Posted on 07/14/2005 8:07:00 AM PDT by Salvation
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Thursday, July 14, 2005 Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, Virgin (Memorial) |
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July 14, 2005 Memorial of Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha, virgin Old Calendar: St. Bonaventure, bishop and doctor
Before the reform of the General Roman Calendar in 1969 today was the feast of St. Bonaventure whose memorial is now celebrated on July 15. St. Camillus de Lellis' feast was celebrated on July 18 before 1961.
Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha [Pronounce: Gah-deh-lee Deh-gah-quee-tah] The blood of martyrs is the seed of saints. Nine years after the Jesuits Isaac Jogues and John de Brebeuf were tortured to death by Huron and Iroquois Native American nations, a baby girl was born near the place of their martyrdom, Auriesville, New York. She was to be the first person born in North America to be beatified. Her mother was a Christian Algonquin, taken captive by the Iroquois and given as wife to the chief of the Mohawk clan, the boldest and fiercest of the Five Nations. When she was four, Kateri lost her parents and little brother in a smallpox epidemic that left her disfigured and half blind. She was adopted by an uncle, who succeeded her father as chief. He hated the coming of the Blackrobes (missionaries), but could do nothing to them because a peace treaty with the French required their presence in villages with Christian captives. She was moved by the words of three Blackrobes who lodged with her uncle, but fear of him kept her from seeking instruction. She refused to marry a Mohawk man and at nineteen finally got the courage to take the step of converting. She was baptized with the name Kateri (Catherine) on Easter Sunday. Now she would be treated as a slave. Because she would not work on Sunday, she received no food that day. Her life in grace grew rapidly. She told a missionary that she often meditated on the great dignity of being baptized. She was powerfully moved by God's love for human beings and saw the dignity of each of her people. She was always in danger, for her conversion and holy life created great opposition. On the advice of a priest, she stole away one night and began a two-hundred-mile walking journey to a Christian Native American village at Sault St. Louis, near Montreal. For three years she grew in holiness under the direction of a priest and an older Iroquois woman, giving herself totally to God in long hours of prayer, in charity and in strenuous penance. At twenty three she took a vow of virginity, an unprecedented act for a Native American woman, whose future depended on being married. She found a place in the woods where she could pray an hour a day and was accused of meeting a man there! Her dedication to virginity was instinctive: She did not know about religious life for women until she visited Montreal. Inspired by this, she and two friends wanted to start a community, but the local priest dissuaded her. She humbly accepted an "ordinary" life. She practiced extremely severe fasting as penance for the conversion of her nation. She died the afternoon before Holy Thursday. Witnesses said that her emaciated face changed color and became like that of a healthy child. The lines of suffering, even the pockmarks, disappeared and the touch of a smile came upon her lips. She was beatified in 1980. Saint of the Day, Leonard Foley, O.F.M. Patron: Ecologists; ecology; environment; environmentalism; environmentalists; exiles; loss of parents; people in exile; people ridiculed for their piety; World Youth Day. Symbols: lily (a symbol of her purity); a cross (a symbol of her love of Jesus Christ); or a turtle (a symbol of her clan). Things to Do:
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Faith-sharing bump.
Blessed Kateri bump.
Catholic Culture bump.
Thanks for that additional information. I had no idea anything like that was happening in the U. S.
I didn't know that! wow!
Ex 3:13-20 / Mt 11:28-30 We human beings have an uncanny knack for making simple things complicated. We go from San Francisco to Los Angeles by way of Hong Kong. We respond to simple questions with answers befitting a Philadelphia lawyer. And we stonewall a friend when a simple "I was wrong" would fix everything. And the result of it all is a heart saddened and rarely at rest. Why do we make things so complicated? Sometimes it's plain and simple bungling. We don't even notice the question before we back into the wrong answer. But other times it's a ham-handed way of hiding from things we don't want to face. And what a long way around to a solution that is! Jesus offers us a better and (for us 21st century technocrats) a more efficient solution: "Learn from me," he says, "for I am gentle and humble of heart." The humble heart always faces the truth: We are dust (in Latin, humus). So there's no point in wasting time dissembling. Cut through the smoke screen, face whatever is there, as Jesus would, and respond in words and deeds of one syllable. It's remarkable what power the truth has if we own it. So face it, and simplify your life! |
i was unnecessarily put down for something I said this last week and this little homily speaks volumes to me. I am going to use it as a meditation at the beginning of our meeting.
Thursday July 14, 2005 Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Reading (Exodus 3:13-20) Gospel (St. Matthew 11:28-30)
In the first reading today, as Moses speaks to God in the burning bush, he asks the question: If the Israelites ask Your name, what am I to tell them? Whom am I to say sent me? and the Lord reveals His Holy Name to Moses. His name is Yahweh I am who am. He said, Tell them I AM sent you. This tells us something about the very essence of God. God is. Because God is eternal, He has no beginning and He has no end.
