Leaving sadness for JOY! ...

"The Eucharist communicates the Lord's love for us: 

a love so great that it nourishes us with Himself." - Pope Francis

 

 

"The Word of God and the Eucharist

fill us with joy, always.

Remember it well!

When you are sad, take up the Word of God.

When you are down, take up the Word of God

and go to Mass and receive Communion,

to participate in the mystery of Jesus.

 

The Word of God, the Eucharist;

they fill us with joy."

 

Pope Francis

He provides, we trust...

"Catch, then, O catch the transient hour;
Improve each moment as it flies!" - St. Jerome

"If Christ did not want to dismiss the Jews

without food in the desert for fear

that they would collapse on the way,

it was to teach us that it is

dangerous to try to get to heaven

without the Bread of Heaven." ~ St Jerome

 

St Jerome

c. 331- 420

Early Church Father, Doctor of the Church 

Brilliant and thorough scholar and writer 

Translated Scripture into Latin (Vulgate) 

Consultant to Popes and Bishops 

FEAST DAY - September 30

Bartolomeo Cavarozzi ~ St Jerome

 "Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." - St Jerome

Click here: St. Jerome - YouTube (2 mins)

St Jerome, pray for us!

Two-pronged path...to Christ! (Easter Thursday)

...it is I myself.  Touch me and see... Luke 24:39a

 

"Those who are called to recognize the risen Jesus do so by following the same two-pronged path:  by the sacrament of Jesus' Body and that of His Word, touching Jesus' Body and understanding the Scriptures.  These two sacraments, in a mysterious way, contain the risen One and at the same time in every Eucharist make Him present to all who believe.

How could we ever believe if Jesus Himself did not take the initiative to make it happen?  How would we recognize Jesus in the sacrament of His Body and Blood if He Himself did not invite us to do this and if He did not tenderly wound our heart at the moment we receive Him?  How would we find the risen One in His Word if He Himself did not open our mind and set our heart on fire every time He spoke to us through Scriptures?  In our own heart, which leaps up with joy, we recognize Jesus, the Jesus Who is risen and still lives, even in our midst."

Dom Andre Louf (+2010)

Abbot - 35 years  - Cistercian monastery

of Mont-des-Cats, France

A pledge of that Day to come!

Lo, the day is coming. - Malachi 3:19a (today’s First Reading)

Artist - Valerian Ruppert

 

 

"As we do in today’s Psalm, we should sing His praises, joyfully proclaim His coming as Lord and King. The Day of the Lord is always a day that has already come and a day still yet to come. It is the “today” of our Liturgy.

The Apostles prayed marana tha - “O Lord come!” (see 1 Corinthians 16:22; Revelation 22:20).

In the Eucharist He answers, coming again as the Lord of hosts and the Sun of Justice with its healing rays (Malachi 3:20a). It is a mighty sign - and a pledge of that Day to come."

Dr Scott Hahn

Prof of Theology and Scripture

Franciscan University, Steubenville, Ohio

He provides, we trust

"Catch, then, O catch the transient hour;

Improve each moment as it flies!" - St. Jerome

 

 

"If Christ did not want to dismiss the Jews

without food in the desert for fear

that they would collapse on the way,

it was to teach us that it is

dangerous to try to get to heaven

without the Bread of Heaven." ~ St Jerome

 

 

 

St Jerome

Early Church Father, Doctor of the Church

Brilliant and thorough scholar and writer

Translated Scripture into Latin (Vulgate)

Consultant to Popes and Bishops

c. 331- 420

FEAST DAY - September 30

 

 

 "Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." - St Jerome

 

St Jerome, pray for us!

Touching and seeing - Jesus (EASTER THURSDAY)

It is I myself.  Touch me and see...

Luke 24:39a

 

 

"Those who are called to recognize the risen Jesus do so by following the same two-pronged path:  by the sacrament of Jesus' Body and that of His Word, touching Jesus' Body and understanding the Scriptures.  These two sacraments, in a mysterious way, contain the risen One and at the same time in every Eucharist make Him present to all who believe.

How could we ever believe if Jesus Himself did not take the initiative to make it happen?  How would we recognize Jesus in the sacrament of His Body and Blood if He Himself did not invite us to do this and if He did not tenderly wound our heart at the moment we receive Him?  How would we find the risen One in His Word if He Himself did not open our mind and set our heart on fire every time He spoke to us through Scriptures?  In our own heart, which leaps up with joy, we recognize Jesus, the Jesus Who is risen and still lives, even in our midst."

