Catholic Faith Refresher Course

CHRISTMAS, THE NATIVITY of OUR LORD

Noel! Noel! This was the cry of our fathers when the Faith prevailed, ardent and lively in the bosom of families, institutions, and all of society. That cry has grown very weak in our day, for the naivete of simple faith has tended to disappear. Nevertheless, of all the Christian feasts, Christmas is perhaps the most beloved and the most popular.

God used the most apparently indifferent events to reach His ends. Mary lived in Nazareth, and the prophets predicted that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. But an edict of Caesar Augustus ordered all the inhabitants of Judea to go at a certain time to enroll in their native city. Bethlehem was the birthplace of Joseph, so that is where the holy spouses went; and that is where, in conformity to the predictions of the prophets, Jesus was to come into the world.

What a birth for a God! Joseph looked for an inn, but there was none for such poor people; rejected and scorned, they were obliged to seek refuge in an isolated stable. And that is where, in the middle of the night, Mary miraculously gave birth to Jesus; that is where the most meek Saviour received the first adorations, where He received the first kisses and caresses, where He shed His first tears! Mary took the Infant in Her arms, covered Him with poor swaddling clothes and laid Him softly in a cold manger. O first moments which Mary and Joseph spent at the feet of Jesus, how precious you were for them, how full of charm! We will taste a little of this joy and these charms on going to our church to pay a visit to the manger scene that represents such a great mystery. Earthly joys are deceitful, but the joy of God’s service are lasting and true.

Jesus was born, and behold, the heavens rang out in hymns of joy as the Angels sang the canticle of triumph, “Glory to God in the highest!” and the canticle of peace, “Peace on earth to men of good will!” Jesus was born, and at once the poor shepherds, informed by the Angels, came to adore the Redeemer of Israel in that little Infant. Jesus was born, and soon the princes of the East, led by a Star, laid their homages at His feet. Let us hail Christmas, the dawn of peace and salvation.

MERRY CHRISTMAS  and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

This year the Fourth Week of Advent is the full seven days long. Saturday evening is Christmas Eve and Sunday, Christmas.

Perhaps we can use these days to try to heighten our awareness of whatever is going on in our lives these days, and how that can bring us to Christmas. Some examples might help.

So many of us experience the ironic reality that Christmas can be the most lonely time of our lives. Some of these “mixed feelings” or “sad feelings” are difficult to recognize or name.

For some of us, the Christmas we will celebrate this year pales in comparison to wonderful Christmases of our past - perhaps because we were younger or more “innocent” then, perhaps because some of our loved ones who were central to our Christmas are no longer living or not where I am, perhaps because the burdens and struggles of my life or the changes in our world and the war have robbed this Christmas of something that was there before.

For some of us, Christmas will be just another day. Unable to get out to go to church to be with a faith community, and without family or friends to be with, Christmas will be a day we are tempted to ignore.

For some of us, Christmas inevitably means family conflicts. Facing the days ahead, whether it be the last few remaining parties, or conflicting demands of family and friends, or the friend or relative who drinks too much, or the experience I'm having that I drink too much and this season is an easy excuse.

For some of us, Christmas challenges us with terrible financial burdens. Children today become victims of the gross commercial exploitation of the day. For those of us struggling to make ends meet on a day to day basis, feeling the cultural pressure of buying for our children things which we can't afford, can lead us to put more debt on the credit card in ways that simply push us further and further behind.

Some of us, might be really looking forward to Christmas, and not be aware of these struggles with Christmas, yet feel that, in spite of our best efforts to make Advent different this year, there is still something missing, and we still feel unready for Christmas.

For all of us, the story behind these days can draw us in, and invite us to bring our lives to the mystery of how Jesus came into this world and why. Our best preparation for the Holy Night ahead and the Joyful Morning to follow is for us to reflect upon how he came. He came in the midst of scandal and conflict. He came in poverty. He was rejected before he was born. He was born in a feed trough. He was hunted down. And he grew up in obscurity.

He did not shun our world and its poverty and conflict. He embraced it. And he desires to embrace us today, in this day. Right where we are. Right where we are feeling most distant. Right were we are feeling least “religious” or “ready.” If we let him come into our hearts to be our Savior these challenging days, we will find ourselves entering the sacred night and morning of Christmas “joyful and triumphant” as never before.

Come, Lord Jesus. Come and visit your people.

We await your coming. Come, O Lord.

