Video:"No Offense"

Folks, I invite you to watch the newest ad by the National Organization for Marriage, titled, " No Offense," featuring Miss Carrie Prejean.


The National Organization for Marriage, is a nonprofit organization with a mission to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it. It was founded in 2007 in response to the growing need for an organized opposition to same-sex marriage in state legislatures, NOM serves as a national resource for marriage-related initiatives at the state and local level. For decades, pro-family organizations have educated the public about the importance of marriage and the family, but have lacked the organized, national presence needed to impact state and local politics in a coordinated and sustained fashion. NOM seeks to fill that void, organizing as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, giving it the flexibility to lobby and support marriage initiatives across the nation. I have done some volunteer work for NOM and of course, I support its aims. I wish to invite all the likely-minded to support NOM in its struggle to protect marriage, the families, and the freedom of speech needed to defend these values.

- Read also Carrie Prejean: My Newest Heroin here in Vivificat!

Pew Forum: Changes in US religious preferences affect Catholic Church the most

Folks, the ever-perceptive people at the Pew Forum released the results of another survey measuring the changes in religious attitudes among Americans. The report is titled Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S. and may be found here. You may read their methodology here. Respondents were allowed to supply more than one answers to the same question so if you add the percentages and these exceed 100%, that's the reason.

These are the main findings relevant to the Catholic Church. I rounded-up percentages and numerical descriptors so these should be understood as closest approximations. Errors and/or imprecisions are mine and not the Pew Forum's:

Catholicism has suffered the greatest net loss in the process of religious change

One-in-ten American adults is a former Catholic

The number of ex-Catholics, unaffiliated, and converts to Protestantism are about even

Two thirds of ex-Catholics who left the Church - whether to Protestantism or to no church - did so because they stopped believing in Catholic teachings

50% of ex-Catholics converts to Protestantism left the Church because they rejected Catholic teachings

60% of ex-Catholics left because of Church teaching on abortion and homosex

50% of ex-Catholics left because of Church teaching on birth control

50% of ex-Catholics left because of Church's treatment of women

55% of ex-Catholics who became Evangelical Protestants left because they dislike the Church's teaching on the Bible

44% of now Protestant ex-Catholics also left because they married a non-Catholic

39% of now Protestant ex-Catholics also left because they were dissatisfied with their parish priests

Fewer than 3-in-ten of ex-Catholics say clergy sexual abuse scandal a reason to leave the Church

There's much to ponder here. I offer the following personal thoughts on these results:

Most of those who left the Church did so because of dissent with the Church's moral teaching, particularly on abortion and human sexuality.

I will mourn the departure of these Catholics who left for doctrinal dissent, but in the end, it's their loss.

Those who left and didn't join a Protestant community didn't flock to the Episcopal Church, where they could find a near-Catholic liturgy and complete commitment to no particular set of moral imperatives, so what they sought wasn't a traditional setting of Christian worship, belief, and practice, but a setting that confirmed their own autonomous morality or no setting at all.

Were I to have the power - and I don't, and I don't believe anyone does - I would not change a single iota or tilde of the Church's Moral Teaching to accomodate those who left for these reasons. I am sorry, but good bye. The door is open for your return home.

Now, on the other sound of the exodus from the Catholic Church, I think:

That we in the Church should present the Bible as guide for living, as much as a prayer book and a doctrinal textbook. Our Protestant brethren have learned to do this very well and we should learn to do the same within the Catholic framework of faith and practice.

The lay faithful, now more than ever, should learn to see priests, deacons, and religious as men and women also struggling for their salvation and not as accomplished superheroes. They too have imperfections and these cannot be used as an excuse to leave the Church.

Priests, deacons, and religious should be more spiritual and better attuned to their flock's needs; their flock's expectations of them are high but fragile, and very easy to betray.

Protestant churches fill significant spiritual voids that we Catholics have failed to fill in those who left us, particularly in the area of support and fellowship. That's our fault and we have no one else to blame but ourselves.

That's about it. What do you think?

UN Human Rights Council's Resolution on "religious defamation" a threat to free religious speech

Folks, The Economist magazine published a very interesting critique of resolution 10/22, of the U.N. Human Rights Council, on Combating the Defamation of Religions. The Economist observes that the resolution says “defamation of religions” is a “serious affront to human dignity” which can “restrict the freedom” of those who are defamed, and may also lead to the incitement of violence, and goes on to say.

But there is an insidious blurring of categories here, which becomes plain when you compare this resolution with the more rigorous language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948 in a spirit of revulsion over the evils of fascism. This asserts the right of human beings in ways that are now entrenched in the theory and (most of the time) the practice of liberal democracy. It upholds the right of people to live in freedom from persecution and arbitrary arrest; to hold any faith or none; to change religion; and to enjoy freedom of expression, which by any fair definition includes freedom to agree or disagree with the tenets of any religion.

In other words, it protects individuals—not religions, or any other set of beliefs. And this is a vital distinction. For it is not possible systematically to protect religions or their followers from offence without infringing the right of individuals.

I read the The Economist regularly to get another take about world affairs that I don’t get from US periodicals and, I will be the first one to admit The Economist’s coverage of religious news in general and of the Catholic Church in particular is often, well, derogatory. However, here I have to agree with them. Resolution 10/22 was pushed by Islamic nations. The Economist observes:

What exactly is it the drafters of the council resolution are trying to outlaw? To judge from what happens in the countries that lobbied for the vote—like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan—they use the word “defamation” to mean something close to the crime of blasphemy, which is in turn defined as voicing dissent from the official reading of Islam. In many of the 56 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which has led the drive to outlaw “defamation”, both non-Muslims and Muslims who voice dissent (even in technical matters of Koranic interpretation) are often victims of just the sort of persecution the 1948 declaration sought to outlaw. That is a real human-rights problem. And in the spirit of fairness, laws against blasphemy that remain on the statute books of some Western countries should also be struck off; only real, not imaginary, incitement of violence should be outlawed.

I hold but deepest mistrust and suspicion of the ulterior agenda of these countries and must conclude that they intend to get a green light to persecute non-Muslim populations within their countries and muzzle the rights of others to respectfully dissent from Islam and even show its contradictions, all under the cover of the protection of human rights.

If democracies were to “to provide, within their respective legal and constitutional systems, adequate protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from defamation of religions and incitement to religious hatred in general, and to take all possible measures to promote tolerance and respect for all religions and beliefs” as this resolution urges, particularly “the use of the print, audio-visual and electronic media, including the Internet, and any other means to incite acts of violence, xenophobia or related intolerance and discrimination against any religion, as well as the targeting of religious symbols and venerated persons” which this resolution deplores, blogs like Jihad Watch would be outlawed. Movie producers such as Geert Wilders would be jailed – and the Netherlands are threatening to do just that. Independent textual and/or higher criticism of the Koran would have to go underground and researchers jailed or worse.

Moreover, in Islamic countries, persecution of priests like Father Zakaria Botros, daring to debate the demerits of the Islamic faith with specialist knowledge will face “defamation” charges, whereas Islamic apologetics and proselytism aimed at Christians would continue relentlessly, under the rubric that Islam “always tells the truth about Christ and Christianity” but not the other way around.

This U.N. Council on Human Rights exemplifies why the U.N. cannot be taken seriously as a world organization. This resolution cannot be allowed to inform any treaties, conventions, and any other form of national or international law. This is bad policy disguise as good intentions. And we know well how these pave the road to hell.

The Bush Administration came out last year strongly against this resolution. Let’s hope – and inform – the Obama Administration to oppose it too and to remain vigilant against any creeping attempt to enact it as law here or elsewhere.

