| Welcome, Guest |
You have to register before you can post on our site.
|
| Online Users |
There are currently 107 online users.
» 0 Member(s) | 104 Guest(s)
Bing, Facebook, Google
|
|
|
| Pope Francis says ‘conservative’ bishops have ‘suicidal attitude’ |
|
Posted by: Stone - 3 hours ago - Forum: Pope Francis
- No Replies
|
 |
Pope Francis says ‘conservative’ bishops have ‘suicidal attitude’ during 60 Minutes interview
Certain of the U.S. episcopate have been notable in defending elements of Catholic teaching, often in seeming juxtaposition to Francis’ own stance – including such men as Bishop Joseph Strickland and Cardinal Raymond Burke.
![[Image: CBS-francis.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/CBS-francis.jpg)
Pope Francis with Norah O'Donnell.
CBS News
May 17, 2024
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has described “conservative” bishops as having a “suicidal attitude” due to being closed “inside a dogmatic box.”
“A Conservative is one who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that,” Francis said in response to a question about “conservative bishops in the United States” the CBS “60 Minutes” interviewer described as as opposing Francis’ “efforts to revisit teachings and traditions.”
“It is a suicidal attitude because one thing is to take Tradition into account and to consider situations from the past, but quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box,” continued Francis.
His comments were part of an hour-long interview with CBS’s Norah O’Donnell. Conducted in late April, a small segment of the interview was released at the time, with the full hour to be aired on CBS this Sunday and Monday.
In a previous clip from the interview, Francis denigrated crit
“There are people who are foolish, and foolish even if you show them research; they don’t believe it,” Francis declared. “Why? Because they don’t understand the situation or because of their interest, but climate change exists.”
Responding to the latest clip, a former U.S. Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, supported Francis’ statement. “For once Bergoglio is absolutely right: conservatism wants to ‘preserve’ the outward appearances of Tradition without the doctrinal substance that makes it alive,” he said.
Quote:Conservatism is the attitude of those who criticize the excesses of the synodical church but are careful not to question its causes, which are to be found in Vatican II. Conservatism is really a “suicidal behavior” because it creates an artificial “dogmatic box,” made of Novus Ordo ad orientem with Roman chasubles and Gregorian chants and also of Vetus Ordo; made of selected quotations of some conciliar documents, accidentally not contrasting with the Catholic Magisterium of all time; made of the apotheosis [deification/divinization] of John Paul II and the regret of Benedict XVI, whom we all loved.
Continuing, Viganò differed with Francis with regard to Tradition, saying that “Tradition is not conservatism; Tradition is not a ‘dogmatic box’ because it draws from the clear and pure water of the divine source, drawing from Grace and fidelity to the Gospel and the Depositum Fidei the lifeblood that makes it capable of looking to the future without denying the past.”
Francis has long appeared to express discontent towards American Catholics, often employing his description of “rigid” when referring to them. Certain of the U.S. episcopate have been notable in defending elements of Catholic teaching, often in seeming juxtaposition to Francis’ own stance – including such men as Bishop Joseph Strickland and Cardinal Raymond Burke.
Others among the U.S. episcopate have taken a less vocal stance than Strickland and Burke, yet nevertheless have taken positions in line with Catholic teaching that have been contradicted by Pope Francis. For example, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone banned pro-abortion Nancy Pelosi from receiving Holy Communion, but this was in practice overruled by the current pontiff.
Indeed, Francis’ relationship with, and his argued ignorance about, the Church in the U.S. has been a regular talking point throughout his pontificate. In recent days, an editorial in the National Catholic Register urged Francis to visit the U.S. “to dispel inaccuracies about the U.S. Church that have been propagated in Rome by some papal advisers.”
“Such misunderstandings have also been fostered by the caricatures of faithful American Catholics that our own nation’s secular press routinely propagates,” the Register’s editors wrote.
British Papal biographer Austen Ivereigh, argued in response that Francis is “astonishingly well informed about the US Church” but did not elaborate on his claim.
The Papal Nuncio to the U.S., Cardinal Christophe Pierre, is undoubtedly a publicly staunch and loyal ally of Francis – characteristics not unexpected in a papal nuncio but which are embodied in a particularly strident manner by the French cardinal.
However, even Pierre’s supporters have critiqued his efficacy in reshaping the U.S. episcopate in Francis’ image, noting that while there are some key appointments with Francis’ ideals, Pierre has not wrought as great a change as expected.
Such a change could well be implemented in the upcoming months, should he and Francis so decide, given the large proportion of sees currently, or shortly, due a new ordinary.
|
|
|
| Warsaw mayor orders removal of crucifix, use of transgender ‘pronouns’ at city hall |
|
Posted by: Stone - 3 hours ago - Forum: Global News
- No Replies
|
|
Warsaw mayor orders removal of crucifix, use of transgender ‘pronouns’ at city hall
All religious symbols are banned on walls or desks in the predominantly Catholic city as well as prayer of any kind at events organized by city hall.
![[Image: Shutterstock_2439040711.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Shutterstock_2439040711.jpg)
Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski
Shutterstock
May 17, 2024
WARSAW, Poland (LifeSiteNews) — The mayor of Warsaw ordered the removal of religious symbols, i.e., crosses and crucifixes, from City Hall while urging employees to use transgender “pronouns” and respect same-sex relationships.
According to Polish News, Rafał Trzaskowski signed an order relating to the “standards of equal treatment” in the Polish capital’s city hall. The order includes a ban on religious symbols on walls or desks, mainly targeting crosses and crucifixes, which are common sights in buildings in the historically Catholic country. The document urges employees to use the “preferred pronouns” and names of people suffering from gender dysphoria.
“Warsaw is the first city in Poland to adopt such a document,” said Monika Beuth, spokesperson for the mayor.
The ban on religious symbols will not apply to “religious symbols for personal use worn by people working in the office, for example in the form of a chain, tattoo or armband.” Going forward, events organized by the city hall must not include prayer of any kind.
The order states, “These standards will strengthen efforts to promote equal opportunities and equal access to city services and resources for all residents of Warsaw.”
City hall employees are required to use language that “recognizes and takes into account social diversity.”
“In the case of a transgender person whose appearance may differ from stereotypical ideas related to the gender recorded in official documents, address him or her with the name or gender pronouns that he or she indicates,” the document says.
Even though same-sex relationships are not legally recognized by the Polish state, the order gives employees freedom to treat same-sex couples who raise children together like married couples in some regards.