In eternity, remember, there is not a succession of moments or even of seconds. Therefore, there is no before and there is no after; there is no future and there is no past. Everything in eternity is present always, and so eternity is constantly present. That is a concept we cannot understand because we live in time. All we can do is look back or look forward. The present lasts but an instant for us, but for God the present is always. God simply is.
This is why Saint Paul would be able to say of Jesus: He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He does not change because He cannot change. That is a wonderful thing. It means that unlike us, who are constantly growing and changing (we learn new things and we do new things), this is not the way it is with God. God knows everything and He knows it perfectly. There is absolutely nothing lacking in God. God is absolute perfection. If there was something lacking in God, or if He changed in any way, then why worship Him? If He were imperfect, you may as well look in the mirror and worship yourself because you too are imperfect. Maybe He would be more perfect than we are, but He would still be imperfect and therefore He still would not be worthy of worship. But God is perfect. God is absolute. In God, everything exists.
Now more wonderful than all of that is that God is perfectly simple. This is why He wants us to come to Him with that childlike faith because God is perfectly simple. So if we try to argue with God and try to convince Him and try to do all the complex things that we attempt, they do not work. First of all, we cannot change His mind because His Will is perfect. Secondly, it is by simplicity, by humility, that we draw ourselves to God and Him to us. We are not going to convince Him by any kind of rational argument because there is no convincing God since He is perfect. The truth is exceedingly simple. We need simply to strive for that simplicity.
Our Lord tells us to come to Him. We know His Holy Name. He wants us to come to Him because we are burdened. We are burdened far less by our daily work and far more by all of the things that weigh upon us. In this society that is so imbued with all of the noise and all of the sinful inclinations, all of us are burdened by it. So where do we go to find the load to be lightened, to find the help that we need? Only to the Lord. But we need to go in simplicity. We need to become like Him. That is why He tells us that we can take His yoke upon ourselves. His yoke is the Cross. Yet, at the same time, if we are willing to take up the Cross, we will find our burden lifted. We will take on His burden. But His burden is light; it is simple because it is pure and it is true and it is love. If we are willing to take His yoke upon ourselves, to carry His burden, He tells us that we will find rest, that we will find peace for our souls. There is great peace in knowing that you are doing what is right. There is great joy in being conformed to the truth.
That is what Our Lord has for us, and then, of course, the joy of eternity that follows where we will be able to glory in Him and in His Holy Name forever. We see that it is completely for us a win-win situation if we will simply allow ourselves to become like Him. He Who is Almighty is perfectly simple. That is something we need to learn, to shun all the nonsense this world tries to push at us, to stop trying to become like everyone else, and instead to become like the only one of whom it matters that we are like and that is God. When we look at Who created us, when we look at Who sent us into this world, when we look at the vocation, the mission, which is ours and we ask ourselves, "Who sent me?" He has revealed Himself to us. He is the One Who sent us, and it is to do His work, to do His Will. We are to conform ourselves to Him so that we will become like Him. As we become like Him, we will become perfect. And in becoming perfect, we will be able to love perfectly forever.
* This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.
Thanks to you for posting it.
Thursday, July 14, 2005 Meditation Matthew 11:28-30 Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28) This simple invitation can bring into our minds the image of a loving father holding out his arms to us and welcoming us into his embrace. And thats exactly what God wants to do for us. He wants to lift off everything that weighs us down, causes us to be downhearted, or separates us from him. Remember what it felt like when you came home from school and your mother or father would take off your backpack, give you a big hug, set out a plate of cookies and milk, and ask you about your day? In a sense, thats what Jesus is inviting us to do with him right now. Jesus is so very gentle with us. He wants to enfold us in his love so that we feel safe enough to tell him what is in our hearts. He wants to convince us that his yoke is easy and his burden is lightbecause he carries it for us. Too often, we feel the need to carry our burdens ourselves and to do everything right so that Jesus and his Father will love us. But that kind of thinking is backward. Jesus yoke is easy because he first carried it for us when he carried the cross. He loved us enough to take our burdens. All he asks now is that we bring them to him and let him bear them with us. Every day, we can know the grace of Jesus lightening our load if we could just spend time at his feet as Marthas sister Mary did. She didnt worry about all that she had to do. Her chores could wait a little while longer, and they would feel a lot less burdensomeif only she spent time with Jesus. We have a God who loves us so immensely that even if we give him just ten minutes, he will bless us a hundredfold. God is crazy about us. Nothing gives him more pleasure than to speak words of love and grace to our hearts. Thank you, Jesus, for loving us so much that you go out of your way to comfort us and lift our burdens. Help me to give you my heart and my burdens so that you can fill me with your inexpressible joy. Exodus 3:13-20; Psalm 105:1,5,8-9,24-27 |
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