In every century, God has raised up valiant women who achieved holiness through the vocation to marriage.
In every century, God has raised up valiant women who achieved holiness through the vocation to marriage.
It’s easy to slip into the error that great holiness is only achievable for those in religious life. But married men and women are called to sanctity just as much as religious.
If you’re a wife and mother, it’s probably hard to stay focused on spiritual things and find time for prayer and spiritual reading. The obligations of caring for a family are constant and pressing.
But God is eminently just and does not expect those in the world to keep the same schedule as a monk or nun. Instead, He uses the duties of our state in life to perfect us. The very things that seem to “distract” a wife and mother from spiritual things are, in fact, God’s tools to bring her to holiness. God sanctifies us through our vocation, never in spite of it.
The saints are always our best role models on the path to holiness. Which ones found sanctity in the role of wife and mother? Here are a few of the countless women who did just that.
Our Lady. God Himself sanctified family life by coming to us in the context of a family. Mary, His Mother, ran a household, cared for a husband and a Son, did laundry, cooked meals, went to the market, and more. You can do all these things together with her.
St. Frances of Rome (15th c.). St. Frances was a devoted wife and mother in a marriage that lasted forty years. She and her husband Lorenzo welcomed six children into the world but mourned the childhood deaths of five of them. Frances perfectly harmonized a wife’s prayer life with her domestic duties. She said, “A married woman must leave all her devotions when the household demands it,” having still managed to cultivate a profound interior life.
St. Jane Frances de Chantal (17th c.). St. Jane was an embodiment of the “valiant woman” of the Book of Proverbs. She loved her husband dearly and ran his household competently during his frequent absences at the royal court. Jane endured the deaths of three of her six children, and the death of her husband after nine years of marriage. She went on to found the Order of the Visitation with St. Francis de Sales.
St. Gianna Molla (20th c.). St. Gianna was an Italian wife, mother, and medical doctor. During her fourth pregnancy, a tumor was discovered on her uterus that forced her to choose whether to have an immediate hysterectomy or to continue with the pregnancy. The first option would have ensured her personal welfare but caused the death of her child; the second gave the child the best chance but was very risky for the mother. Gianna’s choice, resulting in life for her child and death for herself in 1962, has made her a heroine to mothers everywhere.
Share the courageous story of St. Gianna Molla with your own children with this St. Gianna Beretta Molla Board Book! This book invites children to see the beauty of Christian holiness, family life, and find in St. Gianna a new heavenly friend. Order your copy today from The Catholic Company!
By Francesca Pollio Fenton – CNA Staff, Apr 26, 2024 / 06:00 am
Students, faculty, monks, and staff at Belmont Abbey College took part in their first “Cover to Cover” Bible Marathon Reading Event from April 8–12, 2024.. | Credit: Nicholas Willey
Eighty-five hours and 42 minutes. That was the time it took students, faculty, monks, and staff to read the Bible from beginning to end at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina during its first “Cover to Cover” Bible marathon reading event earlier this month.
More than 110 readers took turns standing at a podium in Stowe Hall, the college’s main administration building, reading aloud from sacred Scripture throughout the day and night beginning Monday, April 8, and ending in the early hours of Friday, April 12.
Tom MacAlester, PhD – Vice Provost and Dean of Student Life at Belmont Abbey College, told CNA in an interview that the idea came from an experience he had during his time in college at Florida State University.
“There was a group of a number of campus ministries at Florida State that kind of undertook an ecumenical approach to reading the Bible from cover to cover, nonstop,” he explained. “Baptist students and Catholic students — we even had some students from Hillel come and read parts of the Old Testament, and it was a really cool event.”
“It’s stuck with me all these years, and I was excited to be able to try it out here at the Abbey and ended up having a fantastic reception,” he added.
Ahead of the event, sign-up sheets were sent out to all students and staff giving them the ability to find a time that worked with their class schedules.
MacAlester shared that once they shared the vision for the event, “it was an easy sell” and “students got really excited about it.”
