God is in every person’s life.…Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs, or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can – you must – try to seek God in every human life. Though someone’s life be a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God. ~Pope Francis, Interview with Antonio Spadaro, SJ, September 2013
Lord God, you have given us the great day of rejoicing: Jesus Christ, the stone rejected by the builders, has become the cornerstone of the Church, our spiritual home. Shed upon your Church the rays of your glory, that it may be seen as the gate of salvation open to all nations. Let cries of joy and exultation ring out from its tents, to celebrate the wonder of Christ’s resurrection. Amen.
What if our churches weren’t divided up by the same economic and racial and political and generational categories that would bind us together even if Jesus were not alive? What would it mean, in your church, if a minimum-wage janitor were mentoring the multimillionaire executive of the restaurant where he cleans toilets, because the janitor/mentor has the spiritual wisdom his boss/protégé needs? It would look awfully strange, but it would look no stranger than a crucified Nazarene governing the universe. ~Russell Moore, The Upside-Down Church: Witnessing to a Strange Gospel
God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have a mission; I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons; He has not created me for naught. I shall do good — I shall do his work. I shall be an angel of peace while not intending it if I do but keep his commandments. Therefore, I will trust him. ~Bl. John Henry Newman
O God, who bestowed on the Priest Blessed John Henry Newman
the grace to follow your kindly light and find peace in your Church;
graciously grant that, through his intercession and example,
we may be led out of shadows and images
into the fullness of your truth.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
I remember when Saint John Paul II said: “Error and evil must always be condemned and opposed; but the man who falls or who errs must be understood and loved… we must love our time and help the man of our time” (JOHN PAUL II, Address to the Members of Italian Catholic Action, 30 December 1978). The Church must search out these persons, welcome and accompany them, for a Church with closed doors betrays herself and her mission, and, instead of being a bridge, becomes a roadblock: “For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified have all one origin. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brethren” (Heb 2:11). ~Pope Francis, homily at opening Mass of Ordinary General Assembly of Synod on the Family, Sunday, Oct 4, 2015
The commemoration of Our Lady of the Rosary, also known as Our Lady of Victory, recalls a very important event which took place on October 7, 1571. For some time the Muslims had attempted to conquer Europe, not only for political reasons, but also in an attempt to destroy the Church and impose Islam throughout the known world. Read more here…
O God, who called Saint Bruno to serve you in solitude,
grant, through his intercession,
that amid the changes of this world
we may constantly look to you alone.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Sunset over the Hermitage
So, in beholding the glory of the Trinity in creation, we must contemplate, sing, and rediscover wonder. In contemporary society people become indifferent “not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder” (G. K. Chesterton).…Nature thus becomes a gospel which speaks to us of God: “from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator” (Wis 13: 5).…But this capacity for contemplation and knowledge, this discovery of a transcendent presence in created things must lead us also to rediscover our kinship with the earth, to which we have been linked since our own creation (Gen. 2:7). This is precisely the goal which the Old Testament wished for the Hebrew Jubilee, when the land was at rest and man ate what the fields spontaneously gave him (Lev. 25:11-12). If nature is not violated and degraded, it once again becomes man’s sister. ~Pope St. John Paul II, general audience, January 26, 2000
There was a great silence. Evening had already stolen into the hut. Francis lay motionless. The final stage of his “transitus”, his passing over from this life to Life Everlasting had begun. He died singing on October 3rd, 1226, in the forty-sixth year of his life, and the twenty-fifth year of his conversion.
Then a multitude of larks flocked wheeling about the roof of the hut, and with their sad chirping, grieved the loss of their friend. At the same hour a brother saw a shining star, borne on a white cloud, mounting towards heaven. The soul of the Little Poor Man was flying to eternal happiness.
“In truth, in very truth, the presence of Francis, our brother and our father, was light, not only to us who were close to him but also to those who were more removed from us in calling and in life. He was as light sent forth from the True Light, to enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death; that he might guide their feet into the way of peace. He did this even as the True Daystar from on high enlightened his heart and inflamed his will with the fire of His love. When he preached the Kingdom of God…he made ready for the Lord a new people throughout the whole world.” ~From the letter of Brother Elias announcing the death of Francis of Assisi
Every Christian has a cross to bear. The point is not whether we stumble under their burden. We all do. What’s crucial is that we repent, get up, and resolve to go and sin no more. Each Christian is after all called to holiness, not averageness. In short, striving to be a saint isn’t just for extraordinary people. It’s something Christ asks of all His followers: rich or poor, man or woman, African or German. In our equality-fixated age, the call to be a saint is in fact one of the great equalizers for Christians—not least because, as Saint John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, “Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal” (VS 96). ~Dr. Samuel Gregg, Thomas More: The Saint for the Synod