Matrimony 2

Dogmatic Part: Definition - Nature

CCC 1601: The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.

CCT: Matrimony, according to the general opinion of theologians, is defined: The conjugal union of man and woman, contracted between two qualified persons, which obliges them to live together throughout life.

It is a conjugal union. Jugum in Latin means yoke. By this union the spouses are yoked, joined together. It is a contract, a pact between a man and a woman that is different than any other contracts. Saint Augustine in his treatise on Matrimony De bono Conjugali – The Good of marriage says that the union of the man of the woman is the first natural bond of human society. Then he adds that another bond is formed by the children with is a worthy fruit of the sexual intercourse between the spouses.
This is established in our nature by the Creator as it is expressed in the narrative of the Creation as Saint Augustine points it out: Nor did God create these each by himself, and join them together as alien by birth: but He created the one out of the other, setting a sign also of the power of the union in the side, whence she was drawn, was formed.

First narrative (Gn1): "And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it."

Second narrative (Gn2): "And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself.

Then the Lord God cast a deep sleep upon Adam: and when he was fast asleep, he took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh for it. And the Lord God built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman: and brought her to Adam. And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh."

In his commentary on Genesis, Saint Augustine explains that it is for the reproduction of human species that the woman was given to man. This is expressed by the Commandment of God given to Adam and Eve right after their creation: Male and female He created them. Then He blessed them and said: Increase and multiply.
Motherhood is in the very nature of woman and finds its perfect realization in the Divine motherhood of Our Lady. We shall speak about this later.

Divine institution
The Church has always proclaimed this truth: marriage has been instituted by God Himself even in its original state of nature. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting the Council says: The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by Him with its own proper laws… God Himself is the author of marriage. (CCC 1603)

God has given authority to men in order to subdue the earth. It is a sign of his dignity and a call to collaborate with the Creator to the work of creation. But men cannot change the nature of things. Attempting this means desiring to be like God. Here is the sin of the creatures who want to be like the Creator. Regarding marriage men cannot change its very nature.

Casti Connubii: And to begin with that same Encyclical, which is wholly concerned in vindicating the divine institution of matrimony, its sacramental dignity, and its perpetual stability, let it be repeated as an immutable and inviolable fundamental doctrine that matrimony was not instituted or restored by man but by God; not by man were the laws made to strengthen and confirm and elevate it but by God, the Author of nature, and by Christ Our Lord by Whom nature was redeemed, and hence these laws cannot be subject to any human decrees or to any contrary pact even of the spouses themselves. This is the doctrine of Holy Scripture this is the constant tradition of the Universal Church; this the solemn definition of the sacred Council of Trent, which declares and establishes from the words of Holy Writ itself that God is the Author of the perpetual stability of the marriage bond, its unity and its firmness.

Ends of marriage
- Procreation and education of children: Thus amongst the blessings of marriage, the child holds the first place. And indeed the Creator of the human race Himself, Who in His goodness wishes to use men as His helpers in the propagation of life, taught this when, instituting marriage in Paradise, He said to our first parents, and through them to all future spouses: "Increase and multiply, and fill the earth." As St. Augustine admirably deduces from the words of the holy Apostle Saint Paul to Timothy when he says: "The Apostle himself is therefore a witness that marriage is for the sake of generation: 'I wish,' he says, 'young girls to marry.' And, as if someone said to him, 'Why?,' he immediately adds: 'To bear children, to be mothers of families'." (Casti Connubii.. cf 1 Tim 5,14)

- Mutual assistance and quieting of concupiscence:
CCT: We have now to explain why man and woman should be joined in marriage. First of all, nature itself by an instinct implanted in both sexes impels them to such companionship, and this is further encouraged by the hope of mutual assistance in bearing more easily the discomforts of life and the infirmities of old age.
A second reason for marriage is the desire of family, not so much, however, with a view to leave after us heirs to inherit our property and fortune, as to bring up children in the true faith and in the service of God. That such was the principal object of the holy Patriarchs when they married is clear from Scripture. Hence the Angel, when informing Tobias of the means of repelling the violent assaults of the evil demon, says: I will show thee who they are over whom the devil can prevail; for they who in such manner receive matrimony as to shut out God from themselves and from their mind, and to give themselves to their lust, as the horse and mule which have not understanding, over them the devil hath power. He then adds: Thou shalt take the virgin with the fear of the Lord, moved rather for love of children than for lust, that in the seed of Abraham thou mayest obtain a blessing in children. It was also for this reason that God instituted marriage from the beginning; and therefore married persons who, to prevent conception or procure abortion, have recourse to medicine, are guilty of a most heinous crime ­­ nothing less than wicked conspiracy to commit murder.
A third reason has been added, as a consequence of the fall of our first parents. On account of the loss of original innocence the passions began to rise in rebellion against right reason; and man, conscious of his own frailty and unwilling to fight the battles of the flesh, is supplied by marriage with an antidote by which to avoid sins of lust. For fear of fornication, says the Apostle, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband; and a little after, having recommended to married persons a temporary abstinence from the marriage debt, to give themselves to prayer, he adds: Return together again, lest Satan tempt you for your incontinency. (Cf 1 Co 7,9: But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to be burnt.)
These are ends, some one of which, those who desire to contract marriage piously and religiously, as becomes the children of the Saints, should propose to themselves. If to these we add other causes which induce to contract marriage, and, in choosing a wife, to prefer one person to another, such as the desire of leaving an heir, wealth, beauty, illustrious descent, congeniality of disposition ­­ such motives, because not inconsistent with the holiness of marriage, are not to be condemned. We do not find that the Sacred Scriptures condemn the Patriarch Jacob for having chosen Rachel for her beauty, in preference to Lia.

Properties of marriage: Indissolubility and unity
CCC 1644 The love of the spouses requires, of its very nature, the unity and indissolubility of the spouses' community of persons, which embraces their entire life: "so they are no longer two, but one flesh." They "are called to grow continually in their communion through day-to-day fidelity to their marriage promise of total mutual self-giving." This human communion is confirmed, purified, and completed by communion in Jesus Christ, given through the sacrament of Matrimony. It is deepened by lives of the common faith and by the Eucharist received together.

CCC 1645 The unity of marriage, distinctly recognized by our Lord, is made clear in the equal personal dignity which must be accorded to man and wife in mutual and unreserved affection." Polygamy is contrary to conjugal love which is undivided and exclusive.

Matrimony 1

This post and those that will follow are the framework of the Recollection on the Sacrament of Matrimony given at Cherokee Village in July 2009.

Introduction

In 1930, Pope Pius XI gave the Church an encyclical letter on the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. This is an important text on this topic as it is a magisterial document that teaches the faithful on such an important subject. The Pope began by recalling the dignity of Matrimony, but right after he expressed his sorrow for “a great number of men, forgetful of that divine work of redemption, either entirely ignore or shamelessly deny the great sanctity of Christian wedlock, or relying on the false principles of a new and utterly perverse morality, too often trample it under foot. And since these most pernicious errors and depraved morals have begun to spread even amongst the faithful and are gradually gaining ground, in Our office as Christ's Vicar upon earth and Supreme Shepherd and Teacher We consider it Our duty to raise Our voice to keep the flock committed to Our care from poisoned pastures and, as far as in Us lies, to preserve it from harm.”(Casti Connubii)
In spite of the great renewal promised with the Council of the Vatican, we can notice that today the situation is certainly worst that in 1930. Religious ignorance is wildly spread among the people of God and is more devastating than ever. It is the greatest enemy of faith and consequently of life – the supernal and divine life of God in our souls and even natural life. The Sacrament of Matrimony establishes the spouse in a state of life that is the most common state of life in the Church. Yet, the truth about Matrimony is ignored by a great majority of the faithful who come to the church for their wedding with a vague notion of its nature, of its dignity and of the rights and obligations of the spouses. Many chose this state of life only because of a natural love for their spouse. It is certainly not a bad motive, but it cannot be sufficient in order to establish a stable state of life whose purpose is first to gain eternal life. According to the Principle and foundation given by Saint Ignatius of Loyola - Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul – one should carefully chose only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created. In other words, one should not chose the state of marriage only because he fell in love with someone but first because of a moral certitude that it is the way wanted by God for his eternal salvation.
The danger of founding a marriage only on a natural love is that if this natural love fades or vanishes – and this can happen with time – is that the temptation of divorcing is great. Unfortunately many Catholics couples come to a divorce. Imbued with the spirit of the world they come to this conclusion that the world considers as wise and good but that is in fact is totally opposed to the will of God: “Well, obviously we love each other no longer. It is better for each of us to separate and to continue our lives on our own separated ways.”
Another sign of the crisis of marriage is the great number of annulments that we can see nowadays. An annulment is a legal procedure of the Church for declaring a marriage null and void. It is a statement from a competent authority that states that a marriage has never existed. It was null and void from the very beginning. This can happen and the Church has always contemplated this possibility. But the Church can only make a statement and declare if this marriage is valid or not. In any case, she can make a valid marriage null. A famous and sad example is given by Henry VIII, king of England. If the Church could make a marriage null, she would have accepted the case of Henry VIII in order to avoid a schism. But this was impossible simply because “What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” (Mc 10,9)

