A Glimpse at the Papacy of Pope John Paul the First?

Posted on March 3, 2009 by Deacon Bob

I was reading Papa Luciani’s August 27, 1978 radiomessage to the world, searching for some hint as to what a lengthy Luciani papacy would have looked like.  A few things stand out in the first couple of pages of the message’s transcript.

The first is his obvious reliance on the prayers and  support of the laity, and his clear faith in the guiding hand of Jesus in his ministry.  He begins by citing Matthew 14:30 which is in reference to the story of the boat being tossed about on the lake with Jesus asleep in the stern.  To the plea, “Jesus, save me!” came the response, “Why do you doubt, oh you of little faith?”

Second is his clear commitment to the teachings of Vatican II.  He said, “As to the Second Vatican Council (to whose teachings we wish to commit our total ministry, as priest, as teacher, as pastor)….”  Papa Luciani, it would seem, would have been tied to the people as a common pastor and teacher.  His subsequent talks during his brief papacy reflected this.

Thirdly, he took up the looming problems between technology and humanity.  He said, “The world…knows well that the sublime perfection to which it has attained by research and technology has already reached a peak, beyond which yawns the abyss, blinding the eyes with darkness.  It is the temptation of substituting for God one’s own decisions, decisions that would prescind from moral laws. The danger for modern man is that he would reduce the earth to a desert, the person to an automan, brotherly love to planned civilization, often introducing death where God wishes life.”

Fourthly, he spoke of the need for the integrity of Church discipline, the need for a new evangelization, and renewed efforts in ecumenism.

Lastly, he mentions world peace.

All in all, I suspect Pope John Paul I would have attended to the same areas that his successor, John Paul II, found of great importance and to which he dedicated  his papacy.

I have a sense though, that there would have been a different air about it all, a different color and texture, and taste.

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Quote of the Day

Posted on March 2, 2009 by Deacon Bob

“If you suffer with him, you shall reign with him; if you mourn with him, you shall rejoice with him. If you die on the cross with him in tribulations, you will have an abode in heaven in the splendor of the saints.  Your name in the book of life will be glorious among men.” — Blessed Agnes of Prague

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Don’t Forget Who You Are Now!

Posted on March 1, 2009 by Deacon Bob

I am borrowing a phrase from Fr. Mark Pierce, whom I heard preach yesterday.  He said his mother would say to him whenever he would go out on the town as a teenager, “Don’t forget who you are now!”

He apparently never did.

What a great admonition for Lent, as Fr. Mark reminded us.  Don’t forget who we are!  The ashes are placed on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday with the words, “Remember man, that you are dust…..” Remember who you are!

If only we kept in mind who we are, we would be so much more at peace.  

Who am I?  The age-old question returns each year during this holy and happy (yes, happy) season of Lent. To whom do we turn to answer that question?  If it is to be answered well, we need to turn, to do an about-face and be converted to God who is well-prepared to love us into the answer.

Who we are is how God sees us.  Not our neighbors, not society, not the government, not anyone else. God’s perception of us is who we are.  God constantly beholds us, sustains us, sees us, and calls us by name.  

We are children of God, adopted sons and daughters of the Father.  

Let no one deceive us with anything different.

Our world would have us think we are what we have, what we produce.  Our value in the world’s eye lays in our material wealth, our physical health and beauty, our power and influence over others, and our positions of privilege.  It is from this we need to “turn around”, turn to God, and be converted.

If we take God out of the equation, we end up identifying with sin.

Let us not forget who we are now in the sight of God. What we shall later be we cannot begin to imagine for we shall be like him who has loved us into life.

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A Big Tent Church

Posted on February 27, 2009 by Deacon Bob

I find it amazing that so many speak of the Catholic Church as narrow-minded or restrictive in its beliefs and practices.  My experience of the Church is so much the opposite. 

Catholicism is a Big Tent Church.

I have had direct or indirect experiences with the Catholic Church as found in Germany, Austria, Norway, Great Britian, Nigeria, Italy, China, Mexico, Canada and the United States.  I have taken part on two occasions in the gathering of the world’s government and Church leaders for one purpose– to celebrate the Church’s faith and sacraments.  There is no doubt that the Church is wider, higher, and more inclusive than any other human organization known to me.  It celebrates the diversity of culture, language, custom, tradition of peoples and nations. 

