Smart Birds
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Just me on Monday, January 30, 2012
While welcoming children and families from Catholic Action during yesterday’s Angelus, the Pope released two doves as a sign of peace.
One stayed on the sill and the other flew back into the papal apartment.
You can hear him chuckling, and then he tells the kids, “They want to stay in the Pope’s house!”
So cute!
The Accessible Pope
Posted by Rebecca Teti in News on Thursday, January 26, 2012
I sometimes hear from people who say they’d like to read Pope Benedict more, but they’re afraid he’s too difficult for them.
Here’s a bit of useless information to encourage them.
You need only the reading level of a 16-year-old to follow his typical homilies.
With that to spur us, here’s a recent papal document of interest:
In his Message for World Communications Day, His Holiness reflects on... READ MORE
The Pope Has A Mission For Us
Posted by Rebecca Teti in News on Friday, January 20, 2012
It’s not often you get a message tailor-made for you from the Pope.
So it was with relish I read the Holy Father’s words to the bishops of Maryland (DC, Baltimore & Military Services) on their ad limina visit to Rome this week.
The bulk of his talk was about protection of religious liberty, and why Catholic concerns aren’t merely parochial, but ordered towards the defense of human dignity for all.... READ MORE
Happy Epiphany!
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Sunday, January 08, 2012
Those figures who came from the East were not the last but the first of a great procession of those who, throughout the epochs of history, are able to recognize the message of the Star, who know how to walk on the paths indicated by Sacred Scripture.
Thus they also know how to find the One who seems weak and fragile but instead has the power to grant the greatest and most profound joy to the heart of man.
In him, indeed, is made manifest the stupendous reality that God knows us and is close to us, that his greatness and power are not expressed according to the world’s logic, but to the logic of a helpless baby whose strength is only that of the love which he entrusts to us.
In the journey of history, there are always people who are enlightened by the light of the Star, who find the way and reach him. They all live, each in his or her own way, the experience of the Magi.
—Benedict XVI, Solemnity of Epiphany 2010
The Restless Heart of God
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Friday, January 06, 2012
You must read the Holy Father’s homily for Epiphany this year.
The whole thing is quotable, but I’ll whet your whistle with this:
The restless heart of which we spoke earlier, echoing Saint Augustine, is the heart that is ultimately satisfied with nothing less than God, and in this way becomes a loving heart. Our heart is restless for God and remains so, even if every effort is made today, by means of most effective anaesthetizing methods, to deliver people from this unrest. But not only are we restless for God: God’s heart is restless for us. God is waiting for us. He is looking for us. He knows no rest either, until he finds us. God’s heart is restless, and that is why he set out on the path towards us – to Bethlehem, to Calvary, from Jerusalem to Galilee and on to the very ends of the earth.
Merry Christmas, Day 12
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Thursday, January 05, 2012
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, The Family of John the Baptist Visiting Christ
Thank God, this negative detail [“no room in the inn”—mankind too preoccupied with itself to make space for God] is not the only one, nor the last one that we find in the Gospel.
Just as in Luke we encounter the maternal love of Mary and the fidelity of Saint Joseph, the vigilance of the shepherds and their great joy, just as in Matthew we encounter the visit of the wise men, come from afar, so too John says to us: “To all who received him, he gave power to become children of God” (Jn 1:12).
There are those who receive him, and thus, beginning with the stable, with the outside, there grows silently the new house, the new city, the new world.
The message of Christmas makes us recognize the darkness of a closed world, and thereby no doubt illustrates a reality that we see daily.
Yet it also tells us that God does not allow himself to be shut out. He finds a space, even if it means entering through the stable; there are people who see his light and pass it on.
—Benedict XVI, Midnight Mass 2007
Merry Christmas, Day 11
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Wednesday, January 04, 2012
The first thing we are told about the shepherds is that they were on the watch – they could hear the message precisely because they were awake. We must be awake, so that we can hear the message. We must become truly vigilant people.
What does this mean?
The principal difference between someone dreaming and someone awake is that the dreamer is in a world of his own. His “self” is locked into this dreamworld that is his alone and does not connect him with others. To wake up means to leave that private world of one’s own and to enter the common reality, the truth that alone can unite all people….
Awake, the Gospel tells us. Step outside, so as to enter the great communal truth, the communion of the one God. To awake, then, means to develop a receptivity for God: for the silent promptings with which he chooses to guide us; for the many indications of his presence.
There are people who describe themselves as “religiously tone deaf.” The gift of a capacity to perceive God seems as if it is withheld from some. And indeed – our way of thinking and acting, the mentality of today’s world, the whole range of our experience is inclined to deaden our receptivity for God, to make us “tone deaf” towards him. And yet in every soul, the desire for God, the capacity to encounter him, is present, whether in a hidden way or overtly. In order to arrive at this vigilance, this awakening to what is essential, we should pray for ourselves and for others, for those who appear “tone deaf” and yet in whom there is a keen desire for God to manifest himself.
Benedict XVI, Midnight Mass, 2009
Merry Christmas, Day 9
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Monday, January 02, 2012
Icon, The Nativity of Christ
Today, anyone wishing to enter the Church of Jesus’ Nativity in Bethlehem will find that the doorway five and a half metres high, through which emperors and caliphs used to enter the building, is now largely walled up. Only a low opening of one and a half metres has remained. The intention was probably to provide the church with better protection from attack, but…it seems to me that a deeper truth is revealed here, which should touch our hearts on this holy night: if we want to find the God who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high horse of our “enlightened” reason.
...
We must bend down, spiritually we must as it were go on foot, in order to pass through the portal of faith and encounter the God who is so different from our prejudices and opinions – the God who conceals himself in the humility of a newborn baby. In this spirit let us celebrate the liturgy of the holy night, let us strip away our fixation on what is material, on what can be measured and grasped. Let us allow ourselves to be made simple by the God who reveals himself to the simple of heart. And let us also pray especially at this hour for all who have to celebrate Christmas in poverty, in suffering, as migrants, that a ray of God’s kindness may shine upon them, that they – and we – may be touched by the kindness that God chose to bring into the world through the birth of his Son in a stable.
—Benedict XVI, Homily for Midnight Mass, 2011
Merry Christmas, Day 8
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Sunday, January 01, 2012
Madonna, Marianne Stokes
God’s Face took on a human face, letting itself be seen and recognized in the Son of the Virgin Mary, who for this reason we venerate with the loftiest title of “Mother of God.” She, who had preserved in her heart the secret of the divine motherhood, was the first to see the face of God made man in the small fruit of her womb. The Mother had a very special, unique and, in... READ MORE
Merry Christmas, Day 7
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Saturday, December 31, 2011
Julius Schnorr
God himself had spoken in many and various ways to mankind. But now something new has happened: he has appeared. He has revealed himself. He has emerged from the inaccessible light in which he dwells. He himself has come into our midst. This was the great joy of Christmas for the early Church: God has appeared. No longer is he merely an idea, no longer do we have to form a picture of him on the basis of mere words. He has “appeared”. But now we ask: how has he appeared? Who is he in reality? The reading at the Dawn Mass goes on to say: “the kindness and love of God our Saviour for mankind were revealed.”
—Benedict XVI, Homily for Midnight Mass, 2011
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