Annulments are possible, yet there is an abuse of this practice today. Pope Benedict XVI in an address to the Tribunal of the Roman Rota in January 2009, deplored and condemned this abuse. “One can still perceive the urgent need to which my venerable Predecessor pointed: that of preserving the ecclesial community "from the scandal of seeing the value of Christian marriage being destroyed in practice by the exaggerated and almost automatic multiplication of declarations of nullity, in cases of the failure of marriage, on the pretext of some immaturity or psychic weakness on the part of the contracting parties” (Quote from the Address to the Roman Rota, 5 February 1987 by John Paul II)
Benedict XVI, and already John Paul II before him, gave some remedies against this abuse.
"In this regard it is helpful to recall several clear-cut distinctions. First of all, the distinction between "the psychic maturity which is seen as the goal of human development" and, on the other hand, "the canonical maturity which is the basic minimum required for establishing the validity of marriage" (Address to the Roman Rota, 5 February 1987, n. 6). Second, the distinction between incapacity and difficulty, inasmuch as "incapacity alone, and not difficulty in giving consent and in realizing a true community of life and love, invalidates a marriage" (ibid., n. 7). Third, the distinction between the canonical approach to normality, which, based on an integral vision of the human person, "also includes moderate forms of psychological difficulty", and the clinical approach, which excludes from the concept of normality every limitation of maturity and "every form of psychic illness" (Address to the Roman Rota, 25 January 1988, n. 5). And finally, the distinction between the "minimum capacity sufficient for valid consent" and the ideal capacity "of full maturity in relation to happy married life"
Basically, what the Popes say is that difficulties in living the state or marriage do not make the marriage null. Difficulty does not mean incapacity and cases of incapacity are rare. Benedict XVI says: “there is a need for a new and positive appreciation of the capacity to marry belonging in principle to every human person by virtue of his or her very nature as a man or a woman. We tend in fact to risk falling into a kind of anthropological pessimism which, in the light of today’s cultural context, would consider marriage as practically impossible. Apart from the fact that this context is not uniform in the various parts of the world, genuine incapacity to consent cannot be confused with the real difficulties facing many people, especially the young, which lead them to conclude that marital union is, as a rule, inconceivable and impracticable. Rather, a reaffirmation of the innate human capacity for marriage is itself the starting point for enabling couples to discover the natural reality of marriage and its importance for salvation.”
Man and woman have a natural capacity to marry, because it is in our human nature. Sometimes there are exceptions, accidents, but they are rare. In order to understand well the nature of marriage, it is important to understand the human nature. Now, Matrimony is also for the baptized people a Sacrament. In order to understand it, we have to understand the plan of God for mankind, what we call the Economy of Salvation.

Saint Mary Magdalene and Provence

Excerpt from the work of Father Henri Lacordaire, O.P.

"Sainte Marie-Madeleine"

Jesus is no longer of this world in visible form. He has left the Apostles, his Mother, his personal friends, but in providing to each of them a life and a death that He had predestined. St. Peter dies in Rome the same mode of death as his Master; all of the Apostles confirm their faith by martyrdom. St. John, himself, is not entirely spared; he suffers in Rome, in front of the Latin Gate, a painful process of torture, and only escapes death by conserving the glory of a willing martyrdom. However, it is clear that the Saviour watches over him with the memory of the special affection he bore him; escaping from the ordeal by a miracle, and from exile by the overthrow of a hated tyrant, he prolongs his days into an old age which attracts the attention of the entire Church, and which allows him to render to the divinity of Jesus Christ, in the last and most sublime of the Gospels, an irrefutable testimony. He belongs to him also, by a privilege unique in the New Testament, to see prophetically the future of the Church, and he dictates the revelation under a form which will enlighten one day and fortify, in their tribulation, in the Elect of the end of time. He dies after that, wrapped in peace and only knowing how to repeat to Christians these words fallen from the mouth of Jesus Christ: "My children, love one another."

The Mother of Jesus does not survive by so many years the Resurrection and the Ascension of her beloved Son. She feels herself borne towards Him by an aspiration that unbinds in the depths of her soul everything which held it captive, and from his tomb, visited by him, she mounts to the throne from where she reigns for ever over the angels and over mankind saved by the fruit of her womb.

The Sainte-Baume Mountain

Like the Mother of God and like St. John, Mary Magdalene will not finish her days by martyrdom. She will also live in the tranquil benediction of her love. She will live at the feet of the vanished Christ, as she lived in Bethany and in Calvary, a lover accustomed to the delights of contemplation, and having no other need but to look with her soul at the One whom she looked upon in other times through the transparent veil of mortal flesh. But what famous or obscure havens will have been prepared for her? Where will she hide the blessed remainder of her existence? Are they to be the deserts of the East, the river banks of the Jordan, Mt. Sion, the field after the harvest of Nazareth or of Bethlehem, which will be the last witnesses of her inaccessible charity? Jesus Christ bequeathed his Mother to Jerusalem, St. Peter to Rome, St. John to Asia --- to whom will he have bequeathed Mary Magdalene?

We know already, it is France who received from the hands of God this part of the Testament of His Son. Tradition, history, the monuments tell it to us clearly, and Providence has taken care to give to their testimony an invincible clarity. One cannot bring one's feet down on the soil of Provence without encountering at each step the memory of St. Mary Magdalene. Everywhere present, she does not live there under the form of an isolated accident; she is linked to the soil by the fact which holds the first place in the history of all Christian people, by the great events of their conversion and nothing doubtless ought to have perpetuated more obstinately in the memory of a race and of a country, than this change brought to its beliefs and customs by a new cult, proscribed, and triumphant by dint of its own virtue. In addition, there is no Christian nation which has not kept the memory of its first Apostles, which has not honored their tombs, built churches in their name, invoked their help, and which does not laugh at the vain reasonings of a blind science against this popular and all-powerful tradition. Provence was not a barbarous grouping of an insignificant people when Christianity appeared there; it was since more than a century a Roman province. It had received from its masters all the culture of Rome, and from its origin all that of Greece. It was connected by Marseilles to all the seaports of the Mediterranean, and untiring vessels conveyed to it from then on the tribute of the furthest shores. When, then, the first sound of the Gospels struck its ears, it could not be in error about those who were bringing to it from the East this great revelation. It knew them, judged them, and, converted by them to the new law, their names were sacred to them as no name had been for them until that moment. Who could doubt it? Who does not see that a people, above all when it is a question of its religion, has a more reliable memory than that of a man, and that age, instead of altering it, renews it without ceasing? That which is engraved on the altar by worship and in the heart by prayer, lasts longer than marble and than bronze, and the kings who have only history to live by have assuredly less than the soul of generations gives to their apostles.

From whom then does Provence date its faith? To whom does it give thanks, after nineteen centuries, for having received, on the day after the proclamation of the Gospels, a ray of the light that had just risen over the deep shadows of humankind? It gives thanks to this illustrious family of Bethany which had had Jesus Christ as a guest and as friend to Lazarus, to Martha, to Mary Magdalene and to their companions Trophime and Maximin. These are the names that the sons have learned from their fathers, and which the fathers have received from the knowledge of their ancestors. Marseilles wishes that St. Lazarus had been its first bishop; Aix attributes this glory to St. Maximin, Arles to St. Trophime; Avignon and Tarascon name St. Martha as the apostle who delivered them from error; and St. Mary Magdalene, united to all by a memory which is supported by this which goes beyond it, hovers over the whole Church of Provence, like the sovereign of the apostolate which established it.

