Commentary Cont'd "Word on Fire" 3
Episode Eight "The Communion of the Saints"
1,2 - God and Friends In Heaven and On Earth
3 - Katherine Drexel
4 - Therese of Lisieux
5 - Edith Stein
6 - Mother Theresa of Calcutta
7 - A Saint Like You
1 & 2 - God and Friends In Heaven and On Earth
God’s friends on earth are those who choose to lead a heroic life of virtue in total communion with God. They experience a life full of grace. Those who die in this state become God’s friends in heaven. All who get to heaven are saints. In continuous loving service to our Lord, we are all called to live a life of grace. God’s gift of grace is never ending. All have the choice to live a life of virtue and service dedicated to God’s honor and praise. Our journey to the City of God can lead to becoming a friend of God on heaven and on earth.
St. Katharine Drexel
Quick Facts
NAME: Saint Katharine Drexel
OCCUPATION: Nun
BIRTH DATE: November 26, 1858
DEATH DATE: March 03, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
PLACE OF DEATH: Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania
Best Known For:
Saint Katharine Drexel dedicated her life and vast family fortune to the needs of oppressed Native Americans and African-Americans. In 1891, she established the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, personally financing more than 60 missions and schools around the American Southwest. Fifty-five years after her death, Pope John Paul II canonized her sainthood in.
Katherine Drexel was born into a wealthy family. She was highly educated and Passive Voice (consider revising) in a religious and loving family. Included as part of the home they had a chapel built. Her mother would open their home to the poor three days per week. They felt that their good fortune should be shared with those less fortunate.
Saint Katharine Drexel was the founder of the Blessed Sacrament Sisters for Indians and Colored People (now Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament). For local people, she founded Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana…
St. Therese of Lisieux
Saint Therese of Lisieux - of the Little Child of Jesus
Therese of Lisieux, patron of catholic missions.
Therese Martin, a young Carmelite Sister at the age of 15, found her project of life in her book "The Little Way" All the small things of every day life will positively influence one's life and faith. It is enough to do the small things of every day.
The ninth and youngest child of a French watchmaker and his wife, and Therese was religiously brought up, and the example of two of her sisters drew her towards the life of a Carmelite nun. This vocation was strengthened at Christmas 1886 when, she tells us, "The divine Child flooded the darkness of my soul with radiant light." However, Teresa was only fourteen, and it was nearly eighteen months later before the bishop allowed her to join her sisters in the Carmel at Lisieux. There she lived for the rest of her short life (only 9 years).
The world would probably never have heard of Teresa had she not been told to write down her childhood recollections. The resulting manuscript, covering all her life, was published after her death as a book, The Story of a Soul: it took the Christian world by storm.
Sister Therese's "little way" of spiritual childhood, the way of trust and complete self-surrender, the way of simplicity and perfection in the doing of small things and daily duties, has become a pattern for numberless people; graces without number are attributed to her intercession in Heaven, she is the saint of an era. God enabled her to attain holiness through ordinary means in a short time. She died on September 30, 1897; she was not yet twenty-five years old. She is best known as St. Theresa of the Little Flower.
5 - Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)
Saint Edith Stein
Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Virgin & Martyr
Optional Memorial
August 9th
co-patroness of Europe
"I even believe that the deeper one is drawn into God, the more one must 'go out of oneself'; that is, one must go to the world in order to carry the divine life into it."
History
Edith was born in Breslau, Germany, on October 12, 1891, the youngest of seven children in a prominent Jewish family. Edith abandoned Judaism as early as 1904, becoming a self-proclaimed atheist. Her brilliant intellect was seeking truth, and she entered the University of Gottingen, where she became a protégé of the famed philosopher of Edmund Husserl. She was also a proponent of the philosophical school of phenomenology at both Gottingen and Freiburg in Breisgau. She earned a doctorate in 1916 and emerged as one of Europe's brightest philosophers. One of her primary endeavors was to examine phenomenology from the perspective of Thomistic thought, part of her growing interest in Catholic teachings. Propelled by her reading of the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila, she was baptized on January 1, 1922. Giving up her university post, she became a teacher in the Dominican school at Speyer, receiving as well in 1932 the post of lecturer at the Educational Institute of Munich, resigning under pressure from the Nazis, who were then in control of Germany.
