Our Lenten Journey

The journey of Lent always seems long and arduous from the beginning vantage point.

But after many years of making this trip, I've learned that in reality the days go by quickly. And with Jesus as our traveling companion, our burden is easy and light. So may we go forth into Lent filled with longing and hope, inspired along the way by Jesus, Who is the Way, and others who became experienced guides on the Lenten pilgrimage, our popes and saints.

Here is some of their wisdom to share:

"Whoever wishes to be My follower must deny his very self, take up his cross each day, and follow in My steps." -Luke 9:23

"Lent comes providentially to reawaken us, to shake us from our lethargy." -- Pope Francis

"Lent stimulates us to let the Word of God penetrate our life and in this way to know the fundamental truth: who we are, where we come from, where we must go, what path we must take in life..." -- Pope Benedict XVI

"Look at His adorable face.
Look at His glazed and sunken eyes.
Look at His wounds.
Look Jesus in the Face.
There, you will see how He loves us."
~ St. Therese of Lisieux

So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. When you fast, see the fasting of others. If you hope for mercy, show mercy. If you look for kindness, show kindness. If you want to receive, give. -- St. Peter Chrysologus


Have a blessed trip!

Inspired by the Year of Faith, Susan Szalewski began writing weekly columns for us. Although that year is over, we liked them so well that we asked her to keep writing. Thankfully, she said yes. So watch for these on Thursdays and see the Year of Faith Blog here.

Thank You Holy Father

Much has been said about Pope Benedict XVI and the legacy he has left the Church, much of it harsh.

He has been called a panzer, Rottweiler, and in kinder terms, an archconservative during his nearly eight years as pope and 25 years as prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Here are some of his own reflections, taken from the book “Let God’s Light Shine Forth; the Spiritual Vision of Benedict XVI,” edited by Robert Moynihan.

In a interview when he was prefect, the future pope was asked “Are they right . . . those who say that you are an ‘ultra-conservative’?”

“I would say the work is conservative,” Ratzinger replied, “in the sense that we must preserve the deposit of the faith, as Holy Scripture says. We must conserve it. But conserving the deposit of faith is always to nourish an explosive force against the powers of this world that threatens justice, and threatens the poor.”

“That sounds as if you are conservative and radical at once. But few would say that about you. Do you think you have been misunderstood?”

“By a certain part of the media, certainly, yes.”

“Does this cause you to suffer?”

“Up to a certain point, yes,” Ratzinger said. “But, on the other hand, I am a bit of a fatalist. The world is what it is. And it lives on the basis of simplified images . . .”

The book continued: “A deep contradiction has marked Benedict’s life. He wished to be a scholar, a man of books and study, yet he was compelled to give up scholarship and become a Church official, an administrator. All of the Church advancements he has obtained -- even this final one, to the throne of Peter -- have been against his own will for his life.

“The man who most influenced Benedict’s thought, St. Augustine, had a similar problem. ‘Augustine had chosen the life of a scholar,’ Benedict writes in his Memoirs, looking to Augustine’s life to understand his own. ‘But God had destined him to become a “beast of burden,” the sturdy ox who draws the cart of God in this world.’ Benedict saw that as his own fate as well: to be a type of ‘donkey’ or ‘pack animal,’ carrying the burdens God had set upon his back.”

I think the pope summarized his mission well when he selected this scriptural passage for his motto as a bishop and for his coat of arms, from the Third Letter of the Apostle John: “Co-workers of the truth.”

According to the book: “It is a motto that sums up his life work: to speak the truth in love, in season and out of season, against opposition and incomprehension, with humility and courage.”

Thank you, Holy Father, for your work in service of Truth.

Inspired by this Year of Faith we will be posting columns like this from Susan Szalewski about exploring and/or deepening our faith. Watch for it on Thursdays.

How will it work?

During the 8:15 Mass tomorrow Fr. Vogel may pray:

Remember, Lord, your Church, spread throughout the world and bring her to the fullness of charity, together with Benedict our Pope and George our Bishop and all the clergy.

But, at the 5:30 Mass tomorrow, we won't have a pope. So what will Fr. Damian do?

