Used to watch this when I was a kid. Haha. Nice theme song:
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
What a welcome!!
Some photos from the Archdiocesan website:
At the airport:
Greeted by the Prime Minister
And by his immediate predecessor, the Most Reverend Oswald Gomis:
This is just BRILLIANT! Haha! :D
Entering the Basilica of Our Lady of Lanka:
Praying at the tomb of Cardinal Cooray
And finally at the Archbishop's House. "Verbum Caro Factum Est" is the Cardinal's episcopal motto.
At the airport:
Greeted by the Prime Minister
And by his immediate predecessor, the Most Reverend Oswald Gomis:
This is just BRILLIANT! Haha! :D
Entering the Basilica of Our Lady of Lanka:
Praying at the tomb of Cardinal Cooray
And finally at the Archbishop's House. "Verbum Caro Factum Est" is the Cardinal's episcopal motto.
A blessed Advent to you
May it be a time of interior preparation and joyful anticipation.
I love this Advent hymn:
Latin:
And here's Libera's version:
Creator of the stars of night,
Thy people’s everlasting light,
Jesu, Redeemer, save us all,
And hear Thy servants when they call.
Thou, grieving that the ancient curse
Should doom to death a universe,
Hast found the medicine, full of grace,
To save and heal a ruined race.
Thou cam’st, the Bridegroom of the bride,
As drew the world to evening-tide;
Proceeding from a virgin shrine,
The spotless Victim all divine.
At Whose dread Name, majestic now,
All knees must bend, all hearts must bow;
And things celestial Thee shall own,
And things terrestrial, Lord alone.
O Thou Whose coming is with dread
To judge and doom the quick and dead,
Preserve us, while we dwell below,
From every insult of the foe.
To God the Father, God the Son,
And God the Spirit, Three in One,
Laud, honor, might, and glory be
From age to age eternally.
The Latin:
Conditor alme siderum,
aeterna lux credentium,
Christe, redemptor omnium,
exaudi preces supplicum.
The rest of the Latin lyrics can be found here.
Go here for Curt Jester's good old Advent Wreath, which I use every year.
I love this Advent hymn:
Latin:
And here's Libera's version:
Creator of the stars of night,
Thy people’s everlasting light,
Jesu, Redeemer, save us all,
And hear Thy servants when they call.
Thou, grieving that the ancient curse
Should doom to death a universe,
Hast found the medicine, full of grace,
To save and heal a ruined race.
Thou cam’st, the Bridegroom of the bride,
As drew the world to evening-tide;
Proceeding from a virgin shrine,
The spotless Victim all divine.
At Whose dread Name, majestic now,
All knees must bend, all hearts must bow;
And things celestial Thee shall own,
And things terrestrial, Lord alone.
O Thou Whose coming is with dread
To judge and doom the quick and dead,
Preserve us, while we dwell below,
From every insult of the foe.
To God the Father, God the Son,
And God the Spirit, Three in One,
Laud, honor, might, and glory be
From age to age eternally.
The Latin:
Conditor alme siderum,
aeterna lux credentium,
Christe, redemptor omnium,
exaudi preces supplicum.
The rest of the Latin lyrics can be found here.
Go here for Curt Jester's good old Advent Wreath, which I use every year.
Friday, November 26, 2010
A glimpse into the interior life of Pope Benedict
from his 2000 interview with Peter Seewald, God and the World.
Your Eminence, do you ever feel afraid of God?
I wouldn't exactly say "afraid". We know from Christ who God is and that he loves us. And he knows what we are like. He knows we are flesh. We are dust. Because of that he accepts us in our weakness.
In any case, again and again I am keenly aware of how I fail to live up to my calling. To live up to the idea that God has of me, of what I could and should give.
Do you have the feeling, in such times, that God sometimes criticizes you or disapproves of some of your decisions?
God is not like a policeman or a prosecuting counsel, who tells you off and hands out a punishment. But in the mirror of faith and of the charge I have received, I have to consider every day what is right and when something is wrong. Naturally I then likewise feel that, with regard to myself, something is not as it should be. And that is what the sacrament of confession is for.
People always say that Catholics are full of guilt feelings towards God.
I believe Catholics are animated above all by a great sense of God's forgiveness. Take baroque or rococo art. There you can see a great joyfulness. Thus, typically Catholic nations like Italy and Spain have a reputation, and with good reason, for being light-hearted.
Perhaps there have been, in particular areas of Christianity, certain forms of education, distortions, in which frightening, burdensome, rigorously strict elements have predominated, but this is not Catholicism properly speaking. My own feeling is that, in those very people whose lives draw upon the faith of the Church, a sense of redemption prevails: God will not abandon us!
