Salt + Light Blog

Though today’s Gospel [Luke 13: 22-30] may well be a loose collection of sayings of Jesus, uttered in several different contexts but brought together here under the general heading of “who will be saved”, the overall tone of Jesus’ meaning is clear: the good news is offered “whole and entire” and must be accepted in the same way.  Jesus words follow upon the parables of the kingdom [Luke 13:18-21] and stress that great effort is required for entrance into the kingdom [13:24] and that there is an urgency to accept the present opportunity to enter because the narrow door will not remain open indefinitely [13:25]. Behind the sayings is the rejection of Jesus and his message by his Jewish contemporaries [13:26] whose places at table in the kingdom will be taken by Gentiles from the four corners of the world [13:29]. Those called last (the Gentiles) will precede those to whom the invitation to enter was first extended (the Jews).

Lord, who will be saved?

The question to Jesus really is: “Will only a few be saved?”  Jesus answers by saying that the initiation is open but the way into the kingdom is narrow and demands more than casual interest.  In fact, the “door of opportunity” will not remain forever open.  God’s purpose moves toward the eschaton, and when the door is closed, it is closed.  This door will certainly not be reopened for persons who only claim is that Jesus once visited their towns and villages or preached in their streets or that they once saw Jesus and a crowd or encountered members of his family.  Such appeals are not only futile but also self-incriminating because their opportunities carried obligations.  Added to the pain of sitting before a closed door will be the sight of large numbers who are admitted, not only the expected ones among Israel’s ancient faithful but also the unexpected Gentiles who heard and believed.  It provides Israel and us opportunity to assess where we stand in relation to the Kingdom of God.

What does it mean to be saved?

To be saved as Christians, we must acknowledge Jesus now as master.  From today’s Gospel we learn that Jesus may not recognize everyone who bears the name “Christian”, but he will recognize immediately all those whose lives bear the stamp of “Christian”.  Each of us must re-think whatever notions we have of the kingdom of God, of who will be saved.  Those we think least likely to enter may be the first to do so, and vice-versa. Salvation is a life-long journey and along the way we are found and chosen by God.  On the journey we become friends with God and with one another, and enter more deeply into the holy mystery of God.  Furthermore, the whole transformative journey is made in love.

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Father Thomas Rosica| Print This Post |

Thirty one thousand decades of the Rosary and one hundred and thirty days of Eucharistic adoration.

That’s the amount of prayer that benefactors of the charity Aid to the Church in Need have pledged to Pope Benedict XVI.

For those of you keeping count, that prayer total works out to more than six months of continuous prayer.

And that doesn’t include the eleven thousand Masses that will be offered for the Holy Father!

ACN organized the “prayer-action” for the Pontiff in anticipation of his visit to the United Kingdom, September 16th-19th.

Those who participated will have their name added to a book that will presented to the Holy Father during his Apostolic journey.

Aid to the Church in Need is an international Catholic charity that helps suffering and persecuted faithful worldwide.  You may have even seen some of their television programs on Salt + Light. Some of their projects include training for seminarians and aid for Iraqi Christian refugees (as a side note:  though not related to ACN, Toronto’s Archbishop Thomas Collins has recently encouraged Canadians to support the latter group).

Visit Vatican Radio HERE to learn more about ACN’s “Prayer-Action” for the Pope and the Papal visit to the UK.

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CNS photo/Paul Haring

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Matthew Harrison| Print This Post |

Castel Gandolfo was busy yesterday as Pope Benedict XVI marked the solemnity of the Assumption.

First there was the celebration of Mass at the Church of St. Thomas, located just across from the summer Papal residence.  Later in the day, the Holy Father welcomed the faithful to Castel Gandolfo for his Angelus address.

Of course, his address and homily focused on our Blessed Mother, and the significance of her assumption “body and soul into heavenly glory”. (Munificentissimus Deus 44)

In his homily the Pontiff stressed Mary’s great faith.  The Pope said faith is the root of the victory over death that we see anticipated in the Assumption.  Her faith is “obedience to the Word of God and a total abandon to divine initiative and action as announced to her by the Archangel.”

