We went to the Easter Vigil Mass this year for the first time in 12 years (that’s what happens when you have kids) and I must say that I had forgotten (or never really realised) the beauty and meaning behind this the greatest of all liturgies.

It made me think of one of my friends whose parents chose not to baptise him as an infant, instead giving him the choice to do so on his own, if he wished to, as an adult. The thinking is that it’s not fair that we are baptised as infants without our consent. At the same time, we’re born into our family without our consent. I was born in Panama without consent. So why not be “born” into the family of God without our consent?

Still, I wonder if Baptism made more sense in the early days of Christianity, when people were baptised as adults.

From the very day of Pentecost the Church has celebrated and administered Holy Baptism. At Pentecost, St. Peter in his first sermon said to the crowd: “Repent, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38) Then, the Apostles offered Baptism to anyone who believed in Jesus. After all, after the “love God and your neighbour” and the “do this in memory of me” commands, the only other command Jesus left his disciples was to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19) Baptism has always been connected with accepting the faith: “believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household,” St. Paul declared to his jailer in Philippi. And then, the jailer “was baptised at once, with all his family.” (Acts 16:31-33) Baptism has also always been a sign of belief in Jesus Christ, a sign of faith.

But in order to understand Baptism, we need to remember some basics on all the Sacraments (read my previous posts What is a Sacrament? Parts 1-3). For me, the most important thing to remember is that all Sacraments point to particular mysteries. Baptism points to two: The mystery that the person now belongs to Christ and the mystery that the person is washed clean from original sin (and all sin). Those are the two “metaphysical occurrences” that take place.

So I guess we should briefly talk about original sin.

Original sin is the sin that caused our current human condition when Adam and Eve chose to ignore God’s request not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Goodness and Evil (Genesis 3). This is when death entered the world. Before that, Adam and Eve were in Communion with God. They had original holiness and justice. Since then, human beings are born deprived of this original holiness and justice (Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraphs 404, 419). That’s original sin. So I guess using the word “cleansing” is a bit confusing. When we say that Baptism “cleanses us” of original sin, we mean that Baptism “restores” our access to holiness and justice.

But, original sin also has consequences. The consequence of original sin is that “human nature is wounded in its natural powers”. Not to say that it is completely corrupted, but it is “subject to ignorance, to suffering and to the dominion of death” (CCC 405-409, 418).  Though God took our place, so that we would not have to die (how’s that for an abbreviation of the Good News?), the tendency to sin is still very strong. This is what the Church calls concupiscence. (A word I had never heard until four years ago. Go figure!)

At Baptism we are cleaned of original sin (the fact that we are born without original holiness and justice), but Baptism doesn’t take away the tendency towards sin. It only restores our ability to have access to holiness and justice.

Does this mean that those who are not baptised cannot be saved? There are those who will argue that. Not the Catholic Church; all she says is that Baptism gives us the guarantee that we will be saved (“saved” meaning “get to Heaven”). But it also means that Baptism is not enough for salvation (unless you died immediately after your Baptism). Because we still have a tendency to sin, chances are we need a bit more than just Baptism.

And that’s where this whole idea of the Kingdom of Heaven being given to us as a little seed comes into play. If we don’t water the seed and take care of it, nurture it, it won’t grow. That’s why we have a ton of adult Christians who are still spiritual babies.

After Jesus was resurrected, he appeared and said to the disciples, “go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew: 28:19-20) So, it’s pretty clear that not only did Jesus command his disciples to go and make more disciples, but to do so, they had to baptise them and then, not just leave them like that, but after baptism they had to be taught.

Next time let’s look at why today we baptise infants. Remember to send in your comments, love to read them and tune in for In Your Faith – Tuesdays at 8pm ET.

Pedro.

Pedro Guevara-Mann| Print This Post |

There are two words foreigners learn almost immediately upon setting foot in Italian territory: “c’e’ scioppero.” That means “there’s a strike”

For most North Americans this phrase causes instant terror. It certainly makes me think of the two month transit strike of 2001 in Vancouver, or the summer long garbage strike in Toronto in 2009. Alas, Italy has the strike down to an art form, like a well choreographed dance.

This past Friday there was “scioppero dei mezzi” or a transit strike in Rome. Buses and subway were on strike from 10 am to 2pm and trains were on strike from 2pm to 6pm. At 6:15pm when I had to board my train to Orvieto to get to the Lenten retreat day organized by my parish here all was running smoothly. The train departed at 6:15pm, without delay along the track to Florence.

