The Catechismal Crusader : Grace & Merit

God has called each of us to be saints.  We have been called by our creator to turn from our sinful ways and love Him with all our hearts. Human nature is fallen, and so God in His infinite mercy and goodness gives us the grace needed to live and love according to our call.  This is what we mean by justification.  “Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man. ”  (Council of Trent)  We know we are called to be holy, but how does this transformation of the sinner happen?  What role does God play?  What role do we play?  I’ve heard our sanctification described as “God and us, but all God.”  If that leaves you a little confused (as it did me) here’s what the Catechism teaches on Grace and Merit.

II. GRACE

1996 Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.⁴⁶

1998 This vocation to eternal life is supernatural. It depends entirely on God’s gratuitous initiative, for he alone can reveal and give himself. It surpasses the power of human intellect and will, as that of every other creature.⁴⁷

2002 God’s free initiative demands man’s free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God immediately touches and directly moves the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only he can satisfy. The promises of “eternal life” respond, beyond all hope, to this desire:

If at the end of your very good works . . ., you rested on the seventh day, it was to foretell by the voice of your book that at the end of our works, which are indeed “very good” since you have given them to us, we shall also rest in you on the sabbath of eternal life.⁵²

2005 Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved.⁵⁶ However, according to the Lord’s words “Thus you will know them by their fruits”⁵⁷ – reflection on God’s blessings in our life and in the lives of the saints offers us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs us on to an ever greater faith and an attitude of trustful poverty.

A pleasing illustration of this attitude is found in the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges: “Asked if she knew that she was in God’s grace, she replied: ‘If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there.'”⁵⁸

III. MERIT

You are glorified in the assembly of your Holy Ones, for in crowning their merits you are crowning your own gifts.⁵⁹

2007 With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from him, our Creator.

2008 The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man’s free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man’s merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.

2009 Filial adoption, in making us partakers by grace in the divine nature, can bestow true merit on us as a result of God’s gratuitous justice. This is our right by grace, the full right of love, making us “co-heirs” with Christ and worthy of obtaining “the promised inheritance of eternal life.”⁶⁰ The merits of our good works are gifts of the divine goodness.⁶¹ “Grace has gone before us; now we are given what is due. . . . Our merits are God’s gifts.”⁶²

2010 Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God’s wisdom. These graces and goods are the object of Christian prayer. Prayer attends to the grace we need for meritorious actions.

The Catechismal Crusader : Pilgrimage

This week’s Mustard seed topic is pilgrimage.  And while the night will be highlighted by a few stories and presentations of past pilgrimages we hope to convey the idea that a pilgrimage is something much greater than a religious vacation.  In fact the Church views herself as if on a pilgrimage here on Earth calling to mind the journey we all embark on towards heaven.  To help set the context of this week’s Mustard Seed here’s what we have found in the Catechism. Enjoy!

769 “The Church . . . will receive its perfection only in the glory of heaven,”¹⁷⁹ at the time of Christ’s glorious return. Until that day, “the Church progresses on her pilgrimage amidst this world’s persecutions and God’s consolations.”¹⁸⁰ Here below she knows that she is in exile far from the Lord, and longs for the full coming of the Kingdom, when she will “be united in glory with her king.”¹⁸¹ The Church, and through her the world, will not be perfected in glory without great trials. Only then will “all the just from the time of Adam, ‘from Abel, the just one, to the last of the elect,’ . . . be gathered together in the universal Church in the Father’s presence.”¹⁸²

2691 The church, the house of God, is the proper place for the liturgical prayer of the parish community. It is also the privileged place for adoration of the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. The choice of a favorable place is not a matter of indifference for true prayer.

– For personal prayer, this can be a “prayer corner” with the Sacred Scriptures and icons, in order to be there, in secret, before our Father.⁴⁸ In a Christian family, this kind of little oratory fosters prayer in common.

– In regions where monasteries exist, the vocation of these communities is to further the participation of the faithful in the Liturgy of the Hours and to provide necessary solitude for more intense personal prayer.⁴⁹

– Pilgrimages evoke our earthly journey toward heaven and are traditionally very special occasions for renewal in prayer. For pilgrims seeking living water, shrines are special places for living the forms of Christian prayer “in Church.”