The Pope also offered a meditation on Heaven during his homily.  He says when the Church teaches that Mary was taken “body and soul into heaven,” heaven is not a reference “to some place in the universe, a star or something similar.”  He explained:

With the word “Heaven’, we affirm that God, the God who made himself close to us, will never abandon us, not even in death or beyond it, but has a place for us and grants us eternity. We are saying that in God, there is a place for us.

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Matthew Harrison| Print This Post |

Cardinal Marc Ouellet has asked the faithful to pray that the Lord may give him “wisdom and discernment” as he heads to Rome.

That’s where, as of August 24th, he’ll take up his new role as the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.

He asked for the prayers yesterday at the St. Anne de Beaupre Basilica, where he celebrated his last official Mass as Archbishop of Quebec.

The Cardinal says he is grateful for the eight years he spent as Archbishop and says he will continue to pray for the Church in Quebec.

The prelate has also asked for forgiveness for any hurt he may have caused in his time among the people.

He says that the message of truth often causes suffering for both the giver and receiver of the message. But, added “God himself shows us that suffering can be a source of life.”

You can catch a presentation of the farewell Mass, in French, on Salt + Light Television Tuesday August 17th at 3:30pm ET.

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Photo: Cardinal Ouellet celebrates Mass at St. Paul’s Basilica in Toronto in 2008.  CNS photo/Nancy Wiechec

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Matthew Harrison| Print This Post |

It’s a feast of the Assumption not soon to be forgotten.

A cruel prank was pulled on over 30,000 pilgrims gathered yesterday in Lourdes, located in southwest France. Police received an anonymous phone call about a bomb threat to the Shrine. The call came in as thousands of worshippers, priests and nuns were congregating for midday Mass. Officials soon began evacuating pilgrims.  It is disheartening to think about the thousands of sick and disabled that had to be ushered out in such a hurried and frightening manner.

After thoroughly sweeping the grounds and surrounding areas, army bomb disposal experts found there to be no sign of explosives. A Lourdes spokesman told the press that they have no idea who is behind the threat. “Bomb scares are not something you associate with Lourdes” he added. This is not a solitary incident however. Lourdes was evacuated in 2002 for the exact same reason, another bomb scare.

I am deeply relieved and thankful that there was in fact no real threat and that no one was harmed. At the same time, I am saddened by the monumental inconvenience suffered by the pilgrims. Over 900 seriously ill pilgrims were kept in a secure area for five hours, unsure of what would happen to them. Lourdes is meant to be a place of healing, to provide sanctuary and solace to those who visit.

There’s a time and place for a funny prank or hoax, this was most definitely not one of them. By what can be called luck or Divine Providence, the Eucharistic procession still started on schedule. Thanks be to God.

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CNS photo/Nancy Wiechec

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Alessia Domanico| Print This Post |

As I shared in my previous post, I spent my vacation in Algonquin Provincial Park and at Madonna House in Combermere, Ontario. In between those adventures, I took a road trip to Newfoundland with my best friend.

For one week, we marveled at the Maritime culture, wildlife and dramatic landscape of Gros Morne National Park. As we prepared to head home, I came across a familiar sight from my work in Toronto.

It was our final day in Newfoundland. My friend Lee, a campus lay missionary, suggested we go to evening mass before we boarded the ferry. An internet search found no daily masses in the area apart from the little town of Lourdes.

Lourdes is located on the triangular Port au Port Peninsula, which reaches into the Gulf of St. Lawrence from the south-west corner of Newfoundland. Our guidebook described the peninsula’s main road as the French Ancestor’s Route, owing to the area’s early settlers.

Despite the lovely name, it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t a regular tourist destination. A pair of bored-looking teens manned a quiet information centre. They listed off the peninsula’s three restaurants, none of which offered a seafood meal, much less French cuisine. Whereas the towns along Newfoundland’s north-western arm were saturated with bed & breakfasts, here, it seemed, the locals could keep the rugged shoreline to themselves.

Sizing up the village, I was skeptical about our chances of finding a Mass. Was the website information up-to-date? If there was a priest to be found at the church, would we find other worshipers?

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Kris Dmytrenko| Print This Post |

The disheveled man lurched along the trail, as if stumbling off the set of a George Romero movie. He wore just one hiking boot; the other ankle was swollen and purple. Half-naked—the wrong half—his bare legs were covered in deep cuts and two crimson, football-sized lesions. His wide eyes did not avert their gaze as he staggered toward me, his pale face expressionless. Alone in the forest with nowhere to turn, I had seconds to consider how I would greet this terrifying man.