Italians, however are not phased by the threat of a strike. It’s merely a day off. Allow me to illustrate my point.

Monday I had lunch with two Italian journalist friends. One lives in the city centre, one does not. Friday evening the Libreria Editrice Vaticana (LEV) was hosting a discussion night at their downtown store. It’s a rather common thing in Italy, weekly “cultural nights” where the store will invite an author in to read a passage from their book and field questions from participants. This week’s guest was Licia Colò, a journalist and TV host with RAI 3 (the Italian version of the CBC). She hosts a show called “Alle falde di Kilimanjaro” or “In the foothills of Kilimanjaro” that features travel documentaries. She wrote a book and LEV invited her to their weekly cultural night. Guaranteed to be a popular evening.

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Alicia Ambrosio| Print This Post |

Many of our viewers and blog readers will have probably heard us quote from the Vatican Newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. On this week’s Catholic News Service Vatican Report, Carol Glatz and John Thavis take a look at the newspaper, and the shift that has occurred there in the last five years.

Matthew Harrison| Print This Post |

The Christian Churches in the Holy Land are often characterized as intractably, scandalously divided. The impression is not without reason, as evidenced by the embarrassing 2008 skirmishes between Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox monks in Jerusalem’s Holy Sepulchre—the church recognized as the site of Calvary and Jesus’ empty tomb.

It would be wrong, however, to despair that the Christian community is resigned to disunity. Starting last year, Church leaders have called their faithful to raise up an Extraordinary Prayer of all Churches for Reconciliation, Unity and Peace. This year, the ecumenical liturgy was held in the Redeemer Lutheran Church, just steps from the Holy Sepulchre in the heart of the Old City.

Television viewers from around the world are encouraged to join this prayer, which organizers describe as:

A call for a profound personal conversion, for each participant to become a true instrument of Reconciliation, Unity and Peace, in the Church and in the world.

A fervent, intensive and unanimous call to the Mercy of the Lord by the whole Church – the earthly and the heavenly one – in a great intercessory prayer for our time, beginning in and with Jerusalem (Luke 24:47). The graces asked from God are in fact so great that the strength of the whole Church must be engaged.

Specifically, participants are interceding for peace in the Holy Land and for the unification of Easter celebrations, which denominations presently commemorate on different dates.

Along with Orthodox and Protestant leaders, the initiative is supported by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which oversees all Latin-rite Catholics in the Holy Land, and Archbishop Antonio Franco, Apostolic Nuncio to Israel and Apostolic Delegate to Jerusalem and Palestine.

For the first time ever in North America, Salt + Light will broadcast the Extraordinary Prayer, along with a half-hour documentary about the historic Lutheran church in which the service is being held. While we post a preview of the event here, the prayer service will be televised on S+L with English translation this Saturday at 9 pm ET. You can follow the prayers and readings of the service with the online program.

Kris Dmytrenko| Print This Post |

Last week we posted the question: “Does prayer require effort?” As is the case every week, we anticipated uniformity in our answers but were surprised at the diversity (and thoughtfulness) in the responses.

One such thoughtful answer came to us from Haiku Hamu who asks: “Is there ever any genuine value in the things that are effortless?”

Haiku’s thoughts were echoed by several others including  Mary Swanson: “You should put in an effort as you put in the effort to talk to a friend because praying is talking to a friend — and that friend is God,” she wrote.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul clearly asserts that “winning the race” is not a passive enterprise:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. (1 Corinthians 9:24-27)

Nearly half of those who wrote in asserted that a relationship with God is an “open line of communication” because as Devin Watkins puts it, “God is powerful enough to hear all of your prayers without effort”.

On today’s Perspectives, we are talking to Brother Émile of the Taizé Community in France. An ecumenical community of brothers, their roots reach back as early as the 1940s,  when founder Brother Roger began to perceive a call to communal monastic life.

“What goes on Taize is that we try to make the sources of trust accessible to young adults today,” Brother Émile told us when he visited Salt + Light, “many people today do not have the vocabulary that would enable them to approach the Christian mystery; prayer seems complicated. Brother Roger used to say: Faith is a simple trust in God, so simple that all can welcome it. He would also say: the desire for God is already the beginning of faith.”

The interview with this Taizé brother, like the prayerful music his community produces, is sure to fill you with renewed conviction and devotion as we come to the midpoint in our Lenten journey.

