A few years ago, Bruce and I had the blessing of having a very special conversation with Fr. Michael Scanlan about “The Truth About Trouble: How Hard Times Can Draw You Closer To God”. Fr. Scanlan’s wisdom is extraordinary…he knows how to pastor us through hard times, because he has suffered it, but he also knows that it is through Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus that in the end all will be well. He talks about the cancer of discontent, which is so dangerous to our spiritual lives. Fr. Scanlan also describes how the devil desires to use trouble to turn us away from God. We should realize that when that is happening and recognize, believe or not, that trouble isn’t the worst thing that could happen to us…it is actually a pathway to purification…be not afraid! What a gift Fr. Scanlan is to us all!
St. Peter Claver was a Jesuit who due to his life and work became the patron saint of slaves, of Colombia, and of African Americans.
Claver arrived in Cartagena in 1610. By this time the slave trade had been established in the Americas for about 100 years and Cartagena was a chief center for it. Ten thousand slaves poured into the port yearly; crossing the Atlantic from West Africa under conditions so foul and inhuman that an estimated one-third of them died in transit. Although slave-trading was condemned by Pope Paul III and later labeled “supreme villainy” by Pius IX, there were fortunes to be made and it continued to flourish.
Claver’s predecessor Alfonso de Sandoval had devoted himself to the service of the slaves for 40 years before Claver arrived to continue the work, declaring himself “the slave of the slaves forever.”
As soon as a slave ship entered the port, Claver headed for the wharf and moved into its filthy and diseased hold to doctor and minister to the ill-treated and miserable human cargo. After the slaves were herded from the ship and penned in nearby yards to be studied by crowds and buyers, Claver plunged in among them with medicines, food, bread, brandy, lemons and tobacco. With the help of interpreters and pictures which he carried with him, he gave basic instruction and assured the slaves of their human dignity and God’s saving love. During the 40 years of his ministry, Claver single-handedly catechized and baptized an estimated 300,000 of these slaves. Furthermore, Claver followed up to see that as Christians they were accorded their legal rights.
His apostolate extended beyond his care for slaves. He preached in the city square, gave missions to sailors and traders as well as country missions – returning every spring to visit those he had baptized and to follow up that they were being treated humanely. During these missions he avoided, whenever possible, the hospitality of the planters and overseers, and would lodge instead in the slave quarters.
His work on behalf of the slaves did not prevent him from caring also for the souls of the more well-to-do members of society and for the traders and visitors (including Muslims and English Protestants) to Cartagena, or for condemned criminals, many of whom he prepared for death. He was also a frequent visitor to the city’s hospitals.
Illness finally forced the saint into his room, where he lingered another four years, largely forgotten and neglected. He died on 8 September 1654. The city magistrates ordered a public funeral, at public expense, and he was buried with great pomp and ceremony.
He was canonized in 1888, and Pope Leo XIII declared him the worldwide patron of missionary work among black slaves. – Wikipedia
Dear Saint Peter Claver, you were permeated with compassion for the oppressed, for human beings sold as slaves and treated as expendable beasts. While alleviating their natural ills, you also took away their spiritual ills, and taught them the surpassing knowledge of Christ. Inspire many of our contemporaries to become self-sacrificing missionaries like you. Amen.
Sharon Doran serves as the teaching director of “Seeking Truth.” An experienced Bible Study teacher, Sharon has a passion forscripture that will motivate and challenge you to immerse yourself in God’s Word and apply His message to your every day life.
Episode 17 – Sharon and Bruce discuss Mary, the Ark of the New Covenant. What does this mean? Where do we find that in the Old and New Testament? How has that been reflected in our Sacred Tradition?
“Seeking Truth” is an in depth Catholic Bible Study, commissioned by the Archdiocese of Omaha in response to John Paul II’s call to the New Evangelization as well as Pope Benedict XVI’s exhortation for all Catholics to study scripture. To learn more go to:www.seekingtruth.net
Msgr. Esseff reflects on the birth of the Virgin Mary. But even more than that, he ponders the importance of the Blessed Mother in our lives. The gift of her presence in the action of salvation history and role is the “Mother” of us all.