“There was a moment where we were like, ‘Oh, maybe we’ll just do the New Testament,’ but then students started signing up for the Old Testament,” he said. “You know reading the Book of Numbers at two in the morning — that sounds like really exciting stuff, right? But our students signed up really quick.”
He said many students have reached out to share how meaningful the event was to them and how, for many, “in a beautiful and a providential way, the Lord had them reading a very specific verse just for them and how touching and moving that was to them.”
There are now plans in the works to ensure each incoming class to Belmont Abbey has the opportunity to take part in the “Cover to Cover” Bible marathon at least once during their four years at the college. This will most likely mean a once-in-three-years cycle, MacAlester explained.
MacAlester hopes that students recognized “the power of Scripture” by taking part in this event.
“It’s a blueprint right? If we’re looking for a guide, if we’re looking for inspiration in how to live a holy life and one day hopefully get to heaven and bring our friends, we can’t be ignorant of Scripture,” he said.
After his fall from virtual grace, the apologetics ‘expert’ to be replaced by lay character.
Matthew McDonald – Nation – April 24, 2024
JMeet Father Justin, Catholic Answers’ AI priest. (photo: Screenshot / Catholic Answers )Father Justin, we hardly knew ye.
Less than two days after debuting an artificial intelligence (AI) priest character to overwhelmingly negative reviews, Catholic Answers has given “Father Justin” the virtual heave-ho.
The lay-run apologetics and evangelization apostolate, based in El Cajon, California, told the Register that it will replace him on its app with a lay character named “Justin” within a week.
“We won’t say he’s been laicized, because he never was a real priest!” Catholic Answers said in a written statement to the Register late Wednesday afternoon.
A statement from the President of Catholic Answers regarding the character formerly known as “Father Justin”: pic.twitter.com/n3n5q402sO
“We chose the character to convey a quality of knowledge and authority, and also as a sign of the respect that all of us at Catholic Answers hold for our clergy,” the statement, from Catholic Answers’ president, Christopher Check, explained. “Many people, however, have voiced concerns about this choice. We hear these concerns; and we do not want the character to distract from the important purpose of the application, which is to provide sound answers to questions about the Catholic faith in an innovative way that makes good use of the benefits of ‘artificial intelligence.’”
Catholic Answers said it would continue to tweak the way it works with AI.
Depicted wearing a black cassock sitting among chirping birds, the bearded AI “priest” appeared oblivious to the cascade of criticism that erupted on social media after Catholic Answers debuted the character Tuesday at midnight.
Some found him creepy. Some didn’t like his voice. Some worried about replacing actual human beings. Some didn’t like his character being a priest.
“I say this with nothing but respect for you guys and your work, but … this should’ve just been a plain search engine,” said Father Mike Palmer, a member of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, on the social-media platform widely known as Twitter (but formally called X). “Dressing it up as a soulless AI avatar of a priest does absolutely nothing except cause confusion and invite mockery of your otherwise excellent work.”
Even so, “every knock a boost,” as the old saying about negative publicity goes.
About 1,000 people an hour were using the “Father Justin” app as of Wednesday afternoon. Traffic at the Catholic Answers website (Catholic.com) was up 77% in April 2024 versus April 2023, said Donna Barrack, director of marketing at Catholic Answers.
Demand was so high that it was taking minutes to receive an access code by email on Wednesday, something that normally takes a few seconds.
The Register ran into technical problems when it attempted to interact with “Father Justin” on Wednesday. Questions had to be shouted into a laptop microphone, and the app took time to translate them into printed words on the screen. “Eucharist” came out “caressed” and, later, “you, you, you.” “Communion” came across as “commute” and later “commune.”
When he understood a question, though, “Father Justin” provided a short, substantive answer.
Asked why you should go to church on Sunday, Father Justin answered with brief quotations from Scripture (Psalm 122:1; 1 Corinthians 12:27; John 6:54) and also explained: “When we gather together for Mass, we are united with Christ and each other in a profound way. We hear God’s Word in the Scriptures, and we receive Jesus himself in the Eucharist. … Going to church isn’t just an obligation, it’s a privilege and a joy.” But The Pillar reported that “Father Justin” said it was okay to baptize someone with Gatorade.