The monuments respond to the acclamation of the centuries. It is in vain that the barbarians have covered Provence with their fleets; it is in vain that, renewing their ferocity once it was appeased, the Saracens have added to the ruins already there long and terrible scimitar blows: those ruins, already consummated twice, have not been able to prevail against the monuments that the people and Providence have destined to perpetuate the memory of the holy founder of the Church of Provence. Marseilles still sees, in the cavern of the ancient abbey of St. Victor, the crypt where there assembled under St. Lazarus the first Christians which it had formed for God, and where rested the very body of its first bishop, right up to the day when he was plucked away from the ravages of the followers of Islam by a translation with which the Church of Autun was endowed. Tarascon venerates the tomb where the relics of St. Martha are enclosed, where it keeps them still, and of which the mark, stronger than time, enables the pilgrim to recognize, despite its mutilation, the very living scene of the resurrection of Lazarus. Two other tombs, still more famous, two tombs reunited in the same crypt by a fraternal piety, recall to the traveler that St. Magdalene lay there opposite St. Maximin, and the name even of St. Maximin, given to the spot when this double and unique burial took place, testified to the impression which it produced in the people -- an impression that has never been extinguished. It is there that St. Mary Magdalene ended her pilgrimage; it is there that St. Maximin buried her in an alabaster sepulchre, in memory of that other alabaster where the saint had twice enclosed the ointment with which she anointed the Savior; it is there that St.Maximin himself wanted his mortal remains to be deposited, beside those other remains so dear to his heart, to Jesus Christ, to the angels, and to mankind and where they came in quest of it -- a veneration that will soon be twenty centuries old.

The tomb of St. Maximin stands for the apostolic mission that was given to him by Jesus Christ. That of St. Magdalene retains the trace of the various characteristics of the life of the Son of God, and on a frieze that the piety of the faithful has more than mutilated, one could see at one time, according to venerable and reliable testimonies, the ointment that she poured on her beloved Master.
All of these tombs, linked together by the divine relationships of Time, of people and of sanctity, convey the impression of the first period of Christianity. One recognizes first of all the Roman form, and this unusual mixture of Christian subjects with the symbols of idolatry, that was familiar to this epoch. There is no archaeologist who has not been struck by it, and the avowals of the least credulous have confirmed people in the respect they attach to these old and faithful witnesses.

They are not the only ones. The liturgy of a multitude of churches is in accord with them and with the tradition, and finally history itself, supporting tradition, the monuments and the liturgy, has put the seal of a final demonstration on all these certainties. For a long time it was believed that the pen of no classical writer had touched upon the life of St. Mary Magdalene and engraved the important events of her life into the solid block of history. Against the belief of people through the ages, the mute language of marble, the feasts and lessons of the Church, the chain of all this proof -- was opposed the primitive and continuous silence of human writings. It was asked where was the history of St. Magdalene and if before the 11th or 12th century there had been found in the libraries of Europe any trace of a biography consecrated to a woman who ought so naturally to have seduced the heart and to have inspired the genius of saints. At Oxford, in one of the 24 colleges of this famous university, a college still dedicated today to St. Mary Magdalene, pious hands have discovered a manuscript bearing the name of Raban-Maur, Archbishop of Mainz at the beginning of the ninth century, and containing the life of St. Martha and of St. Mary Magdalene. The authenticity of this manuscript has been confirmed by the collection of letters that in the archaeological world inspire confidence in the date of the book, its authenticity and its integrity.

We will not enter into these details, which are to be found elsewhere, and we will limit ourselves to saying that Raban-Maur was, in the 9th century, by his knowledge, his piety, his influence, his renown and his dignities, one of the most considerable men of his time. Abbot of Fuld for 20 years, then retired voluntarily, by the resignation of this office, into a deep solitude, then called despite himself to the archbishopric of Mainz, he shines out in his century by everything that can recommend him to posterity, the exactitude and sincerity of a historian. His biography of St. Martha and of St. Mary Magdalene is sober, he follows the Gospels step by step, and when the Gospel vanishes with the ascension of our Savior, he draws on writings that he declares to be ancient and to have been the foundation of his account.
And, moreover, these ancient writings have been rediscovered as have his own; they have been unearthed in the public libraries of Paris: pages all the more precious and venerated in that in comparing them to the history of Raban-Maur, one recognizes them almost word for word. They are of the kind, according to the testimony of the Archbishop of Mainz, that are well before the ninth century, since he calls them ancient, and they are in effect, in their naturalness and their brevity, of the taste of a century that had not yet known, with regard to saints, the vain amplifications of a false rhetoric. They are thought to be of the fifth and sixth centuries, that is to say from an epoch where all the monuments of St. Magdalene's apostolate and of her companions in Provence were still young, where the invasion of the barbarians and that of the Saracens had not yet destroyed the very names of our churches, from which, as a consequence, it had been easy to draw, in order to write them, annals true and certain.

Scenic view from the grotto of Saint Mary Magdelene that she could contemplate every day

It is thus that time, instead of weakening the glory of St. Mary Magdalene, has prepared for her resurrection. What is happening today for the Christian Bible, whose veracity has been confirmed by the same lapse of time, has happened also for the Bible of St. Mary Magdalene. A deeper science has reclothed the tradition in a more vivid light, and, taking up henceforth the life of our dear and illustrious saint at the empty sepulchre of the Savior, we can follow its course in this blessed land of Provence.

Today there is a little Dominican community that takes care of the grotto of Saint Mary Madgelene. Find more information and beautiful pictures on their website:

http://saintebaume.dominicains.com/?lang=en

They come in the clothing of sheep

Sermon for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost

(Without the story of the bottle of wine and the drop of gazoline)

By their fruits you shall know them! With these words Our Lord warns us against the false prophets. They come in the clothing of sheep. We shall not recognize them by their appearances or their looks but by their fruits. It usually takes time before you can see the first fruits of a tree. It is a process that takes several years. So, Our Lord asks us to be patient and to not succumb immediately to the enthusiasm of novelty or to the appeal of extraordinary facts. “I have heard about this priest or this minister, what does he do! He is amazing, and so nice! He is a man of God for sure, he can heal people and he performs miracles.” Then you leave your church and change your habits to follow this new shepherd who will lead you to Christ… until you find another one that you find more attractive.
This kind of behavior is unfortunately not rare in a country where religion has become a business and with its market. Thousands of Christians are simply the victims – more or less consenting – of the false prophets against whom Christ precisely warns us. They come in clothing of sheep. Saint John Chrysostom explains that they are neither the Jews nor the Gentiles, but the heretic Christians who have the clothing, the look of the sheep. The clothing is the appearance of Christianity, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. They pretend to give you God but in fact they devour your soul.
Of course we think first about all the different Christian denominations that are so flourishing in the U.S. especially here in the South. They all look good. After all it can not be a bad thing to speak about Jesus Christ, especially in a corrupted world that returns to secularism and paganism. Many would tell you that it is better to be a Christian, whatever is your denomination, rather than an atheist or a pagan. They would add that there are different ways of worshiping Christ; you just have to find the one that is the best for you, according to your preference, to what you like.
The problem, brethren, is that we do not have – in fact we cannot – choose between two evils. I do not care if it is a better to be a Christian of whatever denominations rather than a pagan, because unless you belong to the true Church founded by Christ, being a Christian is not a good thing. Being a heretic is a very grave sin that leads to hell! Who is not with Christ is against Him. The fact is that all the false religions that pretend to be Christian are in the same side as the atheists and pagans. They are together against the truth.
Until a recent time, this was the clear teaching of the Catholic Church that has always warned and defended her sheep against the wolves. And it is still the teaching of the Church today, because it cannot change. There is no salvation outside the Church. It is a dogma and it will remain a dogma until the end of times. But today, this truth is tainted and dissolved in an insipid soup, because many wolves have put on the clothing of the sheep, and they are within the Catholic Church. They officially belong to the Church of Christ but they do not give the doctrine of Christ.
We recognize a tree by its fruits. What are the fruits of these false prophets? An abandon of the true doctrine and spirit of the Church for a kind of universal humanism! A loss of missionary zeal – if everybody is saved, why would you make some efforts to convert other? A loss of the preaching of the truth for an exaltation of tolerance as if it were the highest virtue! The absolute rule is now to not offend people and to respect their beliefs and behaviors, whatever they are. A loss of spirit of penance and of mortification! A loss of the sense of sin! A loss of the sense of reparation! A loss of the true meaning of the priesthood and of the hierarchical dimension of the Church! A loss of the sense of the sacredness which has for horrible consequence the fact that the churches are now social halls where people spend a lot of time to chat instead of being the sacred temple where we adore with humility the King of Kings hidden in the tabernacle! A loss of many things which are so characteristic of the Catholic Church! Is it the prelude to the great apostasy? It might be, but we shall see.