- onlineministries.creighton.edu

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

(Declared a dogma December 8, 1854 by Pius IX)

Holy Day of Obligation in the US

On this day, so dear to every Catholic heart, we celebrate first of all the moment when Almighty God, in a vision telescoping the ages, showed Mary both to our first parents and to the demon, as the Virgin Mother of the future divine Redeemer, the Woman destined to crush the proud head of the serpent. This episode is narrated in the first book of Scripture, Genesis chapter 3. We find Her again in the last canonical prophecy of the Bible, the Apocalypse or Revelation of Saint John the Apostle, as the Woman clothed with the sun, having on Her head a crown of twelve stars. In this beautiful vision She is also identified with the persecuted Apostolic Church, obliged to flee into the “desert”, and as the Mother of a great Head of that Church, destined to govern the flock of the latter times in the final combat, who like that flock is Her own Child. (chapter 12) Mary, like Her Son, is at the beginning and the end of all God’s intentions, an integral part of His designs for the Redemption of the human race.

Since by eternal decree She was exempted from all stain of original sin from the first moment of Her Creation, and was endowed with the richest treasures of grace and sanctity, it is fitting that we honor Her glorious prerogatives by this special feast of the Immaculate Conception. We should join in spirit with the Blessed in heaven and rejoice with our dear Mother, not only for Her own sake, but for ours, Her children, for we are partakers of Her glory and happiness. “The treasures of the mother are the heritage of the children,” said Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus.

We celebrate at the same time the ever-memorable day, the 8th of December of 1854, which raised the Immaculate Conception of Our Blessed Lady from a pious belief to the dignity of a dogma of the infallible Church, causing a great and universal joy among the faithful. The Holy See had already permitted the feast day from the time of Sixtus IV, by his papal bull Cum Praecelsa (1477), formally allowing its celebration for all dioceses desiring it. In 1854, the ancient faith of the people in their Mother exulted.

Advent is the liturgical season of the Church in preparation for the coming of the Lord, both in commemoration of His Nativity and His coming again at the end of time.

The Christmas season does not begin until the first Mass at Christmas Eve, and doesn't end liturgically until the Octave of the Epiphany.

Advent is the time to make ready for Christ to live with us.

Learn more about Advent on our apostolate Homepage.

Over the centuries the month of November has been dedicated to the Poor Souls. No doubt the reason is because November is the last month of the liturgical year, even as purgatory is the last stage of human existence before a soul reaches heaven.

Between these two feast days of All Saints, on Nov. 1st, and All Souls, the following day, we remember all the members of the Mystical Body of Christ: the Church Triumphant in heaven, the Church Militant on earth, and the Church Suffering in purgatory.

Who Are the Poor Souls?

The Poor Souls are the souls of those people who died in the friendship of God. But they still have some suffering to undergo for the sins they had committed during their lives on earth. It is the infallible teaching of the Catholic Church that there is a purgatory. As the word itself indicates, purgatory is the state of those who still have to be cleansed of the penalty which they owe for their past offenses against God.

The Poor Souls are poor because they are in suffering and need our help. We know from Sacred Scripture that there is a purgatory, as described in the second book of Maccabees, which unfortunately has been removed from the Protestant Old Testament. As described in Sacred Scripture, Judas Maccabeus, the leader of a Jewish army, decided to offer a sacrifice for the Jews who had died in battle. The Bible then tells us,"If he had not expected the fallen to rise again, it would have been superstitious and foolish to pray for the dead." However, since he believed in the resurrection of the dead, "he had this atonement sacrifice offered for the dead, so that they might be released from their sins." (II Maccabees 12:41-45)

The existence of purgatory is a defined truth of the Catholic faith. Those who die without the guilt of mortal sin, but with temporal punishment still due for their past offenses "are cleansed after death in purgatorial or cleansing punishments."

It is commonly believed that the principal suffering in purgatory is the pain of loss. The souls are temporarily deprived of the Beatific Vision.

We post daily mediations about the Poor Souls on our apostolate site here.

The month of October is dedicated to the Holy Rosary.

Click to Follow Daily Posts on the Holy Rosary at our apostolate site

According to an account by fifteenth-century Dominican, Alan de la Roch, Mary appeared to St. Dominic in 1206 after he had been praying and doing severe penances because of his lack of success in combating the Albigensian heresy. Mary praised him for his valiant fight against the heretics and then gave him the Rosary as a mighty weapon, explained its uses and efficacy, and told him to preach it to others.

"Since the prayers of the Rosary come from such excellent sources — from Our Lord Himself, from inspired Scripture, and from the Church — it is not surprising that the Rosary is so dear to our Blessed Mother and so powerful with heaven.

