Catholic Calendar

[dawn runner]

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Pentecost Sunday



1 Corinthians 12: 3 - 7, 12 - 13


3 Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Jesus be cursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit.

4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;

5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord;

6 and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one.

7 To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free -- and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

[size=18px]Its the birthday of the Catholic Church! [/size][size=12px][/size]







ANG PANGINOON ANG AKING PASTOL

Titik ni Fr. D. Isidro, SJ
Himig ni Fr. Fruto Ramirez, SJ


REF:
Ang Panginoon ang aking pastol
Pinagiginhawa akong lubos

Handog niyang himlaya’y sariwang pastulan
Ang pahingaan ko’y payapang batisan,
Hatid sa kalul’wa ay kaginhawahan,
Sa tumpak na landas, Siya ang patnubay.
(refrain )

Madilim na lambak man ang tatahakin ko,
Wala aking sindak, Siya’y kasama ko.
Ang hawak niyang tungkod ang siyang gabay ko.
Tangan niyang pamalo, sigla’t tanggulan ko. ( refrain )

[dawn runner]

THE SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY (may 22, 2005)



[size=18px]John 3: 16 - 18

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

17 For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

18 He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God [/size]

The Holy Trinity
by Rev. William G. Most

Perhaps the deepest, the most profound of all mysteries is the mystery of the Trinity. The Church teaches us that although there is only one God, yet, somehow, there are three Persons in God. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet we do not speak of three Gods, but only one God. They have the same nature, substance, and being.

We came to know this immense mystery because Christ revealed it to us. Just before ascending He told them: "Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19). We know that these Three are not just different ways of looking at one person. For at the Last Supper, Jesus told us: "I came forth from the Father." So He is different from the Father. But He also promised: "If I go, I will send Him [the Paraclete] to you. . . . He will guide you to all truth" (John 16:28, 7, 13). So the Holy Spirit is also different.

Even though the Three Persons are One God, yet they are distinct: for the Father has no origin, He came from no one. But the Son is begotten, He comes from the Father alone. The Holy Spirit comes or proceeds from both the Father and the Son. These different relations of origin tell us there are three distinct Persons, who have one and the same divine nature.

Even though everything the Three Persons do outside the Divine nature is done by all Three, yet it is suitable that we attribute some works specially to one or the other Person. So we speak of the Father especially as the power of creation, of the Son as the wisdom of the Father, of the Holy Spirit as goodness and sanctification.

The two doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation are the foundation of Christian life and worship. By becoming man, God the Son offered us a share in the inner life of the Trinity. By grace, we are brought into the perfect communion of life and love which is God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This sharing in the life of the Trinity is meant to culminate in heaven, where we will see the three Persons face to face, united to them in unspeakable love

[mannyamador]

This is a good catechetical service! Keep it up!

[dawn runner]

CORPUS CHRISTI SUNDAY May 29, 2005



[size=18px]John 6: 51 - 58

51 I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh."

52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

53 So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you;

54 he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

55 For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

56 He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.

57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.

58 This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever." [/size]The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist
by Frank J. Sheed

The Blessed Eucharist is the Sacrament. Baptism exists for it, all the others are enriched by it. The whole being is nourished by it. It is precisely food, which explains why it is the one sacrament meant to be received daily. Without it, one petition in the Our Father-"Give us this day our daily bread"-lacks the fullness of its meaning.

Early in his ministry, as St. John tells us (ch 6), Our Lord gave the first promise of it. He had just worked what is probably the most famous of his miracles, the feeding of the five thousand. The next day, in the synagogue at Capernaum on the shore of the sea of Galilee, Our Lord made a speech which should be read and reread. Here we quote a few phrases: "I am the Bread of Life"; "I am the Living Bread, which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give, is my flesh for the life of the world"; "He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, abides in me, and I in him"; "He that eats me shall live by me."

He saw that many of his own disciples were horrified at what he was saying. He went on: "It is the spirit that quickens: the flesh profits nothing." We know what he meant: in saying they must eat his flesh, he did not mean dead flesh but his body with the life in it, with the living soul in it. In some way he himself, living, was to be the food of their soul's life. Needless to say, all this meant nothing whatever to those who heard it first. For many, it was the end of discipleship. They simply left him, probably thinking that for a man to talk of giving them his flesh to eat was mere insanity. When he asked the Apostles if they would go too, Peter gave him one of the most moving answers in all man's history: "Lord, to whom shall we go?" He had not the faintest idea of what it all meant; but he had a total belief in the Master he had chosen and simply hoped that some day it would be made plain.

There is no hint that Our Lord ever raised the matter again until the Last Supper. Then his meaning was most marvellously made plain. What he said and did then is told us by Matthew, Mark, and Luke; and St. Paul tells it to the Corinthians (1 Cor 10 and 11). St. John, who gives the longest account of the Last Supper, does not mention the institution of the Blessed Eucharist; his Gospel was written perhaps thirty years after the others, to be read in a church which had been receiving Our Lord's body and blood for some sixty years. What he had provided is the account we have just been considering of Our Lord's first promise.

