Aid to the Church in Need
Beauty will Save the World The New Evangelisation 13 - 5
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Fr. Michael Shield’s 2013 Pilgrimage to Ireland This August Fr. Michael Shields is returning to Ireland at Aid to the Church in Need’s invitation to:
• Walk the Walk with Worldpriest.com to Croagh Patrick. • Talk the Talk at Youth 2000 Summer Festival in Roscrea. • Reflect upon The Prodigals’ Return with the Alexian Brothers in Knock. Walk the Walk, 12th August through to 15th August: The Tobhair Phadraig Pilgrimage Walk, from Ballintubber Abbey to Croagh Patrick and on to the Pilgrimage Highlight at Knock Shrine 15:00hrs Feast of The Assumption of Our Lady. Worldpriest.com have organised a four day pilgrim’s walk for Priests, Parishioners and Friends from Ballintubber Abbey to Croagh Patrick. During this time Fr. Michael will walk the walk with fellow pilgrims as well as celebrate the Eucharist, hear confessions and preach the Word of God as they journey along St Patrick’s Way - the path of Beauty, ‘The Via Pulchritudinis.’ All are welcome. For further information please contact: www.worldpriest.com
Talk the Talk, 15th–18th August: Youth 2000 Summer Festival, Cistercian Monastery, Roscrea. Youth 2000 Annual Summer Festival this year will take place in the Cistercian Monastery, Roscrea and has as its beautiful theme ‘Let us fix our gaze on Jesus’. On Friday 16th August Fr. Michael will lead a workshop on Reconcilation and the following day will lead a Workshop on Healing. Throughout his time in Roscrea, Fr. Michael along with a whole cadre of his brother priests will administer the sacraments and give witness to the Beauty of Truth. All young adults are welcome. For further information please contact: dublin@youth2000.ie
The Prodigals’ Return: 19th - 21st August. Alexian Monastery, Knock In the Alexian Brothers’ Monastery, Knock, during the late afternoon of the last three days of the Knock Novena, Fr. Michael will give an integrated series of three 45 minute reflections on the Beauty of God’s inexhaustible love for His Prodigal children. All God’s children have a beautiful home to go and Fr. Michael will reflect upon the difficulties many experience in finding their way home. All are welcome. For further information please contact: frmichael2013@gmail.com
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Aid to the Church in Need
Contents
Page
The ‘New Evangelisation’ - Fr. Martin Barta . . ................................................. 2 ‘Creative Fidelity’ - Johannes Freiherr Heereman ............................................ 3 Engines that Drive the Good News - Pastoral Transport ................................ 4 They are Counting on Us - New Evangelisation .............................................. 6 The Beauty of Forgiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ............................................... 21
A LOOK IN THE
A chairde - New Evanglisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ................................................ 8 On The New Evangelisation - Pope Benedict XVI .......................................... 10 On Being an Evangeliser - Seven Things to Remember by Cardinal Timothy Dolan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ............................................... 14 Beauty Will Save the World - by Fr Michael Shields, Magadan, Siberia .......... 15 The ‘Via Pulchritudinis’, The Path of Beauty - by Anna Krestyn .................... 20 The Beauty of Truth - by Megan Hodder . . . . . . . . .............................................. 22 Evangelising the Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............................................. 25 Saint Aloysius Gonzaga - Patron of Youth by Eddie Cotter Jr., DTS ................... 27
Editor: Jürgen Liminski. Publisher: Kirche in Not / Ostpriesterhilfe, Postfach 1209, 61452 Königstein, Germany. De licentia competentis auctoritatis ecclesiasticae. Printed in Ireland - ISSN 0252-2535. www.acn-intl.org
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been trying to make the Church The ‘New Evangelisation’ has for some attractive to us years now been a byword within the young people – Church. Our late Pope, Blessed John Paul without success. II, intended by these words to express his For although profound desire for our Faith to be filled your intentions with new fire and new power of the Holy are good, you Spirit in the face of the great challenges have adopted around us in our personal, family and the wrong initiasocial lives. tives. Instead of preaching the Gospel in its fullness, you have tried to make The new evangelisation is by no means the Church appealing to young people intended to suggest a second Chris- by presenting it as an association of tianisation. Still less does it mean the humanistic morality, dressed in fashionpreaching of a new or different gospel. able colours (parties, discussion groups The appeal for a new evangelisation is and so forth). But a Church that only above all a call to conversion, to break replays all the old familiar tunes of social out of our comfortreform that we hear able self-satisfaction. ‘New evangelisation is the all around us, but in a The New Evangelisaanswer to the needs of the “Christian” variation, tion is the answer people in the traditionally is of no interest to us.’ to the needs of the Christian countries.’ people in the tradiYoung people are tionally Christian not satisfied with countries, who are now undergoing a half measures, or indeed with halfgreat crisis of faith. truths. They want to have life in its fullness. They are seeking the whole Consequently the new forms of evange- truth, just like Blessed Chiara Luce lisation are not, first and foremost, a Badano (1971-1990) who, despite her matter of new techniques of proclaim- grave illness, found her happiness in ing the Gospel but above all of authentic Jesus and his Word. ‘I have discovered witness to the love of God and neighbour. the Gospel in a new light’, she said. ‘I Nor may this witness shrink back from the have understood now that I was not challenging demands of the Gospel. One truly a Christian, because I did not group of young people wrote the follow- live the Gospel in a consistent manner. ing, in a letter to their bishops, priests Now I want to make this wonderful and catechists: ‘For a long time you have book the only goal of my life. I do not
Dear Friends,
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want to be, and cannot be, illiterate in regard to such a unique message. Just as I can easily learn the alphabet, so it must also be for me with a life in accordance with the Gospel.’ Dear Friends, thanks to your help many young people are welcoming Jesus with enthusiasm, and especially through their participation in the World Youth Day which we will soon be celebrating in
Dear Friends, Once again you have given proof, in a particularly generous manner, of your fidelity to the church’s mission. For more and more of our benefactors in fact, it has been the expression of your last Will and Testament. Thanks to this generosity, we have not had to refuse a single request that came to us from the regions of the persecuted Church. As Pope Francis said on 6 April, ‘Christians are being persecuted on account of their faith. In some countries they are forbidden to wear a cross and are punished if they do so. Today, in the 21st century, our Church is a Church of the martyrs.’ Yet equally, in those places where faith in the mercy of God is being lost, the road to violence is not such a long one. That is why we are still being faithful to our mission when we pursue new ways of supporting the proclamation of our faith – for example when we distribute
Brazil – as a festival of new evangelisation. My grateful thanks and blessings, to all of you,
Father Martin M. Barta, Spiritual Assistant
the YOUCAT, the youth catechism, to 1.5 million young people who are preparing to attend the World Youth Day 2013. ‘Creative fidelity’ was the phrase used by Blessed John Paul II, who first initiated the World Youth Days. Only God can grant us peace on earth, but he works through people – for example through priests, religious men and women, catechists – and through you, the benefactors of ACN!
