Pope’s Intentions

Following are the Intentions of our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI for the month of June, courtesy of the Apostleship of Prayer:

• Christ, Present in the Eucharist.  That believers may recognize in the Eucharist the living presence of the Risen One who accompanies them in daily life.
• European Christians.  That Christians in Europe may rediscover their true identity and participate with greater enthusiasm in the proclamation of the Gospel.

The Church traditionally dedicates the month of June to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This year the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart falls on June 15th, the Friday following the second Sunday after Pentecost. In addition to the liturgical celebration, many devotional exercises are connected with the Sacred Heart of Jesus and, in recent years, the Divine Mercy. The devotion to the Sacred Heart remains one of the most widespread and popular devotions in the Church.

 

Apostleship of Prayer

I always keep on my desk a leaflet from the Apostleship of Prayer, containing the Pope’s intentions for each month. Uniting ours prayers with those of the Holy Father and the universal Church is an excellent way to open ourselves to God’s personal call in our lives.

Before giving the Pope’s intentions for May, I’d like to recommend two privileged times for remembering the Pope’s intentions:

First, there’s the Morning Offering, which is a great way to commit our day to the Lord:

O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer You my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day, in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world. I offer them for all the intentions of Your Sacred Heart: the salvation of souls, reparation for sin, and the reunion of all Christians. I offer them for the intentions of our bishops and for all the intentions recommended by our Holy Father this month. Amen.

Second, there’s the family Rosary. At the beginning or end of the Rosary, to gain the indulgence for praying the Rosary–and again to manifest the unity of our prayer with that of the universal Church–it’s customary to pray an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be for the Pope’s intentions.

But what are the Pope’s intentions this month? Here they are:.

The Family. That initiatives which defend and uphold the role of the family may be promoted within society.

Mary, Guide of Missionaries. That Mary, Queen of the World and Star of Evangelization, may accompany all missionaries in proclaiming her Son Jesus.

Living (Room) Stations of the Cross

Many of us may be familiar with “living” Stations of the Cross, in which actors (often high school students or members of the youth group) dramatically reenact Our Lord’s Passion. This can be a very powerful experience for all involved. I also recall the Passion Plays performed by Doug Barry with RADIX, which has come to so parishes around the country.

In addition, during Lent we are accustomed to the Stations of the Cross devotions that typically take place on Friday evenings in our parishes. These celebrations take place all over the world, culminating in the Holy Father’s celebration of the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday.

I’d like to suggest another manner of celebrating the Stations of the Cross, which we do as a family in our own home, or “domestic Church.”

During Lent, we strategically place pictures that depict the 14 Stations of the Cross around our house. Over time and with practice we have figured out the best places to put them. On Fridays during Lent, often with another family joining us, we will have our meatless soup and bread dinner followed by the Stations of the Cross in our home, during which all of us process from one station to the next.

We have collected different Stations of the Cross prayerbooks over the years and have settled on the ones that seem to work best for us and allow for the active engagement of our children. (Click here for more resources on praying the Stations of the Cross with children.)

I’m all for larger celebrations of the Stations of the Cross, but after a busy week of work and school it’s nice to be able to stay home and pray the Stations in a more intimate setting. Plus, it is one further, tangible way to teach our kids that the Christian life isn’t just about what goes on over at the church building. Rather, our own “way of the Cross” is lived each day in the world–and in our homes.

“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

 

Prayers for Life

There are now are two brand new texts for a Mass “For Giving Thanks to God for the Gift of Human Life.” As today marks the 39th anniversary of the tragic Roe v. Wade decision, with countless pilgrims gathering in Washington and throughout the country for “March for Life” and similar events, one of these special votive Masses would be especially appropriate today.

The opening prayer, or “collect,” for the first of these Masses beautifully expresses the prayer and aspirations of millions of pro-lifers:

God our Creator, we give thanks to you, who alone have the power to impart the breath of life as you form each of us in our mother’s womb; grant, we pray, that we, whom you have made stewards of creation, may remain faithful to this sacred trust and constant in safeguarding the dignity of every human life. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The collect for the other Mass is equally moving:

O God, who adorn creation with splendor and beauty and fashion human lives in your image and likeness, awaken in every heart reverence for the work of your hands, and renew among your people a readiness to nurture and sustain your precious gift of human life. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

 

 

Right Here, Right Now

I spent a couple wonderful years with a religious community in the 1980s as I was discerning a possible vocation to the priesthood and religious life. One day, they brought in a well-known retreat master to give the two dozen or so seminarians a day of recollection.

