Posted on 09/17/2018 8:38:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I’ve been thinking a lot about priests lately. In truth, I often do, as some of my best friends happen to wear Roman collars. I see them on their low days, and I see them in moments of true total self-surrender. Of course, you know why I’d be thinking about them even more lately. For priests who seek holiness in loving service to God’s people — striving to see God in every person they encounter — these are grueling times. And a few conversations I’ve had lately have reminded me that the good and holy among them, while still human beings, can have a lot of wisdom to offer — if they are true pray-ers. I know some of them, thanks be to God. And they help me see more clearly.
One of the priests I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is on the other side of the veil between here and eternity. Father Arne Panula was most recently director of the Catholic Information Center (CIC) in Washington, D.C., a hub for many things truly Catholic. I still have a vivid memory of seeing him after he had a very close call in his battle with cancer. Back from the brink, he had taken Amtrak from D.C. for a dinner in New York. He seemed as close as an encounter with resurrection as one can get, and he was wearing a radiance that could have only been of God.
It was clear that the end was still coming for him soon, and that the rest of us there needed to see him as a message from God to be careful about falling into rabbit holes, getting caught up in the things of the world, falling into endless distraction, and being ruled by our emotions. The added time he got was also enough time for my friend Mary Eberstadt to sit down with him and ask him every question she ever wanted to, for his final record.
At the CIC, he was a revered spiritual director, accompanying people in discerning God’s will for them. Her transcripts of their conversations will be published next month under the title “The Last Homily.” Parts of it read as if he’s directing us through this current moment in the Church. It’s a reminder that the Christian call is the same whatever the season — a call to truly live God’s will — and that our role in being the solution has everything to do with living well, as Father Arne did.
Eberstadt asked him about what he tells young people about charity. His answer wasn’t initially about putting money in a collection basket or giving to the man on the corner (though he gets to the man on your commute home soon thereafter). Instead he addressed “the most corrosive impediments to charity: anger, vindictiveness, suspicion.” “Understand that you are a tempting target for the devil.”
Given darkness in our midst, this grabbed my attention.
“Diabolo,” Father Arne said, “means literally ‘scatterer.’”
And that is how evil operates: by putting obstacles between individuals and true community. His first weapon is lust. The sexual appetite is all-powerful, because it engenders a powerful good: the propagation of humanity itself. When the sexual appetite is turned to selfish self-indulgence, it destroys not only individuals, but a whole culture. When lust doesn’t work for the devil, or even if it does, he goes after charity. Once more: suspicion, vindictiveness, anger, and other such feelings are inimical to charity, because they divide people from one another. In all cases, I encourage spiritual jujitsu. When you begin to feel any of these divisive emotions, be self-aware, and immediately say a prayer for whoever is the object of your anger or resentment. This sets your spiritual house in order, and keeps you closer to community, and less scattered.
He explained: “The first line of thought I’d advance about charity is the necessity of getting one’s spiritual, interior life framed correctly, the better to give the right sort of material help.”
About scandal in the Church, he said: “Any priest who says Mass every day, or the Liturgy of the Hours . . . isn’t fertile territory for the evil seeds that led to the scandals.”
Perhaps now more than ever, for priests and Catholics of all states in life, this is a moment to choose to not get caught up in confusion, which is legion at the moment in the Church and many other places. Adopt practices of virtue, stick with them, increase their role in your life. See them as the part of the solution, because they are.
Father Arne had such a serene yet commanding nature about him. And it would draw you not to him but to the God he served. When you think of priests, every time you hear a news mention of the Catholic Church these days, consider saying a prayer that they might have what he had: Christ — radiating Him to others by the way he prayed, smiled, talked, and lived. You’ll see Him by his love.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.
From DeMontfort
6. I declare with the saints: Mary is the earthly paradise of Jesus Christ the new Adam, where he became man by the power of the Holy Spirit, in order to accomplish in her wonders beyond our understanding. She is the vast and divine world of God where unutterable marvels and beauties are to be found. She is the magnificence of the Almighty where he hid his only Son, as in his own bosom, and with him everything that is most excellent and precious. What great and hidden things the all-powerful God has done for this wonderful creature, as she herself had to confess in spite of her great humility, “The Almighty has done great things for me.” The world does not know these things because it is incapable and unworthy of knowing them.
