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December 16, 2008 –  Tuesday in 3rd Week of Advent      DAILY LITURGICAL/THEME MEDITATION: "The tax collectors and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you" UNIVERSAL CHURCH/WORLD EVENT(S): Icon of Mary Travels Down Under for 2009; What's the Point of a Christmas Tree? SAINT OF THE DAY Blessed Honoratus Kozminski  GENERAL MARIOLOGY The Predestination of the Virgin Mother and Her Immaculate Conception The Contribution of Saints DIVINE MERCY On Saving Souls Burned Up By The Desire To Save Souls  TEACHING/TESTIMONY/CONVICTION: Synod Propositions 41-45   Monthly Index

DAILY LITURGICAL MEDITATION

Tuesday (12/16): "The tax collectors and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you" Scripture: Matthew 21:28-32 28 "What do you think? A man had two sons; and he went to the first and said, `Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' 29 And he answered, `I will not'; but afterward he repented and went. 30 And he went to the second and said the same; and he answered, `I go, sir,' but did not go. 31 Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. 32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the harlots believed him; and even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe him. Old Testament Reading: Zephaniah 3:1-2, 9-13 1 Ah, soiled, defiled, oppressing city! 2 It has listened to no voice; it has accepted no correction. It has not trusted in the LORD; it has not drawn near to its God. 9 At that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call on the name of the LORD and serve him with one accord. 10 From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, my scattered ones, shall bring my offering. 11 On that day you shall not be put to shame because of all the deeds by which you have rebelled against me; for then I will remove from your midst your proudly exultant ones, and you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain.12 For I will leave in the midst of you a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the LORD-- 13 the remnant of Israel; they shall do no wrong and utter no lies, nor shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouths. Then they will pasture and lie down, and no one shall make them afraid. Meditation:  What kind of future are you preparing for? Jesus encourages us to think – to think about the consequences of our choices, especially the choices and decisions that will count not just for now but for eternity as well. The choices we make now will affect and shape our future, both our future on earth as well as in the life of the age to come. Jesus tells a simple story of two imperfect sons to illustrate the way of God's kingdom. The father amply provided for his sons food, lodging, and everything they needed. Everything the father had belonged to them as well. The father also rewarded his sons with excellent work in his own vineyard. He expected them to show him gratitude, loyalty, and honor by doing their fair share of the daily work. The "rebellious" son told his father to his face that he would not work for him. But afterwards he changed his mind and did what he father commanded him. The "good" son said he would work for his father, but didn't carry through. He did his own pleasure contrary to his father's will. Now who was really the good son? Both sons disobeyed their father; but one repented and then did what the father told him. Jesus makes his point clear: Good intentions are not enough. And promises don't count unless they are performed. God wants to change our hearts so that we will show by our speech and by our actions that we respect his will and do it. God offers each of us the greatest treasure possible – unending peace, joy, happiness, and life with him in his kingdom. We can lose that treasure if we refuse the grace God offers us to follow in his way of truth and righteousness.  Do you respect the will of your Father in heaven? "Lord Jesus, change my heart that I may only desire that which is pleasing to you. Help me to respect your will and give me the strength, joy and perseverance to carry it out wholeheartedly." Psalm 34:2-3, 6-7, 17-19, 22 2 My soul makes its boast in the LORD; let the humble hear and be glad. 3 O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together. 6 This poor soul cried, and was heard by the LORD, and was saved from every trouble. 7 The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. 17 When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears, and rescues them from all their troubles. 18 The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit. 19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD rescues them from them all. 22 The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.   RETURN TO TOP