Is there some particular language that God uses sometimes to say to us, in quite a concrete way, "Yes, do that." Or, again: "Hold on there -- last warning! Just leave it alone!"
God speaks quietly. But he gives us all kinds of signs. In retrospect, especially, we can see that he has given us a little nudge through a friend, through a book, or through what we see as a failure -- even through "accidents. Life is actually full of these silent indications. If I remain alert, then slowly they piece together a consistent whole, and I begin to feel how God is guiding me.
When you yourself talk with God, is that something that has become as easy and obvious as making a phone call?
In some respects one can make the comparison. I know that he is always there. And he knows in any case who I am and what I am. Which is all the more reason for me to feel the need to call on him, to share my feelings with him, to talk with him. With him I can exchange views on the simplest and most intimate things, as well as on those that are weightiest and of great moment. It seems, somehow, normal for me to have occasion to talk to him all the time in everyday life.
On these occasions, does God always behave respectfully, or does he let you see he has a sense of humour?
I believe he has a great sense of humour. Sometimes he gives you a nudge and says, Don't take yourself so seriously! Humor is in fact an essential element in the mirth of creation. We can see how, in many matters in our lives, God wants to prod us into taking things a bit more lightly; to see the funny side of it; to get down off our pedestal and not to forget our sense of fun.
Do you also get cross with God?
Naturally I, too, think from time to time: Why doesn't he give me more help? And sometimes he remains puzzling to me. In those cases that annoy me I can also feel the presence somewhere of his mystery, his strangeness. But getting really angry with God would mean that he had dragged God too far down to our level. Very often, quite superficial things give rise to anger. And in those cases where anger is really justified I have to ask myself whether there isn't something important being communicated in the things that annoy me and the people who annoy me. I never get cross with God himself.
How do you begin your day?
Before I get up, I first say a short prayer. The day looks different is you don't just stumble into it. Then comes all the things you do first thing in the morning, washing, breakfast. After that is the Holy Mass and the breviary. Both of these, for me, lay the foundations of the day: Mass is the entirely real meeting with the presence of the risen Christ, and the breviary is a way into the great prayer of the whole history of salvation. The Psalms stand at the heart of it. Here we pray together with the millennia, and we hear the voice of the Fathers. All of this opens a door onto the day for us. Then comes ordinary work.
How often do you pray?
Fixed prayer times are at noon, when in accordance with Catholic tradition we pray the Angelus. In the afternoon there is Vespers, and in the evening Compline, the Church's evening prayer. And in between times, whenever I feel I need help, I can fit in a quick prayer.
Does the prayer before you get up always vary?
No, that is a fixed prayer -- in fact, it's a collection of various little prayers, but as a whole a fixed form of prayer.
Have you anything to recommend?
Each of us can surely find something for ourselves out of the Church's treasury.
At night, when one cannot settle down...
...I would recommend the Rosary. That is a form of prayer that, besides its spiritual meaning, has the power to calm the inner self. If we hold fast here to the actual words, then we are gradually freed from the thoughts that so torment us.
How do you personally deal with problems -- that is, supposing you have any problems at all?
How could I not have problems? In the first place, I always try to bring my problems into my prayer and to find for myself there a firm interior foothold. And then, I try to do something challenging, really to give myself entirely to some task that is demanding and at the same time give me satisfaction. Finally, through meeting with friends I can to some extent distance myself from everything else. These three elements are important.
...
Perhaps we should, simply, deal more strictly with our problems, not allow them to arise in the first place.
Problems just do arise. Certain decisions, failure, human inadequacies, disappointments, all these get to us -- and indeed should get to us. Problems are meant in fact to teach us to how to work through things like that. If we became steel-hard, impenetrable, that would mean a loss of humanity and sensibility in dealing with other people. Seneca the stoic said: Sympathy is abhorrent. If, on the other hand, we look at Christ, he is all sympathy, and that makes is precious to us. Being sympathetic, being vulnerable, is part of being Christian. One must learn to accept injuries, to live with wounds, and in the end to find therein a deeper healing
Many people were able to pray as children, but at some time of other they lost this ability. Do you have to learn to talk with God?
The organ of sensitivity to God can atrophy to such an extent that words of faith become quite meaningless. And whoever no longer possesses a faculty of hearing can no longer speak, because being deaf goes together with being mute. It's as if one had deliberately to learn one's own mother tongue. Slowly one learns to spell out God's letters, to tspeak this language and -- if still inadequately -- to understand God. Gradually, then, one will become able to pray for oneself and to talk with God, at first in a very childlike way -- in a certain sense we always remain like that -- but then more and more in one's own words.