On How to Discover the Energy of the Holy Spirit

St. Gregory of Sinai

Source: Inner Light Productions

The energy of the Holy Spirit, which we have already mystically received in baptism, is realized in two ways. First, to generalize, this gift is revealed, as St. Mark tells us (e.g., St. Mark the Ascetic in "On Baptism"), through arduous and protracted practice of the commandments: to the degree to which we effectively practice the commandments its radiance is increasingly manifested in us. Secondly, it is manifested to those under guidance through the continuous invocation of the Lord Jesus, repeated with conscious awareness, that is, through mindfulness of god. In the first way, it is revealed more slowly, in the second more rapidly, if one diligently and persistently learns how to dig the ground and locate the gold. Thus if we want to realize and know the truth and not to be led astray, let us seek to possess only the heart-engrafted energy in a way that is totally without shape or form, not trying to contemplate in our imagination what we take to be the figure or similitude of things holy or to see any colors or lights. For in the nature of things the spirit of delusion deceives the intellect through such spurious fantasies, especially at the early stages, in those who are still inexperienced. On the contrary, let our aim be to make the energy of prayer alone active in our hearts, for it brings warmth and joy to the intellect, and sets the heart alight with an ineffable love for God and man. It is on account of this that humility and contrition flow richly from prayer. For prayer in beginners is the unceasing noetic activity of the Holy Spirit. To start with it rises like a fire of joy from the heart; in the end it is like light made fragrant by divine energy.

There are several signs that the energy of the Holy Spirit is beginning to be active in those who genuinely aspire for this to happen and are not just putting God to the test -- for, according to the Wisdom of Solomon, "It is found by those who do not put it to the test, and manifests itself to those who do not distrust it" (Wisdom 1:2). In some it appears as awe arising in the heart, in others as a tremulous sense of jubilation, in others as joy mingled with awe, or as tremulousness mingled with joy, and sometimes it manifests itself as tears and awe. For the soul is joyous at God's visitation and mercy, but at the same time is in awe and trepidation at His presence because it is guilty of so many sins. Again, in some the soul at the outset experiences an unutterable sense of contrition and an indescribable pain, like the woman in Scripture who labors to give birth (Revolution 12:2). For the living and active Logos - - that is to say, Jesus -- penetrates, as the apostle says, to the point at which soul separates from body, joints from marrow (Hebrews 4:12), so as to expel by force every trace of passion from both soul and body. In others it is manifest as an unconquerable love and peace, shown towards all, or as a joyousness that the fathers have often called exultation -- a spiritual force and an impulsion of the living heart that is also described as a vibration and sighing of the Spirit who makes wordless intercession for us to God (Romans 8:26). Isaiah has also called the "waves" of God's righteousness (Isaiah 48:18), while the great Ephrem calls it "spurring." The Lord Himself describes it as a "spring of water welling up for eternal life" (John 4:14) -- He refers to the Spirit as water -- a source that leaps up in the heart and erupts through the ebullience of its power.

You should know that there are two kinds of exultation or joyousness: the calm variety (called a vibration or sighing or intercession of the Spirit), and the great exultation of the heart -- a leap, bound or jump, the soaring flight of the living heart towards the sphere of the divine. For when the soul has been raised on the wings of divine love by the Holy Spirit and has been freed from the bonds of the passions, it strives to fly to that higher realm even before death, seeking to separate itself from its burden. This is also known as a stirring of the spirit -- that is to say, an eruption or impulsion -- as in the text, "Jesus was stirred in spirit and, deeply moved, He said, 'Where have you laid him?'" (John 11:34). David the Psalmist indicates the difference between the greater and the lesser exultation when he declares that the mountains leap like rams and the little hills like lambs (Psalm 114:6). He is referring of course to those who are perfect and to beginners, for physical mountains and hills, lacking animal life, do not actually leap about.

Divine awe has nothing to do with trepidation -- by which I mean, not the tremulousness induced by joy, but the trepidation induced by wrath or chastisement or the feeling of desertion by God. On the contrary, divine awe is accompanied by a tremulous sense of jubilation from the prayer of fire that we offer when filled with awe. This awe is not the fear provoked by wrath or punishment, but it is inspired by wisdom, and is also described as "the beginning of wisdom" (Psalms 111:10). Awe may be divided into three kinds, even though the fathers speak only of two: the awe of beginners, that of the perfect, and that provoked by wrath, which should properly be called trepidation, agitation or contrition.

There are several kinds of trembling. That of wrath is one, that of joy is another, and that of the soul's incensive power, when the heart's blood is over-heated, is another, that of old age is another, that of sin or delusion is another, and that of the curse which was laid on the human race because of Cain is another (Genesis 4:11-15). In the early stages of spiritual warfare, however, it sometimes but not always happens that the trembling induced by joy and that induced by sin contend with one another. The first is the tremulous sense of jubilation, when grace refreshes the soul with great joyfulness accompanied by tears; the second is characterized by a disordered fervor, stupor and obduracy that consume the sol, inflame the sexual organs, and impel one to assent through the imagination to erotic physical obscenities. END

from "The Philokalia: Volume IV," edited and translated by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Bishop Kallistos Ware, (London: Faber and Faber, 1995), pp. 259 - 261.

Shake Down the Thunder on Notre Dame

Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer,
President, Human Life International

"Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame! Wake up the echoes cheering her name. Send a volley cheer on high; shake down the thunder from the sky. What though the odds be great or small, old Notre Dame will win over all, while her loyal sons go marching onward to victory."
(Notre Dame Fight Song)

I used to sing these words with tremendous zeal while a student at Notre Dame (ND) in the '80s and especially as a member of the ND Glee Club for a year. How proud we were to belt out this most famous of college fight songs and rally the troops for battle on the gridiron - and elsewhere! ND alumni do not need to be reminded how deeply embedded in our hearts this tune and these words are; we only need to be assured that they still mean what they indicate: namely, that Notre Dame's loyal sons are still "marching onward to victory" (of Catholic orthodoxy, that is.)

The decision of Notre Dame President, Fr. John Jenkins, to invite our nation's abortion-promoter-in-chief to speak at the May 17th commencement is such an egregious violation of our loyalty to our alma mater that it's hard to see how these words actually to Notre Dame apply any more. Who wants to "wake up the echoes cheering her name" now? Fr. Jenkins has just shaken down a sort of spiritual thunder on what used to be the country's premier Catholic university, and woe to him and the rest of the ND leadership for their decision to put Notre Dame definitively outside the scope of Catholic orthodoxy. It's worse than that, of course, because Fr. Jenkins and his team have reaffirmed time and again, in the face of massive protests, their commitment to having President Obama speak at graduation and to receiving an honorary doctorate. It just doesn't get more tragic than that.

Let's be honest: all the hand wringing and justification for Fr. Jenkins' decision is just fluff. Despite the unprecedented tour de force of close to fifty US bishops objecting to this travesty, Fr. Jenkins's claim that his decision is "consistent" with the bishops' 2004 directive on speakers at Catholic colleges - simply because Barack Obama is not a Catholic - is, well, absurd on its face. No person in his right mind buys it.

And that's the point - Notre Dame leadership is not "in its right mind" any more. The ones who made or endorsed this decision are not thinking with the mind of the Church let alone the Mind of Christ. This doesn't just apply to Fr. Jenkins either. It also applies to his superior, Fr. Hugh Cleary, who has an obligation to demand Jenkins' immediate resignation from his post to end this scandal but who chose instead to make a sappy, glowing, politically-correct statement which dares call this hurtful fiasco a "teachable moment."

No, Father Cleary - a "teachable moment" would be your removing Fr. Jenkins from office to show the world that the Church really means what she says in calling abortion an "abominable crime." (Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, 51)

As far as I am concerned, a thunder of judgment has just been shaken down on Notre Dame, its Board of Directors and any faculty, students or alumni who endorse the decision to bring Barack Obama to Notre Dame's campus to sully Our Lady's good name and our deepest loyalties.

“World” versus “Planet”

 

 

 

Why we no longer say “world” and say “planet” instead when talking about Earth? Who had that idea? When did we fall on that error? “Planet” belittles us and alienates us; "world" makes us big and includes us in all things. We’re not merely “the third rock from the Sun”; we’re something, we’re here, we’ve been found worthwhile by God or, if you don’t believe in Him, then by nature. Crazy world!