Recollection for married couples

Seeking Christ in the Sacrament of Matrimony

From Monday 27th to Thursday 30th

Lecture each day at noon and 7 pm

Saint Michael's church, Cherokee Village

"This is a great Sacrament" (Ephesians 5,32)

Saint John Bosco Academy

Saint John Bosco Academy is opening soon, in August 2009.

A new Catholic school in Northern Arkansas

"Saint John Bosco Academy is founded by and supported by families who are dedicated to the traditional Mass of the Latin Rite. As such, we place great emphasis on understanding the Catholic customs and traditions which have survived the test of time. The school schedule is based on the liturgical cycle, and academic life revolves around the liturgical calendar and feast days."

Information about Saint John Bosco Academy:

http://www.staroftheseavillage.com/stjohnboscoacademy.html

Little thought

Yesterday evening, as I was returning from Mountain Home after Holy Mass, I turned on the radio in my car. Yes, I do not listen only to Baroque music and Corsican Polyphony, things that we do not hear often on the local radios of North Arkansas. Instead, there was a protestant Pastor who spoke on the station – and this happens often on the local radios of North Arkansas. I listened to him, out of curiosity, to know what our separated brothers have to say. In fact it was a commentary of the Our Father and the Pastor said many good things that Catholics can receive. Then he came to the subject of our personal relationships with God and with others. He explained that we must acknowledge a hierarchy in our relations with others. Our relationship with God must be above all other kinds of relations with others. In fact, our relationships towards others must be grounded on our relationship with God, but on the other hand, our relationships with others affect our relationship with God. As Catholics, we can only agree.

Now this Pastor said that as a minister, he follows this order of relationships: first with God; then with his wife and children; finally with his flock – I am not sure of the word he used, but he meant the people he has care in his ministry. So, his family comes right after God and before his ministry. He is right. This is the right order that everyone should follow. So, I thought that this protestant minister, certainly even without thinking about that, gave a very good point for the celibacy of the ministers of Christ. The consecrated celibacy is truly a richness of the Catholic Church. Men and women who have embraced it are signs of the Kingdom of God, as Matrimony is… but in a different manner. Let the priests of Jesus Christ be totally dedicated to their flock. Thanks to this protestant minister for helping us to remember this, even though it was certainly not his intention!

Sermon for Trinity Sunday

With this Sunday, begins the time after Pentecost that will lead us toward the end of the liturgical year. We had the opportunity to meditate on two of the great mysteries of Faith, which are the Incarnation, during the Christmas cycle, and the Redemption during the Easter cycle. This new liturgical season begins with the feast of the Blessed Trinity, which is the third great mystery of faith.
Since the beginning of the liturgical year, we have contemplated the works of God in the history of men. Certainly, the moral aspect was still present in the liturgy, especially with the epistles of Saint Paul that we find throughout the liturgical year. The divine interventions of God in our world suppose an answer from men. The Revelation speaks first to our intelligence, but in order to move then our will. The Sundays after Pentecost will help us to answer in a right way by conforming our lives to our faith. We would say that the agenda of this liturgical season can be summarized by the words of Saint Paul: Walk in the spirit! (Ga 5,16) The gift of the spirit has been given to us: it is the gift of Pentecost. Now we have to use it well in order to achieve the will of God that is our sanctification.
We said yesterday evening during our meditation on the Holy Spirit that in order to act well, we have to know first our nature and our condition and to know the principles of spiritual life that unfortunately too many people ignore. The regime of grace in which we live now has its rules and principles that have been well described and commented by the Saints and the Doctors. It is precisely an effect of the Spirit that one lives according to these rules and principles of spiritual life. The progress of your soul depends basically on how you apply them.
The great principle of everything is in fact God himself, and it happens that God is Trinity, which means, as Saint Thomas says, trine-unity. And Saint Athanasius says: Unity in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity is to be revered. It is certainly a great mystery that God is Three Persons, well distinct but truly equal. Yet, the fact that it is a mystery should not dispense us from making the effort of our intelligence that would be a fair answer to the gift of Revelation. And effort means sacrifice. The quest for God is difficult but it is worthwhile and salutary.
Seek God and your soul shall live, Psalm 69 says. But Saint Augustine warns us. It would be rash and dangerous to think that you know God. Our quest for God is never achieved in this present life. This is why the Psalmist adds in Psalm 104: Seek His face evermore. Similarly Saint Paul also says: And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he hath not yet known as he ought to know. But if any man love God, the same is known by him. (1 Co 2-3) There would be a lot to say about this sentence. It is an invitation to humility and to charity. Whatever you know about God is still nothing and can even be dangerous because of a certain pride. It is a usual temptation that when you know, you want to be sure that others know that you know. So Saint Paul, well aware of this danger, invites us to love in order to be known by God. Yet, it is still true that we owe to progress in our knowledge of God. Saint Augustine encourages us by saying: Let us seek with the desire to find, and find with the desire to seek still more. Whatever you know, you still have more to know.
In order to know more about God we can look at ourselves, since we have been created to His image. Saint Augustine says that when I love something, I discovered three things, which are myself, the thing that I love, and love itself. If a soul loves itself, there is a certain identity between the lover and the thing that is loved.. There is a relation between two terms: the soul that loves and love. They are on a relative point of view two different things, but they are united together in one spirit.
Now, in order to love something, you have to know it first. A soul knows itself first and then loves itself. The soul and the knowledge of itself are two different things, but again they are united together in one spirit. So, Saint Augustine says that the soul, its knowledge and its love are three different things but these three things are only one; and when they are perfect, they are equal. Our soul, our intelligence and our will are finally the image of the Blessed Trinity. In God, there is a perfection of knowledge and of love, so there is a equality between the three terms: three things that are only one substance.
It is then in the right comprehension of intelligence and of love that we can apprehend as much as we can the mystery of God. Knowing and loving! Here is the principle of our religious life that is well conformed to our rational nature. Being created in the image of God, with an intelligence and a will, we have to use them in order to return to Him, our principle and our end. If you know God, as He truly is, which is Trinity, then we can love Him. If you love Him, then we are known by Him. We are incorporated into the relations between the Three Divine Person. In other word, we share the Divine intimacy with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. That is the gift of the Divine grace.

Si scires donum Dei

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday

Si scires donum Dei! If thou didst know the gift of God!

