tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56044237810887915672024-03-14T02:46:33.419-05:00St. Bruno's Family"I am living here in the wilderness of Calabria, far removed from all human habitation. There are some brethren here with me, some of whom are very well educated, and they are keeping assiduous watch for their Lord, so as to open to Him at once when He knocks." St. BrunoSt. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.comBlogger186125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-9150424117629622023-10-06T12:13:00.002-05:002023-10-06T12:13:42.724-05:00<p> By the Grace of God, today on St. Bruno's feast day, I have been consecrated for 10 years. Let us pray together that we may serve God at his pleasure, Fr. Brian.<><</p>St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-48982329973953414962021-10-25T06:09:00.000-05:002021-10-25T06:09:27.487-05:00ORDAINED<p style="text-align: center;"> Ordained October 23rd, 2021</p>St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-14106944605174493362021-09-08T05:55:00.006-05:002021-09-08T05:55:55.040-05:00ORDINATION<p> By the Grace of God, I will be ordained a hermit priest on October 23rd, 2021.</p>St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-76878102249047500932021-07-01T15:30:00.003-05:002021-07-01T15:32:37.742-05:00Letter to my Archbishop.<p> My Archbishop asked me to write a letter that he could take to the Council of Priest in our Diocese as a final act of deciding to ordain me. Here it is:</p><p>Peace and joy to you Your Grace;</p><p>Over time in my vocational journey with you, we have shared much material addressing my hermit’s vocation and also of a hermit priest. Although some of this material shared between us may be reflected here, my purpose, as best I can, is to share more of a personal aspect of my vocation.</p><p>Early in my life as a hermit, I found that it is not about receiving praise and notoriety. It involves accepting one’s poverty of one’s own heart and allowing oneself to be led by Jesus. It is a call to deeper self-discovery and embracing who you really think you are in the light of the Father’s healing love. I believe that in embracing this healing love it allows a person to be a conduit of God’s universal love for all. As Bishop Delaquis wrote: “This is a special way to ‘be Christ’, taking on the sin of the world on the cross, (which calls for suffering and dying to oneself and to sin) and calling on the mercy of God to transform sin into grace, new Life, for the greatest Glory of God.</p><p>In my years of reflecting on a hermit vocation, my experience has led me to believe that a journey through the desert of self is also a journey to the foundation of mankind itself and here unity of mankind is also a part of the Body of Christ. Here is Christ with his love available for all. And the hermit brings to the Church, indeed the world, the sense of transcendence in a world that tends to live and organize itself without any reference to the divine or accepting God’s Revelation or understanding His presence in this world. I find that there has been much thought and innovation given to mankind’s well-being over human history, but in recent times little depth of thought is given to who he really is, and by my life of silence and solitude I find opportunities are there for Christ’s action to open up new vistas on the understanding of mankind; I believe that mankind needs this contemplative service of love: a renewed sense of transcendence. And the hermit is transformed by the Word in order to preach by his life.</p><p>In part, I have also found that learning to live in the present through silence and solitude, opens up new opportunities for the action of Grace. Though God did not come to solve all our problems we would probably have fewer problems if God were more present in our thinking and living. A hermit is a ‘conduit’ to that source of Wisdom and Life as a desert intercessor for all. And a life lived in a desert is an environment that can be very fruitful for finding the necessary life of prayer:</p><p>He found them in a wilderness, *</p><p>a wasteland of howling desert.</p><p>He shielded them and cared for them, *</p><p>guarding them as the apple of his eye.</p><p>As an eagle incites its nestlings forth *</p><p>by hovering over its brood,</p><p>so he spread his wings to receive them *</p><p>and bore them up on his pinions.</p><p>The Lord alone was their leader, *</p><p>no strange god was with him.</p><p>Deuteronomy 32</p><p>The call to priesthood ordination has always been a part of me and has deeply matured in my years as a hermit, and in order to obey this call, I have submitted my belief in this call to your pastoral discernment Archbishop Albert. I found that living a life of silence and solitude needs a foundation of Liturgy, the necessary environment to support self-understanding and the spiritual connection with the Body of Christ. Here is the reality in which we all live and move. And Liturgy is formative: lex orandi, lex credendi – the law of praying is the law of believing:</p><p>“Worship, that is, the right kind of cult, of relationship with God, is essential for the right kind of human existence in the world. It is so precisely because it reaches beyond everyday life. Worship gives us a share in heaven’s mode of existence, in the world of God, and allows light to fall from that divine world into ours. In this sense, worship…has the character of anticipation” Ratzinger</p><p>I note with joy that during this time of the pandemic that priests of this diocese, for the most part, are celebrating Mass ‘in private’, alone, and those celebrations are meaningful and important. Although the people of God are not in the same location as the celebration, the spiritual efficacy, indeed the actualization of Christ’s salvific work and His love for the Father and the good of all is present. As a hermit-priest, I would be celebrating this same Mass and for the same reasons as noted above. As Pope St. Paul VI has written in support of this vocational understanding:</p><p>“…A sound perspective of the fitting relationship between both consecrations, that proper to the priest, and that proper to the hermit/monk. Indeed, solitude, the absolute loss of the goods of the world, the abnegation of one’s own will: things that are undertaken by those who enclose themselves within the bounds of a monastery/hermitage, most singularly prepare the soul of the priest to be devoutly and ardently offered up for the Eucharistic sacrifice which is the source and summit of the whole Christian life.”</p><p>I believe that serving God as a hermit-priest in obedience to you, Archbishop Albert, is to serve the whole Body of Christ and reaches out to all beyond committees, programs and ministries and makes merciful Love possible for all. Celebrating the Eucharist opens me to be open to and founded on God’s action and expressing that great love for His creation through celebrating the Eucharist. This reality moves beyond the natural limitations of myself.</p><p>Your obedient servant;</p><p>Br. Brian <><, er dio.</p>St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-55126916585736356182020-11-24T08:59:00.001-06:002020-11-24T08:59:22.412-06:00A quote of a hermit to his pastor.<p> </p><div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-unicode"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br />
