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Ave Maria Meditations

Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!

To the Greater Glory of God!

Prayer: Father, you consecrated the first beginnings of the faith in North America by preaching and martyrdom of Saints John & Isaac and their companions. By the help of their prayers may the Christian faith continue to grow throughout the world. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

October 19 commemorates the martyrdom of six priests of the Society of Jesus and their two lay companions who worked with them tirelessly.

Jesuit Priests:
* St. Jean de Brebeuf
* St. Noel Chabanel
* St. Anthony Daniel
* St. Charles Garnier
* St. Issac Joques
* St. Gabriel Lalemant

Laymen:
* St. Rene Goupil – (surgeon and lay apostle, first to be martyred, Sept 29. 1642)
* St. Jean de la Lande

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On 2 August, 2011, Solemnity of Our Lady Queen of the Angels, 4 young men  began the journey of their religious vocation as they became aspirants at the Marian Friary of Our Lady Help of Christians, Toodyay, WA, Australia. Pictured from left to right are: Br. Gabriel Pophillat (Singapore),  Br. Adam Waugh (Newcastle, NSW), Br. Kenneth Gan (Brisbane, QLD)  and Br. David Dono (Perth, WA).

Ave Maria Meditations

St. Leopoldo is known as an Apostle of the Confessional and also as an Apostle of Unity.  Feast Day is July 30th.

Ave Maria Meditations

No, I was not helpless or worthless or useless in that prison. I was not terribly humiliated because I was rejected as a priest. These men around me were suffering, they needed help. They needed someone to listen to them with sympathy, someone to comfort them, someone to give them courage to carry on. They needed someone who was not feeling sorry for himself but who could truly share in their sorrow. They needed someone who was not looking for consolation but who could console. They needed someone who was not looking for respect and admi­ration because of what he was but someone who could show them love and respect even if spurned and rejected himself.

As Christ had set the example for me, so could I be to them an example of Christian charity and concern. If nothing else, if they insisted upon shunning me, I could at least pray for them and offer up for them to the Father of us all the suffering and anguish that their rejection of me as a priest caused me. Christ had prayed for his persecutors, “Father, forgive them.” If I could do nothing else at this moment in the prison at Perm, I could do that. (more…)

Variety #94 – Bsp. Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska ( 14min) >>> Play

Ave Maria!

Fr. Elias Mills of our Bloomington, Indiana friary recently interviewed the renowned Bishop Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska on current issues of faith and Church in America.  We are posting them here in a five part series. In the first part, in answering Fr. Elias questions, the bishop relates his thoughts about:

• His 50 years as a priest and bishop in the Church and all the changes and events in the time.
• His visits to shrines in Europe and Rome.
• His 19 years as Bishop of Lincoln.
• The graces that are ever needed for his office
• His work with John Paul II and Benedict XVI
• What these two papacies have done for the Church especially the continuity that they reaffirmed between the post and pre-Vatican II Church
• The Moto Proprio of Pope Benedict and how it is not at all against Vatican II
• The unlikelihood of a mixture of the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the liturgy
• New English translation of the Ordinary Form of the Liturgy
• How well Catechisis has been carried out in the Post Vatican II era
• balance needed between doctrine and pastoral and social concerns

Listening to Bsp. Bruskewitz’s clear  insights and answers is refreshing indeed.

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

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One Minute Meditation

Lead, kindly Light, amid th’encircling gloom, lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still will lead me on.
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till the night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile, which I
Have loved long since, and lost awhile!

Meantime, along the narrow rugged path, Thyself hast trod,
Lead, Savior, lead me home in childlike faith, home to my God.
To rest forever after earthly strife
In the calm light of everlasting life.