“A person may authorize a same-sex partner to collect documents on his or her behalf or to contact the school, psychological and pedagogical counseling center, or other institution regarding the child,” the order states.
The document also notes that employees will be subjected to compulsory “diversity training.”
Expressions like “disabled person” or “mentally ill” should be replaced by “a person with a disability” or “a person in a mental health crisis.” The order encourages employees to use “gender-neutral terms” as much as possible.
|
|
|
|
| Pope Francis calls for ‘global financial charter’ at Vatican climate change conference |
|
Posted by: Stone - Yesterday, 05:46 AM - Forum: Pope Francis
- No Replies
|
|
Pope Francis calls for ‘global financial charter’ at Vatican climate change conference
Pope Francis called for a 'new global financial charter' by 2025 that would be centered on climate change and 'ecological debt' in a keynote address at the Vatican-organized 'Climate Crisis to Climate Resilience' conference.
![[Image: NEWS-810x500-Story-2-May-16-2024.jpg]](https://www.lifesitenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/NEWS-810x500-Story-2-May-16-2024.jpg)
May 16, 2024
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) – Addressing a Vatican-hosted climate change conference, Pope Francis called for a “new global financial charter” by 2025 that would be centered on climate change and “ecological debt.”
“There is a need to develop a new financial architecture capable of responding to the demands of the Global South and of the island states that have been seriously affected by climate catastrophes,” Pope Francis said on Thursday, May 16.
The Pontiff’s words came toward the end of his keynote address at the conference “Climate Crisis to Climate Resilience,” organized jointly by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
Outlining a three-fold action plan to respond to the “planetary crisis,” Francis told the participants that any such action must be centered around financial action.
“The restructuring and reduction of debt, together with the development of a new global financial charter by 2025, acknowledging a sort of ecological debt – we must work on this term: ecological debt – can be of great assistance in mitigating climate changes,” he said, appearing to allude to an already existing but as yet unpublished charter.
The Pope’s three-fold plan also highlighted his call for “policy changes” based on climate adherence and the reduction of warming, fossil fuel reliance, and carbon dioxide:
Quote:First, a universal approach and swift and decisive action is needed, capable of producing policy changes and decisions.
Second, we need to reverse the curve of warming, seeking to halve the rate of warming in the short space of a quarter of a century. At the same time, we need to aim for global de-carbonization, eliminating the dependence on fossil fuels.
Third, large quantities of carbon dioxide must be removed from the atmosphere through environmental management spanning several generations.
Francis’ call for finance-related policies to implement climate change goals will have been met especially warmly by certain attendees of the Vatican’s conference. Among the numerous participants and speakers at the three-day event were ardent pro-climate change advocates California Gov. Gavin Newsom, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Massachusetts lesbian Gov. Maura Healey, along with academics and politicians from South America, Africa, Italy, and Taiwan.
Newsom and Khan – both of whom have implemented sweeping and highly controversial measures in the name of climate change – spoke respectively on “The Gold Standard – Climate Leadership in the Golden State” and “Governance in the Age of Climate Change.” Khan also wrote in the U.K.’s The Tablet that he joins his voice to that of Francis “to support climate resilience efforts and advocate for climate justice.”
Green finance for the future
While no further details were given about the charter Pope Francis referred to, in recent years increased attention has been paid to coordinating climate policies with finance, performing “debt for nature swaps” in line with the World Economic Forum’s policies, and addressing “ecological debt” itself, which is a term itself employed regularly by Francis.
Last October 4, Francis published a second part to his 2015 environmental encyclical letter Laudato Si’ in the form of the Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum, in which he issued stark calls for “obligatory” measures across the globe to address the issue of “climate change.”
READ: Pope Francis calls for obligatory global ‘climate change’ policies in new document ‘Laudate Deum’
“It is no longer possible to doubt the human – ‘anthropic’ – origin of climate change,” the Pontiff wrote before later calling for mandatory alignment with “green” policies:
Quote:If there is sincere interest in making COP28 a historic event that honors and ennobles us as human beings, then one can only hope for binding forms of energy transition that meet three conditions: that they be efficient, obligatory and readily monitored.
Francis’ oft-repeated lines on the subject have repeatedly born similarities to the sentiments expressed by key globalist and founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Klaus Schwab, whose proposed anti-Catholic “Great Reset” is underpinned by a focus on a “green” financial agenda, as he mentions the “withdrawal of fossil-fuel subsidies” and a new financial system based on “investments” that advance “equality and sustainability” and the building of a “‘green’ urban infrastructure.”
Indeed, the world of finance is one of the sectors that is most devoted to implementing “climate change” policies, such as those outlined by the Paris Agreement – the pro-abortion climate agreement to which the Vatican joined in 2022.
A lesser-known third aim of the Paris Agreement pertains directly to the financial element of the document, ensuring that the future of global finance is directly connected to the various climate change efforts laid out in the Paris Agreement. It reads:
Quote:Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.
This aim provides the basis for international governments to link provision of finance to the implementation of the “green” agenda of the Paris Agreement. The almost unknown Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) was born at the Paris “One Planet Summit” in December 2017, with the purpose of transforming the global economy in alignment with “green” climate change policies.
READ: Secretive international banking group may enforce Great Reset ‘green’ agenda on world
Already, it numbers 138 members, with an additional 21 observer organizations, including national and international banks such as the “Bank of Canada; Bank of England; Banque de France; Dubai Financial Services Authority; European Central Bank; Japan FSA; People’s Bank of China; Swiss National Bank; U.S. Federal Reserve.”
Such policies are regularly at the forefront of international finance meetings as well. One such example was last year, when French President Emmanuel Macron called for a “public finance shock” based around climate issues and global finance. His address was given to international leaders at the 2023 Summit for a New Global Financial Pact held in Paris.
|
|
|
|
| Fr. Ruiz Mass will be offering Mass in Texas - May 17-19, 2024 |
|
Posted by: Stone - 05-14-2024, 10:13 AM - Forum: May 2024
- Replies (1)
|
|
Fr. Ruiz will be in the Dallas and Houston, Texas areas this coming weekend
and offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at the following dates and locations.
