A Prayer and a Psalm

"Lord Jesus, our Savior, let us now come to you: Our hearts are cold; Lord, warm them with your selfless love. Our hearts are sinful; cleanse them with your precious blood.  Our hearts are weak; strengthen them with your joyous Spirit. Our hearts are empty; fill them with your divine presence.  Lord Jesus, our hearts are yours; possess them always and only for yourself." 

 (Prayer of Augustine, 354-430)

 

Psalm 86:1-6

Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. 

Preserve my life, for I am Godly; save your servant who trusts in you.  You are my God; 

be gracious to me, O Lord, for to you do I cry all the day. 

Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. 

For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you. 

Give ear, O LORD, to my prayer; hearken to my cry of supplication.

A Morning Prayer

God, make us more like Jesus.  

Help us to bear difficulty, pain,  

disappointment and sorrow  

knowing that in your perfect working and design  

you can use such bitter experiences  

to shape our characters  

and make us more like Christ.  

We look with hope for that day  

when we shall be wholly like Christ,  

because we shall see him as he is. Amen.

 

- St. Ignatius of Antioch

Pope's last Mass will be on Ash Wednesday in St. Peter's

Vatican City, Feb 12, 2013 / 08:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid the buzz created by the Pope’s announcement that he will retire, it could be easy to miss the fact that his last Mass will be on Ash Wednesday and not in the normal location for the first day of Lent.

“It’s very clear that St. Peter’s is a much bigger church than Santa Sabina in Aventino, so for a celebration in which we expect there will be a lot of faithful, bishops and cardinals who wish to be present to pray together with the Pope, St. Peter’s Basilica was chosen spontaneously,” Father Federico Lombardi told CNA Feb. 12.

“It’s a natural motive of space and it’s also necessary to bear in mind that this will probably be the last big liturgical celebration, the last Mass, presided over by the Pope with the cardinals.

“So it’s normal that it occurs in his church, in St. Peter’s Basilica,” the Vatican spokesman said.

Pope Benedict XVI was scheduled to preside over the traditional Lenten Stations of the Cross at Sant’ Anselmo church, followed by a procession to Santa Sabina Basilica on Rome’s Aventine Hill.

The traditional procession is composed of cardinals, archbishops, bishops, the Benedictine monks of Sant’ Anselmo, the Dominican friars of Santa Sabina and lay people.

As the Pope, cardinals, bishops and faithful make their way between the two churches they sign the litany of the saints.

When they arrive at Santa Sabina, the Pope celebrates Mass, receives ashes and places them on the foreheads of those who come forward to receive them.

The practice of beginning the Lenten season of prayer and penance this way was started by Pope John XXIII when he came for the opening of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute in 1961.

The Pope will also hold a general audience on Feb. 27, and recite the Angelus from his apartment window overlooking St. Peter’s Square two more times 

Benedict XVI Plans Life of Prayer at Vatican Monastery After Retirement

Found this article about the Holy Father and his plans for after his retirement. This was in the National Catholic Register.

After Pope Benedict XVI retires at the end of February, he will dedicate himself to a life of prayer and study in a Vatican-based monastery.

VATICAN CITY — After Pope Benedict XVI retires at the end of February, he will dedicate himself to a life of prayer and study in a Vatican-based monastery.

The Pope, who announced today he will step down on Feb. 28, will first stay in Castel Gandolfo, before eventually going back to the Vatican to live in Mater Ecclesiae Monastery.

The monastery is currently being renovated, but it is normally inhabited by a group of nuns who pray for the ministry of the Pope, a mission Pope John Paul II gave to them.

“He will be dedicating himself to prayer and reflection,” said Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, during an unexpected Feb. 11 media event at the Holy See Press Office.

“The Pope will not be cloistered, nor should he be considered confined in any way, and he will have his freedom,” said Father Lombardi.

“Certainly, this is a new situation, and we will see how he lives it,” he added.

Some fear having two popes alive will cause problems, but Father Lombardi dismissed those suggestions.

“I wouldn’t have any fear about this because there’s a knowledge of Pope Benedict XVI as being discrete, and there would not be any interference with his successor,” said Father Lombardi.