Thankfully, I had received a few lessons in hospitality just a few weeks prior. For my summer vacation, I had signed up to live at Madonna House, a Catholic farm community in the rural village of Combermere, Ontario. Here, dozens of lay women and men have committed their lives to prayer and service to one another.

The foundress of Madonna House, Catherine Doherty, described it as “a house of hospitality.”

“It is a place where people are received, not on their education, not on how wonderful they are as painters, or whatever they have to do,” she said. “They are received simply as people. They are loved.”

Their legendary hospitality draws guests from around the world, each invited to participate in the life of the community, without cost, for as long as they please.

“When I encounter a stranger,” said one long-time Madonna House member, “I wish to greet them with the same joy that I would for an old friend at the airport.”

This enthusiastic receptivity is even sculpted in the image of their patron. Our Lady of Combermere runs “in haste” (Luke 1:39) to reunite with her cousin Elizabeth. She bounds with arms wide open, Madonna House teaches, with the same intense desire to embrace each of us, her “wounded children”.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux exhibited this same welcoming spirit in her response to interruption. In Interior Freedom, Fr. Jacques Philippe writes that some of the “Little Flower’s” responsibilities in the convent required great concentration, but she would often be pulled away to assist with other tasks. She learned to graciously receive her fellow sisters — almost as if she was choosing to be disrupted — as a means of embracing God’s will.

This brings me back to the forest.

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Kris Dmytrenko| Print This Post |

You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. (Matthew 5:13-15)

When I began my summer internship at Salt + Light Television in April, I prayed that my time here would be a constructive learning experience applicable to my future ministry as a Basilian religious, seminarian, and eventual priest, and that I would be able to contribute in such a crucial area of ministry as Catholic media. I knew not at the time in what ways my understanding of media would grow, or what my role would be among so many gifted and kind people with whom I have worked this summer.

Salt + Light Television draws its name from the above-quoted passage from the Gospel of Matthew. That passage has long inspired me, because it begins not as a request by Jesus of His disciples to be “salt of the earth” and “light of the world,” but with a statement of fact: “You are the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.”

Matthew 5:13-15 was also the theme of the seventeenth World Youth Day in 2002. In his final homily of World Youth Day on July 28, 2002 at Downsview Park in Toronto, Pope John Paul II followed his reflection on the words of this Gospel with this emphatic declaration: “You are our hope, the young are our hope.” The late Pope then exhorted the pilgrims: “Do not let that hope die! Stake your lives on it! We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son.”

During the same World Youth Day, John Paul II had previously taken up a theme of Vatican II and applied it to Catholic youth today: “You are the future of the Church. You are the Church.” Thus, it is in our very nature as Church to be the image of Christ in our world, to be hope for the world, to be salt of the earth and light of the world. However, to live up to our nature, given by God for the good of all, is not easy. Jesus warns us of the danger of salt losing its taste, or of the light being hidden. For many the Gospel has become insipid, its values seen as foolishness or its proclamation seen as ineffective. The Biblical Greek word for the salt losing its taste is moranthe, the same root that gives us “moron” in English, while the modern Italian equivalent is insipido.

Therein lies the challenge of proclaiming the Gospel in word and especially in deed. Such has been the example of Salt + Light Television, where I have had the privilege of working for the past four months. Here, the Gospel is lived; it is anything but insipid or foolish, but is announced with clarity, with intelligence, with joy, and with charity. Therefore, my colleagues at Salt + Light give me great hope for the future of our Church.

My internship at Salt + Light began and ended with the intense and almost constant onslaught of stories over the news wires of clergy alleged to have abused or failed to protect minors. Such examples present in such a horrific manner are to be deeply lamented. As Church we must seek repentance for these grave crimes. Yet as John Paul II, in the same World Youth Day 2002 Homily I cited above, reminded us eight years ago:

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Warren Schmidt| Print This Post |

It is not often that the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary falls on a Sunday. I would like to offer a few reflections on the historical and pastoral significance of this important feast, and its relevance for our own life. The Assumption of Mary, Mother of the Lord, into heaven is a consoling sign of our hope. In looking to her, carried up amid the rejoicing of angels, human life is opened to the perspective of eternal happiness. Our own death is not the end but rather the entrance into life that knows no death.