Answer: He will skip that part. It won't be used until we do have a pope again, saying:

Remember, Lord, your Church, spread throughout the world and bring her to the fullness of charity, together with George our Bishop and all the clergy.

Reporting on the Pope

Fr. Steve wasn't the only person from St. Columbkille to make it into the Omaha World Herald today. Parishioner Stephen Driscoll is interning with Catholic News Service in Rome as an Assistant Producer. It is a unique time to be in Rome with the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI and looking forward to a new pope.

Click here for the story

The Cardinal Tweets the Pope's Retreat

Fr. Vogel and Pope Benedict XVI are both on retreat this week, though Fr. Vogel claims they are on separate retreats.

The Lenten Retreat for Pope Benedict (and the papal staff) is being led by Gianfranco Cardinal Ravasi. One of the unusual aspect of this retreat is that Cardinal Ravasi is tweeting many of his meditations.

So you can pray along with Pope Benedict on his retreat by following Cardinal Ravasi on Twitter. You'll just have to ask Fr. Vogel about his retreat when he returns. (Evidently he isn't as tech savy on his retreat.)

And, by the way, you can also follow St. Columbkille on Twitter -- though we're just getting a handle on it.

Follow @sColumbkille

He's Shown Us Love

Strange worlds collided this week with the convergence of Valentine’s Day, Ash Wednesday and Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation announcement.

So how do these three events speak to us? The obvious answer: they speak of love.

The pope, in his encyclical “God Is Love,” teaches us about the ancient Greek terms for love, which include eros and agape.

Our modern notion of Valentine’s Day focuses on eros, a passionate type of love that seeks union with one’s beloved. Our culture has badly distorted eros, but it’s a noble aspect of God’s love.

Another face of love is agape. It is self-sacrificing love. Lent is all about agape, dying to oneself for the sake of another. In the Gospel reading on Valentine’s Day, our second day into Lent, Jesus tells us: “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.”

Joseph Ratzinger probably didn’t envision that he would become pope. It is said that after Pope John Paul II’s death, the cardinal and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would have preferred to go off to a quiet life of prayer and study. But that’s not what the Holy Spirit had in mind. People who don’t understand the Catholic faith see the papacy solely as a position of power. But it’s more about service, obedience and fidelity. And sometimes suffering.

Pope Benedict has shown us how to follow Christ’s call. He’s shown us Love.

Inspired by this Year of Faith we will be posting columns like this from Susan Szalewski about exploring and/or deepening our faith. Watch for it on Thursdays.

Pope Benedict's Lenten Message

Pope Benedict receiving Ashes on Ash Wednesday
(In Italy it is custom to receive ashes on the top of the head.)

"Believing in charity calls forth charity"

“We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us” (1 Jn 4:16)

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The celebration of Lent, in the context of the Year of Faith, offers us a valuable opportunity to meditate on the relationship between faith and charity: between believing in God – the God of Jesus Christ – and love, which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and which guides us on the path of devotion to God and others.

1. Faith as a response to the love of God

In my first Encyclical, I offered some thoughts on the close relationship between the theological virtues of faith and charity. Setting out from Saint John’s fundamental assertion: “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us” (1 Jn 4:16), I observed that “being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction … Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere ‘command’; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us” (Deus Caritas Est, 1). Faith is this personal adherence – which involves all our faculties – to the revelation of God’s gratuitous and “passionate” love for us, fully revealed in Jesus Christ. The encounter with God who is Love engages not only the heart but also the intellect: “Acknowledgement of the living God is one path towards love, and the ‘yes’ of our will to his will unites our intellect, will and sentiments in the all-embracing act of love. But this process is always open-ended; love is never ‘finished’ and complete” (ibid., 17). Hence, for all Christians, and especially for “charity workers”, there is a need for faith, for “that encounter with God in Christ which awakens their love and opens their spirits to others. As a result, love of neighbour will no longer be for them a commandment imposed, so to speak, from without, but a consequence deriving from their faith, a faith which becomes active through love” (ibid., 31a). Christians are people who have been conquered by Christ’s love and accordingly, under the influence of that love – “Caritas Christi urget nos” (2 Cor 5:14) – they are profoundly open to loving their neighbour in concrete ways (cf. ibid., 33). This attitude arises primarily from the consciousness of being loved, forgiven, and even served by the Lord, who bends down to wash the feet of the Apostles and offers himself on the Cross to draw humanity into God’s love.