Intelligent Design and the Problem of Evil

Folks, Benjamin Wiker of InsideCatholic.com has written a very thought-provoking post on his blog, titled, The Problem of Evil which I know you all will find interesting. This is how it begins :

As an advocate of the Intelligent Design movement, I'm very often confronted with the following rather pointed criticism: "Well, if the world is designed, then we've got to blame the designer for all of the evil in it, don't we? Backaches and headaches, cancer, cats playing with mice, parasites, floods, Nazis, slavery, starving children -- the whole mess would have to be laid at the designer's door."

Indeed, the presence of evil has been used, time and again, as a kind of trump card thrown down in debate against theists in general and design proponents in particular as the unanswerable objection, a lock-tight logical proof of atheism. In slightly expanded form, the logic runs as follows: If God exists, He is all-powerful and benevolent. If He is all powerful and benevolent, He wouldn't allow _____. But _____ exists; therefore, God does not exist.

We must understand, however, that this is not a mere debating tactic on the part of the atheist, but a formalization of a very human cri de coeur: "I can't believe God exists. There is so much evil in the world." Simply put, evil is a real problem, and odd as it sounds, we need to keep it that way.

Please, continue reading here.

Congratulations, Son and Daughter!

Folks, please join me in congratulating my firstborn son Chris and his wife, Natasha, on receiving the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony yesterday, after four years of civil matrimony. May the Lord bless them richly, grant them eternal joy, and bind them forever. Here's a short video of the joyous ocassion.

Carrie Prejean: My Newest Heroine

Folks, I don’t watch beauty pageants, period. I think them relics from another era. But last Sunday in the Miss America pageant, someone shone not only because of her external beauty, but also because of her inner beauty. Her name is Carrie Prejeane, and she was Miss California. Her beauty greatly outshines the coarse bigotry of a certain trash-blogger and potty-mouth named Mario Armando Lavandeira, who goes by the alias “Perez Hilton.”

For reasons lost to me, pageant producers hired this disturbed and disturbing individual as someone qualified to judge the beauty of another. So he got to ask Ms. Prejean a question about gay marriage. Miss. Prejeane answered from the depths of her convictions. Lavandeira, being a militant gay activist, didn’t like the answer and for that, he diss’ed her. Then he went on TV and to his video-cast and insulted her by calling her the most vile names a man – a real man – would not call a woman.

In NBC’s The Today Show Miss Prejeane gleamed during an interview with Matt Lauer as she explained "I knew at that moment after I answered the question, I knew, I was not going to win because of my answer, because I had spoken from my heart, from my beliefs and for my God… I wouldn't have answered it differently. The way I answered may have been offensive. With that question specifically, it's not about being politically correct. For me it was being biblically correct."

See how the tables have been turned: deviant behavior is now praised and the unions this behavior have created now deemed worthy of the title and benefits of marriage. Whoever dares to question this new “verity” is bigot to shunned and ridiculed. Evil is now being called “good” and good, “evil”.

I applaud Miss Carrie Prejeane. No earthly accolade is worth the glory of heaven. She did good. It’s good to see people of conscience daring to risk fame and fortune in order to remain true to themselves and true to Jesus.

Lavandeira is a gay thug and a misogynist. Shame on him. And shame on the media for not calling him on it.

- Read also Free Speech for Me but not for Thee? Miss California and the Gay Thug by Deacon Keith Fournier.

- Watch the new add produced by the National Organization for Marriage featuring Carrie Prejean

Video - John Michael Talbot - Sunrise - Quiet Reflections Part 1

The Venezuela Dossier

Folks, now that President Obama and Venezuela’s Macho Grande are chums, we should do well to review as many as these reports on Chavez’s mischief in and outside his country. Now don’t take me wrong, I think that there is merit in talking to jerks and I am no fan of trade embargoes – I rather allow the market to react against unfriendly regime and for companies to cut their losses, divest their assets, and stop investing in economies distorted by hostile, socialist regimes. However, the deeds of the Chavez’s regime can stand a lot of scrutiny and frankly, I don’t trust him. Please review this little collection and reach your own conclusions. Then call your representative and tell them that what you want to see from Chavez are deeds, not empty words.

U.S. State Department

• http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35766.htm
• http://www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2009/vol1/116525.htm
• http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/wha/119177.htm
• http://2001-2009.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2008/108543.htm
• http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2007/103710.htm
• http://www.incb.org/pdf/annual-report/2008/en/AR2008_Chapter_III_Americas.pdf

U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)

• http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-09-806

The Economist

• http://www.economist.com/countries/Venezuela/
• http://www.economist.com/countries/Venezuela/profile.cfm?folder=Profile%2DEconomic%20Data
• http://www.economist.com/countries/Venezuela/profile.cfm?folder=Profile-Forecast
• http://a330.g.akamai.net/7/330/25828/20081021195552/graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy%20Index%202008.pdf

Heritage Foundation

• http://www.heritage.org/Index/Country/Venezuela

Transparency International

• http://www.transparencia.org.ve/admin/multimedia/imagenes/20080428100044.pdf
• http://www.transparencia.org.ve/admin/multimedia/imagenes/20080923121511.pdf
• http://www.transparencia.org.ve/admin/multimedia/imagenes/20080923121222.pdf

Amnesty International

• http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/venezuela/report-2008

Human Rights Watch

• http://www.hrw.org/americas/venezuela
• http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2004/06/16/rigging-rule-law-0

Federation of American Scientists

• http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2006/12/venezuelas_military_build-up_w.php
• http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32488.pdf

Open Source Center

• Venezuela -- Chavez Moves to Silence Opposition Media - http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/osc/chavez.pdf

Reporters without Borders

• http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=25598

World Economic Forum

• Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010

Recent News

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/international/newsid_7947000/7947414.stm
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/latin_america/newsid_7953000/7953189.stm
• http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/fls/PressReleases/081103-02.html

Venezuela and the Catholic Church (in Spanish)

• Click here.

Why was Jesus scourged?

Folks, today is Divine Mercy Sunday and  I wanted to share with you paragraph #445 of St. Faustina Kowalska’s Diary which I caused me great consternation:

When I came for adoration, an inner recollection took hold of me immediately, and I saw the Lord Jesus tied to a pillar, stripped of His clothes, and the scourging began immediately. I saw four men who took turns at striking the Lord with scourges. My heart almost stopped at the sight of these tortures. The Lord said to me, I suffer even greater pain than that which you see. And Jesus gave me to know for what sins He subjected himself to the scourging: these are sins of impurity. Oh, how dreadful was Jesus' moral suffering during the scourging! Then Jesus said to me, Look and see the human race in its present condition. In an instant, I saw horrible things: the executioners left Jesus, and other people started scourging Him; they seized the scourges and struck the Lord mercilessly. These were priests, religious men and women; and high dignitaries of the Church, which surprised me greatly. There were lay people of all ages and walks of life. All vented their malice on the innocent Jesus. Seeing this, my heart fell as if into a mortal agony. And while the executioners had been scourging Him, Jesus had been silent and looking into the distance; but when those other souls I mentioned scourged Him, Jesus closed His eyes, and a soft, but most painful moan escaped from His Heart. And Jesus gave me to know in detail the gravity of the malice of these ungrateful souls: You see, this is a torture greater than My death. Then my lips too fell silent, and I began to experience the agony of death, and I felt that no one would comfort me or snatch me from that state but the One who had put me into it. Then the Lord said to me, I see the sincere pain of your heart which brought great solace to My Heart. See and take comfort.

As we observe this beautiful feast, let us all pray for our priests and religious who are under constant attack by evil powers. We only have to look at headlines during most of this decade to understand this painful reality. Let us pray for the preservation of all the good ones and for the conversion and healing of those who have fallen, that they may return to the their original calling and be healed.

Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom

Source: Monachos.net

If any man be devout and loveth God,
Let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast!
If any man be a wise servant,
Let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord.