Date: Friday, May 17, 2024 - Feast of St. Paschal Baylon
Time: Confessions - 4:30 PM
Holy Mass - 5:00 PM
Location: 8933 Cross Wind Drive
Fort Worth, Texas 76179
Contact: 469-347-3740
✠ ✠ ✠
Date: Saturday, May 18, 2024 - Vigil of Pentecost/Feast of St. Venantius
Time: Confessions - 8:30 AM
Holy Mass - 9:00 AM
Location: 8933 Cross Wind Drive
Fort Worth, Texas 76179
Contact: 469-347-3740
✠ ✠ ✠
Date: Sunday, May 19, 2024 - Pentecost Sunday
Time: Confessions - 8:00 AM
Holy Mass - 9:30 AM
Location: 8933 Cross Wind Drive
Fort Worth, Texas 76179
Contact: 469-347-3740
✠ ✠ ✠
Date: Sunday, May 19, 2024 - Pentecost Sunday
Time: Confessions - 4:30 PM
Holy Mass - 5:00 PM
Location: 8615 Lawncliff Lane
Houston, Texas 77040
Contact: Jose 281-786-7743 or agmfgalera@yahoo.com
|
|
|
|
| Climate Scientist Suggests “Culling” the Human Population with a Deadly Pandemic |
|
Posted by: Stone - 05-14-2024, 06:13 AM - Forum: Socialism & Communism
- No Replies
|
|
SICK: Climate Scientist Suggests “Culling” the Human Population with a Deadly Pandemic to Solve the “Climate Crisis”
![[Image: climate-scientist.jpg]](https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/climate-scientist.jpg)
Credit: @ProfBillMcGuire
By Cullen Linebarger May. 13, 2024
One government climate scientist made the mistake of blurting out the real end-game of so many radical environmental activists in a bid to preserve the planet: Killing off the human population.
Bill McGuire, a Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London (UCL), authored a tweet Sunday that lamented the fact carbon emissions were not falling nearly as fast as needed and suggested solving the “climate crisis” with a deadly pandemic to wipe out swaths of the human population.
“If I am brutally honest, the only realistic way I see emissions falling as fast as they need to, to avoid catastrophic #climate breakdown, is the culling of the human population by a pandemic with a very high fatality rate,” he wrote.
After righteous backlash from social media users, McGuire deleted his post and whined that people were deliberately taking his words out of context.
He then lied and claimed that his initial post was about falling economic activity despite clearly referencing a pandemic killing off mankind.
As the National Pulse notes, McGuire is infamous for being a member of a British government body that advised politicians on the COVID-19 response. He also co-authored a report for the radical United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which helps influence climate policy worldwide.
McGuire is also not the first leftist to suggest exterminating the human population to solve the planet’s issues. For example, infamous animal rights activist Jane Goodall once floated reducing the Earth’s population to what it was 500 years ago. A University of Texas professor also called for killing 90 PERCENT of all humans to save the planet.
The Biden regime is funding dangerous experiments that could turn these vile individuals’ dreams into a reality. The National Pulse reveals Peter Daszak, a researcher with ties to Anthony Fauci, is still receiving millions in taxpayer dollars to “research” not only coronavirus samples in Wuhan, but also to source new bat viruses from Burma, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand, and other countries. Some of these pathogens are highly infectious.
American taxpayers are also funding risky Chinese research on the bird flu more transmissible, a disease that kills over 50% of the people it infects. COVID-19, by comparison, has a fatality rate of less than 1%.
These facts add fuel to the theory that COVID-19 was created as a trial run and globalists are planning to develop a far more deadly virus to provide a “final solution” to the human race.
|
|
|
|
| Cardinal Fernández: New Document On Discerning Apparitions ‘Being Finalized’ |
|
Posted by: Stone - 05-13-2024, 05:19 AM - Forum: Vatican II and the Fruits of Modernism
- No Replies
|
|
Cardinal Fernández: New Document On Discerning Apparitions ‘Being Finalized’
![[Image: 20240423160416_89ae94a077299c36c173ff974...9b3bd.webp]](https://ewtn.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/20240423160416_89ae94a077299c36c173ff974ce153b7b9aab8ac129fbb33c7b6d2ad5c29b3bd.webp)
Newly appointed cardinal Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Víctor Manuel Fernández poses during the courtesy visits to the New Cardinals at the Apostolic Palace on September 30, 2023 in Vatican City, Vatican. (photo: Franco Origlia / Getty)
NCR | 23/04/2024
The last time the Vatican’s doctrinal office issued a general document on apparitions was in 1978, during the final months of the pontificate of Pope Paul VI.
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is putting the finishing touches to a new document that sets out clear rules on discerning apparitions and other such supernatural events.
The dicastery’s prefect, Cardinal Victor Fernández, told the Register April 23 that he and his staff are “in the process of finalizing a new text with clear guidelines and norms for the discernment of apparitions and other phenomena.”
The cardinal, who met with Pope Francis in private audience on Monday, did not divulge any further details on the document, nor exactly when it will be published.
The last time the Vatican’s doctrinal office issued a general document on apparitions was in 1978, during the final months of the pontificate of Pope Paul VI.
In “Norms Regarding the Manner of Proceedings in the Discernment of Presumed Apparitions or Revelations,” the then-Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Croatian Cardinal Franjo Šeper, outlined the process the Catholic Church follows when investigating alleged apparitions or revelations.
The document stated that the Church’s responsibility is to first judge the facts, then permit public devotion if the examination is favorable, and finally make a judgment on the authenticity and supernatural character of the event.
The document outlined the positive and negative criteria for judging the authenticity of such phenomena, and when and how competent ecclesiastical authorities should be involved, including eventually the Holy See. It stressed that “extreme prudence” should be used when investigating the facts.
The most recent Vatican document regarding apparitions was issued in 2001 by the then-Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. In a “Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines,” the congregation drew on the Catechism of the Catholic Church and its references to private revelation.
That passage (No. 67) states that private revelations “do not belong … to the deposit of faith,” and adds that it is not their role to “improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history.”
The [New] Catechism adds:
“Guided by the Magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church.”
Pope St. Pius X also touched on apparitions in his 1907 encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, in which he stated that the Church exercises great prudence in this matter, allowing such traditions to be “narrated” only with caution and the disclaimer that the Church does not guarantee the truth of the facts narrated.
In an entry on “Private Revelations” written in 1913, the Catholic Encyclopedia stated that private revelations are constantly occurring among Christians, and that when the Church approves them, it declares only that there is nothing contrary to faith or morals, but does not impose an obligation to believe them.