Here is St. Matthew's account of the establishment: "Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said, Take ye and eat: This is my body. And taking the chalice he gave thanks: and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this. For this is my blood of the New Testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins."

Since they deal with the food of our life, we must examine these words closely. What we are about to say of "This is my body" will do for "This is my blood" too. The word is need not detain us. There are those, bent upon escaping the plain meaning of the words used, who say that the phrase really means "This represents my body." It sounds very close to desperation! No competent speaker would ever talk like that, least of all Our Lord, least of all then. The word this, deserves a closer look. Had he said, "Here is my body," he might have meant that, in some mysterious way, his body was there as well as, along with, the bread which seems so plainly to be there. But he said, "This is my body"-this which I am holding, this which looks like bread but is not, this which was bread before I blessed it, this is now my body. Similarly this, which was wine, which still looks like wine, is not wine. It is now my blood.

Every life is nourished by its own kind-the body by material food, the intellect by mental food. But the life we are now concerned with is Christ living in us; the only possible food for it is Christ. So much is this so that in our own day you will scarcely find grace held to be Christ's life in us unless the Eucharist is held to be Christ himself.

What Our Lord was giving us was a union with himself closer than the Apostles had in the three years of their companionship, than Mary Magdalen had when she clung to him after his Resurrection. Two of St. Paul's phrases, from 1 Corinthians 11 and 10, are specially worth noting:

"Whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and of the blood of the Lord"; and "We, being many, are one bread, one body, all that partake of one bread"- a reminder that the Eucharist is not only for each man's soul but for the unity of the Mystical Body.

I can see why a Christian might be unable to bring himself to believe it, finding it beyond his power to accept the idea that a man can give us his flesh to eat. But why should anyone to escape the plain meaning of the words?

For the Catholic nothing could be simpler. Whether he understands or not, he feels safe with Peter in the assurance that he who said he would give us his body to eat had the words of eternal life. Return again to what he said. The bread is not changed into the whole Christ, but into his body; the wine is not changed into the whole Christ, but into his blood. But Christ lives, death has no more dominion over him. The bread becomes his body, but where his body is, there he is; the wine becomes his blood but is not thereby separated from his body, for that would mean death; where his blood is, he is. Where either body or blood is, there is Christ, body and blood, soul and divinity. That is the doctrine of the Real Presence.

[mannyamador]

[size=18px]Pope's Prayer Intentions for June[/size]

VATICAN CITY, MAY 31, 2005 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI's special
prayer intention for June is that the sacrament of the Eucharist "be
more and more recognized as the beating heart of the life of the
Church."

This will be the Pope's missionary prayer intention, according to an
announcement by the Apostleship of Prayer.

Every month, the Holy Father also offers his prayers for a general
intention. This June it is "That our society should, with concrete
acts of Christian and brotherly love, come to the aid of the millions
of refugees who live in extreme need and abandonment.

[mannyamador]

The Essentials, in 598 Questions and Answers
A Catechetical Summary in 200 Pages

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 28, 2005 (Zenit.org).- The new Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a quick synopsis of the
essential contents of the faith.

The 200-page volume is a collection of 598 questions and answers
which summarize the Catechism published in 1992. The Compendium makes
no additions or changes to what is stated in the 700-page Catechism.

As Benedict XVI explained during the presentation of the new work
today, since the publication of the Catechism, there "has been an
ever greater and insistent need for a catechism in synthesis."

The Compendium begins with a document promulgated by Benedict XVI for
its approval and publication, and with a brief Introduction by then
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, dated last Palm Sunday, March 20, weeks
before he was elected Pope.

In 2003 Pope John Paul II had entrusted to Cardinal Ratzinger the
direction of the commission that was designated to write the
Compendium.

Structure

The Compendium is divided in the same four parts of the Catechism.

Part I, "The Profession of Faith," includes 217 questions; Part II,
"The Celebration of the Christian Mystery" covers questions 218 to
356; Part II, "Life in Christ," questions 357 to 533; and Part IV,
"Christian Prayer," questions 534 to 598.

The book ends with a double appendix on "Common Prayers" (from the
sign of the cross, the Gloria and the Our Father, to the Prayer for
the Dead and the act of contrition) and "Catholic Doctrine Formulas"
(such as the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, corporal and spiritual
works of mercy, the Beatitudes, etc.).

At present the Compendium, published by the Vatican Publishing House
and St. Paul's, is available only in Italian. Translations into other
languages will be coordinated by bishops' conferences.

The text includes 14 images taken from masterpieces of Christian art,
to illustrate the beginning of each part or section.

"The sacred images, with their beauty, are also a proclamation of the
Gospel and express the splendor of the Catholic truth," explained the
Pope during the presentation ceremony.

Among the works of art reproduced is the icon of Christ "Pantokrator"
of Theophanes of Crete (1546), which is kept in the Stavronikita
Monastery of Mount Athos; the "Triptych of the Seven Sacraments" by
Roger van der Wyden; two works by "El Greco" -- "St. John
Contemplating the Immaculate Conception" and "Jesus Praying in the
Garden"; and Blessed Angelico's "The Sermon on the Mount."

[henrys]

keep it going guys...