We are now nearing the end of our first full week of Lent – have you been doing your spiritual reading? If you have not yet begun, let me make it easier on you. Here are two great lists of books to consider during this Lent, one from the East and one from the West:
Now your only problem is choosing just one book!
How many canonized Saints do you know who have their own YouTube channel? Well, I know of at least one: St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei. At his channel (perhaps streaming live from Heaven?), you can see biographical videos about the Saint, interviews with members of Opus Dei, as well as explanations of his teachings.
But even more exciting, because St. Josemaría lived during the television era, you can also watch videos of the Saint himself, taken during a tour he made of South America in the early 1970’s. Here is one sample, in which he speaks of our need to love the Pope:
If you want to know more about this saint, I recommend perusing his YouTube channel sometime (imagine reading that sentence ten years ago – it would have been nonsensical!).
St. Josemaría, pray for us!
One of my favorite pro-life apostolates is Good Counsel Homes, which was founded by Fr. Benedict Groeschel and Chris Bell (who later married pro-life heroine Joan Andrews). Good Counsel Homes provides a home for homeless pregnant women and single mothers, and they have five homes in New York State. Both Chris and Joan Bell are on the Board of Advisors for Little Flowers Foundation.
For a taste of what Good Counsel Homes does, watch this video:
This Lent, if you are looking for a charity to support, consider Good Counsel Homes.
In today’s Gospel reading, Christ urges us to make petitionary prayers to the Father. He says,
Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
Which one of you would hand his son a stone
when he asked for a loaf of bread,
or a snake when he asked for a fish?
If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your heavenly Father give good things
to those who ask him.
(Matthew 7:7-11)
For a while now I have been planning a “service” I would like to offer to anyone who comes to this blog, and this Gospel inspired me to start it today. Here is the service: if you send me a prayer intention I will make sure that one of the following will be offered for that request: a decade of the Rosary, a Mass intention, or a day of fasting. I am in contact with some people who are willing to offer these activities for your prayer intentions.
To make a prayer request, simply email prayer@ericsammons.com and let me know your intention. Strict confidentiality will be kept and I promise that someone will offer your intention as soon as possible. Unless I am overwhelmed by intentions, I can’t imagine that it will be more than one or two weeks before your intention is offered in union with one of the above-mentioned activities. If the matter is urgent, state that in the email, and the request will be given priority.
I don’t want this blog to just be a place where I expound my opinions; I want it to be something that helps others draw closer to Christ. I believe very strongly in the power of prayer, so I hope (and pray) that this little service will do some good in building up the Kingdom of God.
If you have your own blog, feel free to let others know about this service.
One thing that many Catholics today don’t realize is how controversial ecumenism still is in many Orthodox circles. Sure, the Catholic Church has pockets of resistance to ecumenism, and there can be some legitimate critiques about how ecumenism is practiced within the Catholic Church, but by and large most Catholics accept ecumenism as a valid activity of the Church. This is not the case inside Orthodoxy. Most Orthodox believers, after all, do not live in the West, where there is a great diversity of religious beliefs and dialogue between differing parties is considered ideal. Your typical Russian, for example, may never have met a Catholic, and only knows about the sad history between the two Churches, which is usually told from a decidedly pro-Orthodox viewpoint (as it is told from a decidedly pro-Catholic viewpoint in the West).
Ecumencial Patriarch Bartholomew, on the other hand, has been a prominent supporter of ecumenism. Over the years, he or his representatives have engaged in a multitude of ecumenical talks, ranging from encounters with Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and other Christian communities. Not surprisingly, this has opened him up to severe criticism within his own Orthodox Church. This past Sunday, he decided to respond to his critics in an Encyclical for the Sunday of Orthodoxy (the date is telling, for the Sunday of Orthodoxy is when the East liturgically celebrates the triumph of Orthodox Christianity over heretical groups).