Johannes Freiherr Heereman, Executive President of ACN International
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Engines that Drive the Good News Cars, motorcycles, boats and pick-up trucks do not just improve the mobility of priests. They are also tools of social and pastoral development. And at the same time they conserve the health and strength of the priests. Particularly in remote villages in inaccessible regions like those in the diocese of Kandi, Benin, a car can be a real step forward. For three years now Father Jonas Nonsou has been ploughing his way through the parish of Saint George in Segbana Commune, on a motorbike. It is an area that has, not without reason, been described as the ‘Siberia’ of Benin. The priests who previously worked here did not stay for longer than a year. Benin is one of the poorest countries in the world and Segbana one of its poorest districts. The population is overwhelmingly Muslim; Christians make up just
Ghana: Handover of bicycles, with the bishop’s blessing.
2%. Father Jonas brings medicines to the isolated Christian villages, ferries the sick, sometimes hundreds of kilometres, builds village schools, seeks out teachers. This human development work is, at the same time, driving evangelisation. Father Jonas is also involved in educational work, for he wants the children to be able to read the Bible. His bishop has asked us for a car in order to relieve the burdens on this hard-working priest.
Brazil: Many villages can only be reached by boat.
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the residence of his bishop, where the monthly retreats for the handful of priests in the diocese are held. Father Eduardo has marked these days in red letters on his calendar, for the chance to see one another is a rare one. The nearest parish is over 150 miles (250 km) away. And he has had no car for the past few months. It was too old and he was forced to sell it before it became far too expensive to run. He has already asked a number of people for help, but with no success – now he is counting on us. We have promised him our help.
Burma: Sister has found many uses for this motorcycle.
Meanwhile in Kazakhstan, Father Eduardo Jose Stefani has to travel still greater distances. He is the only priest in Taras, a town over 300 miles (500 km) distant from
Faith is a gift, but it doesn’t simply fall from heaven. God makes use of people like Father Jonas and Father Eduardo. And he looks to your generosity to mobilise this faith. •
Mongolia is an overwhelmingly Buddhist country. But in 2002 an apostolic prefecture was established here. At the time there were just 114 Catholics in the country. Today there are around 800. Still a tiny proportion in a country of 2.7 million souls, in a total area of over half a million square miles (1.5 million km²). The distances between the handful of parishes are enormous, while proper roads are few and far between. A solid all-terrain vehicle is an absolute necessity for pastoral work here. Father Hervé Kuafa, the parish priest of the cathedral of Saint Peter & Paul in Ulan Bator, expresses his immense relief and heartfelt thanks for
the vehicle we supplied. The Scriptures tell us: ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name…’ This vehicle will help gathering together the faithful so they can be strengthened to live in communion in Christ. Thank you for mak• ing this happen.
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They are Counting on Us The priest was downcast. John Paul II sensed it. The priest explained: on the way to meet with the Pope he had met an old friend who had been ordained with him and was now sitting, begging, by the walls of the Vatican. The Pope asked the priest to bring his friend with him to dinner. He came, and they spoke together; then the Pope asked him to hear his confession. The priest-turned beggar was alarmed. ‘But I am not a priest in good standing.’ The answer came back: ‘Once a priest, always a priest’. Afterwards, the priest himself confessed, and the Holy Father appointed him as chaplain to the beggars. Seeing Peter can bring healing, conversion, reconciliation. In this Year of Faith a pilgrimage to Rome can surely bring a strengthening of faith. All over the world there are seminarians and novices who would like to see the Pope and pray at the tomb of Saint Peter. In many cases
Brazil: Preparing for the World Youth Day – with the YOUCAT.
it remains only a dream. But now the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelisation is organising a meeting with Pope Francis, for seminarians, novices and young people who feel the call of God within them. ‘I Trust in You’ is the title of the meeting. The accommodation, and above all the travel costs are beyond the means of the young people from poorer countries, however, and so the council has turned to us. Thanks to your generosity, we have been able to help for five groups of ten of these young people to come to Rome – one group from Eastern Europe
Celebrating with the Holy Father: Benedict XVI at the World Youth Day in Madrid. 6 +e513ei_print.indd 10
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(Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus); one from Asia and its environs (Pakistan, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea); one from the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Egypt); one from Latin America (Cuba, Haiti, Bolivia); and one from Africa (Sudan, D.R. Congo). Our help will undoubtedly bear fruit a hundredfold, when these young seminarians and novices return as apostles to their own home countries. And as Pope John Paul
from Iraq. As Bishop Yussif Abba in Baghdad says, ‘This will strengthen their faith and give them hope to stay on in this country and live here as Church.’ To prepare for this, they and many tens of thousands of other young people from all over the world will have received in advance a copy of the youth catechism YOUCAT – thanks to your generosity. Before we can proclaim the Good News, we first have to know it. But what is also true is that ‘It is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed by love’ (Benedict XVI). And this is something they will experience in the personal encounter with other Christians, in communion with the Pope. • Iraq: In this sign is hope. Young people from Baghdad in Madrid.
From Ethiopia – one in love within the Universal Church.
II said in 1989, in Madagascar, being apostolic means ‘endeavouring to allow the newness of the Gospel to reach and transform mentalities and social structures, in order in this way to promote the happiness and moral progress in the life both of individuals and of communities.’ One great event with a worldwide apostolic impact will surely be the World Youth Day at the end of July in Rio, Brazil. Once again we are being asked by the youth pastors in the poorer countries if we can help them. We have promised financial aid for 49 Armenian Catholics from Egypt and for 100 young people Aid to the Church in Need +e513ei_print.indd 11
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A LOOK IN THE
A chairde, Christ invites us to be His witnesses beginning in our homes but not stopping there. We are to proclaim His Good News to all people, ‘always and everywhere’. Moreover we are to transmit faith in Christ in a way that effectively responds to the challenges of today’s world, namely the challenges of false beliefs, religious indifference and unbelief. Against this background The Via Pulchritudinis, the Path of Beauty is widely regarded as a privileged pathway for the evangelisation of cultures and dialogue with non-believers, a royal road which leads to Christ who is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’ (Jn.14,6). Referring to this pathway, Pope Benedict XVI at the inaugural Mass of his Pontificate in April 2005, affirmed that ‘there is nothing more beautiful than to know Jesus and speak to others of our friendship with Him.’ In this Look in the Mirror, the inextricable relationship between Beauty and the New Evangelisation is briefly explored. In our first reading, Pope Benedict surveys the landscape of the New Evangelisation, today’s landscape, a landscape were many of our friends and neighbours, never mind the culture at large, live ‘as if God did not exist’. In this reading Benedict invites each of us, in our own small ways,
to participate in the New Evangelisation and become evangelisers. Building upon this theme Cardinal Timothy Dolan in our second reading gives us seven things to remember when we set about evangelising. From among Cardinal Dolan’s considered list my personal favourite is ‘Remember that an evangelist must be someone who smiles, a person of joy’. Such an evangelist is the irrepressible Fr. Michael Shields who is the source of our third reading ‘Beauty will save the world’. For as Fr. Michael writes ‘we are made for a permanent beauty i.e. God and God alone.’ Our fourth and fifth readings ‘The Path of Beauty’ and ‘The Beauty of Truth’ come from two young ladies Anna Kerstyn and Megan Hodder. Quite simply, the language of Beauty, the language of Grace, speaks to us, speaks to our hearts and does so ‘always and everywhere.’ Our sixth reading addresses the issue of what we can do as individual to evangelise the culture and this is immediately followed by a prayer for the evangelisation of culture. Apropos of which we should never forget, as we were recently reminded by Pope Francis, that ‘Prayer works’ and is more efficacious than we will ever know.
