Me, God’s Priest, and God

His mercy endures forever. (Psalm 118)

The Solemnity of Easter lasts for eight days–a week and a day, from Sunday to Sunday. It is the biggest feastday of all, too big for just twenty-four hours.

On the eighth day of Easter in the year 2000, Pope John Paul II declared that this day is ‘Divine Mercy Sunday.’ He declared this while he was canonizing St. Faustina Kowalska, the nun who had seen the vision of Jesus with rays of merciful love pouring out from His Heart.

When the Pope declared that the eighth day of Easter is Divine Mercy Sunday, he noted that none of the prayers or readings of the Mass needed to be changed. From the beginning, from the first eight days after our Lord rose from the dead, the Solemnity of Easter has been the feast of divine mercy.

When the Lord Jesus spoke to the Apostles after He rose from the dead, He commissioned them to preach His message. The message is: Repent of your sins, and be forgiven!

The Apostles obeyed. When St. Peter preached to the citizens of Jerusalem, he addressed the very people who had stood in front of Pontius Pilate’s praetorium and clamored for Christ’s crucifixion. St. Peter spoke to these enemies of Christ and said, “You denied the holy and righteous One and asked that a murderer be released to you. The author of life you put to death…Repent, therefore!”

Dear brothers and sisters: If we want to keep this holy feast, the feast that lasts for a week and a day, the feast of the Lord’s Resurrection, the feast of Divine Mercy—if we want to keep this feast in sincerity and truth, then we must acknowledge that we are the very citizens to whom St. Peter spoke.

Altogether Under

That time, Alex Ovechkin knocked everything else, other than the kitchen sink, into the crease.

This is what Steve Kolbe said about Ovechkin’s disallowed goal in the second period this evening. Will the streak end? Caps are clawing back from a 5-2 deficit right now.

…I am not trying to be a priss. But to call our mid-Atlantic snowbound situation an “apocalypse” is really a sacrilege.

The Apocalypse will occur when the Lord Jesus Christ appears again in glory. If we are not ready for it, it will be a great deal more unpleasant than four feet of snow.

I think Mike Wise described our situation better in his column:

We have run out of bread and milk. We can’t move our vehicles. We can’t move our muscles.

We are snowed in until June, people. June!

We are trapped in a Ukranian hamlet, huddled around a bonfire trying to thaw, comforted by just three things: grain alcohol, the thought of global warming and our money-in-the-bank hockey team — Ovechkin, Semin, Backstrom and the boys, winners of 14 consecutive games.

Fr. Matteo Ricci, S.J.

We are fed up. We are freezing. We are “Dr. Zhivago” with a Target.

All we have left is the Caps. C-A-P-S! Caps! Caps! Caps!

…Don’t forget that it is only three months until the 400th anniversary of the death of Fr. Matteo Ricci.

Fr. Ricci was a Jesuit missionary in China. He is one of the most excellent men who has ever lived. He died on May 11, 1610.

Disputable Articles

Look, I was AIMING for that camera!

The big ecclesiastical news of the past month is that Pope Benedict intends to make it easy for Anglicans to come into full communion with the Church.

Entire Anglican parishes–even dioceses–will be able to unite fully with the Pope while retaining some distinctive Anglican practices.

Which brings us to the Book of Common Prayer, the Anglican liturgical prayerbook.

This book was a companion of mine for years, before my reception into the R.C. Church in 1993.

The Book of Common Prayer book was originally published by the Protestant bishops in England in 1549. It has undergone a number of revisions. Different Anglicans use different editions.

The Preface to the edition published by the Episcopal bishops in the new United States in 1789 concludes with an exhortation about the use of the prayerbook:

It is hoped that [this book] will be received and examined by every true member of our Church, and every sincere Christian, with a meek, candid, and charitable frame of mind; without prejudice or prepossessions; seriously considering what Christianity is, and what the truths of the Gospel are; and earnestly beseeching Almighty God to accompany with his blessing every endeavor for promulgating them to mankind in the clearest, plainest, most affecting and majestic manner, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Savior.

Granted, this is a thoroughly edifying sentence. But the book contains errors.

The book features only two of the seven sacraments. The prayers in this book do not honor the Blessed Virgin or any of the saints, and the rules prohibit praying for the souls in Purgatory.

The book does not include prayers for the Pope.

The book systematically refuses to express that the Holy Mass is the sacrifice of Christ and that He is truly present–Body, Blood, soul, and divinity–in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar. The book requires that the chalice be offered to the people.

The Church embraces many styles of ceremony for the celebration of Her faith. But there is only ONE faith, the Catholic faith.

St. Augustine

The faith is expressed in the teaching of the Popes and Councils, including the Council of Trent. Parts of the Book of Common Prayer were originally published precisely to contradict the teachings of the Council of Trent.

The Book of Common Prayer was edited for use as a Catholic liturgical prayerbook in 2003. The errors of doctrine were fixed. The revised book is called the “Book of Divine Worship” (this link takes a long time to load).

Apparently, a few Anglican-use Catholic parishes already use this revised prayerbook. Perhaps this version will be the book used in all Anglican-use churches.

…Last Sunday I published a silly little sermon about miracles. I tried explain that the Lord Jesus worked miracles not for the sake of working miracles, but for the sake of communicating the mystery of the Kingdom of God. In other words, His miracles were signs, as St. John called them in his gospel.

Anyway: St. Augustine explains this much better in the first part of his Sermon 98…

Tough loss for the Caps this evening. Bad news: After a fisticuffs, Ovechkin left the ice with an undisclosed “upper body” injury.

Unity, Diversity, Universal Apostolate, and Ovechkin

In the Bible, the book of Genesis recounts the beginning—the beginning of the world, of the human race, and of the Chosen People of God.

The first eleven chapters of the book recall what happened before the Lord called Abraham to be the father of the holy nation.

No Fears and No Pride

Alex Ovechkin

Abraham Lincoln is 200 years old. The Capitals lost a heartbreaker in Madison Square Garden on a shootout last night. And we are NOT worried about any Friday the Thirteenth.

To fear Friday the 13th is a type of superstition. “Divination” seeks knowledge about the course of events from dates, signs in the sky, or other auguries.

God provides for us every day of every month. To be afraid of Friday the 13th is a sin against the First Commandment.

Nonetheless, if you have an orange bathmat or doormat, make sure to use it on Saturday.

Stomp on anything orange, especially between noon and 2:00 p.m…

…How did Notre Dame just manage to beat Louisville by 33 points?

…Okay, here is today’s homily:

A man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh (Genesis 2:24)