"We are now
facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church,
of the Gospel and the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the
plans of divine providence. It is a trial which the whole Church must
take up." The Venerable John Paul II.
This e-mail was forwarded to me, so I thought I ought to get the word out.
Dear Friends of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, In this age of instant communications, word travels fast, so you may have already heard the news: we will be appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Showon Tuesday, February 9, which also happens to be the 13th anniversary of the founding of our Community. Oprah was interested in doing a show on religious life as a hidden way of life which many people never experience, and so her producers asked us if we would be willing to welcome them. We accepted this invitation as an opportunity to share our life, and by extension, the Gospel, with an audience that we might not ever reach otherwise.
A camera crew came to the Motherhouse in Ann Arbor at the beginning of this week, and then on Thursday, Sr. Mary Samuel, Sr. John Dominic, Sr. Mary Judith, and Sr. Francis Mary were flown to Chicago for
the taping. Some of our Novices and Postulants also participated in the taping from the Motherhouse via Skype.
The camera men come to breakfast!
The show will air on Tuesday, February 9th, so be sure to check your local listings for the time and station in your area. If you can't watch it then, be sure to record it, as her producers have let us know that they do not send out copies of any show. And please, spread the word!
In the meantime, please join us in praying that Our Lord will use this television show to touch the hearts of many, so that they may come to know Him and His boundless love and mercy.
God bless you! In Jesus and Mary,
The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist 4597 Warren Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48105 (734) 930-4222 www.sistersofmary.org
There are several keys to understanding this essential identity which the Church possesses as a perfect society despite the sins of her members. These keys originated in the teachings of Christ; they were carried on by Tradition and outlined in the New Testament; they were developed by the Fathers and have been further articulated by the Magisterium. The two most powerful keys to this proper understanding were conveniently provided by St. Paul in a particularly blessed passage in his letter to the Ephesians:
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (5:15-32)
Let anyone who understands something about Christian marriage tremble at the unfathomable intimacy of this passage. Here St. Paul not only introduces marriage in the context of Christ’s love for the Church, but the Church in the context of marriage and Christ’s love for His own body. And here are our two keys to grasping the Church’s perfect identity, the Church as the bride of Christ and the Church as the body of Christ. In both senses, the Church is so fully and deeply joined to her Lord as husband and head that she is made supremely holy through her union with Him.
It has often been remarked, and not without wisdom, that the Church is a hospital for sinners. But here we see, at one and the same time, that she is the bride “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” and she is even the very body of Christ. As bride she is enraptured for holiness by Christ’s sacrifice; as body she is created and extended through Christ’s own body and blood. Nor is this bridal and bodily identity just an identity of ideas. No, the flawless bride and the holy body of Christ is a real, objective, discernible organization, composed of institutional bone and muscle. The bone is her hierarchy, led infallibly (for all its human flaws) by the successor of Peter, who serves as Christ’s vicar until He comes again. The muscle is her membership, activities and works which—again, despite all the many sins, failures and miscues—imprint the image of Christ on a fallen world.
This bride, this body, is infused with the very life of God, coursing in her veins through her participation in the high priesthood of Jesus Christ, embodied in action by the sacraments, through which grace flows into the world. In fact, grace flows here so perfectly and completely that all attachment to Christ depends ultimately on the existence and mission of His Church. This is why a positive response to grace by any person under any circumstance tends toward unity with the Church; it also explains how connections with Christ’s body may be formed by men of good will everywhere, often beneath the level of juridical membership, but always in direct consequence of Christ’s mysterious action through His Church. Thus is every grace and good intimately dependent upon the Church, which by virtue of her supreme holiness has become the universal sacrament of salvation extended through time.
The Mind of the Church
The Church is also the repository of Revelation, of all that we know about God, about His ways with men, about His salvific plan, about what it means to conform ourselves spiritually and morally to Him. Moreover, as recorded in the deposit of Faith in both Scripture and Tradition, Christ imbued the Church with the Petrine power so that the brethren might be confirmed in faith and strengthened (Lk 22:32), and this power has been exercised now by the Church’s Magisterium for nearly two millennia. The result is a wealth of clear and specific teaching about reality, life and love which serves to express quite fully both what the Church is and what we must do—and must even become—to be worthy of her. This teaching, so fruitful in producing holiness, has indeed enabled many to become worthy of what the Church is. Those who become so are called saints.