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Eddie Cotter Jr. founder of the Dead Theologians Society like Fr. Michael Shields is another joy-filled evangelist. For more than thirty years Eddie has been deeply involved in Youth Ministry in the USA and around the world. For some time now Eddie has been preparing profiles of the lives of saints for inclusion in the Mirror. Anticipating World Youth Day in Rio de Janiero at the end of July, Eddie has selected to profile the Jesuit St. Aloyius Gonzaga, patron saint of Youth. Also with reference to World Youth Day in Rio, Eddie will be leading a small band of musicians down to Rio to perform excerpts from The Prodigal. The Prodigal is a 45 minute musical interpretation of the parable of The Prodigal Son which was co-produced by the Dead Theologians Society and ourselves and involved the combined talents of McPeake from Belfast, Kathleen Keane from Chicago and The Kells from Ohio. In this endeavour it was Eddie’s and our intention to produce ‘something beautiful for God’ and that is what Le Chéile (McPeake, Kathleen and the Kells) created last February at the Alexian Brothers Monastery, Knock and in Ballintubber Abbey. You will be hearing more about this New Evangelisation, this Via Pulchritudinis initiative in forthcoming issues of the Mirror.
Finally a simple word of heartfelt thanks to all our readers and benefactors for your prayers and kind donations offered in support of the suffering and persecuted Church in Need throughout the world. Through your prayers and material supports each of you are actively participating in the New Evangelisation, each of you are actively engaged on mission. The truth is that ‘some people give to the missions by going and some people go to the missions by giving’. This truth has been beautifully captured in the last of the letters in our Letters Page where an 85 year old benefactor in France writes about how she came to realise that through her ‘small offering and lots of prayers’ she is ‘bringing consolation to the Christians in Syria’ and she is therefore very much ‘still in service’. Thankfully all of us are ‘still in service’ and please God will always be of service to God and to each other, ever-conscious of Cardinal Dolan’s sixth point, ‘The New Evangelisation is about Love – the Love of God made concrete in service’. This is the Via Pulchritudinis, the Way of Beauty. Beanachtaí
J F Declan Quinn
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On The New Evangelisation by Pope Benedict XVI1
t is the duty of the Church to proclaim always and everywhere the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He, the first and supreme evangeliser, commanded the Apostles on the day of his Ascension to the Father: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you’ (Mt 28:19-20). Faithful to this mandate, the Church—a people chosen by God to declare his wonderful deeds (cf. 1 Peter 2:9)—ever since she received the gift of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:14), has never tired of making known to the whole world the beauty of the Gospel as she preaches Jesus Christ, true God and true man, the same ‘yesterday and today and for ever’ (Heb.13:8), who, by his death and Resurrection, brought us salvation and fulfilled the promise made of old. Hence the mission of evangelisation, a continuation of the work desired by the Lord Jesus, is necessary for the Church: it cannot be overlooked; it is an expression of her very nature. In the course of history, this mission has taken on new forms and employed new strategies according to different places, situations, and historical periods. In our own time, it has been particularly challenged by an abandonment of the
faith—a phenomenon progressively more manifest in societies and cultures which for centuries seemed to be permeated by the Gospel. The social changes we have witnessed in recent decades have a long and complex history, and they have profoundly altered our way of looking at the world. We need only think of • the many advances in science and technology, • the expanding possibilities with regard to life and individual freedom, • the profound changes in the economic sphere, and • the mixing of races and cultures caused by global-scale migration and • an increasing interdependence of peoples.
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All of this has not been without consequences on the religious dimension of human life as well. If on the one hand humanity has derived undeniable benefits from these changes, and the Church has drawn from them further incentives for bearing witness to the hope that is within her (cf. 1 Pt 3:15), on the other hand there has been a troubling loss of the sense of the sacred, which has even called into question foundations once deemed unshakable such as • faith in a provident creator God, • the revelation of Jesus Christ as the one Saviour, and • a common understanding of basic human experiences: i.e., birth, death, life in a family, and reference to a natural moral law. Even though some consider these things a kind of liberation, there soon follows an awareness that an interior desert results whenever the human being, wishing to be the sole architect of his nature and destiny, finds himself deprived of that which is the very foundation of all things.
With foresight, the Servant of God Paul VI noted that the task of evangelisation, ‘as a result of the frequent situations of de-christianisation in our day, also proves equally necessary • for innumerable people who have been baptised but who live quite outside Christian life, • for simple people who have a certain faith but an imperfect knowledge of the foundations of that faith, • for intellectuals who feel the need to know Jesus Christ in a light different from the instruction they received as children, and for many others’ (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 52). Moreover, having in mind those distant from the faith, he added that the evangelising action of the Church ‘must constantly seek the proper means and language for presenting, or representing,
The Second Vatican Council already included among its central topics the question of the relationship between the Church and the modern world. In view of this conciliar teaching, my Predecessors reflected further on the need to find adequate ways to help the people of our time to hear the living and eternal Word of the Lord.
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to them God’s revelation and faith in Jesus Christ’ (ibid., n. 56). The Venerable Servant of God John Paul II made this urgent task a central point of his far-reaching Magisterial teaching, referring to it as the ‘new evangelisation,’ which he systematically explored in depth on numerous occasions—a task that still bears upon the Church today, particularly in regions Christianised long ago. Although this task directly concerns the Church’s way of relating ad extra, it nevertheless presupposes first of all a constant interior renewal, a continuous passing, so to speak, from evangelised to evangelising. It is enough to recall what was affirmed in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici: ‘Whole countries and nations where religion and the Christian life were formerly flourishing and capable of fostering a viable and working
community of faith, are now put to a hard test, and in some cases, are even undergoing a radical transformation, as a result of a constant spreading of an indifference to religion, of secularism and atheism. This particularly concerns countries and nations of the so-called First World, in which economic well-being and consumerism, even if coexistent with a tragic situation of poverty and misery, inspires and sustains a life lived “as if God did not exist”. This indifference to religion and the practice of religion devoid of true meaning in the face of life’s very serious problems, are not less worrying and upsetting when compared with declared atheism. Sometimes the Christian faith as well, while maintaining some of the externals of its tradition and rituals, tends to be separated from those moments of human existence which have the most significance, such as, birth, suffering and death [...].’