UNIVERSAL CHURCH/WORLD EVENTS

Icon of Mary Travels Down Under for 2009 Entrusted to Young People by John Paul II   ROME, DEC. 15, 2008 (Zenit.org).- An icon of Mary entrusted to youth by Pope John Paul II will be in Australia for the coming year. One young Australian says having the image is like St. John receiving Our Lady at the cross. This was the impression expressed by Kelly Edmunds to ZENIT on Thursday, when she formed part of the Australian delegation to receive the icon at the traditional Eucharistic celebration for Roman universities in preparation for Christmas. The Mass was presided over by the Holy Father's vicar for Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini. At the end, Benedict XVI addressed the students. The icon, known as Sedes Sapientiae (throne of wisdom) will be in Australia as a follow up to last July's World Youth Day in Sydney. The image is of the Virgin with the Child Jesus, and travels to schools and universities, as the Holy Father wished. Each year, the icon is given to a new group of students in Rome. This year, a delegation from Romania gave the image to the Australians. Cardinal Vallini told the young people, "In your life of study and investigation, constantly turn your gaze to her: throne of wisdom who continues to communicate to the Church and humanity the events and words of salvation kept in her heart." Sharing the faith Edmunds took the message to heart, expressing her excitement at receiving the icon: "It makes me enthusiastic to be able to bring Mary to Australia and share my faith with university students." She acknowledged that in a society as secularized as Australia's, "it is difficult to be Catholic when others think there is no reason to live the faith, but it is marvelous to be a witness of the faith and live it with joy." Xavier O'Kane agreed. He told ZENIT: "It is absolutely incredible to be in Rome and it is a blessing to have been chosen as a university student from Australia in the delegation of Catholic students. This makes me strengthen my faith." Among the Rumanian students, Marcela Iacomi, an Orthodox youth, said the experience in Rome was motivating her to create more apostolate in her Church. "In the Orthodox Church, we do not have such a strong experience among students," she said. "The new patriarch in Romania is very interested in developing the catechesis for the youth of Romania." During Thursday's meeting with the Pope, a law student, Irene Piccolo, spoke on behalf of the young people in thanking the Holy Father for his support of youth ministry. She said that both World Youth Day and the Pauline Jubilee Year have been opportunities that can "bring many youth confused by the relativism of this age closer to the Church." What's the Point of a Christmas Tree? Pontiff Explains Symbol of Life and Hope   VATICAN CITY, DEC. 15, 2008 (Zenit.org).- "With its loftiness, its green [color] and the lights in its branches, the Christmas tree is a symbol of life that points to the mystery of Christmas Eve," says Benedict XVI. With this, the Pope explained Friday the Christian meaning of the Christmas tree. He was speaking to the delegation from the Austrian region that donated the 108-foot-tall tree in St. Peter's Square. "Christ, the Son of God, brings to the dark, cold, unredeemed world in which he was born, a new hope and a new splendor," the Holy Father said. He went on to recall the "deeply Christian soul of Austria," and he encouraged the pilgrims to "work so that also in the future, this testimony of Christ remains vibrant, to give men support and guidance in their lives." "If man allows himself to be touched and enlightened by the splendor of the living truth that is Christ," the Bishop of Rome affirmed, "he will experience an interior peace in his heart and will himself become an instrument of peace in a society that has so much nostalgia for reconciliation and redemption." The tree, a Norway spruce from the municipality of Gutenstein in Lower Austria, was decorated with some 2,000 ornaments and 1,500 lights.   RETURN TO TOP