I LOVE it…the birthday of the mother of all “moms”!Happy Birthday to the dearest Mother of all. The Church celebrates 3 birthdays on the calendar…Jesus, John the Baptist, and the great Mother of God, Mary Most Holy. We celebrate the day the Immaculate Conception was brought through birth into the world.
From The Catholic News Agency –
“The Catholic Church will soon celebrate the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary on its traditional fixed date of September 8, nine months after the December 8 celebration of her Immaculate Conception as the child of Saints Joachim and Anna.
The circumstances of the Virgin Mary’s infancy and early life are not directly recorded in the Bible, but other documents and traditions describing the circumstances of her birth are cited by some of the earliest Christian writers from the first centuries of the Church.
These accounts, although not considered authoritative in the same manner as the Bible, outline some of the Church’s traditional beliefs about the birth of Mary.
The “Protoevangelium of James,” which was probably put into its final written form in the early second century, describes Mary’s father Joachim as a wealthy member of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Joachim was deeply grieved, along with his wife Anna, by their childlessness. “He called to mind Abraham,” the early Christian writing says, “that in the last day God gave him a son Isaac.”
Joachim and Anna began to devote themselves extensively and rigorously to prayer and fasting, initially wondering whether their inability to conceive a child might signify God’s displeasure with them.
As it turned out, however, the couple were to be blessed even more abundantly than Abraham and Sarah, as an angel revealed to Anna when he appeared to her and prophesied that all generations would honor their future child: “The Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive, and shall bring forth; and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world.”
After Mary’s birth, according to the Protoevangelium of James, Anna “made a sanctuary” in the infant girl’s room, and “allowed nothing common or unclean” on account of the special holiness of the child. The same writing records that when she was one year old, her father “made a great feast, and invited the priests, and the scribes, and the elders, and all the people of Israel.”
“And Joachim brought the child to the priests,” the account continues, “and they blessed her, saying: ‘O God of our fathers, bless this child, and give her an everlasting name to be named in all generations’ . . . And he brought her to the chief priests; and they blessed her, saying: ‘O God most high, look upon this child, and bless her with the utmost blessing, which shall be for ever.’”
The protoevangelium goes on to describe how Mary’s parents, along with the temple priests, subsequently decided that she would be offered to God as a consecrated Virgin for the rest of her life, and enter a chaste marriage with the carpenter Joseph.
Saint Augustine described the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary as an event of cosmic and historic significance, and an appropriate prelude to the birth of Jesus Christ. “She is the flower of the field from whom bloomed the precious lily of the valley,” he said.
The fourth-century bishop, whose theology profoundly shaped the Western Church’s understanding of sin and human nature, affirmed that “through her birth, the nature inherited from our first parents is changed.” –CNA
I LOVE it…the birthday of the mother of all “moms”!Happy Birthday to the dearest Mother of all. The Church celebrates 3 birthdays on the calendar…Jesus, John the Baptist, and the great Mother of God, Mary Most Holy. We celebrate the day the Immaculate Conception was brought through birth into the world.
From The Catholic News Agency –
“The Catholic Church will soon celebrate the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary on its traditional fixed date of September 8, nine months after the December 8 celebration of her Immaculate Conception as the child of Saints Joachim and Anna.
The circumstances of the Virgin Mary’s infancy and early life are not directly recorded in the Bible, but other documents and traditions describing the circumstances of her birth are cited by some of the earliest Christian writers from the first centuries of the Church.
These accounts, although not considered authoritative in the same manner as the Bible, outline some of the Church’s traditional beliefs about the birth of Mary.
The “Protoevangelium of James,” which was probably put into its final written form in the early second century, describes Mary’s father Joachim as a wealthy member of one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Joachim was deeply grieved, along with his wife Anna, by their childlessness. “He called to mind Abraham,” the early Christian writing says, “that in the last day God gave him a son Isaac.”