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‘On the other hand, in other regions or nations many vital traditions of piety and popular forms of Christian religion are still conserved; but today this moral and spiritual patrimony runs the risk of being dispersed under the impact of a multiplicity of processes, including secularisation and the spread of sects. Only a re-evangelisation can assure the growth of a clear and deep faith, and serve to make these traditions a force for authentic freedom.’ ‘Without doubt a mending of the Christian fabric of society is urgently needed in all parts of the world. But for this to come about what is needed is to first remake the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community itself present in these countries and nations’ (n. 34). Making my own the concerns of my venerable Predecessors, I consider it opportune to offer appropriate responses so that the entire Church, allowing herself to be regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit, may present herself to the contemporary world with a missionary impulse in order to promote the new evangelisation.
• in certain territories, in fact, despite the spread of secularisation, Christian practice still thrives and shows itself deeply rooted in the soul of entire populations; • in other regions, however, there is a clearly a distancing of society from the faith in every respect, together with a weaker ecclesial fabric, even if not without elements of liveliness that the Spirit never fails to awaken; we also sadly know of • some areas that have almost completely abandoned the Christian religion, where the light of the faith is entrusted to the witness of small communities: these lands, which need a renewed first proclamation of the Gospel, seem particularly resistant to many aspects of the Christian message. This variety of situations demands careful discernment; to speak of a ‘new evangelisation’ does not in fact mean that
Above all, this pertains to Churches of ancient origin, which live in different situations and have different needs, and therefore require different types of motivation for evangelisation:
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a single formula should be developed that would hold the same for all circumstances. And yet it is not difficult to see that what all the Churches living in traditionally Christian territories need is a renewed missionary impulse, an expression of a new, generous openness to the gift of grace. Indeed we cannot forget that the first task will always be to make ourselves docile to the freely given action of the Spirit of the Risen One who accompanies all who are heralds of the Gospel and opens the hearts of those who listen. To proclaim fruitfully the Word of the Gospel one is first asked to have a profound experience of God. As I stated in my first Encyclical Deus Caritas Est: ‘Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction’ (n. 1). Likewise, at the root of all evangelisation lies not a human plan of expansion, but rather the desire to share the inestimable gift that God has wished to give us, making us sharers in his own life. • 1 Extract from the APOSTOLIC LETTER IN THE FORM OF MOTU PROPRIO, UBICUMQUE ET SEMPER OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF BENEDICT XVI ESTABLISHING THE PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR PROMOTING THE NEW EVANGELIZATION 21st September2010, the Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist.
On Being an Evangeliser Seven Things to Remember* 1
Remember that the first step of evangelisation must be to keep the quest for God alive: Even those who boast of their secularism have an innate longing for the divine.
2
Remember it is the power of God who sends his people to evangelise, so ‘Be not afraid’ - confident, without being triumphalist,
3
Remember that the New Evangelisation is not about presenting a doctrine or belief-system, but a Person, Jesus Christ.
4
Remember evangelisation is linked to catechesis.
5
Remember that an evangelist must be a someone who smiles, a person of joy.
6
Remember that the New Evangelisation is about love - the love of God made concrete in service.
7
Remember, that the Church is now peopled by those who are suffering persecution for their faith, and that these martyrs give impetus to the New Evangelisation. * Adapted from a Homily by Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
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‘Beauty Will Save the World’ by Fr Michael Shields, Magadan, Siberia. ecently I was asked to nominate three experiences of beauty and I immediately thought of... A winter display of northern lights on the Palmer mud flats in Alaska with swirling colours that danced and coloured the sky and the snow. And I knew it was all for me. A young women I visited while I was a seminarian, with bent arms and legs who had spent her whole life in a hospital bed in a Seattle hospital. When I looked into her crib I didn’t see her broken body but her eyes, deep, pure and blue and saw her gentle suffering smile. I felt had seen Gods face. Who was visiting whom?
A cold Siberian winter in my hermitage sitting opposite of a small monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament praying as I had done many times but that night Christ showed His beauty and it was so true and intimate my heart ached. I couldn’t look any longer so I covered the monstrance opened the door and met His majesty shining through the zillion stars filling the Siberian sky. He was beautiful everywhere. And I wept. The fact is that Beauty pulls at us, fills us, moves us, unites us, holds us, inspires us, comforts us, nourishes us, frees us, changes us, and creates that deep down ache we all have experienced; but can it save the world as Dostoyevsky so
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famously suggests?... Only if we let beauty work it’s beautiful way in our life. Beauty points to something more or someone more. Beauty asks what are you looking for? As CS Lewis so splendidly expresses ‘We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves.’1 So the beauty that we seek is really something that we will never fully find in this world. That is what causes the deep down heartache. The beautiful ache is a fleeting pang that says, ‘There’s something more than this life.’ We will only find hints of it that will keep us searching for more.
CS Lewis continues, ‘If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.’ In the area of apologetics this is called the ‘Argument of Desire’. Follow our desires to their end and we find God. Make our desires an end in themselves and we find hell… which is ourselves without God. Even the most twisted desires, we call sin, can lead a person to find God who can untwist, and purify the desire and show His most beautiful face. G.K. Chesterton once famously said, ‘Every man who knocks on the door of brothel is looking for God.’
Baikal Lake, Southern Siberia
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Sadly many of us keep coming back knocking on the wrong door. The beauty-ache however, reminds us that we are made for more; we are made for a permanent beauty i.e. God and God alone. And only God can satisfy our deepest desires. That water (earthly desires) will make you thirsty all your life. Jesus is the Living Water, that when you drink of him, you will never thirst again.2 John Flavel, a 17th Century Puritan writer from England said, ‘All that delights you in earthly things can never satisfy you, for all of your desires are in God. The comforts you have here are only drops which inflame, but do not satisfy the appetites of your soul, the Lamb however will lead you to fountains of living water.’ Beauty offers only two choices. Either that the lovely smell of a lily is a hint of a heavenly aroma, a promise that one day all will be fulfilled which leads to a life of hope and a person of faith. Or that the same aroma will be but a painful reminder that the lily will die and become fertiliser and so will the one who smells it. And there is nothing more than nothingness. An experience of beauty then is a painful despair that says life is meaningless.