1013 Death is the end of man’s earthly pilgrimage, of the time of grace and mercy which God offers him so as to work out his earthly life in keeping with the divine plan, and to decide his ultimate destiny. When “the single course of our earthly life” is completed,⁵⁸⁶ we shall not return to other earthly lives: “It is appointed for men to die once.”⁵⁸⁷There is no “reincarnation” after death.

1419 Having passed from this world to the Father, Christ gives us in the Eucharist the pledge of glory with him. Participation in the Holy Sacrifice identifies us with his Heart, sustains our strength along the pilgrimage of this life, makes us long for eternal life, and unites us even now to the Church in heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and all the saints.

1438 The seasons and days of penance in the course of the liturgical year (Lent, and each Friday in memory of the death of the Lord) are intense moments of the Church’s penitential practice.³⁶ These times are particularly appropriate for spiritual exercises, penitential liturgies, pilgrimages as signs of penance, voluntary self-denial such as fasting and almsgiving, and fraternal sharing (charitable and missionary works).

 

For information regarding pilgrimages available in Wisconsin, please visit us at Mustard Seed or email Liz Frias!

The Catechismal Crusader : The Holy Spirit

This week’s topic was inspired by Pope Francis’ homily yesterday which called all peoples respond to the call of the Holy Spirit in their lives.  He says  The Holy Spirit “gives us consolation and the strength to move forward” but often we ignore His promptings. What tremendous help the Holy Spirit gives us to know, love and serve, to put our will second.  However, (at least in my catechesis) the Holy Spirit was rarely discussed.   So who  is the third Person of the Trinity?  Here’s what the Catechism says.

687 “No one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”⁷ Now God’s Spirit, who reveals God, makes known to us Christ, his Word, his living Utterance, but the Spirit does not speak of himself. The Spirit who “has spoken through the prophets” makes us hear the Father’s Word, but we do not hear the Spirit himself. We know him only in the movement by which he reveals the Word to us and disposes us to welcome him in faith. The Spirit of truth who “unveils” Christ to us “will not speak on his own.”⁸ Such properly divine self-effacement explains why “the world cannot receive [him], because it neither sees him nor knows him,” while those who believe in Christ know the Spirit because he dwells with them.⁹

689 The One whom the Father has sent into our hearts, the Spirit of his Son, is truly God.¹⁰ Consubstantial with the Father and the Son, the Spirit is inseparable from them, in both the inner life of the Trinity and his gift of love for the world. In adoring the Holy Trinity, life-giving, consubstantial, and indivisible, the Church’s faith also professes the distinction of persons. When the Father sends his Word, he always sends his Breath. In their joint mission, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct but inseparable. To be sure, it is Christ who is seen, the visible image of the invisible God, but it is the Spirit who reveals him.

690 Jesus is Christ, “anointed,” because the Spirit is his anointing, and everything that occurs from the Incarnation on derives from this fullness.¹¹ When Christ is finally glorified,¹² he can in turn send the Spirit from his place with the Father to those who believe in him: he communicates to them his glory,¹³ that is, the Holy Spirit who glorifies him.¹⁴ From that time on, this joint mission will be manifested in the children adopted by the Father in the Body of his Son: the mission of the Spirit of adoption is to unite them to Christ and make them live in him

737 The mission of Christ and the Holy Spirit is brought to completion in the Church, which is the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. This joint mission henceforth brings Christ’s faithful to share in his communion with the Father in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit prepares men and goes out to them with his grace, in order to draw them to Christ. The Spirit manifests the risen Lord to them, recalls his word to them and opens their minds to the understanding of his Death and Resurrection. He makes present the mystery of Christ, supremely in the Eucharist, in order to reconcile them, to bring them into communion with God, that they may “bear much fruit.”¹³²

741 “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”¹³⁴ The Holy Spirit, the artisan of God’s works, is the master of prayer. (This will be the topic of Part Four.)