“This would be completely against his personality,” he noted.

On the matter of how the Pope came to his decision, the Vatican spokesman said it was “not a rash decision; he is not depressed or overwhelmed by his pontificate.”

Canon law states a meeting to choose the next pope, a “conclave,” must be held within a maximum of 20 days after his seat is vacant.

This could mean the Church will have no head during most of Lent, but the Vatican hopes to have one by Easter.

This is the first time since Gregory XII relinquished his office in 1415 that a pope has resigned.

Pope Benedict will still hold his title of cardinal, which he had before he was elected Pope.

Ash Wednesday

Reading 1 Jl 2:12-18

Even now, says the LORD,
return to me with your whole heart,
with fasting, and weeping, and mourning;
Rend your hearts, not your garments,
and return to the LORD, your God.
For gracious and merciful is he,
slow to anger, rich in kindness,
and relenting in punishment.
Perhaps he will again relent
and leave behind him a blessing,
Offerings and libations
for the LORD, your God.

Blow the trumpet in Zion!
proclaim a fast,
call an assembly;
Gather the people,
notify the congregation;
Assemble the elders,
gather the children
and the infants at the breast;
Let the bridegroom quit his room
and the bride her chamber.
Between the porch and the altar
let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep,
And say, “Spare, O LORD, your people,
and make not your heritage a reproach,
with the nations ruling over them!
Why should they say among the peoples,
‘Where is their God?’”

Then the LORD was stirred to concern for his land
and took pity on his people.

Responsorial Psalm Ps 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 12-13, 14 And 17

R. (see 3a) Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.
Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness;
in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense.
Thoroughly wash me from my guilt
and of my sin cleanse me.
R. Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.
For I acknowledge my offense,
and my sin is before me always:
“Against you only have I sinned,
and done what is evil in your sight.”
R. Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.
A clean heart create for me, O God,
and a steadfast spirit renew within me.
Cast me not out from your presence,
and your Holy Spirit take not from me.
R. Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.
Give me back the joy of your salvation,
and a willing spirit sustain in me.
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
R. Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.

Reading 2 2 Cor 5:20—6:2

Brothers and sisters:
We are ambassadors for Christ,
as if God were appealing through us.
We implore you on behalf of Christ,
be reconciled to God.
For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, 
so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

Working together, then,
we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.
For he says:

In an acceptable time I heard you,
and on the day of salvation I helped you.

Behold, now is a very acceptable time;
behold, now is the day of salvation.

Gospel Mt 6:1-6, 16-18

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Take care not to perform righteous deeds
in order that people may see them;
otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father.
When you give alms,
do not blow a trumpet before you,
as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets
to win the praise of others.
Amen, I say to you,
they have received their reward.
But when you give alms,
do not let your left hand know what your right is doing,
so that your almsgiving may be secret.
And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

“When you pray,
do not be like the hypocrites,
who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners
so that others may see them.
Amen, I say to you,
they have received their reward.
But when you pray, go to your inner room,
close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.
And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

“When you fast,
do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.
They neglect their appearance,
so that they may appear to others to be fasting.
Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you fast,
anoint your head and wash your face,
so that you may not appear to be fasting,
except to your Father who is hidden.
And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you.”

ASH WEDNESDAY

Let us receive them (ashes) in a spirit of humility and penance, that by this powerful sacramental we may obtain from almighty God the blessings which the Church implores in the act of blessing them. For, truly, "God overlooks the sins of men for the sake of repentance."

Pope Benedict to resign

Pope Benedict XVI is to resign at the end of this month in an unexpected development, saying he is too old to continue at the age of 85.

He became Pope in 2005 following John Paul II's death.

Resignations from the papacy are not unknown, but this is the first in the modern era, which has been marked by pontiffs dying while in office.

At 78, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was one of the oldest new popes in history when elected.

Continue reading the main story

He took the helm as one of the fiercest storms the Catholic Church has faced in decades - the scandal of child sex abuse by priests - was breaking.

In a statement, he said: "After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry...

"In today's world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognise my incapacity to adequately fulfil the ministry entrusted to me."