The Wayfarer
by Padraic Pearse (1879 - 1916) The beauty of the world hath made me sad, This beauty that will pass; Sometimes my heart hath shaken with great joy To see a leaping squirrel in a tree, Or a red lady-bird upon a stalk, Or little rabbits in a field at evening, Lit by a slanting sun, Or some green hill where shadows drifted by Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven; Or children with bare feet upon the sands Of some ebbed sea, or playing on the streets Of little towns in Connacht, Things young and happy. And then my heart hath told me: These will pass, Will pass and change, will die and be no more, Things bright and green, things young and happy; And I have gone upon my way Sorrowful.
Life at the most beautiful moments offers a choice either it becomes a mockery that shouts ‘it is all for nothing and it is all going nowhere’ or a moment of sacramental grace that’s makes for a life of ‘wide awake living’ where the yearnings are seen as leaning into heaven. A LOOK IN THE +e513ei_print.indd 21
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Albert Camus the late 20th Century absurdist philosopher captures this despair when he writes, ‘Beauty is unbearable, it drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.’ You live differently when beauty is the pointer to God and not made into an idol. You don’t have to hold on to life with desperation squeezing it tightly and photographing every minute hoping the good memories will be enough to fill the void; your life can be ‘messed up’, broken and full of the mundane. Christians don’t get upset when the marriage is a struggle, or one’s career isn’t all it was suppose to be, they don’t get upset when the body starts falling apart. Life will bring pain, separation, Frozen Lake, Siberia
failure, uncertainty, unfulfilled plans but there is a way to live ‘in-the-hoped-forand-life-as-it-is’ reality; in the kingdom that is here and is yet to come. How? By realising you are looking for something so great that no single desire can even come close to fulfilling. And it will be yours. We throw ourselves into good things like work, family, and education and say that will do it, into play and say that will do it, into relationships and say that will do it. But finally it doesn’t do it. Even good things aren’t enough. We throw ourselves into following all and any desires. We throw ourselves into sex, alcohol, drugs, and more parties any time all the time and say that should do it but it doesn’t do it. What is looked for and what is at the centre of the beauty ache in every heart is what I believe to be the greatest and most irrefutable argument for the existence of God and is found in this passage of scripture 1 John 3:2: ‘Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.’ St Augustine said we are looking for God; we are seeking the beatific vision, the Visio Dei. You see Christianity critiques this age of making feelings and desires an end in themselves by saying what foolishness you live. Your life is too small. It is not that you should not feel or desire it is
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that your desires are not strong enough and your feelings deep enough. You live a sad shallow life where as there is so much more to have. CS Lewis puts it this way ‘In the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.’ 3 Is Dostoyevsky right? Will beauty save the world? The amazing truth is beauty has come into our world, died on a cross rose and is ascended and saved the world. And hear this scripture. ‘He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.’ Isaiah 53:2 He who was most beautiful became the very ugliness of sin so we could become the most beautiful of God. And all who have eyes for beauty will see and all who have ears for beauty will hear and all who have hearts for beauty will live in Him. And they pray this prayer ‘One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek … all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to seek him in his temple.’ 4 •
I See His Blood Upon The Rose by Joseph Mary Plunkett (1887–1916) I SEE his blood upon the rose And in the stars the glory of his eyes, His body gleams amid eternal snows, His tears fall from the skies. I see his face in every flower; The thunder and the singing of the birds Are but his voice - and carven by his power Rocks are his written words. All pathways by his feet are worn, His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea, His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn, His cross is every tree.
1 C.S. Lewis: ‘The Weight of Glory’. 2 cf John 4:13-14. 3 C.S. Lewis: ‘The Weight of Glory’. 4 Psalm 27:4
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‘The Via Pulchritudinis’, The Path of Beauty by Anna Krestyn*
In a message sent to the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation, Benedict XVI recounted a striking personal encounter: ‘For me, an unforgettable experience was the Bach concert that Leonard Bernstein conducted in Munich after the sudden death of Karl Richter. I was sitting next to the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann. When the last note of one of the great Thomas-Kantor-Cantatas triumphantly faded away, we looked at each other spontaneously and right then we said: “Anyone who has heard this knows that the faith is true.”’ What is it about the brush with something beautiful that awakens the heart to at least the notion of the Creator and of the
human person’s capacity to know him? Does beauty, understood as a way of bringing the Christian faith to others, hold a particular value for the modern age? Many leaders in the Church are drawing increasing attention to this way of evangelisation. In the concluding document of a Plenary Assembly in 2006**, it was confirmed as a particularly useful method in a radically relativistic culture where rational discourse is increasingly difficult: ‘With a spirit of suspicion hanging over truth and goodness, the Via Pulchritudinis – the path of beauty – is now more than ever a necessity. It fosters the faith of the people making them capable to witness to their faith and this, obviously not only
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during liturgical celebrations, but also throughout life in general.’ The encounter with beauty offers a unique opportunity to meet God because it brings the person to knowledge not through instruction but through a direct experience that is unhampered by the limitations of verbal apologetics, a mechanism that is not always effectively received by many individuals. As Benedict XVI puts it, ‘Being struck and overcome by the beauty of Christ is a more real, more profound knowledge than mere rational deduction. Of course we must not underrate the importance of theological reflection, of exact and precise theological thought; it remains absolutely necessary. But to move from
here to disdain or to reject the impact produced by the response of the heart in the encounter with beauty as a true form of knowledge would impoverish us and dry up our faith and our theology. We must rediscover this form of knowledge; it is a pressing need of our time.’ Anything truly beautiful leads ultimately to the saving beauty of Christ, who pierces through all arguments, and for this reason the way of beauty is a privileged pathway to evangelisation. • * Source: http://www.aleteia.org/en/religion/documents. ** Pontifical Council for Culture, Plenary Assembly 2006
The Beauty of Forgiveness ‘He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes’ (Rev 21:4) says the Bible of the persecuted and suffering. This is also fulfilled, in some sense, in the here and now, in the power of faith and forgiveness. In the state of Orissa, in India, the Christians have indeed suffered. Their churches and houses were burned down, their priests and religious attacked. Now the bishops of the five dioceses concerned see the Year of Faith as ‘a golden opportunity for the Church in Orissa’, and above all for the young people there, to strengthen and deepen their faith and be willing to forgive. A full programme is being implemented, with texts from the Second Vatican A LOOK IN THE +e513ei_print.indd 25
Orissa - United in prayer.