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman

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Ave Maria Mediations

Elisabeth and Felix Leseur

Ave Maria Meditations

LITANY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST
PRIEST AND VICTIM

Lord, have mercy – Lord, have mercy

Christ, have mercy – Christ, have mercy

Lord, have mercy – Lord, have mercy

Christ hear us – Christ hear us

Christ, graciously hear us – Christ, graciously hear us
God the Father of heaven, *Have mercy on us

God the Son, Redeemer of the world,

God the Holy Spirit,

Holy Trinity, One God,
Jesus, Priest and Victim, *Have mercy on us

Jesus, Priest forever according to the Order of Melchizedek, Have mercy on us

Jesus, Priest Whom God sent to preach the Gospel to the poor, Have mercy on us

Jesus, Priest Who at the Last Supper institute the form of the eternal sacrifice, Have mercy on us

Jesus, Priest Who lives forever to intercede for us, Have mercy on us

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One Minute Meditation

I bring to Mass today:

–my hopes and my needs, my trials and my fears;

–my gratitude for all that I have received from my Father’s hand up to the present moment;

–my desire to remain close to my Father and come ever closer to Him during this day.

I come to the altar today:

–to give thanks for the daily mystery of my redemption and salvation;

–to seek the strength and perseverance that I find so lacking in myself;

–to seal again the covenant with God, my Father, in and through Christ Jesus my Lord.

The Servant of God Terence Cardinal Cooke

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At Fatima on May 12, 2010,

the Holy Father consecrated Priests in this Year for Priests to the Blessed Mother.

Immaculate Mother, in this place of grace, called together by the love of your Son Jesus the Eternal High Priest, we, sons in the Son and His priests, consecrate ourselves to your maternal Heart, in order to carry out faithfully the Father’s Will.

We are mindful that, without Jesus, we can do nothing good (cf. Jn 15:5) and that only through Him, with Him and in Him, will we be instruments of salvation for the world.

Bride of the Holy Spirit, obtain for us the inestimable gift of transformation in Christ. Through the same power of the Spirit that overshadowed you, making you the Mother of the Saviour, help us to bring Christ your Son to birth in ourselves too. May the Church be thus renewed by priests who are holy, priests transfigured by the grace of Him who makes all things new. (more…)

Ave Maria Meditations

Ave Maria Meditations

With each sacramental communion Jesus writes afresh the new law on our hearts. Here we touch upon an important point for the celebra­tion of the Eucharist…To participate in the Eucharist, to communicate with the body and blood of Christ, demands the liturgy of our life, a sharing in the passion of the Servant of God. In this participation our sufferings become “sacrifice” and so we can complete “in [our] flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col. 1:24).

It seems to me that this aspect of Eucharistic devotion has been somewhat obscured in the liturgical movement and that we ought to recover it. In the communion of suffering, sacra­mental communion is actualized; we enter into the riches of the Lord’s mercy, and from this compassion springs up anew the capacity to be merciful from which come the vocations which make mercy their aim and which are lacking today in the Church.

One final observation. If we have at length interpreted the connection between Supper and Cross, we have in fact all the time been speaking also of the Resurrection. Not only are Supper and Cross inseparable: Supper, Cross and Resurrec­tion form the one indivisible Paschal Mystery. The theology of the Cross is the Resurrection; therefore the Resurrection is the divine response and the divine interpretation of the Cross. The theology of the Cross is a paschal theology, a theology of joyous victory even in this valley of tears. We have shown that the Last Supper was the anticipation of the violent death of Jesus, and that the Cross without the Supper, the Supper without the reality of the Cross, would remain void. Now we have to add that the Last Supper also antic­ipates the Resurrection, the certainty that love is stronger than death. This act of love to the last is the transubstanti­ation of death, its radical transformation, the power of the Resurrection already present in the shadow of death.

The Supper without the Cross, the Cross without the Sup­per, would be void, but the two without the Resurrection would be the wreck of hope. The image of the pierced side, fount of water and blood, is also the image of the Resurrec­tion, of love stronger than death. In the Eucharist we receive this love – we receive the medicine of immortality. The Eu­charist guides us to the fount of true life, of invincible life, and shows us where and how true life is to be found – not in riches, not in having. Only if we follow Jesus on the way of His Cross do we find ourselves on the road to life.

Pope Benedict XVI: Journey to Easter

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Ave Maria Meditations

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