A few excerpts:
Orthodoxy is not a museum treasure that must be preserved; it is a breath of life that must be transmitted and invigorate all people. Orthodoxy is always contemporary, so long as we promote it with humility and interpret it in light of the existential quests and needs of humanity in each historical period and cultural circumstance. To this purpose, Orthodoxy must be in constant dialogue with the world. The Orthodox Church does not fear dialogue because truth is not afraid of dialogue. On the contrary, if Orthodoxy is enclosed within itself and not in dialogue with those outside, it will both fail in its mission and no longer be the “catholic” and “ecumenical” Church. Instead, it will become an introverted and self-contained group, a “ghetto” on the margins of history…
Today, Orthodoxy is called to continue this dialogue with the outside world in order to provide a witness and the life-giving breath of its faith. However, this dialogue cannot reach the outside world unless it first passes through all those that bear the Christian name. Thus, we must first converse as Christians among ourselves in order to resolve our differences, in order that our witness to the outside world may be credible…
These dialogues, together with every effort for peaceful and fraternal relations of the Orthodox Church with other Christians, are unfortunately challenged today in an unacceptably fanatical way – at least by the standards of a genuinely Orthodox ethos – by certain circles that exclusively claim for themselves the title of zealot and defender of Orthodoxy. As if all the Patriarchs and Sacred Synods of the Orthodox Churches throughout the world, who unanimously decided on and continue to support these dialogues, were not Orthodox. Yet, these opponents of every effort for the restoration of unity among Christians raise themselves above Episcopal Synods of the Church to the dangerous point of creating schisms within the Church…
They disseminate false rumors that union between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches is imminent, while they know well that the differences discussed in these theological dialogues remain numerous and require lengthy debate; moreover, union is not decided by theological commissions but by Church Synods. They assert that the Pope will supposedly subjugate the Orthodox, because they latter submit to dialogue with the Roman Catholics! They condemn those who conduct these dialogues as allegedly “heretics” and “traitors” of Orthodoxy, purely and simply because they converse with non-Orthodox, with whom they share the treasure and truth of our Orthodox faith. They speak condescendingly of every effort for reconciliation among divided Christians and restoration of their unity as purportedly being “the pan-heresy of ecumenism” without providing the slightest evidence that, in its contacts with non-Orthodox, the Orthodox Church has abandoned or denied the doctrines of the Ecumenical Councils and of the Church Fathers.
Beloved children in the Lord, Orthodoxy has no need of either fanaticism or bigotry to protect itself. Whoever believes that Orthodoxy has the truth does not fear dialogue, because truth has never been endangered by dialogue.
I am very pleased to see the Ecumenical Patriarch address the problem of anti-ecumenical Orthodox so forcefully, and I pray that his witness will help, in some small way, bring us closer to union.
Sts. Peter and Andrew, pray for us!
Just remember, every time someone confidently proclaims that something in the Bible has been proven by scholars to be false or “mythical”, don’t believe him.
Brandon Vogt over at The Thin Veil is not just a blogger, he is a serious reader of blogs. By his own estimation, he is subscribed to over 180 blogs, which he scans almost daily. Recently, he decided to rank his top 75 blogs, and the list is quite interesting and ecclectic; it includes Catholic blogs, Protestant blogs, as well as useful secular blogs. He broke the list into three parts:
I was honored to make the Top 10 of Brandon’s list of favorites, but even more important, I’m grateful to Brandon for this list – many of the blogs I was not familiar with, so now I can peruse them and see if I want to add any to my own subscriptions (which comes nothing close to 180!).
Thanks Brandon!
Today is the feast of St. Polycarp, bishop, martyr, and disciple of John the Apostle. Most people are familiar with the story of his martyrdom, how at an advanced age he refused to offer incense to the emperor and instead gave us his life for his Lord Jesus Christ. But perhaps less well-known is the story of his encounter with the arch-heretic Marcion.
Marcion was one of the first great heretics of the Church. He rejected the entirety of the Old Testament, believing that the god of the Jews was a lesser god than the God of Jesus Christ. He also only accepted an edited version of Luke’s Gospel and the writings of Paul in his New Testament canon. At one point he moved to Rome and tried to push his heretical beliefs on the Church, knowing that if Rome fell to his preaching, the whole Church would.
Ireneaus tells the story of Polycarp’s encounter with Marcion:
[Polycarp] it was who, coming to Rome in the time of Anicetus caused many to turn away from the aforesaid heretics to the Church of God, proclaiming that he had received this one and sole truth from the apostles, that, namely, which is handed down by the Church. There are also those who heard from him that John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus within, rushed out of the bath-house without bathing, exclaiming, “Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.” And Polycarp himself replied to Marcion, who met him on one occasion, and said, “Dost thou know me? “I do know thee, the first-born of Satan.” Such was the horror which the apostles and their disciples had against holding even verbal communication with any corrupters of the truth; as Paul also says, “A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.”