Last month, the DDF released a “long-hidden” decree from 1951 which had declared the alleged 1948 apparition in the Philippines of the Virgin Mary in Lipa — also known as the Our Lady of Mediatrix of All Graces — was not supernatural.
For many years, the apparition has been a source of tension between those who have believed it to be authentic and the Catholic hierarchy in the Philippines.
The alleged apparition, in which the Virgin Mary reportedly appeared to a 21-year-old Discalced Carmelite postulant named Sister Teresita Castillo in Lipa City for 15 days beginning on Sept. 12, 1948, was investigated and was referred to Rome, after which the Vatican declared it wasn’t supernatural.
In a statement accompanying the publication of the decree, Cardinal Fernández noted how Mother Mary Cecilia of Jesus of the Discalced Carmelite convent in Lipa had, in 1951, confessed “to having deceived the faithful about the alleged apparitions in Lipa and consequently asked for forgiveness.”
The DDF made the 1951 decree public after a Dominican exorcist-priest, Father Winston Cabading, was sued in the Philippines for “offending religious feelings” after discrediting the Lipa apparition. A judge dismissed the case against him on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
|
|
|
|
| On Mothers: Sancta Maria - Mater Dei |
|
Posted by: Stone - 05-12-2024, 06:48 AM - Forum: General Commentary
- No Replies
|
|
The following is gratefully reprinted from the Oratory of the Sorrowful Heart of Mary Sunday Bulletin for today [also Mothers Day 2024]:
![[Image: 9ca0d53c-5216-6da9-cbe9-6cbe4603c9eb.jpg]](https://mcusercontent.com/76ce784d87af5db75a3164d6a/images/9ca0d53c-5216-6da9-cbe9-6cbe4603c9eb.jpg)
Sancta Maria Mater Dei
"The Angels have not been blessed with a such a grace; they cannot share in God's Creative miracle to bring new saints to heaven. Only a human mother can. Mothers are closer to God the Creator than any other creatures. God joins forces with mothers in performing this act of creation. What on God's good earth is more glorious than this: to be a mother?" - Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty
"A vocation comes from the heart of God, but goes through the heart of the mother." - Pope Saint Pius X
+
A Mother’s Prayer
O Blessed Virgin, Immaculate Queen of Heaven, Mother of Sorrows, refuge and comfort of all the afflicted! Kneeling before your throne with all my family, I choose you as our Mistress, Mother, and Advocate with God. I consecrate myself and all belonging to me forever to your service, and I implore you, O Mother of God, to number us among your servants. Take us under your protection, assist us during life and especially at the hour of death.
Mother of Mercy, I choose you as the Lady and Mistress of my entire household: my parents, my husband, my children, my cares, and my duties. Disdain not to take charge of them, and direct everything as seems good to you. Bless us all, and permit not that anyone of us should ever offend your Son. Protect us in temptation, preserve us in danger, help us in trouble, counsel us in doubt, assist us in sickness, and especially at the hour of death. Permit not the evil one to boast that anyone of us now consecrated to you has ever fallen into his net. Obtain for us the crown of eternal happiness, that we may thank you while praising and loving Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, for all eternity. Amen.
All Mothers Are Alike - Save One
by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen; The World’s First Love
No mother whose son has won distinction for himself, either in a profession or in the field of battle, believes that the respect paid her for being his mother detracts from the honor or dignity that is paid her son. Why, then, do some minds think that any reverence paid to the Mother of Jesus detracts from His Power and Divinity? We know the false rejoinder of those who say that Catholics "adore" Mary or make her a "goddess," but that is a lie. Since no reader of these pages would be guilty of such nonsense, it shall be ignored.
Where do this coldness, forgetfulness, and, at the least, indifference to the Blessed Mother start? From a failure to realize that her Son, Jesus, is the Eternal Son of God. The moment I put Our Divine Lord on the same level with Julius Caesar or Karl Marx, with Buddha or Charles Darwin, that is, as a mere man among men, then the thought of special reverence to His Mother as different from our mothers becomes positively repellent. Each famous man has his mother, too. Each person can say: "I have my mother, and mine is as good as or better than yours." That is why little is written of the mothers of any great men—because each mother was considered the best mother by her son. No one mother of a mortal is entitled to more love than any other mother. Therefore no sons and daughters should be required to single out someone else's mother as the Mother of mothers.
Our Lord described John the Baptist as "the greatest man ever born of woman." Suppose that a cult were started to honor his mother, Elizabeth, as superior to any other mother? Who among us would not rebel against it as excessive? Everything the critics would say of such exaggeration would be well taken, for the simple reason that John the Baptist is only a man. If Our Lord is just another man, or another ethical reformer, or another sociologist, then we share, even with the most bigoted, the resentment against thinking that the Mother of Jesus is different from any other mother.
The Fourth Commandment says: "Honor thy father and thy mother." It says nothing about honoring Gandhi's mother or Napoleon's father. But the Commandment to honor our fathers does not preclude adoring the Heavenly Father. If the Heavenly Father sends His Divine Son to this earth, then the Commandment to honor our earthly mothers does not preclude venerating the Mother of the Son of God.
If Mary were only the mother of another man, then she could not also be our mother, because the ties of the flesh are too exclusive. Flesh allows only one mother. The step between a mother and a stepmother is long, and few there are who can make it. But Spirit allows another mother. Since Mary is the Mother of God, then she can be the Mother of everyone whom Christ redeemed.
The key to understanding Mary is this: We do not start with Mary. We start with Christ, the Son of the Living God! The less we think of Him, the less we think of her; the more we think of Him, the more we think of her; the more we adore His Divinity, the more we venerate her Motherhood; the less we adore His Divinity, the less reason we have for respecting her. We could even resent hearing her name, if we had become so perverse as not to believe in Christ the Son of God. Never will it be found that anyone who really loves Our Lord as a Divine Savior dislikes Mary. Those who dislike any devotion to Mary are those who deny His Divinity or find fault with Our Lord because of what He says about hell, divorce, and judgment.
It is on account of Our Divine Lord that Mary receives special attention, and not on account of herself. Left to herself, her motherhood would dissolve into humanity. But when seen in the light of His Divinity, she becomes unique. Our Lord is God Who became man. Never before or since did Eternity become time in a woman, nor did Omnipotence take on the bonds of flesh in a maid. It is her Son who makes her motherhood different.
A Catholic boy from a parochial school was telling a university professor who lived next door about the Blessed Mother. The professor scoffed at the boy, saying: "But there is no difference between her and my mother." The boy answered: "That's what you say, but there's a heck of a lot of difference between the sons."
