“And now for a brief pause” is sometimes the way they announce on television a break for interminable advertisements. Lætare Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Lent, is a respite, but not like the commercial break. It is like Gaudete Sunday in Advent, in that both refresh the soul with a reminder of what penance is for. Both Latin words [gaudete and lætare] mean rejoice, because the ultimate aim is the Heavenly Jerusalem. Exactly a thousand years ago, Pope Leo IX spoke of this liturgical pause for refreshment as an already venerable tradition, for human nature always needs encouragement. He was one of the most energetic popes, a German who went to Rome for his election and who then went from city to city in Europe reforming morals and administration, sending missions to Greenland and Iceland, corresponding with the holy King Edward of England, blocking William the Conqueror’s marriage, crossing the Alps three times, struggling with the Patriarch of Constantinople, going to southern Italy to confront the Normans and even hearing the confession of King Macbeth, who had journeyed from Scotland to Rome to unburden his murderous soul. No wonder Pope Leo looked forward to his Lætare Sundays. As a youth, he was attacked by a wild animal and attributed his recovery to the intercession of St. Benedict. Like our present Pope Benedict, Leo found consolation in music.

A century after Leo, a music-loving monk of the great French monastery of Cluny wrote a hymn of three thousand lines about the transitoriness of this world, and the permanent glory of the Heavenly Jerusalem, which is the ‘Mother’ and true native home of Christians. It was a custom at one time for people to symbolize this by returning to their ‘home’ parish on Lætare Sunday. In the nineteenth century, Bernard of Cluny’s poem was translated by the brilliant and witty classicist John Mason Neale, who enjoyed teasing scholars with ‘ancient’ texts that he had fabricated. But Bernard’s words are authentic and form one of the finest hymns for Lætare and Gaudete and any other Sunday: “Jerusalem the Golden” hails that

Sweet and blessèd country,
The home of God’s elect.
O sweet and blessèd country
That eager hearts expect.

As a pause for refreshment makes the journey more intense, so does focusing on Mother Jerusalem actually save man from the escapism of a materialist and sensual definition of life. The ultimate realism is the perception of the heavenly goal of earthly existence. It concentrates the virtues and makes all activity more vibrant. That is the splendid burden of another hymn, published in 1854 by Fr. Frederick William Faber of the Oratory of Philip Neri in London:

Far, far way, like bells at evening pealing,
The voice of Jesus sounds o’er land and sea,
And laden souls, by thousands meakly stealing,
Kind Shepherd, turn their weary steps to thee.

Related stories: Gaudete Sunday; Fr. Rutler’s thoughts on Gaudete Sunday.

More proof that Islam is not a sane ‘religion’: The newly ‘liberated’ and ‘democratic’ government of Afghanistan is actively trying to sentence an Afghan man to death for having converted to Christianity. (To make matters worse, his own family brought the charges against him.)

So much for Afghanistan respecting human rights. And so much for all the muslims who claim that Islam is a “religion of peace.”

Check out the BBC story and Karl Keating’s commentary and forum discussion.

Another Lent, another anniversary for Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ, released by Icon Productions and Newmarket Films in 2004. Having watched now for the fifth time, it continues to affect me profoundly, bringing me to tears. For our readers, we now reprint a post from when it was first released.

The other day at work, I heard three Jewish colleagues and bosses of mine berating the film and Mel Gibson as being clearly anti-Semitic. They were citing all sorts of articles from the Jewish press and added such quips as, “Before the Holocaust, there were plenty of warning signs that we did not follow. Now, before the release of this movie, there are plenty of more warning signs.”

I marvel at this pessimism. First, The Passion of the Christ is only a movie — a marvelous, beautiful, awe-inspiring movie, in my opinion — but still only a movie.