"If we consider the power of the Rosary as seen in its effects, we find a great abundance of proofs of its wonderful value. Many are the favors granted to private individuals through its devout recitation: there are few devoted users of the Rosary who cannot testify to experiencing its power in their own lives.

If we turn to history, we see many great triumphs of the Rosary. Early tradition attributes the defeat of the Albigensians at the Battle of Muret in 1213 to the Rosary. But even those who do not accept this tradition will admit that St. Pius V attributed the great defeat of the Turkish fleet on the first Sunday of October, 1571, to the fact that at the same time the Rosary confraternities at Rome and elsewhere were holding their processions. Accordingly, he ordered a commemoration of the Rosary to be made on that day. Two years later, Gregory XIII allowed the celebration of a feast of the Rosary in churches having an altar dedicated to the Rosary. In 1671, Clement X extended the feast to all Spain. A second great victory over the Turks, who once, like the Russians, threatened the ruin of Christian civilization, occurred on August 5, 1716, when Prince Eugene defeated them at Peterwardein in Hungary. Thereupon Clement XI extended the feast of the Rosary to the whole Church.

"Today, when dangers far greater than those of the ancient Turks threaten not only Christianity but all civilization, we are urged by our Blessed Mother to turn again to the Rosary for help. If men in sufficient numbers do this, and at the same time carry out the other conditions that she has laid down, we have the greater reason for confidence that we will be delivered from our dangers."

from: Mary in our Life by Fr. William G. Most

A SHORT WAY TO TRUTH

by Fr. John J. Burke, C.S.P.

What is your most Important Business in this Life?----It is to save your soul. "What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul," says our Blessed Saviour (Mark viii. 36).

What must you do to Save Your Soul?----You must follow the religion taught by Christ. "Go ye into the whole world," He said to His Apostles, "and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be condemned" (Mark xvi. 15, 16).

How many Religions did Christ teach?----Most certainly only one, for this plain reason, that He cannot contradict Himself. As St. Paul tells you that there is "one Lord" and "one Faith" (Ephes. iv. 5).

What, therefore, is to be thought of the many Religions in this Country?----As our Saviour taught but one religion, it must follow that all these religions are false except one, wherever that is. Hence St. Paul says, in his epistle to the Galatians (i. 8): "Though we, or an Angel from Heaven, preach a Gospel to you other than that which we have preached, let him be anathema."

Is it not very uncharitable to say that all Religions are false except one?----It is not more uncharitable than to point out the right road to one when he is on a journey; and to tell him all other roads will lead him astray:

But are you not safe in following the Religion in which you were born?----From what you have been reading, it is as clear as noonday that you are not safe in following the religion in which you were born, unless it be the one true religion which Christ taught.

But how are you to find out the true religion?----You must truly and heartily repent of all the sins you have committed; you must have no other wish than to learn the will of God and to do it; you must be resolved that neither persecutions nor losses, nor worldly interest, nor anything else whatsoever, shall prevent you from doing the will of God, when you know what that will is; and you must often pray that He will teach you His holy will, saying: "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" (Acts ix. 6). If you will follow this advice, you may be sure that God will hear your prayer and lead you into the right way (Luke xi. 13; Matt. vii. 7, 8).

You should also look about you, and inquire which is the one true religion. You will soon find, in the New Testament, that Christ established a Church upon earth; that He built it upon a rock, and declared that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it (Matt. xvi. 18); you will find that He gave His Church authority to teach His religion, and commanded all to hear and obey it (Matt. xviii. 17; Luke x. 16; Acts ix. 6, 7; x. 5, 6) that this Church cannot teach error; being "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. iii. 15) and that by following what it teaches you will be freed from all doubt and perplexity about the way to Heaven, and will no longer be tossed about by every wind of doctrine (Ephes. iv. 11-15). You will find, in short, that you will be as sure of learning the religion of Christ from this Church as if you heard Him speaking to you Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me" (Luke x. 16).

A further examination will make clear to you that this Church is no other than that which you often truly say was the first and will be the last and which all Christians say they believe when they repeat the Apostles' Creed: "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." Yes, this is the Church which Christ built on a rock, which has stood for nineteen hundred years, and has triumphed over all the persecutions raised against it; this is the Church from which all other churches have separated, whilst it has always remained the same as our Saviour established it. Death! Judgment! Heaven! Hell! Eternity!