That is the answer. It is because Our Lord is so different from other sons that we set His Mother apart from all mothers. Because He had an Eternal Generation in the bosom of the Father as the Son of God and a temporal generation in the womb of Mary as the Son of Man, His coming created a new set of relationships. She is not a private person; all other mothers are. We did not make her different; we found her different. We did not choose Mary; He did.
But why was there a Virgin Birth? Because Christ is the Son of God, we cannot be as indifferent to the circumstances of His birth as we would be to the birth of the butcher or the baker. If Mary told the Apostles after Pentecost about His virgin birth, it must have made a difference; if the Apostles put it in their Creed and teaching, it must have made a difference. Once Christ is accepted as the Son of God, there is immediate interest not only in His prehistory, which John describes in the Prologue of his Gospel, but also in His history and particularly in His birth.
Is the Virgin Birth fitting and becoming? The challenge to our faith in the Virgin Birth is not related by anyone (except in the Jewish Talmud) to sinfulness on Mary's part. The challenge concerns the physical possibility of a miraculous process of life. By keeping His Mother absolutely stainless, He has prevented the doubts about His Divine Paternity from being such that they would wound her heart, her womanly heart. It is impossible for us to imagine or feel, even to a slight degree, the vast ocean of love of Christ for His Mother. Yet if even we were faced with the problem of keeping the miasmic breath of scandal from our own mothers, what would we not do? And is it therefore hard to believe that the omnipotent Son of God would do all in His power to protect His Own Mother? With this in mind, there are many conclusions apparent.
No great triumphant leader makes his entrance into the city over dust-covered roads when he could come on a flower-strewn avenue. Had Infinite Purity chosen any other port of entrance into humanity but that of human purity, it would have created a tremendous difficulty—namely, how could He be sinless if He was born of sin-laden humanity? If a brush dipped in black becomes black, and if cloth takes on the color of the dye, would not He, in the eyes of the world, have also partaken of the guilt in which all humanity shared? If He came to this earth through the wheatfield of moral weakness, He certainly would have some chaff hanging on the garment of His human nature.
Putting the problem in another way: How could God become man and yet be a sinless man and the Head of the new Humanity? First of all, He had to be a perfect man in order to act in our name, to plead our defense, and to pay our debt. If I am arrested for speeding, you cannot walk into the courtroom and say: "Judge, forget it, I will take the blame." If I am drowning, I cannot save anyone else who is drowning. Unless Our Lord is outside the sin-current of humanity, He cannot be Our Savior. "If the blind lead the blind, then both fall into the pit," said Our Lord. If He was to be the new Adam, the new Head of Humanity, the Founder of a new corporation or Mystical Body of regenerated humanity, as Adam was the head of fallen humanity, then He also had to be different from all other men. He had to be absolutely perfect, sinless, the Holy of Holies, all that God ever conceived man to be.
Such is the problem: How could God become man and yet be sinless man without Original Sin? How, in the language of St. Paul, could He "be like unto us in all things save sin"? How could He be a man, by being born of a woman? He could be a sinless man by being born of a virgin. The first statement is obvious: that He is born of a woman, then He shares in our humanity. But how would being born of a virgin make Him free from Original Sin?
Now, it must never be thought that the Incarnation would have been impossible without the Virgin Birth. Rash, indeed, would be the human mind to dictate to Almighty God the methods that He should use in coming to this earth. But once the Virgin Birth is revealed, then it is proper for us to inquire into its fitness, as we are now doing. The Virgin Birth is important because of its bearing upon the solidarity of the human race in guilt. The human race became incorporated to the first Adam by being born of the flesh; incorporation to the new Adam, Christ, is by being born of the spirit, or through a virgin birth. Thanks to it, we see how Our Blessed Lord entered into the sinful race from the outside. Therefore, upon Him the curse did not rest, save as He freely bore it for those whom He redeemed by His blood. Nowhere do the New Testament writers argue from the Virgin Birth to the Godhead of the Virgin-born. Rather do they argue from it His sinless humanity.
To sum up: in order that Jesus Christ might be a descendant of Adam, he had to be born of a daughter of Adam. But the process of generation and birth of any individual is invisible. The only way to show that this process in the birth of Christ was miraculous was to have its invisible workings develop in a woman agreed by all to be incapable of having experienced the process—a virgin. Joseph, the just man, stood for all humanity when in his heart he questioned the fidelity of Mary. More than any other person he knew how cruel it was to place that doubt even in the face of the most incontrovertible evidence. He witnessed to Mary's immaculate life and her amiability even before her Son was born. His doubt was settled by Heaven itself. St. Joseph, more than any other human being on this earth, had a right to know the circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus. And just as any husband is the prime witness of the fidelity of his wife, so, too, is Joseph in the case of Mary, his espoused; his testimony establishes for all men her virginity and the miraculous nature of the generation and birth of her Son.
As Father Joseph Tennant points out, there is a type of this miraculous birth in the story of Abraham and Sara. When they journeyed down to Egypt, Abraham asked Sara to say that she was his sister rather than his wife, lest the Egyptians kill him. The Pharaoh took her into his household. How long she lived with the Egyptian King is not indicated, but some space of time, and the Pharaoh and his household were punished with a sickness because of it. He finally dismissed both Abraham and Sara from his palace. There is no expression of divine wrath reported in this case. But after God had promised that Sara would bear a son whose father would be Abraham, it was important that there be no doubt in Abraham's mind or in anybody else's about the paternity of Sara's son. Some time after the promise, in Gerara, there was danger that the King, Abimelech, would take her into his harem. With shameful cowardice Abraham permitted it to be done. (He was punished for this when God ordered him to sacrifice Isaac.) But God intervened immediately by appearing to Abimelech at night and threatening to wipe out his whole kingdom if he dared to touch Sara. "And Abimelech forthwith rising up in the night. . . called for Abraham and said to him, 'What hast thou done to us?'" It was not enough merely to have protected Sara. Abraham had to know from the lips of Abimelech himself that Sara was untouched, just as Joseph did in the case of Mary. And thus Isaac, the first of the "children of promise" (Gal 4:28) and of the miraculous seed of Abraham, was born.
