Joy in Suffering
Friends in Christ,
Living the 10 Commandments
6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Beloved in Jesus Christ, being a Catholic man or woman, means having faith; faith is believing all the teachings of Holy Mother Church; But in the Sacred Scriptures, St. James says, ‘What good is it, if a person has faith, but does not do good works? So – if a person really has faith, he will live a moral life as well. Today in the Gospel, Jesus teaches us a lot about how we are to live; and what is he teaching? It is really the 10 Commandments. Continue Reading →
Living the 10 Commandments
Latin Mass: Septuagesima Sunday
Beloved in Jesus Christ, we enter now the period of Septuagesima – a time to get ready for Lent. St. Paul reminds us today that we must work hard, even chastise our bodies – we must run the race so as to win. – Even the gospel speaks about workers in the vineyard: some come early, some late – but they have to work. Lent will be a time to get to work on Christian living, and so it seems good today, to review the Guide that we have for Christian living: the 10 commandments. Continue Reading →
St. Valentine (school mass)
Good morning Children of St. John Vianney! Today in Holy Mass, we remember two saints St. Cyril and Methodius, but in the Roman Martyrology for today, there is also another saint; this is why there are so many red hearts around, because it is the feast day of St. Valentine.
St. Valentine lived way back in the Roman Empire, when there were laws against being Catholic. You weren’t supposed to be a Catholic, but that didn’t stop people, they did it secretly.
Emperor Claudius had also issued an edict forbidding marriage. He needed to increase his army, and he thought that unmarried, single men made better soldiers. Now Valentine was a Catholic priest, and he therefore secretly met with young couples, and prepared them for the sacrament of marriage. Eventually he was arrested for doing this, but he didn’t care.
Emperor Claudius demanded that he stop this and also worship the pagan gods instead of Jesus. Valentine answered: ‘If you but knew the grace of God, you would turn your mind from idols and adore the true God who is in heaven.’ But the emperor’s heart was hardened, and he ordered that Valetine be put to death for following Christ.
Now while he was awaiting his death, he was in jail; there, Valentine prayed that the Lord would enlighten even the people in that jail. His jail guard, whose name was Asterius, had a blind daughter, and the daughter felt sorry for Valentine, and often brought him food in prison. In gratitude, he one day prayed over the girl, and her sight was miraculously restored. This led the whole household of Asterius to convert to the faith.
While in prison, Valentine would look out of his cell window, through the cold, iron bars into the blue sky, and doves would sometimes land near the window. He thought about the married couples he had prepared, and about his family. He wanted to send them a message. Well just within reach, grew a cluster of violets. Reaching between the bars, he took some of the leaves, which were shaped like a heart, and he poked holes in them with a thorn, forming words. “Remember your Valentine,” he would write. Attaching them to the doves, he sent them out. The next day, and the next, he sent more messages that simply said, “I love you, your Valentine” And so this legend would seem to be the origin of sending Valentines.
After performing many cures, and bringing so many people to love Jesus, St. Valentine was beheaded for the Faith, on Feb. 14th, 273, in Rome. He was a wonderful priest who became a martyr for Christ.
Today is a day that, following the example of St. Valentine, we send notes to people, to tell them we love them, and that we are glad they are our friends. Let’s be sure today to tell our parents that we love them very much.
Jesus: Master of the Demons
Friends in Christ, just yesterday we read about Solomon and his great wisdom. He had been very blessed by God, but we see today that despite all those blessings, he did not remain faithful. He had married many wives from many nations, but they brought into his life, their pagan ways.
In order to please them, he had shrines constructed to these gods; most shocking, he built a shrine to the most horrible of them, the god Molech. It was to Molech, that people offered their own little children in sacrifice. A bronze statue of Molech had outstretched, metal arms. A child was placed in those arms, and the statue was heated to red-hot. Men beat drums in order to drown out the sound of the screams.
This is the world, without Jesus Christ. It shows the levels to which humanity will descend without the True God. This horrific child-sacrifice was practiced by a number of pagan groups, including the Cannanites.
In 1804, the artist William Blake made a painting called ‘The Flight of Molech.’ Christians believed that false gods were nothing but demons, and so in the painting, the demon is fleeing away. And present, are parents who are crying; but then a child is seen walking out from the burning statue, unharmed.
William Blake presented this event, the Fleeing of Moloch, as taking place at the moment of Christ’s birth, when Our Lord conquers the demons, and brings real life to the world. He who is, ‘the way, the truth, and the life.’
And so today we meet Jesus in the gospel – he is in the land of the Canaanites, a place where this demon Molech was once worshiped. A Canaanite woman, whose child is possessed by a demon, she seeks out Christ: the True God of Life. She comes, begging him to drive a demon out of her daughter. Our Lord sees how earnest and sincere her request is, and so he complies, and the child is free.
Our own world is falling back into the ways of Molech; an anti-life – a child-destroying world, worshiping at the altar of so-called ‘freedom.’ The world needs help. Even many we know, need help. With only a word, Christ can drive out any demon; but as the Canaanite woman shows us, we have to ask him to.
