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THE SAINTS: STORIES, IMAGES, MEDITATIONS

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 10/03/2012 14:55
07/10/2007 23:34
 
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Utente Master
October 4
MEMORIAL OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI



Please see Page 8 of this thread
freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=354952&p=8
for material on St. Francis posted in connection
with the Holy Father's pastoral visit to Assisi last June.
08/10/2007 01:01
 
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Utente Master
October 7
FEAST OF OUR LADY OF THE HOLY ROSARY



Paolo Veronese, The Battle of Lepanto, 1572, oil on canvas, 167 x 139 cm. Palazzo Ducale, Venice.

Pope St. Pius V established this feast in 1573. The purpose was to thank God for the victory of Christians over the Turks at Lepanto — a victory attributed to the praying of the rosary. Clement XI extended the feast to the universal Church in 1716.

The development of the rosary has a long history. First, a practice developed of praying 150 Our Fathers in imitation of the 150 Psalms. Then there was a parallel practice of praying 150 Hail Marys. Soon a mystery of Jesus' life was attached to each Hail Mary.

Though Mary's giving the rosary to St. Dominic is recognized as NOT historical, the development of this prayer form owes much to the followers of St. Dominic. One of them, Alan de la Roche, was known as "the apostle of the rosary." He founded the first Confraternity of the Rosary in the 15th century.

In the 16th century the rosary was developed to its present form —with the 15 mysteries (joyful, sorrowful and glorious). In 2002, Pope John Paul II added the Mysteries of Light to this devotion.

Comment:

The purpose of the rosary is to help us meditate on the great mysteries of our salvation. Pius XII called it a compendium of the gospel. The main focus is on Jesus —h is birth, life, death and resurrection.

The Our Fathers remind us that Jesus' Father is the initiator of salvation. The Hail Marys remind us to join with Mary in contemplating these mysteries. They also make us aware that Mary was and is intimately joined with her Son in all the mysteries of his earthly and heavenly existence. The Glorys remind us that the purpose of all life is the glory of the Trinity.

The rosary appeals to many. It is simple. The constant repetition of words helps create an atmosphere in which to contemplate the mysteries of God. We sense that Jesus and Mary are with us in the joys and sorrows of life. We grow in hope that God will bring us to share in the glory of Jesus and Mary forever.

Quote:
“[The rosary] sets forth the mystery of Christ in the very way in which it is seen by St. Paul in the celebrated ‘hymn’ of the Epistle to the Philippians — kenosis [self-emptying], death and exaltation (2:6-11).... By its nature the recitation of the rosary calls for a quiet rhythm and a lingering pace, helping the individual to meditate on the mysteries of the Lord’s life as grasped by the heart of her who was closer to the Lord than all others” (Paul VI, Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, 45, 47).


One of the best meditations on the Rosary is John Paul II's Apostolic Letter in 2002, Rosarum Virginis Mariae:

www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_20021016_rosarium-virginis-mariae...



From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Feast of the Holy Rosary

Apart from the signal defeat of the Albigensian heretics at the battle of Muret in 1213 which legend has attributed to the recitation of the Rosary by St. Dominic, it is believed that Heaven has on many occasions rewarded the faith of those who had recourse to this devotion in times of special danger.

More particularly, the naval victory of Lepanto gained by Don John of Austria over the Turkish fleet on the first Sunday of October in 1571 responded wonderfully to the processions made at Rome on that same day by the members of the Rosary confraternity.

St. Pius V thereupon ordered that a commemoration of the Rosary should be made upon that day, and at the request of the Dominican Order.

Gregory XIII in 1573 allowed this feast to be kept in all churches which possessed an altar dedicated to the Holy Rosary.

In 1671 the observance of this festival was extended by Clement X to the whole of Spain, and somewhat later Clement XI after the important victory over the Turks gained by Prince Eugene on August 6, 1716 (the feast of our Lady of the Snows), at Peterwardein in Hungary, commanded the feast of the Rosary to be celebrated by the universal Church.

A set of "proper" lessons in the second nocturn were conceded by Benedict XIII. Leo XIII has since raised the feast to the rank of a double of the second class and has added to the Litany of Loreto the invocation "Queen of the Most Holy Rosary". On this feast, in every church in which the Rosary confraternity has been duly erected, a plenary indulgence toties quoties is granted upon certain conditions to all who visit therein the Rosary chapel or statue of Our Lady. This has been called the "Portiuncula" of the Rosary.

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Although countless images of the Madonna are associated with the Rosary, including those of the famous Marian apparitions, Italy has a particular shrine to Our Lady of the Rosary, and it is found in Pompeii.


Our Lady of Pompeii
by M. Jean Frisk


Five minutes from the ruins of Pompeii Italy, the great Roman city destroyed by the volcano of Mt. Vesuvius, there is a an area called Valle di Pompei where the town of Campania is located. In the shadow of the ancient volcano, a Marian Shrine was erected in the latter half of the 1800's. The shrine is dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary, named for the Marian image elevated on its high altar.



The image represents Our Lady of the Rosary. It is a variation of the Marian icons representing Mary enthroned. She is the reigning Madonna. She reigns but she is herself the throne of the King of kings, Jesus Christ, her son. He extends his blessing hand and at the same time bestows the blessing of the rosary on the saint at his feet.

The Pompei image is a derivation of the Eastern icon type traced back to the 6th century. Both in the East and West, the image represents Mary as Queen of Heaven. The throne is usually situated in a church, as is this one in the image of Our Lady of Pompei.

Pompei was destroyed in 79 AD. In the fourth century, Christians settled in the area. Early records indicate that a large church dedicated to the Most Holy Savior was erected there, and by the 11th century entrusted to the care of the Benedictines.

In time, the church was destroyed and a small chapel built on the site. The lands were eventually ceded to a Neapolitan noble who allowed the property to deteriorate. Local inhabitants acquired the right of patronage, and Valle di Pompei became one of eighteen parishes in Italy where the priest was elected by the people.

An article written in 1891 discovered in the files of The Marian Library/International Marian Research Institute states: "The church twenty years ago was small and dilapidated; the poverty of the place made a school an impossibility; the inhabitants were superstitious and criminal, many of them being thieves." It was a layman and his wife who would change the face of Valle di Pompei.

Bartolo Longo, founder of the Shrine of Our Lady Queen of the Rosary, was born in 1841, the son of a doctor. Longo studied to be a lawyer. During his studies, he joined a sect and was ordained as a priest of Satan. He publicly ridiculed Christianity and did all in his power to subvert Catholic influence.

A good friend, Vincent Pede, eventually showed Bartolo the gentleness of Christ and arranged for him to meet a saintly Dominican priest, Alberto Radente. The Dominican had a deep, personal devotion to Mary and fostered the devotion of the rosary.

When Bartolo Longo was baptized, he chose the second name, Maria, to be his baptismal name. He saw Mary as a "Refuge of Sinners," and attributed his miraculous conversion to her. She was the "Refuge" who would lead him to Christ.

After his conversion, Bartolo Maria Longo wanted to do penance for his past life and serve the Church he had so viciously slandered. He made a promise to work for the poor and destitute. He also published a pamphlet entitled, "The Rosary of New Pompei" and did all in his power to spread the devotion.

One evening, as he walked near the ruined rat-and-lizard-infested chapel at Pompeii, he had a profound mystical experience. He wrote:

As I pondered over my condition, I experienced a deep sense of despair and almost committed suicide. Then I heard an echo in my ear of the voice of Friar Alberto repeating the words of the Blessed Virgin Mary: "If you seek salvation, promulgate the Rosary. This is Mary's own promise." These words illumined my soul. I went on my knees: "If it is true ... I will not leave this valley until I have propagated your Rosary.

Bartolo Maria persuaded people of the area to help him clean out the dilapidated church. Then he invited the people to join him one evening to pray the rosary. Only a few curious children came.

Despite the fact that the intrepid disciple of the rosary visited every hut and farm house to distribute rosaries, medals, and encouragement, his apostolate met with meager success. The people loved and respected Don Bartolo, but they neither understood nor cared to learn about the rosary.

Bartolo then sponsored a festival on the Feast of the Holy Rosary in 1873. His first effort failed. It rained, and the preacher spoke in classical Italian instead of the local dialect which the people understood. He tried the next year; he wasn't much more successful, but he had taught some of the people to pray the rosary.

The third year, he invited the Redemptorist Fathers to hold a two-week mission. In preparation, he fully restored the little church. The mission was a successful revival and blessed by the bishop. It was, in fact, the bishop who envisioned a large church and pilgrimage place in the future.

Bartolo began the project by first hunting for a picture of Our Lady of the Rosary. The only one he could afford was an oleograph on paper. At the time, church law required sacred images to be painted in oils on canvas or wood. He was told about a painting of Our Lady of the Rosary being kept in a convent that had been purchased in a junk shop for 3,40 Lire. Longo described it himself:

Not only was it worm-eaten, but the face of the Madonna was that of a course, rough country-woman ... a piece of canvas was missing just above her head ... her mantle was cracked. Nothing need be said of the hideousness of the other figures. St. Dominic looked like a street idiot. To Our Lady's left was a St. Rose. This I had changed later into a St. Catherine of Siena ... I hesitated whether to refuse the gift or to accept ... I took it.

The image was too large to carry from Naples to Pompei, but Bartolo finally found someone who would take it to the chapel for him. When it arrived it was lying on a wagon of manure.

An attempt was made by an amateur to restore it, and it was placed in the church on February 13, 1876, the foundation day for the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary there. In 1880 the famous Italian painter, Federico Madlarelli, offered to restore the image. It was again finally restored by Vatican artists in 1965.

The image was first placed in the small, restored chapel in 1875, but plans were made to build a large church worthy of Our Lady of the Rosary. 300 people of the area pledged a penny a month for Our Lady's work. The cornerstone laying was held on May 8, 1876.

Within the month, miraculous events began to take place at the shrine. Four healings were recorded. From that time on, especially between 1891 and 1894, hundreds of miracles have been officially recorded at the sanctuary. When the construction was completed in 1883, Bartolo appealed to the people:

In this place selected for its prodigies, we wish to leave to present and future generations a monument to the Queen of Victories that will be less unworthy of her greatness but more worthy of our faith and love.

In 1894, Bartolo and his wife, Countess Marianna Farnararo De Fusco, gave the new church to the papacy, in whose care the shrine has remained since. The image was crowned immediately after its enthronement on the inauguration day of the opening of the new shrine.


A painting of Bartolo Longo presenting the shrine of Our Lady of Pompei to Pope Leo XIII, 19 February 1894.

In 1965, after the third restoration of the image, Pope Paul VI said the following during a homily: "Just as the image of the Virgin has been repaired and decorated ..., so may the image of Mary that all Christians must have within themselves be restored, renovated, and enriched." At the end of this solemn celebration, Pope Paul VI placed two new precious diadems on the heads of Jesus and Mary, crowns that had been offered by the people.

During the time when the pilgrimage church was being built, Bartolo Maria Longo began to undertake many works of charity. He and his wife established an orphanage for little girls. The first children he took in were 15 small orphans, one for each decade of the rosary. He also established a hospice for boys, sons of prisoners, and a corresponding hospice for girls.

He founded the Daughters of the Holy Rosary of Pompei, a religious women's institute to care for the shrine and the educational houses attached to it. He also established the Dominican Tertiaries near the shrine.

A special devotion known as the "Supplication to the Queen of Victories" was begun on October 1883 and is recited all over the world, especially on May 8 and on the first Sunday in October. The devotion includes a request thought to have been given by Our Lady to one of the children healed at Pompei, "Whoever desires favors of me should make three novenas of petition and three of thanksgiving."

On October 21, 1979, Pope John Paul II visited Pompei. The gathering was a national pilgrimage to Our Lady of Pompei. On October 26, 1980, Bartolo Longo was beatified by John Paul II and called "the man of the Madonna" and the "Apostle of the Rosary."



The Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary, Pompeii, Italy
The present structure was begun in 1934 at the request of Pope Pius XI.


The image of Our Lady of the Rosary represents the long tradition of the faithful who turn to Mary for refuge and hope in their needs. Mary is the throne for her small Son, Jesus. He found his first home on earth within her womb and on her lap. Mary is seated on a throne. It is the throne of the Church. Mary with her divine son reigns in the Church and from the Church, sign of heaven's continuation on earth. But what church is it?



The church in the painting's background is formed of simple, plain lines. The throne is of wood, not the highly carved wood of the period found in wealthy homes, but the wood of the poorer people. The Madonna's feet rest on a plain pedestal, not a cushion of velvet. The people of Pompei wished to honor the Son and his mother by erecting a magnificent shrine of stone. The shrine of beauty, golden decorations, and sacrificed jewels was the way the culture of the time expressed their love and devotion. Bartolo Longo, however, knew that shrines of stones must be built by the living stones of charity and peace. It was his first intention to teach the people to pray, then to care for their needs.

The rosaries in the painting each have six decades. This, too, was the custom of the time. Many times, this sixth decade was prayed for the intentions of those caring for the Church and the apostolic works of the Church. Whatever form the rosary devotion takes, it remains a prayer of Sacred Scripture. The unknown artist of the image has not forgotten this truth. A book is painted at the base of the throne. Our eye moves to this point, away from the pearls and gold, to the book containing the wisdom of God among us, the reality of the Virgin and the Word Made Flesh who dwells among us.

=====================================================================


In New York City, there is a Church of Our Lady of Pompeii in lower Manhattan. It was built in 1926 on the site of a church where St. Frances Cabrini used to worship.



For an 'endless' gallery of images on Our Lady of the Rosary:
images.google.com/images?q=our+lady+of+the+rosary&hl=en&rlz=1T4TSHB_en___US223&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=images&...


=====================================================================

Here is a very informative article that ties up a lot of related Marian topics relevant to a better understanding of the significance of the devotion to Mary and the rosary:

OUR LADY AND ISLAM:
HEAVEN’S PEACE PLAN

Fr. Ladis J. Cizik
National Executive Director
Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima (USA)
SOUL Magazine
September-October 2001



Islam
Islam is an Arabic word that can be defined as "to make peace." Islam is the religion founded by Mohammed, which considers the Koran as its holy book. In addition, Islam accepts the New Testament of the Christians and the Old Testament of the Jews as Divinely inspired works. Followers of Islam are known as Muslims (also: Moors, Turks, and Moslems) and, just as Jews and Christians, believe in only one God. Yet, over the centuries, Muslims have engaged in tremendous wars with Christians and Jews. It would seem that there is little hope for peace. However, Heaven's Peace Plan, involving Our Lady, is evidenced at Fatima, Portugal as well as other places around the world.

Fatima
The Moors once occupied Portugal. The village of Fatima was given the Islamic name of the well-loved Princess of the nearby Castle of Ourem. She died at an early age after marrying the Count of Ourem and converting to Catholicism. Baptized with the Christian name of Oureana, she was named at birth "Fatima," like many other Moslem girls, in honor of the daughter of Mohammed. Of his daughter, Fatima, the founder of Islam, Mohammed, said: "She has the highest place in heaven after the Virgin Mary."

It is a fact that Moslems from various nations, especially from the Middle East, make so many pilgrimages to Our Lady of Fatima's Shrine in Portugal that Portuguese officials have expressed concern. The combination of an Islamic name and Islamic devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is a great attraction to Moslems. God is writing straight with crooked lines, as we will see. Fatima is a part of Heaven's Peace Plan. It is hope for the world.

The Koran
In the Koran, the holy name of the Blessed Virgin Mary is mentioned no less than thirty times. No other woman's name is even mentioned, not even that of Mohammed's daughter, Fatima. Among men, only Abraham, Moses, and Noah are mentioned more times than Our Lady. In the Koran, Our Blessed Mother is described as "Virgin, ever Virgin." The Islamic belief in the virginity of Mary puts to shame the heretical beliefs of those who call themselves Christian, while denying the perpetual virginity of Mary. Make no mistake about it, there is a very special relationship between the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Moslems!

The Holy Land
The Holy Land has been a real battleground between the Islamic peoples and Christianity over the centuries. Evidence of this are the numerous churches and basilicas that have been built by the Church, destroyed by, the Moslems, rebuilt by Catholic Crusaders, leveled again by the followers of Islam, and so on over the course of history. However, there is one remarkable exception: the Basilica of Saint Anne in Jerusalem.

The Crusaders built this church and named it in honor of the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the Crypt of St. Anne's Basilica, a statue of the Infant Mary is venerated on what is believed to be the exact spot where Our Lady was born. Their great reverence for Our Lady precluded the Moslems from destroying her birthplace. The foundation for Heaven's Peace Plan at Fatima, Portugal, can be found in the Land of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Spain
As the Moslems swept through Spain in the 8th century, a great religious treasure was buried for safe-keeping in the earth, high in the Estremadura Mountains. It was a much venerated statue of Our Lady holding the Divine Child Jesus that was a gift of Pope Gregory the Great to Bishop Leander of Seville. After the overthrow of Moorish occupation, the image was uncovered in the year 1326, subsequent to a vision of Our Lady to a humble shepherd by the name of Gil. Our Lady's very special statue was enshrined in a nearby Franciscan Monastery next to the "Wolf River."