Mary was not sinless because she was a virgin, but the best sign of her sinlessness was her virginity. Just as the Gospels prove the humble humanity of Christ by naming among his ancestors Lamech, the boastful murderer; Abraham, the coward; Jacob, the liar; Judas, the adulterer; Ruth, the pagan; David, the murderer and adulterer; and many idolatrous kings, showing that He was like to us in all things except sin, so, too, the same Gospels disassociate Mary from all sin in order to show her to be as much as possible "in the image and likeness of God." Mary was of the house of David, but Christ's relationship to that line is not given through Mary, but through Joseph, His foster father. And it had to be that the Mother of God was sinless in order that we might more easily believe that she had flung before the face of the world woman's greatest challenge to sin—the vow of virginity— and kept it and made it bear divine fruit.
We do not believe that Jesus is God because He was born of a virgin mother, as the Apostles and Evangelists did not believe it for that reason alone. We believe in the Divinity of Christ because of the evidence of the Resurrection, the marvel of the Gospel portrait, the growth of the Church, the miracles and prophecies of Christ, the consonance of His doctrine with the aspirations of the human heart. The Virgin Birth is rather related to the manhood of Christ and His separateness from the sin that affected all men who are born of the union of man and woman. Far from treating the Virgin Birth as the dazzling mark of Divinity, the Te Deum regards it as Our Lord's sublime condescension to the lowly conditions of humanity:
When thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man: Thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb.
The Virgin Birth is the safeguard of the sinlessness of the human nature that Our Blessed Lord assumed. The only salvation that is given to men on this earth is in the name of Him Who as God Himself entered the ranks of sinful men. That no one should ever deny He was a man, He was born like the rest of men from the womb of a woman—a fact that so scandalized Marcion that he said: "A babe wrapped in swaddling clothes is not the kind of a God that I will adore."
In the Incarnation, God the Son initiates the process of the re-creation of His own earlier and disordered creation by the method of clothing Himself with those very elements within it that had fallen into disarray. For the first time since the Fall of Man, a completely perfected unit of humanity is created in the world. This humanity is united substantially to the very Person of the Son of God.
What do all denials of the Virgin Birth testify? Generally, to the subtle attempt to pull down the new order of humanity and the race of the second Adam into the unredeemed world of the old Adam. If a human father supplied the human nature of Christ, then Christ is not the new Adam. The Virgin Birth keeps the Divine initiative of Redemption to God Himself. If the initiation of the new order is given to man, then it is taken from God. Without the Virgin Birth, Our Lord would be entangled in a sinful humanity. With it, He is incarnate in humanity without its sin. By getting rid of the Virgin Birth, one seeks to get rid of the Divine initiative within the race of the new Adam. The early heretics doubted the humanity of Our Lord, and so they denied that He had a human mother. Modern agnostics doubt the true Divinity, so they add a human father to His parentage.
There is never any danger that men will think too much of Mary; the danger is that they will think too little of Christ. Coldness toward Mary is a consequence of indifference to Christ. Any objection to calling her the "Mother of God" is fundamentally an objection to the Deity of Christ. The consecrated term Theotokos, "Mother of God," has ever since 432 been the touchstone of the Christian Faith. It was not that the Church then had the intention of expanding Mariology; it was rather that she was concerned with Christological orthodoxy. As John of Damascus said: "This name contains the whole mystery of the Incarnation." Once Christ is diminished, humanized, naturalized, there is no longer any use for the term "Mother of God." It implies a twofold generation of the Divine Word: one eternal in the bosom of the Father, the other temporal in the womb of Mary. Mary therefore did not bear a "mere man" but the "true God." No new person came into the world when Mary opened the portals of the flesh, but the Eternal Son of God was made man. All that came into being was a new nature, or a human nature to a Person Who existed from all eternity. It was the Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Who became flesh and dwelt amongst us. Theanthropos, or God-Man, and Theotokos, or Mother of God, go together and fall together.
It will be discovered that so-called Christians who think they believe in the Divinity of Christ but do not believe in Mary as the Mother of God fall generally into four ancient heresies. They are Adoptionists, who believe that Christ was a mere man but after birth was adopted by God as His Son. Or they are Nestorians, who held that Mary gave birth to a man who had only a close union with Divinity. Or they are Eutychians, who denied the human nature of Christ and hence made Mary merely an instrument in a theophany. Or they are Docetists, holding that Christ's nature was only a phantom or an appearance. Those who are offended at reverence paid Mary, if they will analyze their thoughts, will discover that they are holding a Docetist or some similar ancient error. Even if they profess the Divinity of Christ in His earthly existence, such people shrink from affirming that His human nature is glorified with Him at the right hand of the Father, where He makes intercession for us. As some no longer think of Christ as God, so some no longer think of Christ as glorified Man. If He is no longer Man, then Mary is no longer His Mother. But if He is still Man, the relation of Mary to Him extends beyond Bethlehem and Calvary even to His Mystical Body the Church. No one, therefore, who thinks logically about Christ can understand such a question as: "Why do you speak so often of His Mother?"
The Virgin Birth, indeed, was a new type of generation. As our mind begets a thought without in any way destroying the mind, so Mary begot the Word within herself without in any way affecting her virginity. There are various ways of generating, but the three principal ways are carnal, intellectual, and Divine. The carnal is sexual, whether it be in animals or in humans. Second is the generation of a thought within the mind. I take the idea of "fortitude." That thought, or word (for it is a word even before I pronounce it), does not exist in the outside world. It has neither weight, nor color, nor longitude. Whence came it, then? It was begotten by the chaste generation of the mind. This intellectual generation is really a feeble image of the spiritual order of the Eternal Generation of the Son by the Father. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." God thinks a thought or a Word. But God does not think many thoughts or words. He thinks only one Word, which reaches to the abyss of all that is known or can be known. That Word is the perfect image of Himself as the Thinker. Because it has been eternally generated, God the Thinker is called the Father, as the principle of generation, and the Word is called the Son as the term of generation.
God willed that there be another kind of generation that would be neither wholly intellectual nor wholly carnal but, in the order of flesh, would reflect His eternal generation in time. God willed to take on a human nature like our own through a virgin, while conserving the virginity of His Mother, and showing precisely that He is the Word of God. As our mind does not alter or destroy itself in the begetting of a thought, so neither does the virginal body of Our Blessed Mother go through any alteration in begetting Him, as the Son of God made man. The Word of God willed that His generation in the order of the flesh and in time be elevated with as close a resemblance as possible to His Heavenly generation.