Getting Ready for Lent

So I am looking around online trying to find some sites to provide aid in my Lenten preperation and a guide for through Lent.
 This year I want to really go deeper than I have in the past and I want to get more out of Lent than just giving up choclate or whatever for Lent.
 I found this site which is a good start and appears to have a lot to digest and help through the whole Lenten season.
 Link is from Creighton University and here it enjoy and fi you find some other sites please let me know as I will continue to look around as well.

http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/Lent/

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading 1 Is 6:1-2a, 3-8

In the year King Uzziah died,
I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne,
with the train of his garment filling the temple.
Seraphim were stationed above.

They cried one to the other,
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts!
All the earth is filled with his glory!”
At the sound of that cry, the frame of the door shook
and the house was filled with smoke.

Then I said, “Woe is me, I am doomed!
For I am a man of unclean lips,
living among a people of unclean lips;
yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me,
holding an ember that he had taken with tongs from the altar.

He touched my mouth with it, and said,
“See, now that this has touched your lips,
your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
“Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?”
“Here I am,” I said; “send me!”

Responsorial Psalm Ps 138:1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 7-8

R. (1c) In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.
I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart,
for you have heard the words of my mouth;
in the presence of the angels I will sing your praise;
I will worship at your holy temple
and give thanks to your name.
R. In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.
Because of your kindness and your truth;
for you have made great above all things
your name and your promise.
When I called, you answered me;
you built up strength within me.
R. In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.
All the kings of the earth shall give thanks to you, O LORD,
when they hear the words of your mouth;
and they shall sing of the ways of the LORD:
“Great is the glory of the LORD.”
R. In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.
Your right hand saves me.
The LORD will complete what he has done for me;
your kindness, O LORD, endures forever;
forsake not the work of your hands.
R. In the sight of the angels I will sing your praises, Lord.

Reading 2 1 Cor 15:1-11 Or 15:3-8, 11

I am reminding you, brothers and sisters,
of the gospel I preached to you,
which you indeed received and in which you also stand.
Through it you are also being saved,
if you hold fast to the word I preached to you,
unless you believed in vain.
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received:
that Christ died for our sins
in accordance with the Scriptures;
that he was buried;
that he was raised on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures;
that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.
After that, Christ appeared to more
than five hundred brothers at once,
most of whom are still living,
though some have fallen asleep.
After that he appeared to James,
then to all the apostles.
Last of all, as to one born abnormally,
he appeared to me.
For I am the least of the apostles,
not fit to be called an apostle,
because I persecuted the church of God.
But by the grace of God I am what I am,
and his grace to me has not been ineffective.
Indeed, I have toiled harder than all of them;
not I, however, but the grace of God that is with me.
Therefore, whether it be I or they,
so we preach and so you believed.

Gospel Lk 5:1-11

While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening
to the word of God,
he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret.
He saw two boats there alongside the lake;
the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets.
Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon,
he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore.
Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.
After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,
“Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.”
Simon said in reply,
“Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing,
but at your command I will lower the nets.”
When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish
and their nets were tearing.
They signaled to their partners in the other boat
to come to help them. 
They came and filled both boats
so that the boats were in danger of sinking.
When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said,
“Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him
and all those with him,
and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee,
who were partners of Simon.
Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid;
from now on you will be catching men.”
When they brought their boats to the shore,
they left everything and followed him.

Psalm 23:1-6

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want; 

he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters; 

he restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. 

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil;  for you are with me;  your rod and your staff, they comfort me. 

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;  you anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows. 

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;  and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. 

Pope: Proclaim God's love with boldness

VATICAN CITY, February 3 (CNA/EWTN News) .- Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday asked Christians to proclaim God’s love with “boldness, humility and coherence” like Jesus.

“Let us ask the Lord to give each of us a spirit of courage and wisdom, so that in our words and actions, we may proclaim the saving truth of God’s love with boldness, humility and coherence,” said Pope Benedict in his remarks after the Sunday Angelus prayer.

“Jesus did not come to seek the consent of men, but to give testimony to the truth,” Pope Benedict told the thousands of pilgrims gathered at St. Peter’s Square.

“The true prophet does not obey anyone other than God and places himself at the service of truth, ready to pay in person,” he added from the window of the Apostolic Palace.