The Moslems, during their Spanish occupation, had actually named the river. The Islamic term for Wolf River is "Guadalupe" (Guada = River; Lupe = Wolf). Hence, the famous Catholic image in Spain has been known, since the 14th century, by the Islamic name of "Our Lady of Guadalupe."

Mexico
In the fullness of time, we can be sure that Almighty God knew that the Islamic religion would pose a serious threat to Christianity. God also knew that the Spanish missionaries would face grave resistance in the "new world" from the mighty Aztec Indians. The Aztecs worshipped an evil stone "serpent god" that demanded human sacrifice. It was extremely difficult to win souls for Christ from these bloodthirsty savages. However, with God all things are possible. Our Lady appeared to a humble Aztec Indian convert by the name of Juan Diego in 1531. When asked her name by Juan Diego, at the request of the local bishop, Our Lady's response, in the Aztec language, included the words "te coatlaxopeuh" (pronounced: "te quatlasupe") and meant "one who crushes the head of the stone serpent."

To Juan Diego and his fellow Aztecs, this revelation had great meaning, coupled with the miraculous image of Our Lady standing on top of a "crescent," the symbol of this evil serpent god. A tidal wave of conversions to Catholicism ensued. However, Bishop Zumarraga, who was from Spain, made what was no doubt a "heavenly mistake" that one day may lead to the mass conversion of Moslems. To the Bishop's Spanish ears, Our Lady's Aztec name of "Te Quatlasupe" sounded just like the name of the revered Madonna from Spain with the Islamic name, "Guadalupe." Hence, the bishop named the Mexican Madonna "Our Lady of Guadalupe." It is interesting that the "crescent" is also the symbol for Islam and that America's Shrine to Our Lady has an Islamic name.

Battle of Lepanto


On October 7, 1571, a great victory over the mighty Turkish fleet was won by Catholic naval forces primarily from Spain, Venice, and Genoa under the command of Don Juan of Austria. It was the last battle at sea between "oared" ships, which featured the most powerful navy in the world, a Moslem force with between 12,000 to 15,000 Christian slaves as rowers. The patchwork team of Catholic ships was powered by the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Knowing that the Christian forces were at a distinct material disadvantage, the holy pontiff, St. Pope Pius V called for all of Europe to pray the Rosary for victory. We know today that the victory was decisive, prevented the Islamic invasion of Europe, and evidenced the Hand of God working through Our Lady. At the hour of victory, St. Pope Pius V, who was hundreds of miles away at the Vatican, is said to have gotten up from a meeting, went over to a window, and exclaimed with supernatural radiance: "The Christian fleet is victorious!" and shed tears of thanksgiving to God.

What you may not know is that one of three admirals commanding the Catholic forces at Lepanto was Andrea Doria. He carried a small copy of Mexico's Our Lady of Guadalupe into battle. This image is now enshrined in the Church of San Stefano in Aveto, Italy. Not many know that at the Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Spain, one can view a huge warship lantern that was captured from the Moslems in the Battle of Lepanto. In Rome, look up to the ceiling of S. Maria in Aracoeli and behold decorations in gold taken from the Turkish galleys. In the Doges' Palace in Venice, Italy, one can witness a giant Islamic flag that is now a trophy from a vanquished Turkish ship from the Victory. At Saint Mary Major Basilica in Rome, close to the tomb of the great St. Pope Pius V, one was once able to view yet another Islamic flag from the Battle, until 1965, when it was returned to Istanbul in an intended friendly token of concord.

The Rosary
At Lepanto, the Victory over the Moslems was won by the faithful praying the Rosary. Even though they had superior numbers, the Turks really were overmatched. Blessed Padre Pio, the Spiritual Father of the Blue Army, said: "The Rosary is the weapon," and how right he was!

The Battle of Lepanto was at first celebrated liturgically as "Our Lady of Victory." Later, the feast of October 7th was renamed "Our Lady of the Rosary" and extended throughout the Universal Church by Pope Clement XI in 1716 (who canonized Pope Pius V in 1712).

And with that we are back to Fatima, Portugal where Our Lady, when asked her name, said: "I am the Lady of the Rosary." At Fatima, Our Lady taught us to pray the Rosary every day. Heaven presented its peace plan at Fatima and truly gave us hope for the world. Conversions were promised at Fatima: the conversion of sinners; the conversion of Russia; and what also appears to be the conversion of Islam. Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

===================================================================

On October 7, 2006, this article appeared in WorldNet Daily, in the context of Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg lecture.

Clash of civilizations:
Battle of Lepanto revisited

Today marks anniversary of
crucial war between Islam and West
Posted: October 7, 2006
By Mary Jo Anderson
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com



Today, Christians quietly recall the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, Oct. 7, 1571. On that date the forces of Islam battled the Holy League in a crucial engagement at Lepanto, the modern day Gulf of Corinth. The date assumes larger significance in light of recent struggles between the West and Islamic jihad.

Sparked by the events like the Danish Cartoon Wars, Pope Benedict XVI's speech at Regensburg and the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, a firestorm of renewed debate about the nature of Islamic jihad fills Western magazines and newspapers. Some maintain that the "war on terror" is the result of the Bush administration's mishandling of the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Others have revised their thinking after five years.

Jonathan Last, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer Oct. 1 states, "It's the West vs. the Islamic world, a clash that has never abated. … It predates America itself. It is a clash between Western civilization and the Islamic world."

Last quotes Samuel Huntington, author of the 1993 article "Clash of Civilizations" and subsequent book of the same title. Huntington, a Harvard professor, wrote, "Conflict along the fault line between Western and Islamic civilizations has been going on for 1,300 years." Islam advanced under the sword conquering North Africa, Sicily, Spain, Portugal and parts of France. Twice "the forces of Islam laid siege to Vienna. For 1,000 years, Islam advanced and Christendom retreated," observed Last.

But at Lepanto, Christendom did not retreat.

The Ottoman Turks had attacked and captured Christian strongholds throughout the Mediterranean. Their strategy was to control the sea, the trade routes, and thus crush European navies and commerce. In 1522, the Knights of St. John were driven from Rhodes by the Moslems. The year 1529 saw an attack on Vienna. By 1570 Cyprus was under siege. According to historian H.W. Crocker III, the Turks skinned the commander of Cyprus while the officer was still alive. More than 12,000 Christians were enslaved on Moslem galleys, lashed to the oars of Turkish ships that then threatened Europe. Feared as "invincible," the Moslem fleet terrorized cities along the coasts of Italy and Greece.

The Turkish fleet, under the command of Ali Pasha, gathered at Lepanto (Gulf of Corinth). They were reinforced with lawless Corsairs under the command of the ferocious Moslem pirate, Uluch Ali.

Europe's Holy League was an allied fleet of the Knights of Malta, Spanish, Venetian and Papal ships assembled by Pope Pius the V. The famous Don Juan of Austria, assisted by equally famous Andrea Dorian, led the Holy League. Maritime historians note that the Battle of Lepanto was the last of the great sea battles between oared vessels, and the largest battle since the Battle of Actium in 30 B.C.

An estimated 50,000 seamen and another 30,000 fighting men fought for Europe against a stronger, better armed Ottoman force of 330 ships. Ottoman ships flew flags emblazoned with verses from the Quran. Christian galleys were named "Resurrected Christ," "Christ of Venice," "Angel of Venice," "St. Euphemia" and "Our Lady of Venice."

As the day dawned over Lepanto, in Rome Pius V called the faithful to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. There he led the people to pray, asking God for a Christian victory. Throughout the morning the prayers of the people continued until, it is said, the pope had a vision of the victory and shouted, "Our great task at present is to thank God for the victory which He has just given us."

The Battle of Lepanto sacrificed nearly 8,000 European soldiers who had fought under Don Juan. Yet, the Moslem forces suffered catastrophic losses; more than 25,000 perished. Don Juan rescued the 12,000 Catholic galley slaves. All Christendom rejoiced.

Within a decade, the Moslem fleet was rebuilt and the Islamic assaults again threatened Europe. For this reason few historians credit the Battle of Lepanto as a decisive military victory against Islamic forces. However, few deny the great psychological victory that Oct. 7, 1571, marks for Europeans who refused to retreat before the "invincible" flag of the crescent.

Jonathan Last of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, "As Pope Benedict XVI explains in his book Without Roots, the very concept of 'Europe' emerged as a reaction to the surge of Islam. Not until the failure of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 did the Islamic tide recede definitively. For the next 300 years, Western civilization was ascendant and the Islamic world stagnated."

Crocker, author of Don't Tread On Me, wrote in the Oct. 6 issue of The American Spectator, "As we (or the better informed among us at least) celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto this Saturday, marking the date in 1571 when the navy of Pope Pius V's Holy League turned back the Ottoman Turks from one of their recurrent jihads, it might be opportune to consider how the Islamic world has advanced politically over the last half century."

Meanwhile, despite Islamic furor over his remarks at Regensburg, Benedict XVI has not canceled his plans to visit Turkey in November.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Related links:

For G. K. Chesterton's rousing poem, LEPANTO -
www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/lepanto.html


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/10/2007 01:09]
08/10/2007 07:55
 
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Wonderful post Teresa !
You know, Guadalupe in arab means something like "dark river" or "dark water"....

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Thank you very much, Suor Rosario Guadalupe, and welcome to the Ordine! Your name is a living token of yesterday's feast.

Lepanto and Guadalupe are both fascinating topics, and I wish I will have enough time to put together some creditable posts on these topics.


Teresa
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/10/2007 03:08]
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Raw Deals for John Paul II and Mother Teresa?

Authors Speculate if Media Reports Are Intentional


ROME, OCT. 11, 2007 (Zenit.org).- With new charges against Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II, it appears that the secular media are trying to cast doubts on the reputation of two saintly world figures.

A recent story from Time magazine speculated on whether John Paul II was euthanized by the removal of feeding tubes during his last days.

The story was prompted by the speculation of Dr. Lina Pavanelli, an anesthesiologist in Italy. Time magazine reported that the doctor "believes that the Pope's doctors dutifully explained the situation to him, and [Pavanelli] surmises that it was the Pontiff himself who likely refused the feeding tube after he'd been twice rushed to the hospital in February and March."

Pavanelli's speculation, originally published in May, was picked up by the Italian press and Time magazine, but not until after the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a document in mid September, explaining the moral guidelines for providing food and water for patients in the "persistent vegetative state."

George Weigel, author of "Witness to Hope," a biography of John Paul II, told ZENIT: "Pavanelli is either ignorant or malicious -- perhaps both.

"The Italian left is unhappy with the Vatican over its recent statement on care for patients in a vegetative state; this is the revenge they take.

"No serious person will take this seriously."

Dark night

Before the latest scuffle over the events surrounding John Paul II's death, there was the much publicized discussion of Mother Teresa's experience of feeling a deep sense of doubt about God's existence.

Secular media cast doubts upon Mother Teresa's sincerity, given her strong temptations against faith. Time magazine again reported on the phenomenon.

Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postulator of Mother Teresa's cause and editor of the book of her writings, "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light," told ZENIT: "First of all, we need to recognize that the aspects of the Christian spiritual life discussed in the book are not so well known or easy to grasp, and for some, to accept, even among committed Christians -- e.g., 'Why do the saints have to suffer so much?'

"With regard to the secular media, I think one basic reason why Mother Teresa's darkness has been misinterpreted is the superficiality with which the darkness was treated.

"The Time [magazine] piece for the most part, apart from the title and cover photo, tried to present the nuances of Mother Teresa's darkness."

Ignorance?

The priest continued: "Many others just jumped on some expressions of Mother Teresa and thus entirely misrepresented the darkness, for example one headline was: 'Mother Teresa's Secret: I Have No Faith.' Some may have done so out of ignorance and others out of an effort to discredit her.

"Perhaps some who have lost their faith, or have little or no faith, felt 'justified' in some way, thinking: 'If even Mother Teresa had no faith or at least doubted her faith, then how do you expect me to have faith?' And others in the 'culture wars' were happy to discredit one of the other side's heroes.

"Those who have no experience or expertise in spirituality or psychology should have the good sense and humility not to presume to analyze what is indeed so far beyond them."

Father George Rutler, author of "Coincidentally," published by Crossroad Books, and a regular columnist for Crisis magazine, told ZENIT that journalists often have their role backward: "Journalism is supposed to report events. Bloated egos in journalism think they should shape events.

"This unfortunately encourages a significant minority actually to lie to achieve an end. When there is no confidence in objective truth, all is propaganda, just as in politics, justice is replaced with sheer power."

The commentator also acknowledged that faulty reporting is not always intentional: "Having worked with the media for a long time I have learned that most of those involved in the various media are not willfully deceitful. Many of them are limited by a lack of formation." [In other words, ignorant.]


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The good news is that those deliberate media attempts to strike at the Church by trivializing and debasing Blessed Teresa and John Paul II to the level of headline fodder - on a par with Paris Hilton adn Britney Spears - soon fizzled out. For good, I hope.

No one was mindless enough except Time's Jeff Israely to play up to Pavanelli and Flores d'Arcais's absurd euthanasia hypothesis - not even the pro-euthanasia crowd in Italy - and the two-week furor over Mother Teresa probably helped a few more people understand that faith means remaining firm despite going through the darkest despair.

Unfortunately, we have to continue living with biased ignorant journalists. And the ignorance - often deliberate and/or due to bad faith - not only persists but is worsening
.


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/10/2007 13:23]
14/10/2007 23:06
 
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Blessed Mother Teresa's niece shares stories of famed nun's youth

By Maryann G. Eidemiller
Catholic News Service

LATROBE, Pa. (CNS) -- Blessed Mother Teresa's niece told an audience at St. Vincent College in Latrobe Oct. 6 that she remembers her father, Lazar, telling stories about growing up with the older sister who would become the famous nun.

"He was the only boy in the family and he was very naughty," said Agi Bojaxhiu of Italy. "Mother Teresa tried to protect him when he got in trouble."

Their mother, who raised the family alone after her husband died, was very strict, according to Bojaxhiu.

"Sometimes when she punished Lazar by sending him to bed without dinner, his doting sister would save half of her food and smuggle it to him," she said. "She would do his homework for him, too."

Mother Teresa, the founder of the Missionaries of Charity, was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu into an ethnic Albanian family in Skopje, in present-day Macedonia. She died in 1997 and was beatified in 2003.

Her niece was one of four relatives and friends who shared stories about her at an evening panel discussion during an Oct. 5-7 conference titled "Remembrances of Mother Teresa of Calcutta by Her Family and Friends." Bishop Lawrence E. Brandt of Greensburg celebrated the event's opening Mass.

Another panel speaker was Sandy McMurtrie, who was Mother Teresa's traveling companion from 1981 until her death in 1997. The single mother of three children, she longed for another child and often asked Mother Teresa to find her an orphan to adopt.

"'It is not time,' she would tell me," McMurtrie said. "Then one day -- and she often talked about herself in the third person -- she said, 'Mother would be very happy for you to have this child.'"

She was referring to Maria, a raven-haired little girl, now 24, who also attended the conference.

Film producer Jan Petrie, who, with her sister, Ann, produced two films about Mother Teresa, became her friend as well.

"We had a very emotional time when we went to Albania," Petrie said.

That was where Mother Teresa's mother and sister were buried, and the country was legally atheist. Undaunted, the nun insisted that a crucifix be placed to mark the grave where she had their remains relocated together. Shortly thereafter, other crucifixes appeared in the cemetery where before there were none.

"There were so many examples of her being stubborn," Petrie said.

She was that way, too, when it came to defying advice from Dr. Patricia Aubanel, who took care of her from 1991 until her death.

Toward the end, as her heart and lungs were failing, she insisted on seeing Pope John Paul II one more time. She was in a wheelchair when they met.

"He was waiting for her," Aubanel said. "He knelt and kissed her head and said, 'My mother, my mother.' For her, the Holy Father was everything. They loved each other."

The pontiff was ill, too, and could barely walk. Yet, at the end of Mass, as Mother Teresa held her face in her hands, he struggled down the aisle to her wheelchair. When she realized that he was there, she got up to embrace him.

"Every single person there was crying," Aubanel said. "It was the last time they would be together."


When Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta, India, she told her sisters: "My mission is completed." A month later, she died peacefully.

"She had so much love," Petrie said. "She would always say, 'God bless you, God bless you.' I feel that blessing all the time."

15/10/2007 04:47
 
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A PAINTING OF JESUS BY ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX



This comes from the July-August 2007 issue of 30 GIORNI, with a cover story about the saint. The caption says the painting was given by Therese to her sister Celine in 1892 (when Therese was 19).



The cover story is actually a chapter from a book by Celine Martin, Sr. Genevieve of the Holy Face, one of Therese's four sisters and four years older (born 1869), who published the book based on Therese's personal notes and diaries in 1951. The chapter entitled 'A Child's Spirit' tells anecdotes about the future saint's childlike spirit.


16/10/2007 02:55
 
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October 15th
MEMORIAL OF ST. TERESA OF JESUS
DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH




Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada
Born on March 28th, 1515 in Ávila, Old Castile, Spain
Died on October 4, 1582 in Alba de Tornes, Salamanca, Spain

St. Teresa of Ávila
By Terry Matz

Less than twenty years before Teresa was born in 1515, Columbus opened up the Western Hemisphere to European colonization. Two years after she was born, Luther started the Protestant Reformation. Out of all of this change came Teresa pointing the way from outer turmoil to inner peace.

