Archbishop Lucas offers insights on the US Catholic Catechism for Adults Chapter 7:
We ponder Christ’s person and his earthly words and deeds in terms of mystery. His earthly life reveals his hidden divine Sonship and plan for our salvation. His parables, miracles, sermons, and wisdom sayings help us “to see our God made visible, and so we are caught up in love of the God we cannot see” (First Preface for Christmas).
The Most Reverend George J. Lucas leads the Archdiocese of Omaha.
We wish to thank the USCCB for the permissions granted for use of relevant material used in this series. Also we wish to thank Chuck Adams and Miriam Gutierrez for their vocal talents in this episode.
Dr. Lilles continues the discussion of the “Living Water”, as well as the nature of “spiritual thirst” and the Woman at the Well as described by St. Teresa of Avila. We also discuss the danger of spiritual gluttony and envy in prayer.
CHAPTER 19 –
Begins to treat of prayer. Addresses souls who cannot reason with the understanding.
Saint Teresa Painting Convento de Santa Teresa Avila Castile Spain.
Anthony Lilles, S.T.D. is an associate professor and the academic dean of Saint John’s Seminary in Camarillo as well as the academic advisor for Juan Diego House of Priestly Formation for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. For over twenty years he served the Church in Northern Colorado where he joined and eventually served as dean of the founding faculty of Saint John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver. Through the years, clergy, seminarians, religious and lay faithful have benefited from his lectures and retreat conferences on the Carmelite Doctors of the Church and the writings of St. Elisabeth of the Trinity.
By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange (CCC 221).
Out now! My newest book with Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers: Ignite, Read the Bible Like Never Before. Get a preview of the introduction and first chapter here.
221 But St. John goes even further when he affirms that “God is love”:44 God’s very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret:45 God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.
Scripture references
Mar 14:36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.”
Rom 8:15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, “Abba! Father!”
Gal 4:6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
LOVE the Word™ is a Bible study method based on Mary’s own practice: lectio without the Latin. This week’s LOVE the Word™ exercise is according to a Thomistic* personality approach.
Listen (Receive the Word.)
Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour?” (Mat 26:38-40)
Observe (Connect the passage to recent events.)
In Catholic tradition, Matthew 26:40 is the basis of the Holy Hour devotion for Eucharistic adoration. The tradition of Holy Hour devotion dates back to 1673 when Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque stated that she had a vision of Jesus in which she was instructed to spend an hour every Thursday night to meditate on the sufferings of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.
I’d like you to participate in a holy hour of Adoration this week: “Watch and pray,” specifically for your woundedness. Where have you been sleeping through or distracting yourself from your agony? How can you enter into that agony, and give to others out of it, rather than “entering into temptation” to somehow run away from it?
Verbalize (Pray about your thoughts and emotions.)
In your journal or on your journal page (get a free page to the right), write down your answers, and what you believe the Holy Spirit is saying to you through the mystery of Jesus’ Agony in the Garden.
Entrust (May it be done to me according to your word!)
Abba, Father, lead me not into temptation, for my spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak.
Visit here for more on Sonja’s “LOVE the Word” journal
.
*LOVE the Word™ exercises vary weekly according to the four personalities, or “prayer forms,” explored in Prayer and Temperament, by Chester Michael and Marie Norrisey: Ignatian, Augustinian, Franciscan, and Thomistic. These prayer forms correspond to the Myers-Briggs personality types.
83. Christ Jesus, high priest of the new and eternal covenant, taking human nature, introduced into this earthly exile that hymn which is sung throughout all ages in the halls of heaven. He joins the entire community of mankind to Himself, associating it with His own singing of this canticle of divine praise.
For he continues His priestly work through the agency of His Church, which is ceaselessly engaged in praising the Lord and interceding for the salvation of the whole world. She does this, not only by celebrating the eucharist, but also in other ways, especially by praying the divine office.
84. By tradition going back to early Christian times, the divine office is devised so that the whole course of the day and night is made holy by the praises of God. Therefore, when this wonderful song of praise is rightly performed by priests and others who are deputed for this purpose by the Church’s ordinance, or by the faithful praying together with the priest in the approved form, then it is truly the voice of the bride addressed to her bridegroom; It is the very prayer which Christ Himself, together with His body, addresses to the Father.
Father Timothy M. Gallagher, O.M.V., was ordained in 1979 as a member of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, a religious community dedicated to retreats and spiritual formation according to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Fr. Gallagher is featured on the EWTN series “Living the Discerning Life: The Spiritual Teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola”.
For more information on how to obtain copies of Fr. Gallaghers’s various books and audio which are available for purchase, please visit his website: frtimothygallagher.org
The “Come Let Us Adore” talk given by Deacon James Keating on Saturday, December 9th at Christ the King Church for the IPF Advent Morning of Reflection.
Deacon James Keating, Ph.D., is the director of Theological Formation for the Institute for Priestly Formation, located at Creighton University, in Omaha.