How ignorant are we of the things of God! We are certainly ignorant by nature, because God is a hidden God – Deus absconditus – as Isaiah says. We are ignorant of the things of God because our intelligence is limited while God is infinite. Yet, we know that our end and our perfection is the knowledge of God and we have seen during the past two weeks that only this knowledge can give true happiness. At this point, it appears that our end is not proportionate to our nature. For Saint Thomas Aquinas, this means that there is a certain necessity for a Revelation, and again, when we speak of necessity about God, it is always a relative necessity as God is totally free. The first Council of the Vatican would confirm the teaching of Saint Thomas when it stated that the Revelation is necessary because God has wanted to give men a supernatural end.
So, God is a hidden God, but He also is a revealed God – revelatus Deus. With the Revelation, we have now the knowledge of our end and the knowledge of the means that we must necessarily use in order to reach our end. But God remains hidden even in His Revelation. In fact, as Pascal says, the more God is disclosed, the more obscured God becomes. It is a paradox but it makes sense if you think about this. The Revelation and the Grace, which are both supernatural, do not suppress our nature and its way of operating, but rather elevate and sublimate it. In other words, the Revelation does not exempt us from thinking but rather calls us, encourages us and motivates us to think more. This fact has been well expressed by Saint Anselm with his famous “Fides quaerens intellectum” – Faith seeking understanding. Saint Augustine had already said: “Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.”
The Revelation is the unveiling of the mysteries of God, in the meaning that it tells us about the existence of these mysteries. The Revelation is not the explanation of these mysteries. So, when I believe, out of faith, I acknowledge the existence of mysteries, such as the Trinity, the Incarnation or the Eucharist. But when I believe, I also acknowledge that I cannot understand them. God is now revealed to me, and God is still a mystery to me. The more God is disclosed, the more obscured God becomes. For Pascal, the descent of Deus revelatus-absconditus culminates in the Eucharist, which is the last hiding place where God can be, as Father McDade explains. The Faith is the Eucharist is precisely what separates true believers from many other Christians. Pascal writes that the veil of nature which covers God has been pierced by several non-believers, who, as St Paul says, ‘have recognized an invisible God by visible nature’ (Rom 1.20). Heretical Christians have known him through his humanity and adore Jesus Christ, God and man. But to recognize him under the species of bread, that is the distinguishing mark of Catholics alone: we are the only ones whom God enlightens to that extent.
It is not a coincidence if Jesus speaks about the Paraclete that the Father will send in His name during the last Supper when He institutes the Sacrament of the Eucharist. He will teach you all things! All things!
The Holy Ghost is truly the gift of the Father who reveals to us the hidden things about God. It is only with humility and gratitude that we can receive Him. He allows us to accept the mysteries of God and to understand that we cannot understand them. The great temptation would be to rationalize the mysteries and to try to find an explanation to all things. That is precisely the error of our Protestant brothers after Luther, especially on the subject of the Eucharist. When you realize that you cannot understand a thing, you are inclined to deny it.
But be aware, dear Brethren, that it is also a temptation for you, maybe not on the subject of the Eucharist or of any great truth revealed by God and taught by the Church, but about more practical involvements of faith in your daily life. There are laws and rules in the spiritual life that we must know and accept in order to grow in holiness. They have been well explained by the Saints and the Doctors of the Church. They come from the Holy Ghost who teaches us all things. It is also with gratitude and humility that we should receive them and then, put them into practice. Denying them is ignoring the gift of God. Many –and I am speaking now about faithful Catholics – ignore the gift of God, because they are still full of themselves, instead of God. Be renewed in the Spirit, Saint Paul says. We have to accept the work of renovation that the Spirit of God wants to perform in us, and that supposes a total abandon of ourselves. This is mainly the object of our preaching throughout the year, based upon the teaching of the great masters of spiritual life. My desire and my wish is that we finally end by understanding it. If thou didst know the gift of God!
The Church applies the words of the Scripture about Wisdom to Our Blessed Mother. I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. She has a role of educator. She is the beginning of our supernatural education. From her we can learn how to receive the teaching of the Holy Spirit. It is first the teaching of faith, which is an intellectual knowledge. It is also the teaching of a way of living that must be in accordance to our faith: the practice of the virtues. It is what we receive with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, who is Himself the Gift of God – Donum Dei. If thou didst know the gift of God! May Our lady help us to know and to receive Him.

Quid hoc ad aeternitatem?

Sermon for the Ascension of Our Lord

We celebrate today the glorious Ascension of Our Lord after having contemplated Him in the mystery of His Resurrection. What is the point of the Ascension? We answer with the Doctors that it is the crowning of the work of Redemption of Our Lord, the achievement of his exaltation that He has merited by His Passion and His entire life on earth since the day of the Incarnation. Saint Thomas explains that heaven was due to Christ because of His nature. It is natural that a being returns to the place from where he has its origin. And Our Lord told us from where He came. We heard that in last Sunday’s Gospel: I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again I leave the world and go to the Father. There is no more reason for Him to remain in the world since the work of Redemption has been performed.
And also, Our Lord shows us that His kingdom is not of this world and that our lives are just passing and transitional in this world. We are called to join Him: Where I am, there also shall my servants be.
Our Lord is the One who has revealed the mystery of the Holy Trinity; this mystery of love between the Divine Person. He tells us the secrets of His Father. He helps us to keep our attention toward the invisible realities of the Kingdom of grace. Our conversation is in heaven, Saint Paul says beautifully. There, there is someone who speaks now to His Father after He has spoken to us about His Father.
Communication has been established, Paul Claudel says. Now there is at the Father’s right hand a voice to explain this new acquisition and extension of His Son, this Passover that He so longed to take with us, this sin that was somehow unspeakably translated into love, this enriched declension of His Word, this bridal bouquet that sacrifices to Him its sweetness! A voice, and I could also say an ear: a divine ear within us pressed to our heart, a divine ear within us pressed to the heart of God!
You see, if you would spend more time about being more curious about God, more time of meditation about Our Lord Jesus Christ and more time for a true conversation – and not only prayers that can be so easily become a kind of routine – you would understand better the love of God for us. And this would make you happier. It would give you more peace. It would help you to understand that the troubles of this life are nothing in comparison with the glory of heaven. Quid hoc ad aeternitatem? Saint Bernard used to repeat constantly. What does this matter for eternity?
In fact, what does matter for my eternity is not the event that I face in my life, but how do I handle them. Do I accept everything with gratitude and do I always complain about others or about the burden that is on my shoulders. I was thinking a few days ago about the great number of prayer requests for friends or relative who are sick. Often we pray for the healing of someone, and there is nothing wrong about that, provided of course that the usual dispositions required when we pray are here. It is good to pray for each other. But I also realized how rare it is to receive prayer requests of thanksgiving when someone is sick. Of course, such a request should come from the sick person himself. I think I have seen that just once since I was ordained.
Quid hoc ad aeternitatem? How often do we ask for temporal good! How rarely do we ask for spiritual good! It is like if we have to spend our all eternity in this world. How often do we ask to be poor with Christ? How often do we pray to desire insults with Christ loaded with them or to be accounted as worthless and a fool for Christ? (Cf Spiritual exercises by Saint Ignatius) We are men of little faith. Very little!
We should desire what is the best for us in order to gain heaven. The fact is that might be better for us to be sick rather than healthy, or poor rather than wealthy, depending on how we use the temporal good. It is legitimate to pray for temporal good, but let us be sure that we will use them for the glory of God and our salvation when we ask for them.
Like Saint Paul, we should be able to say that our conversation is in heaven. Christ is there now. May Our Blessed Mother help us to understand this truth and encourage us to take the glorious way of the Cross! It is the only way that leads to the glory of heaven.

27th Pilgrimage of Pentecost

May 30th - June 1st 2009

From Notre-Dame de Paris to Notre-Dame de Chartres

The Paris-Chartres Pilgrimage is a three-day walk from Notre-Dame de Paris to Notre-Dame de Chartres, approximately 75 miles. Pilgrims are organized into groups of 20-65 people, that are referred to as "chapters". The "walk" is through the streets of Paris, and then into the countryside. It can be muddy, rocky, and demanding-and the rewards of such a penitential exercise are eternal. Good sturdy shoes are a must. Each chapter is accompanied by at least one chaplain, who hears confession and gives spiritual direction to each pilgrim who avails himself of the priest's presence. This pilgrimage originated in the 12th century, with interruptions for the various wars our European brethren seem to find themselves in from time to time. A plenary indulgence is granted, under the usual conditions.Pilgrims will meet in front of Notre Dame de Paris at 6 a.m. on May 30, and the journey of faith and foot begins.