In 1934, Edith entered the Carmelite Order. Smuggled out of Germany into the Netherlands in 1938 to escape the mounting Nazi oppression, she fell into the hands of the Third Reich with the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in 1940. Arrested in 1942 with her sister Rosa (also a convert) as part of the order by Hitler to liquidate all non-Aryan Catholics, she was taken to Auschwitz, and, on August 9 or 10, 1942, she died in the gas chamber there.
Pope John Paul II canonized Edith on October 11, 1998.
Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer
6 - Mother Theresa of Calcutta
“By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus. ”Small of stature, rocklike in faith, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was entrusted with the mission of proclaiming God’s thirsting love for humanity, especially for the poorest of the poor. “God still loves the world and He sends you and me to be His love and His compassion to the poor.” She was a soul filled with the light of Christ, on fire with love for Him and
burning with one desire: “to quench His thirst for love and for souls.”
At the age of eighteen, moved by a desire to become a missionary, Gonxha Agnes left her home in September 1928 to join the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known as the Sisters of Loreto, in Ireland. There she received the name Sister Mary Teresa after St. Thérèse of Lisieux. In December, she departed for India, arriving in Calcutta on 6 January 1929. After making her First Profession of Vows in May 1931, Sister Teresa was assigned to the Loreto Entally community in Calcutta and taught at St. Mary’s School for girls. On 24 May 1937, Sister Teresa made her Final Profession of Vows, becoming, as she said, the “spouse of Jesus” for “all eternity.” From that time on, she was called Mother Teresa. She continued teaching at St. Mary’s and in 1944 became the school’s principal. A person of profound prayer and deep love for her religious sisters and her students, Mother Teresa’s twenty years in Loreto were filled with profound happiness.
On 10 September 1946 during the train ride from Calcutta to Darjeeling for her annual retreat, Mother Teresa received her “inspiration,” her “call within a call.” Over the course of the next weeks and months, by means of interior locutions and visions, Jesus revealed to her the desire of His heart for “victims of love” who would “radiate His love on souls.” “Come be My light,” He begged her. “I cannot go alone.” He revealed His pain at the neglect of the poor, His sorrow at their ignorance of Him and His longing for their love. He asked Mother Teresa to establish a religious community, Missionaries of Charity, dedicated to the service of the poorest of the poor.
7 - A Saint Like You
The Church has canonized saints of many different personalities and backgrounds. Tomas Aquinas, an intellect, Joan of Arc, a martyr, Teresa of
The Little flower, simple prayer, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, love and charity;
just to mentions a few and shows the intensity of God‘s goodness.. We should pick a saint like ourselves and one not like ourselves as examples of how to grow in holiness. Use their life as models suitable to you. We are all called to know, love and serve God and to be Happy with him in heaven. We are called to be saints. On earth, we are in communion with the saints. All who make it to heaven are Saints and become the Communion of saints.
The Communion of Saints
Paul's letters clarify how the Apostolic Church under the influence of the Holy Spirit spoke of believers as "saints," whether living or dead. Paul asked the saints to pray for him and to imitate him. Faithful people in the Post-Apostolic Church in the Apostles Creed defined the confessional response to faith in their creed: "We believe in the communion of saints. Christians must believe that there is no real distinction between the believer in human life and after human life. Saints, living or dead, are indistinguishable before God. If we can pray for and with saints in this life, we can pray for and with those saints after human life. In addition, as Paul asked saints to imitate him as he imitates Christ, the Church encourages Catholic Christians to imitate the holiness of the saints as they imitated the holiness of Christ and the Father. As a hem of a garment, the shadows of saints, and clothes of the saints were used devotionally in the Apostolic Church, so relics and images of the saints are devotionally encouraged by the Church today. First among saints by the fullness of grace which was hers is the Mother of Jesus, Mary.
Episode 9 Prayer and Life of the Spirit
1. Introduction
2. Prayer
3. Beginning with Thomas Merton
4. John of the Cross
5. Teresa of Avila
6. Prayer of Petition
7. The are all Shinning Like the Sun
1. Introduction - The raising of the mind and the heart to God. Our spirit and the spirit of God coming together.
2. Prayer -
Prayer is a form of communication, a way of talking to God or to the saints. Not all prayers are the same, however. Here are brief descriptions of the five major types of prayer.