Immaculate Conception

For Catholic Christians, the belief in the Assumption of Mary flows from our belief in and understanding of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. We believe that if Mary was preserved from sin by the free gift of God, she would not be bound to experience the consequences of sin and death in the same way that we do. We believe that because of the obedience and fidelity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the end of her earthly life, she was assumed both body and soul into heavenly glory.

History

For several centuries in the early Church, there is no mention by the Church Fathers of the bodily Assumption of Mary. Irenaeus, Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose and the others Church Fathers said nothing about it. Writing in 377 A.D., Church Father Epiphanius states that no one knows Mary’s end.

As early as the 5th century, the feast of the Assumption of Mary was celebrated in Syria. In the 5th and 6th centuries, the Apocryphal Books were testimony of the unwillingness of the Church to accept the fact that the body of the Mother of God should lie in a grave. In the 6th century, the feast of the Assumption was celebrated in Jerusalem and perhaps even in Alexandria.

The first “genuine” written references to the Assumption come from authors who lived in the sixth to the eighth centuries. It is mentioned in the sermons of St. Andrew of Crete, St. John Damascene, St. Modestus of Jerusalem and others. In the West, St. Gregory of Tours mentions it first. St. Gregory lived in the sixth century, while St John Damascene belongs to the eighth century.

In the 9th century, the feast of the Assumption was celebrated in Spain. From the 10th to the 12th centuries, there was no dispute over the celebration of the feast in the Western Church. In the 12th century, the feast of was celebrated in the city of Rome and in France.

From the 13th century to the present, there is certain and undisputed faith in the Assumption of Mary in the universal Church. In 1950, Pope Pius XII taught infallibly (Munificentissimus Deus): “Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul to heavenly glory.”

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Father Thomas Rosica| Print This Post |

Stressing out is a natural reaction a person has towards a difficult situation. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no class act when it comes to sweating the small stuff. When life gives me lemons I don’t always think to add the sugar right away. After the fact I’ll reflect on God, pray and ask for patience in accepting mistakes and shortcomings. But maybe I’ve got the order wrong. According to a study by the University of Toronto, I should be thinking about God before, as opposed to after the fact.

University of Toronto Researchers Micahel Inzlicht and Alexa Tullet found that those who believe in and reflect on God, deal with stress and anxiety more easily in strenuous situations.

The study tested individuals to determine if thinking about religion would reduce their reaction to making mistakes.  Test subjects were first asked to think about religion by writing about God. They then had to complete a word scramble with religiously themed words. After this they were given a tricky computerized test. The researchers monitored the subjects’ brain reactions when they made mistakes on the test.

The test found that believers experienced less distress when making an error. It also found that it didn’t matter what religious denomination the person belonged to. All that mattered was that they were reflecting on their belief and religion while taking the test. One researcher said that these small differences in brain pattern can lead to a calmer lifestyle. And God doesn’t even have to be the first thing on your mind, the result is achieved as long as you have experienced some form of reflection on your faith and spirituality. The researchers use the example of a person walking by a Church on the way to their bus stop. Dr. Inzlicht says:

Admiring (the) church en route could prime the religious thoughts that will take the sting out of noticing the bus has passed by.

Interestingly enough, the test found the result was the opposite for subjects who did not believe in God or practice a form of organized religion. Non-believers demonstrated a heightened form of neural distress when they were made to contemplate God and then take the tricky test. The distress reactions only last mere milliseconds after making an error, but researchers say that they can add up over the course of a lifetime.

While avoiding stress may be a positive thing, the researchers say it is also important to remember that a little anxiety is a good thing. The anxiety we experience after making a mistake will in theory, help prevent us from making it again in the future. While I’m relieved that my anxiety is teaching me something, I will be giving this test a try before my mad dash to the train this evening. Try it too and see what happens.

If you’d like to learn more; the article on this study can be found in the latest edition of Psychological Science.

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Photo: CNS photo/Nancy Wiechec

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Alessia Domanico| Print This Post |