http://www.nd-chretiente.com/

Pèlerinage de Chrétienté

The pursuit of happiness

Sermon for the fifth Sunday after Easter

The optimist considers that the absolute good that he seeks can be gained through the realization of his earthly hopes. The “pursuit of happiness” that is considered as an inalienable right of man in the American Constitution, is a specific product of such an optimistic mentality. At a first look, you may not see what is wrong with that. Is it not legitimate to pursue happiness? The answer is: yes it absolutely legitimate. Now it depends on how do you consider happiness and how do you seek it. Aristotle in his time already said that all men acknowledge that the supreme good is happiness, but right after, he added that there are different opinions concerning the nature of happiness. Basically, there are three main common opinions. Happiness resides in pleasure, in honor or in wealth.
It is interesting to see how Aristotle considers these three theories and how much his thought is very topical today. After all, it is not really surprising. Gustave Thibon has well said that Things have not really changed in two thousand years. The same repetition of error and evil commands the same repetition of truth and of good. We can see regularly here and there a champion of change claiming that a new era is about to begin and that the only thing we need is to believe in it. "Yes, we can!" he claims. Is there any novelty in this belief? If it is something new, it is at the very least already 300 years old. Charles Péguy in his time had already denounced the oldest error of the world that is repeated at every generation like the sap that rises every spring. This very ancient error is to believe that man can remake the society according to his wish. But, as Gustave Thibon points out, there is a conformism of revolt and chaos as there is a conformism of order. It seems after all that our innovators and heroes of change, of liberty, of nonconformism are more traditional than they believe. The Revolution has indeed its own tradition. The progressive and the modernist people have their own traditions. They have them so well, that we can anticipate their so called novelties. They say that nothing will be as before. Let us answer them: the more it changes, the more it is the same thing!
Certainly, the Revolution has different faces, and Gustave Thibon, speaking about this, notices that the ideological and moral contents of the various revolutions were totally different. But their authors were all similar in the way that all of them believed that they could perform a deep and lasting transformation, and they lived on the pretention that nothing would be as before. In a certain way there were right: everything, in general, became worst.
And as long as the great majority of men, especially those who are in charge of the destiny of our nations, believe that the supreme good resides in an earthly happiness, it will continue to get worst. And we will continue to see optimistic people saying that it can be better. To the question: “is the pursuit of happiness truly an inalienable right of man?”, let Our Lady answer.
Our Lady told Bernadette Soubirous: I don’t promise you to make you happy in this world, but in the other. Our Lady, seat of wisdom tells us what true happiness is. We can find it only in God. Aristotle had already discovered that happiness is a divine gift, in the highest degree among all human things and that it is the best of all things. And he added that every man can find it. What is his definition of happiness? It is an operation of the soul that is conform to virtue! Not too bad for a pagan! The Christian Revelation would confirm this definition and perfect it. Man’s happiness must of necessity consist in an operation, Saint Thomas Aquinas says. In fact, perfect happiness consists in an act of our intellect, which is nothing else than the vision of the Divine essence. This is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God! (Jn 17,3)
This is not the optimism of the world, but the concrete reality of the nature of things. It is something that the innovators and the revolutionaries have forgotten. Even the naturalists do not understand the natures of things because they do not acknowledge the principle of nature. The optimism of Rousseau led the world to a global Revolution that finally becomes a world without God. Most of our contemporaries continue to believe in the noble savage myth and their optimism is nothing but an illusion.
And of course, they will accuse us of being pessimistic. With Gustave Thibon, we answer that we simply believe in original sin. The philosopher even adds: I do not need to believe it; the evidence exempts from faith. Are we pessimistic? We are simply Christians. We believe in original sin, but we believe also in the Redemption. Yet, as Thibon says, at the level of appearances, the balance between sin and Redemption is not equal. Sin is an evil that devastates all men and breaks out everywhere. But the benefits of Redemption remain in a very large measure virtual, for the great majority of men neglect or refuse to receive them. It is not enough that a remedy is infallible and universal. The sick must also use it.
It is legitimate to pursue happiness, but it can be find only in God and in the gift of Redemption. Refusing this gift can only leads to the ruin. The modern philosophers and politicians think they can provide happiness in this life. Our Lady promises it in the other life. Between illusion and reality, we should not hesitate. May Our Blessed Mother help us to make the good choice.

The picture of the day

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Father Weslin arrested at Notre-Dame

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiz4tfjSuPc

Saint Pierre était-il corse ?

Extrait de Sur les chemins de l'âme corse, Sauveur m'a dit...

De André Giovanni

La face tragique, celle des offenses, du sang versé et du sacrifice, est probablement celle que la Corse a regardée avec la plus vive compassion. Songeons au catenacciu de Sartène. Notre peuple s’y est reconnu que n’ont épargné ni les malheurs, ni les outrages, ni les violences, ni les injustices.
Et quel Corse, en son for intérieur, ne s’est pas retrouvé dans l’apôtre Pierre quand, au moment de l’arrestation du Christ, il tire le glaive pour frapper le serviteur du grand prêtre ? Ce geste vengeur, inutile, attire la réponse souveraine du Maitre : « Celui qui prend l’épée périra par l’épée. »
Le caractère insulaire, pétri de passions, a prouvé qu’il savait se dominer et surmonter les tragédies pour s’accomplir dans la charité. La charité du Christ. L’histoire de notre ile s’est jouée, et se joue encore aujourd’hui, dans un balancement violent entre la rusticité des passions humaines, les malheurs subis comme une malédiction fatidique qui pousserait l’homme à se faire justice, et finalement l’imitation du Christ, cloué sur la Croix par Amour, dans un sacrifice suprême pour la Rédemption de l’humanité.
Notre peuple, sans rien perdre de son identité et de ses justes revendications, doit dépasser les ressentiments provoqués par des vicissitudes trop humaines, pour accéder à un autre ordre, celui de la Miséricorde, tant pour lui-même que pour les autres, les frères, les voisins, et ceux qui passent. Se revêtir de la noblesse du Roi du monde, dans la lumière de la Charité. La justice suprême, c’est le pardon des offenses. « Pardonnez-nous nos offenses comme nous pardonnons à ceux qui nous ont offensés. Et délivrez-nous du mal.”

U lamentu di Maria

He will convince the world of sin

Sermon for the fourth Sunday after Easter

Our Lord prepares His Apostles for His departure: it is expedient to you that I go. If I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you. We read this text during paschaltide, in the context of the Resurrection and as a preparation to the mysteries of the Ascension and of Pentecost, but they were said during the Last Supper. The Apostles certainly did not understand the meaning of all the words of the Lord at this time, but they would understand when the Holy Spirit would come upon us. In the Chapter 14 of Saint John , Our Lord had already promised the Apostles that the Father will give them another Counselor and the Spirit of truth. He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
Pope John Paul II in the Encyclical Letter Dominum et Vivificantem, says that the Holy Spirit is not only the Counselor of the Apostles, but of the whole Church. The words "he will teach" and "bring to remembrance" mean not only that he, will continue to inspire the spreading of the Gospel of salvation but also that he will help people to understand the correct meaning of the content of Christ's message; they mean that he will ensure continuity and identity of understanding in the midst of changing conditions and circumstances. The Holy Spirit, then, will ensure that in the Church there will always continue the same truth which the Apostles heard from their Master.
Our Lord says another Counselor, because He is Himself the first Counselor as He is the first bearer and giver of the Good News. There is an intimate bond, Pope John Paul II adds, between Christ and the Holy Spirit. In fact, The Holy Spirit continues the mission of Christ through His members: He teaches and bears witness as Jesus did during His life on earth, and that is precisely what the militant Church does on earth. The Holy Spirit has a very important mission in the Church and is like her soul. We will have the opportunity to meditate on this mystery in a few weeks.
But now, let us consider the mission of the Paraclete in the world. He will convince the world of sin, and of justice and of judgment. He will convince the world of sin! It is first the sin of those who rejected Christ and condemned Him to the death of the Cross. Jesus spoke these words only a few hours before His death. By dying on the Cross He performed the works of remission of sins. He did not come into the world to judge it but to save it. When the Holy Spirit convinces the world of sin, He also convinces it of the remission of sins. Therefore the world is divided into two sides. On one side, there are those who acknowledge the remission of sins and who accept it for themselves. They have received the Holy Spirit. On the other side, there are those who refuse the gift of redemption and this rejection will be their condemnation. The conviction of sin is intrinsically connected to the death of Christ on the Cross as Pope John Paul II points it out: it is the demonstration of the evil of sin, of every sin, in relation to the Cross of Christ. Sin, shown in this relationship, is recognized in the entire dimension of evil proper to it, through the "mysterium iniquitatis" which is hidden within it. Man does not know this dimension-he is absolutely ignorant of it apart from the Cross of Christ. So he cannot be "convinced" of it except by the Holy Spirit: the Spirit of truth.
The mystery of iniquity has its beginning with original sin. What do we know about the beginning? In the Beginning God created heaven and earth. It is the gift of Creation, a gift from the Three Divine Persons. The Word, who is the Second Person of the Trinity, is the principle of the Creation according to Saint John. In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God: and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made.
But at the beginning, there was also a spirit that is opposed to the Word of God and that has its origin in the will of the rational creatures. There was a tree in the garden and this tree brought death into the world by the disobedience of Adam. One day, another tree would bring back life by the obedience unto death of the New Adam. The spirit that opposes the Word, we can name it with Pope John Paul II, the Anti-Word or the Anti-truth.
This "anti-truth" is possible because at the same time there is a complete falsification of the truth about who God is. God the Creator is placed in a state of suspicion, indeed of accusation, in the mind of the creature. For the first time in human history there appears the perverse "genius of suspicion." He seeks to "falsify'' Good itself; the absolute Good, which precisely in the work of creation has manifested itself as the Good which gives in an inexpressible way: as bonum diffusivum sui, as creative love. Who can completely "convince concerning sin," or concerning this motivation of man's original disobedience, except the one who alone is the gift and the source of all giving of gifts, except the Spirit, who "searches the depths of God" and is the love of the Father and the Son?
Living in this world where two antagonistic spirits oppose each other, we often vacillate from one to another. Between Word and the Anti-Word, there is no hesitation possible. The Word is the principle of my being and of my life. May the Anti-Word not be the principle of my actions! Let us turn to the Mother of the Incarnate Word, so that we can live according to the Spirit of truth and reject the works of darkness that lead to death. Amen!