Christ is a Mediator between God and humanity; Mary is the Mediatrix between Christ and us. Our Lord is a Mediator between God and man. A mediator is like a bridge that unites two opposite banks of a river, except that here the bridge is between Heaven and earth. As you cannot touch the ceiling without a stepladder acting as a mediator, so sinful man could not in justice reach God, except by One Who mediated and was both God and man. As man, He could act in our name, take on our sins; as one of us, He redeems us on the Cross and gives us new life in His Resurrection. But as God, His words, miracles, and death have an infinite value, and therefore He restores more than we lost. God became man without ceasing to be either God or man and therefore is our Mediator, Our Savior, Our Divine Lord.
As we study His Divine life, seeing Him as the first refugee persecuted by a cruel government, working as a carpenter, teaching, and redeeming, we know that it all began when He took on our human nature and became man. If He had never taken on our human flesh, we would never have heard His Sermon on the Mount or have seen Him forgive those who dug His hands and feet with nails on the Cross. But the Woman gave Our Lord His human nature. He asked her to give Him a human life—to give Him hands with which to bless children, feet with which to go in search of stray sheep, eyes with which to weep over dead friends, and a body with which to suffer—that He might give us a rebirth in freedom and love.
It was through her that He became the bridge between the Divine and the human. If we take her away, then either God does not become man, or He that is born of her is a man and not God. Without her we would no longer have Our Lord! If we have a box in which we keep our money, we know that one thing we must always give attention to is the key; we never think that the key is the money, but we know that without the key we cannot get our money. Our Blessed Mother is like the key. Without her we can never get to Our Lord, because He came through her. She is not to be compared to Our Lord, for she is a creature and He is a Creator. But if we lose her, we cannot get to Him. That is why we pay so much attention to her; without her we could never understand how that bridge was built between Heaven and earth.
It may be objected: "Our Lord is enough for me. I have no need of her." But He needed her, whether we do or not. And, what is more important, Our Blessed Lord gave us His Mother as our Mother. On that Friday men call Good, when He was unfurled upon the Cross as the banner of salvation, He looked down to the two most precious creatures He had on earth: His Mother and His beloved disciple John. The night before, at the Last Supper, He had made His last Will and Testament, giving us that which on dying no man was ever able to give, namely, Himself in the Holy Eucharist. Thus He would be with us, as He said, "all days unto the consummation of the world." Now in the darkening shadows of Calvary, He adds a codicil to His will. There beneath the Cross, not prostrate, as the Gospel notes, "stood" His Mother. As a Son, He thought of His Mother; as a Savior, He thought of us. So He gave to us His Mother: "Behold thy mother."
At last we see illumined the Gospel's description of His birth, namely, that Mary "brought forth her first born and laid him in a manger." Her first born. St. Paul calls Him the "first born of all creatures." Does that mean that she was to have other children? Most certainly! But not according to the flesh, for Jesus was Her only Son. But she was to have other children by the spirit. Of these John is the first, born at the foot of the Cross, maybe Peter is the second, James, the third, and all of us the millionth and millionth of children. She gave birth in joy to Christ, Who redeemed us, then she gave birth in sorrow to us, whom Christ redeemed! Not by a mere figure of speech, not by a metaphor, but in virtue of Baptism did we become children of Mary and brothers of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Just as we do not shrink from the thought of God giving us His Father, so that we can pray: "Our Father," so neither do we rebel when He gives us His Mother, so that we can pray: "Our Mother." Thus the Fall of man is undone through another Tree, the Cross; Adam through another Adam, Christ; and Eve through the new Eve, Mary.
Born of the Virgin Mary: this is a true statement not only of Christ but also of every Christian, although in a lesser way. Every man is born of woman in the flesh as a member of the race of Adam. He is also born of the Woman in the Spirit if he is of the redeemed race of Christ. As she formed Jesus in her body, so she forms Jesus in our souls. In this one Woman are virginity and motherhood united, as if God willed to show us that both are necessary for the world. Things separated in other creatures are united in her. The Mother is the protector of the virgin, and the Virgin is also the inspiration of motherhood.
One cannot go to a statue of a mother holding a babe, hack away the mother, and expect to have the babe. Touch her and you spoil him. All other world religions are lost in myth and legend except Christianity. Christ is cut off from all the gods of paganism because He is tied to woman and to history. "Born of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate." Coventry Patmore rightly calls Mary "Our only Savior from an abstract Christ." It is easier to understand the meek and humble heart of Christ by looking at His Mother. She holds all the great Truths of Christianity together, as a piece of wood holds a kite. Children wrap the string of a kite around a stick and release the string as the kite climbs to the heavens. Mary is like that piece of wood. Around her we wrap all the precious strings of the great Truths of our holy Faith—for example, the Incarnation, the Eucharist, the Church. No matter how far we get above the earth, as the kite may, we always have need of Mary to hold the doctrines of the Creed together. If we threw away the stick, we would no longer have the kite; if we threw away Mary, we would never have Our Lord. He would be lost in the Heavens, like our runaway kite, and that would be terrible, indeed, for us on earth.
Mary does not prevent our honoring Our Lord. Nothing is more cruel than to say that she takes souls away from Christ. That could mean that Our Lord chose a mother who is selfish, He Who is Love itself. If she kept us from her Son, we would disown her! But is not she, who is the Mother of Jesus, good enough for us sinners? We would never have had Our Divine Lord if He had not chosen her.
We pray to the Heavenly Father, "Give us this day our daily bread." Though we ask God for our daily bread, we do not hate the farmer and the baker who help prepare it. Neither does the mother who gives the bread to her child dispense with the Heavenly Provider. If the only charge Our Lord has against us on Judgment Day is that we loved His Mother—then we shall be very happy!
As our love does not start with Mary, so neither does it stop with Mary. Mary is a window through which our humanity first catches a glimpse of Divinity on earth. Or perhaps she is more like a magnifying glass; she intensifies our love of her Son and makes our prayers more bright and burning.
God, Who made the sun, also made the moon. The moon does not take away from the brilliance of the sun. The moon would be only a burnt-out cinder floating in the immensity of space were it not for the sun. All its light is reflected from the sun. The Blessed Mother reflects her Divine Son; without Him, she is nothing. With Him, she is the Mother of Men. On dark nights we are grateful for the moon; when we see it shining, we know there must be a sun. So in this dark night of the world when men turn their backs on Him Who is the Light of the World, we look to Mary to guide their feet while we await the sunrise.
|
|
|
|
| Archbishop Viganò: Homily on the Ascension of the Lord |
|
Posted by: Stone - 05-10-2024, 05:07 AM - Forum: Archbishop Viganò
- No Replies
|
|
SIC VENIET
Homily on the Ascension of the Lord
Taken from here.