“Faith tells us that God has given his Son for our sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love! … Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love. Love is the light – and in the end, the only light – that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working” (ibid., 39). All this helps us to understand that the principal distinguishing mark of Christians is precisely “love grounded in and shaped by faith” (ibid., 7).

2. Charity as life in faith

The entire Christian life is a response to God’s love. The first response is precisely faith as the acceptance, filled with wonder and gratitude, of the unprecedented divine initiative that precedes us and summons us. And the “yes” of faith marks the beginning of a radiant story of friendship with the Lord, which fills and gives full meaning to our whole life. But it is not enough for God that we simply accept his gratuitous love. Not only does he love us, but he wants to draw us to himself, to transform us in such a profound way as to bring us to say with Saint Paul: “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (cf. Gal 2:20).

When we make room for the love of God, then we become like him, sharing in his own charity. If we open ourselves to his love, we allow him to live in us and to bring us to love with him, in him and like him; only then does our faith become truly “active through love” (Gal 5:6); only then does he abide in us (cf. 1 Jn 4:12).

Faith is knowing the truth and adhering to it (cf. 1 Tim 2:4); charity is “walking” in the truth (cf. Eph 4:15). Through faith we enter into friendship with the Lord, through charity this friendship is lived and cultivated (cf. Jn 15:14ff). Faith causes us to embrace the commandment of our Lord and Master; charity gives us the happiness of putting it into practice (cf. Jn 13:13-17). In faith we are begotten as children of God (cf. Jn 1:12ff); charity causes us to persevere concretely in our divine sonship, bearing the fruit of the Holy Spirit (cf. Gal 5:22). Faith enables us to recognize the gifts that the good and generous God has entrusted to us; charity makes them fruitful (cf. Mt 25:14-30).

3. The indissoluble interrelation of faith and charity

In light of the above, it is clear that we can never separate, let alone oppose, faith and charity. These two theological virtues are intimately linked, and it is misleading to posit a contrast or “dialectic” between them. On the one hand, it would be too one-sided to place a strong emphasis on the priority and decisiveness of faith and to undervalue and almost despise concrete works of charity, reducing them to a vague humanitarianism. On the other hand, though, it is equally unhelpful to overstate the primacy of charity and the activity it generates, as if works could take the place of faith. For a healthy spiritual life, it is necessary to avoid both fideism and moral activism.

The Christian life consists in continuously scaling the mountain to meet God and then coming back down, bearing the love and strength drawn from him, so as to serve our brothers and sisters with God’s own love. In sacred Scripture, we see how the zeal of the Apostles to proclaim the Gospel and awaken people’s faith is closely related to their charitable concern to be of service to the poor (cf. Acts 6:1-4). In the Church, contemplation and action, symbolized in some way by the Gospel figures of Mary and Martha, have to coexist and complement each other (cf. Lk 10:38-42). The relationship with God must always be the priority, and any true sharing of goods, in the spirit of the Gospel, must be rooted in faith (cf. General Audience, 25 April 2012). Sometimes we tend, in fact, to reduce the term “charity” to solidarity or simply humanitarian aid. It is important, however, to remember that the greatest work of charity is evangelization, which is the “ministry of the word”. There is no action more beneficial – and therefore more charitable – towards one’s neighbour than to break the bread of the word of God, to share with him the Good News of the Gospel, to introduce him to a relationship with God: evangelization is the highest and the most integral promotion of the human person. As the Servant of God Pope Paul VI wrote in the Encyclical Populorum Progressio, the proclamation of Christ is the first and principal contributor to development (cf. n. 16). It is the primordial truth of the love of God for us, lived and proclaimed, that opens our lives to receive this love and makes possible the integral development of humanity and of every man (cf. Caritas in Veritate, 8).

Essentially, everything proceeds from Love and tends towards Love. God’s gratuitous love is made known to us through the proclamation of the Gospel. If we welcome it with faith, we receive the first and indispensable contact with the Divine, capable of making us “fall in love with Love”, and then we dwell within this Love, we grow in it and we joyfully communicate it to others.

