Category: +Religion

The Church Year: June 25, 2012

Today is Monday of the 12th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost, and the liturgical color for today is white.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 25, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. William, abbot, who died in A.D. 1142. It is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. William, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Letter on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation:

25. With regard to mysticism, one has to distinguish between the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the charisms granted by God in a totally gratuitous way. The former are something which every Christian can quicken in himself by his zeal for the life of faith, hope and charity; and thus, by means of a serious ascetical struggle, he can reach a certain experience of God and of the contents of the faith. As for charisms, St. Paul says that these are, above all, for the benefit of the Church, of the other members of the Mystical Body of Christ (cf. 1 Cor 12:17). With this in mind, it should be remembered that charisms are not the same things as extraordinary (“mystical”) gifts (cf. Rom 12:3-21), and that the distinction between the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” and “charisms” can be flexible. It is certain that a charism which bears fruit for the Church, cannot, in the context of the New Testament, be exercised without a certain degree of personal perfection, and that, on the other hand, every “living” Christian has a specific task (and in this sense a “charism”) “for the building up of the body of Christ” (cf. Eph 4:15-16),29 in communion with the Hierarchy whose job it is “not indeed to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things and hold fast to what is good” (LG, n. 12).

The Weekly Benedict: 24 Jun, 2012

This  version of The Weekly Benedict covers material released in the last week from 3 May – 21 June 2012  (subscribe here; get as an eBook version for your Kindle, iPod, iPad, Nook, or other eBook reader):

Angelus

General Audience

Letters

Messages

Speeches

The Church Year: June 24, 2012

Today is the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is white.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost.

In the Extraordinary Form, it is the 4th Sunday after Pentecost.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 24, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. In the Ordinary Form, it is a solemnity, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class I day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. John the Baptist, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:

225. The devotion of St. John the Baptist has been present in the Christian Church since ancient time. From a very early date, it acquired popular forms and connotations. In addition to the celebration of his death (29 August), of all the Saints he is the only one whose birth is also celebrated (24 June) – as with Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In virtue of having baptized Jesus in the Jordan, many baptisteries are dedicated to him and his image as “baptizer” is to found close to many baptismal founts. He is the patron Saint of those condemned to death or who have been imprisoned for the witness to the faith, in virtue of the harsh prison which he endured and of the death which he encountered.

In all probability, the date of John the Baptists’ birth (24 June) was fixed in relation to that of Christ (25 December): according to what was said by the Angel Gabriel, when Mary conceived Our Savior, Elizabeth had already been with child for six months (cf Lk 1, 26.36). The date of 24 June is also linked to the solar cycle of the Northern hemisphere. The feast is celebrated as the Sun, turning towards the South of the zodiac, begins to decline: a phenomenon that was taken to symbolize John the Baptist who said in relation to Jesus: “illum oportet crescere, me autem minui” (John 3, 30).

John’s mission of witnessing to the light (cf John 1, 7) lies at the origin of the custom of blessing bonfires on St John’s Eve – or at least gave a Christian significance to the practice. The Church blesses such fires, praying God that the faithful may overcome the darkness of the world and reach the “indefectible light” of God.

“To Be Absent from the Body Is to be Present with the Lord”?

There is a common argument used against the idea of purgatory in some circles which goes like this: “St. Paul says that ‘to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord’ (2 Cor. 5:8). It’s that simple: If you’re a Christian and you aren’t in your body then you are with Jesus in heaven. There is no room for purgatory in St. Paul’s view. Purgatory is just a Catholic fable–a ‘man made tradition.'”

Is this true?

It turns out that if you examine what St. Paul really said, the whole argument is based on a misquotation. St. Paul said nothing of the kind.

Furthermore, if you look elsewhere in St. Paul’s writings–to the very same church he was addressing in his “absent from the body” passage–you find strong evidence for purgatory.

Far from being a Catholic fable, purgatory is rooted in the thought of the Apostle Paul himself–as I show in the following video.

I’ve also been working on a special mailing for the Secret Information Club where I “interview” John Paul II on the subject of purgatory. In the interview, I pose questions, and the answers are taken from his writing. Current Secret Club members will get it automatically.

Purgatory is a controversial subject that Catholics are often attacked over, so if you’d like to receive the special interview with John Paul II on purgatory, just sign up for the Secret Information Club by Friday, June 29th, and you’ll have it in your inbox on Saturday morning.