If any have laboured long in fasting,
Let him how receive his recompense.
If any have wrought from the first hour,
Let him today receive his just reward.
If any have come at the third hour,
Let him with thankfulness keep the feast.
If any have arrived at the sixth hour,
Let him have no misgivings;
Because he shall in nowise be deprived therefore.
If any have delayed until the ninth hour,
Let him draw near, fearing nothing.
And if any have tarried even until the eleventh hour,
Let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness.

For the Lord, who is jealous of his honour,
Will accept the last even as the first.
He giveth rest unto him who cometh at the eleventh hour,
Even as unto him who hath wrought from the first hour.
And He showeth mercy upon the last,
And careth for the first;
And to the one He giveth,
And upon the other He bestoweth gifts.
And He both accepteth the deeds,
And welcometh the intention,
And honoureth the acts and praises the offering.

Wherefore, enter ye all into the joy of your Lord;
Receive your reward,
Both the first, and likewise the second.
You rich and poor together, hold high festival!
You sober and you heedless, honour the day!
Rejoice today, both you who have fasted
And you who have disregarded the fast.
The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously.
The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.
Enjoy ye all the feast of faith:
Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness.

Let no one bewail his poverty,
For the universal Kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one weep for his iniquities,
For pardon has shown forth from the grave.
Let no one fear death,
For the Saviour's death has set us free.
He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.

By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive.
He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh.
And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry:
Hell, said he, was embittered
When it encountered Thee in the lower regions.

It was embittered, for it was abolished.
It was embittered, for it was mocked.
It was embittered, for it was slain.
It was embittered, for it was overthrown.
It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains.
It took a body, and met God face to face.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is thy sting?
O Hell, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.
For Christ, being risen from the dead,
Is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be glory and dominion
Unto ages of ages.

Amen.

Enemy of the State?

Folks, by now you are all aware of a leaked unclassified report authored by the Department of Homeland Security, titled, Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, dated April 7. Drawing from what they see as parallels with the 1990’s, the authors make some sweeping generalizations:

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

At first sight, this seems pretty reasonable, the operative word here being “hate.” Still, how does this connect with “groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration”? Who defines the connection?

For example, I am pro-Life and as a consequence, opposed to abortion. Am I single issue, hateful person? Should I be watched by the law-abiding as a potential troublemaker? Worse, I am a veteran with some basic knowledge of firearms and advanced knowledge of other disciplines – I don’t own any guns, though. Should I be held under suspicion? If someone commits a crime in the name of Life, should I be profiled as a suspect, interrogated, and sent to a lineup?

The problem with these broad strokes is that the reports containing them are going to become the first references on how local and state law enforcers are to conduct investigations of this kind.

The fact that the Obama Administration previously released a report on leftwing extremism, titled Leftwing Extremists Likely to Increase Use of Cyber Attacks over the Coming Decade brings me little comfort, since the majority of our citizens consider the groups mentioned therein – The Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front, Animal Defense League, Earth First, Crimethic, Ruckus Society, and Recreate 68 – as positively cuckoo, and outright criminal. This concreteness is absent from the “rightwing” report, since the report doesn’t mention any specific groups, warning vaguely instead against various mindsets.

Also, the comparison that the report on rightwing extremism makes with the 1990’s strikes me as unbalanced. Why are the 1990’s the decade of archetypical bad rightwing madness? How about the 1970s with the Weather Underground, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the Macheteros among others? The economy and the international situation back then were very similar, may be even worse that they are now and yet they tended to produce more violent leftwing criminals than rightwing – the perennial KKK being already on its road to extinction. It seems logical to conclude that national and international conditions are not necessary determinant of what kind of unrest and terrorism will spawn from these conditions. To keep the parallels going, the report’s authors should’ve warn against the emergence of leftwing terrorism different from cyberterrorism.

Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment is an incoherent report precisely because it fails to make the proper distinctions between the minds of those who seek a more humane, life-affirming society from those who kill, maim, and destroy in the name of Life. The report muddles the issue of who is or can be a terrorist by blurring the distinctions between citizens harboring serious concerns about governance issues from those who hide under those concerns to create mayhem. In the end, Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, will misinform law enforcers, investigators, prosecutors, and criminal profilers by injecting an antireligious bias into their investigations. Citizens with an ax to grind against pro-Lifers will find this report all too useful. I am very displeased with this report and I hope that the Department of Homeland Security issues a corrected report as soon as possible before “mistakes are made” and injustice flourishes, before a poor schmuck is declared an enemy of the state just for entertaining certain ideas.

The Joy of Easter

Father Nicolas Schwizer

1. To be a Christian is to believe in the Resurrection of Christ. We are not Christians because we believe in the cross, suffering, and death. We are Christians because we believe in the Resurrection, in liberation, in life, and in joy.

At the bottom of our heart, we must have the security that all trial transforms into grace, all sadness into joy, and all death into resurrection.

If we wish, there will not be one single moment of our existence which cannot be free of the splendid joy of Easter. The true Christian is incapable of living on the fringe of joy. By Christ, he/she has been introduced and installed into joy, surrendered to joy. In his/her life, failure can no longer exist; neither sin, nor suffering, nor death can be for him/her insurmountable obstacles. Everything is prime material for redemption, for resurrection since at the center of his/her sin, his/her sufferings and his/her death, is Jesus Christ, Victor. For that reason, the greatest sufferings and the best joys can co-exist, intimately united in the bosom of the same life.

2. But, we experience so many temptations to resist. Accepting to believe in joy is almost accepting to renounce our very selves, our experiences, our lack of confidence, our complaints. Our joy is the measure of our attachment to God, to confidence, to hope, and to faith. Our “no” to happiness is our “no” to God. God occupies in our lives the same place as joy.

3. The Fathers of the Church would say that there is only one way to cure sadness: to stop loving it. To believe in God is to believe that He is capable of making us happy, of showing us a life we wish to prolong for all eternity. Because for many of us, the difficult question is not in knowing if we have faith in the resurrection, rather it is in knowing if we have the desire to resurrect…..not in our small, egotistical, painful and blind life. If this would be done, prolonging this life indefinitely, would be more of a punishment that a recompense.

4. Therefore, faith in the Resurrection can only come forth from true love. Christ has let us know that love which does not pass: “Faith and hope will pass, but charity (love) lives forever.”

Our faith, our hope of resurrecting, for us and others, depends closely on our ability to resurrect…..they are according to the measure of our power to love.

5. In order to be able to experience a life of love and faith, we have to die to our faults, to our sadness, and to our resentments. There is no Easter for us if we do not accept dying in this area of our soul where we are so much alive: in our agitations, our fears, our interests, and our selfishness…..and if we do not accept resurrecting in that area where we are so dead: resurrect to peace, to faith, to hope, to love, and to joy.

There is no Easter without a good confession: a dying to ourselves, a dying to our caprices which are our sins…..in order to resurrect to the will of Christ who is love, hope, renewal, affection.

There is no Easter without an Easter communion: a leaving of our customs, a leaving of our bread and life…..in order to taste another bread, another life, a bread of sincerity, of surrender to others, a life of love, faith and joy.

That is the feast of Easter: a change of life, a passing from this life to another admirable, marvelous life which will be our life forever, in the house of the Heavenly Father.

Questions for reflection

1. To what measure am I a joyful Christian?

2. Am I capable of renouncing my caprices for love of Christ?

3. How do I imagine the Resurrection?

Drug trafficking is a mortal sin

Folks, this series now starting at CNN caught my attention and even though I know that drug traffickers on both side of the border care little about their eternal destinies, I still have to say it in the hope that someone, somewhere, sees the light, asks God and their victims for forgiveness, and be saved: drug trafficking is a mortal sin.

Let’s recap what a mortal sin is. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him.

The Catechism continues:

For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: "Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent."

Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: "Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother." The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger.

Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God's law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.

So, if someone grows and or produces, transports, distributes, and sells legal or illegal drugs that would then turn human beings into addicts, thereby enslaving millions of human beings in order to profit from the venture, he or she are falling into mortal sin that many number of times.