Concerning the relationship between faith and works of charity, there is a passage in the Letter to the Ephesians which provides perhaps the best account of the link between the two: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God; not because of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (2:8-10). It can be seen here that the entire redemptive initiative comes from God, from his grace, from his forgiveness received in faith; but this initiative, far from limiting our freedom and our responsibility, is actually what makes them authentic and directs them towards works of charity. These are not primarily the result of human effort, in which to take pride, but they are born of faith and they flow from the grace that God gives in abundance. Faith without works is like a tree without fruit: the two virtues imply one another. Lent invites us, through the traditional practices of the Christian life, to nourish our faith by careful and extended listening to the word of God and by receiving the sacraments, and at the same time to grow in charity and in love for God and neighbour, not least through the specific practices of fasting, penance and almsgiving.

4. Priority of faith, primacy of charity

Like any gift of God, faith and charity have their origin in the action of one and the same Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 13), the Spirit within us that cries out “Abba, Father” (Gal 4:6), and makes us say: “Jesus is Lord!” (1 Cor 12:3) and “Maranatha!” (1 Cor 16:22; Rev 22:20).

Faith, as gift and response, causes us to know the truth of Christ as Love incarnate and crucified, as full and perfect obedience to the Father’s will and infinite divine mercy towards neighbour; faith implants in hearts and minds the firm conviction that only this Love is able to conquer evil and death. Faith invites us to look towards the future with the virtue of hope, in the confident expectation that the victory of Christ’s love will come to its fullness. For its part, charity ushers us into the love of God manifested in Christ and joins us in a personal and existential way to the total and unconditional self-giving of Jesus to the Father and to his brothers and sisters. By filling our hearts with his love, the Holy Spirit makes us sharers in Jesus’ filial devotion to God and fraternal devotion to every man (cf. Rom 5:5).

The relationship between these two virtues resembles that between the two fundamental sacraments of the Church: Baptism and Eucharist. Baptism (sacramentum fidei) precedes the Eucharist (sacramentum caritatis), but is ordered to it, the Eucharist being the fullness of the Christian journey. In a similar way, faith precedes charity, but faith is genuine only if crowned by charity. Everything begins from the humble acceptance of faith (“knowing that one is loved by God”), but has to arrive at the truth of charity (“knowing how to love God and neighbour”), which remains for ever, as the fulfilment of all the virtues (cf. 1 Cor 13:13).

Dear brothers and sisters, in this season of Lent, as we prepare to celebrate the event of the Cross and Resurrection – in which the love of God redeemed the world and shone its light upon history – I express my wish that all of you may spend this precious time rekindling your faith in Jesus Christ, so as to enter with him into the dynamic of love for the Father and for every brother and sister that we encounter in our lives. For this intention, I raise my prayer to God, and I invoke the Lord’s blessing upon each individual and upon every community!

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

What Do We Think?

As part of their story on Pope Benedict XVI's surprise announcement, KETV stopped by our parish and asked what some of our folks think about the announcement.

They also spoke with Fr. Steve.

For the story, Click Here.

Pope Benedict's Resignation Letter

Dear Brothers,

I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church. After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.  I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me. For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.
Dear Brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects.  And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff. With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.
From the Vatican, 10 February 2013

BENEDICTUS PP XVI

"I have been as surprised as everyone else to learn that Pope Benedict XVI plans to resign at the end of this month. We see this decision, in the context of a lifetime of service to the Lord, as an act of great pastoral love for all of us in the Church. I remain grateful for his leadership and fatherly care. I invite all to pray for the pope and for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in this important time of transition."

 -ArchBishop George Lucas

What Conversion Really Means

We celebrate this week St. Paul’s Conversion, an event that altered history. Paul’s conversion was sudden and dramatic, changing him from a zealous persecutor of Christ into one of His Apostles.

