Behold the right hand of St. Stephen of Hungary in its golden reliquary. (Folks in the Middle Ages were odd, I'm, sorry. Why would you cut off the hand of a man you venerate?).St. Stephen united the Magyar people and consolidated the Church in Hungary and was kind to the poor, but most interesting to me is how sanctity was a family affair for him. He married St. Gisela, daughter of St. Henry II and sired St. Emeric. St. Astricus advised him, and he hired St. Gerard Sagredo to be his son's tutor. He left his son a list of virtues to practice:
All these virtues I have noted above make up the royal crown, and without them no one is fit to rule here on earth or attain to the heavenly kingdom.
Popery
Everyone's on vacation, I guess. The Holy Father celebrated Mass at St. Peter's yesterday, but neither Zenit nor the Vatican have the homily in any language. Asia News reports, however, that the Pope took his inspiration from the reading from the Apocalypse about the woman clothed with the sun and the red dragon.
We saw the power of the red dragon realised in the great dictatorships of the last century,” Benedict XVI said. "The dictatorships of Nazism and Stalinism had a power that penetrated every corner. In the long run it seemed impossible that faith could survive such a powerful dragon who sought to devour God who had become a child, and the woman, the Church. But in this case in fact love proved stronger than hatred.”For the Pontiff today’s dragon is found “in the materialist ideologies that say: It is absurd to think about God. It is absurd to observe God’s Commandments. It is something from a bygone era . . . . Only consumerism, selfishness and fun are worth something. That’s life.”
We must have hope and courage, however. Mary's being clothed with the sun means to say she's clothed with God. Even if the Church is always a woman in travail, bringing Christ to the world amidst suffering, Mary's ultimate triumph foreshadows ours:
Let us look upon Mary, the Assunta, and be encouraged in our faith and in the feast of joy: God wins. Faith, which appeared weak, is the real power of the world. Love is stronger than hatred.The Angelus, back at Castel Gandalfo, was to an overflow crowd again. The pope highlighted a special Mass being celebrated simultaneously in Lebanon & Nazareth on behalf of peoples in the Middle East, and returned to the theme of Mary as our hope.
Here at last is a full translation of B16's Q & A with clergy last month. Right out of the box someone asks him about how to help people form an upright conscience and the Pope gives an interesting answer, suggesting that the culture's present environmental concerns are an opportunity to restore an understanding of natural law:
a first step would be to make people aware that our very nature carries in itself a moral message, a divine message that must be deciphered. We can become increasingly better acquainted with it and listen to it if our inner hearing is open and developed. The actual question now is how to carry out in practice this education in listening, how to make human beings capable of it despite all the forms of modern deafness, how to ensure that this listening, the Ephphatha of Baptism, the opening of the inner senses, truly takes place.And he goes from there to the experience of freedom and how freedom is always shared freedom (the state of nature not being free), and once that is conceded, it's from there a short hop to the Decalogue.
In taking stock of the current situation, I would propose the combination of a secular approach and a religious approach, the approach of faith. Today, we all see that man can destroy the foundations of his existence, his earth, hence, that we can no longer simply do what we like or what seems useful and promising at the time with this earth of ours, with the reality entrusted to us. On the contrary, we must respect the inner laws of creation, of this earth, we must learn these laws and obey these laws if we wish to survive. Consequently, this obedience to the voice of the earth, of being, is more important for our future happiness than the voices of the moment, the desires of the moment. In short, this is a first criterion to learn: that being itself, our earth, speaks to us and we must listen if we want to survive and to decipher this message of the earth.
And if we must be obedient to the voice of the earth, this is even truer for the voice of human life. Not only must we care for the earth, we must respect the other, others: both the other as an individual person, as my neighbour, and others as communities who live in the world and have to live together. And we see that it is only with full respect for this creature of God, this image of God which man is, and with respect for our coexistence on this earth, that we can develop.