You once said: If a person believes only what he can see with his own eyes, then really he is blind...
...because in that case he is limiting his horizon in such a fashion that the essential things escape him. He cannot after all see his own understanding. Precisely those things that are of real moment are what he does not see with the mere physical eye, and to that extent he cannot properly see if he cannot see beyond his immediate sensory perceptions.
Someone once said to me that having faith is like leaving out of an aquarium into the ocean. Can you recall your first great experience of faith?
I would ay that in my case it was more like a silent growth. Naturally there have been high points, when something opened up for me in the liturgy, in theology, in first formulating a theological insight -- points at which faith became broad and momentous and no longer merely passed on from someone else. The great leap you were talking about, a particular event, is something I would be unable to point to in my own life. It was rather as if one were to venture out, slowly and cautiously, a little farther each time, out of the very shallow water, and slowly begin to feel a little of the ocean that is coming in towards us.
I also think that one has never achieved complete faith. Faith has to be lived again and again in life and in suffering, as well as in the great joys that God sends us. It is never something that I can put in my pocket like a coin.
...
Do you have a particular way of praying the Rosary?
I do it quite simply, just as my parents used to pray. Both of them loved the Rosary. And the older they got, the more they loved it. The older you get, the less you are able to make great spiritual efforts, the more you need, rather, an inner refuge, to be enfolded in the rhythm of the prayer of the whole Church. And so I pray in the way I always have.
But how? Do you pray one Rosary, one set of mysteries, or all three?
No, three are too much for me; I am too much of a restless spirit; I would wander too much. I take just one, and then often only two or three mysteries out of the five, because I can then fit in a certain interval when I want to get away from work and free myself a bit, when I want to be quiet and to clear my head. A whole one would actually be too much for me then.
Such a frank and charming conversation! Can't wait to read the Light of the World!
Your Eminence, do you ever feel afraid of God?
I wouldn't exactly say "afraid". We know from Christ who God is and that he loves us. And he knows what we are like. He knows we are flesh. We are dust. Because of that he accepts us in our weakness.
In any case, again and again I am keenly aware of how I fail to live up to my calling. To live up to the idea that God has of me, of what I could and should give.
Do you have the feeling, in such times, that God sometimes criticizes you or disapproves of some of your decisions?
God is not like a policeman or a prosecuting counsel, who tells you off and hands out a punishment. But in the mirror of faith and of the charge I have received, I have to consider every day what is right and when something is wrong. Naturally I then likewise feel that, with regard to myself, something is not as it should be. And that is what the sacrament of confession is for.
People always say that Catholics are full of guilt feelings towards God.
I believe Catholics are animated above all by a great sense of God's forgiveness. Take baroque or rococo art. There you can see a great joyfulness. Thus, typically Catholic nations like Italy and Spain have a reputation, and with good reason, for being light-hearted.
Perhaps there have been, in particular areas of Christianity, certain forms of education, distortions, in which frightening, burdensome, rigorously strict elements have predominated, but this is not Catholicism properly speaking. My own feeling is that, in those very people whose lives draw upon the faith of the Church, a sense of redemption prevails: God will not abandon us!
Is there some particular language that God uses sometimes to say to us, in quite a concrete way, "Yes, do that." Or, again: "Hold on there -- last warning! Just leave it alone!"
God speaks quietly. But he gives us all kinds of signs. In retrospect, especially, we can see that he has given us a little nudge through a friend, through a book, or through what we see as a failure -- even through "accidents. Life is actually full of these silent indications. If I remain alert, then slowly they piece together a consistent whole, and I begin to feel how God is guiding me.
When you yourself talk with God, is that something that has become as easy and obvious as making a phone call?
In some respects one can make the comparison. I know that he is always there. And he knows in any case who I am and what I am. Which is all the more reason for me to feel the need to call on him, to share my feelings with him, to talk with him. With him I can exchange views on the simplest and most intimate things, as well as on those that are weightiest and of great moment. It seems, somehow, normal for me to have occasion to talk to him all the time in everyday life.
On these occasions, does God always behave respectfully, or does he let you see he has a sense of humour?
I believe he has a great sense of humour. Sometimes he gives you a nudge and says, Don't take yourself so seriously! Humor is in fact an essential element in the mirth of creation. We can see how, in many matters in our lives, God wants to prod us into taking things a bit more lightly; to see the funny side of it; to get down off our pedestal and not to forget our sense of fun.
Do you also get cross with God?