Et inimici domini domestici ejus.
And the master’s family will be his enemies. Mt 10:36
Too often, we look at this world with the attitude and hopes of those who consider it a place of permanence rather than a passage to the heavenly goal, while we know that our pilgrimage on this earth has eternity as its inescapable destination: an eternity of bliss in the glory of Paradise or an eternity of damnation in the despair of the flames of Hell. And because of our inclination to believe in an illusory Hic manebimus optime, we consider the Ascension of Our Lord almost as an anomalous event, an abandonment on the part of the Savior who leaves us alone just forty days after His Resurrection.
The flame of the Paschal Candle that is extinguished after the chanting of the Gospel – signifying precisely the return of the Incarnate Son to the right hand of the Father – seems to us, so to speak, in contradiction with what we asked the divine Majesty a few days ago, through the Rogations: to grant, preserve and bless the fruits of the earth, to spare us from the scourge of earthquake, to ward off lightning and storm, pestilence, famine, and war.
It is difficult – we must admit this – to be able to pass through a place that we would like to be happy and prosperous, fertile and generous, serene and free of conflicts. It is even more difficult when, looking up to the sky, we often see it furrowed by trails with which evil and ruthless men poison the air we breathe, pollute fields and springs, rot or dry up crops, and even go so far as to obscure the sunlight. The inimicus homo does not only scatter the weeds where the wheat grows: he wants the weeds to be sown and cultivated, and the wheat to be uprooted and thrown into the fire; vice to triumph and virtue to be trampled underfoot; death and sickness to be celebrated, and life – even in the shrine of the womb or in the innocence of children and the weak – to be struck, scarred, amputated, and tampered with.
We remain incredulous and shocked in the face of this subversion, because we do not want to accept the idea that in addition to the hostile nature that began to exist after our fall, there has now been added the further snare of homo iniquus et dolosus, which that nature manipulates, replicates, and imitates through grotesque artificial surrogates, transgenic foods, and soulless imitations of Creation, because of the hatred that Satan nurtures towards the Creator of such gratuitous perfection.
The Lord rises from this valley of tears, ascends to heaven in jubilatione et in voce tubæ, as if the angelic hosts were happy to see the Son of God return to his place of origin, to that eternal and immutable dimension in which the Most Holy Trinity is the Only Beginning and End of the chosen spirits. But He ascends to it after He too descended propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem, becoming incarnate in the virginal womb of Mary Most Holy, taking on human nature and flesh, facing the Passion and Death on that Cross which raised Him as Pontifex futurorum bonorum (Heb 9:11), High Priest of future goods, halfway between earth and heaven, to create a mystical bridge between us and God. And that humanity assumed by Our Lord in the Incarnation is borne as the insignia of triumph of the Victor Rex in the presence of the Eternal Father, and that is why His Most Holy Body still bears the Wounds of Redemption shining.
This should help us understand two extremely important concepts. First: the meaning of our earthly life, which is a pilgrimage to eternity, an exile that we hope with God’s grace will be temporary, before returning to our true homeland. And with this conviction, we must also understand that the goods of this earth – riches, success, power, pleasures – are ballast that we must get rid of if we are to be able to ascend upwards, to soar as the biblical eagle flies towards the Divine Sun. Second: the need to treasure this exile, this pilgrimage in the desert towards the Promised Land, using the gifts and making fruitful use of the talents that the Lord has given us, not to make the distance from Heaven more comfortable and lasting, but to accumulate those spiritual treasures that neither moth nor rust consume, and that thieves do not break in and steal (Mt 6:20).
This does not mean despising the life that Providence has given us, but rather using it for the purpose it has: the glory of God, to be obtained through our own and others’ sanctification in obedience to His will: fiat voluntas tua – we recite in the Our Father – sicut in cœlo et in terra, that is, in the perspective of the eternity that awaits us, and in the temporality of the passing of days.
Thus, while the divine harmony of the cosmos marks the days and seasons in which the years of our earthly life unfold – and for this reason we invoke blessings from Heaven upon our harvests – in the supernatural order we have the rhythmic cadences of the Liturgy, which allow us to contemplate the divine Mysteries and to enjoy a glimpse of that eternity in which the Immaculate Lamb celebrates the heavenly Liturgy, surrounded by the hosts of Angels and Saints.
Today our soul is called to look to the Lord who goes before us to Paradise. Tomorrow, resurrected in our bodies and led to the Judgment, we will see Him return in glory: Hic Jesus, qui assumptus est a vobis in cœlum, sic veniet quemadmodum vidistis eum ascendentem in cœlum (Acts 1:11) – This Jesus, who was taken up from among you into heaven, will return one day in the same way as you saw him go into heaven, say the two Angels to the Disciples. And it will be a return in which time, as we know it, will cease to be and will enter into divine eternity precisely because the consummatum est pronounced by the agonizing Savior on the Cross on Good Friday 1,991 years ago will also be valid for the world and for the whole of humanity, when it has reached the end of trial, exile, and earthly pilgrimage.
The Paschal Candle represents, as the Deacon instructs us in the solemn hymn of the Exsultet, the Lumen Christi, Christ the true Light: as the pillar of fire that preceded the Jews in crossing the Red Sea, so He also precedes us in our passage through this world, and in our flight from the wicked who pursue us. Let us pray that we may be found worthy to reach safety, lest we be swept away by the waters like Pharaoh’s soldiers. May the Most Holy Eucharist be our Viaticum, and may the Immaculate Virgin be our Star. And so may it be.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
May 9, 2024
In Ascensione Domini
|
|
|
|
|
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi2.wp.com%2Fwww.discern...ipo=images]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi2.wp.com%2Fwww.discerninghearts.com%2Fcatholic-podcasts%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F05%2Fpentecost.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=819109e10c50ced781b334f47b5d3bc5b05ada5ab6f11c6106f184515217884f&ipo=images)
![[Image: ?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi2.wp.com%2Fepicpew.com...ipo=images]](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi2.wp.com%2Fepicpew.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F05%2F5.jpg%3Fresize%3D602%252C887%26ssl%3D1&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=4093f0b72c2de31425ee4a9256bfddadba046d71665ef938fd25d9c60ebdb1f2&ipo=images)