Tune in tonight at 7pm or 11pm ET/8pm PT, or Sunday March 14th at the same times, for our featured conversation with Brother Émile as he shares how we can live a life of prayer from wherever we find ourselves; in the midst of the serene French countryside, or otherwise.

As always, keep checking the S+L Facebook page where we always make sure to keep you in the loop.

Jenna Murphy| Print This Post |

On Monday, the S+L blog published an unofficial transcript of Cardinal William Levada’s address on the Vatican’s outreach to Anglicans. His talk attracted a great deal of attention due to the rarity of a visit to Canada by this high-ranking Curial Cardinal. However, the speech was particularly significant given that the office he charges, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is responsible for overseeing the new ‘ordinariate’ structures that will welcome traditional Anglicans into full communion with Rome. If you haven’t yet read this significant address, we reproduce here the final, official text from the CDF.

Note that the Cardinal will be meeting with Pope Benedict this evening. Hopefully, he’ll have many positive things to report from his five-day trip to Canada.

Address of His Eminence William Cardinal Levada
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

St. John Fisher Visitor Lecture Series
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Queens University
Kingston, Ontario

Five Hundred Years After St. John Fisher:
Pope Benedict’s Initiatives Regarding the Anglican Communion

I. Introduction

Of the fifty or so English cardinals, only one was a martyr: St. John Fisher. I am honored to be invited to give this St. John Fisher Visitor Lecture to this assembly sponsored by Newman House at Queen’s University in Kingston. I am reminded of the prayer with which our Holy Father imposed the cardinal’s biretta or hat on my and some four years ago this month: “Receive this red biretta as a sign of the dignity of the Cardinalate, by which you must be strong—even to the shedding of your blood—in working for the increase of the Christian faith, for the peace and tranquility of the People of God, and for the freedom and progress of the Holy Roman Church.”

As a way of celebrating these 500 years since the time of St. John Fisher’s saintly and intrepid life, which brought him the martyr’s crown, and of celebrating as well this year’s promised beatification of the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman, whose search for the fullness of truth led him to Rome without requiring that he abandon the spiritual heritage that had nurtured him in the Anglican Communion, I entitled my presentation today “500 Years After St. John Fisher: Pope Benedict’s Initiatives Regarding the Anglican Communion.”

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Kris Dmytrenko| Print This Post |

There’s just something about people from the prairies.

Maybe it is the familiarity, and the feeling that everyone is a neighbour. Or it is the humility that comes from knowing their place under the grandeur of the endless sky. Perhaps it is the gentleness of the people who see life begin with just one kernel of grain in the soil, but who have the strength to withstand both the winter’s windchill and the summer’s blazing heat. Somehow it all adds up to something.

And no matter where in Canada you are from, I’m certain you would say that in unison along with me after meeting Monsignor Donald Bolen. There is just something about people from the prairies.

Friendly. Humble. Thoughtful. Gentle but strong. With all these characteristics in his possession, Msgr. Bolen, born and raised in the prairie town of Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan, will be ordained as Saskatoon’s seventh Bishop on March 25, 2010. And Salt + Light Television is pleased to give you the opportunity to meet this prairie priest in the days leading up to his Episcopal Ordination.  Join Fr. Thomas Rosica as he interviews Msgr. Bolen in an episode of Witness on Sunday, March 21st, 8pm ET.

In preparation for our coverage, I had a chance to interview Msgr. Bolen and talk to him about his varied experiences as a priest and his appointment as Bishop.

Msgr. Bolen was ordained to the priesthood on October 12, 1991 after studying at St. Paul Seminary in Ottawa for the Archdiocese of Regina. He has since served in a number of Saskatchewan parishes, but has also spent seven years in Rome on the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. His ecumenical work continued when he returned to Regina and began serving on the Archdiocesan Ecumenical Commission. He is also an Associate Priest of the Madonna House Apostolate and an Oblate of St. Peter’s Benedictine Abbey in Muenster, Saskatchewan.

“Over my years as a priest, I’ve been called to many things and through that process learned ever more deeply to trust the Church and trust that God speaks through the authoritative structures of the Church. So when the call came from the Nunciature – a telephone call that changes everything – I could hear God’s voice in that call.”

Helping him to hear God’s voice was that the call from the Nunciature came on December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Later, as Msgr Bolen celebrated Mass, he was encouraged by the words of Mary: “Let it be done to me according to your will.”

“This was a moving part of that process and allowed me to see God’s hand in it.”

Msgr. Bolen’s Episcopal Ordination will be Thursday, March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation.