Look Inside
Friends in Christ,
It is not uncommon for us, to try and blame our own, inner failures on external things. ‘My husband just provokes me to anger all the time.’ ‘If I didn’t have these irritating neighbors, I would be calm, everything would be fine.’ ‘I would be pure in our relationship, if my girlfriend would only stop leading me down the wrong path.’ ‘I could be holy if only I had a decent Church in my neighborhood.’ If, if, if…
We want to blame our own sins and failures on externals, on things other than ourselves. We might call this a form of ‘rationalization.’ Our Lord today says ‘no’ to this thinking. He says that it is from within the heart that come ‘evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, envy, blasphemy, arrogance. All these evils come from within.’ William Barclay says, ‘this is a truly terrible list which Jesus cites, of the things that come from the human heart. It is a call to an honest self-examination of our own souls.’
No matter what situation we are in, no matter the externals of our life: family situation, work situation, THAT person who is against us – the Lord gives us the grace that we need to walk serenely and calmly through life, praying for our enemies, praying for help in time of temptation, keeping order and calm in our own, inner world.
St. Josemaria says,[i] we can be ‘immersed in the world, with hungry lions all around, yet never losing our peace, never forgetting that the Lord will work all the miracles we need, if and when we need them. If we are humble, and call on the Lord in every temptation and every situation, then ‘we will be safe in any environment. Jesus wants us to be full of honesty with ourselves, and never blame external things or circumstances for our own failures.
It is from within the human heart that comes the start of any sin. That means, that, relying on God, we can conquer every trial in our life: As the Apostle says, ‘I can do all things, in him who strengthens me.
[i] Friends of God, p. 153.
Our Lady of Lourdes (a miracle)
Friends in Christ,[i]
Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, and it is also World day of the sick. In 1858, the Blessed Virgin appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, at Lourdes, France. There, Mary gave us a miraculous spring, from which have come many cures. Some cures of the body, some of the soul. Here is one:
In 1912, Dr. Alexis Carrel was awarded the Nobel prize for his work in vascular anastomosis. His work initiated all the major advances in modern surgery. In the 1920s he was practically a celebrity of New York City. Many used to say that Dr. Carrel would soon discover the secret of immortality. But Carrel had a brush with immortality in another way. This happened when he witnessed at close range a miraculous cure in Lourdes. In fact, he witnessed two such cures.
He came from a devout Catholic family, but by the time he entered the University, he no longer practiced his religion. In 1902, a friend asked him to take his place, as the doctor on a train carrying sick people to Lourdes. He did not believe in miracles, but he did want to see if it was true that wounds healed faster at Lourdes, as he had heard. What happened from that moment on was written down by Carrel, but not published until 4 years after his death.
On the train he met and examined a girl, Marie Bailly; her abdomen was swollen and hard. Marie had been written off for dead by her doctors in Lyon, she had tuberculous peritonitis. Dr. Carrel gave her some morphine by the light of a kerosene lamp and stayed with her. Arriving at Lourdes, she asked that some water be poured on her stomach. It caused her searing pain all over her body. Still she asked for the same again. This time she felt much less pain, and when the water was poured on her the third time, it gave her a very pleasant sensation. Meanwhile Carrel stood behind her, with a notepad in his hands. He marked the time, the pulse, and other clinical details.
Half an hour later, the girl’s pulse slowed to normal. The blanket covering her stomach had flattened out; pulling it back, Carrel saw that her abdomen was flat and that it felt soft and normal. She was quickly examined by a team of doctors. The next morning she got up on her own and was already dressed when Carrel saw her again. ‘What will you do with your life now?’ he asked her. ‘I will join the Sisters of Charity to spend my life caring for the sick, she said.
Carrel continued to take a great interest in her. He had her given regular tests by psychiatrists and for evidence of tuberculosis. Marie lived the arduous life of a Sister of Charity until the age of 58. All of this, he wrote down, but publically, this famous doctor would not admit to miracles. He kept going back to Lourdes so that he might see more cures. In fact, he did. In 1910, he saw the sudden restoration of the sight of an 18- month-old boy who was born blind. Nevertheless, he continued to search for natural explanations.
For 32 years in his restlessness and searching, nothing brought him any closer to the faith of his childhood. Marie Bailly died in 1937. Undoubtedly she began her work in heaven: praying for the doctor who had helped her. The next year, in Carrel’s searching, something happened when he met a Trappist monk named Father Alexis. Somehow, he began to change. Years later, as he was dying in Paris, he asked for Father Alexis. The priest jumped on a military train and arrived just in time to administer the final sacraments to Carrel.
Our Lady of Lourdes has worked many physical healings, but she continues to work many other, more important healings.
[i] Adapted from an article by Rev. Stanley L. Jaki, from the annual Joseph M. Gambescia lecture given at the conclusion of the 19th World Congress of FIAMC and the 67th Annual Meeting of the Catholic Medical Association, September 13, 1998.
