the guarantee of liberty. To put it even more succinctly: he gave us the strength to believe in Christ, because Christ is Redemptor hominis, the Redeemer of man. This was the theme of his first encyclical, and the thread which runs though all the others.


When Karol Wojtyła ascended to the throne of Peter, he brought with him a deep understanding of the difference between Marxism and Christianity, based on their respective visions of man. This was his message: man is the way of the Church, and Christ is the way of man. With this message, which is the great legacy of the Second Vatican Council and of its "helmsman", the Servant of God Pope Paul VI, John Paul II led the People of God across the threshold of the Third Millennium, which thanks to Christ he was able to call "the threshold of hope". Throughout the long journey of preparation for the great Jubilee he directed Christianity once again to the future, the future of God, which transcends history while nonetheless directly affecting it. He rightly reclaimed for Christianity that impulse of hope which had in some sense faltered before Marxism and the ideology of progress. He restored to Christianity its true face as a religion of hope, to be lived in history in an "Advent" spirit, in a personal and communitarian existence directed to Christ, the fullness of humanity and the fulfillment of all our longings for justice and peace.


Finally, on a more personal note, I would like to thank God for the gift of having worked for many years with Blessed Pope John Paul II. I had known him earlier and had esteemed him, but for twenty-three years, beginning in 1982 after he called me to Rome to be Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I was at his side and came to revere him all the more. My own service was sustained by his spiritual depth and by the richness of his insights. His example of prayer continually impressed and edified me: he remained deeply united to God even amid the many demands of his ministry. Then too, there was his witness in suffering: the Lord gradually stripped him of everything, yet he remained ever a "rock", as Christ desired. His profound humility, grounded in close union with Christ, enabled him to continue to lead the Church and to give to the world a message which became all the more eloquent as his physical strength declined. In this way he lived out in an extraordinary way the vocation of every priest and bishop to become completely one with Jesus, whom he daily receives and offers in the Eucharist.


Blessed are you, beloved Pope John Paul II, because you believed! Continue, we implore you, to sustain from heaven the faith of God’s people. Amen.

[Vatican Press Office; Original: Italian]

It's Divine Mercy Sunday

John Paul II will also be beatified today by Pope Benedict XVI.

Prayers taught to St. Faustina by our Lord, Jesus Christ:

Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

For the sake of His sorrowful Passion have mercy on us and on the whole world.

You expired, Jesus, but the source of life gushed forth for souls, and the ocean of mercy opened up for the whole world. O Fount of Life, unfathomable Divine Mercy, envelop the whole world and empty yourself out upon us.

O Blood and Water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us. I trust in You!

Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One,
have mercy on us and on the whole world.
[recite this last prayer three times, once for each member of the Holy Trinity]

Amen.

The Eighth Day

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The liturgical celebration of the Easter Vigil makes use of two eloquent signs. First there is the fire that becomes light. As the procession makes its way through the church, shrouded in the darkness of the night, the light of the Paschal Candle becomes a wave of lights, and it speaks to us of Christ as the true morning star that never sets – the Risen Lord in whom light has conquered darkness. The second sign is water. On the one hand, it recalls the waters of the Red Sea, decline and death, the mystery of the Cross. But now it is presented to us as spring water, a life-giving element amid the dryness. Thus it becomes the image of the sacrament of baptism, through which we become sharers in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Yet these great signs of creation, light and water, are not the only constituent elements of the liturgy of the Easter Vigil. Another essential feature is the ample encounter with the words of sacred Scripture that it provides. Before the liturgical reform there were twelve Old Testament readings and two from the New Testament. The New Testament readings have been retained. The number of Old Testament readings has been fixed at seven, but depending upon the local situation, they may be reduced to three. The Church wishes to offer us a panoramic view of whole trajectory of salvation history, starting with creation, passing through the election and the liberation of Israel to the testimony of the prophets by which this entire history is directed ever more clearly towards Jesus Christ. In the liturgical tradition all these readings were called prophecies. Even when they are not directly foretelling future events, they have a prophetic character, they show us the inner foundation and orientation of history. They cause creation and history to become transparent to what is essential. In this way they take us by the hand and lead us towards Christ, they show us the true Light.

At the Easter Vigil, the journey along the paths of sacred Scripture begins with the account of creation. This is the liturgy’s way of telling us that the creation story is itself a prophecy. It is not information about the external processes by which the cosmos and man himself came into being. The Fathers of the Church were well aware of this. They did not interpret the story as an account of the process of the origins of things, but rather as a pointer towards the essential, towards the true beginning and end of our being. Now, one might ask: is it really important to speak also of creation during the Easter Vigil? Could we not begin with the events in which God calls man, forms a people for himself and creates his history with men upon the earth? The answer has to be: no. To omit the creation would be to misunderstand the very history of God with men, to diminish it, to lose sight of its true order of greatness. The sweep of history established by God reaches back to the origins, back to creation. Our profession of faith begins with the words: “We believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth”. If we omit the beginning of the Credo, the whole history of salvation becomes too limited and too small. The Church is not some kind of association that concerns itself with man’s religious needs but is limited to that objective. No, she brings man into contact with God and thus with the source of all things. Therefore we relate to God as Creator, and so we have a responsibility for creation. Our responsibility extends as far as creation because it comes from the Creator. Only because God created everything can he give us life and direct our lives. Life in the Church’s faith involves more than a set of feelings and sentiments and perhaps moral obligations. It embraces man in his entirety, from his origins to his eternal destiny. Only because creation belongs to God can we place ourselves completely in his hands. And only because he is the Creator can he give us life for ever. Joy over creation, thanksgiving for creation and responsibility for it all belong together.