Naturally I, too, think from time to time: Why doesn't he give me more help? And sometimes he remains puzzling to me. In those cases that annoy me I can also feel the presence somewhere of his mystery, his strangeness. But getting really angry with God would mean that he had dragged God too far down to our level. Very often, quite superficial things give rise to anger. And in those cases where anger is really justified I have to ask myself whether there isn't something important being communicated in the things that annoy me and the people who annoy me. I never get cross with God himself.
How do you begin your day?
Before I get up, I first say a short prayer. The day looks different is you don't just stumble into it. Then comes all the things you do first thing in the morning, washing, breakfast. After that is the Holy Mass and the breviary. Both of these, for me, lay the foundations of the day: Mass is the entirely real meeting with the presence of the risen Christ, and the breviary is a way into the great prayer of the whole history of salvation. The Psalms stand at the heart of it. Here we pray together with the millennia, and we hear the voice of the Fathers. All of this opens a door onto the day for us. Then comes ordinary work.
How often do you pray?
Fixed prayer times are at noon, when in accordance with Catholic tradition we pray the Angelus. In the afternoon there is Vespers, and in the evening Compline, the Church's evening prayer. And in between times, whenever I feel I need help, I can fit in a quick prayer.
Does the prayer before you get up always vary?
No, that is a fixed prayer -- in fact, it's a collection of various little prayers, but as a whole a fixed form of prayer.
Have you anything to recommend?
Each of us can surely find something for ourselves out of the Church's treasury.
At night, when one cannot settle down...
...I would recommend the Rosary. That is a form of prayer that, besides its spiritual meaning, has the power to calm the inner self. If we hold fast here to the actual words, then we are gradually freed from the thoughts that so torment us.
How do you personally deal with problems -- that is, supposing you have any problems at all?
How could I not have problems? In the first place, I always try to bring my problems into my prayer and to find for myself there a firm interior foothold. And then, I try to do something challenging, really to give myself entirely to some task that is demanding and at the same time give me satisfaction. Finally, through meeting with friends I can to some extent distance myself from everything else. These three elements are important.
...
Perhaps we should, simply, deal more strictly with our problems, not allow them to arise in the first place.
Problems just do arise. Certain decisions, failure, human inadequacies, disappointments, all these get to us -- and indeed should get to us. Problems are meant in fact to teach us to how to work through things like that. If we became steel-hard, impenetrable, that would mean a loss of humanity and sensibility in dealing with other people. Seneca the stoic said: Sympathy is abhorrent. If, on the other hand, we look at Christ, he is all sympathy, and that makes is precious to us. Being sympathetic, being vulnerable, is part of being Christian. One must learn to accept injuries, to live with wounds, and in the end to find therein a deeper healing
Many people were able to pray as children, but at some time of other they lost this ability. Do you have to learn to talk with God?
The organ of sensitivity to God can atrophy to such an extent that words of faith become quite meaningless. And whoever no longer possesses a faculty of hearing can no longer speak, because being deaf goes together with being mute. It's as if one had deliberately to learn one's own mother tongue. Slowly one learns to spell out God's letters, to tspeak this language and -- if still inadequately -- to understand God. Gradually, then, one will become able to pray for oneself and to talk with God, at first in a very childlike way -- in a certain sense we always remain like that -- but then more and more in one's own words.
You once said: If a person believes only what he can see with his own eyes, then really he is blind...
...because in that case he is limiting his horizon in such a fashion that the essential things escape him. He cannot after all see his own understanding. Precisely those things that are of real moment are what he does not see with the mere physical eye, and to that extent he cannot properly see if he cannot see beyond his immediate sensory perceptions.
Someone once said to me that having faith is like leaving out of an aquarium into the ocean. Can you recall your first great experience of faith?
I would ay that in my case it was more like a silent growth. Naturally there have been high points, when something opened up for me in the liturgy, in theology, in first formulating a theological insight -- points at which faith became broad and momentous and no longer merely passed on from someone else. The great leap you were talking about, a particular event, is something I would be unable to point to in my own life. It was rather as if one were to venture out, slowly and cautiously, a little farther each time, out of the very shallow water, and slowly begin to feel a little of the ocean that is coming in towards us.
I also think that one has never achieved complete faith. Faith has to be lived again and again in life and in suffering, as well as in the great joys that God sends us. It is never something that I can put in my pocket like a coin.
...
Do you have a particular way of praying the Rosary?
I do it quite simply, just as my parents used to pray. Both of them loved the Rosary. And the older they got, the more they loved it. The older you get, the less you are able to make great spiritual efforts, the more you need, rather, an inner refuge, to be enfolded in the rhythm of the prayer of the whole Church. And so I pray in the way I always have.