</span><span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">After our last meeting, while
reflecting on the fruitfulness of a hermit priest, I remembered
that I have a few friends who are involved with the Carthusians
[as I am] or are Carthusians. They do not take a vow of silence but use silence to support one another and as a tool for opening their hearts to God, and they write very little. I am honored that I do have some contact with them, and occasionally I
receive some good reflections from them in our exchanges. Here
are a few thoughts I have received and reflected on:<br />
</span></span>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">How efficacious for
the world is the Eucharist when celebrated by a Carthusian
Father alone in his chapel! « Separated from all, we are
united to all for it is in the name of all that we present
ourselves to the living God. » (Statutes 34.2) Commentary:
The Carthusian did not choose solitude for its own sake, but
because he saw in it an excellent means for him to attain a
deeper union with God and all mankind. It is upon entering
the recesses of his heart that the Carthusian solitaries
become, in Christ, present to all men. He becomes a solitary
to attain solidarity. Contemplatives are at the heart of the
Church. They fulfill an essential function in the
ecclesiastical community: the glorification of God.
Carthusians withdraw to the desert first and foremost to
worship God, to praise him [the Eucharist and liturgy of
hours], to admire him, to be seduced by him, to give
themselves to him, in the name of all of mankind. It is in
the name of all that they are mandated by the Church to be a
permanent prayer.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Intercession:
commentary: Since the very beginning the Church recognized
that monks tied to contemplation act as intercessors.
Representing all of creation, on a daily basis, at all the
liturgical offices and during the Eucharistic celebration,
they pray for the living and the dead.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Witness: from their
Statutes: « Turned, by our profession, solely toward Him who
is, we are witness in face of a world engrossed in the
earthly realities that outside of Him there is no God. Our
life shows that the good from heaven is already to be found
on earth; it is a precursor of the resurrection and like an
anticipation of a renewed world. » Statutes 34.3
Commentary: For the solitaries, being such a witness is not
realized by speech, nor by personal contact. By his mere
presence, the monk is a witness that God lives and can take
over the hearts of men.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">From Vita Consecrata,
#30: In the priest, in fact, the vocation to the priesthood
and the vocation to the consecrated life converge in a
profound and dynamic unity. Also of immeasurable value is
the contribution made to the Church's life by religious
priests completely</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> devoted to contemplation. Especially in the
celebration of the Eucharist they carry out an act of the
Church and for the Church, to which <b>they join the
offering of themselves, in communion with Christ who
offers himself to the Father for the salvation of the
whole world.</b></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><br />
</span></blockquote>
</div>St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-15494762793937650832020-10-25T16:30:00.002-05:002020-10-25T16:30:26.173-05:00 QUIET DAY AT THE HERMITAGE.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRpy1WrDPbesf0qepZ_a62eBemysWFbFbkjN92XBjQb-dt2TN4PrDpQhy7reH5U0bP0zE12ERbSfDxOCsA3109K2aMAusFI-4jKbLgZ0CHQMFvSDh-v4g_z7BKBAlm4uPatXx-SCeF_Hs/s1008/20201025_104455.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="756" data-original-width="1008" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRpy1WrDPbesf0qepZ_a62eBemysWFbFbkjN92XBjQb-dt2TN4PrDpQhy7reH5U0bP0zE12ERbSfDxOCsA3109K2aMAusFI-4jKbLgZ0CHQMFvSDh-v4g_z7BKBAlm4uPatXx-SCeF_Hs/s320/20201025_104455.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicgRiSC_CVmfF1CFn3Z0qlakH1oRx-idCrfMRarYarTFUj7hMl5Cr8hrUyfEYK0_qDrGDhKZYNny2ZD8_dJZ_gGX-4jYAZO3_6-fo5cr72Evpaju0soR75CSfUgdtULMoyHCOpV4Trwnk/s2048/20201025_104501.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicgRiSC_CVmfF1CFn3Z0qlakH1oRx-idCrfMRarYarTFUj7hMl5Cr8hrUyfEYK0_qDrGDhKZYNny2ZD8_dJZ_gGX-4jYAZO3_6-fo5cr72Evpaju0soR75CSfUgdtULMoyHCOpV4Trwnk/s320/20201025_104501.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-8394026637860603052020-06-29T05:29:00.000-05:002020-06-29T05:29:12.056-05:00Hermit Deacon, June 27th, 2020<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwz0v4V-FPRx2GM8Pd8a4sRh4qqyNSbVLKqQCFb281kFVYCVCqaX76Uqpg3ZaV-kea0UsrSZziN3acjlMKpi8WLaGo2AAl65CZbWWI3TpykNCW8g45aS9kIjSL_WTDqw_wEtBurZee0eA/s1600/IMG_0857.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwz0v4V-FPRx2GM8Pd8a4sRh4qqyNSbVLKqQCFb281kFVYCVCqaX76Uqpg3ZaV-kea0UsrSZziN3acjlMKpi8WLaGo2AAl65CZbWWI3TpykNCW8g45aS9kIjSL_WTDqw_wEtBurZee0eA/s640/IMG_0857.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
<br />St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-14956287223262050282020-03-25T08:09:00.001-05:002020-03-25T08:11:01.205-05:00AN UPDATEFrom my Director:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;">I want to share a few thoughts with you this morning,
the date after the night before.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;">Yesterday, at my request, you made a special step
forward, simple but meaningful, a step of commitment, a step of entering more
clearly in the journey of yours on the way to the Ordination to the diaconate
and the ministerial priesthood. You express your desire of giving yourself in Christ,
you also express the willingness to respond to the grace of God. You enter into
the Will of God as officially recognized by the Church or the Pastor of the
local Church. The engagement and the direction are more officially
acknowledged; you enter ‘officially’ on the way to the Ordination. Your
vocation as a hermit was already sanctioned officially over five years ago.
