Friday 13th December 2019

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Here Is Your God

December 11, 2019 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off on Here Is Your God

Third Sunday In Advent (YR A) Readings: Isaiah 35:1-6a, 10 James 5:7-10 Matt. 11:2-11   In both the first and the second readings an identical point is made. Isaiah is to say to those whose hearts are frightened: “Be strong, fear not. Here is your God.” James tells us: “Make your hearts firm, because the coming of the Lord is at hand.” The first reference is to the Incarnation of Christ and His life among us on Earth. The second reference is to the Second Coming and our life with Jesus in Heaven. When we consider the first reference to the coming of our Lord, it is directed to the People of God around the time of the exile to…Continue Reading

A Leaven In The World… Sheen: A Needed Patron For Bishops

December 10, 2019 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off on A Leaven In The World… Sheen: A Needed Patron For Bishops

  By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK Shock: While McCarrick goes unexamined by leadership and comfortably ensconced in a Kansas friary, some Catholics initially feared that unspecified prelates, in an anonymous attack upon Archbishop Sheen’s reputation, indefinitely stalled his beatification. Peoria Bishop Daniel Jenky and his people are now deeply saddened. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, credited with at least one miracle to support his beatification, is a badly needed heavenly patron for bishops today. Which makes the fact that one or more of our bishops convinced Rome to delay his planned December 21 beatification in Peoria all the more difficult to comprehend. When we need good news about the Church, why are those in charge likely the first in this case to…Continue Reading

Jesus Christ Is God’s Divine Son Incarnate

December 9, 2019 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off on Jesus Christ Is God’s Divine Son Incarnate

By MOST REV. JOSEPH STRICKLAND Catholics believe that Jesus Christ is God’s Divine Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, fully God and fully man. And that all power in Heaven and on Earth has been given to Him by the Father. Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. And, we have been commissioned by Him to make disciples of all the nations. Here are His words: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am…Continue Reading

Catholic Replies

December 6, 2019 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off on Catholic Replies

Q. Would you please identify the Church document that places restrictions on where prayer petitions are announced at Mass? — J.M., New York. A. The document is The General Instruction of the Roman Missal, which says that the Prayer of the Faithful takes place after the Profession of Faith and before the bringing up of the gifts to begin the Offertory. Paragraph 71 says that “it is for the Priest Celebrant to regulate this prayer from the chair. He himself begins with a brief introduction, by which he calls upon the faithful to pray, and likewise he concludes it with an oration. The intentions announced should be sober, be composed with a wise liberty and in few words, and they…Continue Reading

Prepare Your Heart To Receive The Lord

December 4, 2019 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off on Prepare Your Heart To Receive The Lord

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Second Sunday Of Advent (YR A) Readings: Isaiah 11:1-10 Romans 15:4-9 Matt. 3:1-12 In the Gospel reading today, St. John the Baptist calls the people to repentance because “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” This is the same message Jesus preached when He began His public ministry. It is also the same thing we pray for every time we pray the Our Father and ask that His Kingdom come. The fact that St. John the Baptist and Jesus were both preaching that the Kingdom of God was at hand tells us that it is already present. At the same time, the fact that we continue to pray for the Kingdom to come tells us there…Continue Reading

A Leaven In The World … The Passion Of Joan Of Arc

December 3, 2019 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off on A Leaven In The World … The Passion Of Joan Of Arc

  By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK The saints help us by their example both to interpret the times in which we live and to witness to the Faith heroically unto death as did they. The beauty of holiness is brought powerfully before our hearts and minds through good films and music as well as other fine arts. Our formation should include these sources of inspiration. With parishioners and family I recently viewed director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 French silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, accompanied by chorus and symphony. The score was composer Richard Einhorn’s 1994 oratorio, Voices of Light, to accompany the film. Hundreds of voices, soloists, and orchestra enhanced the already intense and startling portrayal of…Continue Reading

Bishop Strickland . . . God Is Father

December 2, 2019 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off on Bishop Strickland . . . God Is Father

By MOST REV. JOSEPH STRICKLAND “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:14-19). Those beautiful words were written by the Apostle Paul, under…Continue Reading

Catholic Replies

November 29, 2019 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off on Catholic Replies

Editor’s Note: In his weekly bulletin at the Church of St. Michael, Fr. George Rutler said that “life in New York City can be hard for anyone who has difficulty accommodating paradoxes. For instance, the same City Council that has just banned the sale of foie gras on the grounds that it involves cruelty to force-fed geese, previously made New York the first city to pay mothers from other states to come here for abortions. With all due respect to Mother Goose, it seems hyperbolic to treat the over-feeding of ducks and geese as more inhumane than the destruction of the most helpless humans. Babies are human, yet there are those who do not see anything inhumane about killing a…Continue Reading

The Hour To Awake From Sleep

November 27, 2019 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off on The Hour To Awake From Sleep

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER First Sunday Of Advent (YR A) Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5 Romans 13:11-14 Matt. 24:37-44 In the readings today we hear about two different events: the coming of the Son of Man and Jerusalem being established as the highest mountain to which all people will come for instruction. One could say that Jerusalem has already been established as the highest mountain because Jesus is the mountain of God spoken of by the Prophet Daniel. However, at the end of the vision of Isaiah, we are told that one nation shall no longer raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. Certainly, we have not seen this. It is possible these two events could be…Continue Reading

A Leaven In The World… Inculturation And Tradition

November 26, 2019 Our Catholic Faith Comments Off on A Leaven In The World… Inculturation And Tradition

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK There are good and bad examples of inculturation. Adapting the presentation of the truths of the Gospel for the purpose of making them better understood by various language groups or regions is good inculturation. Betraying the truths and the Lord who revealed them by borrowing uncritically and wholesale those unredeemed pagan or diabolical aspects of false religions, found among a people to be evangelized, is bad inculturation. This should be obvious but, as Navy chief petty officers, steeped in long experience of the weakness of human nature, would often say, “Ignorance is a renewable resource.” Good inculturation always acknowledges and hands on those aspects of the Deposit of Faith that are necessary for salvation because…Continue Reading