All the illegal actions that traffickers engage in to support their trade, including but not limited to murder, intimidation, and terrorism, either of individuals or of entire population centers, are mortal sins. Each separate count is a mortal sin.

Those who invoke the help and blessing of God or of any of the saints, particularly the Blessed Mother, upon their evil enterprises, blaspheme or engage in sacrilege. Yep, you’ve got it, mortal sins. Those who deny God and enshrine the quest for power and wealth as their functional gods, becoming theoretical atheists but pagan in practice, yep, guess what, they have fallen into mortal sin. On the other hand, if they invoke the help of evil powers, to include the devil and this new cultic thing called “La Santa Muerte” to protect them in their crimes, they fall into idolatry and superstition: that’s more mortal sins for their accounts.

Every profit made from this trafficking in human misery is tainted and stolen, as well as all the services and good purchased from these profits. Charitable donations made from this money are also tainted and tantamount to blood money; all charitable organizations to include churches of any denomination, as well as synagogues or mosques who accept drug money are sanctioning the drug trade, profiting from the suffering of others and their officers in mortal sin too.

If you are not a drug trafficker but freely and willfully render them assistance in order to profit, you too are in mortal sin. Say, by taking a bribe or providing other minor services such as being a "lookout." You too share in their sin.

The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Those who die in unforgiven mortal sin will be forever separated from God – condemned to hell to be precise.

If you are one of those, please consider my words carefully. Look about you and see the untold misery in which you live and the pain and suffering you are causing to others. Repent. Ask for forgiveness, and repair the damage you have done to the best of your ability. Ask Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for the grace you need to repent and change your life. Get out of the living hell you have created for yourself on this earth before the one that lasts forever overtakes you.

Only the Blood of Jesus can wipe your soul clean and will give you the strength to work for the common good. Ask Jesus to come into your life and to change you. If you were raised Catholic or want to become one, head for the nearest Catholic Church, give your heart to Jesus in the Eucharist, and then join the line for Confession.

He will tell you what to do next.

- Link to Spanish version of this post, Traficar en drogas es pecado mortal.

Video: Thomas Merton - What the Contemplative has to offer

Does evolution explain human nature?

Folks, I present to you a link to the fifth in a series of conversations among leading scientists, scholars, and public figures about the "Big Questions” presented by the John Templeton Foundation. I think you’ll find it interesting.

• Does evolution explain human nature?

“Prayer will come alive if you embody prayer in action”

Prayer will come alive if you embody prayer in action. If you say in your prayer, “God, grant me one thing or another,” it means that you must be prepared to do it yourself to the extent in which you can. There is a story again about a saint who prayed for patience. And then one or two of his friends sent him into a rage. He turned to God and said, “Look, I have just been praying for patience.” And the Lord answered, “Yes, and I am multiplying the occasions for you to learn it.” I think you must be prepared to try to do all that is within your power to life up to the words you use. What is the point in saying, “I love you, Lord,” without doing anything to sustain it?

- Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, Practical Prayer

If you sink we’re sinking, sink again

Folks, the rain of sticks and stones against the Catholic Church has gotten worse lately from all directions, from outside the Church and even from the inside – witness, for example, the debacle at Notre Dame where its President imprudently and impudently defied the bishops of the United States by inviting as a speaker and granting an honorary degree to a person who is ardently “pro-choice.” Savage criticism has also come from sectors of public opinion who refuse to accept our principled views regarding contraceptive – read “condoms” –  use in the battle against AIDS, opposition to same-sex marriage, activism for a more humane immigration policy, you name it, the world, the flesh, and the devil are having a raving party at our expense.

Enter this beautiful homily by the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI on Holy Saturday night where he reminds us that “Perhaps this is actually the situation of the Church in every age? It always seems as if she ought to be sinking, and yet she is always already saved. Saint Paul illustrated this situation with the words: "We are as dying, and behold we live" (2 Cor 6:9). The Lord’s saving hand holds us up, and thus we can already sing the song of the saved, the new song of the risen ones: alleluia! Amen!”

"The Church Sings the Song of Thanksgiving of the Saved"

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 12, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is a Vatican translation of the homily Benedict XVI delivered Holy Saturday at the Mass of the Easter Vigil, celebrated in St. Peter's Basilica.

* * *

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Saint Mark tells us in his Gospel that as the disciples came down from the Mount of the Transfiguration, they were discussing among themselves what "rising from the dead" could mean (cf. Mk 9:10). A little earlier, the Lord had foretold his passion and his resurrection after three days. Peter had protested against this prediction of death. But now, they were wondering what could be meant by the word "resurrection". Could it be that we find ourselves in a similar situation? Christmas, the birth of the divine Infant, we can somehow immediately comprehend. We can love the child, we can imagine that night in Bethlehem, Mary’s joy, the joy of Saint Joseph and the shepherds, the exultation of the angels. But what is resurrection? It does not form part of our experience, and so the message often remains to some degree beyond our understanding, a thing of the past. The Church tries to help us understand it, by expressing this mysterious event in the language of symbols in which we can somehow contemplate this astonishing event. During the Easter Vigil, the Church points out the significance of this day principally through three symbols: light, water, and the new song – the Alleluia.

First of all, there is light. God’s creation – which has just been proclaimed to us in the Biblical narrative – begins with the command: "Let there be light!" (Gen 1:3). Where there is light, life is born, chaos can be transformed into cosmos. In the Biblical message, light is the most immediate image of God: He is total Radiance, Life, Truth, Light. During the Easter Vigil, the Church reads the account of creation as a prophecy. In the resurrection, we see the most sublime fulfilment of what this text describes as the beginning of all things. God says once again: "Let there be light!" The resurrection of Jesus is an eruption of light. Death is conquered, the tomb is thrown open. The Risen One himself is Light, the Light of the world. With the resurrection, the Lord’s day enters the nights of history. Beginning with the resurrection, God’s light spreads throughout the world and throughout history. Day dawns. This Light alone – Jesus Christ – is the true light, something more than the physical phenomenon of light. He is pure Light: God himself, who causes a new creation to be born in the midst of the old, transforming chaos into cosmos.

Let us try to understand this a little better. Why is Christ Light? In the Old Testament, the Torah was considered to be like the light coming from God for the world and for humanity. The Torah separates light from darkness within creation, that is to say, good from evil. It points out to humanity the right path to true life. It points out the good, it demonstrates the truth and it leads us towards love, which is the deepest meaning contained in the Torah. It is a "lamp" for our steps and a "light" for our path (cf. Ps 119:105). Christians, then, knew that in Christ, the Torah is present, the Word of God is present in him as Person. The Word of God is the true light that humanity needs. This Word is present in him, in the Son. Psalm 19 had compared the Torah to the sun which manifests God’s glory as it rises, for all the world to see. Christians understand: yes indeed, in the resurrection, the Son of God has emerged as the Light of the world. Christ is the great Light from which all life originates. He enables us to recognize the glory of God from one end of the earth to the other. He points out our path. He is the Lord’s day which, as it grows, is gradually spreading throughout the earth. Now, living with him and for him, we can live in the light.