(Against Heresies, III.3.4)
Sometimes we need to dialogue with those who disagree with us, but there are also times when we must simply condemn the corruption that anti-Christs bring to the world. Polycarp understood the importance of defending the truth of the Gospel and resisting those who opposed it. Let us pray that we always have the courage to stand up to those who preach a false Gospel.
St. Polycarp, pray for us!
This past Sunday my family attended Mass in the Extraordinary Form, as my pastor has begun to say this Form of the Mass on a weekly basis at our parish. It was the first time attending a Latin Mass for my wife and most of my children, so I tried to prepare them beforehand as to what to expect. It was a Low Mass, so silence reigned, which was actually quite beautiful.
Although I truly appreciate the old Mass, I admit that I am content with the Novus Ordo, as long as it is properly celebrated. However, there are many Catholics who greatly prefer the Latin Mass, and John Zmirak has posted a wonderfully written, charitably-argued defense of traditional Catholicism over at Inside Catholic. I urge everyone to go over there and read it.
Zmirak distinguishes between “orthodox Catholics” and “traditionalist Catholics”. “Orthodox Catholics” are those who assent to all the Church’s teachings and appreciate all the Church’s traditions, yet do not have an attachment to pre-Vatican II, Tridentine Catholicism. In fact, some orthodox Catholics greatly prefer many of the changes that came about as a result of Vatican II. “Traditionalist Catholics”, on the other hand, also assent to all the Church’s teachings, but believe that many of the pre-Vatican II, Tridentine traditions of the Church still have great value. As someone who falls in the “orthodox Catholic” camp but has significant Traditionalist sympathies, I want to make a few comments on Zmirak’s article:
Still, the division [between orthodox and traditionalist Catholics] is palpable. It was lying right there on the table, for any who cared to palpate it, last week when I went to dinner with a Trad-minded colleague and a visiting author who’d come to speak at our college on G. K. Chesterton. (The presentation was riveting, and I highly recommend Dale Ahlquist’s talks and books.) Like the good Mr. Shea, our speaker is a convert, and he shared with Mark a puzzlement at the apparent fixation traditionalists have on restoring former elements of the liturgy and other Catholic practices that are not essential, and resisting innovations that are not inherently evil. Having come from churches that didn’t have the Eucharist, and remaining through God’s grace flush with gratitude for the sacraments, many converts really don’t understand what the rest of us are nattering on about. We who grew up privileged may seem like sulky, spoiled kids. We owe these good people an explanation.
Zmirak hits on an important difference here. When I go to Mass, I still sometimes find myself saying, “Jesus Christ is coming – body, blood, soul and divinity – to this altar; I can’t believe I’m here!” A traditionalist cradle Catholic, on the other hand, might sometimes think something along the lines of, “Jesus Christ is coming – body, blood, soul and divinity – to this altar; I can’t believe [insert liturgical abuse] is here!” Both are valid reactions, and both appreciate the awesomeness of what is happening. But the former perspective – often held by converts – doesn’t concern itself with many of the inessential elements of the Mass. After all, we have been a part of a ecclesial community which didn’t even have the Eucharist, so we are just thankful for being present.
But should we be concerned with “inessential” elements? Zmirak thinks so:
Here’s what we Trads have realized, that the merely orthodox haven’t: Inessential things have power, which is why we bother with them in the first place. In every revolution, the first thing you change is the flag. Once that has been replaced, in the public mind all bets are off — which is why the Commies and Nazis filled every available space with their Satanic banners. Imagine, for a moment, that a newly elected president replaced the Stars and Stripes with the Confederate battle flag. Or that he replaced our 50 stars with the flag of Mexico. Let’s say he got away with doing this, and wasn’t carried off by the Secret Service to an “undisclosed location.” What would that signify for his administration? If people accepted the change, what else would they be likely to accept?
A valid concern, but I would argue that it can be easily over-inflated. If the president changes the United States flag with the flag of Mexico, that has a powerful effect. But if he changes the dinner china in the White House dinner room, that does not. So there are inessential things that have power, and inessential things that do not. The trick is determining the difference, and the sin of the Pharisees was that they could not make that distinction. But even accepting that certain inessential elements have power (such as the turning of the priest towards the people), the Christian should still always realize that even then they do not trump truly essential elements, something that, at least in my experience, some Traditionalist Catholics have a hard time remembering.