But how? Do you pray one Rosary, one set of mysteries, or all three?
No, three are too much for me; I am too much of a restless spirit; I would wander too much. I take just one, and then often only two or three mysteries out of the five, because I can then fit in a certain interval when I want to get away from work and free myself a bit, when I want to be quiet and to clear my head. A whole one would actually be too much for me then.
Such a frank and charming conversation! Can't wait to read the Light of the World!
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
I've ordered "Light of the World"
And not because of the crazy condom controversy that has flared up around it.
I'm reading God and the World - the second interview between Ratzinger and Peter Seewald. The pope is so frank and clear! Looking forward to the new one.
It's a pity that the English translation doesn't look like this:
I love the red and white and the fact that the title is in the pope's handwriting.
And here's an excellent photo of the pope, also highlighting the red and the white, via the New York Times:
I'm reading God and the World - the second interview between Ratzinger and Peter Seewald. The pope is so frank and clear! Looking forward to the new one.
It's a pity that the English translation doesn't look like this:
I love the red and white and the fact that the title is in the pope's handwriting.
And here's an excellent photo of the pope, also highlighting the red and the white, via the New York Times:
Nocturne in C sharp minor
by Chopin.
Via Crescat
I remember Imma playing this once (I can't remember song names, but the tunes trigger memories)
Just beautiful.
Here's a performance on the piano:
Via Crescat
I remember Imma playing this once (I can't remember song names, but the tunes trigger memories)
Just beautiful.
Here's a performance on the piano:
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
St Cecilia, virgin, martyr
Happy feast day of St Cecilia. Here are some photos I took at the Church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere on the 29th of June.
St Cecilia's body was incorrupt when discovered in 1595. This sculpture, by Stefano Maderno who was struck by the Saint's body when he saw it, depicts how the body was when discovered.
"Behold the body of the most holy virgin Cecilia,
whom I myself saw lying incorrupt in the tomb.
I have in this marble expressed for you the same saint in the very same posture."
St Cecilia's body was incorrupt when discovered in 1595. This sculpture, by Stefano Maderno who was struck by the Saint's body when he saw it, depicts how the body was when discovered.
"Behold the body of the most holy virgin Cecilia,
whom I myself saw lying incorrupt in the tomb.
I have in this marble expressed for you the same saint in the very same posture."
Christus Vincit
A beautiful hymn for the Pope, the bishop, the clergy and the world, for everlasting peace, life, salvation and the coming of the Kingdom:
Bookmarking - November 2010
Too many tabs open for too long - so here goes:
The Designs of Science - Christoph Cardinal Schönborn on Darwinism.
There is no Santa clause - Edward Feser argues that it is wrong to tell children that Santa Clause is real. See also The Murderer at the Door and What Counts as a Lie?.
Fred Sanders asks: What Makes for a Great Book?
Steve Pyke has spent almost a quarter century photographing philosophers. See what he has to say about Philosophers Through the Lens.
Philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre about ethics and finance.
The Idea of a University: revisiting Cardinal Newman's book on the university.
This one looks particularly interesting: How John Locke Influenced Catholic Social Teaching.
Try these 7 research-based techniques for increasing creativity.
A short piece on the tyranny of innovation.
And a long article by Rocco Palmo on Daniel Cardinal diNardo.
George Cardinal Pell writes about Human Dignity, Human Rights and Moral Responsibility.
Check out some of the best American science writing of 2010 here.
And take a look at these incredible sound illusions. Really good!
Real-time world statistics. Pretty cool stuff.
The Designs of Science - Christoph Cardinal Schönborn on Darwinism.
There is no Santa clause - Edward Feser argues that it is wrong to tell children that Santa Clause is real. See also The Murderer at the Door and What Counts as a Lie?.
Fred Sanders asks: What Makes for a Great Book?
Steve Pyke has spent almost a quarter century photographing philosophers. See what he has to say about Philosophers Through the Lens.
Philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre about ethics and finance.
The Idea of a University: revisiting Cardinal Newman's book on the university.
This one looks particularly interesting: How John Locke Influenced Catholic Social Teaching.
Try these 7 research-based techniques for increasing creativity.
A short piece on the tyranny of innovation.
And a long article by Rocco Palmo on Daniel Cardinal diNardo.
George Cardinal Pell writes about Human Dignity, Human Rights and Moral Responsibility.
Check out some of the best American science writing of 2010 here.
And take a look at these incredible sound illusions. Really good!