Your vocation takes a more definite direction to enter more deeply in the
Mystery of Christ giving his life out of love for the salvation of the world
and for the greatest glory of God. Congratulation and may the good Lord
continue His Work in you; and continue to keep your heart open to His grace.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;">I think it is also meaningful that you should become a
candidate to the ordained priesthood in the midst of the crisis or pandemic
that we are going through, a time when all the Masses celebrated for the public
or in public are now cancelled. BUT it is highly recommended that the priests
would continue to pray and to celebrate the Eucharist privately for the people
entrusted to their care in particular. I think, for you, this would be a very
special sign that celebrating Mass ‘in private’, alone, is still very
meaningful and important. It seems that it tells us that the celebration of the
Mass is important on its own and not necessarily as a means of bring the
faithful people together and to celebrate their communion in Christ.
Encouraging the priests to celebrate also reminds us that the celebration of
the Mass is indeed the representation and commemoration (and shall we say: the
actualisation) of the salvific work of Christ for the world, out of love for
his Father and for the good of all people. I think this is a confirmation of
what you are preparing yourself for, namely the offering of your life in Christ
for the glory of God and the salvation of the world, bringing the ultimate
answer and victory in Christ to all ills and evil that may happen to </span>us
in </b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;">our
confused world.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;">Let us not be overcome by the fear and anxiety that
the pandemic may ignite in the heart of people, but may we stand firm in Faith
and Hope relying on the One who is our salvation and LIFE. <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext;">Have a blessed day, in the Lord,</span></b></div>
</blockquote>
My ordination to the diaconate will probably go ahead (April 15th) as there will be few people involved. b.<><St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-44746414733713435902019-09-23T06:58:00.000-05:002019-09-23T06:58:07.339-05:00My Soul Thirsts, no. 5<br />
“[T]he basic challenge is to ‘show’ men the beauty of the face of God manifested in Christ Jesus so that they are attracted to Him. If we want everyone to know and love Jesus Christ and, through Him, [to come to a personal encounter] with God, the Church can not be perceived only as a moral educator or defender of truths, but above all as a teacher of spirituality and [a place in which to come to have a deeply human] experience of the living God.”<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.conferenciaepiscopal.es/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/DF-Nota-doctrinal-sobre-la-oracio%C3%ACn_AFINT-1.pdf" target="_blank">Spain's Bishops</a>St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-47540842523207066042019-09-12T14:41:00.000-05:002019-09-12T14:41:11.713-05:00The Sacraments<br />
<br />
In his sacramental theology, Aquinas makes two great points that are very pertinent in this regard. One is that we are, as animals, in need of being touched by the grace of God. This is the point of the sacraments. In the seven sacraments instituted by Christ, we are receiving what is most transcendent and what is most essential to our happiness: God and life with God. In itself, the mystery of God is transcendent and evades us, but <b>in the sacraments, we receive what is most transcendent—what we most need—in the most connatural way, even directly through the senses.</b> Not even through a book! That’s a very beautiful way to receive God (through the Scriptures), but really to touch God, that’s the sacramental life. It’s very interesting to watch a baby being baptized and to think about how Divine Life is being infused into the immaterial soul of this child by pouring water on its head. Or the Eucharist: you can hold it in your hand, you can receive it on your tongue. <b>You are being nourished by the death of Christ; you are being nourished by the life of Christ resurrected.</b> That is very mysterious, but it is so simple. It’s about receiving love from God in the most connatural way and then, when we receive these physical signs, grace truly acts upon us! When someone says the words of pardon over you in the sacrament of confession—when they say little words over you—Christ acts and your sins are forgiven. It’s amazing!<br />
<br />
So we receive God through the most connatural forms but also, secondly, this knits together the Church as a community, not a church of my own making in my own mind, but the Church that Christ founded. We live in the Church that the Apostles founded, based on the apostolic succession of the bishops and priests. Yes, the mediocre bishops and priests and the mediocre laypeople. The mediocre people of God, but kept alive through this living bond of the sacraments that keeps us as a family bound together in the death and resurrection of Christ. This is a serious religion, a visible religion—one in which you can truly live, truly die and truly attain to eternal life. Human beings put up protests and say that Catholicism is too monolithic, but deep down our human nature is made for the kinds of challenge to conversion and holiness that traditional Catholicism presents. There is no point in proposing to other people an unserious religion. And Aquinas’ sacramental vision gives you a serious religion to propose to people. The sacraments are causes of grace. God causes grace in the soul through this set of physical gestures that Christ gave the Apostles, that the Apostles gave to the Church, and that the Church brings to us.<br />
<br />
Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OPSt. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-69103339038080942612019-09-05T08:01:00.000-05:002019-09-05T08:01:21.236-05:00 Dietrich Bonhoeffer<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
<i>Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ<u><span style="color: blue;">.</span></u></i><i></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
<i>Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light.</i></div>
St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-45672199618277537392019-08-27T08:43:00.000-05:002019-08-27T08:43:21.192-05:00Contemplative thoughtThough I have read this Psalm many, many times its deeper meaning hit me powerfully this morning. I do not change the world or self by all my thinking, planning or scheming. The needed changes come through gazing on the Lord through Liturgy and Scripture and allowing them to affect my deeper self, my soul, like a river can smooth rock in its riverbed over time.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: "Book Antiqua";">
A king is not saved by his army,<br />nor a warrior preserved by his strength.<br />A vain hope for safety is the horse;<br />despite its power it cannot save.</div>
<div style="font-family: "Book Antiqua";">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Book Antiqua";">
The Lord looks on those who revere him,<br />on those who hope in his love,<br />to rescue their souls from death,<br />to keep them alive in famine.</div>
