6th Sunday of Easter (C) — White May 9, 2010

Gospel (Jn 14:23-29)

JESUS said to his disciples: “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.
“I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.
“You heard me tell you, ‘I am going away and I will come back to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe.”

5th Wk of Easter: Friday 7th May, 2010 (Jn 15:12-17)

SAINT LORENZO RUIZ DE MANILA blacksotana

SAN LORENZO RUIZ DE MANILA 

STRONGHOLD OF THE YOUTH

Youthful priests of Kuwait gathering after the CHRISM MASS

HAPPY EASTER TO ALL OF YOU!!! JESUS ROSE FROM THE DEAD ALLELUIA!!!

Good Friday 2nd April, 2010 (Jn 18:1,19:1,4-6,16-17a,18-19,25,28-30)

Dear Friends in the Lord,

Christ’s Death: In today’s Gospel, God’s love and compassion climaxes in His Son’s sufferings and death on the Cross . Why must this to happen to God? The divine mystery of God’s love is beyond the limited love and compassion we have for one another. Beg Jesus for the graces we need to love more wholeheartedly, like Him.

Fr Philip Heng,S.J.

Papal Homily at Last Supper Mass

“Truly You Are a God Who Is Close, You Are a God-With-Us”
VATICAN CITY, APRIL 1, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a Vatican translation of Benedict XVI’s homily at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, held today in St. Peter’s Basilica.

* * *

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In his Gospel, Saint John, more fully than the other three evangelists, reports in his own distinctive way the farewell discourses of Jesus; they appear as his testament and a synthesis of the core of his message. They are introduced by the washing of feet, in which Jesus’ redemptive ministry on behalf of a humanity needing purification is summed up in a gesture of humility. Jesus’ words end as a prayer, his priestly prayer, whose background exegetes have traced to the ritual of the Jewish feast of atonement. The significance of that feast and its rituals – the world’s purification and reconciliation with God – is fulfilled in Jesus’ prayer, a prayer which anticipates his Passion and transforms it into a prayer. The priestly prayer thus makes uniquely evident the perpetual mystery of Holy Thursday: the new priesthood of Jesus Christ and its prolongation in the consecration of the Apostles, in the incorporation of the disciples into the Lord’s priesthood. From this inexhaustibly profound text, I would like to select three sayings of Jesus which can lead us more fully into the mystery of Holy Thursday.

First, there are the words: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). Everyone wants to have life. We long for a life which is authentic, complete, worthwhile, full of joy. This yearning for life coexists with a resistance to death, which nonetheless remains unescapable. When Jesus speaks about eternal life, he is referring to real and true life, a life worthy of being lived. He is not simply speaking about life after death. He is talking about authentic life, a life fully alive and thus not subject to death, yet one which can already, and indeed must, begin in this world. Only if we learn even now how to live authentically, if we learn how to live the life which death cannot take away, does the promise of eternity become meaningful. But how does this happen? What is this true and eternal life which death cannot touch? We have heard Jesus’ answer: this is eternal life, that they may know you – God – and the one whom you have sent, Jesus Christ. Much to our surprise, we are told that life is knowledge. This means first of all that life is relationship. No one has life from himself and only for himself. We have it from others and in a relationship with others. If it is a relationship in truth and love, a giving and receiving, it gives fullness to life and makes it beautiful. But for that very reason, the destruction of that relationship by death can be especially painful, it can put life itself in question. Only a relationship with the One who is himself Life can preserve my life beyond the floodwaters of death, can bring me through them alive. Already in Greek philosophy we encounter the idea that man can find eternal life if he clings to what is indestructible – to truth, which is eternal. He needs, as it were, to be full of truth in order to bear within himself the stuff of eternity. But only if truth is a Person, can it lead me through the night of death. We cling to God – to Jesus Christ the Risen One. And thus we are led by the One who is himself Life. In this relationship we too live by passing through death, since we are not forsaken by the One who is himself Life.

But let us return to Jesus’s words – this is eternal life: that they know you and the One whom you have sent. Knowledge of God becomes eternal life. Clearly “knowledge” here means something more than mere factual knowledge, as, for example, when we know that a famous person has died or a discovery was made. Knowing, in the language of sacred Scripture, is an interior becoming one with the other. Knowing God, knowing Christ, always means loving him, becoming, in a sense, one with him by virtue of that knowledge and love. Our life becomes authentic and true life, and thus eternal life, when we know the One who is the source of all being and all life. And so Jesus’ words become a summons: let us become friends of Jesus, let us try to know him all the more! Let us live in dialogue with him! Let us learn from him how to live aright, let us be his witnesses! Then we become people who love and then we act aright. Then we are truly alive.