The Catechismal Crusader : Vocations

This week we find ourselves deep with the Vocation paragraphs of the Catechism. It is our hope that these articles shed some light on the often mysterious world of our Vocations. As usual there is only so much space on the blog for Catechism quotes, but please feel free to read on in the text. A simple index search for “Vocation” has left me with ample resources. Also, come to Mustard Seed on the 10th for our Vocations Panel which will certainly expound on the ideas expressed here.  Remember we should never fear our Vocation, it is the integral part of God’s plan for us, and as St. Catherine  of Siena says “If you are what you should be, then you will set the world on fire.”  So Get Jacked!

Marriage

1603 “The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage.”⁸⁷ The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity,⁸⁸ some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures. “The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life.”⁸⁹

1604 God who created man out of love also calls him to love the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love.⁹⁰ Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator’s eyes. And this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation: “And God blessed them, and God said to them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.'”⁹¹

1605 Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: “It is not good that the man should be alone.”⁹² The woman, “flesh of his flesh,” his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a “helpmate”; she thus represents God from whom comes our help.⁹³ “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”⁹⁴ The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been “in the beginning”: “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.”⁹⁵

The Priesthood

1539 The chosen people was constituted by God as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”⁶ But within the people of Israel, God chose one of the twelve tribes, that of Levi, and set it apart for liturgical service; God himself is its inheritance.⁷ A special rite consecrated the beginnings of the priesthood of the Old Covenant. The priests are “appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.”⁸

1544 Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the “one mediator between God and men.”¹⁵ The Christian tradition considers Melchizedek, “priest of God Most High,” as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique “high priest after the order of Melchizedek”;¹⁶ “holy, blameless, unstained,”¹⁷ “by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified,”¹⁸ that is, by the unique sacrifice of the cross.

1545 The redemptive sacrifice of Christ is unique, accomplished once for all; yet it is made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Church. The same is true of the one priesthood of Christ; it is made present through the ministerial priesthood without diminishing the uniqueness of Christ’s priesthood: “Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his ministers.”¹⁹

Religious Life

925 Religious life was born in the East during the first centuries of Christianity. Lived within institutes canonically erected by the Church, it is distinguished from other forms of consecrated life by its liturgical character, public profession of the evangelical counsels, fraternal life led in common, and witness given to the union of Christ with the Church.⁴⁶⁸

926 Religious life derives from the mystery of the Church. It is a gift she has received from her Lord, a gift she offers as a stable way of life to the faithful called by God to profess the counsels. Thus, the Church can both show forth Christ and acknowledge herself to be the Savior’s bride. Religious life in its various forms is called to signify the very charity of God in the language of our time.

927 All religious, whether exempt or not, take their place among the collaborators of the diocesan bishop in his pastoral duty.⁴⁶⁹ From the outset of the work of evangelization, the missionary “planting” and expansion of the Church require the presence of the religious life in all its forms.⁴⁷⁰ “History witnesses to the outstanding service rendered by religious families in the propagation of the faith and in the formation of new Churches: from the ancient monastic institutions to the medieval orders, all the way to the more recent congregations.”⁴⁷¹

Please pray for an increase of Vocations to the priesthood and religious life as well as an out pouring of the Holy Spirit upon those called to marriage, that their families may be fertile ground for God to plant His seed.  And join us at Mustard Seed on the 10th at 7:00 PM!

Catechismal Crusader : St. Joseph Terror of Demons

Yesterday marked the Solemnity of St. Joseph husband of Mary.  St. Joseph served as the guardian of both the Christ child and Marry the Mother of God.  As he is Mary’s  husband, he was  viewed as the father of Jesus during his time and is still seen as fulling that role (although Jesus was not born of his seed).  We know he was a good and righteous man, who mimicked Mary’s “fiat” not in words, but in his action in obeying the angelic command to take the young virgin as his wife.  It is because of Joseph of Nazareth that Jesus was in at Bethlehem during the first world census.  The first time the people of the world were counted, Christ was counted among them.  The role of St. Joseph in the economy of salvation exemplifies the role of the family in the Church today and its importance in our society.  Let us never cease to pray for good families and in particular good fathers.   For more on St. Joseph please read Bl. John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Redemptoris Custos  here.  (You’ll notice I took most of my information from this document)