So what exactly happened on the road to Damascus? Here are Pope Benedict XVI’s thoughts, taken from one of his general audience teachings during the Church’s Year of St. Paul:

In reading the accounts told in the Acts of the Apostles, “The average reader may be tempted to linger too long on certain details, such as the light in the sky, falling to the ground, the voice that called him, his new condition of blindness, his healing like scales falling from his eyes and the fast that he made. But all these details refer to the heart of the event: the Risen Christ appears as a brilliant light and speaks to Saul, transforms his thinking and his entire life. The dazzling radiance of the Risen Christ blinds him; thus what was his inner reality is also outwardly apparent, his blindness to the truth, to the light that is Christ. And then his definitive ‘yes’ to Christ in Baptism restores his sight and makes him really see.”

It was the encounter with Jesus that changed St. Paul, the pope said. “Thus St. Paul was not transformed by a thought but by an event, the irresistible presence of the Risen One Whom subsequently he would never be able to doubt, so powerful had been the evidence of the event, of this encounter.”

Jesus “spoke to Paul, called him to the apostolate and made him a true Apostle, a witness of the Resurrection, with the specific task of proclaiming the Gospel to the Gentiles, to the Greco-Roman world.”

“This turning point in his life, this transformation of his whole being was not the fruit of a psychological process, of a maturation or intellectual and moral development. Rather it came from the outside: it was not the fruit of his thought but of his encounter with Jesus Christ. In this sense it was not simply a conversion, a development of his ‘ego,’ but rather a death and a resurrection for Paul himself. One existence died and another, new one was born with the Risen Christ. There is no other way in which to explain this renewal of Paul. . . . In this deeper sense we can and we must speak of conversion. This encounter is a real renewal that changed all his parameters. Now he could say that what had been essential and fundamental for him earlier had become ‘refuse’ for him; it was no longer ‘gain’ but loss, because henceforth the only thing that counted for him was life in Christ.”

God had still been at work in Paul’s former life, equiping him through his experiences to become one of the Church’s greatest missionaries. His conversion, though, became his launching point.

“At this moment he did not lose all that was good and true in his life, in his heritage, but he understood wisdom, truth, the depth of the law and of the prophets in a new way and in a new way made them his own. At the same time, his reasoning was open to pagan wisdom. Being open to Christ with all his heart, he had become capable of an ample dialog with everyone, he had become capable of making himself everything to everyone. Thus he could truly be the Apostle to the Gentiles.

“Turning now to ourselves, let us ask what this means for us. It means that for us too Christianity is not a new philosophy or a new morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ. Of course, He does not show Himself to us in this overwhelming, luminous way, as He did to Paul to make him the Apostle to all peoples. But we too can encounter Christ in reading Sacred Scripture, in prayer, in the liturgical life of the Church. We can touch Christ’s Heart and feel him touching ours. Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we truly become Christians. And in this way our reason opens, all Christ’s wisdom opens as do all the riches of truth.

“Therefore let us pray the Lord to illumine us, to grant us an encounter with His presence in our world, and thus to grant us a lively faith, an open heart and a great love for all, which is capable of renewing the word.”

Amen.

Inspired by this Year of Faith we will be posting columns like this from Susan Szalewski about exploring and/or deepening our faith. Watch for it on Thursdays.

Telling Others About God

How do we tell others about God?

When you think of evangelization, you might think of someone at your door with a Bible in hand, a preacher on television, or a stranger on a soap box. And you might conclude that you are not meant to evangelize.

Well, here's some good news: God probably is not asking you to go that far out of your comfort zone. Evangelization is more basic than that. For the most part, it's simply living your faith.

You will be challenged, of course. We are called to radiate Christ with our lives. Are you up for the task? Pope Benedict XVI offers us help in one of his Wednesday audience messages, part of his instruction during the Year of Faith.

First of all, the pope says that when we speak about God we are "communicating the Christian faith as a response to the deepest longings of the human heart."

Everyone needs the message we bear: God's love, hope, healing, forgiveness, truth, joy and beauty.

"It means bearing quiet and humble witness each day to the core of the Gospel message," Pope Benedict said.

Our Teacher shows us the way, the Holy Father said. "Jesus gave us an example: by His loving concern for people's questions, struggles and needs, He led them to the Father."

Putting our faith in action begins in our families and naturally branches out to others.

"In the task of bringing God to our contemporaries, families play a privileged role, for in them the life of faith is lived daily in joy, dialogue, forgiveness and love. The God of Jesus Christ has revealed our grandeur as persons redeemed by love and called, in the Church, to renew the city of man, so that it can become the city of God."