“Father Justin” was aimed at providing answers to questions faster than was possible with human apologists on staff. Several years ago, the organization took down a question-and-answer feature on its website because its staff apologists were inundated with thousands of queries.
“With our mission to explain and defend the Catholic faith, we do think artificial intelligence has a usefulness, at least as a starting point. I would caution against it being an ending point in your journey or in your search for answers,” said Chris Costello, director of information technology for Catholic Answers, in a Zoom interview Wednesday, several hours before the decision to end Father Justin was announced.
Barrack said the “Father Justin” app was an attempt at “gamifying the question-and-answer process” to appeal to young people.
Costello said the intent was never to replace human apologists.
“Obviously, there’s something different in the human delivery,” Costello said. “People … don’t just want the answer. They want to understand the answer. And they want to talk about it and have a back-and-forth, which you can actually do with the application. But I think that there’s always going to be something missing if you don’t have an actual person.”
Bishop Checchio will ordain Ketan Christian, the first Gujarati as a Deacon along with 15 candidates and one other as a transitional Deacon. May 03, 2024
The permanent Deacon is an ordained member of the Church who has received the sacrament of Holy Orders (as does a Bishop and Priest) and is deemed a cleric. Permanent Deacons make promises of obedience to the Bishop. They also promise to pray the Liturgy of the hours each day for all the people of God. Deacons can perform Baptisms, Weddings and Funerals. A Deacon also assists Priest or Bishop at Mass and may give the Homily.
From Left Max, Stephanie, Ketan Cristian, Bishop James Checchio, Ila Christian and Christine.
Ketan and Family invite for dinner after the ordination on May 03, 2024
Traditionally, the beginning of the order of deacons is traced back to the story in Acts of the Apostles, Acts 6: 1-6. The time finally came during deliberations of the Second Vatican Council in 1963, calling for restoration of the diaconate as a permanent level of Holy Orders. In June 1967 Pope Paul VI implemented this decree of the Council when he published the apostolic letter “Sacrum Diaconatus Ordinem” (“The Sacred Order of the Diaconate”) in which he re-established the permanent diaconate in the Latin Church.
The very first time in US history five men from the Archdiocese of Baltimore were ordained as a Deacon On June 12, 1971 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Homeland.
Members of the first class of permanent deacons and their wives stand outside the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in 1971. The deacons and their wives, from left to right: Charles and Janet Kruger, Hubert and Dolores Derouaux, George and Joyce Evans, Bernard and Antoinette Bak, Doris and Americus Roy, and Angelina and Richard Johe. (CR file)
Although a resolution was already passed by the CBCI for accepting the permanent Diaconate in India as a proper and permanent state of the hierarchy in 1966, it was only in 1982 that the CBCI finally petitioned the Holy See. A year later, the CBCI received permission from the Holy See to restore and promote the permanent Diaconate in India, with a proviso that before it could be introduced in any diocese, the bishop would consult the bishops of the region. On January 22, 2006, Bombay was the first and only diocese in India to introduce the permanent Diaconate when, the then Archbishop of Bombay, Cardinal Ivan Dias, ordained two permanent Deacons, Mr Lloyd Dias from Sacred Heart Church, Vashi and Mr Elwyn De Souza from St Joseph Church, Juhu.
Archbishop of Bombay, Cardinal Ivan Dias, ordained two permanent Deacons, Mr. Lloyd Dias from Sacred Heart Church, Vashi and Mr Elwyn De Souza from St Joseph Church, Juhu.
Please save the date and join: Ketan will serve as Deacon of the Mass and preach is first homily.
Church of The Sacred Heart, South Plainfield Bulletin April 14, 2024
HOLY MASS OF THANKGIVING
Sunday, May 05, 2024 @ 11:30 AM
Church of the Sacred Heart
South Plainfield, NJ 07080
Fr. Paresh Parmar, the Episcopal Vicar of The Diocese of Ahmedabad, Gujarat will be attending all above events and will offer a Mass in Gujarati as per details below:
Do the majority of Catholics not fully grasp the why behind the Liturgy of the Eucharist?