DAILY LITURGICAL SAINT

December 16, 2008 Blessed Honoratus Kozminski (1825-1916)   He was born in Biala Podlaska (Siedlce, Poland) and studied architecture at the School of Fine Arts in Warsaw. When Wenceslaus was almost sixteen, his father died. Suspected of participating in a rebellious conspiracy, the young man was imprisoned from April 1846 until the following March. In 1848 he received the Capuchin habit and a new name. Four years later he was ordained. In 1855 he helped Blessed Mary Angela Truszkowska establish the Felician Sisters. Honoratus served as guardian in a Warsaw friary already in 1860. He dedicated his energies to preaching, to giving spiritual direction and to hearing confessions. He worked tirelessly with the Secular Franciscan Order. The failed 1864 revolt against Czar Alexander III led to the suppression of all religious Orders in Poland. The Capuchins were expelled from Warsaw and forced to live in Zakroczym, where Honoratus continued his ministry and began founding twenty-six male and female religious congregations, whose members took vows but wore no religious habit and did not live in community. They operated much as today’s secular institutes do. Seventeen of these groups still exist as religious congregations. The writings of Father Honoratus are extensive: forty-two volumes of sermons, 21 volumes of letters as well as 52 printed works on ascetical theology, Marian devotion, historical writings, pastoral writings — not counting his many writings for the religious congregations he founded. In 1906, various bishops sought the reorganization of these groups under their authority; Honoratus defended their independence but was removed from their direction in 1908. He promptly urged the members of these congregations to obey the Church’s decisions regarding their future. He “always walked with God,” said a contemporary. In 1895 he was appointed Commissary General of the Capuchins in Poland. Three years before he had come to Nowe Miasto, where he died and was buried. He was beatified in 1988. Comment: The story is told that Francis and Brother Leo, his secretary, were once on a journey and Francis volunteered to tell Leo what perfect joy is. Francis began by saying what it was not: news that the kings of France, England, as well as all the world’s bishops and many university professors had decided to become friars, news that the friars had received the gift of tongues and miracles, or news that the friars had converted all the non-Christians in the world. No, perfect joy for them would be to arrive cold and hungry at St. Mary of the Angels, Francis’ headquarters outside Assisi, and be mistaken by the porter for thieves and beaten by the same porter and driven back into the cold and rain. Francis said that if, for the love of God, he and Leo could endure such treatment without losing their patience and charity, that would be perfect joy (cited in Regis Armstrong, O.F.M. Cap., and Ignatius Brady, O.F.M., Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, pages 165-166). Honoratus worked very zealously to serve the Church, partly by establishing a great variety of religious congregations adapted to the special circumstances of Poland in those years. He could have retreated into bitterness and self-pity when the direction of those congregations was taken away from him; that was certainly a “perfect joy” experience. He urged the members of these groups to obey willingly and gladly, placing their gifts at the service of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Quote: When the Church removed Honoratus from the direction of his religious congregations and changed their character, he wrote: “Christ’s Vicar himself has revealed God’s will to us, and I carry out this order with greatest faith.... Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that you are being given the opportunity to show heroic obedience to the holy Church.”  RETURN TO TOP

GENERAL MARIOLOGY

The Predestination of the Virgin Mother and Her Immaculate Conception  By Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner, F.I.  The Contribution of the Saints It is often said that Scotus, coming from a land where the feast of the Virgin’s conception was celebrated, and teaching mostly in northwestern Europe where that feast was likewise commonly celebrated, was influenced by liturgical considerations in his defense of the Immaculate Conception against almost all the great theological names of the thirteenth century. This may be so, but it is not an entirely satisfactory explanation, because the precise object of the feast and its great prestige as a celebration of the stainless conception, and not merely a purification from original sin within the womb of St. Ann, came only after Scotus had made his great contributions to the elucidation of the mystery. Rather, a second factor ought also to be considered along with that of "symbolic" theology in the formation of his theological convictions: namely, that of the "mystical" theology or spirituality of the founder of his Order, St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis is not known to have ever used the title Immaculate Conception, though that of Spouse of the Holy Spirit could well have been an equivalent. Neither is he shown to have ever celebrated the feast, though he often visited places where it was celebrated in Southern Italy and could hardly have been ignorant of this. Apart from this historical discussion, it is a fact that his spirituality is centered on the mystery of the Cross and of the Church, the link between these two being the maternal mediation of the Sorrowful Mother or Immaculate Co-redemptrix. This fits well with his documented affirmation of the absolute primacy or kingship of the Word incarnate. Any such affirmation must logically lead to an affirmation of the all-holiness of Mary, the moral state defined by the Immaculate Conception or espousal of the Holy Spirit, the ontological premise of the divine and spiritual maternity by the power of the Holy Spirit. Many scholars hold that St. Francis knew the mystery without the dogmatic terminology, or that he used titles such as Spouse of the Holy Spirit to designate what this mystery meant concretely. They also hold that the Scotistic reflection on the concrete excellence of the redemption wrought by Christ to the glory of God and triumph of the Church, given formulation in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, is inspired by St. Francis, specifically by Francis’ view of Mary as our Mediatrix with Christ as Christ is our Mediator with the Father. In Scotus such Marian mediation is a direct corollary of the Immaculate Conception. The point is crucial, for it makes perfectly evident that the Holy Spirit and his bride, the Immaculate Virgin Mother and teacher of the apostles, are primarily responsible for doctrinal development, not the academic theologians. Nowhere is this truer than in the case of the Immaculate Conception. That mystery could have been defined, had a pope desired this, once the work of Scotus was acknowledged by the Church under Sixtus IV. In fact it was only defined after a crucial apparition of Mary in Paris (in 1830, to St. Catherine Labouré), one indication that the only viable basis for a renewal of the Church after the disaster of the French Revolution was the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, illustrated in the medal of the Immaculate Conception, or miraculous medal (72). More importantly, the apparition and the medal commemorating it universally confirm the mystery of the Immaculate Conception as the basis of Mary’s role as maternal Mediatrix: at the Incarnation, on Calvary and in the Church. (to be continued)  RETURN TO TOP

