Unfurl your flags...

 Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.

One dismissal formula option for the Order of the Mass. Another:
Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.

"Unfurl your flags

for Jesus Crucified

is about to send you

to proclaim everywhere

the vital energy of the Spirit."

St Anthony Mary Zaccaria

_________________________________________________

The Lord's Day is the lord of days...
but also remembering today: 

St Anthony Mary Zaccaria

Italy ~ 1502- 1539

Physician, Priest
Powerful preacher - in Church, on the streets

Reformer, promoter of Eucharistic Adoration

Introduced bells of Church to ring at 3 PM on Fridays

Founder of Barnabites (men) and Angelics (women)
Incorrupt

Feast Day - July 5

 "Come on, Brothers! let us run like madmen 

not only toward God but toward our neighbor, as well.  
It is our neighbor alone that can receive what we cannot give God,

who does not need anything from us." ~ St Anthony Mary Zaccaria

Click here: Saint Anthony Zaccaria - YouTube

(by Barnabite Order, 6 mins - excellent)

Click here: St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria - YouTube

(Apostleship of Prayer - 2 mins)

St Anthony Zaccaria, pray for us!

Truth Himself speaks truly...

  "Do not doubt whether this is true, but rather 
receive the words of the Savior in faith, 
for since He is the truth, He cannot lie." ~ St. Cyril 

"An argument was once made use of by a pious painter named Leonardo.  He one day met in an inn two men, one of whom was a Lutheran and the other a Calvinist.  They were ridiculing the Catholic doctrine about the Blessed Sacrament.  

The Calvinist pretended that by these words, 'This is My Body,' it was only meant that the bread signifies the Body of Christ; the Lutheran, on the other hand, asserted that this was not true, but that they meant that bread and wine, in the moment of their reception, became, by the faith of the recipient, the Body and Blood of Christ. 

While this dispute was going on, Leonardo took a piece of paper and drew the image of Our Lord Jesus Christ, with Luther on the right hand and Calvin on the left.  Under the image of our Saviour, he wrote the words: 'This is My Body.' Under the figure of Calvin he wrote: 'This signifies My Body'; and under that of Luther: 'This becomes My Body in the moment that you eat it.'  

Then handing the paper to the two disputants, he said: 'Which of these three is right, our Saviour, or Calvin, or Luther?'  They were struck at the force of the argument, and ceased to scoff at the Catholic doctrine."

Excerpt from The Blessed Eucharist: Our Greatest Treasure

by Fr Michael Muller, C.S.S.R. 
First published 1868.  Reprinted 1973, 1994.

They stayed... for love of Him...

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
through which the world has been crucified to me,

and I to the world. - Gal 6:14

"Fr Paul Miki was the son of an affluent Japanese military chief and a gifted evangelist who strongly defended the faith against Buddhism.  When the political climate became hostile to Christianity in Japan, the missionaries were ordered to leave.  He and fellow Jesuit missionaries decided to continue their ministry in secret.  The Jesuits did not want to leave the faithful without the Holy Eucharist and Sacraments. They were eventually arrested.

Fr Miki was martyred along with two other Jesuits and 23 other Christians - united in a common faith and love for Jesus Christ and His Church.  They were killed simultaneously by being raised on crosses and then stabbed with spears. The people pushed near, dipped cloths into the wounds and cut off pieces of the clothing of the holy martyrs as holy relics.

When missionaries returned to Japan in the 1860s, at first they found no trace of Christianity. But after establishing themselves they found that thousands of Christians lived around Nagasaki and  that they had secretly preserved the faith.  The survival of Japanese Catholicism is one of the most moving stories in the entire history of the Church. For over two centuries the people had no priests but lived the faith as best they could, in secret, not daring to keep written materials but handing down their beliefs by word of mouth." 