Judy Roberts – Nation – March 28, 2024
Fr. Jonathan Meyer
When an Indiana priest’s message on the Mass went viral on YouTube recently, the response revealed a hunger among Catholics to know more about the Church’s principal sacramental celebration.
Father Jonathan Meyer of All Saints parish in Guilford, Indiana, was astounded when a 33-minute talk he had given at a Jan. 27 men’s conference in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, was picked up by the Servants of God YouTube channel in Australia, drawing more than a half million views and 1,432 comments.
“I had no idea it was even happening,” Father Meyer told the Register. “I gave a talk, and the next thing I knew, it was trending like crazy.”
Claiming that more than 90% of Catholics do not fully grasp why they go to Mass, Father Meyer set out in the talk to correct misconceptions and expound on the roots and purpose of the Church’s chief form of worship. In it, he presents 14 “Stations of the Eucharist”he has developed to illustrate the nature of the Mass as the re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary, taking readers through the Bible and highlighting scenes such as the sacrifice of Abel and the Last Supper.
Father Meyer told the Register in his experience most Catholics bring a kind of consumer mentality to Mass, showing up to get what they want: Jesus in Holy Communion. But Christ, he said, is truly present in the Eucharist not just so that Catholics can receive and adore him. Rather, it is so that they can be at the re-presentation of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
“I think there is this great love of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament,” he said, “but it is completely detached from the true understanding of his presence being given to us so we could enter into the re-presentation of Calvary.”
When Catholics miss this, he said, they tend to cling to peripheral elements of the Mass like music, homilies or community, making them the focal point.
“All those are great and fruits of a well-celebrated Mass, but none is essential to what is taking place,” he said. “… I go to Mass to go to the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, to go to Calvary, to go to my salvation. It literally is my salvation. It is the death and resurrection of the Lord, and I have the ability to unite myself to it.”
Father Casey Jones, pastor of St. Elizabeth Seton parish in Naples, Florida, said his observations mirror those of Father Meyer.
“I can tell by the look on people’s faces at Mass,” he said. “You have these blank, glazed-over kind of eyes. Secondly is the casual way in which people approach the Blessed Sacrament. You see people that come up like I’m giving out a number at the deli counter. You see this lack of understanding.”
“People will receive Holy Communion and then bolt right out the door, without even taking time for a moment of thanksgiving,” Father Jones said.
Others, he said, not only leave early, but arrive late — just in time to receive Communion.
“That is a clear indicator they don’t understand the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass because they think about ‘what I can get out of it.’ They’ve missed the notion of sacrifice.”
Brant Pitre, research professor of Scripture at the Augustine Institute and author and presenter of The Mass Explained video series, agreed that many Catholics, especially those who grew up in the faith, know what to do and say at Mass but don’t necessarily comprehend why.
“One of the reasons Father Meyer’s video is going viral,” he said, “is that it is touching a nerve and filling a gap many Catholics have in understanding the Mass as a sacrifice.”
For instance, he said, Catholics who say they go to Mass to receive Holy Communion are not necessarily wrong to cite that as a reason, given the Mass is ordered not just toward the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ but toward the reception by the priest and the faithful.
“However, many Catholics unfortunately have the idea that we go to Mass only to receive,” he said, “and they forget the Church’s teaching that we go to Mass not only to receive but to offer ourselves in union with the sacrifice of Christ. This is really, really important. It’s nowhere clearer than in the Mass itself, in the Offertory.”
When the priest turns to the faithful and says, “Pray, brethren,” Pitre explained, he is asking them to pray that “my sacrifice and yours be acceptable to God the Father Almighty.”
Yet, he continued, “If you ask most Catholics, ‘What is your sacrifice?’ they would be hard-pressed to answer that. The priest is offering the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ to the Father in the Person of Christ, but it’s not often as clear that we also go to offer sacrifice.”
Quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Pitre said, “The lives of the faithful, their praise, sufferings, prayer and work are united with those of Christ and with his total offering, and so acquire a new value.”
It is especially at the Offertory, he continued, that the faithful are supposed to be bringing their suffering, prayer, the work they’ve engaged in through the week and all their trials and difficulties and offer them on the altar in union with the priest’s offering.
“For me personally, this understanding of Mass not just as reception of Communion but as offering of sacrifice is really transformative for our active participation in the Mass.”
Father Meyer added, “We need the re-presentation of Calvary because we need to take our sufferings and trials there so we know we’re not alone, that there’s a place we can go in our isolation, brokenness and addiction and can unite it to Christ. And this is not just me thinking about Jesus and that he did that one time in history. He allows us to continue to enter into it because we’re all broken, and every day that brokenness continues, and the brokenness of the world continues.”
As he told the men at the January conference in Florida, “I don’t know what cross you have today, but what I do know is that there’s a Mass right now in this world being offered at this very moment, and you can unite that sacrifice and that pain and that wound to that cross, which is your salvation.”
One of the 50 priests who have been serving as “Eucharistic preachers” for the three-year National Eucharistic Revival, Father Meyer said he and the others have been encouraged to preach on the Eucharist as presence, communion and sacrifice.
“Of those three aspects of the Holy Eucharist that the Revival is trying to bring forth,” he said, “the one probably the least understood is the Eucharist as sacrifice, a sacrificial meal that brings us into direct contact with the sacrifice on Calvary.”
He said he is hopeful that the Church, having previously emphasized communion and presence, may now be entering a season in which sacrifice is highlighted.
Even in his own priesthood, Father Meyer said, he doesn’t know if he fully understood the Mass as a sacrifice. Ordained in 2003, he said, “I was fighting with every ounce that I had to try to just get people to believe in the True Presence. If I had it to do all over again, I wish I would have fought the battle that the Mass is the re-presentation of Calvary and that that’s why we have the True Presence.”
Patrick Madrid, host of Relevant Radio’s Patrick Madrid Show, said in speaking at hundreds of U.S. parishes over nearly 40 years, he has observed that, regardless of their level of understanding, Catholics have an innate love for the Mass, and “going to Mass” is very much a part of their identity.
“There is a certain gravitational pull for Catholics who go to Mass because they know that’s what Catholics do,” he told the Register. Those who are more fervent about their faith tend to have more knowledge about the Mass and why they go, he said, but many go simply because they know in some sense that Jesus is present. “Even for those not well-grounded in their faith, they still feel that gravitational pull. They know Jesus is there. Catholics are drawn to Jesus as they understand him to be present in the Mass, even if their understanding is minimal.”
Madrid said he thinks that many American Catholics’ perception of the Mass as a sacrifice was diminished, if not entirely lost, during the liturgical changes that followed the Second Vatican Council because the transition to the new rite was not explained adequately and because many things were done, such as moving tabernacles out of sanctuaries, that had nothing to do with the Council’s vision.
Likewise, Father Jones said he would blame the loss of the sense of the Mass as sacrifice not on the Council itself, but on the implementation of the liturgical reform that followed it.
“The proverbial rug was pulled from under the feet of the faithful with very little explanation given as to why.” He said changes in the language meant that priests stopped talking about sacrifice and the Real Presence and ceased encouraging Eucharistic adoration and devotions.
Similarly, he said, employing a bare-minimum approach to liturgy that used only what was required by the missal and eliminated such elements as incense or chant removed the awe and wonder of sacrifice. “When you take a minimalist approach, it is a great disservice to the faithful because these beautiful elements were given to us by the Church to help teach us what is taking place at the altar.”
Madrid said he believes the English translation of the Roman Missal that went into use in 2011 was a huge improvement over the previous translation and helped restore the rightful emphasis on the Mass as a sacrifice, especially in the Eucharistic Prayers, and thus was a significant step in the right direction.
He said, “As the lay faithful become ever more aware of what really happens at Mass, through those prayers, the momentum of belief in the Real Presence of Jesus is flowing back in the right direction.”
