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ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI
Tuesday, June 18, Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
Venerable MATT TALBOT (Ireland, 1856-1923), Ex-Alcoholic, Lay Franciscan
Born in Dublin to a working-class family, with a father and brothers who were heavy drinkers, Matt himself
became an alcoholic when he started work at 15 as a messenger for a liquor merchant. He remained an active
alcoholic until he was about 30. One day, he decided to take 'the pledge' to renounce drinking for three months,
while doing penance and going to daily Mass. He renewed the pledge every three months, and eventually for life.
He joined the Franciscan lay order in 1890, read widely under the guidance of a spiritual adviser from a Dublin
college, worked hard as an unskilled construction laborer, and shared his wages with needier persons. He died
of a heart attack on his way to Mass one day. Under his clothes, they found a chain around his waist and cords
around his arms and legs, which he apparently wore as an act of mortification. His story became widely known
and was used by the Church and civic groups to promote temperance among the Irish. The young Karol Wojtyla
wrote a paper about him. Six years after Matt's death, the Dublin Archdiocese started investigating his life
to promote his cause for sainthood. Paul VI recognized his heroic virtues and proclaimed him Venerable in 1973.
Although he is not a saint yet, he is considered in the Anglo-Saxon Catholic world as the patron of alcoholics.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/061812.cfm
AT THE VATICAN TODAY
Pope Francis met with Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila (Philippines)
One year ago...
Benedict XVI met with H.E. Eduardo Gutiérrez Sáenz de Buruaga, Ambassador from Spain to the Holy See, who presented his credentials; with Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, Archbishop of Havana (Cuba); and ten bishops from Colombia (Group 3) on ad-limina visit,
As Benedict XVI made no statements for publication on this day last year, it is apropos to consider two commentaries on two of his recent discourses at the time - the first, his message at the closing Mass of the 50th International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin on June 17, 2012, and his impromptu lectio divina on baptism to the diocesan convention of Rome on June 11 (Pope Francis addressed the 2013 convention last night at the Aula Paolo VI).
Jose Luis Restan does well to tie in the Holy Father's closing message to the 50th IEC with his earlier lectio divina on baptism at the opening of the annual diocesan convention of Rome last week... It's a pity that both papal discourses - each exceptional in a different way, as the bulk of Benedict XVI's texts have been exceptional - have so far found little or no resonance at all in the Anglophone Catholic media-net world. Actually, one could count on the fingers of one hand the number of Catholic bloggers or commentators who regularly pay attention to what Benedict XVI says and do not take his texts for granted.
Indeed, one cannot and should not do that. In the past seven years, I have found out, with abiding wonder and gratitude, from the abundant examples provided to us by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI in decades of active thinking and expression of that thought, that the test of a great mind is how it can manage to present its messages in an infinite variety of really engaging ways while remaining constant, cogent and consistent. I can't think of any other figure who meets that criterion in today's world! Every new text from our Holy Father representa a surprise I look forward to receiving...
When faith becomes
nothing more than habit
Translated from
June 19, 2012
Much is being said [among those who pay attention to these things] of Benedict XVI's videomessage that closed the 50th International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin.
The courage and the clarity of the Pope in recognizing the terrible damage done by the sins of some members of the Church are always surprising. But on this occasion, there is a fundamental underlying judgment that must be underlined.
The Pope acknowledges that the homegrown evil on the terrain of the Church is remains a mystery, but he adds this perspective: "Evidently, their Christianity [of the priest sinners] was not nourished by an encounter with Christ but had been transformed to mere habit".
Benedict XVI sets the basis of the problem in the dramatic reduction of faith to mere formalism, to a mindless habit that no longer has an impact on our life. And once more, we heard him articulate the epicenter of all his efforts as Pope" to clarify the meaning of faith, to present it in all its breadth and depth, to show that it is the heart of life and not just some appendage to it.
A few days earlier, during the extemporaneous lectio divina with which he opened the annual diocesan convention of Rome, the Pope had presented this problem in order to explain the Sacrament of Baptism.
He started with one of his provocative paradoxes saying that in one way, becoming Christian is a passive act. It is not I who decides, "Now I will be Christian'. Of course, it requires my free adherence, my response, but first, there is the act of God who comes to me, draws me to his altitude.
And our 'activity' consists, first, in accepting that initiative of God. In the second place, being taken up by God means being set into the 'we' of the Church, it links us to others in a mysterious solidarity which is the very substance of the Body of Christ in history.
Then he explains that the positive formulations of Baptism - the baptismal vows - are not just a formula but a true dialog that concerns the very life of he who desires to receive a new life in Christ.