Council, the Bible and the Catechism. They meet to pray and hold penitential services. As always, the costs exceed the resources of these hard-up dioceses, and so we have promised to help. In their pastoral letter the bishops have entrusted the programme to the protection of Our Lady, for she was ‘blessed, because she believed’. • 21 18/06/2013 14:29
The Beauty of Truth by Megan Hodder*
A year ago when I was just beginning to explore the possibility that, despite what I had previously believed and been brought up to believe, there might be something to the Catholic faith, I read ‘Letters to a Young Catholic’ by George Weigel. One passage in particular struck me. Talking of the New Testament miracles and the meaning of faith, Weigel writes: ‘In the Catholic view of things, walking on water is an entirely sensible thing to do. It’s staying in the boat, hanging tightly to our own sad little securities, that’s rather mad.’ In the following months, that life outside the boat – the life of faith –would come to make increasing sense to me, until eventually I could no longer justify staying put. Recently I was baptised and confirmed into the Catholic Church. Of course, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Faith is something my generation is meant to be casting aside, not taking up. I was raised without any religion and was eight when 9/11 took place. Religion was irrelevant in my personal life and had provided my formative years with a rolling-news backdrop of violence and extremism. I avidly read Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens, whose ideas were sufficiently similar to mine that I could push any uncertainties I had to the back of my mind. After all, what alternative was there to Atheism?
As a teenager, I realised that I needed to read beyond my staple polemicists, as well as start researching the ideas of the most egregious enemies of reason, such as Catholics, to properly defend my world view. It was here, ironically, that the problems began. I started by reading Pope Benedict’s Regensburg address, aware that it had generated controversy at the time and was some sort of attempt –futile, of course – to reconcile faith and reason. I also read the shortest book of his I could find, ‘On Conscience. I expected – and wanted – to find bigotry and illogicality that would vindicate my atheism’. Instead, I was presented with a God who was the Logos: not a supernatural dictator crushing human reason, but the self-expressing standard of goodness and objective truth towards which our reason is oriented, and in which it is fulfilled, an entity that does not robotically control our morality, but is rather the source of our capacity for moral perception, a perception that requires development and formation through the conscientious exercise of free will. It was a far more subtle, humane and, yes, credible perception of faith than I had expected. It didn’t lead to any dramatic spiritual epiphany, but did spur me to look further into Catholicism, and to re-examine some of the problems I had with atheism with a more critical eye. First, morality. Non-theistic morality, to my mind, tended towards two equally problematic camps: either it was subjec-
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tive to the point of meaninglessness or, when followed logically, entailed intuitively repulsive outcomes, such as Sam Harris’s stance on torture. But the most appealing theories which could circumvent these problems, like virtue ethics, often did so by presupposing the existence of God. Before, with my caricatured understanding of theism, I’d considered that nonsensical. Now, with the more detailed understanding I was starting to develop, I wasn’t so sure. Next, metaphysics. I soon realised that relying on the New Atheists for my counter-arguments to the existence of God had been a mistake: Dawkins, for instance, gives a disingenuously cursory treatment of St Thomas Aquinas in ‘The God Delusion’, engaging only with the summary of Aquinas’s proofs in the Five Ways – and
misunderstanding those summarised proofs to boot. Acquainting myself fully with Thomistic-Aristotelian ideas, I found them to be a valid explanation of the natural world, and one on which atheist philosophers had failed to make a coherent assault. What I still did not understand was how a theology that operated in harmony with human reason could simultaneously be, in Benedict XVI’s words, ‘a theology grounded in biblical faith’. I’d always assumed that ’sola scriptura’ (‘scripture alone’), with its evident shortcomings and fallacies, was how all consistent, believing Christians read the Bible. So I was surprised to discover that this view could be refuted just as robustly from a Catholic standpoint – reading the Bible
Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ (1844 – 1889) GLORY be to God for dappled things For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.
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through the Church and its history, in light of Tradition – as from an atheist one. I looked for absurdities and inconsistencies in the Catholic faith that would derail my thoughts from the unnerving conclusion I was heading towards, but the infuriating thing about Catholicism is its coherency: once you accept the basic conceptual structure, things fall into place with terrifying speed. ‘The Christian mysteries are an indivisible whole,’ wrote Edith Stein in The Science of the Cross: ‘If we become immersed in one, we are led to all the others.’ The beauty and authenticity of even the most ostensibly difficult parts of Catholicism, such as the sexual ethics, became clear once they were viewed not as a decontextualised list of prohibitions, but as essential components in the intricate body of the Church’s teaching.
to understand only through observing those already serving the Church within that life of grace.
There was one remaining problem, however: my lack of familiarity with faith as something lived. To me, the whole practice and vernacular of religion – prayer, hymns, Mass – was something wholly alien, which I was reluctant to step into.
I grew up in a culture that has largely turned its back on faith. It’s why I was able to drift through life with my illconceived atheism going unchallenged, and at least partially explains the sheer extent of the popular support for the New Atheists: for every considerate and well-informed atheist, there will be others with no personal experience of religion and no interest in the arguments who are simply drifting with the cultural tide.
My friendships with practising Catholics finally convinced me that I had to make a decision. Faith, after all, isn’t merely an intellectual exercise, an assent to certain propositions; it’s a radical act of the will, one that engenders a change of the whole person. Books had taken me to Catholicism as a plausible conjecture, but Catholicism as a living truth I came
As the popularity of belligerent, allthe-answers atheism wanes, however, thoughtful Christians able to explain and defend their faith will become an increasingly vital presence in the public square. I hope I, in a small way, am an example of the appeal that Catholicism can still hold in an age that at times appears intractably opposed to it. •
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Evangelising the Culture enerally, under the pressure of many forces (secularism, relativism, atheism, indifference, attacks on human dignity, etc.), our present culture continues to disintegrate in many sectors and is crying out for help. Blessed John Paul II challenged us, echoing the Scriptures, to ‘be not afraid’ to proceed with a New Evangelisation, and to promote and develop a culture of life and hope. Today, it is urgent for Christians to believe and proclaim, to live, serve and celebrate the Gospel of Jesus Christ with ‘new ardor, new methods and new expression’.
Therefore, let us commit ourselves and one another, and our whole life, to Christ our God, and to bringing the gift of His saving love and power through the Holy Spirit to everyone beginning with our own families. Let us therefore begin to evangelise the culture:
• one person at a time • one day at a time • one act at a time • one prayer at a time • and all in God’s good time.
•
Prayer theEvangelisation Evangelisation ofofCulture Prayer forforthe Culture O Holy Spirit, our Advocate and guide, Help us open doors to Christ’s saving power, Which alone is the source of hope for humanity And the renewal of society. Fill us with courage to respond boldly To the call of Blessed John Paul II To evangelise the culture. Enable us by Your grace to live Our faith in the public square, So that we may promote A civilisation of love and a culture of life, And may secure justice for every human person At every stage and condition of life. We ask this through the intercession of The Blessed Virgin Mary, Star of the New Evangelisation
Amen. Amen.
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Your personal invitation to join the Worldpriest Tochar Phadraig Pilgrimage Walk (La Via Pulchritudinis) A unique Spiritual Experience for Priests their Parishioners & Friends.