“To reflect on this mystery … is demanded by the pleas of many human hearts, their sufferings and hopes, their anxieties and expectations…Believing in the crucified Son means ‘seeing the Father,’ means believing that love is present in the world and that this love is more powerful than any kind of evil in which individuals, humanity, or the world are involved” (Dives in Misericordia, JPII).
Out now! My newest book with Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers: Ignite, Read the Bible Like Never Before. Get a preview of the introduction and first chapter here.
Mar 14:36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.”
Rom 8:15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, “Abba! Father!”
Gal 4:6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
LOVE the Word™ is a Bible study method based on Mary’s own practice: lectio without the Latin. This week’s LOVE the Word™ exercise is according to a Thomistic* personality approach.
Listen (Receive the Word.)
“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”
Observe (Connect the passage to recent events.)
How do you feel about calling God “Abba”? What emotions arise at the thought of intimacy with Him? How do your relationships with your earthly mother and father distort your view of how God relates to you? Where are you afraid concerning your relationship to God the Father? Considering Jesus’s relationship to God as Abba, what does He teach you about the Father that you had not considered before?
Verbalize (Pray about your thoughts and emotions.)
In your journal or on your journal page (get a free page to the right), write down your fears, and what you believe the Holy Spirit is saying to you through this verse about God as your Abba:
This is what I think you are telling me about yourself…
My fears about my relationship with you are…
I need your help here…
Entrust (May it be done to me according to your word!)
Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.
Visit here for more on Sonja’s “LOVE the Word” journal
.
*LOVE the Word™ exercises vary weekly according to the four personalities, or “prayer forms,” explored in Prayer and Temperament, by Chester Michael and Marie Norrisey: Ignatian, Augustinian, Franciscan, and Thomistic. These prayer forms correspond to the Myers-Briggs personality types.
Episode 2 – Praying the Psalms – Praying the Liturgy of the Hours with Fr. Timothy Gallagher
From “Praying the Liturgy of the Hours”, Fr. Gallagher shares:
My psalter is my joy. —Saint Augustine
SINCE THE OLD TESTAMENT times when they were written, people of faith have loved the Psalms. Devout Jews turned to these one hundred fifty prayers in times of joy and sorrow, of peace and desperate need. Jesus knew, quoted, and prayed the Psalms; in him, the fullness of divine revelation, the Psalms acquired their deepest meaning. 1 The early Christians likewise prayed them and, when the persecutions of the first centuries ceased, gathered for this prayer in their churches.
Father Timothy M. Gallagher, O.M.V., was ordained in 1979 as a member of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, a religious community dedicated to retreats and spiritual formation according to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Fr. Gallagher is featured on the EWTN series “Living the Discerning Life: The Spiritual Teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola”.
For more information on how to obtain copies of Fr. Gallaghers’s various books and audio which are available for purchase, please visit his website: frtimothygallagher.org
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.
As it is written in Isaiah the prophet:
Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you;
he will prepare your way.
A voice of one crying out in the desert:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight his paths.”
John the Baptist appeared in the desert
proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
People of the whole Judean countryside
and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem
were going out to him
and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River
as they acknowledged their sins.
John was clothed in camel’s hair,
with a leather belt around his waist.
He fed on locusts and wild honey.
And this is what he proclaimed:
“One mightier than I is coming after me.
I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals.
I have baptized you with water;
he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Msgr. John A. Esseff is a Roman Catholic priest in the Diocese of Scranton. He was ordained on May 30, 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 St. 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 St. 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.
Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Wednesday, 8 December 2004
“Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” (Lk 1: 28).
We address the Virgin Mary several times a day with these words of the Archangel Gabriel. Let us repeat them with fervent joy today, on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, remembering 8 December 1854 when Blessed Pius IX proclaimed this wonderful Dogma of the Catholic faith in this very same Vatican Basilica.
I cordially greet those who are gathered here today, especially the representatives of the National Mariological Societies who have taken part in the International Mariological Congress, organized by the Pontifical Marian Academy.
I then greet all of you present here, dear brothers and sisters, who have come to pay filial homage to the Immaculate Virgin. I offer a special greeting to Cardinal Camillo Ruini. I renew to him my warmest wishes for the jubilee of his ordination to the priesthood and express to him my deep gratitude for the service that with generous dedication he has and continues to render to the Church as my Vicar General for the Diocese of Rome and President of the Italian Bishops’ Conference.
How great is the mystery of the Immaculate Conception that the Liturgy presents to us today! A mystery that never ceases to invite the contemplation of believers and inspires the reflection of theologians. The theme of the Congress that has just been mentioned: “Mary of Nazareth welcomes the Son of God into history”, has fostered a deep examination of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary as a presupposition for receiving in her virginal womb the Word of God Incarnate, the Saviour of the human race.
“Full of grace”, “κεχαριτωµευη”: in the original Greek of Luke’s Gospel, the Angel greets Mary with this title. It is the name that God, through his messenger, chose to use to describe the Virgin. This is how he had always seen and thought of her, ab aeterno (from all eternity).
In the hymn of the Letter to the Ephesians just now proclaimed, the Apostle praises God the Father “who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (1: 3). What a special blessing God addressed to Mary from the beginning of time! Mary was truly blessed among women (cf. Lk 1: 42)!