<div style="font-family: "Book Antiqua";">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Book Antiqua";">
Our soul is waiting for the Lord.<br />The Lord is our help and our shield.<br />In him do our hearts find joy.<br />We trust in his holy name.</div>
<div style="font-family: "Book Antiqua";">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Book Antiqua";">
May your love be upon us, O Lord,<br />as we place all our hope in you.</div>
St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-86899756394475754452019-08-25T14:58:00.000-05:002019-08-25T14:58:15.912-05:00St. John of the Cross.<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 17px;">O soul most beautiful among all creatures, who dost long so ardently to know where thy Beloved is so that you may meet Him and be united with Him, at last you have been told that you yourself are the place where He dwells, and the hiding place where He is concealed. Well may you rejoice, knowing that your whole good, the object of your love, is so close to you, that He dwells in you, or to express it better, you cannot be without Him!</span>St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-64266269351728983352019-08-16T18:50:00.002-05:002019-08-16T18:50:48.567-05:00Traditions.<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="center">
<span style="font-size: large;">Traditions are the solution to forgotten problems,<br />
Throw them out<br />
And the problems return.</span><br />
</div>
<br />St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-59222173283934627922019-08-13T15:33:00.000-05:002019-08-13T15:33:00.032-05:00Benedict XVI<br />
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"We are living in alienation, in the salt waters of suffering and death; in a sea of darkness without light. The net of the Gospel pulls us out of the waters of death and brings us into the splendour of God’s light, into true life. It is really true: as we follow Christ in this mission to be fishers of men, we must bring men and women out of the sea that is salted with so many forms of alienation and onto the land of life, into the light of God. It is really so: the purpose o<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">f our lives is to reveal God to men. And only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him. The task of the shepherd, the task of the fisher of men, can often seem wearisome. But it is beautiful and wonderful because it is truly a service to joy, to God’s joy which longs to break into the world."</span></div>
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St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-13313325363385644092019-08-02T05:18:00.002-05:002019-08-02T05:18:37.920-05:00A MOMENT IN TIME.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-16989018290079365272019-07-26T10:01:00.001-05:002019-07-26T10:01:50.448-05:00This Morning's hike.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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For the most part, my hikes are in solitude. I came across this painted stone on my hike this morning and mused on the thought of God's natural beauty found while hiking, but also that man can contribute too.St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-77283795162112863422019-02-16T07:30:00.000-06:002019-02-16T07:30:31.767-06:00THE EVIL OF BANALITY<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Open Sans", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin-bottom: 20px;">
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The deeper illness is that we have forgotten the sense of mysticism and participation in the transcendent and swapped divine worship for a happy meal, campfire songs and a pep talk. As someone else wittily put it, “We have traded our birthright not for a mess of pottage, but for a pot of message.”</div>
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It gets worse I’m afraid. This travesty of worship which passes for the majority of Catholic masses in the USA is the sign of an even deeper disease–a fundamental lack of belief in the transcendental and supernatural aspect of our faith. We are not reverent in God’s house because we don’t really believe he is dwelling there. We do not kneel to receive him because we think our “human dignity” is more important than his divine majesty. We do not truly worship because we have come to believe that the church is just a place to meet our friends and talk about changing the world.</div>
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What is the answer? I’m not sure, because in our utilitarian consumerist society the language of sign and symbol of liturgy and drama has largely disappeared.</div>
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I sense, however, a return of the human spirit to these fundamental things, and it is in the stirrings of the religious life. I think more and more young men and women will be called to the enclosed life of prayer and from that source will come to the renewal of the imagination that will spark a counteraction.</div>
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<a href="https://dwightlongenecker.com/the-evil-of-banality/" target="_blank">Fr. Dwight Longenecker</a></div>
St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-61871138995197264882019-01-20T05:15:00.000-06:002019-01-20T05:16:09.670-06:00A HERMIT'S CONSIDERATION.<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">O hermit;</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Replace the <i>shoulds</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">of your life</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">with</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">God's love for the world,</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">through you.</span></div>
St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-47862101185947894032019-01-18T03:49:00.000-06:002019-01-18T03:49:52.494-06:00FROM: The Book of Elders<br />
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# 15. A brother asked Abba Isaiah. "How does one maintain <i>hesychia </i>in the cell?" The Elder answered, "To maintain <i>hesychia </i>in the cell is to thrust oneself into the presence of God and, to the best of one's ability, to withstand every <i>logismos </i>sowed by the enemy, for that is to flee from the world." The brother said, "What is the world?" and the elder replied, "The is distraction by affairs; the world is to perform what is contrary to nature and to satisfy one's own desires of the flesh; the world is to think that one is remaining in this age; the world is to care for the body rather than the soul and to boast of what you are leaving behind. I did not say this on my own authority; it is the Apostle John who says this: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world." [1 John 2:15]<br />
<br />St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-24145978503954384642019-01-08T09:54:00.000-06:002019-01-08T09:54:02.158-06:00Fund Rasinghttps://www.gofundme.com/building-solitude<br />
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<img src="https://d2g8igdw686xgo.cloudfront.net/34563036_1542317132657457_r.jpeg" />St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-56737089715506804622018-08-08T08:55:00.000-05:002018-08-08T08:55:58.707-05:00Enough Already by Anthony Esolen<br />