He noted that “it is true that Jesus is the prophet of love, but love has its own truth.”

He explained that love and truth are “two names for the same reality” and “two names of God.

The pontiff added that the Sunday liturgy echoes the words of St. Paul.

“Love does not boast, it is not puffed up with pride, it is not disrespectful, it does not seek its own interests and does not get angry,” said Pope Benedict.

“It does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice over wrongdoings but rejoices with the truth,” he said.

The Pope said that to believe in God is to “give up prejudices and accept the concrete face in which he has revealed himself, the man Jesus of Nazareth.”

“This way also leads to recognize him and serve him in others,” he added.

He talked about the Sunday reading in which Jesus reads a passage of the Old Testament at a synagogue.

Jesus said that “no prophet is accepted in his own country” and named two miracles performed by the prophets Elijah and Elisha.

Pope Benedict said Jesus’ words “showed that sometimes there is more faith outside of Israel.”

“At that point the reaction was unanimous as all rose to hunt him down and to try to throw him off a cliff, but he calmly passes through the angry people and leaves,” said Pope Benedict.

“Why did Jesus want to cause this failure?” he asked.

“But this is precisely the point: Jesus did not come to seek the consent of men, but to give testimony to the truth.”

Doing Good

After a brief hiatus due to other issues which needed resolving I was able to go back to Cursillo yesterday. Talk about a way to get your batteries charged back up. It is truly amazing and uplifting. If you have not done Cursillo I just say you must! It will change your world your outlook and your everyday demeanor, well at least for me it has.
 My new again parish is a blast and I really like the atmosphere that the new priests have created. I am looking forward to participating in many of the Lenten events they have coming up. Certainly I am now able to go to the well and dig deeper within myself in my faith journey as more opportunities are presented to me.
 Yes things are getting better. I feel some doom and gloom has been lifted as I let God handle things more and more and I try to steer clear of causing him problems. Certainly his way is better even with the occasional curve ball he throws in there! We might not like it but it is for our good.
 So keep up your prayers and get ready for Lent and until later God Bless!

Pope's Lent message: charity is extension of God's love

Vatican City, Feb 1, 2013 / 11:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI's message for Lent is that when people are open to God’s love, then they can “love with him, in him and like him.”

"When we make room for the love of God, then we become like him, sharing in his own charity," said the Pope in his annual message for Lent.

"If we open ourselves to his love, we allow him to live in us and to bring us to love with him, in him and like him," said the pontiff.

Pope Benedict's message is titled, "Believing in charity calls forth charity." It was released Feb. 1 with a media event at the Holy See’s press office.

The panel presenting it included members of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum – which is dedicated to carrying out charitable work – and the president for the Society of St. Vincent of Paul, Michael Thio.

The president of Cor Unum, Cardinal Robert Sarah, said that the essence of the Pope's message is focused on illuminating the relationship between faith and love.

The Pope noted in his Lenten message that "faith, as gift and response, causes us to know the truth of Christ as love incarnate and crucified, as full and perfect obedience to the Father's will and infinite divine mercy towards neighbor."

"Faith implants in hearts and minds the firm conviction that only this love is able to conquer evil and death," said the pontiff.

"Faith invites us to look towards the future with the virtue of hope, in the confident expectation that the victory of Christ's love will come to its fullness," he added.

Pope Benedict highlighted that "charity ushers us into the love of God manifested in Christ and joins us in a personal and existential way to the total and unconditional self-giving of Jesus to the Father and to his brothers and sisters."

"Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love," he said.

"Faith precedes charity, but faith is genuine only if crowned by charity," he stated.

"Love is the light (and in the end, the only light) that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working," said the pontiff.

The Holy Father noted that "all this helps us to understand that the principal distinguishing mark of Christians is precisely love grounded in and shaped by faith."

Monsignor Segundo Tejado Muñoz, the undersecretary of Cor Unum, added that "the great strength of the Church is that most times charity is done anonymously and is often volunteer work."

The Pope's message also states that Lent, "in the context of the Year of Faith," offers us a valuable opportunity to meditate on the relationship between faith and charity and between believing in God and love."