None of this works without communion with God, without respect for God and God's presence in the world. In any case, a world without God becomes an arbitrary and egoistic world. There is light and hope only if God appears. Our life has a meaning which we must not produce ourselves but which precedes us and guides us. In this sense, therefore, I would say that together, we should take the obvious routes which today even the lay conscience can easily discern. We should therefore seek to guide people to the deepest voices, to the true voice of the conscience that is communicated through the great tradition of prayer, of the moral life of the Church. Thus, in a process of patient education, I think we can all learn to live and to find true life.What I love about the Pope is that nothing threatens him. Most serious Christians, self included, are frequently tossed into panics and outrages about various matters. For him, everything is an occasion to preach the Gospel.
Definitely read the whole thing. There's a marvelous answer to a question about priests feeling more like managers and bureaucrats because of parish paperwork, and the headline-making remarks about evolution and re-marriage, and two beautiful treatments of the meaning of suffering. I'll just highlight one other question, which was about evangelizing non-Christian immigrants. In his answer, the Pope compares the position of the Church today to that of the 1st century:
In his First Letter, St Peter said: "Always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you" (3: 15). Thus, he formulated for the ordinary person of that time, for the ordinary Christian, the need to combine proclamation and dialogue. He did not say formally: "Proclaim the Gospel to everyone". He said: "You must be able, ready, to account for the hope that is in you". I think that this is the necessary synthesis between dialogue and proclamation. The first point is that the reason for our hope must be ever present within us. We must be people who live faith and think faith, people with an inner knowledge of it.There is of course a place for direct preaching of the Gospel, and the Pope talks about that, but there's a more fundamental point, which is simply to live a Christian life:
live beside them, recognizing with them their neighbour, our neighbour; thus, living love of neighbour on the front line as an expression of our faith. I think that this is already a very powerful witness and also a form of proclamation: truly living love of neighbour with these others, recognizing the latter, recognizing them as our neighbour so that they can see: this "love of neighbour" is for me. If this happens, we will be able to more easily present the source of our behaviour, in other words, that love of neighbour is an expression of our faith.He takes this idea up again in response to another question. Preach, yes, but don't complicate matters:
Christianity is not a highly complicated collection of so many dogmas that it is impossible for anyone to know them all; it is not something exclusively for academicians who can study these things, but it is something simple: God exists and God is close in Jesus Christ. Thus, to sum up, Jesus Christ himself said that the Kingdom of God had arrived. Basically, what we preach is one, simple thing. All the dimensions subsequently revealed are dimensions of this one thing and all people do not have to know everything but must certainly enter into the depths and into the essential.But most importantly, be holy:
the best proclamation, is always the life of true Christians. If we see that families nourished by faith live in joy, that they also experience suffering in profound and fundamental joy, that they help others, loving God and their neighbour, in my opinion this is the most beautiful proclamation today. For me too, the most comforting proclamation is always that of seeing Catholic families or personalities who are penetrated by faith: the presence of God truly shines out in them and they bring the "living water" that you mentioned. The fundamental proclamation is, therefore, precisely that of the actual life of Christians.
Catholics: show and tell. In that order.
Potpourri:
France: Cardinal Lustiger laid to rest.
Great Britain: Church not allowed to fire a headmaster who entered a civil union.
India: Cardinal warns against demon of corruption holding his country back.
Pakistan: Forced conversions.
Saudia Arabia: Christian doctor released after 2 years.
Turkey: Gov't cancels Archbishop of Cyprus' visit for a 2nd time.
US:
- "Asian invasion."75,000 Vietnamese Catholics rally for Mary Days in Missouri.
- Cardinal Bertone calls for a "church of yes" at the Knights of Columbus 125th Supreme Convention in Nashville. Gives a press conference, too, at which this remark amused me:
I have seen among the Knights a very good representation of young people; however, the average age is a little bit high.
What do you think is the average age of the Dominican Sisters I just visited? The average is 33 years old. Write that down! There are many girls with university degrees that are being attracted to this way of life.
- New bishop for Birmingham.
- Envoy is back. Crisis is going net-only. Register's publisher notes where some of the Curia is vacationing.