On the 12, 13, 14, & 15 August 2013, Co. Mayo, Ireland. WORLDPRIEST wishes to celebrate The Gathering by inviting Priests, parishioners & friends from around the world to join us in The Worldpriest Tochar Phadraig Pilgrimage Walk. Start point at Ballintubber Abbey. View full pilgrimage walk schedule www.worldpriest.com . on The Gathering 2013. Bookings now been taken on
www.worldpriest.com
Fr. Michael Shields from Magadan, Russia will be joining the Gathering in Ballintubber. For people who are already in Ireland who wish to participate in this special pilgrimage email enquiries at
info@worldpriest.com
Ballintubber Abbey
Knock Basilica
www.worldpriest.com Supported by
Aid to the Church in Need
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AINT LOYSIUS of ONZAGA Patron Saint of Youth he youth of today as in any day struggle with the need for independence as well as direction. To avoid becoming turned in totally on the self, which can ultimately lead to destruction, young people are often encouraged to turn away from themselves through service to others. Saint Aloysius Gonzaga is a perfect example of a person who went against the grain of his parents in search of independence as he felt drawn to a life of service to God. It was in serving the needs of others that Saint Aloysius ultimately found his true freedom. Together, let us examine the life of this great patron of youth who was certainly a normal, precocious child until his own encounter with the lives of the saints provided him the direction he so desperately sought after.
and prestige and it was to this as well as a life in the military that the Gonzaga’s had the highest of hopes and dreams for their eldest son. Luigi proved to be a child with all the normal curiosities as well as propensities for getting into trouble. At age five, Luigi made his presence felt as he shot off a canon without anyone’s knowledge, which greatly disrupted the military camp he was attending with his father. By the time Luigi reached the age of seven, something stirred deep inside him which would set him on a crash course with his father for many years to come. Luigi wanted to become a saint. Life of Privilege hen Luigi was eight years old, his father took him and his younger brother, Ridolfo to Florence to further their education. By this time (1577), Ferrante Gonzaga had become the Governor of Montserrat and thus could afford his family the very best life had to offer.
Hopes and Dreams uigi (Saint Aloysius) Gonzaga was born on March 9, 1568 to Ferrante and Marta Tana Gonzaga in Lombardy. His father was the marquis of Castiglione in the service of Philip II, King of Spain, while his mother was also the lady of honor to the king’s wife and was a very pious, holy woman. To say the least, Luigi was born into a family of extreme wealth
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Through this entire time, Luigi’s father kept preparing his eldest son for a career in the military in the hopes that he would one day follow in his own footsteps. Luigi had other ideas. By the time Luigi was almost twelve years old, he was ready to resign his right of succession to the marquisate of Castiglione to his younger brother in order that he might pursue his desire for religious life. Illness and Inspiration od began to answer Luigi’s prayers in a way that he probably did not expect nor recognise immediately. When Luigi was twelve years of age, his kidneys began to give him trouble, which left him very sick. The remainder of his life, he would suffer digestive problems which caused him to be very weak. During his illness and recovery, he read another volume on the lives of the saints, which sent the future saint, himself into the heights of desire for sanctity. Through the inspira-
tion of the lives of the saints, Luigi began to impose upon himself a rigorous schedule of prayer (rising at midnight every night) along with fasting 3 days a week, on bread and water (something that would not have been advised given his already weak constitution due to his kidney disease) as well as other forms of penance. Another book that Luigi read was a book on the Jesuit missionaries in India (specifically about the life of Saint Francis Xavier – DTS website). It was through the reading of this book that Luigi Gonzaga set his heart upon entering the Jesuit Order All of this inspiration led the future saint into immediate action, as he began to teach the catechism to the poor children of Castiglione, thus his first missionary activities. Vocation to the Jesuits y the time Luigi Gonzaga was fifteen years old, he was determined to enter the Jesuit Order, yet his father
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would not hear of it. In an attempt to counter his son’s desire, his father sent him on a two year journey throughout Spain and Italy, hoping that this would take his son’s mind off such foolish thoughts. Throughout this entire time, Luigi’s mother was supportive of her son’s desire for religious life. Eventually, his father after an extensive battle relented and allowed him to enter the Jesuit Order. Luigi set out for Rome and entered the Jesuit novitiate house of Saint Andrea arriving on November 25, 1585 at the age of seventeen. Immediately, his superiors curbed Luigi’s penitential practices that were most likely more harmful than helpful to both his physical as well as his spiritual life. He was ordered to eat more and pray at established times, in order that he might get enough sleep. (It is important that before we begin any sort of penitential practices, which in and of themselves, are good for us, we should check with our pastor or spiritual director that they may give us proper guidance.) Throughout the two years of his novitiate, Luigi, now known as Brother Aloysius was a model of religious fervor. During his period of formation, he was sent to Milan for a time. One morning, during Morning Prayers, Aloysius received some sort of insight or revelation that he did not have long left to live, which filled his heart with joy. Because of his weak constitution, he was sent back to Rome to complete his theological studies.
visited Rome in 1591. The Jesuits set up a hospital in Rome, which was served by several brothers and priests, including the Superior General of the Order himself. Brother Aloysius offered his services to the victims of the plague who came through the hospital. He brought comfort to the patients through exhorting them, bathing them, changing beds and any other lowly tasks in which he could involve himself. Several Jesuits came down with the plague, including Aloysius. Brother Aloysius suffered for a time and then was thought to be in recovery, even though he received a revelation of sorts that his time was soon at hand.
The Plague hits Rome he plague, which ravaged Europe off and on between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries, A LOOK IN THE +e513ei_print.indd 33
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The Death of Brother Aloysius uring a three month period during which he was reduced to extreme weakness, Aloysius spent a great deal of time with his spiritual director, Saint Robert Bellarmine (an incorrupt Jesuit bishop and doctor of the church). On one occasion, Aloysius asked Father Bellarmine if it was possible for a person to die and go straight to heaven, bypassing purgatory. The future bishop (he would become the archbishop of Capua, Italy in 1602) told Aloysius that it was certainly possible and to pray for this grace and greatest of gifts. After receiving this answer, Brother Aloysius fell into a state of ecstasy which lasted all night, during which he was given fore-
knowledge that he would die on the octave of the feast of Corpus Christi. At first, it seemed that he would recover and then he took a turn for the worse. Brother Aloysius received the last rites of the church from Father (Saint) Robert Bellarmine. With his eyes fixed on the crucifix that he held, Brother Aloysius spoke the name of Jesus and died around midnight of June 20 – 21 of 1591, at the age of twenty-three. The relics of Saint Aloysius are buried under the altar in the Lancellotti Chapel of the Church of Saint Ignatius in Rome. He was canonised a Saint in 1726 by Pope Benedict XIII. • Eddie Cotter Jr.