Feast of The Immaculate Heart of Mary

In 1917 the Mother of God appeared six times at Fatima in Portugal. After showing the three children a vision of hell, She informed Lucy of Fatima, the oldest of the visionaries: “You have seen hell, where the souls of poor sinners will go. To save them, the Lord desires to establish devotion to My Immaculate Heart in the world.” The Saviour Himself, when He appeared to Lucy again on December 10, 1925 with His Mother, indicating with His hand the Heart of His Mother, said: “Have pity on this gentle Heart, continually martyred by the ingratitude of men.”

Christians have long known that at the very origin of the world God threatened the ancient enemy, disguised under the form of a serpent, that the Woman he had seen in vision with Her Son, the Son of God, would eventually crush his head. “I Myself,” God told him, “will place an irreducible enmity between Her race and your race.” Thus Satan was informed at that moment, after he had just seduced the first human couple, that in the end, it would be this other Woman and Her Son, who would vanquish him. He had refused to honor the incarnate Son of God in His future human nature, inferior to his own angelic nature; his pride would not permit him to abase himself to serve God in that form. Christian hope has been nourished ever since by the prospect of this victory; nonetheless, the Mother of God wanted the twentieth century from its early years to understand that the time was drawing near when Her Immaculate Heart would triumph, as She explicitly said at Fatima, but that it was only through Her, uniquely by Her maternal aid, that this victory could be attained.

Mary is indispensable to the sanctification of each soul. This is the great truth which in the Latter Times must be better understood. For that purpose, consecration to Her Immaculate Heart was given us at Fatima, as the means She Herself desired, with the daily Rosary. Devotion to Her Heart is not new in the Church; Saint John Eudes, Saint Louis Mary de Montfort, how many others, in truth all the Saints have loved the Heart of their Mother in Heaven. But to know Her well, each one must individually establish the relationship of a child with its loving Mother.

For this purpose She asks for our personal and effective consecration to Her Immaculate Heart. The child of Mary turns to Her constantly for counsel, force and courage, gentleness and humility in the affairs of daily life. Many prayers of consecration to Mary exist, in particular that of Montfort; but one may use any simple formula such as the following: “Blessed and beloved Mother, I am Your child and I wish to belong to You; I give and consecrate myself forever to Your Immaculate Heart, renewing in Your hands my baptismal promises, and I ask You to ratify my filial homage to Your Immaculate Heart — that of my person and my activities, my temporal and spiritual goods, my resolution to have frequent recourse to Your maternal and merciful intercession. And, insofar as it is within my scope to do so, I offer You also my family, my homeland and all of humanity.”

See our apostolate featured page on The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The ASSUMPTION of the BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

(† ca. 57 A.D.)

On this great feast day the Church commemorates the happy departure from mortal life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Her translation into the kingdom of Her Son, where He crowned Her with immortal glory and enthroned Her above all the other Saints and heavenly spirits.

After the triumphant Conqueror of hell and death ascended into heaven, His blessed Mother had remained at Jerusalem, persevering in prayer with the disciples, until She received with them the Holy Ghost. She desired to assist the Church in its beginnings, and Her prayer was granted. It is generally believed that She lived for a good many years, until the age of 72 or 73. This supposition is based on the fact that Saint Dennis the Areopagite, who was converted by Saint Paul in the year 54, visited Her not long afterward, according to his own narration. That account is judged authentic by reliable authorities, among them Saint Thomas Aquinas. Finally She paid voluntarily the debt of fallen human nature to God, although like Adam at his creation, She was entirely innocent and exempt from the penalty of the painful separation of soul and body incurred by death. She might have been transported alive to Heaven, but chose instead to die, as Her Son also had chosen to die. If the death of the Saints is called a sweet sleep, how much more does the Dormition of the Queen of Saints, exempt from all sin, merit that name?

It is a traditional belief of the Holy Church that the body of the Blessed Virgin was raised up by God on the third day, and introduced at once into glory by a singular privilege. The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the consummation of the other great mysteries by which Her life was supremely admirable; it is Her true birthday and the crowning of all Her incomparable virtues which we admire singly in Her other festivals.

The month of August is rich in celebration of honors and devotion we show to Mary, the Mother of God.

Please visit our apostolate homepages:

Learn about the devotion to Mary's Immaculate Heart. Aug 22 feast

Daily posts for the month of August dedicated to Mary's Heart

The day of celebration when Catholic honor Mary's Assumption into Heaven Aug 15 feast

Magnificent and miraculous snowfall  Aug 5 feast