St. Maximilian Kolbe and Vigil of the Assumption

Today is the memorial of St. Maximilian Kolbe, founder of the Militia Imaculata and a martyr at a concentration camp during WWII. He's relatively new so those of you who pray the office may not have the propers for the feast. Here's the collect:

Gracious God, you filled your priest and martyr, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, with zeal for souls and love for his neighbor. Through the prayer of this devoted servant of Mary Immaculate, grant that in our efforts to serve others for your glory we too may become like Christ your Son, who loved his own in the world even to the end, and now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Also, don't forget tomorrow is a Holy Day.

There's nothing like...

...a really good confession. I really don't know how I'd make it without this sacrament. If I were Protestant and didn't have this sacrament I think I'd be tortured with thoughts about whether or not I was sincerely sorry enough to receive the pardon of God. Having a confessor assure us that our sins are forgiven through the ministry of the Church is quite liberating.

I'm so thankful for this sacrament. The devil wants us to keep our sins hidden so he can torture us with them. He hates it when things are brought to the light. Admitting we are wrong requires humility. He can't use our secret sins to torture us anymore since they have been brought to the priest and they have been forgiven.

God's mercy endures forever!


Also, just a reminder that August 15 is the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. It's a Holy Day of Obligation and a very important feast.

St. Lawrence, Feast

Today is the Feast of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr of the early Church. Most saints who aren't apostles get memorials or optional memorials, but today we get a full feast to celebrate this saint. St. Lawrence was a deacon responsible for giving alms to the poor in Rome and the authorities asked him to give them the "treasures of the Church." Lawrence did just that...he gathered the poor to whom he ministered and presented them to the Roman official declaring these were the "real treasures of the Church." For this act of defiance, Lawrence died a martyr's death.

St. Lawrence, pray for us!

To Quell the Terror...

I don't know if you remember my July 17 post about the Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne, but I just finished reading a book To Quell the Terror that relates the story of their martyrdom. I'll be honest and say that it read kind of like a history textbook in some places, but it was very good nonetheless. If anyone wants to borrow it when we get back to school, feel free and let me know.

I think there's a tendency within the Church today to look at cloistered carmelites (or other cloistered orders) and wonder what good they're doing for the Church and the world. In active orders you see the religious out running hospitals, teaching, or ministering to the poor. In contemplative orders, their work is harder to see, but it's profoundly important. The biblical story of Martha and Mary illustrates this tension.

I was also impressed by how "countercultural" these sisters were. The revolutionary government in France stormed their convent and asked each nun individually if she wanted to leave (in an attempt to "liberate" them from their "oppressive" way of life). One nun replied she would rather die than give up her habit. The community was unanamous in its refusal. Asking permission to die prior to being executed as enemies of liberty shows how much true freedom is found in obedience to God's will and how man's shallow concept of freedom leads to intense destruction.

Also, before I forget today is the memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (also known as St. Edith Stein). She was also a Carmelite, but her feast day is on the general calendar as well. If you pray the office, you probably don't have her in your proper of saints since she's relatively new (but she can be found in the red "supplement" if you have that). Otherwise, if you want to use the propers from the Carmelite proper you can find them here.

St. Teresa Benedicta was born jewish and declared herself an atheist at age 14. Later, she earned a doctorate in philosophy and after reading the life of St. Teresa of Avila, she said "This is truth." She was baptised, entered the Church, and decided to become a Carmelite nun, but her director said she would be more effective teaching in the world. She did that for awhile, but later did become a Carmelite. Once Hitler came to power in Germany, not even Jews that had converted were safe from his reign of terror. St. Teresa Benedicta was arrested, taken to Auschwitz and martyred one week later.

St. Dominic

Today is the Memorial of St. Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers (or Dominicans). This is another great order that produced such saints as St. Thomas Aquinas...they were known for their preaching and learnedness.