DIVINE MERCY

Dairy from St. Faustina On Saving Souls Burned Up By The Desire To Save Souls † I shall fight all evil with the weapon of mercy. I am being burned up by the desire to save souls. I traverse the world's length and breadth and venture as far as its ultimate limits and its wildest lands to save souls. I do this through prayer and sacrifice (Diary, 745). I will praise God for His infinite goodness, and I will strive to bring other souls to know and glorify the inexpressible and incomprehensible mercy of God (Diary, 753). RETURN TO TOP

CATHOLIC  TEACHING/CONVICTION/TESTIMONY

Synod Propositions 41-45 Conclusions of Episcopal Assembly on Word of God   VATICAN CITY, DEC. 15, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Here are translations of the synodal propositions 41-45, which were submitted to Benedict XVI at the end of the world Synod of Bishops on the "Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church," held in October at the Vatican. ZENIT will publish a translation of the remaining propositions in subsequent services. * * * Proposition 41 Word of God and culture The Word of God is addressed to all mankind. It must be acknowledged that, in the course of the centuries, it has inspired different cultures, generated fundamental moral values, excellent artistic expressions and exemplary lifestyles. In the Word of God are found different applications that can help both science in its discovery of ever new conquests as well as enhance the dialogue with all those who share our own faith. Hence, the synodal fathers encourage a dialogue between the Bible and culture, above all given the questions about meaning present in our time, so that the definitive answer to the search will be found. It would be good to organize biblical reading groups, including in secularized environments or among nonbelievers, as a way to open the world to God through the Word of the Bible. Proposition 42 Bible and translation The synod recommends that, in compatible cultures and in similar linguistic regions, the same translation of the Bible be approved and used, both in the liturgical use as well as in private. Many Churches spread around the world are still deprived of Bibles translated into their local languages. Important above all, therefore, is the formation of specialists dedicated to the various translations of the Bible. Proposition 43 Bible and dissemination The synod wishes to remind how necessary it is that all the faithful be able to have easy access to the reading of sacred texts. Together with this, it requests a general mobilization so that sacred texts are disseminated as much as possible and with all the instruments available that modern technologies offer, above all for people with different abilities, who have our preferred attention. Such an endeavor calls for an exceptional form of collaboration between the Churches so that those that dispose of more means share more to respond to the needs of the Churches that are in greater difficulty. The synodal fathers recommend support of the commitment of the Catholic Biblical Federation for ample access to sacred Scripture (cf. "Dei Verbum," 22) so that there is an ultimate increase in the number of translations of sacred Scripture and its capillary dissemination. This should be done in collaboration with the various Biblical societies. Proposition 44 Means of social communications The synod underlines the importance of the means and languages of communication for evangelization. The proclamation of the Good News finds new amplitude in present-day communication, characterized by the interaction of the means. The Church is called not only to disseminate the Word of God through the means but also and above all to integrate the message of salvation in the new culture that communication creates and amplifies. The new communicative context allows us to multiply the ways of proclamation and in-depth study of sacred Scripture. The latter, with its wealth, calls for reaching all communities, including the most remote through these new instruments. It recommends thorough knowledge of the means of communication, a sympathetic attitude to its rapid changes, and more investment in communication through the different instruments that are offered, such as television, radio, newspapers, Internet. They are, in any case, ways that can facilitate the exercise of obedient listening to the Word of God. It is necessary to prepare competent Catholics of conviction in the field of social communication. Proposition 45 Word of God and world congress In these times, meetings of worldwide character are multiplied. Hence, it is not considered opportune to institute a specific congress on the Word of God. Episcopal conferences are invited to support and promote events to disseminate the Bible.     RETURN TO TOP

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