1655 Christ chose to be born and grow up in the bosom of the holy family of Joseph and Mary. The Church is nothing other than “the family of God.” From the beginning, the core of the Church was often constituted by those who had become believers “together with all [their] household.”¹⁶⁶ When they were converted, they desired that “their whole household” should also be saved.¹⁶⁷ These families who became believers were islands of Christian life in an unbelieving world

The Catechismal Crusader : Nunc Coepi

This past weekend, many from our community gathered at the wonderful Wynncliff Manor on the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan. The weekend was  full of prayer, meditations, and discussions focused on living a life at the foot of the cross amidst the busy world, which tied in perfectly to last week’s Mustard Seed “The Sanctification of Work”.  It is almost like it was planned that way. Almost.  Following Mass on Sunday morning,  everyone was content thinking the retreat was  winding down.  Little did they know that  Brad Frias was about to tie the entire retreat together (much like the way a Scooby Doo episode usually ends with the bad guys tied up) with his talk on perseverance titled Nunc Coepi (Now I begin).  And so in honor of the retreat, we ahve compiled here several catechism paragraphs pertaining to perseverance.  As we reach the last weeks of Lent let us not be discourgared by our failures, each fall let us humbly and bravely say Nunc Coepi, and begin again.

162 Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man. We can lose this priceless gift, as St. Paul indicated to St. Timothy: “Wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have made shipwreck of their faith.”⁴⁴ To live, grow and persevere in the faith until the end we must nourish it with the word of God; we must beg the Lord to increase our faith;⁴⁵ it must be “working through charity,” abounding in hope, and rooted in the faith of the Church.⁴⁶

2728 Finally, our battle has to confront what we experience as failure in prayer: discouragement during periods of dryness; sadness that, because we have “great possessions,”¹⁵ we have not given all to the Lord; disappointment over not being heard according to our own will; wounded pride, stiffened by the indignity that is ours as sinners; our resistance to the idea that prayer is a free and unmerited gift; and so forth. The conclusion is always the same: what good does it do to pray? To overcome these obstacles, we must battle to gain humility, trust, and perseverance.

2730 In positive terms, the battle against the possessive and dominating self requires vigilance, sobriety of heart. When Jesus insists on vigilance, he always relates it to himself, to his coming on the last day and every day: today. The bridegroom comes in the middle of the night; the light that must not be extinguished is that of faith: “‘Come,’ my heart says, ‘seek his face!'”¹⁷

2743 It is always possible to pray: The time of the Christian is that of the risen Christ who is with us always, no matter what tempests may arise.³⁶ Our time is in the hands of God:

It is possible to offer fervent prayer even while walking in public or strolling alone, or seated in your shop, . . . while buying or selling, . . . or even while cooking.³⁷

Catechismal Crusader : In the World but not of the World

Tomorrow, Thursday March 7th, Mustard Seed will be highlighted by Juan Landa the founder of Mater Dei Tours, who will be discussing the importance of sanctifying ordinary work. It follows that this week the Crusader should focus on the role of the laity in the Church’s mission of holiness and evangelization. This topic also seems fitting for the Lenten season. Then again, most topics seem fitting for the Lenten season, except smiling. ( Just kidding you can smile on Sunday.) Of course this again is a joke, but Lent does call to mind a certain sense of rolling up the sleeves and getting down to the business of sanctification, even in the monotony that often accompanies everyday life.  Now maybe you are not familiar with the doldrums which creep into our lives from time to time, but if you, like me, sometimes find yourself slipping away from menial tasks like pipetting 3 uL 976 times then I expect this talk will be just what we need to help us become saints!  And I hope these paragraphs set the stage for holiness in the world:

897 “The term ‘laity’ is here understood to mean all the faithful except those in Holy Orders and those who belong to a religious state approved by the Church. That is, the faithful, who by Baptism are incorporated into Christ and integrated into the People of God, are made sharers in their particular way in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly office of Christ, and have their own part to play in the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the World.”⁴³⁰