St. Dominic fought tirelessly to defeat the Albigensian heresy that was spreading accross France and Italy. Albigensianism taught that matter was bad and encouraged suicide, abortion, and euthanasia. It was a heresy that really attacked the dignity of the human person. Dominic preached against it, but didn't have a ton of success until he had a vision of the Blessed Mother who told Dominic to preach "her psalter." Mary's psalter, consisting of 15 Our Fathers and 150 Hail Mary's developed into what we call the rosary today. I think it's important to note that if the rosary destroyed Albigensianism, a heresy that attacked the dignity of the human person, how much more valuable should it be to us today in our fight against abortion and other offenses against human life.

...and some inspiration I found at the Priests for Life website:

"When the time comes, as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I've often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates, you are there alone standing before God -- and a terror will rip your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there'll be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world -- and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, 'Spare him, because he loved us!'"

Congressman Henry Hyde

St. Dominic, pray for us!

You know your a Catholic nerd when...

This and little known facts like it are far more interesting to you than they should be.

I mean, who knew the titular feast of the Lateran Basilica came right after the feast of the dedication of St Mary Major? Also, until reading that I almost forgot that each of the patriarchal basilicas actually represents an ancient patriarchate (St. Peter's Basilica is actually representative of the patriarchate of Constantinople where the pope's proper church is really the Lateran Basilica which is the cathedral for the Diocese of Rome...this is why the dedication (different from titular feast) of St. John Lateran is actually a solemnity)

We should definitely do this

Thanks to a link from the Shrine of the Holy Whapping (a fun blog run by some students from Notre Dame)

Our Lady of the Snows...no, she's not the patron saint of snow days

JMJ

Today (this morning to be more specific) is the memorial of the dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major...also known as the Church of St. Mary of the Snows. According to tradition, the basilica is built on the Esquiline hill in Rome because of a miraculous snowfall on this date in the 300's.

Mass today was a good time (as always...I mean, it doesn't get better than Mass this side of Heaven, right?). Some thoughts from the homily:

Satan conforms his temptations to the person he's tempting. He tries to hit us where we're week, like he hit Eve in the garden of Eden. While the original sin was primarily an act of disobedience, gluttony was also a factor. The apple was "pleasing to the eyes." This is why it makes so much sense that gluttony is tied into so many other vices like lust and sloth (I thought that was interesting). Jesus (the new Adam) was our redeemer and He chose to come through us through Mary (the new Eve). We should approach Mary as the mediatrix of grace to gain strength to overcome our temptations that the head of the serpent might be finally crushed and the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph.

Good quote

I never thought of the "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" part of the Our Father exactly like this before:

How greatly the Lord must esteem this mutual love of ours one for another! For, having given Him our wills, we have given Him complete rights over us, and we cannot do that without love. See, then, sisters, how important it is for us to love one another and to be at peace. The good Jesus might have put everything else before our love for one another, and said: “Forgive us, Lord, because we are doing a great deal of penance, or because we are praying often, and fasting, and because we have left all for Thy sake and love Thee greatly.” But He has never said: “Because we would lose our lives for Thy sake”; or any of these [numerous] other things which He might have said. He simply says: “Because we forgive.” Perhaps the reason He said this rather than anything else was because He knew that our fondness for this dreadful honour made mutual love the hardest virtue for us to attain, though it is the virtue dearest to His Father. Because of its very difficulty He put it where He did, and after having asked for so many great gifts for us, He offers it on our behalf to God.

-St. Teresa of Avila The Way of Perfection Chapter 36

St. John Mary Vianney

Today we celebrate an AMAZING saint, St. John Mary Vianney, Cure of Ars. At mass this morning the priest said that if all priests were like St. John Vianney the entire world would be Catholic...I don't doubt it.

He spent hours in the confessional (sometimes up to 18 hours in one day). He would fast, pray, do all kinds of penance for his people. I highly recommend reading some of his writings. The one on the Mass is quite excellent.

"If someone said to us, 'At such an hour a dead person is to be raised to life, ' we should run very quickly to see it. But is not the Consecration, which changes bread and wine into the Body and Blood of God, a much greater miracle than to raise a dead person to life?"

-St. John Vianney

Eternal rest...

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=45697

Archbishop Montalvo passed away recently. He used to be the Papal nuncio to the United States. I always looked forward to hearing him speak when he was on TV...He also had a really fun accent.


May the angels lead him into paradise.