Joachim and Anna began to devote themselves extensively and rigorously to prayer and fasting, initially wondering whether their inability to conceive a child might signify God’s displeasure with them.
As it turned out, however, the couple were to be blessed even more abundantly than Abraham and Sarah, as an angel revealed to Anna when he appeared to her and prophesied that all generations would honor their future child: “The Lord has heard your prayer, and you shall conceive, and shall bring forth; and your seed shall be spoken of in all the world.”
After Mary’s birth, according to the Protoevangelium of James, Anna “made a sanctuary” in the infant girl’s room, and “allowed nothing common or unclean” on account of the special holiness of the child. The same writing records that when she was one year old, her father “made a great feast, and invited the priests, and the scribes, and the elders, and all the people of Israel.”
“And Joachim brought the child to the priests,” the account continues, “and they blessed her, saying: ‘O God of our fathers, bless this child, and give her an everlasting name to be named in all generations’ . . . And he brought her to the chief priests; and they blessed her, saying: ‘O God most high, look upon this child, and bless her with the utmost blessing, which shall be for ever.’”
The protoevangelium goes on to describe how Mary’s parents, along with the temple priests, subsequently decided that she would be offered to God as a consecrated Virgin for the rest of her life, and enter a chaste marriage with the carpenter Joseph.
Saint Augustine described the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary as an event of cosmic and historic significance, and an appropriate prelude to the birth of Jesus Christ. “She is the flower of the field from whom bloomed the precious lily of the valley,” he said.
The fourth-century bishop, whose theology profoundly shaped the Western Church’s understanding of sin and human nature, affirmed that “through her birth, the nature inherited from our first parents is changed.” –CNA
– Benedict XVI today resumed his general audiences in the Vatican, having held them at Castelgandolfo during the month of August. Meeting with faithful in the Paul VI Hall he turned his attention to prayer in the Book of Revelation which, he explained, “presents us with the living breathing prayer of the Christian assembly, gathered together ‘on the Lord’s day'”.
Revelation, Pope Benedict went on, “is a difficult book, but one of great richness. … In it a reader presents the assembly with a message entrusted by God to John the Evangelist. … From the dialogue between them a symphony of prayer arises which is then developed in many different forms up until the conclusion”.
The first part of Revelation presents us with the assembly in prayer in three successive phases. The first of these highlights how “prayer is, above all, a listening to God Who speaks. Engulfed as we are by so many words we are little used to listening, and especially to adopting an interior and exterior attitude of silence so as to attend to what the Lord wishes to say to us. These verses also teach us that our prayers, often merely prayers of request, must in fact be first and foremost prayers of praise to God for His love, for the gift of Jesus Christ which brought us strength, hope and salvation. … God, Who reveals Himself as the beginning and the end of the story, welcomes and takes to heart the assembly’s request”.
This first phase also includes another important element. “Constant prayer revives in us a sense of the Lord’s presence in our life and history. His presence supports us, guides us and gives us great hope. … Prayer, even that pronounced in the most extreme solitude, is never a form of isolation and it is never sterile, it is a vital lymph which nourishes an increasingly committed and coherent Christian existence”.
In the second phase of the prayer of the assembly “the relationship with Jesus Christ is developed further. The Lord makes Himself visible, He speaks and acts, and the community, increasingly close to Him, listens, reacts and accepts”.
In the third phase “the Church in prayer, accepting the word of the Lord, is transformed. … The assembly listens to the message, and receives a stimulus for repentance, conversion, perseverance, growth in love and guidance for the journey”.
“The Revelation”, Benedict XVI concluded, “presents us with a community gathered in prayer, because it is in prayer that we gain an increasing awareness of Jesus’ presence with us and within us. The more and the better we prayer with constancy and intensity, the more we are assimilated to Him, and the more He enters into our lives to guide them and give them joy and peace. And the more we know, love and follow Jesus, the more we feel the need to dwell in prayer with Him, receiving serenity, hope and strength for our lives”.