Teresa's father was rigidly honest and pious, but he may have carried his strictness to extremes. Teresa's mother loved romance novels but because her husband objected to these fanciful books, she hid the books from him. This put Teresa in the middle -- especially since she liked the romances too. Her father told her never to lie but her mother told her not to tell her father. Later she said she was always afraid that no matter what she did she was going to do everything wrong.

When she was five years old she convinced her older brother that they should, as she says in her Life, "go off to the land of the Moors and beg them, out of love of God, to cut off our heads there." They got as far as the road from the city before an uncle found them and brought them back. Some people have used this story as an early example of sanctity, but this author think it's better used as an early example of her ability to stir up trouble.

After this incident she led a fairly ordinary life, though she was convinced that she was a horrible sinner. As a teenager, she cared only about boys and clothes and flirting and rebelling -- like other teenagers throughout the ages. When she was 16, her father decided she was out of control and sent her to a convent. At first she hated it but eventually she began to enjoy it -- partly because of her growing love for God, and partly because the convent was a lot less strict than her father.

Still, when the time came for her to choose between marriage and religious life, she had a tough time making the decision. She'd watched a difficult marriage ruin her mother. On the other hand being a nun didn't seem like much fun. When she finally chose religious life, she did so because she though that it was the only safe place for someone as prone to sin as she was.

Once installed at the Carmelite convent permanently, she started to learn and practice mental prayer, in which she "tried as hard as I could to keep Jesus Christ present within me....My imagination is so dull that I had no talent for imagining or coming up with great theological thoughts." Teresa prayed this way off and on for eighteen years without feeling that she was getting results. Part of the reason for her trouble was that the convent was not the safe place she assumed it would be.

Many women who had no place else to go wound up at the convent, whether they had vocations or not. They were encouraged to stay away from the convents for long period of time to cut down on expenses. Nuns would arrange their veils attractively and wear jewelry. Prestige depended not on piety but on money. There was a steady stream of visitors in the parlor and parties that included young men. What spiritual life there was involved hysteria, weeping, exaggerated penance, nosebleeds, and self- induced visions.

Teresa suffered the same problem that Francis of Assisi did -- she was too charming. Everyone liked her and she liked to be liked. She found it too easy to slip into a worldly life and ignore God. The convent encouraged her to have visitors to whom she would teach mental prayer because their gifts helped the community economy. But Teresa got more involved in flattery, vanity and gossip than spiritual guidance. These weren't great sins perhaps but they kept her from God.

Then Teresa fell ill with malaria. When she had a seizure, people were so sure she was dead that after she woke up four days later she learned they had dug a grave for her. Afterwards she was paralyzed for three years and was never completely well. Yet instead of helping her spiritually, her sickness became an excuse to stop her prayer completely: she couldn't be alone enough, she wasn't healthy enough, and so forth. Later she would say, "Prayer is an act of love, words are not needed. Even if sickness distracts from thoughts, all that is needed is the will to love."

For years she hardly prayed at all "under the guise of humility." She thought as a wicked sinner she didn't deserve to get favors from God. But turning away from prayer was like "a baby turning from its mother's breasts, what can be expected but death?"

When she was 41, a priest convinced her to go back to her prayer, but she still found it difficult. "I was more anxious for the hour of prayer to be over than I was to remain there. I don't know what heavy penance I would not have gladly undertaken rather than practice prayer." She was distracted often: "This intellect is so wild that it doesn't seem to be anything else than a frantic madman no one can tie down." Teresa sympathizes with those who have a difficult time in prayer: "All the trials we endure cannot be compared to these interior battles."

Yet her experience gives us wonderful descriptions of mental prayer: "For mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us. The important thing is not to think much but to love much and so do that which best stirs you to love. Love is not great delight but desire to please God in everything."

As she started to pray again, God gave her spiritual delights: the prayer of quiet where God's presence overwhelmed her senses, raptures where God overcame her with glorious foolishness, prayer of union where she felt the sun of God melt her soul away. Sometimes her whole body was raised form the ground. If she felt God was going to levitate her body, she stretched out on the floor and called the nuns to sit on her and hold her down. Far from being excited about these events, she "begged God very much not to give me any more favors in public."

In her books, she analyzed and dissects mystical experiences the way a scientist would. She never saw these gifts as rewards from God but the way he "chastised" her. The more love she felt the harder it was to offend God. She says, "The memory of the favor God has granted does more to bring such a person back to God than all the infernal punishments imaginable."

Her biggest fault was her friendships. Though she wasn't sinning, she was very attached to her friends until God told her "No longer do I want you to converse with human beings but with angels." In an instant he gave her the freedom that she had been unable to achieve through years of effort. After that God always came first in her life.

Some friends, however, did not like what was happening to her and got together to discuss some "remedy" for her. Concluding that she had been deluded by the devil, they sent a Jesuit to analyze her. The Jesuit reassured her that her experiences were from God but soon everyone knew about her and was making fun of her.

One confessor was so sure that the visions were from the devil that her told her to make an obscene gesture called the fig every time she had a vision of Jesus. She cringed but did as she was ordered, all the time apologizing to Jesus. Fortunately, Jesus didn't seem upset but told her that she was right to obey her confessor. In her autobiography she would say, "I am more afraid of those who are terrified of the devil than I am of the devil himself." The devil was not to be feared but fought by talking more about God.

Teresa felt that the best evidence that her delights came from God was that the experiences gave her peace, inspiration, and encouragement. "If these effects are not present I would greatly doubt that the raptures come from God; on the contrary I would fear lest they be caused by rabies."

Sometimes, however, she couldn't avoid complaining to her closest Friend about the hostility and gossip that surrounded her. When Jesus told her, "Teresa, that's how I treat my friends" Teresa responded, "No wonder you have so few friends." But since Christ has so few friends, she felt they should be good ones. And that's why she decided to reform her Carmelite order.

At the age of 43, she became determined to found a new convent that went back to the basics of a contemplative order: a simple life of poverty devoted to prayer. This doesn't sound like a big deal, right? Wrong.

When plans leaked out about her first convent, St. Joseph's, she was denounced from the pulpit, told by her sisters she should raise money for the convent she was already in, and threatened with the Inquisition. The town started legal proceedings against her. All because she wanted to try a simple life of prayer. In the face of this open war, she went ahead calmly, as if nothing was wrong, trusting in God.

"May God protect me from gloomy saints," Teresa said, and that's how she ran her convent. To her, spiritual life was an attitude of love, not a rule. Although she proclaimed poverty, she believed in work, not in begging. She believed in obedience to God more than penance. If you do something wrong, don't punish yourself -- change. When someone felt depressed, her advice was that she go some place where she could see the sky and take a walk. When someone was shocked that she was going to eat well, she answered, "There's a time for partridge and a time for penance." To her brother's wish to meditate on hell, she answered, "Don't."

Once she had her own convent, she could lead a life of peace, right? Wrong again. Teresa believed that the most powerful and acceptable prayer was that prayer that leads to action. Good effects were better than pious sensations that only make the person praying feel good.

At St. Joseph's, she spent much of her time writing her Life. She wrote this book not for fun but because she was ordered to. Many people questioned her experiences and this book would clear her or condemn her. Because of this, she used a lot of camouflage in the book, following a profound thought with the statement, "But what do I know. I'm just a wretched woman." The Inquisition liked what they read and cleared her.

At 51, she felt it was time to spread her reform movement. She braved burning sun, ice and snow, thieves, and rat-infested inns to found more convents. But those obstacles were easy compared to what she face from her brothers and sisters in religious life. She was called "a restless disobedient gadabout who has gone about teaching as though she were a professor" by the papal nuncio. When her former convent voted her in as prioress, the leader of the Carmelite order excommunicated the nuns. A vicar general stationed an officer of the law outside the door to keep her out. The other religious orders opposed her wherever she went. She often had to enter a town secretly in the middle of the night to avoid causing a riot.

And the help they received was sometimes worse than the hostility. A princess ordered Teresa to found a convent and then showed up at the door with luggage and maids. When Teresa refused to order her nuns to wait on the princess on their knees, the princess denounced Teresa to the Inquisition.

In another town, they arrived at their new house in the middle of the night, only to wake up the next morning to find that one wall of the building was missing.

Why was everyone so upset? Teresa said, "Truly it seems that now there are no more of those considered mad for being true lovers of Christ." No one in religious orders or in the world wanted Teresa reminding them of the way God said they should live.

Teresa looked on these difficulties as good publicity. Soon she had postulants clamoring to get into her reform convents. Many people thought about what she said and wanted to learn about prayer from her. Soon her ideas about prayer swept not only through Spain but all of Europe.

In 1582, she was invited to found a convent by an Archbishop but when she arrived in the middle of the pouring rain, he ordered her to leave. "And the weather so delightful too" was Teresa's comment. Though very ill, she was commanded to attend a noblewoman giving birth. By the time they got there, the baby had already arrived so, as Teresa said, "The saint won't be needed after all." Too ill to leave, she died on October 4 at the age of 67.

She is the founder of the Discalced Carmelites. In 1970 she was declared a Doctor of the Church for her writing and teaching on prayer, one of two women to be honored in this way.

St. Teresa is the patron saint of Headache sufferers. Her symbol is a heart, an arrow, and a book. She was canonized in 1622.



A simplified version of St. Teresa's life from the application 'Saint of the Day.'

ST. TERESA OF ÁVILA

Teresa was born in Avila, Spain, on March 28, 1515. As a little girl in her parents' rich home, Teresa and her brother Rodrigo loved to read the lives of the saints and martyrs. It seemed to them that the martyrs got to heaven an easy way. The two children set out secretly to go to the land of the Moors. As they walked along, they prayed that they might die for Christ. But they had not gotten far when they met an uncle. He took them back to their worried mother at once. Next the children decided to be hermits in their garden. This didn't work out either. They could not get enough stones together to build their huts. St. Teresa herself wrote down these amusing stories of her childhood. The fact is that when she grew to be a teenager, however, she changed. Teresa read so many novels and foolish romances that she lost much of her love for prayer. She began to think more of dressing up to look pretty. But after she recovered from a bad illness, Teresa read a book about the great St. Jerome. Then and there, she made up her mind to become a bride of Christ. As a nun, Teresa often found it hard to pray. Besides that, she had poor health. Teresa wasted time every day in long, foolish conversations. But one day, in front of a picture of Jesus, she felt great sorrow that she did not love God more. She started then to live for Jesus alone, no matter what sacrifice had to be made. In return for her love, the Lord gave St. Teresa the privilege of hearing him talk to her. She learned to pray in a marvelous way, too. St. Teresa of Avila is famous for having opened new Carmelite convents. These convents were filled with sisters who wanted to live holy lives. They made many sacrifices for Jesus. Teresa herself gave them the example. She prayed with great love and worked hard at the convent tasks. St. Teresa was a great leader and true lover of Jesus and his Church. She died in 1582 and was proclaimed a saint by Pope Gregory XV in 1622. She was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI in 1970. St. Teresa taught that we must have a great trust in God's care for us. She wrote that a person who possesses God, lacks nothing; God alone is enough.

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EWTN is currently showing this:

TERESA DE JESUS (1:00)
A dramatic mini-series on the life of the great saint and mystic Theresa of Avila. Spanish with English subtitles.

Oct 16 - 21, 6:00 AM


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Teresa of Ávila
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Saint Teresa of Ávila (known in religion as Teresa de Jesús, baptized as Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada) (March 28, 1515 – October 4, 1582) was a major figure of the Catholic Reformation as a prominent Spanish mystic and writer and as a monastic reformer. She died just as Catholic nations were making the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar which required the removal of 11 days from the calendar. She likely died on the night of October 4th but perhaps early on the morning of October 15 (in 1582 October 5-14 did not exist), which was adopted as her feast day. She was born at Ávila (85 km northwest of Madrid), Old Castile and died at Alba de Tormes (province of Salamanca). She is recognized by Roman Catholics as one of the thirty-three Doctors of the Church. She is one of only three female Doctors of the Church, along with St. Catherine of Siena, made so in 1970 and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, made so in 1997.


Teresa of Ávila by Peter Paul Rubens

Brief biography

Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada was born in 1515 in Ávila, Spain. Her paternal grandfather, Juan de Toledo, was a Jewish convert to Christianity and was condemned by the Spanish Inquisition for allegedly returning to the Jewish faith. Her father, Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda, bought a knighthood and successfully assimilated into Christian society. Teresa's mother Beatriz was especially keen to raise their daughter as a pious Christian. Teresa was fascinated by accounts of the lives of the saints, and ran away from home at age seven with her brother Rodrigo to find martyrdom among the Moors. Her uncle spoiled their plan as he was returning to the city and spotted the two outside the city walls.

Leaving her parents' home secretly one morning in 1534, at the age of 19, Teresa entered the Monastery of the Incarnation of the Carmelite nuns at Avila.[citation needed] In the cloister, she suffered greatly from illness. Early in her sickness, she experienced periods of spiritual ecstasy through the use of the devotional book, Abecedario espiritual, commonly known as the "third" or the "spiritual alphabet" (published in six parts from 1537-1554). This work, following the example of similar writings of medieval mystics, consisted of directions for tests of conscience and for spiritual self-concentration and inner contemplation (known in mystical nomenclature as oratio recollectionis or oratio mentalis). She also employed other mystical ascetic works such as the Tractatus de oratione et meditatione of Peter of Alcantara, and perhaps many of those upon which St. Ignatius of Loyola based his Exercitia and perhaps even the Exercitia themselves.

She claimed that during her illness she rose from the lowest stage, "recollection", to the "devotions of peace" or even to the "devotions of union", which was one of perfect ecstasy. During this final stage, she said she frequently experienced a rich "blessing of tears". As the Catholic distinction between mortal and venial sin became clear upon her, she says she came to understand the awful terror of sin and the inherent nature of original sin. She also became conscious of her own natural impotence in confronting sin, and the necessity of absolute subjection to God.

Around 1556, various friends suggested that her newfound knowledge was diabolical, not divine. She began to inflict various tortures and mortifications on herself. But Francis Borgia, to whom she made confession, reassured her of the divine inspiration of her thoughts. On St. Peter's Day in 1559, Teresa became firmly convinced that Christ was present to her in bodily form, though invisible. This vision lasted almost uninterruptedly for more than two years. In another vision, a seraph drove the fiery point of a golden lance repeatedly through her heart, causing an ineffable spiritual-bodily pain. The memory of this episode served as an inspiration throughout the rest of her life, and which motivated her life-long imitation of the life and suffering of Jesus, epitomized in the motto usually associated with her: "Lord, either let me suffer or let me die." This last vision was the inspiration for one of Bernini's most famous works, Ecstasy of St Teresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.

Activities as reformer

The incentive to give outward practical expression to her inward motive was inspired in Teresa by Peter of Alcantara. Incidentally, he became acquainted with her as Founder early in 1560, and became her spiritual guide and counselor. She now resolved to found a Carmelite monastery for nuns, and to reform the laxity which she had found in the Cloister of the Incarnation and others. Guimara de Ulloa, a woman of wealth and a friend, supplied the funds.

The absolute poverty of the new monastery, established in 1562 and named St. Joseph's, at first excited a scandal among the citizens and authorities of Ávila, and the little house with its chapel was in peril of suppression; but powerful patrons like the bishop himself, as well as the impression of well-secured subsistence and prosperity, turned animosity into applause.

In March of 1563, when Teresa moved to the new cloister, she received the papal sanction to her prime principle of absolute poverty and renunciation of property, which she proceeded to formulate into a "Constitution" (see Constitutions of the Carmelite Order). Her plan was the revival of the earlier stricter rules, supplemented by new regulations like the three disciplines of ceremonial flagellation prescribed for the divine service every week, and the discalceation of the nun, or the substitution of leather or wooden sandals for shoes. For the first five years, Teresa remained in pious seclusion, engaged in writing.

In 1567, she received a patent from the Carmelite general, Rubeo de Ravenna, to establish new houses of her order, and in this effort and later visitations she made long journeys through nearly all the provinces of Spain. Of these she gives a description in her Libro de las Fundaciones. Between 1567 and 1571, reform convents were established at Medina del Campo, Malagon, Valladolid, Toledo, Pastrana, Salamanca, and Alba de Tormes.

As part of her original patent, St Teresa was given permission to set up two houses for men who wished to adopt the reforms; to this end she convinced John of the Cross and Anthony of Jesus to help with this. They founded the first convent of Discalced Carmelite Brethren in November 1568 at Duruello. Another friend, Geronimo Grecian, Carmelite visitator of the older observance of Andalusia and apostolic commissioner, and later provincial of the Teresian reforms, gave her powerful support in founding convents at Segovia (1571), Vegas de Segura (1574), Seville (1575), and Caravaca de la Cruz (Murcia, 1576), while the deeply mystical John, by his power as teacher and preacher, promoted the inner life of the movement.

In 1576 a series of persecutions began on the part of the older observant Carmelite order against Teresa, her friends, and her reforms. Pursuant to a body of resolutions adopted at the general chapter at Piacenza, the "definitors" of the order forbade all further founding of convents. The general condemned her to voluntary retirement to one of her institutions. She obeyed and chose St. Joseph's at Toledo. Her friends and subordinates were subjected to greater trials.

