Liturgical dance . . .

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update on Baby Luukas

Keep praying for Luukas and his family. I'm not sure what time it is in Finland but as of 5 minutes ago his mother says that he was able to breath on his own for most of the morning. But he's not out of the woods yet. Please remember this child who is barely a week old and fighting for his life in your prayers.

Who God calls us to be

Yesterday during Father Andy's homily he refered to T.S. Elliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, the work on which the Broadway musical Cats is based. At first I thought that maybe Fr. Andy had gone off his rocker. He then spoke about The Naming of Cats in which Elliot informs us that cats have three names. Fr. went on to explain that like T.S. Elliot's cats, we in fact have three names. We have our proper name as given to us by our parents, our common name in everyday usage. For example though my proper name is Christopher I commonly am called Chris. Then, we have our third name. The one given to us by God. This is our call in life. It is who God has called us to be. It is the name that we spend our entire lives trying to discover.

So a homily that started with my wondering about my priest's state of mind left me asking two questions.

1. Who am I?
2. Who does God want me to be?

These are questions that we should ask ourselves everyday. Actually, I think they are best asked like this. Who has God called me to be and how does who I am today relate to that call?

I am at a stage where I'm not sure what the next step is. I don't know what the future holds and I'm unsure about who God is calling me to be. In reflection, I can see that I was in much the same situation not long ago when I was tossing around the idea of converting to the Catholic Faith. When asked by people how I came to accept the Catholic Church I've often recounted "reading myself into it". But that's not really it at all. Through grace, God led me to become more of who He has called me to be. We have to open our hearts to listen to God and to be willing to follow where He leads. We will spend our lives searching in vain for who God wants us to be unless we listen for His voice. He has called us to Himself, the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. We must listen and follow what we hear to find our true self, our true name as called by God.

Prayer for baby Luukas

Please say a prayer for baby Luukas. He is a very sick newborn in Finland. You can read about Luukas and his family and join others in prayer at Defenders of the Catholic Faith forum .

For Luukas and all children both born and unborn:

Hail Mary, full of Grace,
the Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Planned Parenthood

From LifeSiteNews.com

The massive organization reported a record income of $882 million dollars and a profit of $63 million, reported PipeLineNews on Monday. Profits have nearly doubled since 2003, when the 2002-2003 annual report indicated a profit of over $36 million dollars.

Planned Parenthood aborted more babies last year than in any previous year, ending the lives of more than 255,015 children by surgical abortion. That number doesn’t include the vast number of deaths caused by the sale of chemical abortion drugs, the morning after pill and abortifacient contraceptives, a major source of Planned Parenthood’s income.

Despite continuing to promote itself as an adoption referral service, the organization also set a new record in the ratio of abortions to adoption referrals it carried out in the past year, at 180 abortions per 1 referral for adoption.

Planned Parenthood received a record amount of money in federal funding this year, with a total of $272.7 million dollars in government grants and contracts.Read Entire Article

A rate of 180 murders to 1 adoption referral with 255,015 murders = 1,416 adoption referrals. 63 million dollars in profit from killing babies and they get 272.7 million dollars in government funding (OUR TAX DOLLARS!)?

From the Planned Parenthood website:

Population

It is the policy of Planned Parenthood Federation of America to advance understanding of the interrelationship between population growth and the quality of human life.

Voluntary family planning programs and sound population policies contribute to the process of socioeconomic development and to family health, particularly in countries where rapid population growth hinders development efforts. Therefore, the Federation is committed to providing education in the communities it serves to enable people to understand the scope of world population growth and its impact on the economic, political, social, and physical environment we all must share.

Sounds like some Chinese communist ideology to me.

Prayer to Mary from Evangelium Vitae

O Mary,
bright dawn of the new world,
Mother of the living,
to you do we entrust the cause of life:
Look down, O Mother,
upon the vast numbers
of babies not allowed to be born,
of the poor whose lives are made difficult,
of men and women
who are victims of brutal violence,
of the elderly and the sick killed
by indifference or out of misguided mercy.
Grant that all who believe in your Son
may proclaim the Gospel of life
with honesty and love
to the people of our time.
Obtain for them the grace
to accept that Gospel
as a gift ever new,
the joy of celebrating it with gratitude
throughout their lives and
the courage to bear witness to it
resolutely, in order to build,
together with all people of good will,
the civilization of truth and love,
to the praise and glory of God,
the Creator and lover of life.

Catholic League

Check out the Catholic League's New York Times ad. Gerald has the image over at Closed Cafeteria.

I agree that the media has gone a bit overboard at times with the sex-abuse scandal. I also agree with the ad's statement that one victim is too many.

June 23, The Solemnity of The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, is World Day of Prayer for the Santification of Priests. Personally, I think this should be part of our daily prayer intentions.

Perpetual Rosary for Life

The Catholics United for Life website contains a perpetual web rosary. Stop by and say a few decades for the unborn.

