Kathryn Lopez
1.
Our Lady in May: charming wooden statue from New Mexico of Our Lady of Sorrows https://t.co/QN6zl4RaPx
— Fr Lawrence Lew OP (@LawrenceOP) May 12, 2016
2. Fr. Steve Grunow:
Christ is with us, literally, really and truly. He has not disappeared into the stratosphere or passed from this world never to return. Christ is with us in the Church, abiding with us, teaching us, intervening in our lives and in the world in extraordinary ways that the worldly cannot perceive. Christ is present to us, not merely as a symbol, or idea or feeling, but as a living, divine person, and his manner of being with us is called the Church.
Christ’s disciples have as their responsibility to bring people to Christ in the Church. We can be bridges or blocks, routes of access or walls in this regard. If people are not meeting Christ in the Church, the judgment falls on us, not on those who in meeting us, cannot find him.
Christ is present to us in his Church, but it is not enough for us to bask in his presence ourselves, we must make his presence known to others, inviting people to know Christ, and share with us, the gifts he offers in his Church.
3. Fr. Roger Landry: Jesus’ Prayer that We May Be Like God in Unity
4.
God gives us everything that we need – but only what we can take. He reveals Himself more and more, as we progress through the Bible.
— Peter Kreeft (@ProfessorKreeft) May 11, 2016
5.
Christ calls us to unity through our relationship with him, and so with his eternal Father; a unity created by God, not man. #HomilyTweet
— Fr James Bradley (@FrJamesBradley) May 12, 2016
6.
The unity for which we pray is not an abstract idea, but reality already present in the Church of Christ; one with the Father. #HomilyTweet
— Fr James Bradley (@FrJamesBradley) May 12, 2016
7. Today is the memorial of Saints Nereus and Achilleus. http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=2 The terrific Go Forth newsletter points out: http://www.goforth.today/
All of what we know about these two saints comes from the testimony of Pope St. Damasus, who recorded their history some 300 years after their deaths. Nereus and Achilleus were Roman soldiers during a time of persecution of Christians. After a miraculous conversion — about which we known little — they no longer consented to the violence the soldiers were commanded to carry out. Consequently, they were martyred, and are remembered today as bold witnesses to the faith.
8. This, from Saint Augustine in the Liturgy of the Hours today:
Jesus Christ is one man with head and body, the Savior of the body and the members of the body, two in one flesh, in one voice, in one passion, and, when wickedness has passed away, in one state of rest. The sufferings of Christ are therefore not in Christ alone; yes, but the sufferings of Christ are only in Christ.
If by Christ you mean both head and body, the sufferings of Christ are only in Christ. But if by Christ you mean only the head, then the sufferings of Christ are not in Christ alone. For if the sufferings of Christ are in Christ alone, how can the apostle Paul, as a member of Christ, say this: That I may fill up in my flesh what is lacking of the sufferings of Christ?
If then you are among the members of Christ, whatever human being you are, whoever you are that hears this, whoever you are that does not hear this (but if you are among the members of Christ you do hear this), whatever you suffer at the hands of those who are not among the members of Christ was lacking to the sufferings of Christ.
Your sufferings are added because they were lacking. You fill up a measure, you do not pour something that overflows. You suffer as much as needed to be added from your sufferings to the total suffering of Christ, who suffered as our head, and suffers in his members, that is, in ourselves.
Each one of us in his own measure pays his debt to what may be called this commonwealth of ours. In proportion to our store of strength we contribute as it were a tax of suffering. The final reckoning of all suffering will not take place until the world has come to an end.
Do not then imagine, brethren, that all the just who suffered persecution at the hands of the wicked, even those who were sent to foretell the coming of the Lord before he came, did not belong to the members of Christ. God forbid that one who belongs to the city which has Christ for king should not belong to the members of Christ.
In the blood of Abel, the just one, the whole city speaks, and so on until the blood of Zechariah. From then, it is the same city that goes on speaking in the blood of John, in the blood of the apostles, in the blood of the martyrs, in the blood of Christ’s faithful people.
9. A little Thomas Aquinas from Magnificat today:
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