898 “By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will. . . . It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are closely associated that these may always be effected and grow according to Christ and maybe to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer.”⁴³¹

899 The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life. This initiative is a normal element of the life of the Church:

 Lay believers are in the front line of Church life; for them the Church is the animating principle of human society. Therefore, they in particular ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the common Head, and of the bishops in communion with him. They are the Church.⁴³²

901 “Hence the laity, dedicated as they are to Christ and anointed by the Holy Spirit, are marvelously called and prepared so that even richer fruits of the Spirit may be produced in them. For all their works, prayers, and apostolic undertakings, family and married life, daily work, relaxation of mind and body, if they are accomplished in the Spirit – indeed even the hardships of life if patiently born – all these become spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. In the celebration of the Eucharist these may most fittingly be offered to the Father along with the body of the Lord. And so, worshipping everywhere by their holy actions, the laity consecrate the world itself to God, everywhere offering worship by the holiness of their lives.”⁴³⁴

913 “Thus, every person, through these gifts given to him, is at once the witness and the living instrument of the mission of the Church itself ‘according to the measure of Christ’s bestowal.”‘⁴⁵²

 

This week let us pray that we may give glory to God in all we do and offer any resistance we may have within ourselves for the upcoming conclave!

Catechismal Crusader : Marriage

As we move forward this week please Pope Benedict XVI, the Holy Catholic Church, and the College of Cardinals in your prayers. This week we highlight the Church’s view on marriage, in preparation for the Badger Catholic sponsored event this Thursday, in which Sherif Girgis will present a talk on the secular defence of tradition marriage. As always enjoy! (and please feel free to read the many other paragraphs pertaining to this beautiful topic found here.

 

1601 “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.”⁸⁴

1604 God who created man out of love also calls him to love the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love.⁹⁰ Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator’s eyes. And this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation: “And God blessed them, and God said to them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.'”⁹¹

1641 “By reason of their state in life and of their order, [Christian spouses] have their own special gifts in the People of God.”¹⁴⁷ This grace proper to the sacrament of Matrimony is intended to perfect the couple’s love and to strengthen their indissoluble unity. By this grace they “help one another to attain holiness in their married life and in welcoming and educating their children.”¹⁴⁸

1642Christ is the source of this grace. “Just as of old God encountered his people with a covenant of love and fidelity, so our Savior, the spouse of the Church, now encounters Christian spouses through the sacrament of Matrimony.”¹⁴⁹ Christ dwells with them, gives them the strength to take up their crosses and so follow him, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one another’s burdens, to “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ,”¹⁵⁰ and to love one another with supernatural, tender, and fruitful love. In the joys of their love and family life he gives them here on earth a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb:

How can I ever express the happiness of a marriage joined by the Church, strengthened by an offering, sealed by a blessing, announced by angels, and ratified by the Father? . . . How wonderful the bond between two believers, now one in hope, one in desire, one in discipline, one in the same service! They are both children of one Father and servants of the same Master, undivided in spirit and flesh, truly two in one flesh. Where the flesh is one, one also is the spirit.¹⁵¹

And this just gives a little context.  There is some much more  of the beauty of marriage just waiting to be discovered!

 

The Catechismal Crusader : The Bishop of Rome

This week we find our hero tarrying deep with the paragraphs of Church hierarchy.  It seems only fitting that was we enter the last week of  Pope Benedict’s reign we pause to review those paragraphs directly tied to the institution of the “Holy Catholic Church” and her mission.  Enjoy!