Finally, after several years her pleadings by letter with King Philip II of Spain secured relief. As a result, in 1579, the processes before the Inquisition against her, Grecián, and others were dropped, and the extension of the reform was at least negatively permuted. A brief of Pope Gregory XIII allowed a special provincial for the younger branch of the discalceate nuns, and a royal rescript created a protective board of four assessors for the reform.

During the last three years of her life, Teresa founded convents at Villanueva de la Jara in northern Andalusia (1580), Palencia (1580), Soria (1581), Burgos, and at Granada (1582). In all seventeen convents, all but one founded by her, and as many men's cloisters were due to her reform activity of twenty years. Her final illness overtook her on one of her journeys from Burgos to Alba de Tormes.

Forty years after her death, she was canonized, and her church reveres her as the "seraphic virgin". The Cortes exalted her to patroness of Spain in 1617, and the University of Salamanca previously conferred the title Doctor ecclesiae with a diploma. The title is Latin for Doctor of the Church, but is distinct from the honor of Doctor of the Church conferred posthumously by the Holy See, which she received in 1970, being the first woman to be awarded it. The mysticism in her works exerted a formative influence upon many theologians of the following centuries, such as Francis of Sales, Fénelon, and the Port-Royalists.

Mysticism

The kernel of Teresa's mystical thought throughout all her writings is the ascent of the soul in four stages (Autobiography, Chs. 10-22):

The first, or "heart's devotion", is that of devout contemplation or concentration, the withdrawal of the soul from without and specially the devout observance of the passion of Christ and penitence.

The second is the "devotion of peace", in which at least the human will is lost in that of God by virtue of a charismatic, supernatural state given of God, while the other faculties, such as memory, reason, and imagination, are not yet secure from worldly distraction. While a partial distraction is due to outer performances such as repetition of prayers and writing down spiritual things, yet the prevailing state is one of quietude.

The "devotion of union" is not only a supernatural but an essentially ecstatic state. Here there is also an absorption of the reason in God, and only the memory and imagination are left to ramble. This state is characterized by a blissful peace, a sweet slumber of at least the higher soul faculties, a conscious rapture in the love of God.

The fourth is the "devotion of ecstasy or rapture", a passive state, in which the consciousness of being in the body disappears (II Cor. xii. 2-3). Sense activity ceases; memory and imagination are also absorbed in God or intoxicated. Body and spirit are in the throes of a sweet, happy pain, alternating between a fearful fiery glow, a complete impotence and unconsciousness, and a spell of strangulation, intermitted sometimes by such an ecstatic flight that the body is literally lifted into space. This after half an hour is followed by a reactionary relaxation of a few hours in a swoon-like weakness, attended by a negation of all the faculties in the union with God. From this the subject awakens in tears; it is the climax of mystical experience, productive of the trance. (Indeed, St. Theresa herself was said to have been observed levitating during mass on more than one occasion.)

Teresa is one of the foremost writers on mental prayer. Her definition was used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "Mental prayer [oracion mental] is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us."

Writings

Teresa's writings, produced for didactic purposes, stand among the most remarkable in the mystical literature of the Roman Catholic Church:

The "Autobiography", written before 1567, under the direction of her confessor, Pedro Ibáñez, La Vida de la Santa Madre Teresa de Jesús, Madrid, 1882; Eng. transl., The Life of S. Teresa of Jesus, London, 1888);

Camino de Perfección, written also before 1567, at the direction of her confessor (Salamanca, 1589; Eng. transl., The Way of Perfection., London, 1852);

El Castillo Interior, written in 1577 (Eng. transl., The Interior Castle, London, 1852), comparing the contemplative soul to a castle with seven successive interior courts, or chambers, analogous to the seven heavens;

Relaciones, an extension of the autobiography giving her inner and outer experiences in epistolary form.

Two smaller works are Conceptos del Amor and Exclamaciones. Besides, there are the Cartas (Saragossa, 1671), or correspondence, of which there are 342 letters and 87 fragments of others. Teresa's prose is marked by an unaffected grace, an ornate neatness, and charming power of expression, together placing her in the front rank of Spanish prose writers; and her rare poems (Todas las poesías, Munster, 1854) are distinguished for tenderness of feeling and rhythm of thought.


A painting of a young Teresa is "St.Theresa", painted in 1819-20 by François Gérard, a French neoclassical painter.

[Modificato da loriRMFC 16/10/2007 04:36]
27/10/2007 12:02
 
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NEW CONTROVERSY ABOUT SAINT PADRE PIO

I posted this originally in NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH, but obviously, it has become fodder for the media, like the recent controversy over Blessed Teresa. The anti-Catholic bias in MSM has lately been expressed in campaigns to disparage the saints - including recent charges that John Paul-II's death was a form of euthanasia.



Historian's book seeks
to debunk Padre Pio


Rome, Oct. 24, 2007 (CWNews.com) - An Italian historian has cast doubt on the stigmata attributed to Padre Pio.

In a new book, Sergio Luzzatto questions whether the beloved Capuchin, who was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002, actually exhibited the wounds of the crucified Christ on his hands, feet, and side.

Luzzatto recounted the testimony of a pharmacist who claimed that he sold acid to Padre Pio, which the monk used to create the appearance of wounds. The pharmacist’s story has not been corroborated, nor is there a full explanation of how acid would create the phenomenon.

The attempt to debunk the reported mystical attributes of Padre Pio comes at the same time as another incongruous event involving the Capuchin saint.

A 1959 Mercedes that was donated to Padre Pio, and reportedly driven by him once, is being sold at auction, and expected to bring a winning bid of about €1 million ($1.4 million).

====================================================================

This has been, understandably, big news in the Italian media, and I have less and less time these days to translate even the minimum I would want to. Here is a brief summary of today's developments.


A story in Corriere della Sera quotes further from the Luzzato book to recount how Pope John XXIII reportedly wrote a four-page memorandum in 1960, expressing his doubts, and almost hostility, about Padre Pio and his moral conduct.

Luzzato's book details how the last seven Popes before Benedict XVI had polarly different attitudes towards Padre Pio:
- Benedict XV ordered his investigation by the then Holy Office.
- Pius XI went even further and almost withdrew the monk's priestly privileges.
- Pius XII encouraged the growing popular devotion to Padre Pio.
- John XXIII took measures to curb such devotion.
- Paul VI, who as Secretary of State, had authorized construction of Padre Pio's House of Relief hospital - now considered a model tertiary-care facility - allowed the monk to carry out his ministry in 'full liberty'.
- John Paul I as Patriarch of Venice discouraged pilgrimages to Padre Pio's birthplace.
- John Paul II was said to have been always fascinated by Padre Pio's story, and it was under him that the monk was both beatified and canonized.

As Cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger made a pilgrimage to San Giovanni Rotondo, visiting places associated with Padre Pio. [The story is recounted in the thread ENCOUNTERS WITH THE FUTURE POPE].

In an exclusive interview with PETRUS today, Mons. Loris Capovilla, who was the devoted personal secretary of John XXIII, said that the late Pope had no prejudices about Padre Pio, but that the information he received about him came exclusively from persons in the Roman Curia who were hostile to the monk, and 'he had to take note' of whathe was told.

Asked whether he thought that John XXIII had made a mistake about judging Padre Pio negatively, Capovilla said, "He was a man after all, and he could make mistakes. The point is Padre Pio has been beatified and canonized by the Church, which found Padre Pio worthy of these honors after thorough investigation. These are documented facts; everything else is gossip. The Church has spoken. Padre Pio is a saint. Nothing more needs to be said."
====================================================================

Three major articles have been writtenin reaction so far - by Alberto Socci, Vittorio Messori and Alberto Melloni. I will translate as I can.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/10/2007 12:15]
01/11/2007 04:55
 
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Who Are the Saints?

Gospel Commentary for the Feast of All Saints' Day


By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap

ROME, OCT. 31, 2007 (Zenit.org).- For some time now, scientists have been sending signals into the cosmos, hoping for a response from some intelligent being on some lost planet. The Church has always maintained a dialogue with the inhabitants of another world -- the saints. That is what we proclaim when we say, "I believe in the communion of the saints." Even if inhabitants outside of the solar system existed, communication with them would be impossible, because between the question and the answer, millions of years would pass. Here, though, the answer is immediate because there is a common center of communication and encounter, and that is the risen Christ.

Perhaps in part because of the time of the year in which it falls, the feast of All Saints' Day has something special that explains its popularity and the many traditions linked to it in some sectors of Christianity. The motive is what John says in the second reading. In this life, "we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed." We are like the embryo in the womb of a mother yearning to be born. The saints have been "born" (the liturgy refers to the day of death as "the day of birth," "dies natalis.") To contemplate the saints is to contemplate our destiny. All around us, nature strips itself and the leaves fall, but meanwhile, the feast of the saints invites us to gaze on high; it reminds us that we are not destined to wither on this earth forever, like the leaves.

The Gospel reading is the beatitudes. One in particular inspires the selection of this passage: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, they shall be satisfied." The saints are those who have hungered and thirsted for justice, that is, in biblical language, for sanctity. They have not resigned themselves to mediocrity; they have not been content with half-measures.

The first reading of the feast helps us to understand who the saints are. They are "those who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb." Sanctity is received from Christ; it is not our own production. In the Old Testament, to be a saint meant "to be separated" from all that is impure; in the Christian understanding, it is, rather, the opposite, that is, to "be united" to Christ.

The saints, that is, the saved, are not only those mentioned in the calendar or the book of the saints. The "unknown saints" also exist: those who risked their lives for their brothers, the martyrs of justice and liberty, or of duty, the "lay saints," as someone has called them. Without knowing it, their robes have also been washed in the blood of the Lamb, if they have lived according to their consciences and if they have been concerned with the good of their brothers.

A question spontaneously arises: What do the saints do in heaven? The answer is, also here, in the first reading: The saved adore, they prostrate themselves before the throne, exclaiming, "Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving …" The true human vocation is fulfilled in them, that of being "praise to the glory of God" (Ephesians 1:14). Their choir is directed by Mary, who continues her hymn of praise in heaven, "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord." It is in this praise that the saints find their happiness and joy. "My spirit rejoices in God." A man is who he loves and who he admires. Loving and praising God, we identify ourselves with God, participate in his glory and in his own happiness.

One day, a saint, St. Symeon the New Theologian, had a mystical experience of God that was so strong he exclaimed to himself, "If paradise is no more than this, it is enough for me." But the voice of Christ told him, "You are very poor if you content yourself with this. The joy you have experienced in comparison to paradise is like the sky painted on paper in comparison to the real sky."
08/11/2007 18:14
 
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08/11/2007 18:17
 
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Book on Mother Teresa's spirituality released


Nov. 8 (Spero News) - In a press release, Our Sunday Visitor publishers announced that Rev. Joseph Langford, a collaborator with Mother Teresa of Calcutta in her Missionaries of Charity, will release a book that offers revelations about her interior life.

Entitled Mother Teresa: In the Shadow of Our Lady, Rev. Langford says that this is an “attempt to describe Mother Teresa Mother Teresa in a few broad strokes by holding up one or another aspect of her life or work without reference to the whole is to fail to grasp who she was."

Critics of the Nobel Prize-winning nun, such as English writer Christopher Hitchens, have questioned the spiritual struggles of the woman who was world-renowned for charitable works in the streets and slums of Calcutta. Some have called her a hypocrite and fraud.

Rev. Langford spoke of the “darkness” experienced by the Albanian-born nun saying, "Who, in reality, was Mother Teresa, beyond headlines and magazine covers, beyond the easy clichés of those who observed her from the outside?"

Answering the skeptics, Rev. Langford said: "While her widely publicized but little understood darkness was indeed a challenge, it never placed her in crisis. Her darkness was a crucible of faith, hope, and love in which Mother Teresa became Saint Teresa."

Rev. Langford speaks to the failings of many in the media to understand a key element in Mother Teresa’s spirituality – her devotion to the Virgin Mary.

Speaking of the founder of an order that sprang from India to embrace outcasts such as those suffering from HIV/AIDS in other parts of the world, Rev. Langford said "It was Our Lady who taught her to see in the darkness, Our Lady who had seen through it first, and at its worst, as her Son struggled for his last breath.

It was Our Lady whose faith bolstered and directed Mother Teresa's faith, and brought her to stand and not waver, despite the darkness, at the cross planted in her own soul."

Rev. Langford knew Mother Teresa for thirty years and promises in his forthcoming book to describe the "lights and lessons learned from the pages of her life".

His book Mother Teresa: In the Shadow of Our Lady is intended to set aright any negative depictions of Mother Teresa's spiritual life and beliefs, and familiarize readers with her special devotion to Mary – revered by millions of Christians as the mother of Jesus.

Rev. Langford currently resides in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, where he continues his work within the Missionaries of Charity at the motherhouse located there. He met Mother Teresa three decades ago while studying theology in Rome. He was co-founder of her community of priests. He will soon start a book tour in the United States.


10/11/2007 04:42
 
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November 9
Feast of the Dedication of
the Basilica of St. John Lateran


Today's feast does not commemorate a saint but the consecration of a church. The 'material' relevant to it more properly belongs to a thread on Church art and architecture if we had one. And if we did, just as with this thread, we would have material to last us for a lifetime, had we the time to devote to it for the forum.







Dedicated to John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, the Basilica of St. John Lateran (Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano) is the first among the four major basilicas of Rome.

It is the cathedral church of Rome and the official ecclesiastical seat of the Bishop of Rome, who is the Pope. Officially named Archibasilica Sanctissimi Salvatoris ("Archbasilica of the Most Holy Saviour"), it is the oldest among the four major basilicas of Rome.



As the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, containing the papal throne (Cathedra Romana), it ranks above all other churches in the Roman Catholic Church, even above St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.

In reflection of the basilica's primacy in the world as mother church, the words Sacrosancta Lateranensis ecclesia omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput are incised in the main door, meaning "Most Holy Lateran Church, of all the churches in the city and the world, the mother and head."

It also holds the title of Omnium urbis et orbis Ecclesiarum Mater et Caput (mother church of the whole inhabited world) among Roman Catholics. The current archpriest of St. John Lateran is Camillo Cardinal Ruini, Cardinal Vicar General for the Diocese of Rome.

An inscription on the façade, Christo Salvatore, dedicates the Lateran as Archbasilica of the Most Holy Saviour, for the cathedrals of all patriarchs are dedicated to Christ himself.

Built by Constantine the Great in the 4th century, San Giovanni in Laterano was the first church to be built in Rome. It contains several important relics, a lovely 13th-century cloister and an ancient baptistery (San Giovanni in Fonte).

In ancient times, the site of San Giovanni Laterano was occupied by the palace of the family of the Laterani. Their 1st-century mansion has been located 5.55 meters below the nave of the church. In the 2nd century, the mansion was replaced by the barracks of the mounted Imperial Guard.

On the pretext that the Imperial Guard had fought on the side of Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge (312), Constantine razed the barracks and filled in the basement to form a foundation for a church that was to be the cathedral of Rome.

The Lateran Palace next to the barracks came into the hands of Constantine through his second wife Fausta, sister of Maxentius. This was used in 313 for the First Lateran Council, a church council that condemned the Donatist schism.

A porticoed structure found in front of the palace has frescoes from the late 4th century depicting the Resurrection of Lazarus, Christ and the Samaritan, the Multiplication of the Loaves, and three saints: Vitus, Modestus and Crescentia.

The cathedral was dedicated to the Savior on November 9, 318. It was embellished with beautiful decorations given by Constantine, including seven silver altars with seven gilded candlesticks inlaid with images of prophets; 111 chandeliers; and gold voil for the apse vault. Constantine also built the baptistery on the northwestern corner of the church, which still survives in its original form.

From the fifth century there were seven oratories surrounding the basilica. These before long were incorporated in the church. The devotion of visiting these oratories, which held its ground all through the medieval period, gave rise to the similar devotion of the seven altars, still common in many churches of Rome and elsewhere.

In the 10th century, Pope Sergius III (904-911) added John the Baptist to the basilica's dedication, and in the 12th century, Pope Lucius II (1144- 1145) added John the Evangelist.

A Benedictine monastery of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist adjoined the basilica and its members were charged at one period with the duty of maintaining the services in the church.

A great many donations from the popes and other benefactors to the basilica are recorded in the Liber Pontificalis, and its splendour at an early period was such that it became known as the "Basilica Aurea", or Golden Basilica. This splendour drew upon it the attack of the Vandals, who stripped it of all its treasures.

Pope Leo the Great restored it about 460, and it was again restored by Pope Hadrian, but in 896 it was almost totally destroyed by an earthquake — damage so extensive that it was difficult to trace the lines of the old building, but the reconstruction was of the same dimensions as the old.

This second church lasted for 400 years and before suffering extensive damage from a series of fires, the worst of which was in 1308. It was rebuilt by Pope Clement V and Pope John XXII, only to be burnt down once more in 1360 and again rebuilt by Pope Urban V.

When the popes returned to Rome from their long absence at Avignon in 1377, they found the city deserted and the churches almost in ruins. Great works were begun at the Lateran by Pope Martin V and his successors. The palace, however, was never again used by them as a residence, with the Vatican, which stands in a much drier and healthier position, being chosen in its place.