Twice in the course of the priestly prayer Jesus speaks of revealing God’s name. “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world” (v. 6). “I have made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (v. 26). The Lord is alluding here to the scene of the burning bush, when God, at Moses’ request, had revealed his name. Jesus thus means to say that he is bringing to fulfilment what began with the burning bush; that in him God, who had made himself known to Moses, now reveals himself fully. And that in doing so he brings about reconciliation; that the love with which God loves his Son in the mystery of the Trinity now draws men and women into this divine circle of love. But what, more precisely, does it mean to say that the revelation made from the burning bush is finally brought to completion, fully attains its purpose? The essence of what took place on Mount Horeb was not the mysterious word, the “name” which God had revealed to Moses, as a kind of mark of identification. To give one’s name means to enter into relationship with another. The revelation of the divine name, then, means that God, infinite and self-subsistent, enters into the network of human relationships; that he comes out of himself, so to speak, and becomes one of us, present among us and for us. Consequently, Israel saw in the name of God not merely a word steeped in mystery, but an affirmation that God is with us. According to sacred Scripture, the Temple is the dwelling-place of God’s name. God is not confined within any earthly space; he remains infinitely above and beyond the world. Yet in the Temple he is present for us as the One who can be called – as the One who wills to be with us. This desire of God to be with his people comes to completion in the incarnation of the Son. Here what began at the burning bush is truly brought to completion: God, as a Man, is able to be called by us and he is close to us. He is one of us, yet he remains the eternal and infinite God. His love comes forth, so to speak, from himself and enters into our midst. The mystery of the Eucharist, the presence of the Lord under the appearances of bread and wine, is the highest and most sublime way in which this new mode of God’s being-with-us takes shape. “Truly you are a God who is hidden, O God of Israel”, the prophet Isaiah had prayed (45:15). This never ceases to be true. But we can also say: Truly you are a God who is close, you are a God-with-us. You have revealed your mystery to us, you have shown your face to us. You have revealed yourself and given yourself into our hands… At this hour joy and gratitude must fill us, because God has shown himself, because he, infinite and beyond the grasp of our reason, is the God who is close to us, who loves us, and whom we can know and love.

The best-known petition of the priestly prayer is the petition for the unity of the disciples, now and yet to come: “I do not ask only on behalf of these – the community of the disciples gathered in the Upper Room – but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me, and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (v. 20ff.; cf. vv. 11 and 13). What exactly is the Lord asking for? First, he prays for his disciples, present and future. He peers into the distance of future history. He sees the dangers there and he commends this community to the heart of the Father. He prays to the Father for the Church and for her unity. It has been said that in the Gospel of John the Church is not present. Yet here she appears in her essential features: as the community of disciples who through the apostolic preaching believe in Jesus Christ and thus become one. Jesus prays for the Church to be one and apostolic. This prayer, then, is properly speaking an act which founds the Church.

The Lord prays to the Father for the Church. She is born of the prayer of Jesus and through the preaching of the Apostles, who make known God’s name and introduce men and women into the fellowship of love with God. Jesus thus prays that the preaching of the disciples will continue for all time, that it will gather together men and women who know God and the one he has sent, his Son Jesus Christ. He prays that men and women may be led to faith and, through faith, to love. He asks the Father that these believers “be in us” (v. 21); that they will live, in other words, in interior communion with God and Jesus Christ, and that this inward being in communion with God may give rise to visible unity. Twice the Lord says that this unity should make the world believe in the mission of Jesus. It must thus be a unity which can be seen – a unity which so transcends ordinary human possibilities as to become a sign before the world and to authenticate the mission of Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ prayer gives us the assurance that the preaching of the Apostles will never fail throughout history; that it will always awaken faith and gather men and women into unity – into a unity which becomes a testimony to the mission of Jesus Christ. But this prayer also challenges us to a constant examination of conscience. At this hour the Lord is asking us: are you living, through faith, in fellowship with me and thus in fellowship with God? Or are you rather living for yourself, and thus apart from faith? And are you not thus guilty of the inconsistency which obscures my mission in the world and prevents men and women from encountering God’s love? It was part of the historical Passion of Jesus, and remains part of his ongoing Passion throughout history, that he saw, and even now continues to see, all that threatens and destroys unity. As we meditate on the Passion of the Lord, let us also feel Jesus’ pain at the way that we contradict his prayer, that we resist his love, that we oppose the unity which should bear witness before the world to his mission.

At this hour, when the Lord in the most holy Eucharist gives himself, his body and his blood, into our hands and into our hearts, let us be moved by his prayer. Let us enter into his prayer and thus beseech him: Lord, grant us faith in you, who are one with the Father in the Holy Spirit. Grant that we may live in your love and thus become one, as you are one with the Father, so that the world may believe. Amen.