874 Christ is himself the source of ministry in the Church. He instituted the Church. He gave her authority and mission, orientation and goal:

In order to shepherd the People of God and to increase its numbers without cease, Christ the Lord set up in his Church a variety of offices which aim at the good of the whole body. The holders of office, who are invested with a sacred power, are, in fact, dedicated to promoting the interests of their brethren, so that all who belong to the People of God . . . may attain to salvation.³⁸⁹

880 When Christ instituted the Twelve, “he constituted [them] in the form of a college or permanent assembly, at the head of which he placed Peter, chosen from among them.”³⁹⁸ Just as “by the Lord’s institution, St. Peter and the rest of the apostles constitute a single apostolic college, so in like fashion the Roman Pontiff, Peter’s successor, and the bishops, the successors of the apostles, are related with and united to one another.”³⁹⁹

882 The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter’s successor, “is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful.”⁴⁰²“For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered.”⁴⁰³

883 “The college or body of bishops has no authority unless united with the Roman Pontiff, Peter’s successor, as its head.” As such, this college has “supreme and full authority over the universal Church; but this power cannot be exercised without the agreement of the Roman Pontiff.”⁴⁰⁴

The governing office

896 The Good Shepherd ought to be the model and “form” of the bishop’s pastoral office. Conscious of his own weaknesses, “the bishop . . . can have compassion for those who are ignorant and erring. He should not refuse to listen to his subjects whose welfare he promotes as of his very own children. . . . The faithful . . . should be closely attached to the bishop as the Church is to Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ is to the Father”:⁴²⁸

Let all follow the bishop, as Jesus Christ follows his Father, and the college of presbyters as the apostles; respect the deacons as you do God’s law. Let no one do anything concerning the Church in separation from the bishop.⁴²⁹

Please take an opportunity this week to pray for our Holy Father and the Church.  We will continue to pray a rosary in the chapel each Monday at 8:40 until the election of the next successor of Peter!  All are welcome!

Catechismal Crusader : Lent and Penance

This week we celebrate our third issue of The Catechismal Crusader. We have come a long way and would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our readers for their continued support and generosity.  Today we also solemnly celebrate Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent.  In my expedition through the Catechism I found that while Lent is not discussed in any particular detail, it is most directly related to conversion and penance.  As we begin this new Lenten season,  I hope these paragraphs help highlight the goal of our fasting, almsgiving, and prayer and better prepare us to celebrate a blessed Easter.

‎”Lent stimulates us to let the Word of God penetrate our life and in this way to know the fundamental truth: who we are, where we come from, where we must go, what path we must take in life…” – Pope Benedict XVI

1438 The seasons and days of penance in the course of the liturgical year (Lent, and each Friday in memory of the death of the Lord) are intense moments of the Church’s penitential practice.³⁶ These times are particularly appropriate for spiritual exercises, penitential liturgies, pilgrimages as signs of penance, voluntary self-denial such as fasting and almsgiving, and fraternal sharing (charitable and missionary works).

1430 Jesus’ call to conversion and penance, like that of the prophets before him, does not aim first at outward works, “sackcloth and ashes,” fasting and mortification, but at the conversion of the heart, interior conversion. Without this, such penances remain sterile and false; however, interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance.²³

1431 Interior repentance is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, a turning away from evil, with repugnance toward the evil actions we have committed. At the same time it entails the desire and resolution to change one’s life, with hope in God’s mercy and trust in the help of his grace. This conversion of heart is accompanied by a salutary pain and sadness which the Fathers called animi cruciatus (affliction of spirit) and compunctio cordis (repentance of heart).²⁴

1434 The interior penance of the Christian can be expressed in many and various ways. Scripture and the Fathers insist above all on three forms, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving,³¹ which express conversion in relation to oneself, to God, and to others. Alongside the radical purification brought about by Baptism or martyrdom they cite as means of obtaining forgiveness of sins: effort at reconciliation with one’s neighbor, tears of repentance, concern for the salvation of one’s neighbor, the intercession of the saints, and the practice of charity “which covers a multitude of sins.”³²

1435 Conversion is accomplished in daily life by gestures of reconciliation, concern for the poor, the exercise and defense of justice and right,³³ by the admission of faults to one’s brethren, fraternal correction, revision of life, examination of conscience, spiritual direction, acceptance of suffering, endurance of persecution for the sake of righteousness. Taking up one’s cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance.³⁴

Looking for a prayerful Lenten experience?  Be sure to check out the Grad/YP Lenten retreat!