Pope Sixtus V replaced most of the remaining structure with work by his by his favorite architect Domenico Fontana, and a further renovation of the interior ensued, carried out by Francesco Borromini for Pope Innocent X (1644-55). This is the definitive remodeling that created the present church.

Finally, Pope Clement XII (1730 - 1740) launched a competition for the design of a new facade, which was completed by Alessandro Galilei in 1735.


The two-storied portico that makes up the facade of the basilica dates from the 18th century. It is from here that the Pope gives his benediction on Maundy Thursday.

Visible from miles away are the 15 colossal travertine statues, each 7 meters high, atop the facade, dating from the 18th century - of Christ the Savior, Sts. John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, and 12 Doctors of the Latin and Greek Churches, signifying the doctrinal unity of the Church: Gregory the Great, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius, Basil, John Chrysostom, Gregory Nazinanzene, Bernard, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and Eusebius Vercelli.

There are five entrances in the columned, double portico outer facade, which in turn opens onto the inner facade and atrium, which has five doors, corresponding to the five naves of the basilica.

The mammoth bronze central doors [photo at the start of post) are from the Roman Forum from the building where the Roman Senate met. They had been transferred in the seventh century to the Church of St. Hadrian in the Forum, and then in 1660 to the basilica by Pope Alexander VII (1655-67). The furthest door on the right is the Holy Door.


Backside of the Loggia of Benediction; the Lateran Palace, headquarters for the Diocese of Rome, is on the left.



Inside, despite many alterations over the centuries, the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano still retains its original plan: a nave flanked by two aisles and ending in a semi-circular apse to the west. Unusually, the basilica is oriented to the west instead of the east: this is because it was built before the tradition of east-orientation had taken hold.

Some of the original decoration survives as well, although not in its original position. Parts of the 4th-century nave colonnade can now be seen supporting the triumphal arch (two red granite columns), flanking the Altar of the Holy Sacrament (four bronze columns), and flanking the statues of the apostles in the nave (24 green-speckled marble columns).



The octagonal cupola is decorated with paintings depicting the life of St. John the Baptist.


Statues of St. Peter (left) and St. Matthew.


The marble pavement of the nave, and the elaborate ceiling; right photo, the choir.

The Cosmatesque pavement in the nave is from the 14th century, making it a late example of this technique. It was paid by the Colonna family, and attained its present form in 1425 under Pope Martin V Colonna. The family's coat-of-arms can be seen in sevaral places on the floor.

The statues in the nave date from the time of Pope Clement XI (1701–1721) and depict Apostles and Evangelists. Closed doors painted on the wall behind the statues represent the gateways to Heavenly Jerusalem. Above the statues are 17th-century relief panels with Old Testament scenes on the left and related scenes from the New Testament on the right. Above are oval paintings of prophets, also from the 17th century.


The Confessio (crypt below pavement level) next to the high altar and a statue of John the Baptist in the Confessio.


The graceful baldacchino over the high altar, which looks out of place in its present surroundings, dates from 1369. At the top is a reliquary said to contain the heads of Saints Peter and Paul, but these may have been removed during the French occupation of Rome in the 18th century.

Beneath the baldacchino is the High Altar, which can only be used by the Pope. It contains a relic said to be part of St. Peter's communion table.



The jewel in this crown is the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, erected by Clement VIII (1592-1605). The tympanum is supported by four gilt columns which, it is said, came from the ships of Cleopatra and, later, from Constantine's palace. The tabernacle is embellished with rare stones of jasper and lapis lazuli. Above the altar is a bas-relief of the Last Supper, behind which is enshrined a cedar table said to have been used at the Last Supper.

The marble and bronze columns are said to have been taken from the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. The bronze columns in that temple had been recast from the bronze prows of Cleopatra's ships, taken in battle by Emperor Augustus.


Apse - Photo by Gerald Augustinus.

The apse, reconstructed between 1878 and 1886, by order of Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), contains the Pope's cathedra (episcopal throne, which is used by the Pope whenever he comes to his cathedral church.

The apse features exquisite mosaics focused on the Redeemer. Below the Redeemer, they depict a jewelled cross topped by a dove in the heavens above Jerusalem, and from this the four rivers which empty into the Jordan. The figures on both sides of the cross are Our Lady, Sts. Peter and Paul, John the Baptist and John the Evangelist and Andrew.

Below them, and between the windows, are nine Apostles, separated by palm trees. Some of the frescoes date from the time of Constantine and the first basilica: these were restored by Franciscans in the 13th century. Some of the larger figures, including the Virgin, date from the ninth century.

The walnut stalls on both sides of the apse are for the archpriest of the basilica and the 22 canons.



The cloisters, all that remain of the Benedictine monastery, date from the early 13th century. Their design, by Vassellectus and the Cosmati brothers, is an intermediate style between Romanesque and Gothic.

They are surrounded by graceful double columns of inlaid marble and contain many early Christian fragments from the basilica. A porphyry slab in the cloister is believed to be the surface on which Roman soldiers cast lots for Christ's robes.

The old Lateran Palace was demolished by Pope Sixtus V (1585-1590), but the apse of the papal dining hall, the Triclinium Leoninum, has been preserved on the outside of the remains of the building (below).

The mosaic in the apse dates from 800, the year Charlemagne was crowned in Rome. It depicts Christ with the Apostles in the center; Christ with Constantine and Pope Sylvester I on the left; and St Peter, Pope Leo III and Charlemagne on the right. Pope Leo III has a square nimbus, showing that he was alive when it was made.



The Scala Sancta or Holy Stairs, consisting of twenty-eight white marble steps, now encased by wooden steps, are in a building which incorporates part of the old Lateran Palace opposite the Basilica.

According to tradition, the staircases were part of the praetorium of Pilate in Jerusalem, hence were sanctified by the footsteps of Jesus Christ during his Passion. They are located next to a church which supposedly was built on ground brought from Mount Calvary, and now lead to what was the private chapel of the Lateran palace, known as the chapel of St. Lawrence or Sancta Sanctorum.

Medieval legends claim that the Holy Stairs were brought from Jerusalem to Rome about 326 by St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great. In the Middle Ages, they were known as Scala Pilati (Stairs of Pilate). From old plans it can be gathered that they led to a corridor of the Lateran Palace, near the Chapel of St. Sylvester, were covered with a special roof.

When Sixtus V in 1589 destroyed the then ruined old papal palace to rebuild a new one, he ordered the Holy Stairs be transferred to their present site, before the Sancta Sanctorum (Holy of Holies), which received its name from the many precious relics preserved there, including the celebrated icon of Santissimi Salvatore Acheiropoieton ("not made by human hands") which on certain occasions used to be carried through Rome in procession. .

In its new site, the Scala Sancta is encased in protective wood boards, and flanked by four other stairs, two on each side, for common use, since the Holy Stairs may only be ascended on the knees, a devotion much in favor with pilgrims and the faithful, especially on Fridays and in Lent.



Names: Basilica of St. John Lateran; Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano; Archbasilica of the Holy Savior
Type of site: Cathedral; major basilica
Faith: Roman Catholic
Status: Active
Dates: Founded 318 AD
Location: Near the city walls, Rome, Italy
Address: Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano 4, Rome, Italy
Metro: San Giovanni
Bus: 4, 16, 30, 85, 87, or 174
Phone: 06-69886433
Hours: Daily 7-6:45 (closes 6pm in low season)
Cost: Free; cloisters €2



The square in front of the Lateran Palace has a red granite obelisk built by Pharaoh
Tuthmosis III in Karnak. Said to be the largest obelisk in the world, it was placed
in the Circus Maximus before being re-erected in its current place. This square
is a favorite site for some of the largest gatherings in Rome (rallies or outdoor concerts)
.


Click here for a satellite view of the St. JohnLateran area;
maps.google.com/maps?q=basilica+of+st+john+rome&ll=41.885953,12.506207&spn=0.004044,0.007196&t...
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/11/2007 15:26]
11/11/2007 18:10
 
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November 10
MEMORIAL OF ST. LEO THE GREAT
POPE AND DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH



A belated post that I have not really worked on yet, but for now, I will post two items which Argent by the Tiber selected and posted yesterday in a timely manner.


The relief at the left shows Leo I meeting Attila the Hun.


'A burden to shudder at' - thus St. Leo I spoke of the papal office.

Yet few have been so capable of bearing that burden as the clever, energetic, and holy Tuscan who succeeded St. Sixtus III. A deacon in the Church at Rome Leo was absent in Gaul on an important mission for the Emperor when St. Sixtus III died. He returned to find himself pope.

To rule the mid-fifth-century Church was not easy. The West was filled with the clamor of barbarians wandering through provinces which had lost the nerve to resist. The East was troubled with a new and dangerous heresy. How Leo faced both situations is the story of his pontificate.

Leo acted strongly against all heresies, but the dogmatic crisis of his pontificate arose when the Constantinople monk Eutyches and the patriarch of Alexandria, Dioscorus, began to teach that in Christ there is only one nature.

This Monophysite (one-nature) heresy made such progress in the East that St. Flavian, the patriarch of Constantinople, called on the Pope to do something about it. Leo did. In a famous letter to Flavian, the Pope so clearly and forcefully exposed and condemned the Monophysite error that this letter has been venerated as a creed.

The Monophysites, however, gained the ear of the Eastern Emperor, Theodosius II, and succeeded in holding a packed synod at Ephesus. There they so maltreated the saintly Flavian that he died, and they proclaimed the Monophysite error to be true Christian doctrine. Leo came to the rescue. In stinging words he characterized the Ephesus affair as a robbery, and the name has lived. To this day it is known as the robber synod.

To counteract Monophysite influence on Theodosius, Leo got Valentinian III, the Western Emperor, to wake up his cousin to the danger of fostering heresy. Though Theodosius died, his successor Marcion heeded the Pope. To settle the matter a great council, the fourth ecumenical, was called to meet at Chalcedon in 451. There the fathers condemned Eutyches and accepted Leo's letter as the symbol of orthodox belief.

Though the Monophysite heresy lingered long to trouble the Eastern Church, this great council killed its chance to win the East.

In the West imperial feebleness forced Leo to stand as buffer between his people and barbarian hordes. Attila the Hun, checked at Chalons, had burst over the Alps in 452. Leo went north to meet Attila. On the banks of the Mincio these two giants of the age met, one representing brute might, the other, moral force. And Leo prevailed. Attila agreed to make peace and spare Rome.

Three years later when a Vandal fleet sailed up the Tiber, the panic-stricken Romans turned to their bishop. The Pope went outside the walls to meet Genseric, the Vandal king. Genseric agreed to spare the lives and homes of the Romans. Then for fourteen days the Vandals helped themselves to the wealth of imperial Rome, but true to Genseric's promise to the Pope, they set no fires and kept their swords sheathed.

The many-sidedness of Leo is a marvel. Diplomat, statesman, administrator, theologian, orator, and above all a holy man, this pope well deserves the title, Leo the Great.


The special obligations of our ministry
~by Pope St. Leo the Great

Although the universal Church of God is constituted of distinct orders of members, still, in spite of the many parts of its holy body, the Church subsists as an integral whole, just as the Apostle says: We are all one in Christ.

No difference in office is so great that anyone can be separated, through lowliness, from the head. In the unity of faith and baptism, therefore, our community is undivided.

There is a common dignity, as the apostle Peter says in these words: And you are built up as living stones into spiritual houses, a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices which are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And again: But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart.

For all, regenerated in Christ, are made kings by the sign of the cross; they are consecrated priests by the oil of the Holy Spirit, so that beyond the special service of our ministry as priests, all spiritual and mature Christians know that they are a royal race and are sharers in the office of the priesthood.

For what is more king-like than to find yourself ruler over your body after having surrendered your soul to God? And what is more priestly than to promise the Lord a pure conscience and to offer him in love unblemished victims on the altar of one’s heart?

Because, through the grace of God, it is a deed accomplished universally on behalf of all, it is altogether praiseworthy and in keeping with a religious attitude for you to rejoice in this our day of consecration, to consider it a day when we are especially honoured.

For indeed one sacramental priesthood is celebrated throughout the entire body of the Church. The oil which consecrates us has richer effects in the higher grades, yet it is not sparingly given in the lower.

Sharing in this office, my dear brethren, we have solid ground for a common rejoicing; yet there will be more genuine and excellent reason for joy if you do not dwell on the thought of our unworthiness.

It is more helpful and more suitable to turn your thoughts to study the glory of the blessed apostle Peter. We should celebrate this day above all in honour of him. He overflowed with abundant riches from the very source of all graces, yet though he alone received much, nothing was given over to him without his sharing it.

The Word made flesh lived among us, and in redeeming the whole human race, Christ gave himself entirely.

12/11/2007 06:15
 
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November 11, 2007
BEATIFICATION OF CEFERINO NAMUNCURA

Born Aug. 26, 1886, in Chimpay, Argentina
Died May 11, 1905, in Rome




First indigenous Argentine
beatified in his hometown






CHIMPAY, Argentina. Nov. 11 (AP) — Ceferino Namuncura became the first Argentine Indian to be beatified by the Roman Catholic Church on Sunday, in a ceremony before tens of thousands including Indians in bright ponchos and plumed headdresses.



Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, led the beatification in the wind-swept Patagonian community of Chimpay, 600 miles southeast of Buenos Aires, as traditional Catholic rites mixed with sporadic drumming, cow horns and Mapuche chants.


Chimpay is so tiny it is not even found on most detailed maps of Argentina. It is marked with a red dot on the small map below.
In the 2nd map, find the city of Nuequen near the center - Chimpay is about 110 miles due east of it.



Namuncura, who lived from 1886 to 1905 and is revered for his piety and humility, has a wide following among Argentina's poor. Police estimated some 120,000 people attended the beatification, which attracted Mapuche Indians from Argentina and from neighboring Chile.

"Let us learn from Ceferino to be good children of God and brothers to all," Bertone told the crowd spread out on a grassy field.

"Viva Ceferino!" church leaders shouted, raising a cheer among the crowd.

Church investigators have attributed a miracle to Namuncura based on an Argentine woman's claim that devotion to him healed her of uterine cancer in 2000. On Sunday, she told journalists there was no medical explanation for her recovery.

"Doctors told me, 'this is impossible."' said Valeria Herera, 24. "But they were never able to explain it to me scientifically speaking."

Namuncura, the son of a Mapuche Indian chief, studied at a Catholic school in Buenos Aires run by the Salesian order, began seminary training in Argentina and went to Rome for more studies before dying there at 18 of tuberculosis.

Some have criticized Namuncura's beatification, noting that his father resisted Argentine military campaigns blamed for eradicating indigenous peoples.

Namuncura "was handed over to be converted to Christianity," said Jorge Nahuel, a spokesman for one Mapuche group. He called the beatification a "real offense against the history of our people."

The ceremony was authorized in July by Pope Benedict XVI, who has made efforts to beatify subjects in their homelands instead of Rome. Beatification is sometimes the first step to sainthood.

The first Indian saint in the Americas, Juan Diego, was canonized by then-Pope John Paul II in Mexico City in 2002.


In Chimpay, Argentina, a statue of Blessed Ceferino at his shrine, and nuns line up in the pre-dawn hours for the beatification rites today.


Beatification in Chimpay


A bishop blesses an effigy of Blessed Ceferino.

CHIMPAY, Argentina, Nov. 11 (AFP) - Tens of thousands of faithful turned out Sunday to witness a ceremony honoring Ceferino Namuncura, the first indigenous South American to be beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.

"Ceferino is blessed," proclaimed Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, deputy of Pope Benedict XVI, drawing a thundering ovation from the crowd of onlookers that swelled to 120,000 people for the event, police said.

More than a century after his death in Rome, Namuncura - the son of a Mapuche Indian chief who fought the European settlers in the late 19th century - became the first Argentine to be beatified outside the Vatican, organizers said.


Mapuche Indians at the beatification rites.

The ceremony took place in this southern Patagonia town 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) south of Buenos Aires.

"The Gospel never destroys the values in a culture, but assimilates them and perfects them," said Bertone, adding that Namuncura "never forgot he what it was to be native and tried to be useful to his people."

Often the first step toward sainthood, beatification is a long process, which in Namuncura's case began in 1944 and culminated in a "miracle" in 2000, when a young Argentine girl was allegedly cured of uterine cancer after praying to him.

Pope Benedict XVI officially certified Namuncura's miracle in July, opening the path to beatification.

The miracle girl, Valeria, her husband and three children were among those who gathered for the beatification ceremony Sunday.

Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, celebrated the beatification mass, which was also attended by Buenos Aires archbishop Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, some 50 bishops from Argentina and Latin America, and by Namuncura's descendants.

Born August 26, 1886, Ceferino Namuncura was the son of legendary Mapuche chief Manuel Namuncura who, after years of fighting the military and white encroachment surrendered on the advice of a Salesian monk who baptized his son when he was eight.

Ceferino studied at a religious school in Buenos Aires, "so he could be of service to his race" according to historians, and as a priest became renown for his unswerving faith.

He was presented to then Pope Pius X in Rome in 1904, but succumbed to tuberculosis a year later. His remains were taken back to Argentina in 1924 and laid to rest in Buenos Aires.





From Wikipedia:

Ceferino "Morales" Namuncurá (the Venerable Namuncurá) (August 26, 1886 - May 11, 1905) was a religious student and the object of a Roman Catholic cultus and veneration in northern Patagonia.