Basically, it starts us on a journey that will last our whole life and which demands our reason, affection and freedom. None of these vows is made once and for all, but they must be renewed every day of our lives, as the lives of the saints teach us.
Our baptismal profession of faith, says the Pope, is not just to be understood and memorized (though we would do well to do this too) but something that has to do with how we live.
"The truth of Christ can only be understood if we have understood his way... Truth which is not lived does not open up to us. Only truth which lived, truth that is accepted as our way of life, opens up as the truth in all its richness and depth".
This echoes the statement in the introduction to his encyclical Deus caritas est: "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction".
What does this have to do with sexual crimes by priests? To the degree that faith is emptied of its substance and is reduced to nothing but an intellectual scheme or a moral discourse or to mere doctrinal formulation or piety, then it stops to 'touch our life', it becomes largely irrelevant.
Fatigue of faith, as he spoke about in his December 2011 address to the Roman Curia, has to do with this reduction, or better said, to the profound alteration of the substance of our faith. And this is reflected in how difficult it is to speak to the heart of contemporary man, in how easy it is for the latter to accept the dictates of whatever ideologies are in fashion.
In his message to a rather rickety part of the Church such as that on the green island of St. Patrick, Benedict XVI said that "The work of the Council was really meant to overcome this form of Christianity and to rediscover the faith as a deep personal friendship with the goodness of Jesus Christ".
The Council was not about adapting the Gospel to the times, but to make it shine in all its splendor in our time, with all its possibilities and risks. That continues to be the great task of the Church, which is not understood by those who remain castled within a fossilized transcendalism as well as those who have given themselves over to cultural dissolution in the dominant mentality of our day.
One and the other, they are all enemies of Benedict XVI's great mission.
Earlier, Sandro Magister had an article reflecting on the various homilies on Baptism that Benedict XVI has given during his years as Pope so far, and the major piece in this mosaic that his lectio divina to the diocesan convention represents.
Benedict XVI's homilies on Baptism:
Add to that sterling collection
his June 11 'lectio divina' at the Lateran
ROME, June 18 - It took place almost unnoticed by the general public. [Probably not at all. When both CNA and CNS (which have Rome bureaus staffed with more than one person) and even Vatican Radio's English service, all inexplicably consider the Bishop of Rome's address to his annual diocesan convention of no interest to their readership and audience - and therefore do not report the event at all - how can we expect secular media to pay any attention to it? Or even be aware of the event?]
But the lectio divina given by Benedict XVI on Monday night at the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, the cathedral of Rome, was one of the most elevated moments of the Pope's homilies on the sacrament of Baptism that together constitute a masterpiece.
That Benedict XVI is destined to pass into history for his liturgical preaching as Pope Leo the Great before him is a hypothesis that has by now been more than consolidated.
But in the great corpus of his homilies, those dedicated to Baptism have a place of unique relevance.
The mandate from Christ to baptize "in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" were Jesus's last words on earth. The Church has taken these words very seriously, and it is how she has always generated her children. AS Christians and children of God.
Consequently, Baptism is the act of rebirth of each Christian as well as his identification document.
That is why it is very central in the preaching of Benedict XVI. At a time of widespread 'religious illiteracy', as he has called it, of vacillating faith and declining baptisms in nations that have a long tradition of Christianity, Papa Ratzinger wishes to start from the foundations of Christian life and call back attention to them in all their splendor.
His homilies on baptism are a striking example. Along with the lectio divina that he gave on June 11 to the faithful of Rome who packed the Lateran Cathedral.
Benedict XVI spoke extemporaneously, as the Fathers of the Church did in antiquity. Above him, his audience could admire, in the center of the mosaic in the apse, a jeweled Cross from which streams of living water flow.
It was precisely the link between Baptism and the Cross that was one of the salient points of the Pope's lectio divina, which took off from the 'mandate' given by Christ to the apostles before he ascended to heaven: "Go forth, make disciples of all peoples and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit".
Another passage of the lectio which struck the audience forcefully is that in which the Pope gave new meaning and freshness to an ancient formula of the baptismal rite: the renunciation of "Satan and all his pomp", a formulation which has since been diluted by using the words "the temptations of evil" instead.
Since he was elected Pope seven years ago, Benedict XVI has administered Baptism 14 times, and preached a homily on each occasion - seven times at the Easter Vigil in St. Peter's Basilica, when he baptizes adult converts from various nations; and seven times on Epiphany Sunday, which commemorates the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, when he baptizes the babies of Vatican employees in the Sistine Chapel.
[Magister then posts the full text of the lectio divina - a translation of which I posted on Page 320 of this thread; as well as links to the Pope's baptismal homilies of Epiphany and Easter from 2006 to 2012.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/06/2013 04:28] |