You should sign up using this handy sign up form:

If you have any difficulty, just email me at jimmy@secretinfoclub.com.

If you’re reading this by email, click here to view the video.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The Church Year: June 23, 2012

Today is Saturday of the 11th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost, and the liturgical color for today is violet.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 23, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.

In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate the Vigil of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. It is a Class II day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. John the Baptist, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Letter on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation:

24. There are certain mystical graces, conferred on the founders of ecclesial institutes to benefit their foundation, and on other saints, too, which characterize their personal experience of prayer and which cannot, as such, be the object of imitation and aspiration for other members of the faithful, even those who belong to the same institutes and those who seek an ever more perfect way of prayer.28 There can be different levels and different ways of sharing in a founder’s experience of prayer, without everything having to be exactly the same. Besides, the prayer experience that is given a privileged position in all genuinely ecclesial institutes, ancient and modern, is always in the last analysis something personal. And it is to the individual person that God gives his graces for prayer.

The Church Year: June 22, 2012

Today is Friday of the 11th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost, and the liturgical color for today is red.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 22, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Paulinus of Nola, bishop of Nola and confessor, who died in A.D. 432. In the Ordinary Form, it is an optional memorial, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class III day.

In the Ordinary Form, we also celebrate St.s John Fisher, bishop, and Thomas More, both martyrs. It is an optional memorial.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Paulinus, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about St. John Fisher, you can click here.

If you’d like to learn more about Thomas More, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Letter on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation:

23. Without doubt, a Christian needs certain periods of retreat into solitude to be recollected and, in God’s presence, rediscover his path. Nevertheless, given his character as a creature, and as a creature who knows that only in grace is he secure, his method of getting closer to God is not based on any technique in the strict sense of the word. That would contradict the spirit of childhood called for by the Gospel. Genuine Christian mysticism has nothing to do with technique: it is always a gift of God, and the one who benefits from it knows himself to be unworthy.27

The Church Year: July 22, 2012

Today is the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost.

In the Extraordinary Form, it is the 8th Sunday after Pentecost.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On July 22, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Mary Magdalene, penitent, who died in the 1st century. In the Ordinary Form, it is a feast, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Mary Magdalene, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Why Are the Psalms Numbered Differently?

While the Bible is divided into chapter and verse today, these divisions developed over time and were not in the original manuscripts, with few exceptions.

One exception is the book of Psalms, which is divided into 150 different chapters, each of which is a different psalm. Those divisions are original, because this was the hymnbook for the Jewish Temple, and the different psalms were different hymns.

So it’s ironic that different editions of the book of Psalms today do not have the same chapter numbers.

You may have had the experience of seeing a reference to a quotation from one of the Psalms, going to your Bible to look it up, and finding that the quotation is not there!

What’s going on?

It may be that the quotation actually is there, but one psalm before or after the one you looked up.

For example, suppose you wanted to look up the famous line:

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.

This is famed as the first verse of Psalm 23. But if you look it up in certain Bibles–like the Douay-Rheims–you won’t find it there. Instead, it’s the first verse of Psalm 22.

The explanation is that there are different ways of numbering the Psalms, and different Bible (and other documents) follow different numbering system.

One numbering system is that used by the Hebrew Masoretic text. This is the version used by most modern Bible translations.

Another is that used by the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. This version was inherited by the Vulgate and thus by the Douay-Rheims.

Because both numbering systems are in circulation, Catholic sources often use both systems, which is why you’ll see references like “Ps 23[22]:1” (or “Ps 22[23]:1”, depending on which numbering system they’re treating as primary).

Okay, fine. There are different numbering systems for the Psalms. But what makes them different?

The answer is that the Hebrew numbering sometimes combines (splices, joins) a psalm that is reckoned as two psalms in the Greek numbering–and visa versa.

Let’s take a look at how that happens.

(Note: I’m not assuming anything about whether one version is joining two psalms that were originally separate or whether it is dividing a psalm that was originally one. Simply for the sake of clarity, I’ll describe what you’d see in the Hebrew version first and then what how things would appear if you looked for the equivalent passage in the Greek version.)

The first time the numbering varies is when the Hebrew psalms 9 and 10 are joined as the Greek psalm 9. That causes the Greek numbers to be one less than the Hebrew numbers for most of the book, which is why the Hebrew 23rd psalm gets reckoned as the Greek 22nd psalm.