In fact, you can see the danger in focusing on inessential matters in the very comments of Zmirak’s article. In one of the very first comments, another traditionalist criticizes Zmirak for being positive about the congregation saying the responses with the altar servers. Instead of focusing on the fact that Zmirak is giving an extremely powerful argument for his own beliefs, this traditionalist focuses only on another inessential matter to debate.
But this does not diminish the main thrust of Zmirak’s article. I applaud him for this well-argued article, and I hope many of us “orthodox Catholics” give it a read and take his arguments to heart.
A few years ago, The Atlantic ran a controversial article entitled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr, the author of the article, argued that the type of reading and thinking used on the Internet actually harms our ability to do deep, meditative reading and thinking. Personally, I think Carr makes a persuasive point: I have found in my own life that the more I surf the Internet, the less able I am to concentrate on deeper reading/thinking. I was able to write my own book by giving myself disciplined times in which I avoided the Internet; it was the only way I could focus and concentrate on the subject at hand. I have written here about my fears of (especially Internet-enabled) e-books harming our ability to understand the Bible (and I was also interviewed on Son Rise Morning Show about this topic).
But I recently saw a headline entitled “Google Probably Not Making Us Stupid, Pew Study Says” and I was very interested to see what the study results were. In fact, I was prepared to admit that perhaps my (and Carr’s) anecdotal evidence would prove to be wrong in light of the cold, hard facts. However, after reading the article, I’ll stick to my original agreement with Carr that Google IS making us stupid. Basically, here are the results of the study:
The organization interviewed 895 technology stakeholders and critics via online survey about their expectations of social, political, and economic change by 2020, and one of those questions dealt with the effect of search engines like Google.
About 76 percent of respondents said that Google will not make us stupid.
In other words, they asked a bunch of experts their opinion and most of them disagreed with Carr. But there was absolutely no actual study done on the effects on the brain by these new ways to access information. It ended up just being their opinion based on their own anecdotal evidence. If anyone thinks that this “study” actually proves anything, I’d say they have been on Google too long.
This is so encouraging: my daughter’s 13-year-old pen-pal, who lives in Ohio, wrote a letter to her local paper decrying the evil of abortion and, praise God, it was published. Entitled “Little Girls Don’t Dream of Abortions“, it is a beautiful statement for life:
To the editor:
When Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973, abortion became the lawful decision to terminate a pregnancy, which means terminating the life of an unborn child. In the United States alone, approximately 1.21 million abortions were performed in 2005 and the abortion industry made a profit of more than a billion dollars.
Abortions aren’t really solutions. They don’t offer women the opportunity to embrace a situation with strength and courage, but rather run from a situation with hurt and guilt. There are other alternatives. A woman could raise her baby or place the baby for adoption. Adoption may seem like a scary thing. Trusting your baby’s fate in the hands of another person is frightening, but what kind of fate is abortion for that baby? Women should consider this alternative and see adoption as a loving act filled with hope for her baby, for the adoptive family and for the birth mother as well. There are many organizations, like A.I.M. Women’s Center in Steubenville, dedicated to helping women make strong and courageous decisions.
I’m 13 years old and in the last few months I’ve learned a great deal about how abortion affects the lives of women and how we as a society are allowing women to terminate their pregnancies. How can we live with the fact that more than one million abortions take place every year in this country? It breaks my heart. I recently joined a group called the Pro-Life Youth Congress, which is dedicated to “Building the Culture of Life in which human life is valued and respected during all of its stages.” (www.prolifeyouthcongress.com) This group is locally directed by Nathan Coleman of Steubenville. Being a part of this group has really changed my life. I’ve learned to respect life and how important it is to defend it. I feel like I’m making a difference in the world.
Little girls don’t dream of growing up and having an abortion. No one plans to have an abortion, but hearing that more than a million abortions take place every year tells us that something is wrong and keeps going wrong over and over again. How long will this nation let abortion overtake us? How long will we let the wrong of abortion keep happening?
Alicia M.D. Libetti
Mingo Junction
Way to go Alicia! Thanks for reminding us that you don’t need to be an adult to stand for the Truth.