Your mission for this Advent, for this Year of Faith, for you entire life: Go and make disciples!

Inspired by this Year of Faith we will be posting columns like this about exporing and/or deepening our faith. Watch for it on Thursdays.

Seven More Saints

 This morning Pope Benedict canonized seven saint.

On of those was Mother Marianne Cope who opened and operated some of the first general hospitals in the United States, such as St. Elizabeth Hospital in Utica, New York, in 1866 and St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center in Syracuse, New York, in 1869. Both are still open today.

Before Mother Marianne, hospitals were typically filthy and staffed with unknowledgeable people and were filthy. Many people simply went there to die. Mother Marianne began to change all that by instituting simple actions like hand washing that stopped diseases from spreading.She also welcomed patients regardless of race, creed or economic standing, decades before desegregated hospitals. She was harshly criticized for treating alcoholics. She treated their problem, which was seen by many experts as a moral failing unworthy of help, as a disease.

In 1883 she went to Hawaii in 1883 and established the first general hospital on Maui. At the leper colony of Molokai, St. Damien DeVeuster was dying from Hansen's disease when Mother Marianne's arrived. After his death she took over his facility that cared for men and boys and established a separate enterprise to treat girls and women.

Mother Marianne died on August 9, 1918, at the age of 80. Most amazingly, to this day none of the Franciscan sisters have ever contracted Hansen's disease.

One of the steps to being named a saint is for a certifiable miracle to take place through the intercession of the named saint. One miracle is needed for beatification and a second for canonization.

Jake Finkbonner was a boy in Washington who was near death for months with a flesh eating bacteria, but made a miraculous recovery that the Vatican credited to Tekakwitha.

Finkbonner cut his lip during a basketball game. Two days later he was in the hospital with a strep bacteria infection that had spread across his face, head and chest as it had gotten in through the skin and caused a severe infection. The odds of survival for people with the bacteria is about 50-50.

The family started praying to Tekakwitha, who converted to Christianity when she was 18 and became a fervent follower. Her face was scarred by smallpox as a child, but it is claimed that the scars disappeared after she died in 1680 at the age of 24. She is the first American Indian named a saint.

One of the biggest crowds today seemed to be for St. Pedro Calungsod from the Philippines. St. Vitores and St. Calungsod were martyred as the spread the faith. A year after their martyrdom , a process for beatification was initiated but only for San Vitores. Political and religious turmoil, however, delayed and halted the process. When Hagåtña was preparing for its 20th anniversary as a diocese in 1981, the 1673 beatification cause of Padre Diego Luís de San Vitores was rediscovered in old manuscripts and revived until San Vitores was finally canonized in 2000. The process brought attention to Calungsod who is now a named saint as well.

The other new saints are: Jacques Berthieu, a 19th century French Jesuit who was killed by rebels in Madagascar, where he had worked as a missionary; Giovanni Battista Piamarta, an Italian who founded a religious order in 1900 and established a Catholic printing and publishing house in his native Brescia; Carmen Salles Y Barangueras, a Spanish nun who founded a religious order to educate children in 1892; and Anna Schaeffer, a 19th century German lay woman who became a model for the sick and suffering after she fell into a boiler and badly burned her legs. The wounds never healed, causing her constant pain.

If you look closely at the crowd present here for the canonization, you might be able to spot our liturgist, David Batter, who is in Rome and attended the ceremony.

The Pope Started It

Fifty years ago today Pope John XXIII

 convened the Second Vatican Council.

This morning Pope Benedict XVI inaugurated the Year of Faith as an invitation for for all of us to deepen our faith over the next year. Of the 70 living Bishops who were part of the Council, 15 were able to come to Rome and participate in the procession.

After Mass, Pope Benedict re-enacted the way Pope Paul VI concluded the Second Vatican Council by issuing a series of "Messages to the People of God." These include messages for rulers, for men of thought and science, for artists, for women, for the poor, sick and suffering, for workers and for youth. Archbishop Rino Fisichella said this ceremony was done to "indicate that the teachings of the Council retain all their validity and deserve to be better known and studied."