1 . Adoration
In prayers of adoration or worship, we praise the greatness of God, and we acknowledge our dependence on him in all things. The Mass and the other liturgies of the Church are full of prayers of this sort, such as the Gloria (or Glory to God). Among private prayers, the Act of Faith is a prayer of adoration.
An Act of Faith
O my God, I firmly believe that Thou art one God in three Divine Person, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; I believe that Thy Divine Son became man, and died for our sins, and that He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, who canst neither deceive nor be deceived. Amen
2 . Expiation
In a prayer of expiation or contrition, we acknowledge our sinfulness and ask God for His forgiveness and mercy. The Confiteor or Penitential Rite at the beginning of Mass, and the Agnus Dei (or Lamb of God) before Communion, are prayers of expiation, as is the Act of Contrition.
The Act of Contrition
O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of Heaven, and the pains of Hell; but most of all because I love Thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.
Grace Before Meals
Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
3 . Love
Prayers of love or charity are just that—expressions of our love for God, the source and object of all love. The Act of Charity is perhaps the best example of a prayer of love.
An Act of Charity
O my God, I love Thee above all things, with my whole heart and soul, because Thou art all good and worthy of all love. I love my neighbor as myself for the love of Thee. I forgive all who have injured me, and ask pardon of all whom I have injured. Amen.
4 . Petition
Prayers of petition are the type of prayer with which we are most familiar. In them, we ask God for things we need—primarily spiritual needs, but physical ones as well. Our prayers of petition should always include a statement of our willingness to accept God's Will, whether He directly answers our prayer or not. The Our Father is a good example of a prayer of petition, and the line "Thy will be done" shows that, in the end, we acknowledge that God's plans for us are more important than what we desire. 1950's style parents and children saying Grace Before Meals. Tim Bieber/The Image Bank/Getty Images
The Our Father
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.
5 . Thanksgiving
Perhaps the most neglected type of prayer is prayer of thanksgiving. While Grace Before Meals is a good example of a prayer of thanksgiving, we should get into the habit of thanking God throughout the day for the good things that happen to us and to others.
Grace Before Meals
Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
3. St. Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton, known in the monastery as Fr. Louis, was born on 31 January 1915 in Prades, southern France. The young Merton attended schools in France, England, and the United States.
Merton entered the Catholic Church in 1938. Following some teaching at Columbia University Extension and at St. Bonaventure’s College, Olean, New York, Merton entered the monastic community of the Abbey of Gethsemane at Trappist, Kentucky, on 10 December 1941. He was received by Abbot Frederic Dunne who encouraged the young Frater Louis to translate works from the Cistercian tradition and to write historical biographies to make the Order better known.
Thomas influenced secular society how to pray. He realized the subtle characteristic of God: the idea of existing through Himself. He sensed the power of adoration. The ordering ones life around the proper praise of God.
During the next 20 years, Merton wrote prolifically on a vast range of topics, including the contemplative life, prayer, and religious biographies. His writings would later take up controversial issues (e.g., social problems and Christian responsibility: race relations, violence, nuclear war, and economic injustice) and a developing ecumenical concern. He was one of the first Catholics to commend the great religions of the East to Roman Catholic Christians in the West.
Merton died by accidental electrocution in Bangkok, Thailand, while attending a
meeting of religious leaders on 10 December 1968, just 27 years to the day after his
entrance into the Abbey of Gethsemane.
Many esteem Thomas Merton as a spiritual master, a brilliant writer, and a man who embodied the quest for God and for human solidarity. Since his death, many volumes by him have been published, including five volumes of his letters and seven of his personal journals. According to present count, more than 60 titles of Merton’s writings are in print in English, not including the numerous doctoral dissertations and books about the man, his life, and his writings.
St. John of the Cross
John is a saint because his life was a heroic effort to live up to his name: "of the Cross." The folly of the cross came to full realization in time. "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me" (Mark 8:34b) is the story of John’s life. The Paschal Mystery—through death to life—strongly marks John as reformer, mystic-poet and theologian-priest.
Ordained a Carmelite priest at 25 (1567), John met Teresa of Jesus (Avila--October 15) and like her vowed himself to the primitive Rule of the Carmelites. As partner with Teresa and in his own right, John engaged in the work of reform, and came to experience the price of reform: increasing opposition, misunderstanding, persecution, imprisonment. He came to know the cross acutely—to experience the dying of Jesus—as he sat month after month in his dark, damp, narrow cell with only his God! He did finally escape by climbing out a window and down a wall. During this time, he contemplated an intimate union with God - The living Flame of Love. Yet, the paradox! In this dying of imprisonment, John came to life, uttering poetry. In the darkness of the dungeon, John’s spirit came into the Light. There are many mystics, many poets; John is unique as mystic-poet, expressing in his prison-cross the ecstasy of mystical union with God in the Spiritual Canticle.