The first words of the priest to begin the day of recollection really startled me. He bluntly said, “None of you are called to the priesthood.” I looked around the room at all the postulants and said to myself, “Boy, Father Tom (the community’s vocation director) sures knows how to pick ‘em!”

The priest then explained that our vocation is “now,” that we must respond wholeheartedly to the Lord right here, right now by being holy seminarians. In five or six years, God willing, the bishop will lay hands on some of us, and then–and only then–would we truly be called to the priesthood.

As it turned out, I wasn’t one of the men called to become a priest. Yet, this important lesson has always stayed with me as a lay Catholic.

A crucial part of the lesson is to seek eternal life right now. This can be quite challenging given the pace of daily life in the world. Further, we already tend to think of eternity exclusively as the sequel to this life. In other words, we live our thirty or sixty or ninety years on this earth, and then only when we die does eternal life begin.

However, eternal life is a present reality. Sure, in this life “eternity” (literally a dimension outside of time) and temporality coexist, while only after we die will we experience eternal life in its fullness without the admixture of time. But make no mistake–there are seeds of eternity in us now. If there weren’t, we’d have no basis for believing that we will continue to experience life–the eternal, “abundant” life (Jn. 10:10)–after we die.

Scripture frequently presents eternal life as a present reality. For example, in John 17:3, Jesus says, “This is eternal life, to know You, the one true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent.” He doesn’t say, “This will be eternal life . . .”

The present moment is the junction between time and eternity. The past and the future are real, but they are exclusively temporal realities and so they lack the dynamism of “right here, right now.” God’s grace, which plants and nourishes in us the seeds of eternal life, is encountered in the present moment as we strive to live in God’s presence and accept His sovereignty in our lives.

Scripture does present us the case of St. Dismas, the good thief who converted at the very end of his life so that “this day” he was with the Lord in paradise (see Lk. 23:43). However, we can’t presume that when we come to the end of our lives that we’ll have the time and proper disposition to accept our Lord’s invitation. That’s a future thing. God speaks to us right here, right now.

We do well, then, to heed the Psalmist’s words, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Ps. 95:7). Or, as St. Paul puts it, “Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation! (2 Cor. 6:2).

Or, as a retreat master once told a bunch of fledgling seminarians, “Vocation is now.”

Thanksgiving After Communion

At Mass on Thanksgiving Day, the Gospel reading is typically Luke 17:11-19.

In this well-known episode, Jesus cures ten lepers as He passes through a Samaritan village. One of the ten, realizing that he had been healed, returned to thank Jesus for this incredible gift. Jesus affirmed the faith of the healed man, but He also asked (rhetorically), “Where are the other nine?”

Our taking the time to give thanks seems to matter greatly to our Savior.

Weren’t the others grateful? We don’t know what was on their hearts, but we do know that they failed to express gratitude in word or action. As we prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday next week, may we take stock of the many blessings we have received from the Lord, and may our own lives of fidelity and service unequivocally proclaim our gratitude to the Holy Trinity for the wondrous gift of our faith, and for the many kindnesses we have received from the people in our lives.

In a particular way, this Gospel passage reminds me of the need to take time after receiving Jesus in the Eucharist to thank Him for this wondrous gift. Too often, I am one of “the other nine,” only too eager to go on with my day without adequately thanking the Lord for coming to me in Holy Communion and for the many graces and blessings in my life.

Picturing the Mysteries

Yesterday I mentioned the catechetical dimension of the family Rosary, a point which Pope John Paul II emphasized in his 2002 apostolic letter on this traditional prayer. But 20 minutes is a long time for a three-year-old to sit still. How do we keep our kids engaged?

First, I try to get them involved, as kids naturally want to “do something.” So my younger children get to hand out rosaries and prayer books, light candles, and lead individual mysteries, among other things. This can make for interesting Rosaries, especially when the children are not old enough to count to ten or to remember all the prayers!

Second, I count on the children to remember prayer intentions. I receive lots of them, and I find their little memories often work better than mine. Even more importantly, this exercise requires the kids to think outside themselves, and thereby grow in Christian empathy.