Holy Week’s Sore Loser Christ’s Victory Over Sin Chafes Forces of Evil

ROME, APRIL 1, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Every year, the forces of evil get very anxious as we reach Holy Week. After six weeks of purification and prayer, we reach the great celebration of Christ’s victory over sin and our reconciliation with God. Satan is a sore loser.

So the Christian celebration of the Lord’s passion, death and resurrection is accompanied by the yearly ritual of Christ-bashing in the mainstream media. You will recall that just a year ago Newsweek Magazine celebrated Easter with a cover story titled “The Decline and Fall of Christian America,” while the Discovery channel aired a documentary that portrayed Jesus as a political opportunist.

This Lent, the attacks have been more pointed, targeting Christ’s vicar, the Pope. The last few weeks have seen a frenzy of accusations against the clergy, the bishops and the Pope himself regarding cases of sex abuse in Germany, Ireland and the United States. The strategy has been that of pre-Geneva Convention warlords: fire as many shots as possible into the air and hope that something will hit the mark. Since the media are held to no rules of engagement, innocent casualties and wanton destruction are welcomed as tactics to weaken the adversary.

Daily headlines pairing Benedict XVI with sexual abuse reveal little substance and much specious reasoning, while the editorialists have been vying, like bullies in a school yard, to see who can deliver the sharpest kick.

To the secular minded it seems inexplicable that the Holy See doesn’t leap to its own defense, brandishing sheaves of files, swiftly rebutting each accusation, and decrying this defamation from the cupola of St. Peter’s. This is not Rome’s way. Not when the Landsknechts sacked Rome in 1527, forcing Pope Clement VII to flee for his life; not when 86-year-old Pope Pius VI was trundled off by Napoleon and driven around Europe until he died; and not when the Italians claimed Rome and drove Pope Pius IX into exile within the Vatican walls.

There are two main reasons for this. For all their pretensions, newspapers are not a court of law. They are bound to no rules when considering evidence, nor is there a process for establishing the worthiness of witnesses for the prosecution. They can pick and choose what to publish and what to silence, or simply ignore. The media’s self-styled tribunals bring more sales for the editors and more reasons and resources to keep attacking the Church, but little in the way of justice.

Moreover, in media courts, you are assumed guilty until proven innocent. In this arena, the press calls the shots, and slings the mud while all the Holy See can do is wipe it off. Much like the trial of Christ, there is no chance of acquittal here.

Christ’s unjust trial and condemnation, however, never was a story about those who betrayed and beat him. Jesus is the hero and brought out the best in many, even as he went to his death. Simon of Cyrene, who helped bear Christ’s burden, Veronica who became the custodian of his image, and even the late convert Longinus, who pierced the side of Christ with his lance — all these are remembered by name, while the reviling mob and persecutors are lost to history.

The trials of Benedict XVI have similarly produced some heroes. Bill Donahue of the Catholic League has brought the battle to the doors of the newsrooms. Relentless and inexhaustible, he has extracted apologies and forced retractions like David repelling the wolves and lions from his flock.

Among many others: George Weigel, Sean Murphy, Father Raymond de Souza, and most recently, Cardinal Levada himself, have spent hours sifting through each accusation, checking facts and brandishing their writing talents to persuasively rebut each new accusation randomly thrown by the press. Why do they do it? So the Holy Father won’t have to.

The tempestuous fury of the mainstream media stands in sharp contrast to the Roman mood. After record numbers for Palm Sunday Mass, the atmosphere in Rome is prayerful and serene as we approach the Holy Triduum.

While the secular world wrestles with its fascination with sex and scandal, the Christian faithful join the prayers of the Holy Roman Church in this the most blessed time of year. The Pope’s job is not to jump when the New York Times calls, but to reap and distribute the graces won for us by Christ. Here in Rome, that is our fixation.

The often overt hatred of the Catholic Church these days constitutes a last Lenten temptation for us. Like Jesus’ three temptations in the desert, Satan offers us three as well: a temptation to despair for the future of the Church, a temptation to turn our attention from our Paschal renewal, and a temptation to despise those who have shown such scorn for our faith and our Holy Father.

Like Jesus, we must resist. It is up to us to remember that our Kingdom already has a news service, and it is the Good News that we proclaim this week.

May Jesus Not Weep Again for Jerusalem Christian Leaders of Holy Land Send Easter Message

JERUSALEM, APRIL 1, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The heads of Churches of the Holy Land admit they know the “power of evil” and the struggles Christians face. But they affirm they also know the “power of the Resurrection.”

This is the message proclaimed by 13 Christians leaders in a joint Easter statement released Wednesday. Among the signatories are the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem and the Franciscan custos of the Holy Land.

“Our message to you, whether near or far, is one of hope, encouragement and perseverance,” the leaders wrote.

“We know the power of despair,” they affirmed. “We know the power of evil. We know the power of the ‘principalities and powers’ of this world which promote agendas of division and oppression to bring harm to God’s people throughout God’s creation. [...]