Real-time world statistics. Pretty cool stuff.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Viva, Cristo Rey! Long live Christ the King!
Christ conquers,
Christ reigns,
Christ commands,
Christ defends His people from all evil.
Christ's Kingdom
And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.
Ceiling of the Baptistry at Santa Maria del Fiore (July 1).
Videos from yesterday's ceremony
The music - which featured brass - was quite glorious:
And the naming of the cardinals
You can see Cardinal Wuerl struggling not to laugh at the large cheers from the African pilgrims.
There were a sizeable number of Sri Lankans present too.
And the naming of the cardinals
You can see Cardinal Wuerl struggling not to laugh at the large cheers from the African pilgrims.
There were a sizeable number of Sri Lankans present too.
"Receive the ring from the hand of Peter,
and know that with the love of the Prince of the Apostles, your love for the church is strengthened."
Getty
Reuters
Getty
Reuters
Lucky Mr. Sonnen
He's taking part in a very interesting tradition: the courtesy visits to the new cardinals.
And here he is posing with who he calls Ranjith the Great:
And here he is posing with who he calls Ranjith the Great:
A wonderful breath of fresh air in the Curia: a voice of common sense and truth. He is a man of great joy and wisdom.
We love You, Eminence!
Saturday, November 20, 2010
CARDINAL Ranjith
I was able to catch the consistory being held in Rome and got to see Malcolm Ranjith receiving the red biretta and being assigned the Church of San Lorenzo in Lucina from the Holy Father. Some screen captures (bad quality; hopefully there'll be good photos online):
The new cardinals will be at St Peter's to greet well-wishers. Wish I was in Rome!
Te Deum!
The new cardinals will be at St Peter's to greet well-wishers. Wish I was in Rome!
Te Deum!
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Eucharistic Springtime
Pope Benedict, during today's Wednesday Audience, said the following:
Join in this Eucharistic Springtime.
Let us try to sacrifice bits of our day to spend in prayer before the Lord, really present in the Blessed Sacrament, preparing well to receive Him at Holy Mass, offering acts of spiritual Communion, greeting Our Lord as we pass by a church.
I would like to affirm with joy that today in the Church there is a "Eucharistic springtime": How many persons pause silently before the Tabernacle to spend time in a conversation of love with Jesus! It is consoling to know that not a few groups of young people have rediscovered the beauty of praying in adoration before the Most Blessed Sacrament. I am thinking, for example, of our Eucharistic adoration in Hyde Park, in London.
I pray so that this Eucharistic "springtime" will spread increasingly in every parish, in particular in Belgium, the homeland of St. Juliana. The Venerable John Paul II, in the encyclical "Ecclesia de Eucharistia," said: "In many places, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is also an important daily practice and becomes an inexhaustible source of holiness. The devout participation of the faithful in the Eucharistic procession on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ is a grace from the Lord which yearly brings joy to those who take part in it. Other positive signs of Eucharistic faith and love might also be mentioned" (No. 10).
Remembering St. Juliana of Cornillon we also renew our faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. As we are taught by the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist in a unique and incomparable way. He is present in a true, real and substantial way, with his Body and his Blood, with his Soul and his Divinity. In the Eucharist, therefore, there is present in a sacramental way, that is, under the Eucharistic species of bread and wine, Christ whole and entire, God and Man" (No. 282).
Dear friends, fidelity to the encounter with the Eucharistic Christ in Sunday's Holy Mass is essential for the journey of faith, but let us try as well to frequently go to visit the Lord present in the Tabernacle! Gazing in adoration at the consecrated Host, we discover the gift of the love of God, we discover the passion and the cross of Jesus, and also his Resurrection. Precisely through our gazing in adoration, the Lord draws us to himself, into his mystery, to transform us as he transforms the bread and wine. The saints always found strength, consolation and joy in the Eucharistic encounter. With the words of the Eucharistic hymn "Adoro te devote," let us repeat before the Lord, present in the Most Blessed Sacrament: "Make me believe ever more in You, that in You I may have hope, that I may love You!"
Join in this Eucharistic Springtime.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Tradition
The problem with rationalists is that they identify the customary and the traditional with the changeless. But they are deeply mistaken.
“Now, a tradition of behaviour is a tricky thing to get to know. Indeed, it may even appear to be essentially unintelligible. It is neither fixed nor finished; it has no changeless centre; there is no sovereign purpose to be perceived or invariable direction to be detected; there is no model to be copied, idea to be realized, or rule to be followed. Some parts of it may change more slowly than others, but none is immune from change. Everything is temporary. Nevertheless, though a tradition of behaviour is flimsy and elusive, it is not without identity, and what makes it a possible object of knowledge is the fact that all its parts do not change at the same time and that the changes it undergoes are potential within it. Its principle is a principle of continuity: authority is diffused between past, present, and future; between the old, the new, and what is to come. It is steady because, though it moves, it is never wholly in motion; and though it is tranquil, it is never wholly at rest.”