But most of us are not worthy of the Church. It is this pervasive unworthiness that creates the Church’s human flaws. In the final analysis, it is we ourselves who open the Church to criticism. Recognizing this, we have a strong obligation to root all criticism in what is, in spite of ourselves, the Church’s own perfection. That perfection is expressed in what I earlier referred to as the Church’s internal account of herself, which is commonly called the “mind” of the Church. When we combine the Church’s doctrines with the witness of her Fathers, doctors and saints, who have given individual expression to her perfect fruitfulness in every time and place, we come into possession of this “mind”. It is formed by Scripture and Tradition, and all that the Church has officially taught, as this has been consistently extended and interpreted by those who, across the generations, have been most formed by her holiness. This mind of the Church is the complete standard for our own spiritual growth, and it is the sole criterion by which we may presume to judge what is or is not wrong with ourselves, as well as what is or is not “wrong with the Church”.
The Church is, or ought to be, everything to each of us: our consistent encounter with Christ, the source of our salvation, the font of grace, the theory and practice of holiness, a haven for all the living, and the rule for the ultimate judgment of all things. It is only by putting on the mind of the Church that we put on the mind of Christ. It is only by holding ourselves to the Church’s measure that we can tell where anyone, including anyone who exercises leadership in the Church, has fallen short. Indeed, it is against the Church’s perfection that her very imperfections must be measured and corrected. The bride-body of Christ must be our one standard, just as it is, in the end, our only hope.
No duty is more incumbent on a Catholic sovereign than to preserve and increase the Christian faith and religion and the proofs thereof, and to transmit them preserved thus inviolate to posterity, by his example in preventing them from being destroyed by any assailant of the Faith or in any wise impaired.
So, when we learned that the pest of Martin Luther's heresy had appeared in Germany and was raging everywhere, without let or hindrance, to such an extent that many, infected with its poison, were falling away, especially those whose furious hatred rather than their zeal for Christian Truth had prepared them to believe all its subtleties and lies; we were so deeply grieved at this heinous crime of the German nation (for whom we have no light regard), and for the sake of the Holy Apostolic See, that we bent all our thoughts and energies on uprooting in every possible way, this cockle, this heresy from the Lord's flock.
When we perceived that this deadly venom had advanced so far and had seized upon the weak and ill-disposed minds of so many, that it could not easily be overcome by a single effort, we deemed that nothing could be more efficient in destroying the contagion than to declare these errors worthy of condemnation, after they had been examined by a convocation of learned and scholarly men from all parts of our realm.
This course of action we likewise recommended to a number of others. In the first place, we earnestly entreated His Imperial Majesty, through our fraternal love for him, and all the electoral princes, to bethink them of their Christian duty and their lofty station and to destroy this pernicious man, together with his scandalous and heretical publications, after his refusal to return to God.
But convinced that, in our ardour for the welfare of Christendom, in our zeal for the Catholic Faith and our devotion to the Apostolic See, we had not yet done enough, we determined to show by our own writings our attitude towards Luther and our opinion of his vile books; to manifest more openly to all the world that we shall ever defend and uphold the Holy Roman Church, not only by force of arms but by the resources of our intelligence and our services as a Christian.
For this reason we have thought that this first attempt of our modest ability and learning could not be more worthily dedicated than to your Holiness, both as a token of our filial reverence and an acknowledgment of your careful solicitude for the weal of Christendom.
We feel assured that our first fruits will be enhanced in value if it be approved by the wholesome judgment of your Blessedness. May you live long and happily!
From our RoyalPalace at Greenwich, the twenty-first day of May, 1521.
Your Holiness' most devoted and humble son, Henry, by the grace of God King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland.
I have long been aware the Culture of Death we find ourselves surrounded by is much deeper and far more insidious than may appear on the surface to the average person. It is not difficult to identify the evil that defends and supports the murder of innocent pre-born children. It is also not difficult to identify the evil that defends and supports the so-called right to die or assisted suicide policy being pushed upon us by a segment of society which has no courage or strength to endure life's struggles with the blessing of faith and trust in Divine Providence and with dignity.
What may not be so apparent to most is the fact that any lack of respect for our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ is at the very center of this diabolic culture we find ourselves in today.
With a little bit of reflection one can consider Matthew 22:36-39...
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your mind and strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5). “This is the greatest and first commandment. The second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Leviticus 19:18).
...And discover, it does not take much more than a little common sense and the use of reason to be cognizant of this reality. Our Lord is clearly comparing our love for Him with our love for His children.
As Christians we should be well aware every single command is an expression of these two commandments. When we read the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17) we see that the first three are about loving God and the other seven are about loving our neighbor. If we were to read every line of the Bible, we would be able to put each command in column A (love of God) or column B (love of neighbor). So these two commandments are without question the root of them all.