However, as agony leads to ecstasy, so John had his Ascent to Mt. Carmel, as he named it in his prose masterpiece. As man-Christian-Carmelite, he experienced in himself this purifying ascent; as spiritual director, he sensed it in others; as psychologist-theologian, he described and analyzed it in his prose writings. His prose works are outstanding in underscoring the cost of discipleship, the path of union with God: rigorous discipline, abandonment, purification. Uniquely and strongly John underlines the gospel paradox: The cross leads to resurrection, agony to ecstasy, darkness to light, abandonment to possession, denial to self to union with God. If you want to save your life, you must lose it. John is truly "of the Cross." He died at 49—a life short, but full.
5. St. Teresa of Avila
Born in Avila, Spain, on March 28, 1515, St. Teresa was the daughter of a Toledo merchant and his second wife, who died when Teresa was 15, one of ten children. Shortly after this event, Teresa was entrusted to the care of the Augustinian nuns. After reading the letters of St. Jerome, Teresa resolved to enter a religious life. In 1535, she joined the Carmelite Order. She spent a number of relatively average years in the convent, punctuated by a severe illness that left her legs paralyzed for three years, but then experienced a vision of "the sorely wounded Christ" that changed her life forever. In her 40s, she began having a series of mystical visitations of Jesus, Mary and the saints, not so much with her bodily eyes, but in in the eyes of her mind . At times during intense trances, she would levitate to as long as a half hour. In her autobiography, she wrote about what she called "The Transverberation" which she was pierced in the heart by an angel with golden arrows, setting her ablaze with the love Christ - her spouse. From this point forward, Teresa moved into a period of increasingly ecstatic experiences in which she came to focus more and more sharply on Christ's passion. She called this place her Interior Castle. A place where there was power and peace. A place where Christ was. She would pray this prayer frequently:
Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing make you afraid.
All things are passing.
God alone never changes.
Patience gains all things.
If you have God, you will want for nothing.
With these visions as her impetus, she set herself to the reformation of her order, beginning with her attempt to master herself and her adherence to the rule. Gathering a group of supporters, Teresa endeavored to create a more primitive type of Carmelite. From 1560 until her death, Teresa struggled to establish and broaden the movement of Discalced or shoeless Carmelites. During the mid-1560s, she wrote the Way of Perfection and the Meditations on the Canticle. In 1567, she met St. John of the Cross-, who she enlisted to extend her reform into the male side of the Carmelite Order. Teresa died in 1582.
St. Teresa left to posterity many new convents, which she continued founding up to the year of her death. She also left a significant legacy of writings, which represent important benchmarks in the history of Christian mysticism. These works include the Way of Perfection and the Interior Castle. She also left an autobiography, the Life of Teresa of Avila.
6. Prayers of Petition -
The most common form of prayer are prayers of petition. Asking God for something. This type of prayer is found in the Bible. At Lourdes, thousands of people say prayers of petition each day. In scripture, we read; "Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you." In the scripture, God is depicted as our Father. Our Father knows what we need before we ask, but he wants to hear us ask for what we want. Like a good loving parent, he don’t always give us what we want, but what we need. He wants us to pray constantly.
More on Thomas Merton - in the mid 60s, wanted a life of solitude. He contemplated about where you were being created by God. He called the virginal point the deepest center where you live in God and he live in you. A time when one reorganizes their life around the Devine Center.
7. The Are All Shining Like the Sun - Merton observes that we should all feel connected to one and other and everything in the cosmos. Looking around one day, he mused: "They are all walking around shining like the sun!
Episode 10 "The Last Things"
1. Hell, Purgatory and Heaven
2. Beginning with Dante
3. Purgatory
4. Angels and Devils
5. Heaven
1. Hell - We know that there is more than a possibility that Hell exits. Two fundamental convictions are that: we are free and God us loves. Free to obey his commandments and laws or not. Free to give glory, praise and thanksgiving or not.