 

In preparation for the Year of Faith, students at St. Columbkille Catholic School have been gathering prayer intentions. Each week after the all school Masses they have been praying for the intentions received.

This morning Fr. Vogel spoke to all of the students as he led a rosary as the school prayed together for all of the intentions.

 

 

 

 

We pray that you will find the

Year of Faith a time of

 renewal and strengthening

of your faith.

The Unfinished Symphony of Peace

Wednesday, on the feast of St. Benedict, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra performed for Pope Benedict. Pope Benedict thanked them saying:

You can imagine how happy I am to receive an Orchestra such as this one, which was born from the conviction, more than that, from the experience that music unites persons, beyond any division; because music is harmony of differences, as happens every time that a concert begins with the “rite” of tuning. From the multiplicity of timbres of diverse instruments, a symphony can emerge. However, this does not happen magically or automatically! It is realized only thanks to the commitment of the Director and of every individual musician. A patient, toilsome commitment that requires time and sacrifices, in an effort to listen to one another mutually, avoiding excessive prominence and fostering the best success of the whole.

While I express these thoughts, my mind turns to the great symphony of peace among peoples, which has never been altogether finished. My generation, as well as that of Maestro Barenboim’s parents, lived through the tragedy of World War II and the Shoa. And it is very significant that you, Maestro, after having reached the highest goals of a musician, wished to give life to a project such as the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra: a group in which Israeli, Palestinian and musicians of other Arab countries play together; persons of Jewish, Muslim and Christian religion...

Also in this choice, in this approach we can see an interesting meaning for us. These two famous Symphonies express two aspects of life: drama and peace, man’s struggle against an adverse destiny and the cheering immersion in the bucolic environment.

Beethoven worked on these two works, in particular on their completion, almost contemporaneously. So much so that they were performed for the first time together – as this evening – in the memorable concert of December 22, 1808, at Vienna. The message I would like to draw today is this: To attain peace one must be committed, leaving violence and arms to one side, committed to personal and community conversion, with dialogue, with the patient search for possible understandings

Hence we thank from our heart Maestro Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra for having given us witness of this way. To each of them, the wish and prayer to continue to spread the hope of peace in the world through the universal language of music.

Happy Birthday Pope Benedict

Pope Benedict turned 85 years old today. His celebration today included dancers from his native Bavaria as well as meeting with Bishops from Bavaria as well. He is the oldest pope since Pope Leo XIII who lived to be 93, dying in 1903. Thursday will mark the 7th anniversary of his election as pope.

Today, in his reflection, he spoke of two saints who have inspired him: St. Bernadette of Lourdes and St. Benedict Joseph Labre.

Pope Benedict also said, “I don’t know what awaits me. The light of the Risen One, however, is stronger than all darkness and also helps the Pope to go forward with confidence.” For more on his day and his message, click here.

From Pope Benedict's Easter Homily

At the beginning of the Liturgy of the Word on Easter night, then, comes the account of the creation of the world. Two things are particularly important here in connection with this liturgy. On the one hand, creation is presented as a whole that includes the phenomenon of time. The seven days are an image of completeness, unfolding in time. They are ordered towards the seventh day, the day of the freedom of all creatures for God and for one another. Creation is therefore directed towards the coming together of God and his creatures; it exists so as to open up a space for the response to God’s great glory, an encounter between love and freedom. On the other hand, what the Church hears on Easter night is above all the first element of the creation account: "God said, ‘let there be light!’" (Gen 1:3). The creation account begins symbolically with the creation of light. The sun and the moon are created only on the fourth day. The creation account calls them lights, set by God in the firmament of heaven. In this way he deliberately takes away the divine character that the great religions had assigned to them. No, they are not gods. They are shining bodies created by the one God. But they are preceded by the light through which God’s glory is reflected in the essence of the created being.

What is the creation account saying here? Light makes life possible. It makes encounter possible. It makes communication possible. It makes knowledge, access to reality and to truth, possible. And insofar as it makes knowledge possible, it makes freedom and progress possible. Evil hides. Light, then, is also an expression of the good that both is and creates brightness. It is daylight, which makes it possible for us to act. To say that God created light means that God created the world as a space for knowledge and truth, as a space for encounter and freedom, as a space for good and for love. Matter is fundamentally good, being itself is good. And evil does not come from God-made being, rather, it comes into existence only through denial. It is a "no".