Third, the family Rosary is a time for the children to quiet themselves. We find it very helpful to have picture books or images for the children to help them enter into the mysteries. Of course, as they get older, they use prayer books with a little more text, or even the Bible itself for “Scriptural Rosaries.”

We’ve also used a “Rosary Quilt” as an interactive tool, as we train the little children to see each Hail Mary as a special flower they are picking for our Blessed Mother.

When most of our children were small, we were also blessed to have a parish Church with beautiful stained glass windows depicting the mysteries of the Rosary. I like to refer to these windows as “Gospels that little kids can read.” It’s utterly amazing how much gets soaked in through their consideration of the events of Jesus and Mary’s life. It really builds their religious imagination, too.

About a decade ago I asked one of my daughters (now a Dominican novice) what her favorite mystery of the Rosary is, and she immediately said the Coronation. I was a little surprised, as I had always had a little more difficulty with that one, since the scene isn’t laid out in detail in the Bible. I asked her why, and she said, “When we pray that mystery, I think about what heaven must be like.”

Isn’t that what we want our children to think about? It reminds me of Philippians 4:8, which we heard at Mass last Sunday: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

This post, in edited form, was originally published by Catholics United for the Faith. The above image was taken from this helpful post in the blog entitled “A Catholic Notebook.”

The Family Rosary

Back in 2002, Pope John Paul II issued a document entitled The Rosary of the Virgin Mary to foster a renewed devotion to the Rosary in the new millennium. This magnificent teaching was for all the faithful, but in a very special way the Pope was reaching out to families. Here is what he said to us:

“A similar need for commitment and prayer arises in relation to another critical contemporary issue: the family, the primary cell of society, increasingly menaced by forces of disintegration on both the ideological and practical planes, so as to make us fear for the future of this fundamental and indispensable institution and, with it, for the future of society as a whole. The revival of the Rosary in Christian families, within the context of a broader pastoral ministry to the family, will be an effective aid to countering the devastating effects of this crisis” (no. 6).

It’s not an overstatement, then, to say that the family Rosary can and must play a pivotal role in the renewal of our society. For that reason, especially during this month devoted to the Rosary, I want to encourage families to make the Rosary part of their daily life.

St. Michael, Defend Us in Battle!

St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our protection against the malice and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God,
cast into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits,
who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin
of souls. Amen.

See Revelation 12:7-12.

Beautiful Game

In his spiritual classic Introduction to the Devout Life, St. Francis de Sales writes, “The most important thing of all . . . is that you cling firmly to the resolutions you have taken in meditation, so as to practice them carefully.”

This insight really hit home this morning, as I look forward to my son Samuel’s soccer tournament, which begins this evening. Sam’s a fine young player, and the games are so much fun to watch. No wonder it’s called the “beautiful game.”

At the beginning of the season, Sam’s enthusiastic coach gave all the players a CD containing inspirational music, including Wavin’ Flag, the theme song for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that song in the car as I shuttle kids to and from soccer practices and games.

It’s now come to the point that I can be sitting at my desk or on the sofa, and the song will pop into my consciousness. For a moment I think of the beautiful game, and then I redirect my attention to whatever I happen to be doing.

It seems to me that God’s Word, as well as our own “resolutions” or applications drawn from the slow repetition of lectio divina, should also be so deeply rooted in us that it comes back to us from time to time during the day, drawing us to a renewed love and zeal. Sure, we need reminders, such as crucifixes and godly friends, but as people of prayer–as people who, after the example of Our Lady, hear the Word and keep it (see Luke 2:19, 51; 11:27-28)–it seems to me that the best means of calling to mind our resolutions is to have God’s Word so deeply ingrained in us that it’s never too far from our minds and hearts.

I know that I often rush through my prayer, and when I do, what I prayed about doesn’t come back to me very often during the day. But when I chew on a passage of Scripture over and over again, it does come back to me during the day, often at times when I most need a reminder.

I really don’t mind having the soccer song pop into my mind every so often, but even more, I desire to remember resolutions made in my prayer, lest the Word of God be without effect in my life (see 1 Sam. 3:19).

This day, let us take our cue from today’s beloved saint, Padre Pio of Pietrelcina who, despite the great things God did in and through him, simply wanted to be known as “a poor Franciscan who prays.”