And where in the above statement does it say that we have to pray to her to influence Jesus?
On the other hand, in the Bible, we have words from Jesus Himself, who taught us how to pray:
“Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven” (Matt. 6:9).
And this from the Apostle Paul:
“For through him [Jesus] we both [Jew and Gentile believers] have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph. 2:18).
We see two important truths, then, in prayer to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.
First, Christian praying is Trinitarian praying. There is no mention of any other person in prayer.
Second, Christian praying exhibits the very structure of the gospel. Jesus stands at the center as the mediator, the Father as the addressee, and the Spirit as the enabler.
There is no mention of Mary in prayers at all. In fact, after the gospels, Mary was only mentioned once by name and never again.
RE: Why did Paul ask people to pray for him? Why do you ask people to pray for you?
Some differences — Paul talked to people who are LIVING to pray for him. I ask LIVING people to pray for me, not the departed.
The Bible nowhere mentions anyone asking for someone in heaven to pray for him. The Bible nowhere describes anyone in heaven praying for anyone on earth.
Second -— I want to pray BIBLICALLY.
I know that It is the official position of the Roman Catholic Church that Catholics do not pray TO saints or Mary, but rather that Catholics can ask saints or Mary to pray FOR them.
However, IN PRACTICE many Catholics diverges from official Roman Catholic teaching. I KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE BECAUSE I LIVED AND WORKED IN ONE OF THE LARGEST ROMAN CATHOLIC COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD -— THE PHILIPPINES.
Many Catholics DO in fact pray directly to saints and/or Mary, asking them for help – instead of asking the saints and/or Mary to intercede with God for help.
Whatever the case, whether a saint or Mary is being prayed to, or asked to pray, neither practice has any biblical basis.
if a saint delivers a prayer to God, it is more effective than us praying to God directly. This concept is NOT MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE. Hebrews 4:16 tells us that we, believers here on earth, can “approach the throne of grace with confidence.”
The Bible gives absolutely no indication that Mary or the saints can hear our prayers. Mary and the saints are not omniscient. Even glorified in heaven, they are still finite beings with limitations. How could they possibly hear the prayers of millions of people?
Finally, In the one instance when a “saint” is spoken to, Samuel in 1 Samuel 28:7-19, Samuel is not exactly happy to be disturbed. It is clear that praying to Mary or the saints is completely different from asking someone here on earth to pray for us. One has a strong biblical basis; the other has no biblical basis whatsoever.
RE: We have only one mediator but many intercessors. Mary and the saints are intercessors as are our fellow believers.
So, do we pray to these intercessors?
I talk to LIVING intercessors who are here on earth. I don’t talk to ( much less pray to ) departed intercessors.
That's a very good point. Then there is the fact that there is zero mention of a priesthood for Christians. A priesthood with an alter, a sacrifice and even alterboys.
It is amazing and wonderful what Jesus did for us in making us kings and priests. It sure seems like a denial of Him to suggest that we need yet another priesthood.
7. The saints have said wonderful things of Mary, the holy City of God, and, as they themselves admit, they were never more eloquent and more pleased than when they spoke of her. And yet they maintain that the height of her merits rising up to the throne of the Godhead cannot be perceived; the breadth of her love which is wider than the earth cannot be measured; the greatness of the power which she wields over one who is God cannot be conceived; and the depths of her profound humility and all her virtues and graces cannot be sounded. What incomprehensible height! What indescribable breadth! What immeasurable greatness! What an impenetrable abyss!
The word 'pray' fundamentally means to ask. "What time is it, pray tell?" - a little archaic but you get the meaning.
Clearly, those believers who have died are not omniscient so the only way they could know of our requests is if God made it known but we all know of stories of people being awakened with a strong urge to pray (intercede) for someone who later turned out to be in need.
If the Lord can do that for living believers, why not for departed believers?
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