One of the common themes underlying much of the New Testament is the grappling of the early Church to understand the meaning behind the person and life of Jesus of Nazareth. In so many ways, Jesus Christ was a truly “new” event; in fact, in many he is the only “new” event since the beginning of time. So the first Christians were understandably at a loss to completely understand what it all meant. Some of the realities revealed by Christ – such as the Trinity – took centuries to explain in human language (and even then, the language only scratched the surface of the reality).
In order to try to make sense of Jesus, the first Christians – all Jews – looked to one place: the Scriptures, or what is called our Old Testament. They poured over the Scriptures to find ways to understand and explain the events of Christ’s life, especially his death and resurrection. And in the Old Testament, there is one place that especially deepened their understanding of Christ’s Passion: the book of Isaiah. More than any other, this book, called the “fifth Gospel” by many of the Church Fathers, was the “go-to” book when it came to comprehending the meaning behind the life of Christ, particularly the crucifixion and the empty tomb.
The climax of Isaiah can be found in the “servant songs” found in Isaiah 42-53. These songs depict a “servant” of the Lord who is faithful and brings salvation to the world through his obedience to God. Before the advent of Christ, many interpreted this “servant” as the people of Israel, but the first Christians saw in the servant a snapshot of their Lord Jesus Christ. And it is especially the fourth servant song, found in Isaiah 52:13-53:12, which reveals Christ’s work on the Cross. Every single word of this passage is quoted in the New Testament, and the first Christians were quite clear about who this servant was:
Traditionally, the book of Isaiah has been recommended reading for Lent. I would pass that recommendation on to you: read this “Gospel” and you will more deeply understand and appreciate our Lord and his saving work.
During my 15 years of married life, I have been very fortunate to have had a number of good pastors. I have been a member of three different parishes in three different dioceses during that time, and have had a total of five pastors in fifteen years. All have been men who faithfully strive to serve the Lord and their parish.
My first pastor, however, does have a special place in my heart. Fr. Ed Bayer was the pastor at Holy Family in Randallstown, Maryland during the mid-1990’s when my wife moved there right after our wedding. Fr. Bayer was a no-nonsense, old-school priest who was devoted to serving the Church. Yet I don’t want someone to get the idea that he was a crusty curmudgeon; on the contrary, he was a loving pastor who would do anything for his people. His specialty was moral theology, and he used his vast knowledge in this area in a loving, pastoral fashion – never compromising the Truth yet always extending mercy to those who fell short of the Christian ideal.
On a personal note, Fr. Bayer was a wonderful confessor, and he also introduced me to a Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical group that was then forming in the Baltimore area, and this group was a major factor in my own deepening knowledge and appreciation of the beauty of Eastern Christianity.
After I moved away from the Baltimore area, I heard that Fr. Bayer, at the age when most people retire, had volunteered to go to New Guinea and teach seminarians there. He lived there for about a decade, faithfully forming new priests to bring Christ’s sacraments to those in need. When I heard he was going to the other side of the world at a time when most people are only thinking of a well-deserved rest after long decades of work, I was not surprised. Fr. Bayer did not ever think of himself, but instead put service to Christ and his Church above all else.
Fr. Ed Bayer passed away last Thursday. Well done, good and faithful servant.
If you have a moment, please say a prayer today for the repose of Fr. Bayer’s soul.
For the past few years, the Archdiocese of Washington has urged Catholics to go to the sacrament of confession during Lent through a wonderful program called “The Light is On”. Archbishop Wuerl has told all parishes in the Archdiocese to have extended confession hours and asked that confession be promoted as much as possible. He has also told all parishes to offer confession every Wednesday night during Lent from 6:30-8:00pm. I can’t think of a better idea to help Catholics enter into this penitential season.
This year, however, the Archbishop has added a new wrinkle: Eucharistic adoration. During those Wednesday evening hours, parishes will also have the Blessed Sacrament exposed for quiet adoration. As Archbishop Wuerl noted, “What better place to say penance after Confession than before the Blessed Sacrament?”
Here are more details:
This Lent, get to confession and make time to prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament as well. You will not regret it!
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I began my study of the Catholic faith in 1991 as an Evangelical Protestant, converting to the Catholic Church in 1993.
I serve as head of evangelization at St. John Neumann parish in Gaithersburg, MD, and am cofounder of Little Flowers Foundation, a non-profit whose mission is to assist Catholic families seeking to adopt children with special-needs.
I regularly speak to parish groups and other organizations on a variety of topics - contact me to schedule a talk for your group.
You can email me at eric@ericsammons.com.