He was born in Chimpay, in Valle Medio, Río Negro Province, Argentina, the sixth child of Rosario Burgos and a Mapuche cacique, Manuel Namuncurá. He was baptized by a missionary priest, Domingo Milanesio, at the age of eight. [His father was 75 when he was born, and his mother was 29).



Namuncurá's early years were spent by the Río Negro river, and it was here that he allegedly miraculously survived a fall into the river. He attended the San Fernando school, and then the Pio IX technical school, in Almagro, Buenos Aires, where he was given a Catholic education by the Salesians of Don Bosco.

Namuncurá started studies for priesthood, yet he became increasingly sick with a cough (later diagnosed as tuberculosis). In 1904, he departed for Italy together with Monseñor Antonio Cagliero, who was to become an Archbishop.

Pope Pius X received them on September, after which Namuncurá moved to Turin to continue his religious education. He became ill during the Italian winter and was taken to Rome, were he died a few weeks later.

In 1924, his remains where returned to Argentina, where they now rest in Fortín Mercedes, in the south of Buenos Aires Province.

In Chimpay a very small chapel has been erected to Namuncurá, where believers from Río Negro Province and beyond pray for his intercession. In 1945, a request for his beatification was made to the Vatican. Since 1972, Ceferino was officially considered venerable, the first Argentine to be so. Pope Benedict XVI finally decreed his beatification on July 6, 2007.


For those who read Spanish, there is a very good state-of-the-art multimedia official website about the new Blessed:
www.ceferino.dbp.org.ar/


There's a beautiful section about why exactly Ceferino was proposed for beatification. He had a very short life, and he had no chance to do anything but be a devoted son, an excellent student and a devout Catholic. And yet...

Here's how his biographer puts it (a translation):

Ceferino did nothing extraordinary. He didn't cause miracles, he did not even make any heroic gestures. All he did was live his life simply as did other boys his age, like other schoolboys in the Salesian colleges he attended. But he filled the little acts of everyday with Christian sense and spiritual vigor - and this is most important as a testimony to how the most simple saintliness is possible, that we do not need to live outside our daily life to fulfill our baptismal mission, that wherever we are and in the concrete ways we live, God invites us all to saintliness.


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/11/2007 08:17]
13/11/2007 00:47
 
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November 12
MEMORIAL OF ST. JOSAPHAT,
Bishop and Martyr




Once again, I must fall back on Argent by The Tiber who has the daily feasts afficiently covered with the appropriate data and meditations. I must confess I had never heard of St. Josaphat before today.




Josaphat Kuncewitcz was born about the year 1580 at Vladimir, Volhynia, [part of the Polish province of Lithuania at the time] and given the name John at baptism.

While being instructed as a child on the sufferings of our Savior, his heart is said to have been wounded by an arrow from the sacred side of the Crucified. In 1604 he joined the Ukrainian Order of Saint Basil (Basilians), lived as a monk in a very mortified life, went barefoot even in winter, refrained from the use of wine and flesh-meat, and always wore a penitential garb.

In 1614 he was appointed archimandrite of Vilna, Russia and four years later archbishop of Polotzk; in this position he worked untiringly for Church reunion.

He was a great friend of the poor, once even pledged his archepiscopal omophorion (pallium) to support a poor widow. The foes of union decided to assassinate him. In a sermon, he himself spoke of his death as imminent.

When he visited Vitebsk (now in Russia), his enemies attacked his lodging and murdered a number of his companions. Meekly the man of God hastened toward the mob and, full of love, cried, "My children, what are you doing? If you have something against me, see, here I am."

With furious cries of "Kill the papist!", they rushed upon him with gun and sword. Josaphat's body was thrown into the river but emerged, surrounded by rays of light, and was recovered. His murderers, when sentenced to death, repented their crime and became Catholics.

~from The Church's Year of Grace, Pius Parsch


He gave his life for the unity of the Church
~from Pope Pius XI's encyclical Ecclesiam Dei

In designing his Church God worked with such skill that in the fullness of time it would resemble a single great family embracing all men. It can be identified, as we know, by certain distinctive characteristics, notably its universality and unity.

Christ the Lord passed on to his apostles the task he had received from the Father: I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations. He wanted the apostles as a body to be intimately bound together, first by the inner tie of the same faith and love which flows into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, and, second, by the external tie of authority exercised by one apostle over the others. For this he assigned the primacy to Peter, the source and visible basis of their unity for all time. So that the unity and agreement among them would endure, God wisely stamped them, one might say, with the mark of holiness and martyrdom.

Both these distinctions fell to Josaphat, archbishop of Polock of the Slavonic rite of the Eastern Church. He is rightly looked upon as the great glory and strength of the Eastern Rite Slavs.

Few have brought them greater honour or contributed more to their spiritual welfare than Josaphat, their pastor and apostle, especially when he gave his life as a martyr for the unity of the Church. He felt, in fact, that God had inspired him to restore world-wide unity to the Church and he realised that his greatest chance of success lay in preserving the Slavonic rite and Saint Basil’s rule of monastic life within the one universal Church.

Concerned mainly with seeing his own people reunited to the See of Peter, he sought out every available argument which would foster and maintain Church unity. His best arguments were drawn from liturgical books, sanctioned by the Fathers of the Church, which were in common use among Eastern Christians, including the dissidents.

Thus thoroughly prepared, he set out to restore the unity of the Church. A forceful man of fine sensibilities, he met with such success that his opponents dubbed him “the thief of souls”.


=====================================================================

May St. Josaphat work his intercessive powers for a quicker, smoother resolution of the ecumenical issues that stand in the way of Christian reunification. Amen.
18/11/2007 01:13
 
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'JESUS'S 'LITTLE FLOWER' VISITS ROME



Pope Benedict XVI venerates the relics of St. Therese
at his private chapel in the Vatican on 11/14/07.



Little Flower Welcomed
By Elizabeth Lev

ROME, Nov. 15 (ZENIT.org) - Last week, Rome received a delightful visit. The relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux - the Little Flower - were brought to the Eternal City.

For one week her mortal remains were transported with great pomp and honor from the Russian College, which bears her name, to various churches in the city, concluding with all-night adoration at the Church of St. Agnes in Piazza Navona.

Everywhere she went, she was greeted with prayers, flowers and songs, bringing a swath of joy to the first cold dark days of November.

Thérèse, born in 1873, visited Rome only once in her brief lifetime. At the age of 15, her father brought her here on a pilgrimage, where she met Pope Leo XIII at the papal audience.

She knew she was called to serve God as a religious sister, but had been denied entry into the Carmelite order because of her youth. She asked the Pope to allow her to join the order, but Pope Leo counseled her to obey her superiors.

Thérèse visited the Mamertine prison and the Colosseum, praying at the sites of the Roman martyrs. Meditating on their example, she put aside her own frustrations. Shortly after her return to France, the local bishop permitted her to join the convent.

Within the convent Thérèse thrived spiritually although her health soon began to decline. Under obedience, she wrote the “Story of a Soul” with her mother superior, outlining with simplicity her “little way.”

She succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 24, after an exemplary witness of embracing suffering for the love of Christ, and was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1925.

Once she joined the Carmelites, the Little Flower never traveled any further than her hometown, and yet she was named patron saint of missions because of her ceaseless intercession for missionaries and her promise to spend her heaven doing good on Earth. From her little world, she was able to see the biggest picture of all.

Ten years ago, in October 1997, Pope John Paul II declared Thérèse a doctor of the Church, although she had never earned a university degree or taught a course.

She was the youngest of the 33 people in the history of the Church to receive this exalted title. In his homily, John Paul II declared that “her spiritual itinerary shows such maturity and the intuitions of her faith expressed in her writings are so vast and so profound, that they merit a place among the great spiritual masters."

Thérèse’s autobiography was a best-seller throughout the 20th century and has offered spiritual guidance to millions of souls. Her simplicity and faith resonate in the longing to do something meaningful for God and others in all of us.

Thérèse takes a refreshing view of academic posturing when she writes: “When I read spiritual treatises, in which perfection is shown with a thousand obstacles in the way and a host of illusions round about it, my poor little mind soon grows weary. I close the learned book, which leaves my head splitting and my heart parched, and I take the holy Scriptures. Then all seems luminous, a single word opens up infinite horizons to my soul, perfection seems easy.”

In a society that esteems learning over wisdom, and titles over virtue, Thérèse’s “little way” reminds us that God chooses what the world deems foolish to shame the proud.




[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/11/2007 01:14]
18/11/2007 01:35
 
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November 18
BEATIFICATION OF ANTONIO ROSMINI

Born in Rovereto, Italy March 24, 1797
Died in Stresa, Italy, July 1, 1855





The 19th-century priest
who prefigured Vatican-II


His beatification takes place today in Novara (35 miles west of Milan). Here is a Vatican Radio feature on him yesterday, translated from the Italian service:


"One of the five or six greatest intellects that humanity has produced in centuries," is how the great 19th century Italian novelist Alessandro Manzoni described Antonio Rosmini, a fundamental figure of 19th century Catholicism.

A priest who was profoundly spiritual, a philosopher, a political theoretician and prolific writer, Rosmini was a far-sighted prophet of the life of the Church. Committed to 'leading men to religion through reason', he was also a shining example of obedience to the Church.

Alessandro Gisotti interviewed Agostino Giovagnoli, historian and lecturer at the Catholic University of Milan, on the contribution Rosmini made to the Church and to Catholic thought.


"He is a personage who truly illuminated the 19th century in Italy and Europe. Certainly, he was a man very sensitive to his time. In this sense, he built a bridge - to a world which was changing vortiginously and problematically - for a Church which had just been violently separated from the State, which found itself facing what the people of the time called a 'revolution.'

Rosmini showed a way in which the 'revolution' was not only against the Church, but could be made a friend of the Church, and above all, a friend of the faith. I think this opened a way of great importance.


[G]Le cinque piaghe della Santa Chiesa(The five wounds of the Holy Church) is Rosmini's best-knwon work, something which was not understood in his time, but which has since borne much fruit. What was Rosmini's strongest point here?

He wrote it in 1832 but it was not published till 1848. And so, everyone read it in the political context of 1848 [during which a series of political and economic revolts took place in Europe because of a recession and abuse of political power, in Germany, italy, France, Hungary, etc].

ACtually, his basic thesis was ecclesiological, which was owed to - as all of Rosmini's ecclesiology were - the 'school of Tuebingen', the German school of thought, on the basis of which Rosmini supported proposals that would rid the church of the last residues of its relationship with the ancien regime and demonstrate the universality of the Church: a Church that was a friend of the people, not of the powerful.

Therefore, the book was not so much a political affinity with the times, but an intellectual affinity that was substantially sensitive to the profound motivations of the era.

Just think of his insistence on the need for a liturgical language in the vernacular. In fact, we could see in him a prophet whio anticipated many aspects of Vatican-II.


Rosmini also remains an exemplary model of someone who could dialog with everyone, particularly with the intellectuals of his time, without diluting his own Christian identity. One sees a resemblance to Joseph Ratzinger...

I think so too. I pointed earlier to the word 'revolution'. For some time now, it has struck me that Benedict XVI is not afraid to speak of Christianity as a revolution. In some way, Rosmini did that - that is, he freed the Church from the risk of being mowed down it it attempted a counter-revolution, which was not so much a poilitical position as an ideological aversion to the modern world and all that modernity brings with it. Precisely, through Rosmini's capacity to grasp the anthropological question, to use a current term.

That was one of the most original things about him - his anthropology, which was new, because it was not pessimistic like the prevailing mood of Catholicism in his time, which was terrified at the newness of modernity. But an open and positive anthropology - knowledge or understanding of man - that did not deny original sin but also encompassed all the infinite possibilities that grace opens up to mankind.

He proposed a friendly church, friendly to novelty, friendly to the times, without renouncing the Christian message in any way, but rather valuing its most profound aspects that are often not understood by the contemporary world.


A biographical sketch


Antonio Rosmini was born in Rovereto, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on March 24, 1797. He attended the public school. In August of 1816, he took his final exams at the imperial secondary school, earning the grade of "eminence" in all subjects, and a written evaluation that says he is "endowed with tremendously keen intelligence."

In the autumn of 1816, he began to attend theology classes at the university of Padua, where he received his degree on June 23, 1822. Meanwhile, in 1821, he was ordained a priest by the bishop of Chioggia.

The patriarch of Venice, cardinal Ladislao Pyrcher, brought him to Rome. There, introduced by the abbot Mauro Cappellari, the future Pope Gregory XVI, he met twice with Pope Pius VIII, who gave this advice to the priest-philosopher: "Remember, you must attend to writing books, and not occupy yourself with the affairs of the active life. You handle logic rather well, and we need writers who know how to make themselves feared."

In 1830, he published his first great philosophical work, "A New Essay on the Origin of Ideas."

On February 2, 1831, Rosmini's friend cardinal Cappellari rose to the pontifical throne, and on September 20, 1839, the Institute of Charity that Rosmini had founded received definitive approval.

In just over ten days, from November 18-30, 1832, Rosmini wrote "The Five Wounds of the Holy Church," in which he denounces the dangers threatening the Church's unity and freedom, and points out the remedies for these. The book would be published in 1846.

In 1839, he published the "Treatise on Moral Conscience," in which he argues that intelligence is illuminated by the light of being that is the light of truth, and therefore there is something "divine" in man. His theses were harshly attacked by some Jesuits.

In 1848, with a mandate from the king of Piedmont, Carlo Alberto di Savoia, Rosmini returned to Rome on a diplomatic mission, with the aim of persuading Pope Pius IX to preside over a confederation of Italian states. But when the Piedmont government demanded that the pope join in the war against Austria, Rosmini resigned from his diplomatic post.

But Pius IX ordered him to remain in Rome. He was spoken of as the next cardinal secretary of state, and after the foundation of the Roman Republic, as prime minister. But he refused to preside over a revolutionary government that stripped the pope of his freedom.

On November 24, 1848, Pius IX fled to Gaeta. Rosmini followed him. But he quickly fell into disgrace by opposing the political line of cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, who wanted to use foreign armies in support of the pope. In 1849, Rosmini left the company of Pius IX.

During his trip back to northern Italy, on his way to Stresa, the news reached him that his words "The Five Wounds of the Holy Church" and "The Civil Constitution according to Social Justice" had been placed on the Index of forbidden books.

Under attack from the Jesuits, but bolstered by visits from his friends, including the author Alessandro Manzoni, Rosmini spent his last years in Stresa, guiding the two congregations he had founded and writing his loftiest work, the "Theosophia."

Tried by the Vatican for the first time in 1854, he was absolved. He died in Stresa on July 1, 1855. The Church's condemnation came in 1887, against 40 propositions drawn from his works. The revocation of this condemnation came in 2001.


Earlier this week, Sandro Magister has this important post on Rosmini:


Blessed Liberty:
The Posthumous Miracle of Antonio Rosmini


The great classical thinker was under condemnation by the Holy Office since 1886.
Six years ago, the CDF under Cardinal Ratzinger exonerated him,
paving the way
for his beatification on Sunday.

by Sandro Magister






ROMA, November 12, 2007 – A beatification ceremony is approaching that is a miracle in its own right: the beatification of the priest and philosopher Antonio Rosmini.

It's a miracle because just six years ago, the new blessed was still under a condemnation issued in 1887 by the congregation of the Holy Office, against 40 propositions drawn from his writings.

Absolution came on July 1, 2001, with a note from the then-prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

And it was only after the removal of this obstacle that the cause of his beatification was put on the fast track.

Antonio Rosmini will be proclaimed blessed on Sunday, November 18, in Novara, the northern Italian diocese where he spent the last part of his life. Pope Benedict XVI has appointed cardinal Josè Saraiva Martins, the prefect of the congregation for the causes of saints, to preside over the celebration.

In addition to being a deeply spiritual priest, Rosmini was a profound thinker and a prolific writer. The complete edition of his works, being prepared by Città Nuova, will ultimately run to 80 large volumes.

Fr. Umberto Muratore, a religious of the congregation that Rosmini founded, does not hesitate to compare him, as a philosopher, to giants like Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine.

Of his books, the one still most widely read and translated is Delle cinque piaghe della santa Chiesa [Of the Five Wounds of the Holy Church]."

One of the wounds that he denounced was the ignorance of the clergy and the people in celebrating the liturgy. But it is a mistake to view him as a standard bearer for the abandonment of the use of Latin. He wrote, instead, that "reducing the sacred rites to the vernacular languages would mean resorting to a remedy worse than the disease."

He was also a great political theorist. He was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal during a period – the mid-19th century – when liberalism, for the Church, was synonymous with the devil. In his book Filosofia della politica [Philosophy of Politics], Rosmini expresses his admiration for Democracy in America, the masterpiece of his contemporary Alexis de Tocqueville, a founding father of faith-friendly liberalism.

Rosmini anticipated by more than a century the statements on religious freedom affirmed by Vatican Council II. He was a critic of Catholicism as a "religion of the state." He was a tireless defender of the freedom of citizens and of "intermediate bodies" against the abuses of an omnipotent state.

It is not surprising, therefore, that those spreading Rosmini's thought in the Catholic camp today are above all the proponents of a form of liberalism open to religion, which in Europe has its leading figures in the "Vienna school" of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek.