These two commandments are precisely the ones Christians of our day, as in the past keep breaking. For some it seems, if they observe these commandments at all; it is not an act of divine worship but rather of self-promotion. For some it seems, rather than observance of the law leading to love of neighbor, it leads to the scorn of those neighbors who fail to live up to the standards of some.
Jesus did not say to just love; he said we must love the Lord with our WHOLE heart and soul and with ALL our mind and strength; and Jesus says the second commandment is like the first. That’s because the kind of wholehearted love Jesus is talking about is charity (agape), which means loving God for his own sake and all others for His sake, and doing so not by human strength, but with the divine love that is poured into our heart by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). When we love others with charity, we love God through them. Our every loving act towards them becomes an expression of our love for God.
Let us also reflect on Matthew 25:31-46 for a moment:
"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.'Then the righteous will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?' And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.' Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.' Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?' He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.' And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
What we notice in the reading of the sheep and the goats is not that the goats "go off to eternal punishment" for anything that they did; but rather, "'Amen, I say to you, what youdid not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.' In other words the goats go off to eternal punishment for....omission....for failing to do what they ought.
From the very beginning of Genesis to the very end of Revelation, we see the story of a family; the universal family of God. We see the consequences of sin and the rewards of faithful, humble, obedience to the Will of God.
We can also see from these two readings from the Gospel of Matthew, that love does not just happen. In fact, love is a decision. Love is a decision to do the morally correct thing, it is a decision to do what we ought, it is a decision to be obedient to the Will of God.
Rather than go into any major acts of love at this point I'd like to just mention healthy communication and relationships; which is in fact an expression of Christian charity and therefore an expression (or omission; as the case may be) of our love for God.
Before we begin looking at healthy communication and relationships; lets look at some hindrances to healthy communication and relationships:
Indifference to the others problems, interests or needs.
Moodiness, grouchiness or; bad attitude.
Lack of courtesy, politeness; or consideration.
Feelings of superiority, insecurity; or jealousy.
Lack of planning, sincerity; or commitment.
Sense of being used, taking advantage of; or using the other.
Being impatient, taken for granted; or taking the other for granted.
Not treating the other with proper respect.
Insults, rudeness, sarcasm or; criticism.
Ridiculing, belittling, shunning; or ignoring.
Not listening; or not hearing what the other is saying.
Not giving to the other, the benefit of the doubt.
Being influenced by the opinion, thoughts, views; or feelings of another.
Pre-judging the others intentions, or meaning or; jumping to conclusions.
Accusing the other, bringing up old stuff, blaming; or bearing false witness.
Needing to be right, refusing to listen, cutting the other off, hanging up.
Not returning calls, e-mails, or letters.
Having a position of being offensive or defensive.
Pacifying, giving false assurance, telling the other what you think they want to hear.
Abruptly changing the subject; or minimizing the feelings of the other.
Contradictory words versus body language.
So just exactly what are some of the components of healthy communication?
Communication is both verbal (or written) and non-verbal, it is both seen and heard. Communication is an exchange of ideas and information, thoughts and feelings, opinions and facts depending on the situation. To have a healthy relationship and thus communicate in a healthy manner requires an intellectual and emotional comittment; as well as the position of mutual trust, well-being, honesty, openness, empathy, respect, acceptance and of being genuine. The genuine person is reliable, responsible, committed, helpful, spontaneous, non-defensive, consistent and willing to share openly.
The most important aspect of healthy communication is to make a decision to listen with the heart. To listen with the heart means:
I will make room in my heart beyond my feelings and beyond what I understand with my head. Listening with the heart means; I will be 'other-centered'. I put my own thoughts and feelings aside and try to take in the thoughts and feelings of the other. I go beyond the words to meet the real person who is trying to say something to me.
Some elements of listening with the heart:
A decision to listen.
An attitude of openness to listening.
The whole person is present listening.
The other, knows they are being listened to.
Clarifications and responses are given.
Listening is for the sake of the other.
Without a decision to do the morally correct thing, to do what we ought, and to be obedient to the Will of God; in our relationships with our husbands or wives, children or parents and all the other "neighbors" God puts in our lives, we risk being goats and being sent off to eternal punishment.
In conclusion, if we were more attentive to the commandments of our Lord. if we concerned ourselves with not offending Him in the little things, we would never have gotten to the point of allowing over 50 million pre-born children to be ripped from their mothers wombs or allowing adults to be deprived of food and hydration simply because they had lost value in the eyes of secular society.