The only way I can figure out one can assert that the Catholic Church is narrow or small is if the one asserting this is limited in his or her experience and understanding of the Church.  This is easy to do in the United States, for most have yet to confront the diversity of experiences people in other parts of the world often experience on a daily basis.  We are such a big country that most live their entire lives in one cultural context, i.e., white Anglo America.  I am not blaming them.  It is the only thing available to them.  Perhaps the influx of Hispanic immigrants will change all of this for them.

Those who think of the Church as narrow and small actually may find if they study her well that their protest or dissent is a smallness and narrowness.  I would cite as example the ultra-conservative sect of the Society of St. Pius X and its offshoots, or the ultra-liberal groups such as Catholic for Choice.  The former protests the Church’s ecclesiology and authority; the latter the Church’s right to preach and teach on issues of morality.

Yes, Catholicism is a Big Tent Church.  Nations and other political bodies would do well to study her as an example of cultural diversity and organizational stability.  It is so human and yet so divine!

Posted in Ecclesiology | 2 Comments

Quote For the Day

Posted on February 26, 2009 by Deacon Bob

“Love is a mutual self-giving that ends in self-recovery.  You recover God and He recovers you.” –Fulton J. Sheen

Posted in Prayer and Meditation | 1 Comment

Psalm of the Day

Posted on February 26, 2009 by Deacon Bob

I can’t help but post on Psalm 144 which we prayed tonight at Vespers.  I pray in Italian, which I find to be such a beautiful language of prayer, that I am afraid my English translation below really doesn’t do it justice.

My God, I will sing to you a new song, I will play for you on the ten-stringed harp; To you who give victory to your anointed, who frees David your servant.

Save me from the sword of iniquity, free me from the hand of the stranger. Their mouths speak lies and their right hand swears falsehood.

May our sons be as plants grown in their youth, our daughters like supporting columns in the construction of the temple.

May our granaries be full, overflowing of fruit of every kind; may our flocks be as myriads, and our fields as myriads more; may our oxen be weighed down with the harvest.

No breach, no incursion, no crying out in our city squares.  

Blessed the people who possess these good things; blessed the people for whom God is the Lord!

Being from a farming background, I can relate to the joy of bringing in the harvest, with the wagons loaded down with grain, as the psalmist describes in this psalm.  Being one who has heard an elder play joyful songs on musical instruments after the end of the day, I can resonate with the psalmist rejoicing on the ten-stringed harp.  Being from a large family, I know the blessings of sons and daughters to a father and mother.  Being one who, I believe, has experienced the power of the Spirit of God in my own life, I can identify with being saved from the sword of iniquity and lying deception.

The more one prays the psalms, the more one finds in them relevance to the here and now.  Many find the psalms an archaic prayer form.  I felt that way too for many years.  But life’s experiences made me receptive to the messages of the psalms, for they speak to all of us today.

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Qoheleth and the Works of God

Posted on February 24, 2009 by Deacon Bob

Today’s Office of Readings again is from Qoheleth.  Qoheleth says:

“I thought again that whatever God does is immutable; there is nothing to add, nothing to take away.  God works like this so we may have a sense of awe and wonder of Him.  That which is has been; that which will be already is; God searches again for that which is already past.”

Perhaps Qoheleth was caught up in our human concept of time as linear, chronological, and sequential.  God’s time is an ever present, and ever now.  He breaks through our time and space and gives meaning to all.

In the second reading in the Office,  St. Gregory of Nyssa alludes to this, I think.  He said:

” ‘ The is a time to be born’, he says, ‘and a time to die.’ (Qo 3:2) Would that the heavens might give me a good time to die and a proper moment for death……For St. Paul each moment is fitting for a good death…. It is clear, then, in what manner Paul dies every day, he who did not live for sin, but mortified his flesh and carried always in himself the mortification of Christ…. This, to me, is a timely death that gives true life….. The word of God, in fact, promises life as a result of death.” –St. Gregory of Nissa, Om 6; PG 44, 702-705.