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Let us hear no more from priests, prelates, and Catholic writers dissenting from the truth – from reason, from Scripture, from the constant and clear teaching of the Church in the matter of the creation of mankind male and female, the one-flesh union willed by God from the beginning, the raising of boys to be men and girls to be women, made <em style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">for one another</em>, the goodness and the reality of sex and its natural expressions in human culture, the created nature of marriage which is as obvious to the old pagan as to the Christian, the inadmissibility of severing the pleasure of the sexual act from its biological aim and its bodily meaning, the indissolubility of marriage, and the warnings by the last several popes, of loneliness and confusion and unhappiness that result from the evil of all kinds of mockery of marriage, including consensual and habitual fornication.</div>
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Let us hear no more about softening the sense that acts that violate the structure of the sexes themselves are perverse. Let us have no more ungrateful denigration of genuine masculinity and femininity. Let us see no more of the craven submission to all of the foul lies of mass entertainment and mass education, so that a Catholic school is but a year or two behind the times – the <em style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">New York Times.</em></div>
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Let us hear no more about pronouns from you priests, prelates, and Catholic writers who perpetrated outrages upon the souls and bodies of young priests and seminarians, and you who covered for them, for reasons best known and kept to yourselves, <em style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">but for no reason sufficient to excuse you, </em>and to prevent you from doing the honorable thing. If you have a position of authority, and you did nothing, you should resign. You may be replaced. You are not indispensable. Enough already.</div>
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Several years ago, the bishop of the Canadian diocese where we live in the summer was caught in a routine check at an airport. He had pornographic images of children in his possession. The Canadian media would not be more specific than that. He had to resign in disgrace, and he did a little bit of time, not much, in prison. He is now, according to word I have from an orthodox priest, living with another man. No surprise to anyone. He had made a habit of flying to peculiar destinations across the world, destinations that had no connection whatever to the ethnic or cultural character of his largely rural diocese. In those places flesh is cheap.</div>
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If it is true that he has settled down now to a comfortable elderly life of sin, it is an example not of repentance but of contumacy and defiance. Where is the shame? This diocese was not rife with homosexual priests preying upon adolescent boys, but it had a few, and the parishes, hardly flush with money, have been reduced to penury by the costs of the settlements. He knew that at the time and he knows it still. An elderly lady in our village bequeathed $165,000 to her beloved neighborhood church to keep it open, and the parishioners sweat blood to do work on the building themselves rather than hiring a contractor. All of that money was rifled.</div>
<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_36542" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma; font-size: 14px; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 712px;"><img alt="" class=" wp-image-36542" height="548" sizes="(max-width: 712px) 100vw, 712px" src="https://1hx5ll3ickiy2waa471l3o2x-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/71fda31598cf26a12457dfd5655e91c3.jpg" srcset="https://1hx5ll3ickiy2waa471l3o2x-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/71fda31598cf26a12457dfd5655e91c3.jpg 1245w, https://1hx5ll3ickiy2waa471l3o2x-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/71fda31598cf26a12457dfd5655e91c3-300x231.jpg 300w, https://1hx5ll3ickiy2waa471l3o2x-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/71fda31598cf26a12457dfd5655e91c3-768x590.jpg 768w, https://1hx5ll3ickiy2waa471l3o2x-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/71fda31598cf26a12457dfd5655e91c3-1024x787.jpg 1024w" style="height: 200px; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: auto;" width="712" /></figure><figure class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_36542" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma; font-size: 14px; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 712px;"><i style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Dancing with Demons </i>by David Rijckaert III<br /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text" style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">*</figcaption></figure><div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma; font-size: 14px; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Every single parish was picked clean, and now the diocese has no seminarians, and still there is no shame from the chancery.</div>
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I do not pretend that the faithful in the pews are without sin. In part, we have gotten even worse leadership from our shepherds than we deserved, but we did not deserve much. Everyone has been scorched and smudged and smutted up by the sexual devolution. Everyone has made a habit of winking and turning away. No one is blameless. “The Church is a harlot in the stews because I helped put her there” – that is what every Christian ought to say, because it is no more than the truth.</div>
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Yet some Christians, some Roman Catholics, have been fighting a thankless fight not only to repent of their wrong but to heal what they have hurt, and rebuild what they have knocked down.</div>
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Now it is that we need our shepherds to lead us in that fight, not to check us at every pass, to weigh our spirits down with the smog of their bureaucratic verbiage, and to smile at those in the know and give them the tacit sign that nothing will change. I lead no battle <em style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">against </em>the episcopacy, which was most to blame for the scandals of the last fifteen years and which administered to itself no punishment at all, but instead laid a flattering unction to their collective episcopal souls.</div>
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I want to believe in the bishops. I certainly accept the authority of the office. But if you do not want to fight the fight that is before us, you need to get out of the way and let a man who is willing to do it be the general. No more blandness and tea. Every single prelate, priest, or Catholic author who knew about the spiritual incest and the creepy perversions of the now disgraced former bishop of the nation’s capital and who did nothing should, for just this once, own up to the failure and leave.</div>
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Please, leave. Retire, pray, read, think, do anything at all that the Lord may smile upon, but do not any longer for one moment burden the Church with your dead weight. You are an embarrassment to both believer and infidel. Leave.</div>