“Now, a tradition of behaviour is a tricky thing to get to know. Indeed, it may even appear to be essentially unintelligible. It is neither fixed nor finished; it has no changeless centre; there is no sovereign purpose to be perceived or invariable direction to be detected; there is no model to be copied, idea to be realized, or rule to be followed. Some parts of it may change more slowly than others, but none is immune from change. Everything is temporary. Nevertheless, though a tradition of behaviour is flimsy and elusive, it is not without identity, and what makes it a possible object of knowledge is the fact that all its parts do not change at the same time and that the changes it undergoes are potential within it. Its principle is a principle of continuity: authority is diffused between past, present, and future; between the old, the new, and what is to come. It is steady because, though it moves, it is never wholly in motion; and though it is tranquil, it is never wholly at rest.”
- Michael Oakeshott, "Political Education" in Rationalism in Politics
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Benny Hinn v. Joel Osteen
This is interesting because both are highly acclaimed by many, and both have airtime on the Evangelical television networks.
I'm not a fan of either Hinn or Osteen, but I particularly dislike Osteen's Christianity Lite message. He sounds more like a self-help guru than anything else. Hinn is wrong on many things but at least he's not as saccharine as Osteen.
Paul Washer, like many Southern Baptists, isn't friendly towards Catholicism (anti-Catholicism is quite a tradition among them) but he's quite right about preachers like Hinn and Osteen in the video below:
Actually, I think the old-time protestant anti-Catholicism was better - at least those days they had firm principles (anti-Catholicism being a major one). Having principles means that they would be interested in serious discussion and debate over the issues, over theology, history, scripture. And honest ones would do what Tim Staples or Scott Hahn eventually ended up doing.
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths."
I'm not a fan of either Hinn or Osteen, but I particularly dislike Osteen's Christianity Lite message. He sounds more like a self-help guru than anything else. Hinn is wrong on many things but at least he's not as saccharine as Osteen.
Paul Washer, like many Southern Baptists, isn't friendly towards Catholicism (anti-Catholicism is quite a tradition among them) but he's quite right about preachers like Hinn and Osteen in the video below:
Actually, I think the old-time protestant anti-Catholicism was better - at least those days they had firm principles (anti-Catholicism being a major one). Having principles means that they would be interested in serious discussion and debate over the issues, over theology, history, scripture. And honest ones would do what Tim Staples or Scott Hahn eventually ended up doing.
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths."
- 2 Timothy 4:3-4
Released
Aung San Suu Kyi was just released from house arrest in Burma. She had been detained for 15 of the past 21 years.
From Wiki:
I hope this time it's permanent.
AP Photo
From Wiki:
- 20 July 1989: Placed under house arrest in Rangoon under martial law that allows for detention without charge or trial for three years.
- 10 July 1995: Released from house arrest.
- 23 September 2000: Placed under house arrest.
- 6 May 2002: Released after 19 months.
- 30 May 2003: Arrested following the Depayin massacre, she was held in secret detention for more than three months before being returned to house arrest.
- 25 May 2007: House arrest extended by one year despite a direct appeal from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to General Than Shwe.
- 24 October 2007: Reached 12 years under house arrest, solidarity protests held at 12 cities around the world.
- 27 May 2008: House arrest extended for another year, which is illegal under both international law and Burma's own law.
- 11 August 2009: House arrest extended for 18 more months because of "violation" arising from the May 2009 trespass incident.
I hope this time it's permanent.
Crystal Cathedral had its day
Harriet Baber of the Guardian looks at what happens when religion is reduced to a collection of gimmicks. It's a picture of the US Evangelical church that I used to come in contact with on TV in Oman. Even back then I couldn't understand why people were attracted to it. Now I'm even more certain that when compared to the true inner dynamism, wonder, and beauty of the Catholic faith - this type of theatrical religion really does seem like a dull fad. This is why we're being very short-sighted when we, Catholics, try to shape our faith along these lines. Firstly we're not good at such spectacles, secondly it's counter-productive, and it detracts from our true, tried-and-tested-for-two-millenia Catholic way.
On 18 October 2010, Southern California's landmark Crystal Cathedral, the prototype of all late 20th Century American Megachurches, filed for bankruptcy. I drove up the following Sunday to get a look at the place while it was still in operation.
