http://www.anglicansforlife.org/
http://www.priestsforlife.org/
http://www.rachelsvineyard.org/
http://www.pregnancycenters.org/
http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/
http://www.blackgenocide.org/
http://www.prolife.com/
Showing posts with label BVM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BVM. Show all posts
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Mary was Pro-Life, thanks be to God
Thursday, December 06, 2007
The Virgin Without Sin
Gospel Commentary for Feast of Immaculate Conception
By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM CapROME, DEC. 6, 2007 ( Zenit.org).- With the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the Catholic Church affirms that Mary, on account of a singular privilege bestowed by God and in view of the merits of Christ's death, was preserved from contracting the stain of original sin and came into existence already completely holy.
Four years after being defined by Pope Pius IX, this truth was confirmed by the Madonna herself at Lourdes in an apparition to Bernadette with the words: "I am the Immaculate Conception."
The feast of Mary Immaculate reminds humanity that there is only one thing that truly lowers man -- sin. It is a very urgent message to repeat. The world has lost the sense of sin. We joke as if it were the most harmless thing in the world. The world presents its products and spectacles as sinful to make them more attractive. It talks about sin, even the gravest sins, in terms of endearment: peccadilloes, little vices, etc. The expression "original sin" is used in the advertising world to indicate something very different from the Bible: A sin that confers a bit of originality on the one who commits it!
The world is afraid of everything but sin. It is afraid of pollution, the obscure maladies of the body, nuclear war, terrorism; but it is not afraid of the war against God, who is the eternal; the all-powerful; love. Jesus says, however, not to be afraid of those who kill the body, but only of him who after he has killed has the power to cast into Gehenna (cf. Luke 12:4-5).
This way of thinking exercises a tremendous influence even on believers who want to live according to the Gospel. It produces a sleep of conscience in them, a kind of spiritual anesthesia. There is a drug that skews our understanding of sin. The Christian people no longer recognize its true enemy, the master that enslaves it; this is because what we have is a gilded slavery.
Many who speak of sin no longer have an entirely adequate idea of it. Sin becomes depersonalized and is projected only onto institutions; we end up identifying sin with the position of our own political and ideological adversaries. An investigation about what people think sin is would probably have frightening results.
Instead of liberation from sin, all efforts today are focused on liberation from regret over sin; instead of fighting against sin we fight against the idea of sin, replacing it with something very different, namely, "guilt feelings." We do precisely that which in every other sphere is considered the worst thing of all, that is, we deny the problem rather than resolve it, we push back and bury evil in the unconscious instead of removing it.
It is similar to believing that we can eliminate death by eliminating the thought of death, or worrying about bringing down the fever rather than curing the sickness when the fever is only a providential revelatory symptom of the sickness. St. John says that if we claim to be without sin, then we deceive ourselves and we make God a liar (cf. 1 John 1:8-10); God, in fact, says the contrary, he says that we have sinned.
Scripture says that Christ "died for our sins" (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:3). If you take away sin, then Christ's redemption itself is made futile, you have destroyed the meaning of his death. Christ would then have been tilting at windmills, he would have spilled his blood for nothing.
But the dogma of Mary Immaculate also tells us something very positive: God is stronger than sin and where sin abounds grace abounds even more (cf. Romans 5:20).
Mary is the sign and guarantee of this. The whole Church, after her, is called to become "glorious, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, that she might be holy and immaculate" (Ephesians 5:27). A text of the Second Vatican Council says: "But while in the Most Holy Virgin the Church has already reached that perfection whereby she is without spot or wrinkle, the followers of Christ still strive to increase in holiness by conquering sin. And so they turn their eyes to Mary who shines forth to the whole community of the elect as the model of virtues" ("Lumen Gentium," 65).
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
* * *
Father Raniero Cantalamessa is the Pontifical Household preacher. The readings for the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception are Genesis 3:9-15, 20; Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12; Luke 1:26-38.
By Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM CapROME, DEC. 6, 2007 ( Zenit.org).- With the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the Catholic Church affirms that Mary, on account of a singular privilege bestowed by God and in view of the merits of Christ's death, was preserved from contracting the stain of original sin and came into existence already completely holy.
Four years after being defined by Pope Pius IX, this truth was confirmed by the Madonna herself at Lourdes in an apparition to Bernadette with the words: "I am the Immaculate Conception."
The feast of Mary Immaculate reminds humanity that there is only one thing that truly lowers man -- sin. It is a very urgent message to repeat. The world has lost the sense of sin. We joke as if it were the most harmless thing in the world. The world presents its products and spectacles as sinful to make them more attractive. It talks about sin, even the gravest sins, in terms of endearment: peccadilloes, little vices, etc. The expression "original sin" is used in the advertising world to indicate something very different from the Bible: A sin that confers a bit of originality on the one who commits it!
The world is afraid of everything but sin. It is afraid of pollution, the obscure maladies of the body, nuclear war, terrorism; but it is not afraid of the war against God, who is the eternal; the all-powerful; love. Jesus says, however, not to be afraid of those who kill the body, but only of him who after he has killed has the power to cast into Gehenna (cf. Luke 12:4-5).
This way of thinking exercises a tremendous influence even on believers who want to live according to the Gospel. It produces a sleep of conscience in them, a kind of spiritual anesthesia. There is a drug that skews our understanding of sin. The Christian people no longer recognize its true enemy, the master that enslaves it; this is because what we have is a gilded slavery.