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Let us give a chance, meanwhile, to the true young men, priests of God who are young enough to be under no illusions about what has happened in the generations before theirs. How could they possibly fare <em style="list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">worse </em>than have their never-maturing elders?</div>
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<br /><a href="https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/08/08/enough-already/print" target="_blank">ENOUGH ALREADY</a>St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-26670017945719173112018-08-03T09:42:00.000-05:002018-08-03T09:42:48.588-05:00What About the Rest of It?<br />
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We are angry because bishops, who should be leading the flock rather than roasting them on a spit, winked and smiled at sexual misbehavior in their peers. This is the same kind of thing we ourselves have been doing for a long time now. Every one of us, without exception. It is almost impossible to live in this whatever culture without compromising yourself at every step. You say nothing about fornication, nothing about cohabitation, nothing about divorce, nothing about obscenity, nothing about sins against nature, and nothing about contraception, and you are shocked to find that your bishops are bad, your president is a pig, his opponent was a sow, the entertainers you watch on television grunt and squeal, and the ordinary banter at your middle school is fouler than the graffiti on the wall of a Roman bathhouse.</div>
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We may also ask how it is that a man like McCarrick rose to the status of chief boar in the bog. What signal accomplishments of the intellect, what conspicuous acts of holiness, or what merely worldly successes in building up institutions qualified him to rise so high? Anyone who has ever worked in a bureaucratic setting, whether in private industry, in education, or in government, will be able to provide the answer. You rise by giving the “right” people what they want. It is another neat trick. You draw down the capital of your institution, whether it is monetary, cultural, or intellectual, in order to reward a certain group of people, often the most worldly and vocal and ambitious, rather than others—the old-fashioned, that is, the people who want mainly that things be sane and decent. Thus do you harm the institution itself while firming up your position in it. You rise by means of the right kind of managed failure.</div>
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As long as the “right” people are with you, you may give the others the whistle. Again, the habit of looking at Other People’s Sins stands you in good stead. We are all censors when it comes to those. Thus you claim a success when the congregation at your church, Our Lady of Perpetual Motion, fills the pews and is chatty and noisy with its semi-Christian sing-along that follows the bouncing dotted eighth-note ditties, but you do not ask whether that is a confessional in back or just the broom closet, and you do not inquire too closely into the age of the parishioners or whether they actually believe all that the Church teaches. You yourself do not believe <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">all</em>. You at least are not grimly traditional and censorious, like the people <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">over there. </em>Or you do as I have just done, and see those sins against orthodoxy, good taste, and even grammar, which sins are many, and fall to a sinister temptation, namely, to be animated more by scorn for the wrong than by love for the right.</div>
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We may have worse bishops than we deserved, but not much worse; we certainly have not deserved good and wise and holy bishops, because we have not been a good and wise and obedient flock. It is time to see to our own corners of the bog. McCarrick was not only the cause of misery. He was a product of it and a symptom of it. For someone who contributed his or her share to the cause, look in the mirror.</div>
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It is time to get to work, cleaning.</div>
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<a href="https://www.crisismagazine.com/2018/what-about-the-rest-of-it" target="_blank">ANTHONY ESOLEN</a></div>
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St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-28111168230114974832018-08-01T07:57:00.000-05:002018-08-01T07:57:42.678-05:00Archbishop Sheen’s Warning of a Crisis in Christendom<i>With a saintly long-ranging spiritual vision, Bishop Sheen saw the roots of today’s crisis firmly planted and growing in 1974, but gave us an antidote.</i><br />
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<i>Joseph Pronechen</i><br />
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“First of all, we are at the end of Christendom,” Bishop Fulton Sheen solemnly said during a television show in 1974. “Now not Christianity, not the Church. Remember what I am saying.”<br />
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Then he defined what he meant. “Christendom is economic, political, social life as inspired by Christian principles. That is ending — we’ve seen it die. Look at the symptoms: the breakup of the family, divorce, abortion, immorality, general dishonesty.”<br />
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That was 1974. Today we know it’s even worse with the definition of marriage and gender drawn into the picture. And the crisis within the Church.<br />
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He reminded that of 22 civilizations that have decayed since the beginning of the world, 19 rotted and perished from within.<br />
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“We live in it from day to day, and we do not see the decline.” Remember, that was in 1974. “We take it for granted—we get used to things, and almost accept them as the rule.” Despite the decline blaring today, isn’t that a rule? How many Catholics accept the counter message to Humanae Vitae?<br />
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Sheen pointed out “the press that we read, the television that we see, is in no instance inspired by Christian principles. As a matter of fact, there is, on the part of many of us, the tendency to go down to meet the world — not to lift the world up. We are afraid of being unpopular — so we go with the mob.”<br />
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The good bishop noted we were living in the fourth 500-year period of Church history, explaining “the Church is not a continuing thing — it dies and rises again. It proceeds on the principle of Christ himself as priest and victim.<br />
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“And there comes the defeat, the seeming decay, we are put in the grave, and then we rise again. We have had four deaths in our Christian history.”<br />
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First Three Falls and Rises<br />