All things are vanity, as says Qoheleth, if one considers only the created world.  All things speak of the richness of God, if one considers how God has entered and continues to enter the world in each moment of our lives.  In the passing and dying there is life.  That is the Christian message.  That is what makes sense of the finiteness and provisionality of our world.

All of creation speaks of the beauty and purpose of God.

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Quote for the Day — Gaudium et Spes

Posted on February 23, 2009 by Deacon Bob

“Fortiora enim sunt ea quibus uniuntur fideles quam ea quibus dividuntur: sit in necessariis unitas,  in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas.” Gaudium et Spes (GS) 92

For us who don’t read Latin well, here is the English for our meditation:

“For the bonds which unite the faithful are mightier than anything dividing them. Hence, let there be unity in what is necessary; freedom in what is unsettled, and charity in any case.” – GS 92

The bishops here were talking about the Church in the Modern World, and her relationship in dialogue with various aspects of human society, government, churches, and other human associations.

I was left thinking how eloquent that line is, when referred to human relationships. (Think about marriage!) Are not these the three-fold supports of a healthy realtionship:  unity, freedom and charity?

To be united in freedom and charity to one another.  “I have a dream…..” –Martin Luther King

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Prayer and Fasting

Posted on February 23, 2009 by Deacon Bob

“Jesus, after having fasted for forty days and forty nights, was hungry”–Mt. 4:2

Fasting is one of those things I have never really learned to do well. Always seems painful.  Seems too often to be self-centered, in the sense that my attention turns toward my hunger, my weakness, my anticipation of the breaking of the fast.  I wonder if I have ever matured past the “adolescent stage” of fasting.

The Church since its inception has recommended, and at times insisted, on fasting as a condition of discipleship.  Our Lord reminded his apostles that some things cannot be dealt with without prayer and fasting.  Countless numbers of people in the world are always fasting, out of necessity and poverty.  

Yet here am I, one who struggles to appreciate fasting as a spiritual discipline.

Fasting without prayer is a diet or a self-help strategy. It will not be a spiritual tool of maturation, it will not be a way to holiness if prayer does not permeate every minute of its time.  The prayer that turns a fast into an expansion of our spiritual capacity is prayer that fills us with the needs of others.

Mother Teresa was a master faster.  She fasted continually. Her spirituality was a complete fast, not only of food, but even from the sense that God was there.  Her fast was complete.  Her prayer was continual.

As I consider my Lenten fast for 2009, I am searching for ways in which it will be laced with prayer and communion, emptiness so as to be one with not only God, but with the needy of my family and community.

Posted in Spirituality | 1 Comment

Catholics Coming Home to Faith

Posted on February 20, 2009 by Deacon Bob

There is a saying, “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.”

No matter how long one may have been away from the practice of the Catholic faith, there will always that tug to come home, to the faith practice of Jesus’ body, the Catholic Church.  Why is that?  Here is the answer:

“Once God has grasped you, he never lets go!  He cannot be anything but faithful to you, for you have been marked by his redemption with your baptism, confirmation and participation in his Body and Blood.  God will never abandon you, and he calls out incessantly, inviting you: ‘Come back to me! I long for you.'”

How true! To all who have fallen away from the faith of your fathers, the faith that has inspired countless generations of martyrs and untold numbers of witnesses to truth and goodness and right, I re-echo the words of our Lord and Brother Jesus:  

“Come home.  We miss you and need you here! Answer the prayers of all the Church with your return.”

We will stand beside you.  We never abandon our children.  We patiently wait, as do all who await their children’s return.  All of heaven will rejoice!  Just say, “I am sorry for my absence.  I want to come home..” 

God will send his angels to lead you home! More than you can imagine.

Posted in General Interest | 1 Comment

St. Augustine and the Desire of the Heart

Posted on February 20, 2009 by Deacon Bob

In today’s Office of Readings,  St. Augustine comments on the first Letter of John.  He speaks of our task as Christians to desire the vision of our future likeness with the Risen Jesus.

My translation from the Italian:

“And since you cannot now have this vision,  your task is to desire it.  The entire life of a fervent Christian is a holy desire. That which you then desire, yet do not see…renders you capable to be filled up when the time of the vision arrives.