On this the feast day of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta:
The Fruit of Prayer The fruit of silence is prayer
the fruit of prayer is faith
the fruit of faith is love
the fruit of love is service
the fruit of service is peace.
If We Pray If we pray, we will believe;
If we believe, we will love
If we love, we will serve.
Love to pray Feel often during the day the need for prayer and pray.
Prayer opens the heart, till it is capable of containing God himself.
Ask and seek and your heart will be big enough to receive Him
and keep Him as Your Own.
It was with the greatest delight that I had the opportunity to meet Dan Burke at the recent Catholic Marketing Trade Show, held in Dallas, TX. Dan is the incredibly gifted founder of “Catholic Spiritual Direction“, a fantastic website, where I have received a great deal of insight and inspiration. To read his work on the site is a wonderful thing, but to talk with Dan and hear him share the beauty of our Catholic Spiritual Tradition is pure gift. He really gets it! More than just the “how-to’s”, Dan understands the “why” of prayer and discernment and he communicates it beautifully. He appreciates what our hearts ache for; he shares with us that it begins and ends with an encounter with Jesus…the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Dan Burke launched out on the “digital sea” long before many others in order to bring to those who were seeking the richness of authentic Catholic Spiritual Direction …and for that blessing we have much to thank him for.
“Most of us have questions about spiritual direction. What is it? Is it for me? What if I can’t find a spiritual director? These questions and more are well answered in Dan Burke’s book. The Lord is clearly calling all Catholics into a deeper union with him. This book, in a style which is both inspiring and practical, provides some of the Church’s most important wisdom about how to respond to this call.”
Msgr. Esseff reflects on the dangers of doing “good work” without having the depth of the contemplative prayer that unites us to Christ in doing the will of the Father. He offers insight primarily from the teachings found in the letter from St. James Chap 1:
Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you
and is able to save your souls.
Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this:
to care for orphans and widows in their affliction
and to keep oneself unstained by the world. – NAB
As well as the Gospel of Mark Chap 7:
He responded,
“Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.
You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.”
He summoned the crowd again and said to them,
“Hear me, all of you, and understand.
Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person;
but the things that come out from within are what defile.
“From within people, from their hearts,
come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder,
adultery, greed, malice, deceit,
licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.
All these evils come from within and they defile.” – NAB
Msgr. John A. Esseff is a Roman Catholic priest in the Diocese of Scranton. He was ordained on May 30th 1953, by the late Bishop William J. Hafey, D.D. at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Scranton, PA. Msgr. Esseff served a retreat director and confessor to Blessed Mother Teresa. He continues to offer direction and retreats for the sisters of the missionaries of charity around the world. Msgr. Esseff encountered St. Padre Pio, who would become a spiritual father to him. He has lived in areas around the world, serving in the Pontifical missions, a Catholic organization established by Bl. Pope John Paul II to bring the Good News to the world especially to the poor. Msgr. Esseff assisted the founders of the Institute for Priestly Formation and continues to serve as a spiritual director for the Institute. He continues to serve as a retreat leader and director to bishops, priests and sisters and seminarians and other religious leaders around the world.
To obtain a copy of Msgr. Esseff’s book byvisiting here
about “The Truth About Trouble: How Hard Times Can Draw You Closer To God”. Fr. Scanlan’s wisdom is extraordinary…he knows how to pastor us through hard times, because he has suffered it, but he also knows that it is through Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus that in the end all will be well. He talks about the cancer of discontent, which is so dangerous to our spiritual lives. Fr. Scanlan also describes how the devil desires to use trouble to turn us away from God. We should realize that when that is happening and recognize, believe or not, that trouble isn’t the worst thing that could happen to us…it is actually a pathway to purification…be not afraid! What a gift Fr. Scanlan is to us all!