The portrait of Rosmini reproduced below was written by a prominent representative of these Catholic thinkers, Dario Antiseri, a professor at the Libera Università degli Studi "Guido Carli" in Rome, and the author of a highly respected "History of Philosophy" translated into a number of languages. His portrayal was published on November 1 in the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, Avvenire.

Antiseri focuses his attention on just one aspect of the figure of Rosmini, his political theories. But this may be the aspect that best displays his originality. Rosmini's ideas are still distasteful to many Catholics, bishops and priests included.

Even after Rosmini's beatification, his thought will still have a long road ahead of it before it becomes accepted language in the Catholic Church.



Rosmini, the Anti-totalitarian
by Dario Antiseri


Antonio Rosmini's first and fundamental concern in the political arena was that of establishing the conditions needed to guarantee the dignity and freedom of the human person. And it is in this perspective that, in his view, the question of property becomes crucial.

In opposition to socialist economic theory, Rosmini clearly maintains the connection between private property and individual freedom.

"Property – he writes in his Filosofia del diritto [Philosophy of Law] – truly expresses the close union between a thing and a person. [...] Property is the originating principle of legal rights and duties. Property constitutes a sphere around the person, of which that person is the center: no one else may enter within this sphere."

Respect for another's property is respect for that other person. Private property is a means for the person to defend himself from encroachment on the part of the state.

Person and state: the former is fallible, the latter, never perfect. And here is a famous passage taken from the "Philosophy of Politics":

"Perfectionism – meaning the system that believes it is possible to achieve perfection in human affairs, and sacrifices present goods for imagined future perfection – is a result of ignorance. It consists of an arrogant prejudice that judges human nature too favorably, basing itself upon pure conjecture, upon a postulate that cannot be granted, and with an absolute lack of reflection upon natural limitations."

Perfectionism ignores the great principle of the limitations of things; it does not consider that society is not composed of "angels confirmed in grace," but rather of "fallible men"; and it forgets that every government "is made up of persons who, being men, are all fallible."

The perfectionist neither uses nor abuses reason. And those who are most intoxicated by the malignant idea of perfectionism are the utopians. These "prophets of boundless happiness," with the promise of an earthly paradise, work busily to build quite serviceable hells for their fellow men.

Utopia, Rosmini asserts, is "the tomb of all true liberalism" and "far from making men happy, it digs an abyss of misery; far from ennobling them, it renders them as ignoble as beasts; far from pacifying them, it introduces universal war, substituting power for law; far from distributing wealth, it concentrates it; far from moderating the power of the government, it makes this absolute; far from opening competition to all in all areas, it destroys all competition; far from expanding industry, agriculture, art, and commerce, it deprives them of any incentives, blocking private initiative and spontaneous activity; far from spurring minds to great invention and hearts to great virtue, it smothers and crushes any vitality of the soul, rendering impossible any noble effort, any magnanimity, any heroism; virtue itself is prohibited, and even faith in virtue is destroyed."

And here it must be specified that connected with Rosmini's anti-perfectionism is his staunch criticism of the arrogance of that strain of thought that celebrated its own triumphs in the writings of the Enlightenment, and then unleashed the horrors of the French Revolution.

The goddess Reason was taken as symbolizing man's presumption that he could take the place of God and create a perfect society. The judgment that Rosmini levels against the fatal presumption of the Enlightenment calls to mind similar assessments, those of Edmund Burke first of all, and then those of Friedrich A. von Hayek.

An anti-perfectionist on account of the natural "infirmity of men," Rosmini is quick, again in his "Political Philosophy," to point out that the critical barbs that he aims against perfectionism "are not intended to deny the perfectibility of man and society. That man can continually become more perfect as long as he lives is a precious reality; it is a dogma of Christianity."

Rosmini's anti-perfectionism thus implies an even greater effort. From this arises, among other things, his attention to what he calls "long, public, free discussion," because it is from this kind of friendly hostility that men can draw out the best from themselves and eliminate the errors of their own projects and ideas.

We read further in the "Philosophy of Law":

"The individuals who comprise a people cannot understand each other if they do not speak a great deal among themselves; if they do not confront each other vigorously; if errors are not drawn forth from minds and, once fully revealed, combated in all their forms."

As an anti-statist, and therefore a defender of "intermediate bodies," and as a champion of freedom, Rosmini was very attentive to the sufferings and problems of the needy and the most disadvantaged.

But the duty of Christian solidarity did not make turn a blind eye to the harms of state-run assistance programs.

"Government beneficence – he asserts – is in great demand in view of the most serious difficulties, and instead of good it can produce great harm, not only to the nation, but also to the same poor class that it is pretending to help; in that case, instead of beneficence, it is cruelty. Very often it is also cruel because it dries up private sources of charity, discouraging citizens from helping the poor, who are thought to be receiving help from the government, while instead they are not and cannot except to the slightest extent."

So these are a few of Antonio Rosmini's positions, as a political theorist. It is not difficult to understand their extreme relevance and their astonishing timeliness.

And, together with this, the incalculable harm – not only to Catholic culture - caused by the long marginalization of this priest-philosopher.


INTERVIEW WITH CARDINAL JOSE SARAIVA MARTINS,
PREFECT OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE CAUSES OF SAINTS, AND REPRESENTATIVE OF BENEDICT XVI AT NOVARA ON 18 NOVEMBER 2007
AT THEBEATIFICTION OF ANTONIO ROSMINI
By Gianni Cardinale
30 GIORNI


"I am truly happy that Antonio Rosmini is finally going to be beatified. I am happy for the Church, and, if I may say so, I am personally happy. Since my time as professor at the Pontifical University "Urbaniana", I have always quoted from the enlightening writings of this great, sharp, prophetic thinker"

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins is already preparing for the homily he will pronounce at Novara on the occasion of the beatification; he does not hide his personal joy for the approaching feast for the Church; it does not often happen that a thinker who has had some Propositions formally condemned by the holy See should be rehabilitated so fully.


Your Eminence, tell us what you feel about the beatification of Rosmini?

We are dealing with a most pure priestly person, who offered himself totally to Christ and to the Church, suffering greatly in the process, a model who became guide and comfort for many Christians who came after him, both "intellectual" Christians and ordinary faithful, who have been touched by the witness of the religious of the two Congregations founded by him. Rosmini is truly a Christian who has lived in the highest degree human and Christian virtues.


It was not easy for Rosmini to have his virtues acknowledged...

In effect, his cause for Beatification - I think you are referring to this - has not been easy, for various reasons... Rosmini's writings had been criticised by ecclesiastical circles, right up to the decree Post Obitum which condemned 40 Propositions taken from his writings. It was a condemnation "after his death", to which Rosmini had no chance of replying; moreover, the Propositions had been taken out of context and had been interpreted in an arbitrary way.


Among the "historic enemies" of Rosmini were the Jesuits...

Some members of the Society of Jesus of the time. The Jesuits, from some time now, have changed their views on Rosmini. Their present General, Kolvenbach, has written an article in the magazine Filosofia Oggi (1997) in which he sees Rosmini as a prophet of the third Millennium.

Kolvenbach says, "During Rosmini's life, some Jesuits - not very prestigious - did write defamatory books against him. It is useful to remember that such Jesuits acted outside the religious rules and were reprimanded by the General of the time, Fr. Jan Roothaan".

The Civilta' Cattolica, a prestigious Jesuit magazine, a few years ago allowed the publication of an article by the late Rosminian bishop Clemente Riva, a most unusual occurrence since it normally publishes only articles written by Jesuits.


Fr. Cornelio Fabro, an unrepentant critic of 1Rosmini, has written that the change of opinion among the Jesuits is only due to an "exacerbated guilty complex"...

It is true that the late Fr. Fabro maintained a negative opinion on Rosmini. We respect his views, but we know that it is the view of the minority of Jesuits.


The fact is that the decree Post Obitum has now been annulled...

In effect, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,under Cardinal Ratzinger, re-studied the Rosmini question and it concluded that there were no obstacles to the beatification of Rosmini.


Another aspect which was detrimental to the cause of Rosmini was his political stand in favour of the unity and independence of Italy, against the interests of the Austrian Empire...

Political views usually do not interfere with the process of beatification. Te Church has beatified Pius IX who, after an initial convergence of views with Rosmini, had very different approaches in political matters. But subsequent political events in italian history comformed to Rosmini's views.


The rapport with Pius IX was very important in the life of Rosmini. At the beginning the Pope had wanted to make him a cardinal - then what happened to spoil their relations?

There is much evidence that Pius IX had great esteem for Rosmini, wanting to make him a cardinal and his Secretary of State. But then, the political turmoil of 1849 took place, and then, the institution of the Italian Republic, and these resolutions came to nothing. As it has been proved by scholars, Rosmini suffered at the hands of Cardinals who were close to Austria, especially Giacomo Antonelli.


What was the general attitude of subsequent Popes to Rosmini?

Generally, great esteem. In the Positio we find quoted various documents and witnesses in relation to this. I would only mention the many times Paul VI mentioned Rosmini, and the fact that John Paul II acknowledges positively Rosmini in the encyclical Fides et Ratio. With John Paul I, it was different.

The servant of God, Albino Luciani, as a young priest, wrote a very critical thesis on Rosmini. It was answered by a young Rosminian priest, Clemente Riva, who later became auxiliary bishop of Rome. In 1978, when Luciani became Pope, he met with his Cardinal Vicar in Rome and the auxiliary bishops.

When it was the turn of Riva, John Paul I said to Cardinal Poletti, "I know him...", but he said this with a large smile. It was Riva himself who recounted this incident saying that his apprehension had been eased by the words of the Pope. We may add to this other witnesses who have testified to the desire of Pope Luciani to have Rosmini fully restored to the Church.


The most famous work of Rosmini is certainly the Five Wounds of the Church. It was placed in the Index of forbidden books, yet it was taken out before the abolition of the Index...

It is a prophetic book, in a sense, too prophetic for his time. And it is the destiny of all prophets, in the Bible, and alas, in the Church at times, to be misunderstood and persecuted.


One of the wounds has to do with the appointment of bishops...

The appointment of bishops has always been and still is a very delicate matter, as I know well from experience. Rosmini wanted to do away with political interference in their nomination, and he wanted to see the ancient tradition of bishops chosen by clergy and people restored.


Is it something we can still do?

The rules for the appointing bishops are not of divine origin, therefore they can always be improved. But it seems to me that the idea of having clergy and people electing their bishop is almost unthinkable todayn the power of the media. At the time of Rosmini there was no television...


[DIM]11t[=DIM]Another wound identified concerns the liturgy...

Rosmini was well aware of the dramatic situation of a liturgy no longer understood by the people and often by the celebrants. In this as in other things,he anticipated the resolutions of Vatican II and particularly of the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium.


What would Rosmini make of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum?

I do not think Rosmini would be against the motu proprio. He had a lofty view of freedom and would have appreciated the Pope's initiative to allow for a liturgy which many of the faithful want and find beneficial, and which has been for so long the official liturgy of the Church. Moreover, Rosmini wished to see people and clergy understand better and love the liturgy, not so much translating it into the vernacular.


What other aspects of Vatican II had been anticipated by Rosmini?

Certainly, his teaching on Religious Freedom, was taken up by Vatican II. His teaching was misunderstood, but the document Dignitatis Humanae owes much to Rosmini.


Rosmini died before he turned 60. Is it possible that he may have been poisoned?

In the Positio prepared by Fr. Claudio Papa, there is some indication that he may have been the target of poisoning on more than one occasion. But there is no firm evidence. Although it is not surprising that someone would wish to get rid of him: he was certainly a thorn in the flesh for some centres of political power.


The Postulator of the Cause of Rosmini has said that the cost for the process of beatification and beatification itself is going to be very high. Forgive the impertinence of the question, but why should it cost so much to become a saint?

There is no fixed fee for beatification, it depends on the various commissions, studies, paperwork, salaries of experts, etc. I must add, however, that there is a special fund for causes that need financial help.


A POEM BY BLESSED ROSMINI

How delightful it is to speak with God,
To talk of God,
To be satisfied with God alone;
To recall, desire, understand, know, and love God;
To seek and find God in God,
Giving oneself wholly to God.
To leave for the sake of God even the delights of God;
To think, to speak, to work for God;
To hope only in God, delight only in God;
To keep one's mind always intent on God;
To do all things with God in God,
Dedicated and consecrated to God,
Pleasing God alone, suffering for God,
Rejoicing solely in God;
To desire God alone,
To abide with God for ever,
To exult with God in times of joy, in times of pain;
To see, touch, taste God,
To live, die and abide in God,
And then, rapt and translated into God,
With God and in God, to offer God to God
For God's eternal honour and glory.
O God, what joy, what sweetness there is in God,
God, O God!; God, O God!; God, O God!; God, O God!; God, O God![




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November 21
Presentation of Mary at the Temple



Giotto, Presentation of Mary, Cycle on Life of Mary, 1305.
Fresco, Capella Scrovigni (Arena Chapel), Padua
.


Iconography and Source:
Three-year-old Mary is taken to the Temple and entrusted to the priests. The scene takes place at the entrance to the Temple of Jerusalem, where Joachim is standing beside the elderly Simeon (112 years old) and the prophetess Anna (Bellinati). The high priest Abiatar welcomes Mary, held by Anna, while in the foreground two other high priests observe the scene.

From the Apocryphal Gospel according to Matthew (4-6):

"When she was three years old, Mary was taken to Temple of Jerusalem, and entrusted to God, together with all those who lived there, praising God day and night.

At the entrance to the Temple, she ran up the fifteen steps quickly without turning to look back at her parents, as children usually do. Those who saw the scene were amazed and even the high priests of the temple were surprised….

Her face was beautiful, as white as snow; every word she uttered was so full of grace that it was clear that God was upon her." (See C. Bellinati, Atlante iconografico della Cappella di Giotto 1300-1305)



From Saint of the Day:

Mary’s presentation was celebrated in Jerusalem in the sixth century. A church was built there in honor of this mystery. The Eastern Church was more interested in the feast, but it does appear in the West in the 11th century. Although the feast at times disappeared from the calendar, in the 16th century it became a feast of the universal Church.

As with Mary’s birth, we read of Mary’s presentation in the temple only in apocryphal literature. In what is recognized as an unhistorical account, the Protoevangelium of James tells us that Anna and Joachim offered Mary to God in the Temple when she was three
years old. This was to carry out a promise made to God when Anna was still childless.

Though unhistorical, Mary’s presentation has an important theological purpose. It continues the impact of the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and of the birth of Mary. It emphasizes that the holiness conferred on Mary from the beginning of her life on earth continued through her early childhood and beyond.

Comment:

It is sometimes difficult for modern Westerners to appreciate a feast like this. The Eastern Church, however, was quite open to this feast and even somewhat insistent about celebrating it.

Even though the feast has no basis in history, it stresses an important truth about Mary: From the beginning of her life, she was dedicated to God. She herself became a greater temple than any made by hands. God came to dwell in her in a marvelous manner and sanctified her for her unique role in God's saving work.

At the same time, the magnificence of Mary redounds upon her children. They, too, are temples of God and sanctified in order that they might enjoy and share in God's saving work.


Prayer to Mary

Hail, holy throne of God, divine sanctuary, house of glory, jewel most fair, chosen treasure house, and mercy seat for the whole world, heaven showing forth the glory of God.

Purest Virgin, worthy of all praise, sanctuary dedicated to God and raised above all human condition, virgin soil, unplowed field, flourishing vine, fountain pouring out waters, virgin bearing a child, mother without knowing man, hidden treasure of innocence, ornament of sanctity, by your most acceptable prayers, strong with the authority of motherhood, to our Lord and God, Creator of all, your Son who was born of you without a father, steer the ship of the Church and bring it to a quiet harbor.

(Adapted from a homily by St. Germanus on the Presentation of the Mother of God).



Fresco, Protaton Church on Mt. Athos,
attributed to Manuel Panselinos, 14th century Macedonian school
.



By faith she believed;
by faith, conceived


A meditation on the feast, from the Office of Readings for today:

From a sermon of St Augustine


Stretching out his hand over his disciples, the Lord Christ declared: "Here are my mother and my brothers; anyone who does the will of my Father who sent me is my brother and sister and my mother."

I would urge you to ponder these words. Did the Virgin Mary, who believed by faith and conceived by faith, who was the chosen one from whom our Saviour was born among men, who was created by Christ before Christ was created in her – did she not do the will of the Father?

Indeed the blessed Mary certainly did the Father’s will, and so it was for her a greater thing to have been Christ’s disciple than to have been his mother, and she was more blessed in her discipleship than in her motherhood. Hers was the happiness of first bearing in her womb him whom she would obey as her master.

Now listen and see if the words of Scripture do not agree with what I have said:

The Lord was passing by and crowds were following him. His miracles gave proof of divine power. And a woman cried out: Happy is the womb that bore you, blessed is that womb!

But the Lord, not wishing people to seek happiness in a purely physical relationship, replied: More blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.

Mary heard God’s word and kept it, and so she is blessed. She kept God’s truth in her mind, a nobler thing than carrying his body in her womb. The truth and the body were both Christ: he was kept in Mary’s mind insofar as he is truth, he was carried in her womb insofar as he is man; but what is kept in the mind is of a higher order than what is carried in the womb.