“If you must fill an container and you know that much more will be given to you than the container can hold, you seek to increase the capacity of the sack, bag or whatever other container may be used.  Enlarging it, you increase its capacity.  In the same way, you do so regarding your capacity for God.

“Making yourself wait, the intensity of your desire intensifies, with desire the spirit expands, and expanding it, it is made more spacious and capable.

“We search, therefore, to live in a climate of desire because we must be filled….what do you do in this life if you haven’t arrived at the fullness of desire?…. to be filled we first need to be emptied.  Suppose God wants to fill you with honey?  If you are filled with vinegar, where will he put the honey?  The vase needs to be emptied of that of which it is filled, and more, it needs to be cleaned….to be suitable to receive something else…. we speak of honey…..this is called God.” (Tratt. 4, 6; PL 35, 2008-2009)

A wonderful meditation today. 

Expand our hearts and spirits through ardent desire.  Empty ourselves of “vinegar” to receive the “honey”.  Through desire, we come closer to God.  The vision of who we are destined to be, “Which eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered the heart of humankind” (1 Cor 2:9) is the focus of our desire today.

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Pelosi and the Pope

Posted on February 19, 2009 by Deacon Bob

I posted yesterday a segment of the Vatican’s statement regarding the meeting of the Pope with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. 

Today, the Catholic News Service (CNS) is reporting that a statement was distributed by Pelosi’s staff regarding her visit with the Pope.  CNS indicates the statement was as follows:

“It is with great joy that my husband, Paul, and I met with His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI today.

In our conversation, I had the opportunity to praise the church’s leadership in fighting poverty, hunger and global warming, as well as the Holy Father’s dedication to religious freedom and his upcoming trip and message to Israel.

I was proud to show His Holiness a photograph of my family’s papal visit in the 1950s, as well as a recent picture of our children and grandchildren.”

It would almost seem the two parties are making statements on two different conversations.  Or perhaps stating their respective contributions to the meeting’s content?

What I am wondering about is how Mrs. Pelosi’s heart was changed.  It is difficult to see how a personal meeting with the pope in which he speaks directly to you about anything of faith and morals, would not effect some change in one’s mind and heart.

Posted in Ethics and Morality, Politics, Popes | 1 Comment

Nancy Pelosi Meets the Holy Father

Posted on February 18, 2009 by Deacon Bob

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and a Catholic, met with the Holy Father today at the Vatican. 

Their conversation is not reported verbatim.  But the Sala Stampa, the Vatican’s news office reports today the following regarding their visit:

“His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoin all Catholics, especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.” (Communication of the Sala Stampa of the Holy See, 18 February 2009)

Let us hope that Ms. Pelosi has a spirit of obedience and respect to this instruction.

I notice that the USA Today is reporting on this also.  I suspect other news outlets will do the same.

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Quote for the Day

Posted on February 17, 2009 by Deacon Bob

“Place your mind before the mirror of eternity!  Place your soul in the brilliance of glory!” — St. Clare of Assissi

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Papa Luciani and the Restoration of a Church

Posted on February 16, 2009 by Deacon Bob

Pope John Paul I, on September 28, 1978, the last day of his life, sent a letter to Msgr. Hugh Aufderbeck marking the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the building of the church of St. Serverus. It had recently been rebuilt and a celebration was to occur in a few weeks.

His words are fitting for any parish to consider, perhaps I would challenge, fitting to be displayed for public reviewal and pondering, for they speak eloquently of the purpose of a parish church.

His words, in part:

“These stones, therefore, speak of the faith and the devotion of our forefathers and they urge the faithful who are there now to preserve intact such sacred heritage and to make it effective in their lives.  Furthermore, let those who frequent this holy place strive to be themselves ‘spiritual houses’ (cf. 1 Pet 2:5) in which God dwells by his grace, so that these words of Saint Augustine can be applied to them:  ‘God…dwells in each one as in his temples, and in all gathered together, as in his temple’ (Ep. 187:13, 38; PL 33:84, 7).

As you are aware, Pope John Paul I is my favorite pope.  What a refreshing breath of fresh air he was in August and September of the memorable year 1978, that saw the deaths of two popes and the election of two.  God gifted me with being there in the middle of it all at the Vatican during those days.

Pray for us Papa Luciani.

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