...
The campus and decor are the culmination of a high-church revival in American Protestantism that began in the 19th century. It was then that evangelical Christians, who had traditionally assembled in meeting houses and preaching halls, constructed faux-Gothic edifices, dressed their preachers in gowns, and "beautified" their services, exchanging tedium for vulgarity. By the mid-20th century, they had appropriated all the "potent symbols of cinema secularism" theologian Reinhold Niebuhr described in his rendition of an evangelical Easter service conducted, as was not uncommon, in a movie theatre:
The service began with the house in darkness and the gradual lighting of the stage, symbolising the Easter dawn. The organist appeared with the spotlight upon him as his console emerged trickily and automatically from its cubicle to full view. The choir was for some obscure reason gowned in a symphony of colours from deep blue on the outside to bright red in the centre… Here was a church service with so little of its own to go on that movie technic could dominate the spirit of it completely.
The walls of the Welcoming Center were covered with words – with optimistic platitudes, rendered in raised metallic lettering, like Arabic calligraphy decorating a mosque. Words were not vehicles for conveying new information. They were icons to be gazed at, sacraments to be consumed – over and over again. Bible verses were talismans, working their magic; slogans were mantras.
...Of course we don't expect popular entertainments to last. Fashion is arbitrary. There was no particular reason why hip-hop replaced disco or why the 1970s favoured earth tones while the 1990s featured violet and teal. We look in vain for some underlying social circumstance to explain why at a particular time and in a particular place popular culture takes the form it does: fashions change because they are fashions and so have nothing to recommend them but their relative novelty.
Fashion dominates the world of evangelical Christianity and its therapeutic penumbra. The Crystal Cathedral, that glitzy architectural marvel, has become a 1980s nostalgia item. Now Rick Warren is the anointed leader of America's "People of Faith" and, for the time being, Orange county crowds are flocking to Saddleback's dull preaching halls.
But there is nothing new under the sun. Saddleback and the Crystal Cathedral, Willow Creek and all the other evangelical megachurches that have had their time in the sun sell the same product: mind-power through talk-magic, which in secular packaging is just what all the innumerable therapies and self-help programmes on the market promise.
...So if you wonder why Americans are, anomalously, religious it is because we have evacuated religion of all content. There are of course theological doctrines on the books, which church members tick off, in the way that they agree to accept screenfuls of conditions for installing new software. But most have no serious interest in these theoretical matters. Whether signing on for a new therapy or self-help programme, trying out a new diet or a new church, they are looking for a bag of tricks, a collection of gimmicks and recipes that will get them the material prosperity, perfect health, beautiful bodies, ideal relationships and complete happiness to which they believe they are entitled.
I never understood the appeal of these programmes, whether religious or secular: they claimed to produce plain empirical results but were never empirically confirmed. For all the cheerful platitudes and possibility thinking, the Crystal Cathedral was bankrupt.
Beyond that, as a religious believer I was disheartened. Was this all religion was: Cheerful platitudes and advice for successful living? Recipes for doing well in this world and the next? A pleasant place to pass an hour or two: an uplifting programme, brunch in the Welcoming Center and a stroll through the grounds?
I thought religion was a window into heaven, into another world of power, glory and intensity, to the contemplation of divine beauty. When I got religion, I never imagined this flat, dull evangelicalism.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Amazing Grace
Look at the emotions that the song evokes in the audience!
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
That saved a wretch like me.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
"You don't call a man a racist"
"It hurt," Bush said. "You can disagree with my politics but don't ever accuse me of being a racist."Read more at ABC News.
West made headlines in the storm's aftermath when he said during a televised fundraiser, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."
"To accuse me of being a racist is disgusting. I feel strongly about it today just like I did then. You don't call a man a racist," he said. "I'm confident my heart is right on that issue."
"I put policy in place that I really thought helped all races in America, and I don't understand why anyone would accuse me of being a racist. It speaks to the ugliness of the American political scene."
Monday, November 8, 2010
Interview with Malcolm Ranjith
I've never seen the Archbishop of Cololmbo in person, and the few videos of him on Youtube are in Sinhalese. Here's an interview that Archbishop Ranjith gave, in English, to Vatican Radio on the cause for beatification of Cardinal Cooray. Thanks Louis!
The Pope at the Sagrada Familia
The Holy Father consecrated Antonio Gaudi's stunning Basilica of the Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family in Barcelona, Spain yesterday. The building truly is a wonder.
Here are a few photos from yesterday's liturgy, via Daylife:
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Here are a few photos from yesterday's liturgy, via Daylife:
AP Photo
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