What God holds out to everyone all the time is the banquet of his love, but some know how to eat at the table and other do not. We participate in the divine love and human freedom. Therefore, we can conclude that God never sends anyone one to hell; rather people choose to go there.
Human being in hell absolutely insists on being there. They lock the doors against divine love. Because God sent his only Son to die and suffer for our sins, all have the hope of getting to heaven. Humans choose hell because they refuse the gifts of God’s love, graces, mercy and forgiveness.
2. Purgatory - Catechism of the Catholic Church: All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve a holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven. Purgatory is the name given to this final purification of the elect.
Traditional theology has distinguished between mortal and venial sins. Mortal sin kills the divine life in the one who commits it. The wounds that this type of sin leaves required correction by open penance, self-denial, fasting and prayer that
effectively bend the will back in the right direction. Venial sins while are less offensive to God are not as damaging, but must be corrected as well. Since no one really knows to what degree of purification is required, we must continue to strive for perfection in our love of God and our neighbor. We walk the path of love.
3. & 4.. Beginning with Dante & Devils and Angels -
Dogma of Faith - Angels are a dogma of the Catholic Faith. Every Sunday Mass when we recite the Nicene Creed (dating from the year 325), we restate our belief of the creation and existence of angels, implicit in the phrase "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen (or other translations of all things visible and invisible)…" The Credo of the People of God (Pope Paul VI, 20 June 1968) further explains the phrase: "We believe in one God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Creator of what is visible--such as this world where we live out our lives--and of the invisible--such as the pure spirits which are also called angels...."
Angels are spirits and are their own species. They are messengers. God sends them. They can interface in our world. Angels are superior in intellect and higher in intensity compared to us. The highest angels are the seraphim.
Choirs of Angels - The number of angels is exceedingly vast, but we have no way to know
how many angels there are? The angels are not all created equal, and based on their degree of knowledge, love of God, and type of service, the angels are categorized into three hierarchies, each containing three different orders, making nine different choirs:
··
1st Hierarchy: Known as the Councillors of God, these angels have no direct contact
mankind; they are the angels of God's Presence.
· Seraphim
· Cherubim
· Thrones
··
2nd Hierarchy: Known as the Governors, they regulate the forces of nature
· Dominations or Dominions
· Virtues
· Powers
··
3rd Hierarchy: Known as the Messengers of God, these angels minister directly to man.
· Principalities or Princedoms
Archangels
· Angels
These names are taken from the Sacred Scripture. Although all are called "angels", it is
usually from the lower choir of Angels those Guardian Angels are chosen. It is practically beyond our power of comprehension and comparison to balance one against the other, the highest in the Order of Seraphim with the lowest in the Choir of Angels, in the third Hierarchy.
· The highest in the Choir of Seraphim must have been the most brilliant, most perfect and
Glorious creature of the spirit world, a bearer of light and beauty, the ideal of creation.
Fallen Angels (Devils) -According to Sacred Scripture the apostasy of the fallen Angels must be attributed to one of the most exalted spirits. He sinned by pride and seduced the others by his example and his lies. There are fallen angels; devils, those who have lost favor with God. They are turned within themselves. They are out of Praise of God. They insinuate themselves into our lives (dark spaces) in the form of temptations. Being creatures of God, they can only do what he allows or permits. Christ has done battle with the fallen angels (devils) and conquered evil by his life death and resurrection. He allowed himself to be tempted for 40 days and nights defeating Satan and admonishing him for trying to tempt the Lord our God.
5. Heaven - The Beatific Vision - The new heaven and the new earth. We tend to think of the soul leaving the body forever. This is not the case. Our bodies will be resurrected to perfection and will experience the new heaven and the new earth at the second coming of Christ. Our bodies will transcend time and space. It will be glorified to the highest perfection. It will be complete. This is the holy longing for the transcendent beauty, truth, something more: the mind and will want to see and experience. Regarding a new heaven and a new earth, St. Thomas Aquinas says we should practice imagining the highest quality of surprise. God wants to share his Trinity with us. "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has in store for us. We should be preparing for eternity. We want to see what and be in the City of God - The new heaven and the new earth. The incomprehensible, something we take in a little at a time. We become in communion with the saints praising God for eternity. Christian hope is professed in the Apostles Creed that we believe in the resurrection of the body and life ever lasting.
Catholicism is a manner of life that revolves around and leads to the Word Incarnate, Jesus Christ. AMEN