At the Easter Vigil, the Church represents the mystery of the light of Christ in the sign of the Paschal candle, whose flame is both light and heat. The symbolism of light is connected with that of fire: radiance and heat, radiance and the transforming energy contained in the fire – truth and love go together. The Paschal candle burns, and is thereby consumed: Cross and resurrection are inseparable. From the Cross, from the Son’s self-giving, light is born, true radiance comes into the world. From the Paschal candle we all light our own candles, especially the newly baptized, for whom the light of Christ enters deeply into their hearts in this Sacrament. The early Church described Baptism as fotismos, as the Sacrament of illumination, as a communication of light, and linked it inseparably with the resurrection of Christ. In Baptism, God says to the candidate: "Let there be light!" The candidate is brought into the light of Christ. Christ now divides the light from the darkness. In him we recognize what is true and what is false, what is radiance and what is darkness. With him, there wells up within us the light of truth, and we begin to understand. On one occasion when Christ looked upon the people who had come to listen to him, seeking some guidance from him, he felt compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd (cf. Mk 6:34). Amid the contradictory messages of that time, they did not know which way to turn. What great compassion he must feel in our own time too – on account of all the endless talk that people hide behind, while in reality they are totally confused. Where must we go? What are the values by which we can order our lives? The values by which we can educate our young, without giving them norms they may be unable to resist, or demanding of them things that perhaps should not be imposed upon them? He is the Light. The baptismal candle is the symbol of enlightenment that is given to us in Baptism. Thus at this hour, Saint Paul speaks to us with great immediacy. In the Letter to the Philippians, he says that, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, Christians should shine as lights in the world (cf. Phil 2:15). Let us pray to the Lord that the fragile flame of the candle he has lit in us, the delicate light of his word and his love amid the confusions of this age, will not be extinguished in us, but will become ever stronger and brighter, so that we, with him, can be people of the day, bright stars lighting up our time.

The second symbol of the Easter Vigil – the night of Baptism – is water. It appears in Sacred Scripture, and hence also in the inner structure of the Sacrament of Baptism, with two opposed meanings. On the one hand there is the sea, which appears as a force antagonistic to life on earth, continually threatening it; yet God has placed a limit upon it. Hence the book of Revelation says that in God’s new world, the sea will be no more (cf. 21:1). It is the element of death. And so it becomes the symbolic representation of Jesus’ death on the Cross: Christ descended into the sea, into the waters of death, as Israel did into the Red Sea. Having risen from death, he gives us life. This means that Baptism is not only a cleansing, but a new birth: with Christ we, as it were, descend into the sea of death, so as to rise up again as new creatures.

The other way in which we encounter water is in the form of the fresh spring that gives life, or the great river from which life comes forth. According to the earliest practice of the Church, Baptism had to be administered with water from a fresh spring. Without water there is no life. It is striking how much importance is attached to wells in Sacred Scripture. They are places from which life rises forth. Beside Jacob’s well, Christ spoke to the Samaritan woman of the new well, the water of true life. He reveals himself to her as the new, definitive Jacob, who opens up for humanity the well that is awaited: the inexhaustible source of life-giving water (cf. Jn 4:5-15). Saint John tells us that a soldier with a lance struck the side of Jesus, and from his open side – from his pierced heart – there came out blood and water (cf. Jn 19:34). The early Church saw in this a symbol of Baptism and Eucharist flowing from the pierced heart of Jesus. In his death, Jesus himself became the spring. The prophet Ezekiel saw a vision of the new Temple from which a spring issues forth that becomes a great life-giving river (cf. Ezek 47:1-12). In a land which constantly suffered from drought and water shortage, this was a great vision of hope. Nascent Christianity understood: in Christ, this vision was fulfilled. He is the true, living Temple of God. He is the spring of living water. From him, the great river pours forth, which in Baptism renews the world and makes it fruitful; the great river of living water, his Gospel which makes the earth fertile. In a discourse during the Feast of Tabernacles, though, Jesus prophesied something still greater: "Whoever believes in me … out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water" (Jn 7:38). In Baptism, the Lord makes us not only persons of light, but also sources from which living water bursts forth. We all know people like that, who leave us somehow refreshed and renewed; people who are like a fountain of fresh spring water. We do not necessarily have to think of great saints like Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Mother Teresa of Calcutta and so on, people through whom rivers of living water truly entered into human history. Thanks be to God, we find them constantly even in our daily lives: people who are like a spring. Certainly, we also know the opposite: people who spread around themselves an atmosphere like a stagnant pool of stale, or even poisoned water. Let us ask the Lord, who has given us the grace of Baptism, for the gift always to be sources of pure, fresh water, bubbling up from the fountain of his truth and his love!

The third great symbol of the Easter Vigil is something rather different; it has to do with man himself. It is the singing of the new song – the alleluia. When a person experiences great joy, he cannot keep it to himself. He has to express it, to pass it on. But what happens when a person is touched by the light of the resurrection, and thus comes into contact with Life itself, with Truth and Love? He cannot merely speak about it. Speech is no longer adequate. He has to sing. The first reference to singing in the Bible comes after the crossing of the Red Sea. Israel has risen out of slavery. It has climbed up from the threatening depths of the sea. It is as it were reborn. It lives and it is free. The Bible describes the people’s reaction to this great event of salvation with the verse: "The people … believed in the Lord and in Moses his servant" (Ex 14:31). Then comes the second reaction which, with a kind of inner necessity, follows from the first one: "Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord …" At the Easter Vigil, year after year, we Christians intone this song after the third reading, we sing it as our song, because we too, through God’s power, have been drawn forth from the water and liberated for true life.

There is a surprising parallel to the story of Moses’ song after Israel’s liberation from Egypt upon emerging from the Red Sea, namely in the Book of Revelation of Saint John. Before the beginning of the seven last plagues imposed upon the earth, the seer has a vision of something "like a sea of glass mingled with fire; and those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb …" (Rev 15:2f.). This image describes the situation of the disciples of Jesus Christ in every age, the situation of the Church in the history of this world. Humanly speaking, it is self-contradictory. On the one hand, the community is located at the Exodus, in the midst of the Red Sea, in a sea which is paradoxically ice and fire at the same time. And must not the Church, so to speak, always walk on the sea, through the fire and the cold? Humanly speaking, she ought to sink. But while she is still walking in the midst of this Red Sea, she sings – she intones the song of praise of the just: the song of Moses and of the Lamb, in which the Old and New Covenants blend into harmony. While, strictly speaking, she ought to be sinking, the Church sings the song of thanksgiving of the saved. She is standing on history’s waters of death and yet she has already risen. Singing, she grasps at the Lord’s hand, which holds her above the waters. And she knows that she is thereby raised outside the force of gravity of death and evil – a force from which otherwise there would be no way of escape – raised and drawn into the new gravitational force of God, of truth and of love. At present she is still between the two gravitational fields. But once Christ is risen, the gravitational pull of love is stronger than that of hatred; the force of gravity of life is stronger than that of death. Perhaps this is actually the situation of the Church in every age? It always seems as if she ought to be sinking, and yet she is always already saved. Saint Paul illustrated this situation with the words: "We are as dying, and behold we live" (2 Cor 6:9). The Lord’s saving hand holds us up, and thus we can already sing the song of the saved, the new song of the risen ones: alleluia! Amen.

Pope Benedict XVI’s Easter Message to the City and the World

Source: SperoForum

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Rome and throughout the world,

From the depths of my heart, I wish all of you a blessed Easter. To quote Saint Augustine, “Resurrectio Domini, spes nostra – the resurrection of the Lord is our hope” (Sermon 261:1). With these words, the great Bishop explained to the faithful that Jesus rose again so that we, though destined to die, should not despair, worrying that with death life is completely finished; Christ is risen to give us hope (cf. ibid.).

Indeed, one of the questions that most preoccupies men and women is this: what is there after death? To this mystery today’s solemnity allows us to respond that death does not have the last word, because Life will be victorious at the end. This certainty of ours is based not on simple human reasoning, but on a historical fact of faith: Jesus Christ, crucified and buried, is risen with his glorified body. Jesus is risen so that we too, believing in him, may have eternal life. This proclamation is at the heart of the Gospel message. As Saint Paul vigorously declares: “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” He goes on to say: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:14,19). Ever since the dawn of Easter a new Spring of hope has filled the world; from that day forward our resurrection has begun, because Easter does not simply signal a moment in history, but the beginning of a new condition: Jesus is risen not because his memory remains alive in the hearts of his disciples, but because he himself lives in us, and in him we can already savour the joy of eternal life.

