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Are You a Mouse or A Man? A Homily for The Feast of Corpus Christi Msgr. Charles Pope • June 17, 2017 • In many places this Sunday, the (moved) Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ Our Lord is celebrated.While you may puzzle over my title for today’s blog, allow me to delay the explanation to a bit later. On a solemn feast like this, many things might be preached and taught. Let’s look at three areas for reflection: the Reality of the Eucharist, the Requirement of the Eucharist, and the Remembrance of the Eucharist.I....

June 18, 2017 Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ Reading 1 Dt 8:2-3, 14b-16aMoses said to the people:"Remember how for forty years now the LORD, your God,has directed all your journeying in the desert,so as to test you by afflictionand find out whether or not it was your intentionto keep his commandments. He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger,and then fed you with manna,a food unknown to you and your fathers,in order to show you that not by bread alone does one live,but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of the LORD. "Do...

Corpus Christi FATHER GEORGE W. RUTLER When Jesus had given instructions sending two of his disciples into Jerusalem where they would find an upper room in which he would institute the Eucharist, "The disciples went out and came to the city, and found everything just as he had told them" (Mark 14:16). Similarly, the liturgical cycle follows a pattern based on this economy that was planned and predicted by God. Ten days after the celebration of the Ascension, the Church celebrates her birth in the flames and wind of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. And then comes Trinity Sunday....

Our Interconnectedness as seen in a Commercial Msgr. Charles Pope • June 16, 2017 • The commercial below reminds us that the products we use don’t just come out of nowhere. Good goes around and around. The Cheerios in the cereal box started out as seeds in the ground, but the commercial stops well short of showing everyone we should thank for the final product.• Before sowing the seed, the ground has to be tilled and prepared.o Thank you to the farmers as well as those who invented, designed, and build the plows. o Thanks to the steel workers...

The cardinal said that omitting Jesus's 'hard sayings' is not charitableCardinal Robert Sarah has said that gay people are called to chastity, and that “we demean them if we think they cannot attain this virtue.” Describing chastity as “a virtue for all disciples”, the Vatican liturgy chief argued that clergy deprive gay people of the fullness of the Gospel if they do not call them to live chastely. In a foreword to the book Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay by Daniel Mattson, the cardinal writes: “To omit the “hard sayings” of Christ and His Church is not charity. Indeed,...

June 17, 2017 Saturday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 2 Cor 5:14-21Brothers and sisters:The love of Christ impels us,once we have come to the conviction that one died for all;therefore, all have died.He indeed died for all,so that those who live might no longer live for themselvesbut for him who for their sake died and was raised. Consequently, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh;even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh,yet now we know him so no longer.So whoever is in Christ is a new creation:the old things...

Fr. Don Miller, OFM Image: Stained glass of Apostle to the English | photo by Lawrence, OPSaint Augustine of Canterbury Saint of the Day for May 27 (? – May 26, 605)  Saint Augustine of Canterbury’s Story In the year 596, some 40 monks set out from Rome to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons in England. Leading the group was Augustine, the prior of their monastery. Hardly had he and his men reached Gaul when they heard stories of the ferocity of the Anglo-Saxons and of the treacherous waters of the English Channel. Augustine returned to Rome and to Gregory the...

Fr. Don Miller, OFM Image: The Madonna Apperaing to Saint Philip Neri | Sebastiano ConcaSaint Philip Neri Saint of the Day for May 26 (July 21, 1515 – May 26, 1595)  Saint Philip Neri’s Story Philip Neri was a sign of contradiction, combining popularity with piety against the background of a corrupt Rome and a disinterested clergy: the whole post-Renaissance malaise.At an early age, Philip abandoned the chance to become a businessman, moved to Rome from Florence, and devoted his life and individuality to God. After three years of philosophy and theology studies, he gave up any thought of...

Fr. Don Miller, OFM Image: San Beda | Bartolomé Román Saint Bede the Venerable Saint of the Day for May 25 (c. 672 – May 25, 735)  Saint Bede the Venerable’s Story Bede is one of the few saints honored as such even during his lifetime. His writings were filled with such faith and learning that even while he was still alive, a Church council ordered them to be read publicly in the churches.At an early age, Bede was entrusted to the care of the abbot of the Monastery of St. Paul, Jarrow. The happy combination of genius and the...

The Vatican is under fire from pro-life organizations for not one but two appointments to its pro-life Academy who are noted abortion activists. Lifenews.com has already reported on Pope Francis’s decision to name Nigel Biggar, a philosopher who supports abortion, to the Pontifical Academy for Life. Biggar was one of 45 ordinary members appointed to the pro-life academy this month, according to a Vatican announcement. Also concerning is Kathleen Foley, MD, who headed the Open Society Institute’s Project on Death in America. The Pontifical Academy for Life promotes protections for human life at all stages and supports research on moral...