The same thing happens when the Hebrew psalms 114 and 115 are joined as the Greek psalm 113.

“Oh, no!” you may be saying to yourself. “Now they’re going to be off by two numbers!”

Well, they would be, except the very next Hebrew psalm–116–is divided into two in the Greek numbering, resulting in Greek psalms 114 and 115. So now the Greek numbering is only one psalm behind the Hebrew numbering again.

Whew!

Since both the Hebrew and Greek editions of the book of Psalms both have 150 entries, though, how do they get joined back up again?

That happens when we hit Hebrew psalm 147, which also is divided into the Greek psalms numbered 146 and 147.

With that resolved, the two numbering systems can now march arm-in-arm through the final three psalms: 148, 149, and 150.

Here’s a handy chart to keep it straight:

MORE FROM WIKIPEDIA.

The Church Year: June 21, 2012

Today is Thursday of the 11th week of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is white.

In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Pentecost.

 

Saints & Celebrations:

On June 21, in both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Aloysius Gonzaga, SJ, confessor, who died in A.D. 1591, religious. In the Ordinary Form, it is a memorial, and in the Extraordinary Form, it is a Class III day.

If you’d like to learn more about St. Aloysius Gonzaga, you can click here.

For information about other saints, blesseds, and feasts celebrated today, you can click here.

 

Readings:

To see today’s readings in the Ordinary Form, you can click here.

Or you can click play to listen to them:

 

Devotional Information:

According to the Holy See’s Letter on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation:

22. Finally, the Christian who prays can, if God so wishes, come to a particular experience of union. The Sacraments, especially Baptism and the Eucharist,26 are the objective beginning of the union of the Christian with God. Upon this foundation, the person who prays can be called, by a special grace of the Spirit, to that specific type of union with God which in Christian terms is called mystical.

What Does “Amen” Mean?

Many of us grew up saying prayers and, in imitation of the adults around us, we learned to end them by saying “amen.”

But this is a word most of us never used in any other context, and for many of us, we had no idea what it meant. It was just that think you say at the end of prayers.

I confess that when I was growing up, I thought it meant something like “over and out.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a brief explanation of the meaning of the word at the end of its section on the Lord’s Prayer, where it quotes Cyril of Jerusalem:

“Then, after the prayer is over you say ‘Amen,’ which means ‘So be it,’ thus ratifying with our ‘Amen’ what is contained in the prayer that God has taught us” [CCC 2856].

It also says:

By the final “Amen,” we express our “fiat” [Latin, “so be it” or “may it be”] concerning the seven petitions: “So be it” [CCC 2865].

The Catechism also has a longer discussion of the meaning of “Amen” at the end of its section on the Creed:

1062 In Hebrew, amen comes from the same root as the word “believe.” This root expresses solidity, trustworthiness, faithfulness. and so we can understand why “Amen” may express both God’s faithfulness towards us and our trust in him.

1063 In the book of the prophet Isaiah, we find the expression “God of truth” (literally “God of the Amen”), that is, the God who is faithful to his promises: “He who blesses himself in the land shall bless himself by the God of truth [amen].” Our Lord often used the word “Amen,” sometimes repeated, to emphasize the trustworthiness of his teaching, his authority founded on God’s truth.

1064 Thus the Creed’s final “Amen” repeats and confirms its first words: “I believe.” To believe is to say “Amen” to God’s words, promises and commandments; to entrust oneself completely to him who is the “Amen” of infinite love and perfect faithfulness. the Christian’s everyday life will then be the “Amen” to the “I believe” of our baptismal profession of faith:

May your Creed be for you as a mirror. Look at yourself in it, to see if you believe everything you say you believe. and rejoice in your faith each day.

1065 Jesus Christ himself is the “Amen.” He is the definitive “Amen” of the Father’s love for us. He takes up and completes our “Amen” to the Father: “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why we utter the Amen through him, to the glory of God”:

Through him, with him, in him,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
all glory and honor is yours,
almighty Father,
God, for ever and ever.
AMEN.

One of the things the Catechism mentions is that Our Lord sometimes repeated the word “Amen.” In some versions of the Bible this is translated “Verily, verily” or “Truly, truly,” but what he actually said was “Amen, amen.”

This was something characteristic of Jesus’ own personal manner of speech.

In any event, the word means more than just “over and out.”