The Father chose her in Christ before the creation of the world, so that she might be holy and immaculate before him in love, preordaining her as the first fruits of filial adoption through the work of Jesus Christ (cf. Eph 1: 4-5).
The predestination of Mary, like that of each one of us, is linked to the predestination of the Son. Christ is that “seed” that was “to bruise the head” of the ancient serpent, according to the Book of Genesis (cf. Gn 3: 15); he is the Lamb “without blemish” (cf. Ex 12: 5; I Pt 1: 19), immolated to redeem humanity from sin.
With a view to the saving death of the Son, Mary, his Mother, was preserved free from original sin and from every other sin. The victory of the new Adam also includes that of the new Eve, Mother of the redeemed. The Immaculate Virgin is thus a sign of hope for all the living who have triumphed over Satan by the blood of the Lamb (cf. Rv 12: 11).
Today let us contemplate the humble young girl of Nazareth, holy and blameless before God in love (cf. Eph 1: 4), in that “love” whose original source is God himself, one and triune.
How sublime an act of the Most Holy Trinity is the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of the Redeemer! Pius IX, in the Bull Ineffabilis Deus, recalls that the Almighty “by one and the same decree had established the origin of Mary and the Incarnation of divine Wisdom” (Pii IX Pontificis Maximi Acta, Pars prima, p. 559).
The Virgin’s “yes” to the announcement of the Angel fits into the reality of our earthly condition, with humble respect for the divine will to save humanity not from history but in history. Indeed, ever preserved free from all taint of original sin, the “new Eve” benefited uniquely from the work of Christ as the most perfect Mediator and Redeemer. The first to be redeemed by her Son, she shares to the full in his holiness; she is already what the entire Church desires and hopes to be. She is the eschatological icon of the Church.
Consequently the Immaculate Virgin, who marks “the very beginning of the Church, Bride of Christ, without spot or wrinkle, shining with beauty” (Preface), always precedes the People of God in the pilgrimage of faith, bound for the Kingdom of Heaven (cf.Lumen Gentium, n. 58; Redemptoris Mater, n. 2).
In Mary’s Immaculate Conception the Church sees projected and anticipated in her most noble member, the saving grace of Easter.
In the event of the Incarnation the Church encounters Christ and Mary indissolubly united: “he who is the Church’s Lord and Head and she who, uttering the first fiat of the New Covenant, prefigures the Church’s condition as spouse and mother” (Redemptoris Mater, n. 1).
To you, Virgin Immaculate, predestined by God above every other creature to be the advocate of grace and model of holiness for his people, today in a special way I renew the entrustment of the whole Church.
May you guide your children on their pilgrimage of faith, making them ever more obedient and faithful to the Word of God.
May you accompany every Christian on the path of conversion and holiness, in the fight against sin and in the search for true beauty that is always an impression and a reflection of divine Beauty.
May you obtain peace and salvation for all the peoples. May the eternal Father, who desired you to be the immaculate Mother of the Redeemer, also renew in our time through you, the miracles of his merciful love. Amen!
FG#16- The Way of Trust and Love Ep4 – Fountains of Grace: reflections on contemporary spiritual classics with Donna Garrett Join host Donna Garrett, with Fr. James Perez, LC, as they discuss the spiritual classic “The Way of Trust and Love: A Retreat Guided By St. Therese of Lisieux” by Fr. Jacques Philippe.
Discussed in this episode, among other topics, from “The Way of Trust and Love”
When a person is faithful to his or her times of prayer, day after day, week after week, it’s like someone with a well in the garden that’s choked with rubbish— branches, leaves, stones, mud— but underneath is water, clean and pure . In spending time in prayer, you’re setting to work patiently to unblock the well. What comes up at the start is the mud and dirt: our wretchedness, worries, fears, guilt, self-blame— the things we normally avoid. Plenty of people run away from themselves. There’s a real fear of silence today! But those who have the courage to go forward into the desert end up finding an oasis.
Fr. James Perez, LC, joins Donna for this series
Let’s stay with the image of the well. We start digging, and at first it’s not very pleasant, because we come face-to-face with our limitations and human deficiencies. But if we persevere, we’ll end by finding the wellspring. We discover, to our joy, that at the bottom of our hearts flows a pure spring of water, the presence of God dwelling within us. Even if we are poor sinners, by going to the depths of our hearts in prayer we find pure, clear water. But only prayer grants us access to the bottom of our hearts.
Philippe, Jacques (2012-06-07). The Way of Trust and Love – A Retreat Guided by St. Therese of Lisieux (Kindle Locations 987-996). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
More information can be found .
Dr. Lilles continues the discussion of the “Living Water”, as well as the nature of “spiritual thirst” and the Woman at the Well as described by St. Teresa of Avila. We also discuss the danger of spiritual gluttony and envy in prayer.
The “Come Let Us Adore” talk given by Deacon James Keating on Saturday, December 9th at Christ the King Church for the IPF Advent Morning of Reflection.
We discuss with Fr. Mark Cyza the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary!