“We also know the power of the Resurrection. We know the power of God to bring hope out of despair. [...] We know the power of God in Christ to confront those same ‘principalities and powers’ to promote faith, mutual respect, compassion and courage to speak the truth to benefit all of God’s people.”

The Christian leaders observed that every generation of believers has faced challenges.

“Our current generation is no different than those who have gone before us,” they affirmed. “[...] The Christian Church faces struggles here in this land and yet we continue to be full of hope that we are at one and the same time the Church of Calvary and the Church of the Resurrection.”

The signatories asked prayers “in our struggle for justice, peace and reconciliation, so that when Jesus returns he will not again weep for Jerusalem but share in our joy of unity, respect and love for all people in the Holy Land.”

“Alleluia! Christ is risen,” they concluded. “He is risen indeed. Alleluia!”

Christ Has a Different Gladness, Says Pope Reflects on Symbol of Oil in Chrism Mass

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 1, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The gladness that comes from Christ is different than the happiness we get from entertainment. It is true happiness, and it can co-exist with suffering, says Benedict XVI. The Pope reflected on the gladness of Christ during the chrism Mass today, in which he gave an explanation of the Christian symbolism of oil as it is used in the sacraments. “In popular etymologies a connection was made, even in ancient times, between the Greek word ‘elaion’ — oil — and the word ‘eleos’ — mercy,” the Holy Father explained. “In fact, in the various sacraments, consecrated oil is always a sign of God’s mercy. […] In the lamp of our lives, the oil of mercy should never run dry.” With the use of the olive branch to signal to Noah the end of the flood, the olive branch and oil have also become symbols of peace, the Pontiff continued. He said that Christ himself “so to speak, bears the olive branch, he introduces his peace into the world. He announces God’s saving goodness. He is our peace.” And thus, the Pope affirmed, “Christians should therefore be people of peace, people who recognize and live the mystery of the cross as a mystery of reconciliation. Christ does not conquer through the sword, but through the cross. He wins by conquering hatred. He wins through the force of his greater love.” The Pontiff said that priests, in fellowship with Christ, are called “to be men of peace, we are called to oppose violence and to trust in the greater power of love.” Battles Benedict XVI drew out a further symbolism from oil: that it strengthens for battle. “This does not contradict the theme of peace, but forms part of it,” he clarified. “The battle of Christians consisted — and still consists — not in the use of violence, but in the fact that they were — and are — ready to suffer for the good, for God. […] The battle of the martyrs consists in their concrete ‘no’ to injustice. […] “With their ‘no’ to falsehood and all its consequences, they upheld the power of right and truth. Thus they served true peace.” Christians of today have to follow this example, the Pope affirmed, rejecting wrong, even if it is enshrined in law. He offered the example of abortion as an evil to be rejected. “In this way we serve peace, in this way we find ourselves following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ,” he said. Wedding song Benedict XVI reflected on how the Fathers of the Church commented on Psalm 45 (44), interpreted as “the psalm for the marriage of the new Solomon, Jesus Christ, to his Church.” He noted how the psalm affirms God has anointed the King with the oil of gladness. “The Fathers had no doubt in this regard: the oil of gladness is the Holy Spirit himself, who was poured out upon Jesus Christ,” the Pontiff explained. “The Holy Spirit is the gladness that comes from God. From Jesus this gladness sweeps over us in his Gospel, in the joyful message that God knows us, that he is good and that his goodness is the power above all powers; that we are wanted and loved by him. Gladness is the fruit of love.” This gift of Love makes us “glad to be alive,” the Holy Father affirmed. “Since we know Christ, and since in him we know God, we know that it is good to be a human being. It is good to be alive, because we are loved, because truth itself is good.” The Holy Spirit is the oil of gladness, who “communicates himself to us as a gift from Christ. […] This gladness is different from entertainment and from the outward happiness that modern society seeks for itself. Entertainment, in its proper place, is certainly good and enjoyable. It is good to be able to laugh. “But entertainment is not everything. It is only a small part of our lives, and when it tries to be the whole, it becomes a mask behind which despair lurks, or at least doubt over whether life is really good, or whether non-existence might perhaps be better than existence. “The gladness that comes to us from Christ is different. It does indeed make us happy, but it can also perfectly well coexist with suffering. It gives us the capacity to suffer and, in suffering, to remain nevertheless profoundly glad. It gives us the capacity to share the suffering of others and thus by placing ourselves at one another’s disposal, to express tangibly the light and the goodness of God.” Priests, the Bishop of Rome said, “are — in St. Paul’s words — ‘co-workers with you for your joy.’” He concluded with the prayer “that his gladness may pervade us ever more deeply and that we may be capable of bringing it anew to a world in such urgent need of the joy that has its source in truth.”