The Virgin Mary is both holy and blessed, and yet the Church is greater than she. Mary is a part of the Church, a member of the Church, a holy, an eminent – the most eminent – member, but still only a member of the entire body.

The body undoubtedly is greater than she, one of its members. This body has the Lord for its head, and head and body together make up the whole Christ. In other words, our head is divine – our head is God.

Now, beloved, give me your whole attention, for you also are members of Christ; you also are the body of Christ. Consider how you yourselves can be among those of whom the Lord said: "Here are my mother and my brothers."

Do you wonder how you can be the mother of Christ? He himself said: "Whoever hears and fulfils the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and my sister and my mother."

As for our being the brothers and sisters of Christ, we can understand this because although there is only one inheritance and Christ is the only Son, his mercy would not allow him to remain alone. It was his wish that we too should be heirs of the Father, and co-heirs with himself.

Now having said that all of you are brothers of Christ, shall I not dare to call you his mother? Much less would I dare to deny his own words. Tell me how Mary became the mother of Christ, if it was not by giving birth to the members of Christ? You, to whom I am speaking, are the members of Christ.

Of whom were you born? “Of Mother Church”, I hear the reply of your hearts. You became sons of this mother at your baptism, you came to birth then as members of Christ.

Now you in your turn must draw to the font of baptism as many as you possibly can. You became sons when you were born there yourselves, and now by bringing others to birth in the same way, you have it in your power to become the mothers of Christ.



Presentation of Mary. Russian icon, Novgorod School, late 15th century



Titian, Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple,1534-38
Oil on canvas, 345 x 775 cm. Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.
Detail below:



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December 8
SOLEMNITY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF MARY


The Immaculate Conception
A dewdrop of the darkness born,
Wherein no shadow lies;
The blossom of a barren thorn,
Whereof no petal dies;
A rainbow beauty passion-free,
Wherewith was veiled Divinity.
- John Bannister Tabb


The Virgin
Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied;
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature's solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast;
Thy Image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mixed and reconciled in Thee
Of mother's love with maiden purity,
Of high with low, celestial with terrene!
- William Wordsworth




Esteban Murillo, Immaculate Conception, 1678, Oil on canvas, 274 cm x 190 cm.
Museo del Prado, Madrid
.

This is probably the most famous image of the Immaculate Conception.


The Feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrates the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is celebrated on 8 December, nine months before the Nativity of Mary, which is celebrated on 8 September.

A feast called the Conception of Mary arose in the Eastern Church in the seventh century (prior to the Great Schism of 1054). It spread to the West in the eighth century. In the eighteenth century it became a feast of the Roman Catholic Church. It is the only one of Mary's feasts that came to the Western Church not by way of Rome, but instead spread from the Byzantine area to Naples, and then to Normandy during their period of dominance over southern Italy. From there it spread into England, France, Germany, and eventually Rome.

Prior to Pope Pius IX's definition of the Immaculate Conception as Church dogma in 1854, most missals referred to it as the Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The festal texts of this period focused more on the action of her conception than on the theological question of her preservation from original sin.

The first move towards describing Mary's conception as "immaculate" came in the eleventh century. In the fifteenth century Pope Sixtus IV, while promoting the festival, explicitly tolerated those who promoted it as the Immaculate Conception and those who challenged such a description, a position later endorsed by the Council of Trent.

In 1854, Pius IX made the infallible statement Ineffabilis Deus: "The most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin."



The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception

In the Constitution Ineffabilis Deus of 8 December, 1854, Pius IX pronounced and defined that the Blessed Virgin Mary "in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin."


"The Blessed Virgin Mary..."
The subject of this immunity from original sin is the person of Mary at the moment of the creation of her soul and its infusion into her body.

"...in the first instance of her conception..."
The term conception does not mean the active or generative conception by her parents. Her body was formed in the womb of the mother, and the father had the usual share in its formation. The question does not concern the immaculateness of the generative activity of her parents.

Neither does it concern the passive conception absolutely and simply (conceptio seminis carnis, inchoata), which, according to the order of nature, precedes the infusion of the rational soul. The person is truly conceived when the soul is created and infused into the body.

Mary was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin at the first moment of her animation, and sanctifying grace was given to her before sin could have taken effect in her soul.

"...was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin..."
The formal active essence of original sin was not removed from her soul, as it is removed from others by baptism; it was excluded, it never was in her soul. Simultaneously with the exclusion of sin.

The state of original sanctity, innocence, and justice, as opposed to original sin, was conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially pertaining to original sin, were excluded. But she was not made exempt from the temporal penalties of Adam -- from sorrow, bodily infirmities, and death.

"...by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race."
The immunity from original sin was given to Mary by a singular exemption from a universal law through the same merits of Christ, by which other men are cleansed from sin by baptism.

Mary needed the redeeming Saviour to obtain this exemption, and to be delivered from the universal necessity and debt (debitum) of being subject to original sin. The person of Mary, in consequence of her origin from Adam, should have been subject to sin, but, being the new Eve who was to be the mother of the new Adam, she was, by the eternal counsel of God and by the merits of Christ, withdrawn from the general law of original sin.

Her redemption was the very masterpiece of Christ's redeeming wisdom. He is a greater redeemer who pays the debt that it may not be incurred than he who pays after it has fallen on the debtor.

Such is the meaning of the term "Immaculate Conception."


Proof from Scripture
Genesis 3:15


No direct or categorical and stringent proof of the dogma can be brought forward from Scripture. But the first scriptural passage which contains the promise of the redemption, mentions also the Mother of the Redeemer.

The sentence against the first parents was accompanied by the Earliest Gospel (Proto-evangelium), which put enmity between the serpent and the woman: "and I will put enmity between thee and the woman and her seed; she (he) shall crush thy head and thou shalt lie in wait for her (his) heel" (Genesis 3:15).

The translation "she" of the Vulgate is interpretative; it originated after the fourth century, and cannot be defended critically. The conqueror from the seed of the woman, who should crush the serpent's head, is Christ; the woman at enmity with the serpent is Mary. God puts enmity between her and Satan in the same manner and measure, as there is enmity between Christ and the seed of the serpent.

Mary was ever to be in that exalted state of soul which the serpent had destroyed in man, i.e. in sanctifying grace. Only the continual union of Mary with grace explains sufficiently the enmity between her and Satan.

The Proto-evangelium, therefore, in the original text contains a direct promise of the Redeemer, and in conjunction therewith the manifestation of the masterpiece of His Redemption, the perfect preservation of His virginal Mother from original sin.

Luke 1:28
The salutation of the angel Gabriel -- chaire kecharitomene, Hail, full of grace (Luke 1:28) indicates a unique abundance of grace, a supernatural, godlike state of soul, which finds its explanation only in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. But the term kecharitomene (full of grace) serves only as an illustration, not as a proof of the dogma.


Other texts
From the texts Proverbs 8 and Ecclesiasticus 24 (which exalt the Wisdom of God and which in the liturgy are applied to Mary, the most beautiful work of God's Wisdom), or from the Canticle of Canticles (4:7, "Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee"), no theological conclusion can be drawn.

These passages, applied to the Mother of God, may be readily understood by those who know the privilege of Mary, but do not avail to prove the doctrine dogmatically, and are therefore omitted from the Constitution Ineffabilis Deus.

For the theologian it is a matter of conscience not to take an extreme position by applying to a creature texts which might imply the prerogatives of God.


Proof from Tradition

In regard to the sinlessness of Mary the older Fathers are very cautious: some of them even seem to have been in error on this matter.

Origen, although he ascribed to Mary high spiritual prerogatives, thought that, at the time of Christ's passion, the sword of disbelief pierced Mary's soul; that she was struck by the poniard of doubt; and that for her sins also Christ died (Origen, "In Luc. hom. xvii").

In the same manner St. Basil writes in the fourth century: he sees in the sword, of which Simeon speaks, the doubt which pierced Mary's soul (Epistle 259).

St. Chrysostom accuses her of ambition, and of putting herself forward unduly when she sought to speak to Jesus at Capharnaum (Matthew 12:46; Chrysostom, Hom. xliv; cf. also "In Matt.", hom. 4).

But these stray private opinions merely serve to show that theology is a progressive science. If we were to attempt to set forth the full doctrine of the Fathers on the sanctity of the Blessed Virgin, which includes particularly the implicit belief in the immaculateness of her conception, we should be forced to transcribe a multitude of passages.

In the testimony of the Fathers two points are insisted upon: her absolute purity and her position as the second Eve (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:22). Patristic writings on Mary's purity abound.

The Fathers call Mary the tabernacle exempt from defilement and corruption (Hippolytus, "Ontt. in illud, Dominus pascit me");

Origen calls her worthy of God, immaculate of the immaculate, most complete sanctity, perfect justice, neither deceived by the persuasion of the serpent, nor infected with his poisonous breathings ("Hom. i in diversa");

Ambrose says she is incorrupt, a virgin immune through grace from every stain of sin ("Sermo xxii in Ps. cxviii);

Maximus of Turin calls her a dwelling fit for Christ, not because of her habit of body, but because of original grace ("Nom. viii de Natali Domini");

Theodotus of Ancyra terms her a virgin innocent, without spot, void of culpability, holy in body and in soul, a lily springing among thorns, untaught the ills of Eve, nor was there any communion in her of light with darkness, and, when not yet born, she was consecrated to God ("Orat. in S. Dei Genitr.").

In refuting Pelagius St. Augustine declares that all the just have truly known of sin "except the Holy Virgin Mary, of whom, for the honour of the Lord, I will have no question whatever where sin is concerned" (De naturâ et gratiâ 36).

Mary was pledged to Christ (Peter Chrysologus, "Sermo cxl de Annunt. B.M.V.");

it is evident and notorious that she was pure from eternity, exempt from every defect (Typicon S. Sabae);

she was formed without any stain (St. Proclus, "Laudatio in S. Dei Gen. ort.", I, 3);

she was created in a condition more sublime and glorious than all other natures (Theodorus of Jerusalem in Mansi, XII, 1140);

when the Virgin Mother of God was to be born of Anne, nature did not dare to anticipate the germ of grace, but remained devoid of fruit (John Damascene, "Hom. i in B. V. Nativ.", ii).

The Syrian Fathers never tire of extolling the sinlessness of Mary. St. Ephraem considers no terms of eulogy too high to describe the excellence of Mary's grace and sanctity: "Most holy Lady, Mother of God, alone most pure in soul and body, alone exceeding all perfection of purity ...., alone made in thy entirety the home of all the graces of the Most Holy Spirit, and hence exceeding beyond all compare even the angelic virtues in purity and sanctity of soul and body . . . . my Lady most holy, all-pure, all-immaculate, all-stainless, all-undefiled, all-incorrupt, all-inviolate spotless robe of Him Who clothes Himself with light as with a garment . ... flower unfading, purple woven by God, alone most immaculate" ("Precationes ad Deiparam" in Opp. Graec. Lat., III, 524-37).

To St. Ephraem she was as innocent as Eve before her fall, a virgin most estranged from every stain of sin, more holy than the Seraphim, the sealed fountain of the Holy Ghost, the pure seed of God, ever in body and in mind intact and immaculate ("Carmina Nisibena").

Jacob of Sarug says that "the very fact that God has elected her proves that none was ever holier than Mary; if any stain had disfigured her soul, if any other virgin had been purer and holier, God would have selected her and rejected Mary". It seems, however, that Jacob of Sarug, if he had any clear idea of the doctrine of sin, held that Mary was perfectly pure from original sin ("the sentence against Adam and Eve") at the Annunciation.

St. John Damascene (Or. i Nativ. Deip., n. 2) esteems the supernatural influence of God at the generation of Mary to be so comprehensive that he extends it also to her parents. He says of them that, during the generation, they were filled and purified by the Holy Ghost, and freed from sexual concupiscence.

Consequently according to the Damascene, even the human element of her origin, the material of which she was formed, was pure and holy.

This opinion of an immaculate active generation and the sanctity of the "conceptio carnis" was taken up by some Western authors; it was put forward by Petrus Comestor in his treatise against St. Bernard and by others.

Some writers even taught that Mary was born of a virgin and that she was conceived in a miraculous manner when Joachim and Anne met at the golden gate of the temple (Trombelli, "Mari SS. Vita", Sect. V, ii, 8; Summa aurea, II, 948. Cf. also the "Revelations" of Catherine Emmerich which contain the entire apocryphal legend of the miraculous conception of Mary.

From this summary it appears that the belief in Mary's immunity from sin in her conception was prevalent amongst the Fathers, especially those of the Greek Church.

The rhetorical character, however, of many of these and similar passages prevents us from laying too much stress on them, and interpreting them in a strictly literal sense. The Greek Fathers never formally or explicitly discussed the question of the Immaculate Conception.


ICONOGRAPHY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION


Carlo Crivelli, Immaculate Conception, 1492.
Egg tempera on wood. 194cm x 93 cm.
Church of San Francesco, Pergola, Italy.


Crivelli's may be the earliest dated picture of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. The doctrine was controversial but enjoyed increasing popularity in the 15th century, becoming dogma in 1854. Although rejected by the Dominicans, the Franciscans supported it.

A standard format and symbolism developed for such pictures. The symbols derive from the Bible, including the Book of Revelation and The Song of Songs. Here, the Virgin's purity is symbolised by a lily in a pure crystal glass.

It was in 17th Century Spain that the details of the Immaculate Conception became firmly established in painting using the imagery of Revelation 12:1. Mary is the "woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars..."




Diego Velazquez, Immaculate Conception, 1618, Oil on canvas,
135 cm x 101.6 cm. National Gallery of Art, London


This is one of Velazquez's earliest known works. The Spanish painter and art censor to the Inquisition, Francesco Pacheco (Velazquez's teacher and eventual fatherin-law), added that she should be shown as a young girl on the verge of womanhood, dressed in a white robe (representing purity) under a blue cloak (representing Heaven), and a girdle with three knots (like the Franciscan habit, signifying poverty, chastity and obedience), with her hands folded in prayer.

This prescription informs the numerous images of the great Spanish Painters from El Greco to Velázquez to Murillo.





It is easy to look at a painting like Murillo's Immaculate Conception, noticing only the sweetness and delicate charm of the Virgin and the angels and overlooking the imaginative power and depth of feeling of the artist. Here, he transcends the standard recipe for the Immaculate Conception to bring before our eyes a vision of a celestial being existing from all eternity, suspended in an immeasurable abyss of time and space.



Francisco Zurbaran, Immaculate Conception, 1628-1630.
Oil on canvas, 139 x 104 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
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Francisco Zurbaran, Immaculate Conception, 1661.
Oil on canvas, 137 x 103 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.


The 1661 painting is a late work of Zurbarán. The Virgin is a slender, delicate young girl with an exquisite oval face and golden hair falling to her shoulders, a vision in white and ultramarine seen against a golden sky peopled with cherubs. Though lacking in vigour, this late work has all the painterly qualities and expressive beauty of the great monumental paintings of Zurbarán's early period.



El Greco, Immaculate Conception, 1608-13. Oil on canvas, 348 x 174,5 cm
Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo


The great masterpiece of the late manner of the artist, painted for the High Altar of the Chapel of Oballe, San Vicente, Toledo, begun 1607, finished 1613. The painting certainly represents the Immaculate Conception, although it has often been referred to as an Assumption.
The various attributes of the Virgin (roses, lilies, mirror, fountain of clear water) proper to the representation of the Mystery, appear at the foot of the painting on the right. A view of Toledo appears on the left.

The spiritual excitement of the scene is reflected in meteorological effects: sun and moon shine simultaneously while explosions of light burst through the clouds like fire.

El Greco took the distinctive characteristics of his late style to their extreme conclusion in this work. Ordered scale and proportion, spatial recession and anatomical accuracy have been subordinated to imperatives of visionary experience.

Colours are unblended, forms have become dematerialised, the logic of gravity and shadows is subverted; the distinctions between near and far, open and enclosed, physical and spiritual, are all dissolved.

At the same time, however, El Greco has included a passage of naturalistic still-life that seems to belong to the earthly realm - the roses and lilies at lower right, traditional emblems of the Virgin. Their inclusion intensifies the visual transition from the earthly to the mystical.

The painting is the grand culmination of Greco's career. No artist has been able to express so convincingly the infinite: an infinity of colour and light, an infinity of movement and of space.

This expression of the spiritual reality of the universe was only possible to attain by the uncompromising disengagement of his art from the material and transitory of this World. The earth, symbolized by Toledo, is already a phantom.

From the burst of rose and white flowers at the base, a great upsurge of movement - of colour and light, in constant flux - commences, and increases in its rapture, and met by the light of the Dove, becomes all-pervading and infinite.

It is perhaps the most remarkable realisation of spiritual ecstasy in painting, and one of the greatest masterpieces of colour. A single detail - the offering of flowers, the opening of a wing, the Virgin's mantle transfigured by light - is a moving experience in itself.



Finally, this unusual portrayal of the Immaculate Conception
by a 16th-century Flemish master:


Jean Bellegambe (1470-1535), Saint Anne conceiving the Virgin Mary
Douai, Musée de la Chartreuse


campus.udayton.edu/mary//meditations/birthday.html




[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/12/2007 04:22]
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