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The first time the Church was in dire straits was in the fall of Rome, the first 500-year period. It had a rebirth when great saint missionaries like Augustine in England and Patrick in Ireland spread the faith.<br />
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Then came a second “decay” around the year 1,000 with the Moslem invasions and the split of the Church with a schism in Constantinople.<br />
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“It seemed to be the end of everything. And then we came to life again,” Sheen said.<br />
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In the third 500-year period he said the Church became “rotten” as nuns and priests were defecting. Then came the reformers who “almost always reform the wrong things. And they began reforming the faith, and there was nothing wrong with faith — it was the morals that needed to be reformed. It’s not renewal — it’s really a moral reformation that is needed today, too.” Remember, that was 44 years ago.<br />
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All the more so in our day. On just one point, how many listened to, and took to heart, Humanae Vitae? Even theologians defected from it.<br />
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After that period the Church came to life again, Sheen said.<br />
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“And now we’re at the fourth period, and we’re rotting — we’re spoiled — no great zeal, no great learning, no great fire.” Yet there’s hope because “anyone who knows history is not particularly disturbed.”<br />
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Church’s Enemies<br />
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“But the enemy in each of the 500-year periods has been separate and distinct,” he continued. “We had, and here I am speaking generally of enemies within the Church, in the first 500 years, false doctrine centering around the person of Christ…the Christological heresies. So the Church was just split open, and that was one of the reasons that made it possible for the Moslems to develop.”<br />
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The next period saw attacks on the head of the Church, leading to the Eastern Church breaking away.<br />
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By the 16th century the attack was on “the body of Christ, the mystical body, the Church.” It was Reformation time.<br />
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Today’s 4th Enemy<br />
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“Our enemy today is the world — the spirit of the world,” Sheen made clear.<br />
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“Today we have to conform to the world or we’re branded” he said. Must be politically correct. “Our Lord said, I have taken you out of the world. We say, ‘No we have to win the world, and to win it you have to be one with it.’ Our Lord says, I pray not for the world. He was praying for the spirit of the world. And this is the easiest kind of way to fall off the log — worldliness. It’s so simple, and it can be justified for a thousand reasons; namely, the Vatican Council said we have to go into the world — indeed, but not to be world, which is quite a different matter. So this is our attack today.”<br />
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Sheen saw this as “one of the basic causes of our degeneration, of our death. We’re dying. What about it? What’s the answer?”<br />
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“The answer is: these are great and wonderful days in which to be alive. I thank God… that I can live in these days, because these are days of testing.” Since 1974 the testing pressure has increased.<br />
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Sheen explained it was easy to be Christian in the three decades before his talk. “The atmosphere was Christian; morals were Christian; there was no great problem in adapting ourselves to a Christian society. But now, when everything is turned around, these are days when the masks have got to come off, and we reveal ourselves just as we really are.”<br />
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“Today the current is against us. And today the mood of the world is, ‘Go with the world, go with the spirit.’ Listen, dead bodies float downstream. Only live bodies resist the current. And so the good Lord is testing us.”<br />
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“And he is testing Western Christians with worldliness, and how many of us are falling?” Would Bishop Sheen be surprised on how far the decadence and corruption have piled up?<br />
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He gives the example of the Israelites being tested by God in the desert. “That is what he is doing to us. We are showing what we really are now,” Sheen said. “St. John says in his Epistle: ‘They did not love us really from the beginning. That is why they left us.’ And so the souls that are falling away have just failed to meet the test. It is very much like the test that the Jews had.”<br />
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The farsighted bishop highlighted how the majority of Israelites scouting the Promised Land told the people they couldn’t enter because the dwellers there were too strong. But “the majority is not always right!” Only Caleb and Joshua, “the minority report,” disagreed. They were right.<br />
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Sheen warned “what we are going to have in the Church is a minority report: a minority report of sisters, a minority report of priests, a minority report of laity — not the minority that is aggressive and troublemaking, but the minority that like Caleb and Joshua, trusts in God. So we are tested just as the Jews were tested.”<br />
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He went on, “not far after our time, and perhaps in the time of some, then will come the battles and the testing. Our Lord said, Satan would sift you as wheat. And we are being sifted as wheat. So we can all thank God that we live in these days. Really, it’s beautiful. Now we can say, ‘aye’ or ‘nay,’ and we can bear up under assault, criticism and ridicule, because this is the lot of the Christian in the days of the spirit of the world.”<br />
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Surprising, Unexpected Advice<br />
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The saintly bishop made clear the situation was really not “gloomy.”<br />
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Why? Because “it is a picture of the Church in the midst of increasing opposition from the world. And, therefore, live your lives in the full consciousness of this hour of testing, and rally close to the heart of Christ.” Be the “minority.”<br />
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He really had ears perked up with his next revelation and recommendation.<br />
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“And if there is anything that has to be restored in our day, I would say it would be violence. Violence! The kingdom of heaven is won by violence. And only the violent shall conquer it.”<br />
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Shouldn’t it be about peace? Let’s hear the great Bishop Sheen explain. And Biblically too.<br />