At Easter, on the morning of the first day of the week, God said once again: "Let there be light". The night on the Mount of Olives, the solar eclipse of Jesus’ passion and death, the night of the grave had all passed. Now it is the first day once again – creation is beginning anew. "Let there be light", says God, "and there was light": Jesus rises from the grave. Life is stronger than death. Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is stronger than lies. The darkness of the previous days is driven away the moment Jesus rises from the grave and himself becomes God’s pure light. But this applies not only to him, not only to the darkness of those days. With the resurrection of Jesus, light itself is created anew. He draws all of us after him into the new light of the resurrection and he conquers all darkness. He is God’s new day, new for all of us.

The Secret and Solution to Family Problems Lie in the Crucified Christ

Each year in Rome, The Way of the Cross is celebrated at the

Colosseum. Meditations for the 14 stations are written each year.

This year, at Pope Benedict XVI's request, Anna Maria and Danilo Zanzucchi wrote the reflections. It is the first time the reflections have been written by a married couple. Anna Maria and Danilo are an Italian couple with 5 children and 12 grandchildren.

“In the face of such an important task, our first reactions were of wonder and trepidation, for we did not feel equal to it,” Danilo said.

“In reflecting on the Cross," Anna said, "We felt that not only the Church but the whole of humanity is caught up in this mystery. It is also clear how much Christ must have suffered, like any human being but with the sensitivity of a God.

“In our meditations, we have sought to convey our impressions of what Jesus lived in those moments, seeking to actualize them in the light of our own experience. It was not of course easy because we stand before such a great mystery. Yet we firmly believe that the secret and the solution to family problems lie in the Crucified Jesus. Christ on the Cross gave meaning to the pain we must face.

“I would just like to tell families in difficulty that we too have had our problems. Our marriage was born from reciprocal love like the marriage of every husband and wife. It is this spark that nourishes marriage. However, this love is sometimes extinguished because of many factors, it remains hidden and is forgotten, but its initial impetus lives on although it is smothered by the worries, misunderstandings and dramas of daily life. It must be rediscovered in the light of the love of God which unites. Christianity, in fact, brings two people who seek to love God and to love each other to be at once united and nevertheless distinct."

For their meditations, see the Vatican website.

Here is one excerpt:

As with each individual Christian, so each family has its own way of the cross, marked by sickness, death, financial troubles, poverty, betrayal, wrongdoing, clashes with relatives, natural disasters.

Yet each Christian, each family, in walking this path of sorrows, can look resolutely to Jesus, man and God.

Visiting Pope Benedict and John Norman

By Canon Law, every five years a diocesan bishop is bound to make a report to the Supreme Pontiff on the state of the diocese entrusted to him. During the year in which he is bound to submit a report to the Supreme Pontiff, a diocesan bishop is to go to Rome to venerate the tombs of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and to present himself to the Roman Pontiff. These visits are often referred to as Ad Lumina visits. "Ad lumina" means "to the threshhold" as the Bishops gather and pledge their faith at the tomb of the apostles, typically by reciting the Apostle's Creed.

How the bishops interact with the pope and the vatican offices varies over time. Archbishop Lucus recently made his visit along with other bishops from Nebraska and Kansas including Archbishop Emeritus Eldon Curtis. As Archbishop Lucas recently told the Omaha World Herald, he gave Pope Benedict a presentation on the Catholic faith of young people.

While there, they were able to visit one of our seminarians, John Norman (second row far right) at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, Italy. In the picture above they are on the roof of the college, which has a spectacular view of Rome.

Skiing

"Skiing makes us feel small and returns us to our true dimension as creatures," Pope Bendict told some ski instructors.  He said their teaching on the ski slopes encouraged good Christian values including steadfastness, respecting rules and determination in facing and over-coming difficulties.

Blessed John Paul II liked to get away for skiing weekends himself.

Right now Fr. Damian is skiing in Colorado. We hope

he's enjoying himself and returns fresh and invigorated.