Fortitude, Patience, and Meekness: Three Virtues We Often Separate, but That Belong Together Msgr. Charles Pope • June 15, 2017 • The Virtues, by Raphael Sanzio, Vatican MuseumsThere is an important interplay and balance between the virtues that many modern minds set in opposition to one another. False dichotomies often prevail when the subtlety of virtues are lost or their meanings are grasped in simplistic or inaccurate ways.Consider three virtues that are related and which enable and moderate one other: fortitude, patience, and meekness. To most people, these virtues seem more opposed than related. Today, fortitude conjures up an...

June 16, 2017 Friday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 2 Cor 4:7-15Brothers and sisters:We hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us.We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained;perplexed, but not driven to despair;persecuted, but not abandoned;struck down, but not destroyed;always carrying about in the Body the dying of Jesus,so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body.For we who live are constantly being given up to deathfor the sake of Jesus,so that the life of Jesus may be manifested...

After Pope Francis issued a dramatic demand for submission from priests in the Nigerian diocese of Ahiara, insisting they all write to pledge loyalty and to indicate a willingness to accept a bishop appointed in 2012 who's never been able to take control, an online campaign is attempting to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the pope's edict.ROME- After Pope Francis demanded that priests from Nigeria’s Ahiara diocese write him promising loyalty, including accepting a new bishop appointed five years ago from outside the area, an online campaign is now attempting to cast doubt on the authenticity of the pope’s...

Reminders on the Road to Victory - A Witness to the Truth of a Teaching from St. Catherine Msgr. Charles Pope • June 14, 2017 • One of the great battles in the spiritual life is mastering our emotions, by God’s grace. Our emotions are not evil, but they are unruly and easily manipulated by the world and the devil. Our own flesh (fallen nature) also contributes to the difficulty of self-mastery.Yet as I have often testified, if we are faithful to the Lord and to prayer, growth in the spiritual life happens. Many of my once-unruly emotions have...

U.S. immigration authorities have arrested and moved to deport 199 Iraqi immigrants, mostly from the Detroit area, in the last three weeks after Iraq agreed to accept deportees as part of a deal removing it from President Donald Trump’s travel ban, officials said on Wednesday. In the Detroit area, 114 Iraqi nationals were arrested over the weekend, and 85 throughout the rest of the country over the past several weeks, Gillian Christensen, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman, said in a statement. The actions came as part of the Trump administration’s push to increase immigration enforcement and make countries,...

June 15, 2017 Thursday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 2 Cor 3:15—4:1, 3-6Brothers and sisters:To this day, whenever Moses is read,a veil lies over the hearts of the children of Israel,but whenever a person turns to the Lord the veil is removed.Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord,are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,as from the Lord who is the Spirit. Therefore, since we have this ministry through the...

Fr. Don Miller, OFM Image: Ecstasy of Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi | Alessandro Rosi Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi Saint of the Day for May 24 (April 2, 1566 – May 25, 1607)  Saint Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi’s Story Mystical ecstasy is the elevation of the spirit to God in such a way that the person is aware of this union with God while both internal and external senses are detached from the sensible world. Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi was so generously given this special gift of God that she is called the “ecstatic saint.”Catherine de’ Pazzi was...

Some Basics on the Beatitudes Msgr. Charles Pope • June 13, 2017 • J.J. Tissot, Sermon of the BeatitudesWe began reading the Sermon on the Mount during daily Mass this week. One of the flawed ways of reading it is to see the Lord’s teaching merely as a list of moral demands that we must fulfill out of our own flesh or human ability. To do so is to miss the point.The better way to understand the Sermon on the Mount is to see that our Lord is painting a picture of the transformed human person. In effect, He...

The “Lesbian-Gay-Bi-Trans” movement (hereafter, LGBT) has largely succeeded in becoming fully accepted into the secular society worldwide. Now it’s clear that this movement—composed of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and the trans-gendered—is setting its sights on the Roman Catholic Church. Members of the LGBT movement want to be accepted as fully Catholic and wholly Christian, without any admittance that the two ways of life—LGBT principles and an authentically Catholic life—may be mutually exclusive. They seek the Church’s approval of their lifestyle, even though most members of the LGBT movement reject the Church’s teaching on celibacy for single life outside of a “one...

June 14, 2017 Wednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 2 Cor 3:4-11Brothers and sisters:Such confidence we have through Christ toward God.Not that of ourselves we are qualified to take creditfor anything as coming from us;rather, our qualification comes from God,who has indeed qualified us as ministers of a new covenant,not of letter but of spirit;for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life. Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, was so gloriousthat the children of Israel could not look intently at the face of Mosesbecause of its glory that...