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He observed how when the Church drops things, the world picks them up but twists them in the wrong way. For example, mysticism drops, and the young turn to pharmaceuticals and drugs.<br />
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“And we drop violence, discipline, commitment to the Cross, and the world picks it up…That’s why there’s no stopping the violence of this country. We just have to…hire more police guards, build more hospitals for the addicts. Why? Because there’s no moral reason on the inside why they should stop.”<br />
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Isn’t he right on today’s beam? What’s the usual first response? More government spending and more laws will fix the problem. Uh huh.<br />
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Sheen explained, “Our Blessed Lord said I have come to bring the sword. Not peace! We are always talking about peace, peace, peace! Yes, because that war (World War II, Korean War, etc.) happened — but we aren’t making war in ourselves — and there’s not going to be any peace in the world until we make war. Our Lord said, I came not to bring peace, but the sword! He never used the word ‘peace’ until after Easter.”<br />
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“The Lord brought a sword. It’s not the sword that’s thrust outward against the enemy. It’s a sword that’s thrust against ourselves, cutting out the seven pallbearers of the soul: pride and covetousness and lust and anger, envy, gluttony and sloth. And we’ve given up the sword — someone else has taken it up, and we have to restore it! Then we’ll get peace! And peace is never corporate — it’s never social — until it’s first individual.<br />
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Social peace, world peace, is the extension of individual peace in our hearts. When we are right with God, then we will be right with our fellow man. When are not right with God, then we will be wrong with everyone else.”<br />
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He told everyone to take seriously spending an hour before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament every day “not only for our own souls, but for the world, and to strengthen our minority.” It’s “violence” to ourselves, easily enough understood.<br />
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Archbishop Sheen emphasized, “The Lord is keeping reserves. He is training us. We’ll make the entry. We’ll prepare for a new Church. And he is with us — we just simply can’t add rules — only we’ve already won as a matter of fact, only the news has not yet leaked out — and so it’s violence that has to be restored.”<br />
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<a href="http://www.ncregister.com/blog/joseph-pronechen/fulton-sheen-answers-for-a-christendom-crisis" target="_blank">Link</a>St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604423781088791567.post-39102455854699688532018-07-27T08:31:00.000-05:002018-07-27T08:31:03.973-05:00THE ENCYCLICAL “HUMANAE VITAE” FIFTY YEARS LATER<br />
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by Lucetta Scaraffia<br />
From “L'Osservatore Romano” of July 25, 2018<br />
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Fifty years after its publication, the encyclical “Humanae Vitae” of Paul VI presents itself in the eyes of the men of today in a completely different way. In 1968, it was a courageous document - and therefore controversial - that went against the climate of the time, that of the sexual revolution, the realization of which required a reliable contraceptive and also the possibility of abortion. It was also the era in which economists were talking about the “population bomb,” meaning the danger of overpopulation that threatened wealthy countries and could reduce their prosperity.<br />
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Two powerful forces, therefore, were aligned against the encyclical: the utopia of happiness that the sexual revolution promised for every human being, and wealth, which would be the logical result of a reduction of the population on a vast scale.<br />
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Today, fifty years later, we see things in a completely different way. These two utopian visions have been realized, but they have not brought the hoped-for results: neither happiness nor wealth, but instead new and dramatic problems.<br />
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If the collapse of the the population in developed countries is having trouble coping with the arrival of masses of immigrants that are necessary but at the same time unacceptable for many, medical birth control has led to the invasion of procreation on the part of science, with ambiguous results that are often worrying and dangerous.<br />
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Today, when we are paying all the costs of a sharp and steep drop in birth rates, when many women after years of chemical birth control are unable to conceive children, we are realizing that the Church was right, that Paul VI had been prophetic in proposing a natural regulation of births that would safeguard the health of women, the relationship of the couple, and the natural character of procreation.<br />
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Now that young women in love with environmentalism are turning to natural methods for the regulation of fertility, without even knowing that “Humanae Vitae” exists, now that governments are trying to implement policies that encourage childbirth, we should reread the encyclical with new eyes. And instead of seeing it as the great defeat of the Church in the face of the onslaught of modernity, we can assert its prophetic lucidity in grasping the dangers inherent in these changes and celebrate, we Catholics, the fact that once again the Church did not fall into the enticing trap of the utopias of the twentieth century, but was able to grasp immediately their limitations and dangers.<br />
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But few are able to do this: for many, it is still difficult to give up the old opposition between progressive and conservative, within which the encyclical has been torn to pieces, without grasping its critical spirit and innovative power. Even now, no one seems to recall that for the first time a pope accepted the regulation of births and invited physicians to study effective natural methods.<br />
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It is very important, therefore, to be able to look at “Humanae Vitae” with new eyes, the eyes of human beings who live in the twenty-first century, now aware of the failure of many utopias and of many economic theories that had been presented as infallible.<br />
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It is only in this way that we can we face the problems of the family today, the new role of women, and the difficult relationships between ethics and science, the roots of which lie - even if unwittingly in some regards - in that text from way back in 1968.<br />
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(English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.)St. Bruno's Familyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01098781206660302586noreply@blogger.com0