Parade in honor of Saint Ioan of Arc

May 8th 2009 in Orleans

The city of Orleans was delivered by Saint Ioan of Arc on May 8th 1429

Fetes de Jeanne d'Arc 2009 - Orléans
Uploaded by choreon

Saint John Bosco Academy

St. John Bosco Academy will be opening at Star of the Sea Village, near the Cherokee Village FSSP apostolate, starting in August 2009. Due to faculty constraints, the first year of classes will meet only three days a week - Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with homework assigned for a fourth school day.

St. John Bosco will offer standard K-12 classes.

For further information contact Lorri Sonnier at (870) 834-1541 or (870) 834-8993.

A place to visit with family if you go to France

"On paper, Philippe de Villiers is an unlikely populist. A strict Catholic and father of seven, he is president of the regional council of the Vendée, the heartland of French royalism. Yet, more than anyone else, he knows how to sell a conservative message in a modern way.
His first passion is the extraordinary theme park that he has created in a village called Puy-du-Fou. It tells the story of the Vendée, dwelling on the agony of the Revolutionary repressions, when priests were hunted down and villages razed.
It is, without being too blatant, a hymn to an older, seemlier France. And it is staggeringly popular, attracting some 20,000 visitors a day in the summer. Incredibly, it is staffed by volunteers, its profits going to local charities.
Puy-du-Fou is thus a standing affront to France's cultural establishment: it is politically conservative, popular and, worst of all, it does not take a penny in subsidy."

Daniel Hanman, in Telegraph.co.uk

La Cinéscénie

2006 show: "Mousquetaire de Richelieu"

Visit the website: http://www.puydufou.com/uk

Confederate Memorial Day in Georgia

"I, SONNY PERDUE, Governor of the State of Georgia, do hereby proclaim April 2009 as CONFEDERATE HISTORY MONTH and April 26, 2009, as CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL DAY in Georgia and encourage our citizens to observe this occasion with appropriate ceremonies. In witness thereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the Executive Department to be affixed this 11th day of December in the year of our Lord two thousand eight"

The marching armies of the past

Along our Southern plains,

Are sleeping now in quiet rest

Beneath the Southern rains.

The bugle call is now in vain

To rouse them from their bed;

To arms they'll never march again--

They are sleeping with the dead.

No more will Shiloh's plains be stained

With blood our heroes shed,

Nor Chancellorsville resound again

To our noble warriors' tread.

For them no more shall reveille

Sound at the break of dawn,

But may their sleep peaceful be

Till God's great judgment morn.

We bow our heads in solemn prayer

For those who wore the gray,

And clasp again their unseen hands

On our Memorial Day.

(Unknown writer)

Spiritual mirage

By Fénelon

Almost all who aim at serving God do so more or less for their own sake. They want to win, not to lose. They want to be comforted, not to suffer. They want to possess, not to be deprived. They want to increase, not to diminish. Yet all the while our whole interior progress consists in losing, sacrificing, decreasing, humbling, and stripping self even of God’s own gifts, so as to be more completely his. We are often like an invalid who feels his pulse fifty times in the day, and wants the doctor to be perpetually ordering some fresh treatment, or telling him how much better he is.
Some people treat their spiritual director or pastor in this way. They move round and round in a petty circle of easy virtues, never stepping beyond it heartily and generously, while they expect the director (like the physician) to soothe, comfort, encourage, and foster perfectionism, only ordering little sedative treatments that drop into mere habit and routine. As soon as they are deprived of conscious grace – grace that they can feel inwardly, grace that is like the milk of babes – such people fancy that all is lost. But this is a plain proof that they cling too much to the means and overlook the end, and that self is their main object.
Privations are the food of strong minds; they invigorate the soul, take it out to itself, and offer it as a living sacrifice to God. But weak people are in despair at the first touch of privation. They fancy that all their work is being overthrown, just when it is really beginning to be solidly fixed and thoroughly purified. They are willing to let God do what He will with them, provided always it be something great and perfect. But they have no notion of being cast down and crushed, or of being offered as a sacrifice to be consumed in the divine flames. They seek to live by pure faith, yet want to retain all their worldly wisdom, to be as children, yet great at their own eyes. But what a spiritual mirage this is!

François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon

The Wrath of God

"What joy, what ecstasy it is to see our Father living and overflowing with love for us, with tenderness, compassion – all the right emotions, even anger! Yes, we love Him to take us as seriously in our transgressions as in our attempts to do good. Those fools who talk about a cruel God are imbeciles. He is a jealous God, yes, as jealous as you please, but we love Him that way!"

Paul Claudel

U Lamentu di Ghjesu

Merci a MonteCintu pour avoir mis cette video en ligne

Pace e Salute

Being a friend of the Cross

On Good Friday, we are going to ‘adore’ the Cross of Our Lord. The word seems too strong; it even seems to be heterodox as adoration is exclusively due to God. It may even have a whiff of paganism, and it would be the case without the understanding of the notion of analogy or rather of equivocality. In the strict sense adoration is the supreme act of religion offered to God by which we acknowledge His dominion over the whole creation and our submission to Him. In a looser sense, the reverence shown to any person or object possessing, inherently or by association, a sacred character or a high degree of moral excellence. (Catholic Encyclopedia)

The Cross of Jesus possesses in a highest degree the character of moral excellence as it is the instrument chosen by God to redeem us. Christ has desired to embrace it, to be nailed on it, to be one with it, so that we can be saved. It is hard to understand. The Cross is unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Gentiles foolishness (1 Co 1,23). In fact, there is only one way of understanding the Cross. Neither the Law or reason allow us to comprehend it. Speaking of Saint Paul, the Holy Father says that the "Gospel of grace" thus became for him the only way of understanding the Cross, not only the criterion of his new existence but also his response to those who questioned him.[1] What is true for Saint Paul is true for each one of us. I cannot understand the Cross of Jesus if I do not receive and accept in my life the “Gospel of Grace.” And if I do not understand the message of the Cross, how can I understand my life?
Our Lord has indeed performed a revolution when He incarnated. The idea that God can assume a created nature shattered the way of thinking of the Jews as well as of the Gentiles. Yet, for God it is not enough. The Man-God would suffer and die as a criminal, as the least of men, the rubbish of the society of men. The scandal is absolute! For those who, like the Greeks, see perfection in the spirit, in pure thought, it was already unacceptable that God should become man, immersing himself in all the limitations of space and time. Then for them it was definitely inconceivable to believe that a God could end on a Cross! And we see that this Greek logic is also the common logic of our time.[2]

Not only does the Cross shatter the intelligence of man, but it challenges him. Once he has bowed his intellect in front of the Divine Mystery, he still has to render himself and offer his own life. The Cross is not only a call to my reason, but is the principle of the interior renovation of my whole person. I may acknowledge the mystery of the Cross, because I am a faithful Catholic who believes, yet it does not necessarily mean that I have embraced it. Faith is not Charity! Believing in the mystery of the Passion of our Lord is one thing. Loving the Cross is another thing.

Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort echoes this reality when he says: if I am captivated by its splendour, I am no less frightened by its responsibility, for it is a title (friend of the Cross) that embraces difficult and inescapable obligations, summed up in the words of the Holy Spirit, “A chosen race, a royal priesthood, a people set apart.”[3] This is a verse from the Scriptures that is often used to laud the People of God. The laity, by a kind of mysterious inspiration insufflated by a mysterious spirit of the Council, has suddenly discovered that it is a royal priesthood; and since we live in a time of demands and claims, the People of God has come to fight for its rights, sometimes against a certain “old and obsolete ecclesiastical institution” incarnated by the authoritarian power that dwells in the Vatican, far from the reality of the modern world. In fact, we simply witness the class war within the Church.