Salt + Light Television is happy to take viewers to the prairies. We’ll stream the ordination live on our website and bring you extensive coverage of the events in Saskatoon. Stay tuned for more information, dates, and times of our programming. You won’t want to miss it. There is, after all, just something about the people from the prairies.

Gillian Kantor| Print This Post |

As we reported on Perspectives and throughout the blog, Cardinal William Levada, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was visiting Ottawa and Kingston, Ontario earlier this week.  His celebration of Mass at Ottawa’s Notre Dame Cathedral Basilica will be broadcast on Salt + Light tonight, March 11th, at 8:30pm ET/9:30pm PT, with an encore presentation Friday, March 12th at 1pm ET/10 am PT. Cardinal Levada will also be featured on Witness, hosted by Fr. Thomas Rosica CSB, on Sunday, March 28th at 8pm ET.  The full text of Cardinal Levada’s homily on Monday can be found below:

Mass with Catholic Christian Outreach
Monday, March 8, 2010
Cathedral of Notre Dame, Ottawa
Homily

II Kings 5:1-15
Luke 4:24-30

I am grateful for the invitation to join you for this Holy Mass. It is a particular blessing to be in this magnificent cathedral with Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, who has kindly welcomed me to Ottawa. It is a special grace to celebrate this Mass together with the local bishop in his own cathedral.

I am grateful too for the presence of my brother bishops, in particular Archbishop Pedro Lopez Quintana, who is beginning his service in Ottawa as Apostolic Nuncio. Your Excellency, may your years in Canada be happy ones!

My dear brother priests, I greet you with special affection in this Year for Priests, a gift of grace from our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. Last evening in Kingston I spoke to the priests there about the Divine Office as a priestly prayer. The Holy Eucharist is all the more so. In this Year for Priests I pray that we renew our devotion to the celebration of the Eucharist – the most important thing that we do, the most important thing that can be done.

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Administrator| Print This Post |

Chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel is often referred to as the “Lost and Found Collection” of the New Testament since it begins with the parable of lost sheep [vv 1-7], followed by the parable of lost coin [vv 8-10], reaching its crescendo in the parable of prodigal son [vv 11-32].

The Prodigal Son story in today’s Gospel is one of those rare gems that captivates the mind of every listener, then and now.  The parable epitomizes Luke’s gifts as a storyteller – his ability to “paint” a scene with such vividness and sensitivity to human relationships that it can echo with each person’s lived experience.  At different times in our lives, most of us have played each of these roles: that of the doting, loving, apparently overindulgent parent; that of the younger son who experiences being brought low by sinfulness and pride, and desperately in need of mercy; the older son, who is responsible and above reproach, and who is frustrated by the generosity and leniency with which the weaknesses and sins of others are dealt with. There is some of each of these characters in each one of us.  Luke’s unique and marvelous parable of the Prodigal Son was originally aimed at Jesus’ respectable contemporaries who resented his fraternizing with tax collectors and other disreputable types.

In his 1984 Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Pænitentia that followed the Synod on Reconciliation, Pope John Paul II wrote:

The parable of the prodigal son is above all the story of the inexpressible love of a Father-God – who offers to his son when he comes back to him the gift of full reconciliation…. It therefore reminds us of the need for a profound transformation of hearts through the rediscovery of the Father’s mercy and through victory over misunderstanding and over hostility among brothers and sisters.

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Father Thomas Rosica| Print This Post |

From Sunday to Wednesday, March 14-17th, Toronto will be hosting the national vocation and formation conference at the Courtyard Marriott in downtown Toronto.  It is an event organized by the National Association of Vocation and Formation Directors (or NAVFD), and they expect close to 200 religious and lay participants from Canada and the US.  The theme to be explored is “Let Your Life Speak… Vocation Alive.”  The keynote speaker is acclaimed author and lecturer Fr. Ron Rolheiser, pictured right, whose weekly column is carried by more than 60 newspapers worldwide.

Sr. Maureen Baldwin is a member of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal, and the Executive Director of NAVFD.  She explained to me earlier this week that the concept of vocation doesn’t just apply to religious and priests. It also includes those called to live as married or single persons.  And so, you may be interested to know that this conference is open to any person or group interested in promoting, supporting and bringing about a culture of vocations.

Tune in to Salt + Light Radio on Saturday, March 13th, as we interview Fr. Ron Rolheiser about this conference.

For more information or to register for this conference, go to www.vocations.ca.

Mary Rose Bacani| Print This Post |