Dom Andre Louf (+2010)

Abbot - 35 years  - Cistercian monastery

of Mont-des-Cats, France

Denying satan

First Sunday of Lent 

 

 

"During these forty days, much like the Israelites, we will journey through the desert together and look forward to the Promised Land of Easter. And like Christ, one should be encouraged to go into the desert alone, a place set aside for personal prayer and silence.

Our Holy Father of happy memory, Pope (Bl) John Paul II, defined Lent as a time for "intense prayer" and for "serious discernment about our lives" and our figurative desert is the place to do both.

In Matthew's version of the temptation in the desert, after Satan tempts Jesus to turn a stone into bread, our Lord's response of, "One does not live on bread alone" is continued with "but by every word that proceeds from the Mouth of God" (Mt 4:4). On a translation note, in Luke's Gospel the Latin Vulgate does include the words which translate as "but by every word of God" even though it is absent from the liturgical text.

The bread that doesn't satisfy is the manna that was given to the Israelites (cf. Ex 16). It's interesting, though, that in this exchange between our Savior and the devil there are three words which are synonymous with Jesus.

He is the "Stone" which the builders rejected (cf. Ps [117] 118:22, Mt 21:42, Mk 12:10, Lk 20:17, Acts 4:11, 1 Peter 2:4; 2:7), He is the "Bread" of life (cf. Jn 6:35; 6:48), and He is the "Word" of God (cf. Jn 1:1).

And this spiritual diet of Word and Bread are exactly what we receive respectively at Mass from the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist."

Jeffrey S. J. Allan (http://secret-harbor.blogspot.com/) 

 

 

Hearkening the Word

"Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord."

(Option for dismissal at end of Mass)

"We come to Holy Mass to hearken to the words of the Word, to be wounded by them, to be espoused by them in such a way that, as the one Body of Christ, we are drawn upward with our Divine Head to the Father in the Holy Spirit.  A listening Church will be one in which Saint Paul's goal for the Corinthians is necessarily fulfilled: 'power to attend upon the Lord, without impediment' (1 Cor 7:35)." 

 

Dom Mark Daniel Kirby, Prior of Silverstream Priory

Stamullen, County Meath, Ireland

“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.” - Madeleine Delbrel, Servant of God, 20th c Fr mystic

Click here: Ask A Catholic A Question: ****Evangelization Is Proclamation of the Gospel****

Denying satan

First Sunday of Lent 

 

 

 

"During these forty days, much like the Israelites, we will journey through the desert together and look forward to the Promised Land of Easter. And like Christ, one should be encouraged to go into the desert alone, a place set aside for personal prayer and silence.

Our Holy Father of happy memory, Pope (Bl) John Paul II, defined Lent as a time for "intense prayer" and for "serious discernment about our lives" and our figurative desert is the place to do both.

In Matthew's version of the temptation in the desert, after Satan tempts Jesus to turn a stone into bread, our Lord's response of, "One does not live on bread alone" is continued with "but by every word that proceeds from the Mouth of God" (Mt 4:4). On a translation note, in Luke's Gospel the Latin Vulgate does include the words which translate as "but by every word of God" even though it is absent from the liturgical text.

The bread that doesn't satisfy is the manna that was given to the Israelites (cf. Ex 16). It's interesting, though, that in this exchange between our Savior and the devil there are three words which are synonymous with Jesus.

He is the "Stone" which the builders rejected (cf. Ps [117] 118:22, Mt 21:42, Mk 12:10, Lk 20:17, Acts 4:11, 1 Peter 2:4; 2:7), He is the "Bread" of life (cf. Jn 6:35; 6:48), and He is the "Word" of God (cf. Jn 1:1).

And this spiritual diet of Word and Bread are exactly what we receive respectively at Mass from the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist."

Jeffrey S. J. Allan (http://secret-harbor.blogspot.com/)

 

 

 

 

 

Fruit of fasting

 

  Ultimately all fasting and abstinence

have a Eucharistic finality.

“He who comes to Me shall not hunger,

and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (Jn 6:35),

says the Lord. 

Fasting is doing what it is supposed to do

when it sends us hungering and thirsting

to the Word of God

and to the Holy Mysteries of the Altar.

Fr Mark Kirby. o. Cist

Supernatural strength

 

Junior Chip Arnold reads from Scripture as his classmates listen and reflect

before the Holy Eucharist in the Holy Name of Jesus Chapel ~ Jesuit High School, New Orleans

"Scripture on the one hand and the
Eucharist, the Word made Flesh, on the
other have in them that strength
which no power on earth can withstand."

Dorothy Day,

Servant of God