The resurrection, then, is not a theory, but a historical reality revealed by the man Jesus Christ by means of his “Passover”, his “passage”, that has opened a “new way” between heaven and earth (cf. Heb 10:20). It is neither a myth nor a dream, it is not a vision or a utopia, it is not a fairy tale, but it is a singular and unrepeatable event: Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, who at dusk on Friday was taken down from the Cross and buried, has victoriously left the tomb. In fact, at dawn on the first day after the Sabbath, Peter and John found the tomb empty. Mary Magdalene and the other women encountered the risen Jesus. On the way to Emmaus the two disciples recognized him at the breaking of the bread. The Risen One appeared to the Apostles that evening in the Upper Room and then to many other disciples in Galilee.

The proclamation of the Lord’s Resurrection lightens up the dark regions of the world in which we live. I am referring particularly to materialism and nihilism, to a vision of the world that is unable to move beyond what is scientifically verifiable, and retreats cheerlessly into a sense of emptiness which is thought to be the definitive destiny of human life. It is a fact that if Christ had not risen, the “emptiness” would be set to prevail. If we take away Christ and his resurrection, there is no escape for man, and every one of his hopes remains an illusion. Yet today is the day when the proclamation of the Lord’s resurrection vigorously bursts forth, and it is the answer to the recurring question of the sceptics, that we also find in the book of Ecclesiastes: “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’?” (Ec 1:10). We answer, yes: on Easter morning, everything was renewed. “Mors et vita, duello conflixere mirando: dux vitae mortuus, regnat vivus – Death and life have come face to face in a tremendous duel: the Lord of life was dead, but now he lives triumphant.” This is what is new! A newness that changes the lives of those who accept it, as in the case of the saints. This, for example, is what happened to Saint Paul.

Many times, in the context of the Pauline year, we have had occasion to meditate on the experience of the great Apostle. Saul of Tarsus, the relentless persecutor of Christians, encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, and was “conquered” by him. The rest we know. In Paul there occurred what he would later write about to the Christians of Corinth: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). Let us look at this great evangelizer, who with bold enthusiasm and apostolic zeal brought the Gospel to many different peoples in the world of that time.

Let his teaching and example inspire us to go in search of the Lord Jesus. Let them encourage us to trust him, because that sense of emptiness, which tends to intoxicate humanity, has been overcome by the light and the hope that emanate from the resurrection. The words of the Psalm have truly been fulfilled: “Darkness is not darkness for you, and the night is as clear as the day” (Ps 139 [138]:12). It is no longer emptiness that envelops all things, but the loving presence of God. The very reign of death has been set free, because the Word of life has even reached the “underworld”, carried by the breath of the Spirit (v. 8).

If it is true that death no longer has power over man and over the world, there still remain very many, in fact too many signs of its former dominion. Even if through Easter, Christ has destroyed the root of evil, he still wants the assistance of men and women in every time and place who help him to affirm his victory using his own weapons: the weapons of justice and truth, mercy, forgiveness and love. This is the message which, during my recent Apostolic Visit to Cameroon and Angola, I wanted to convey to the entire African continent, where I was welcomed with such great enthusiasm and readiness to listen. Africa suffers disproportionately from the cruel and unending conflicts, often forgotten, that are causing so much bloodshed and destruction in several of her nations, and from the growing number of her sons and daughters who fall prey to hunger, poverty and disease.

I shall repeat the same message emphatically in the Holy Land, to which I shall have the joy of travelling in a few weeks from now. Reconciliation – difficult, but indispensable – is a precondition for a future of overall security and peaceful coexistence, and it can only be achieved through renewed, persevering and sincere efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My thoughts move outwards from the Holy Land to neighbouring countries, to the Middle East, to the whole world.

At a time of world food shortage, of financial turmoil, of old and new forms of poverty, of disturbing climate change, of violence and deprivation which force many to leave their homelands in search of a less precarious form of existence, of the ever-present threat of terrorism, of growing fears over the future, it is urgent to rediscover grounds for hope. Let no one draw back from this peaceful battle that has been launched by Christ’s Resurrection. For as I said earlier, Christ is looking for men and women who will help him to affirm his victory using his own weapons: the weapons of justice and truth, mercy, forgiveness and love.

Resurrectio Domini, spes nostra! The resurrection of Christ is our hope! This the Church proclaims today with joy. She announces the hope that is now firm and invincible because God has raised Jesus Christ from the dead. She communicates the hope that she carries in her heart and wishes to share with all people in every place, especially where Christians suffer persecution because of their faith and their commitment to justice and peace. She invokes the hope that can call forth the courage to do good, even when it costs, especially when it costs. Today the Church sings “the day that the Lord has made”, and she summons people to joy.

Today the Church calls in prayer upon Mary, Star of Hope, asking her to guide humanity towards the safe haven of salvation which is the heart of Christ, the paschal Victim, the Lamb who has “redeemed the world”, the Innocent one who has “reconciled us sinners with the Father”. To him, our victorious King, to him who is crucified and risen, we sing out with joy our Alleluia!

Pascha Sunday of the Resurrection of Our Lord - AD 2009

Easter Proclamation

Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God's throne!
Jesus Christ, our King is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!

Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,
radiant in the brightness of your King!
Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!
Darkness vanishes forever!

Rejoice, O Mother Church! Exult in glory!
The risen Savior shines upon you!
Let this place resound with joy,
echoing the mighty song of all God's people!

The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give him thanks and praise.

It is truly right
that with full hearts and minds and voices
we should praise the unseen God,
the all-powerful Father,
and his only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

For Christ has ransomed us with his blood,
and paid for us the price of Adam's sin
to our eternal Father!

This is our passover feast,
when Christ, the true Lamb, is slain,
whose blood consecrates the homes of all believers.

This is the night when first you saved our fathers:
you free the people of Israel from their slavery
and led them dry-shod through the sea.

This is the night when Christians everywhere,
washed clean of sin
and freed from all defilement,
are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.

This is the night when Jesus Christ
broke the chains of death
and rose triumphant from the grave.

What good would life have been to us,
had Christ not come as our Redeemer?

What good would life have been to us,
had Christ not come as our Redeemer?

Father, how wonderful your care for us!
How boundless your merciful love!
To ransom a slave
you gave away your Son.

O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam,
which gained for us so great a Redeemer!

Most blessed of all nights, chosen by God
to see Christ rising from the dead!

Of this night scripture says:
"The night will be as clear as day;
it will become my light, my joy."

The power of this holy night
dispels all evil, washes guilt away,
restores lost innocence, brings mourners joy;
it casts out hatred, brings us peace,
and humbles earthly pride.

Night truly blessed when heaven is wedded to earth
and we are reconciled with God!

Therefore, heavenly Father, in the joy of this night,
receive our evening sacrifice of praise,
your Church's solemn offering.

Accept this Easter candle,
a flame divided but undimmed,
a pillar of fire that glows to the honor of God.

Let it mingle with the lights of heaven
and continue bravely burning
to dispel the darkness of this night!

May the morning Star which never sets
find this flame still burning:
Christ, that Morning Star, who came back from the dead,
and shed his peaceful light on us all,
your Son who lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Amen.

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

Death shall not have the last word.

Good Friday of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, AD 2009

From today's Office of Readings.

From the Catecheses by Saint John Chrysostom, bishop

The power of Christ's blood

If we wish to understand the power of Christ’s blood, we should go back to the ancient account of its prefiguration in Egypt. “Sacrifice a lamb without blemish”, commanded Moses, “and sprinkle its blood on your doors”. If we were to ask him what he meant, and how the blood of an irrational beast could possibly save men endowed with reason, his answer would be that the saving power lies not in the blood itself, but in the fact that it is a sign of the Lord’s blood. In those days, when the destroying angel saw the blood on the doors he did not dare to enter, so how much less will the devil approach now when he sees, not that figurative blood on the doors, but the true blood on the lips of believers, the doors of the temple of Christ.

If you desire further proof of the power of this blood, remember where it came from, how it ran down from the cross, flowing from the Master’s side. The gospel records that when Christ was dead, but still hung on the cross, a soldier came and pierced his side with a lance and immediately there poured out water and blood. Now the water was a symbol of baptism and the blood, of the holy eucharist. The soldier pierced the Lord’s side, he breached the wall of the sacred temple, and I have found the treasure and made it my own. So also with the lamb: the Jews sacrificed the victim and I have been saved by it.