But being a chosen people and a royal priesthood is not a license to enter and to jiggle into the sanctuaries. It is first a responsibility as Saint Louis de Montfort states. It is the practical acceptance of the Cross in my daily life!

A Friend of the Cross is one chosen by God, from among thousands who live only according to their reason and senses, to be wholly divine, raised above mere reason and completely opposed to material things, living in the light of pure faith, and inspired by a deep love of the Cross.
A Friend of the Cross is an all-powerful king, a champion who triumphs over the devil, the world and the flesh in their three-fold concupiscence. He crushes the pride of Satan by his love of humiliations; he overcomes the greed of the world by his love of poverty; he retrains the sensuality of the flesh by his love of suffering.
A Friend of the Cross is one who is holy and set apart from the things that are visible, for his heart is raised above all that is transient and perishable, and his homeland is in heaven; he travels through this world like a visitor and a pilgrim, and, far from setting his heart on it, he looks on it with indifference and tramples it underfoot with contempt.
A Friend of the Cross is a glorious trophy gained by the crucified Christ on Calvary, in union with his holy Mother. He is a Benoni or Benjamin, a child of sorrow and of the right hand, conceived in the suffering heart of Jesus, born from his pierced side, and baptised in his blood. True to his origin, his life embraces the cross, and death to the world, the flesh, and sin, so as to live here below a life hidden with Christ in God.
In short, a perfect Friend of the Cross is a true Christ-bearer, or rather another Christ, so that he can truly say, "I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me."

Being another Christ! This is the vocation I have received the day of my Baptism. I shall be another Christ only when I shall totally surrender myself to the will of God. This is the way of the Cross; the way of my Cross. May Our Lady of sorrows keep me safe on this way!


Father Laurent Demets, FSSP (Upon this Rock, April 2009)

[1] General audience, October 29th 2008
[2] General audience, October 29th 2008.
[3] Letter to the Friends of the Cross.

Sermon for the 5th Sunday of Lent....

(.. that many read or hear, but only a few - unfortunatelly - put into practice, because it is hard to change a habit of life!)

During the retreat that we had this past week, many of you told me: "Father, it is something new for me, or I have never thought about that before. I realize that I am not the saint I wanted to be." The reason is that a retreat is a meeting with Our Lord, a time when you can really look at Him and listen to Him, without the distractions of the world. When you take the time to look at Him and to listen to Him, then He can reveal to you who you are. This is what we need: to know who we are.

The contemporaries of Christ had the opportunity to meet Him face to face. They have certainly felt in the deepest of their soul the piercing gaze of the Lord who knows all about you, about your life, about your thoughts, your feelings, and who knows all your sins, especially those who remain hidden in a dark corner of your soul. Realizing who they truly were, then they fell on their knees and, as Peter did, confessed their sinfulness: Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. What a grace! It is a grace to understand that you are a sinful man. It is a grace to fall on your knees and to humble yourself. It is a grace to cry for your sins and to shed tears of repentance.
Saint Ignatius had this grace in his life and he wants to share it with us. As the contemporaries of Our Lord, we can also meet Him and look in His eyes. We can let Him look in ours. It is precisely what we do in a retreat, especially with the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius.
They are a conquest: a conquest over yourself as the Saint put it: to conquer oneself and regulate one’s life. But in order to conquest yourself, you first have to know yourself. And that is not so common. Saint Ignatius knows this fact and this is why he wants us to ask often God the grace to know ourselves well. Then, once we begin to understand who we are, we can ask for what we need. For example, it will be to ask shame and confusion at myself. It is not the kind of petitions we usually pray for, isn’t it? We usually ask God for a success for an exam, a work or whatever. We pray for the conversion of someone or his healing if he is sick. We pray for the Church, the souls in purgatory and many other intentions and all of these prayers are good. It is rare to pray and to ask for shame, humiliation, or confusion. The reason is that we do not know ourselves and consequently we do not know what we really need for our souls. Strange as it may seem, Cardinal Newman says, multitudes called Christians go through life with no effort to obtain a correct knowledge of themselves. They are contented with general and vague impressions concerning their real state; and if they have more than this, it is merely such accidental information about themselves as the events of life force upon them. But exact systematic knowledge they have none, and do not aim at it.

It is certainly very difficult to know yourself very well. All the Doctors and Saints agree on this matter. But difficult does not mean impossible. It means that you have to make some efforts. It means that you have to perform some particular and proper acts that allow you to know yourself.

Self-knowledge does not come as a matter of course, Cardinal Newman continues. It implies an effort and a work. The very effort of steadily reflecting, is itself painful to many men; not to speak of the difficulty of reflecting correctly. To ask ourselves why do this or that, to take account of the principles which govern us, and see whether we act for conscience’ sake or from some lower inducement, is painful.

Then we have to overcome the self-esteem that we have. Because of certain good actions we do, we think that we are not so bad. Remember the danger of being a Pharisee we were talking about last week. After all, I go to Mass every Sunday; I even go to Mass during the week; I am not a criminal; I am not a thief; I do not have any big sins to confess etc… Then you end by thinking with a false air of humility that you are certainly not perfect but that you are finally not too bad. This way of thinking is very dangerous and has terrible consequences. One of them is a judgmental mind toward others and instead of displaying compassion you just show critics and judgments. You are very good at detecting the faults of your neighbor while you even do not see your own faults. Cardinal Newman says again that if the truth were known to us, we should find we had nothing but debts, and those greater than we can conceive, and ever increasing.

We also have to consider the force of habit that is a serious obstacle to self-knowledge. We all have our habits. Some are good, many are wrong. For that reason we have to reform ourselves regularly. There is a common idea that wisdom comes with time and that the older you are, the wiser and better you are. It is not always true. In fact it is true only if you have the good habit of reforming yourselves. If you do not do this at the time or your young age, it will become more and more difficult to do it as you get older. The effects of original sin do not naturally fade with time and they even can be worst. If you have lived with illusion about yourself during the time you were younger and more active in the world, there is no reason that you will suddenly become better. It is rather the opposite that is true. You get accustomed to your own way of thinking, to your own way of living and it is just become harder and harder to reform yourself. Pride is simply the cancer of the soul and, unless you use the proper treatment to heal it, it continues to develop.

Many things are against us, Cardinal Newman concludes. This is plain. Yet is not our future prize worth a struggle? Is it not worth present discomfort and pain to accomplish an escape from the fire that never shall be quenched? Can we endure the thought of going down to the grave with a load of sins on our head unknown and unrepented of? Can we content ourselves with such an unreal faith in Christ, as in no sufficient measure includes self-abasement, or thankfulness, or the desire or effort to be holy? For how can we feel our need of His help, or our dependence on Him, or the nature of His gift to us, unless we know ourselves? How can we in any sense be said to have that “mind of Christ” to which the Apostle exhorts us, if we cannot follow Him to the height above, or the depth beneath; if we do not in some measure discern the cause and meaning of His sorrows, but regard the world, and man, and the system of Providence, in a light different from that which His words and acts supply? If you receive revealed truths merely through the eyes and ears, you believe words, not things; you deceive yourselves. You may conceive yourselves sound in faith, but you know nothing in any true way. Without self-knowledge you have no root in yourselves personally.

Yes, dear brethren, unless we have a true faith, we are in danger. And as Cardinal Newman just said, we ought to have faith not only in the words – the creed – but also in the realities that are signified by the words. This includes self-knowledge. We also know that faith without the works is useless. Faith must be followed by obedience, not only in theory but in the cursus of our daily life. It means obedience to the teaching of God and to the teaching of the Church. It means obedience to our natural and legitimate superiors. It means obedience and docility to the teaching and the admonestations of a guide. As we have already seen, this is the admonition of admonitions. This is also a powerful means of acquiring self-knowledge. For that, you have to open your soul to your spiritual director. It is certainly a most difficult thing to do, but it is your safeguard against self-illusion.

Dear Brethren, we have tried to consider during this Lenten Season, what are the necessary means of sanctification we ought to use in ordre to progress in spiritual life. Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Cardinal Newman have been our guides in this meditation. We know now what we have to do in order to do the will of God, that is our sanctification. God want me to be holy; Do I?

May our Blessed Mother give us the desire of holiness.