Many who speak of sin no longer have an entirely adequate idea of it. Sin becomes depersonalized and is projected only onto institutions; we end up identifying sin with the position of our own political and ideological adversaries. An investigation about what people think sin is would probably have frightening results.
Instead of liberation from sin, all efforts today are focused on liberation from regret over sin; instead of fighting against sin we fight against the idea of sin, replacing it with something very different, namely, "guilt feelings." We do precisely that which in every other sphere is considered the worst thing of all, that is, we deny the problem rather than resolve it, we push back and bury evil in the unconscious instead of removing it.
It is similar to believing that we can eliminate death by eliminating the thought of death, or worrying about bringing down the fever rather than curing the sickness when the fever is only a providential revelatory symptom of the sickness. St. John says that if we claim to be without sin, then we deceive ourselves and we make God a liar (cf. 1 John 1:8-10); God, in fact, says the contrary, he says that we have sinned.
Scripture says that Christ "died for our sins" (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:3). If you take away sin, then Christ's redemption itself is made futile, you have destroyed the meaning of his death. Christ would then have been tilting at windmills, he would have spilled his blood for nothing.
But the dogma of Mary Immaculate also tells us something very positive: God is stronger than sin and where sin abounds grace abounds even more (cf. Romans 5:20).
Mary is the sign and guarantee of this. The whole Church, after her, is called to become "glorious, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, that she might be holy and immaculate" (Ephesians 5:27). A text of the Second Vatican Council says: "But while in the Most Holy Virgin the Church has already reached that perfection whereby she is without spot or wrinkle, the followers of Christ still strive to increase in holiness by conquering sin. And so they turn their eyes to Mary who shines forth to the whole community of the elect as the model of virtues" ("Lumen Gentium," 65).
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
* * *
Father Raniero Cantalamessa is the Pontifical Household preacher. The readings for the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception are Genesis 3:9-15, 20; Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12; Luke 1:26-38.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Our Mother’s Day
BY Father Owen Kearns
National Catholic Register - North Haven,CT,USA
Publisher
May 13-19, 2007 Issue | Posted 5/8/07 at 8:00 AM
It’s appropriate that we are celebrating Mother’s Day this year on May 13, the anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady of Fatima.
After Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote about the apparition in the year 2000, many commentators hinted that he was not an enthusiastic supporter.
That misimpression needs to be changed.
Pope Benedict XVI not only loves Our Lady of Fatima as much as his predecessor did, he finds great consolation in her.
“A sure way of remaining united to Christ, as branches to the vine, is to have recourse to the intercession of Mary,” he said last year, “whom we venerated yesterday, May 13, in a particular way, recalling the apparitions at Fatima, where she appeared on several occasions to three shepherd children, Francisco, Jacinta and Lucia, in 1917.
“The message that she entrusted to them, in continuity with that of Lourdes, was a strong appeal to prayer and conversion; a truly prophetic message, considering that the 20th century was scourged by unheard-of destruction caused by war and totalitarian regimes, as well as widespread persecution of the Church.
“Moreover, on May 13, 1981, 25 years ago, the Servant of God John Paul II felt that he was saved miraculously from death by the intervention of ‘a maternal hand’ — as he himself said — and his entire pontificate was marked by what the Virgin had foretold at Fatima.
“Although there is no lack of anxiety and suffering, and although there are still reasons for apprehension about the future of humanity, what the ‘Lady in White’ promised the shepherd children is consoling: ‘At the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.’”
So, happy Mother’s Day to all our mothers — and from us to the Mother of us all. We thank her for the great hope she has given us at the Register — and the mission to pass that hope on every week to you.
National Catholic Register - North Haven,CT,USA
Publisher
May 13-19, 2007 Issue | Posted 5/8/07 at 8:00 AM
It’s appropriate that we are celebrating Mother’s Day this year on May 13, the anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady of Fatima.
After Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote about the apparition in the year 2000, many commentators hinted that he was not an enthusiastic supporter.
That misimpression needs to be changed.
Pope Benedict XVI not only loves Our Lady of Fatima as much as his predecessor did, he finds great consolation in her.
“A sure way of remaining united to Christ, as branches to the vine, is to have recourse to the intercession of Mary,” he said last year, “whom we venerated yesterday, May 13, in a particular way, recalling the apparitions at Fatima, where she appeared on several occasions to three shepherd children, Francisco, Jacinta and Lucia, in 1917.
“The message that she entrusted to them, in continuity with that of Lourdes, was a strong appeal to prayer and conversion; a truly prophetic message, considering that the 20th century was scourged by unheard-of destruction caused by war and totalitarian regimes, as well as widespread persecution of the Church.
“Moreover, on May 13, 1981, 25 years ago, the Servant of God John Paul II felt that he was saved miraculously from death by the intervention of ‘a maternal hand’ — as he himself said — and his entire pontificate was marked by what the Virgin had foretold at Fatima.
“Although there is no lack of anxiety and suffering, and although there are still reasons for apprehension about the future of humanity, what the ‘Lady in White’ promised the shepherd children is consoling: ‘At the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.’”
So, happy Mother’s Day to all our mothers — and from us to the Mother of us all. We thank her for the great hope she has given us at the Register — and the mission to pass that hope on every week to you.
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