“There flowed from his side water and blood”. Beloved, do not pass over this mystery without thought; it has yet another hidden meaning, which I will explain to you. I said that water and blood symbolised baptism and the holy eucharist. From these two sacraments the Church is born: from baptism, “the cleansing water that gives rebirth and renewal through the Holy Spirit”, and from the holy eucharist. Since the symbols of baptism and the Eucharist flowed from his side, it was from his side that Christ fashioned the Church, as he had fashioned Eve from the side of Adam Moses gives a hint of this when he tells the story of the first man and makes him exclaim: “Bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh!” As God then took a rib from Adam’s side to fashion a woman, so Christ has given us blood and water from his side to fashion the Church. God took the rib when Adam was in a deep sleep, and in the same way Christ gave us the blood and the water after his own death.

Do you understand, then, how Christ has united his bride to himself and what food he gives us all to eat? By one and the same food we are both brought into being and nourished. As a woman nourishes her child with her own blood and milk, so does Christ unceasingly nourish with his own blood those to whom he himself has given life.

- Reading courtesy of Universalis.com

Hagia Sophia called “a symbol of reconciliation”

Folks, this morning, as I watched NBC’s The Today Show journalist Richard Engel, while gushing about President Obama’s visit to Turkey’s Blue Mosque and then to Hagia Sophia, called the latter “a symbol of reconciliation” after remarking that it was first a “church, then a mosque, and now a museum.”

I don’t know why Mr. Engel said such a thing. To call Hagia Sophia “a symbol or reconciliation” it’s grating to those of us who know the history behind this “museum.” It is as if the Basilica of St. Peter were confiscated by a Muslim army, added 4 minarets to it, vandalized all the Christian art on the walls, taken down the cross, and made it into a mosque. Much later, a secularizing military dictator would’ve come in and then freeze the basilica in its Moslem stage when the true act of reconciliation would have been to return the temple to its legitimate, original owners.

This is the logic of “progressives”: that the world would be a better place if Christian temples were to become worship spaces for those of other faiths, or even better, museums for the popcorn-chewing crowds. To them, Christian temples can only be “symbols of reconciliation” if they are but empty shells, signs of a past long gone.

Pardon me while I barf, and then pledge to do my part to confront the thick evil surrounding us.

"Be all of you can be" or Else

U.S. Army abuses recruiters in Houston, TX area

Folks, I've read with great consternation and disgust an exposé by Time Magazine entitled The Dark Side of Recruiting, detailing the failure of leadership and abuses perpetrated upon Army recruiters in Texas by their Houston-based leaders that led to the suicide of four recruiters, including a highly-decorated wartime hero.

It is shameful to see how combat-tested men broke down under relentless pressure instigated by a less-deserving chain of command bent upon results at all costs. I find it appalling to see a soldier who proved himself under fire in the streets of Iraq being humiliated by third-rate supervisors simply because he wouldn't deliver two new recruits to the Army every month.

In my opinion as a career military person, I judge this entire chain of command as broken and as compromised as the one that brought us the Abu Ghraib abuses. Heads must roll; leaders should be held accountable; the Army, in the person of its Chief of Staff, must apologize to the families of the victim's survivors. Our heroes deserve better leadership than that provided by crackpot officers and NCOs who have shown themselves to be nothing better than paper-pushing warriors.

My little brother is in Afghanistan now and when he returns I definitely don't want him to return to this in any way, shape, or form.

This system is broken. Army leadership, please, and with all due respect: get off your behinds from your cushy chairs and fix this situation. Now.

Contemplative Prayer is Communion, a Gaze, a Hearing, and a Silence

The Catechism of the Catholic Church on the subject of contemplative prayer:

2709 What is contemplative prayer? St. Teresa answers: "Contemplative prayer [oracion mental] in my opinion is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us."⁶ Contemplative prayer seeks him "whom my soul loves."⁷ It is Jesus, and in him, the Father. We seek him, because to desire him is always the beginning of love, and we seek him in that pure faith which causes us to be born of him and to live in him. In this inner prayer we can still meditate, but our attention is fixed on the Lord himself.

2710 The choice of the time and duration of the prayer arises from a determined will, revealing the secrets of the heart. One does not undertake contemplative prayer only when one has the time: one makes time for the Lord, with the firm determination not to give up, no matter what trials and dryness one may encounter. One cannot always meditate, but one can always enter into inner prayer, independently of the conditions of health, work, or emotional state. The heart is the place of this quest and encounter, in poverty ant in faith.

2711 Entering into contemplative prayer is like entering into the Eucharistic liturgy: we "gather up:" the heart, recollect our whole being under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, abide in the dwelling place of the Lord which we are, awaken our faith in order to enter into the presence of him who awaits us. We let our masks fall and turn our hearts back to the Lord who loves us, so as to hand ourselves over to him as an offering to be purified and transformed.

2712 Contemplative prayer is the prayer of the child of God, of the forgiven sinner who agrees to welcome the love by which he is loved and who wants to respond to it by loving even more.⁸ But he knows that the love he is returning is poured out by the Spirit in his heart, for everything is grace from God. Contemplative prayer is the poor and humble surrender to the loving will of the Father in ever deeper union with his beloved Son.

2713 Contemplative prayer is the simplest expression of the mystery of prayer. It is a gift, a grace; it can be accepted only in humility and poverty. Contemplative prayer is a covenant relationship established by God within our hearts.⁹ Contemplative prayer is a communion in which the Holy Trinity conforms man, the image of God, "to his likeness."

2714 Contemplative prayer is also the pre-eminently intense time of prayer. In it the Father strengthens our inner being with power through his Spirit "that Christ may dwell in [our] hearts through faith" and we may be "grounded in love."¹⁰

2715 Contemplation is a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus. "I look at him and he looks at me": this is what a certain peasant of Ars in the time of his holy curé used to say while praying before the tabernacle. This focus on Jesus is a renunciation of self. His gaze purifies our heart; the light of the countenance of Jesus illumines the eyes of our heart and teaches us to see everything in the light of his truth and his compassion for all men. Contemplation also turns its gaze on the mysteries of the life of Christ. Thus it learns the "interior knowledge of our Lord," the more to love him and follow him.¹¹

2716 Contemplative prayer is hearing the Word of God. Far from being passive, such attentiveness is the obedience of faith, the unconditional acceptance of a servant, and the loving commitment of a child. It participates in the "Yes" of the Son become servant and the Fiat of God's lowly handmaid.

2717 Contemplative prayer is silence, the "symbol of the world to come"¹² or "silent love."¹³ Words in this kind of prayer are not speeches; they are like kindling that feeds the fire of love. In this silence, unbearable to the "outer" man, the Father speaks to us his incarnate Word, who suffered, died, and rose; in this silence the Spirit of adoption enables us to share in the prayer of Jesus.

2718 Contemplative prayer is a union with the prayer of Christ insofar as it makes us participate in his mystery. The mystery of Christ is celebrated by the Church in the Eucharist, and the Holy Spirit makes it come alive in contemplative prayer so that our charity will manifest it in our acts.

2719 Contemplative prayer is a communion of love bearing Life for the multitude, to the extent that it consents to abide in the night of faith. The Paschal night of the Resurrection passes through the night of the agony and the tomb - the three intense moments of the Hour of Jesus which his Spirit (and not "the flesh [which] is weak") brings to life in prayer. We must be willing to "keep watch with [him] one hour."¹⁴

Palm Sunday of the Passion of Our Lord - AD 2009

Luke 19:28-40 (New International Version)

The Triumphal Entry

28After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

29As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them,

30"Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here.

31If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' tell him, 'The Lord needs it.' "

32Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them.

33As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?"

34They replied, "The Lord needs it."

35They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it.

36As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.

37When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:

38"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!"

39Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!"

40"I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."