The central message of the creation account can be defined more precisely still. In the opening words of his Gospel, Saint John sums up the essential meaning of that account in this single statement: “In the beginning was the Word”. In effect, the creation account that we listened to earlier is characterized by the regularly recurring phrase: “And God said …” The world is a product of the Word, of the Logos, as Saint John expresses it, using a key term from the Greek language. “Logos” means “reason”, “sense”, “word”. It is not reason pure and simple, but creative Reason, that speaks and communicates itself. It is Reason that both is and creates sense. The creation account tells us, then, that the world is a product of creative Reason. Hence it tells us that, far from there being an absence of reason and freedom at the origin of all things, the source of everything is creative Reason, love, and freedom.

Here we are faced with the ultimate alternative that is at stake in the dispute between faith and unbelief: are irrationality, lack of freedom and pure chance the origin of everything, or are reason, freedom and love at the origin of being? Does the primacy belong to unreason or to reason? This is what everything hinges upon in the final analysis.

As believers we answer, with the creation account and with John, that in the beginning is reason. In the beginning is freedom. Hence it is good to be a human person.

It is not the case that in the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny corner of the cosmos, there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it. If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature.

But no, Reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine Reason. And because it is Reason, it also created freedom; and because freedom can be abused, there also exist forces harmful to creation. Hence a thick black line, so to speak, has been drawn across the structure of the universe and across the nature of man. But despite this contradiction, creation itself remains good, life remains good, because at the beginning is good Reason, God’s creative love. Hence the world can be saved. Hence we can and must place ourselves on the side of reason, freedom and love – on the side of God who loves us so much that he suffered for us, that from his death there might emerge a new, definitive and healed life.

The Old Testament account of creation that we listened to clearly indicates this order of realities. But it leads us a further step forward. It has structured the process of creation within the framework of a week leading up to the Sabbath, in which it finds its completion. For Israel, the Sabbath was the day on which all could participate in God’s rest, in which man and animal, master and slave, great and small were united in God’s freedom. Thus the Sabbath was an expression of the Covenant between God and man and creation. In this way, communion between God and man does not appear as something extra, something added later to a world already fully created. The Covenant, communion between God and man, is inbuilt at the deepest level of creation.

Yes, the Covenant is the inner ground of creation, just as creation is the external presupposition of the Covenant. God made the world so that there could be a space where he might communicate his love, and from which the response of love might come back to him. From God’s perspective, the heart of the man who responds to him is greater and more important than the whole immense material cosmos, for all that the latter allows us to glimpse something of God’s grandeur.

Easter and the paschal experience of Christians, however, now require us to take a further step. The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week. After six days in which man in some sense participates in God’s work of creation, the Sabbath is the day of rest. But something quite unprecedented happened in the nascent Church: the place of the Sabbath, the seventh day, was taken by the first day. As the day of the liturgical assembly, it is the day for encounter with God through Jesus Christ who as the Risen Lord encountered his followers on the first day, Sunday, after they had found the tomb empty.

The structure of the week is overturned. No longer does it point towards the seventh day, as the time to participate in God’s rest. It sets out from the first day as the day of encounter with the Risen Lord. This encounter happens afresh at every celebration of the Eucharist, when the Lord enters anew into the midst of his disciples and gives himself to them, allows himself, so to speak, to be touched by them, sits down at table with them. This change is utterly extraordinary, considering that the Sabbath, the seventh day seen as the day of encounter with God, is so profoundly rooted in the Old Testament.

If we also bear in mind how much the movement from work towards the rest-day corresponds to a natural rhythm, the dramatic nature of this change is even more striking. This revolutionary development that occurred at the very the beginning of the Church’s history can be explained only by the fact that something utterly new happened that day. The first day of the week was the third day after Jesus’ death. It was the day when he showed himself to his disciples as the Risen Lord. In truth, this encounter had something unsettling about it. The world had changed. This man who had died was now living with a life that was no longer threatened by any death. A new form of life had been inaugurated, a new dimension of creation. The first day, according to the Genesis account, is the day on which creation begins. Now it was the day of creation in a new way, it had become the day of the new creation. We celebrate the first day. And in so doing we celebrate God the Creator and his creation.

Yes, we believe in God, the Creator of heaven and earth. And we celebrate the God who was made man, who suffered, died, was buried and rose again. We celebrate the definitive victory of the Creator and of his creation. We celebrate this day as the origin and the goal of our existence. We celebrate it because now, thanks to the risen Lord, it is definitively established that reason is stronger than unreason, truth stronger than lies, love stronger than death. We celebrate the first day because we know that the black line drawn across creation does not last for ever. We celebrate it because we know that those words from the end of the creation account have now been definitively fulfilled: “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31).

Amen.

[Pope Benedict's Easter Vigil Sermon]