It is like watching a documentary by Caravaggio. The images are so vivid, and the story so familiar, that language becomes almost incidental… The violence, though intense, is never gratuitous… It rescues Christ from myth and grounds him in a reality that makes his actions more heroic…”

Raymond Arroyo
‘The Greatest Story, Newly Told,’
The Wall Street Journal

Gibson is portraying the Truth as we Catholics know it to be, basing the story of the Passion on the Gospel and other inspired writings, such as Emerich’s The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Artistically, it tries to capture the realism and dynamism of the Chiaroscuro movement of such greats as Caravaggio and Gentileschi. It is violent and bloody and gory (initially earning it an NC-17 rating), but this is not without cause: Too often is our Lord’s grand Sacrifice forgotten or glossed over — not only by Protestants but by lukewarm, ‘cafeteria’ Catholics as well — in preference of the glory of the Resurrection. It is not uncommon to hear, “I prefer not to see my God dead on a cross,” and churches (even Catholic ones) lose the Crucifix for the Cross. Well, this movie is a brutal reminder of what actually transpired; and in the words of the [late] Pope [John Paul II] after a screening at the Vatican, “It is as it was.”

Second, I marvel at the two-facedness of the world. When the Last Temptation of Christ came out — a movie filled with blasphemous inuendos — I didn’t see anyone stop and listen to the Catholic objections to the movie. (Incidentally, Mel Gibson was offered to star in that movie, and he refused.) When Dan Brown’s best-selling The DaVinci Code hit bookstands in 2003 [and now with the upcoming movie adaptation], one heard tons of hype of the ‘truth’ that had been “suppressed over the years by the Catholic Church,” as if the book had revealed some great reality instead of just collecting new-age conspiracy theories and resurrecting age-old heresies (all of which, by the way, have been shown to be in error by the great minds of the Church, such as saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas)… But no one gave more than a moment’s notice to the Catholic defense of the Faith. It is scary to think that one-third of people polled regard the book as factual. Yet, had Catholics demanded that this book not be released for fear of propagating anti-Catholicism (not to mention heresy) in this world, we would have been laughed at. Sadly, that fear would not be without cause, as anti-Catholicism is truly one of the few prejudices still accepted in the world and especially in the United States.

The Passion of the Christ is by no means an anti-Semitic work. It does not blame the Jews for the death of Christ — it blames mankind for the death of Christ. And books and movies like The DaVinci Code are but more stripes across His back and spit in His face.

See also:

• Via Crucis (Way of the Cross), featuring scenes from The Passion of the Christ.
• Buy The Passion on DVD!
• Catholic League for Religious & Civil Liberties
• Be sure to boycott The DaVinci Code!

In his Ash Wednesday homily at the Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI spoke out about the Christian’s struggle against evil: “Every day, but especially in Lent, Christians face a battle like the one Jesus faced in the desert.” Hence, this liturgical time recalls

that Christian life is a struggle without truce, using the ‘arms’ of prayer, fasting and penance. To fight against evil, against all forms of egoism and hatred… is the ascetic journey which all Christ’s disciples are called to undertake…. Meekly following the divine Master makes Christians witnesses and apostles of peace.

Such an attitude

helps us better to identify what the Christian response must be to the violence that threatens peace in the world: certainly not vengeance, not hatred, nor an escape into false forms of spirituality.

The response of Christ’s followers, said the Pope, must be that of

following the road chosen by Him who, in the face of the evil of His time and of all times, embraced the Cross, following the longer but more effective path of love.

This love “must be translated into concrete gestures toward others, especially toward the poor and needy.” It constitutes one of the

essential elements of the life of Christians, who are encouraged by Christ to be the light of the world so that men and women, seeing their good works, may render glory to God.

The Pope concluded his homily by stressing the importance of this suggestion: “so that we may gain an ever clearer understanding that ‘for the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity… but is a part of her nature, an indispensible expression of her very being’ (Deus Caritas Est).”

Lenten opportunities to practice ‘mortifications’ are gifts that strengthen virtue and kill off vice. This kind of dying of the passions gives life. Overcoming slavery to the self is radical freedom. Gratification which is only self-gratification is bound to disappoint — and may even disappoint forever, which is the state of damnation. So there is the anonymous admonition which a woman wrote some time ago:

I was dying to finish school and go to work. And then I was dying to get married and have a family. And then I was dying for the children to grow up, that I might have a career. And then I was dying to retire. And now I really am dying, and I realize that I forgot to live.