A Reading from a Letter to his Mother by Saint Aloysius. ‘May the comfort and grace of the Holy Spirit be yours for ever, most honored lady. Your letter found me lingering still in this region of the dead, but now I must rouse myself to make my way on to heaven at last and to praise God for ever in the land of the living; indeed I had hoped that before this time my journey there would have been over. In charity, as Saint Paul says, means “to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who are glad,” then, dearest mother, you shall rejoice exceedingly that God in his grace and his love for you is showing me the path to true happiness, and assuring me that I shall never lose him. Take care above all things, most honored lady, not to insult God’s boundless loving kindness; you would certainly do this if you mourned as dead one living face to face with God, one whose prayers can bring you in your troubles more powerful aid than they ever could on earth. And our parting will not be for long; we shall see each other again in heaven; we shall be united with our Savior; there we shall praise him with heart and soul, sing of his mercies for ever, and enjoy eternal happiness.’
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Prayer to Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Star of the New Evangelisation Holy Mary, star of the new evangelisation, Make us the light of the world. We receive Christ in the Eucharist; Help us build the Kingdom in the world. Teach us to do whatever He tells us. May our study of His life lead us to love Him, and May our love for Him lead us to imitate Him. If we are what we should be, we will Set the world ablaze and affect the culture. We ask your intercession to make this so, Through Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
38t
Intercession 2013 for Priests
hY ear
5th - 30th of August
Enquiries for all retreats Secretary, Intercession for Priests, Purcell House, All Hallows College, Grace Park Road, Drumcondra, Dublin 9, Ireland TEL (01) 852 0700/(086) 356 3120 EMAIL retreats@intercessionforpriests.org
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Thank you A chairde, Despite the ongoing global economic recession, ACN’s international benefactors in 2012 provided in excess of €90 million in support of the suffering and persecuted Church worldwide, an increase of approx. 10% on the previous year. So it was that during 2012, local Churches and religious orders in over 140 countries received material support. Directly as a result of your support... • approx. 20,000 priests were provided with needed sustenance • approx. 18,000 seminarians and religious were assisted in their formation studies • approx. 2.5 million catechetical books were distributed in over 170 languages and • approx. €19 million was spent on funding over 350 Church construction projects. With your support we have... • helped contemplative sisters to live their vocation of calling down graces from heaven by their prayers. • enabled priests and catechists to visit four or five villages in remote and inaccessible regions and slake the thirst of souls, whereas without suitable transport they would have managed only one, or two at best. • built or renovated seminaries, thereby helping prepare the ground for vocations;
• built homes for the Lord, forging communion around the Tabernacle; • printed and distributed hundreds of thousands of Bibles and so helped children and young people to take the Good News to heart. And perhaps, through all these things, we have after all managed to hold back evil. We may not have prevented any murderous assassinations. But we have confronted hatred and bitterness with love and forgiveness and perhaps indeed secretly encouraged many a heart to speak the words of Saint Stephen: ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ Among the deep furrows and trenches of war, terror and suffering, we have sown the small seeds of your love. Now this seed is germinating. For as Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his encyclical on hope, ‘His Kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us.’ In this Year of Faith we are sowing the seed you have given us. Obviously the more seed we have, the more fruitful we can be. Aid to the Church in Need’s founder, Father Werenfried, never said no to the suffering and persecuted and neither do we. Today the needs of Christ’s church are still growing all over the world. In 140 countries there are Christians hoping and waiting for our seed of love. For love is without measure: ‘love is as strong as death’ as it says in the Song of Songs. The Church in Need is founded on this love.
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So it is that through your love, through your prayers and material support all of you are actively participating in the Church’s mission. Your prayers, your donations, your mass stipends your legacies make a real difference in helping those who suffer to tangibly experience the love of God. Thank you once again for all the support which you give to Christ’s suffering and persecuted Church and please continue to remember the Church in Need in your daily prayers.
Johannes Freiherr Heereman, Executive President of ACN International
J F Declan Quinn, National Director ACN (Irl)
Beanachtaí
PS. Audited accounts for ACN (Int) 2012 are now available for immediate viewing on our website www.acnireland.org. Hard copies of the report are available upon request to all benefactors.
Some people give to the missions by going Some people go to the missions by giving!
Where to send your contribution for the Church in Need: Please use the Freepost envelope. Aid to the Church in Need, 151 St. Mobhi Road, Glasnevin, Dublin 9. Tel. (01) 837 7516. Email: info@acnireland.org Web: www.acnireland.org
(Registered Charity Numbers: (RoI) 9492 (NI) XR96620).
If you give by standing order, or have sent a donation recently, please accept our sincere thanks. This Mirror is for your interest and information.
Beautiful Work in Gratitude to God In Gratitude to God For many a long year now we have felt a great love for our persecuted and vilified fellow Christians around the world. Since we in Austria are comfortable and able to live in freedom and peace, we want by this donation to express our gratitude to you, and of course, to God. A Benefactor in Austria Father Werenfried’s Beautiful Work As a student, I witnessed the beginnings of Father Werenfried’s campaign. Later, as a member of the Catholic youth movement, we helped for the Chapel Truck campaign. I pray for you and for all who are continuing the beautiful work of the Bacon Priest, which has brought so much help to the Christians behind the Iron Curtain. I still help ACN sometimes, as now on the anniversary of his birth and death. A Nun in Belgium
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Encouragement in life The Mirror strengthens me and often gives me encouragement to do more in my own life. The Gospel message and the many practical aids to faith that ACN has sponsored are impressive and encouraging. A Benefactress in Germany Still in Service At the age of 85, after first of all working in a Catholic college, and then with a priest, I found myself after his death with nothing to do. Your letter, in response to my modest donation, has helped me to see things differently. Through this small offering, and lots of prayers, I am bringing consolation to the Christians in Syria. For as you write, ‘The material aid is helping them to survive and the spiritual aid is bringing courage and hope to build the future.’ And so, I am still ‘in service’. A Benefactress in France
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Stand firm in the faith, be strong. (1 Cor. 16:13)
‘New evangelisation is the answer to the needs of the people in the traditionally Christian countries.’ Father Martin M. Barta, ACN Ecclesiastical Assistant.
‘One cannot proclaim the Gospel of Jesus without the tangible witness of one’s life. Those who listen to us and observe us must be able to see in our actions what they hear from our lips, and so give glory to God! I am thinking now of some advice that Saint Francis of Assisi gave his brothers: preach the Gospel and, if necessary, use words.’ Pope Francis, Basilica of Saint Paul’s outside the walls. 14.04.2013.
The Saving Cross: Pausing on a pilgrimage in Kazakhstan.
Aid to the Church in Need helping the Church heal the world. 151 St. Mobhi Road, Dublin 9. TEL 01 837 7516 EMAIL info@acnireland.org +e513ei_print.indd 1
www.acnireland.org www.allthingscatholic.org www.wheregodweeps.org www.godspeakstohischildren.org 18/06/2013 14:29