Today is the 11th anniversary of my Priestly Ordination.
AN INTERESTING POINT HERE: Remember the timeline here - Judas left Jesus and the Apostles on Holy Thursday. Jesus rose and spent forty days being seen by everyone, and yet never sought to replace Judas Himself. Jesus picked the original twelve, and certainly if, within those forty days after the Resurrection, He had chosen someone and told the Apostles "This one will replace Judas", they would have accepted it without question. But the Lord didn't do it. So already, within days of the Ascension, the eleven understood that it was their responsibility. Jesus let them do what He called them to do, and it's what the Church has continued to do since then.
Anyone who has spent time in a church sacristy will recognize this as a page from an "Ordo", the booklets produced annually which give the order of Mass for each day: what memorials can be celebrated, what colors worn, what readings can be used, etc."Cutie told CBS he has been romantically involved with the woman in the photos for about two years."
Christopher West, one of the "frontline soldiers" in the New Evangelization, will appear in a segment on ABC's Nightline tonight (Thursday, May 7).The first is “careful listening and prudent discernment.” Young people in particular need to be trained in the art of listening to God and discerning his voice, not merely in prayer but also in the subtle signs God gives through personal talents, the events of life, and the intervention of others. God is speaking, but to those who have never learned how to listen and discern, he is often speaking a foreign language. The Church — by which the Pope specifies families, parishes, movements, apostolic associations, religious communities and “all sectors of diocesan life” — has the duty to help people decipher and understand this often faint and mysterious idiom.
The second step is a “serious study” of the reality that is proper to the priestly and religious vocations. The integral formation of every Catholic should involve exposure to and adequate understanding of the various states of life in the Church. The practice of “vocations awareness days” in Catholic schools and CCD programs is obviously a good one, and helps to open up young people’s minds to the various manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the Church. At the same time, however, they are no substitute for what the Holy Father calls “serious study,” which implies a sincere and mature effort on the part of each of us, as well as a recommended “plan of study” provided by pastors, parents, and teachers. Every young Catholic should be encouraged and helped to give serious consideration to each of the vocations in the Church, not merely to discern whether God might be calling him or her to one of them in particular, but also to be aware of all of them in order to assist those whom the Lord is calling. It’s obviously hard to be God’s instrument to promote and assist vocations to the Order of Virgins, for example, if one has little or no idea of what a consecrated virgin is.
The third stage that the Pope describes is “a generous and willing adherence to the divine plan.” When people seek the will of God in their daily life and strive to follow Christ faithfully on the path of love and holiness, when they are aware of the various range of possibilities to which God might be calling them, it is much easier both to hear what God is asking and to give a free and wholehearted “yes” to his invitation. All those in the Church — but particularly families, catechists and parishes— must help young people to make the often difficult transition from saying “my will be done” to “thy will be done,” and from asking, “What do I want to be when I grow up?,” to “What does God want me to do when I grow up?”
The Holy Father says that one great means to help us learn how to adhere generously and willingly to the divine plan is a deeper understanding of and participation in the mystery of the Eucharist. Jesus in the Eucharist, the Pope says, gives us the “eminent model of a ‘vocational dialogue’ between the free initiative of the Father and the faithful response of Christ.” He shows us in the Eucharist how to seek the Father’s will, to enter into a similarly “fruitful dialogue,” and to respond with loving trust and total surrender. “The awareness of being saved by the love of Christ, which every Mass nourishes in the faithful,” the Pope teaches, “cannot but arouse within them a trusting self-abandonment to Christ who gave his life for us. To believe in the Lord and to accept his gift, therefore, leads us to entrust ourselves to Him with thankful hearts, adhering to his plan of salvation.” In other words, the “amen!” we say to Christ in Holy Communion trains us to say “yes” to Christ freely and unreservedly when he asks us to follow him down a particular vocational path. The Communion brought about by the faithful reception of the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Pope concludes, “thus becomes ‘co-responsibility,’ responsibility in and with Christ, through the action of his Holy Spirit; it becomes communion with the One who makes it possible for us to bear much fruit.”
Seven decades of Priesthood.
This morning I got up with the alarm (which is odd, since me and the snooze button have this ongoing relationship). So after my Office and coffee and before I headed over for Mass, I was reading an article from Canadian Press Service on the Devils, and at the end was this quote from NHL workhorse Brendan Shanahan:Shanahan, the 40-year-old who joined the team in midseason, said he would wait before deciding to play another season. "In the last couple of weeks I had my lip split open, my chin split open, I got stitches in my eyelid and I got hit so hard in Game 6 it actually knocked one of my false teeth out, and I loved every minute of it," he said.On this feast of St. Joseph the Worker, what a great quote from one of the great workers in the NHL.