Lent intensifies life, so that we might join the whole Church in the Resurrection. Traditional mortifications are presented by the Church: fasts and abstinences. Prudent voices have suggested some other creative acts of mortification; among them:

• Fast one day from TV and radio and the internet and listen to the world around you and to the sounds of your own soul.
• Begin a daily plan of prayer, especially praying the forms of Morning and Evening Prayer and other devotions found in prayer books.
• Give away some clothing or other possession that ou have not used in the past year.
• Calculate how your weekly offering to the Church approaches the Biblical standard of a tithe.
• Do some chore at home or at work that someone else usually does.
• Observe people closely and see if they need assistance with some small effort.
• Memorize a hymn or spiritual poem.
• Learn a new act of contrition to recite when going to Confession.
• Use a different examination of conscience before going to Confession.
• Set aside some time to pray for catechumens preparing to be baptized, for the newly baptized and for those who have recently died.
• Write a letter to someone who has not heard from you in a while.
• Grow in sincere prayer by telling God some doubts that you may have about the Faith, or some questions about doctrines. Peter Abelard said, “By doubting we come to enquire, and by enquiring we reach the truth.”

Just as Louis Pasteur broke up old theories of what causes diseases to develop his germ theory, and just as Albert Einstein broke up the old Euclidean notions to attain his new physics, so does health of soul and a profound ‘meta’-physical understanding of human nature require that we break up, by small mortifications, those evidences of selfishness which impede the plan that our Creator has had for each one of us since we were conceived.

I do not fight as if I were shadowboxing. What I do is discipline my own body and master it, for fear that after having preached to others, I myself should be rejected. (I Cor. 9:24-27)

Officials of the Catholic Church in Arizona have a dilemma: How to allow a 10-year-old autistic boy to receive Communion when he is unable to swallow.

Because of his autism, Matthew is unable to swallow foods of certain textures or consistencies. In particular, he has been unable to swallow bread of any kind. When it comes to the wafer Host, he spits it out. To complicate things further, the child does not want to drink wine.

His stay-at-home father has tried to find a solution — That is, he allows Matthew to receive the Eucharist; but before the child spits it out, and after it has been in the mouth for several seconds, the father takes and consumes the Host himself. (He only consumes that one Host.)

Apparently, this arrangement had been sanctioned by the family’s former parish in Pennsylvania, where the child went to Catechism classes for two years before receiving first Communion.

Now that the family has moved to Arizona, local officials don’t know how to respond, really, but in the meantime, they have put a moratorium on the practice.

Phoenix Diocese officials contend that Matthew has not been prohibited from Communion, only that the bishop is “not able to approve the present practice,” according to his letter. He offered assistance, which has come in the form of various hosts for Matthew to try, educational material and other recommendations for the parents, including respite care, in which trained personnel would look after the children while the parents took time for themselves.

One of the particular concerns is that the child is not receiving the Host validly: The Catholic faith holds that, via the miracle of transubstantiation, the Host actually becomes the Body of Christ, thus perpetuating for all time the grand Sacrifice of Our Lord on Calvary. Matthew’s reception of the Host for a few seconds does not equate to actually taking and eating it, and thus his action is reduced to a symbolic gesture rather than valid reception of the Sacrament.

“Matthew deserves to be able to take the Eucharist fully and completely,” said Isabella Rice of the diocese Office on Disabilities and Pastoral Care. “As long as he is unable to do so, we will keep working with him.”

The family is appealing the moratorium, and request that, until a suitable alternative is found, Matthew be allowed to continue to receive Communion in the previous manner. Their appeal is based on the USCCB’s “Guidelines for the Celebration of the Sacraments with Persons with Disabilities,” which says that “cases of doubt should be resolved in favor of the right of the baptized person to receive the sacrament.”

–

My own view is that the moratorium is justified.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m a staunch advocate of rights for the disabled (my own brother is handicapped).

However, you can’t just go and make your own rules for what is acceptable practice for receiving Communion. I feel bad for the family, which was misguided by its previous parish in Pennsylvania. No doubt the intention was a sincere and charitable one, but it was incorrect.

While others might view the moratorium as harsh, I applaud the Arizona Church officials for their effort to work with the family and find a valid alternative. I know that in medicine, for severely ill and comatose patients, hospital priests sometimes give only a small fragment (even a crumb) of the Host that eventually gets swallowed with the saliva. If the child will not take a sip from the Chalice, perhaps a droplet of wine could be placed in his mouth. This too is surely to be swallowed.

It is, definitely, a challenging problem to overcome. My prayers go out to the family and church officials involved.

For discussion of this topic, check out the thread in the Catholic Answers forum.

For the complete article from The Arizona Republic: Read more »