Excerpt ~ James Hitchcock, The Nagasaki Martyrs

St. Paul Miki and Companions

Martyrs ~ Japan (d. 1597)

Feast Day - Feb 6

Click here: St. Paul MIki - YouTube

Click here: St. Paul Miki and the Rise of Japan’s Hidden Christians | Crisis Magazine

 While hanging upon a cross Paul Miki 

preached to the people gathered for the execution:

“The sentence of judgment says these men came to Japan from the Philippines, but I did not come from any other country. I am a true Japanese. The only reason for my being killed is that I have taught the doctrine of Christ. I certainly did teach the doctrine of Christ. I thank God it is for this reason I die. I believe that I am telling only the truth before I die. I know you believe me and I want to say to you all once again: Ask Christ to help you to become happy. I obey Christ. After Christ’s example I forgive my persecutors. I do not hate them. I ask God to have pity on all, and I hope my blood will fall on my fellow men as a fruitful rain.”

At this point, he turned his eyes toward his companions and began to encourage them in their final struggle.  The faces of them all shone with great gladness.  Another Christian shouted to him that he would soon be in paradise.  "Like my Master," murmured Paul, "I shall die upon the cross.  Like Him, a lance will pierce my heart so that my blood and my love will flow out upon the land and sanctify it to His name."

As they awaited death the entire group sang the Canticle of Zechariah (see Luke 1:67–79). The executioners stood by respectfully until they had intoned the last verse. Then at a given  signal they thrust their spears into the victims’ sides.  - Excerpt from Bert Ghezzi, Voices of the Saints

St Paul Miki and Companions, pray for us!

Belonging to those waiting for the Word...

And he (Jesus) said to them, "Go into all the world
and preach the gospel to the whole creation." - Mark 16:15

Fr Spencer Howe preaching during holy Mass ~ St John the Baptist, New Brighton , MN ~ USA

"But tell me:  what would become of this world, I mean of the Christian faith, if there were no preaching?  Within a very little while our faith would have perished, for we should believe nothing of that which we now believe.  And because of this, Holy Church has ordered that every Sunday there shall be preaching, much or little, but some preaching. ...

For tell me, should you believe in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar if this had not been preached in holy sermons?  You have learned to believe in the Mass only from preaching.  More than this, how should you ever know what sin is,  if not by preaching?  What would you know of hell, if there were no preaching?  What would you know of any good work or how you should perform it, if not by preaching, or what would you know of the glories of Heaven?  

All these things that you know came to you through the words heard by your ears, and it is in this wise that you come by knowledge to faith, and that which you know and which you have has come all through the Word of God.  And this is a sovereign rule:  that which we have of the faith of Jesus Christ has come merely through preaching.  And this faith will never perish while it shall be preached."

St Bernardine of Siena (+1444) 

Remembering today...

St Denis* (and companions)

Nee ~ Italy, Martyr ~ d. 258 (approx)

Bishop of Paris, Patron of Paris

Feast Day - Oct 9

NOTEWORTHY: *The first name of one of the priests who 
offers Mass every month (first Wednesday) 
for this Eucharistic Truth Himself Apostolate group is Dennis. 

Kindly pray a MEMORARE now in thanksgiving 

for his vocation and generosity of serving our group.

Legend has it:  after St Denis was beheaded, his corpse rose and 
he carried his head a few miles, preaching the entire way. 

Click here: Basilique St. Denis - Paris - YouTube (2:30 mins)

 Our part...

"The Word of God is not brought to the ends of the world in a suitcase.  We carry it in ourselves.  We don't set it off in a corner of ourselves, arranged in our memory as if on a cupboard shelf.  We must let it go to the very core of ourselves, to the very center around which our whole being revolves.  We cannot be missionaries if we have not sincerely, generously, and warmly welcomed the Word of God, the Gospel within ourselves.  The vital dynamic of this word is to take flesh, to become flesh in us.  And when this word comes to dwell within us, we become capable of being missionaries. ...

Once we have heard God's Word, we no longer have the right not to accept it; once we have accepted it, we no longer have the right not to let it become flesh in us; once it has become flesh in us, we no longer have the right to keep it for ourselves alone.  Henceforward, we belong to all those who are waiting for the Word."

~ Servant of God, Madeleine Delbrel (20th c French mystic) 

Click here: Basic Evangelization Training | St. Paul Street Evangelization

St Denis and companions, pray for us!