Check out this homily . . .

. . . it will make you think about some things.

Click Here to Read Homily

iPadre podcast

Search in iTunes or log on to iPadre.net for Father Jay Finelli's podcast. Be sure to look for the two part podcast on the Mass.

Guided by the Holy Spirit

Yesterday, a friend and I had a lengthy conversation about the Catholic Church. We discussed many issues, one of which was papal infallibility. We discussed how the authority of the Church comes from Christ and that the Pope and the Bishops in conference may speak infallibily through the guidance of the Holy Spirit in matters of faith and morals.

In no way am I any type of authority on the Church but I tried to explain these parts of the Catholic Faith as best I could. Even thought he didn't say it I got a sense of "it isn't in the Bible and I'm not believing it"

Today's Gospel reading stood out to me in light of this conversation:

Jesus said to his disciples: “When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me. And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.

“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.” Jn 15:26-27, 16:12-15

“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth."

Throughout the ages, the one Truth of Christ has been revealed to the Church thought the guidance of the Holy Spirit as the Father saw fit. As I pointed out in the conversation is seems like infallible statements from the pope or bishops are rare today. Yet we can still rely on the Holy Spirit to reveal truths to us as they are needed, when we are ready to accept and bear them if you will. In times of trial, confusion, or even error we can rely on the Holy Spirit to reveal the Truth to us through the authority of the Church as established by Christ.

Pentecost

This photo is of one of the many murals in the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis (see post below for more photos from my trip to St. Louis, MO).

click photo for larger view

St. Louis, MO

Yesterday I was in Saint Louis, MO for a baseball game. There was an 8:00 am Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis. After Mass I was able to take a few pictures of the inside. The interior photo is a little out of focus because the lighting wasn't great and my camera just couldn't handle it (or at least I don't know enough about the settings to adjust them). Anyway, afterwards we decided to visit the Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France, also known as the "Old Cathredral". Along the way we passed Saint Francis Xavier Church on the campus of Saint Louis University. It was open but fairly dark inside and I wasn't able to get any good shots of this amazing church. If you are ever in Saint Louis, I would suggest taking some time to visit the city's churches.

Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis

Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France (Old Cathedral)

Saint Francis Xavier Church

The Flaming Heart

From Fort Worth Weekly:

By JIMMY FOWLER
On the recent April night when I became a Catholic, my feet hurt like hell.
It must be the brand-new shoes, I told myself while standing at the lectern in front of a packed congregation at Dallas’ Holy Trinity Catholic Church. I had been selected from among the conversion students to serve as a lector at the same Holy Saturday service at which I was to receive my baptism, confirmation, and first communion. I was reading everyone’s favorite “family values” tale from the Old Testament — the story of God asking Abraham to kill his son Isaac to prove his faith.
Another part of my brain wondered if the gay genes in my body were rebelling, punishing me with aching feet. Yep, that’s right — they picked the sodomite to read from Holy Scripture. This won’t surprise anyone familiar with Holy Trinity, which is located in the gay and lesbian neighborhood of Oak Lawn. This church is listed on national web sites for gay Christians as one of the more tolerant, even welcoming, parishes in the city. Their homosexual congregants are legion. (Just how gay is Holy Trinity? Well, the church choir is scheduled to perform a Cole Porter revue this month, so you be the judge.)

Let me summarize the rest of the article for you:

• He loves the Church's pageantry, mysticism, and iconography
• As a kid he got a big kick out of horror films when the hero drove back the demon, vampire, whatever with a cross
• He has a crush on Jesus (yes THAT kind of crush)
• He figured out, with the help of some so-called Catholic writers, that it would be edifying to go ahead and enter the Church and "forgive" it of it's sin of persecuting homosexuals.

Oh, and this:

So there I was, the newly minted and very conflicted gay Catholic, reading to the congregation the story of a very stern and bloody god indeed. It forced me to wonder if God would ask me to kill a special part of myself — my capacity for loving another man — in order to prove my faith.

It occurred to me that the main point of the story might not be that Abraham was willing to cut his child’s throat, but that God stopped him from doing it. The story illustrates a God that does not require sacrifice — especially of one’s fullest humanity — in order to prove allegiance. I can let myself live whole, and that includes my sexuality.

Well, there's an interpretation I've never heard before. Very disturbing article that shows a total contempt for AND lack of understanding of the teaching of the Church.

Read Entire Article

Faure Requiem

It got my ipod today. Yeah, I know I'm way behind the times. Anyway, one of the first albums I bought was the Faure and Durufle requiems recorded by the Atlanta Symphony. I was privileged enough to perform the Faure requiem while in the university choir. It quite possibly could of been my first true introduction to the Church. If you've never heard this piece of, I highly recommend it.

Who is the Bread of Life? II

I found this discussion today that addresses the song that I was talking about in my original post. It's a worthy read.