Month: January 2018

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Rely on God the Father’s love, Sister of Life advises youth leaders

January 8, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Chicago, Ill., Jan 8, 2018 / 11:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The love of God the Father is an inexhaustible source of fulfillment for the human heart, Sr. Bethany Madonna of the Sisters of Life said Thursday at a Catholic youth leadership conference in Chicago.

“So many blessings are coming at us at every second of every day,” Sr. Madonna said Jan. 4 to an audience of approximately 8,000, “and the source of each and every one of these blessings is the blessing the Father gives me with himself.”

Sr. Madonna gave one of the keynote speeches on the third day of the Student Leadership Summit, an event hosted biennially by the Fellowship of Catholic University Students which aims to train young people to be effective evangelists. The theme selected for this year’s conference, which ran January 2-6, was “Inspire & Equip.”

Sr. Madonna is vocations director for the Sisters of Life, a New-York based religious order founded in 1991 by the late Cardinal John O’Connor. Much of their ministry centers around aiding pregnant women and providing healing to those who have had abortions.

“Help us to receive the Father’s love anew, more deeply than we’ve ever received it before,” Sr. Madonna prayed at the start of her talk.

Sister Madonna told the story of a couple named Matt and Lucy, friends of the Sisters, who found out shortly before their wedding that Matt had been diagnosed with cancer and had been given a year to live. The two cancelled their honeymoon in order to begin treatments.

Around the end of Matt’s treatments, doctors urged Lucy to abort their newly conceived child, fearing anomalies due to Matt’s chemo.

Instead, Matt and Lucy “began to pray,” trusting in God. In the end, she said, the only anomaly the child was born with was that two fingers were fused to the palm in such a way that his hands formed the sign for “I love you” in sign language.

“It was remedied with a simple surgery, but Matt and Lucy received it as a message from their Father, brought to them through a son, the Gospel in miniature,” Sr. Madonna said.

However, even in the cases of great defects at a child’s birth, “the Father is saying, ‘I love you’ even more.”

She highlighted the uniqueness of the Father’s love, saying it makes for a relationship like no other. This love “goes to the extremes, indwelling.” She emphasized that only mortal sin can separate human beings from this love.

“When we sever ourselves like this, he holds onto our blessing, and awaits our return,” she said, referencing the parable of the prodigal son.

She told the story of Dr. Michael Brescia, whom the Sisters of Life honored this year with their annual Cardinal O’Connor award. Brescia developed a treatment for kidney disease  in 1966, paving the way for the development of ongoing dialysis. Brescia was offered $1 billion to keep his discovery a secret for one year while a patent was developed.

She related a conversation Brescia had with his Italian immigrant father at the time. Brescia’s father, she said, was overcome with joy to know that 50,000 lives a year could be saved by his son’s discovery, but was dismayed to hear of the delay Brescia had accepted.

“‘Don’t think of this world,’” she said Brescia’s father urged. “‘You would let 50,000 people die?’”

Brescia published his discovery the next day. Sr. Madonna said that despite the invention now being worth $60 billion, he never gained anything from it financially. However, “he’s the richest man I know,” she said.

“Lasciare,” she said, using the Italian word for “release” or “let go” that Brescia’s father had spoken to him in urging his son to give up the discovery. “We too have to let go of so many things,” she said, “that keep us from the blessing that is ours.”

Referencing the “discernment of spirits” developed by St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, Sr. Madonna said that “so often, we hand desolating thoughts and lies a microphone, and we set them on the stage of our hearts.”

“It’s like, ‘Wow, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard about myself. Say it again, just this time in surround sound,’” she said.

“Let these thoughts be taken captive,” she urged listeners.

She told a story from a sister in Romania who had worked at an understaffed orphanage, where babies had stopped crying because there was no one there to respond.

“There are places in our hearts that have not yet cried out to the Father because of a lack of faith,” she said. “We have a good Father, and he hears you.”

“Tonight, we break the silence,” she said, as FOCUS staff prepared the stage for adoration.

Speaking to CNA after her talk of how she herself first came to deeply encounter this love, Sr. Madonna told a story of time she had spent praying with the book of Genesis.

“I had a powerful meditation with the the Scripture of Jacob and Esau receiving the blessing of their father,” she said. In this story, Jacob dresses as Esau to receive his father’s blessing. “Sometimes, I feel like I have to dress up, or be someone else, or impress, or pretend, so that he can bless me.”

“Something happened in my heart where I realized basically how sorrowful that is, how far that is from what the Father is actually offering me,” Sr. Madonna stated. “Through the prayer, I felt like the Father wanted my empty hands, and wanted my heart as it is.”

Speaking to CNA on the connection between accepting God the Father’s love, the focus of the SLS conference, Sr. Madonna said that this love changes how we view those we encounter.

“Once we’ve received our own lives as a gift, and once we recognize that every human person is made in the image and likeness of God and is a communication of him,” Sr. Madonna told CNA, “when I encounter another person, I recognize that they were brought into being by God all-mighty, and are beloved of him. He loves them. They are communicating something to me that was actually entrusted to them by him and it’s unique.”

“When I know that, and live it, then every person is going to know that they’re special, they’re worthy of my time. I desire to know their hearts and be with them in solidarity.”

“We have to tell people; we have to invite them.”

Speaking to CNA on how this evangelization of the Father’s love relates to the work of the Sisters of Life, Sr. Madonna drew on the Blessed Mother.

“When we receive Jesus, and we allow him to be conceived in our hearts as she did at the Annunciation, and then when we go out, like the Visitation, and we meet these women who are pregnant, we hope that, just like John the Baptist leapt in Elizabeth’s womb, we hope that something would leap in these women, that they would recognize Christ come to them, that they would experience this joy, the Holy Spirit, coming upon them.”

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Participating in the March for Life? There’s an indulgence for that.

January 7, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Washington D.C., Jan 7, 2018 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholics participating in the 45th annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., Jan. 19 will be able to receive a plenary indulgence for doing so, the local Church has announced.

“In virtue of the authority granted by our Holy Father, Pope Francis… a plenary indulgence can be obtained under the usual conditions…by the Christian faithful who are truly penitential and compelled by charity, if they take part in the sacred celebrations, along with the great assembly of people, throughout the whole course of the annual event that is called ‘March for Life,’” announced a Dec. 20 letter from the Archdiocese of Washington and the Diocese of Arlington.

The document was signed by Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington and Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, who together encouraged their brother bishops with the hope “that you will share this information with those entrusted to your pastoral care.”

Individuals who wish to obtain the plenary indulgence must engage in the events hosted by the March for Life in Washington, D.C.: the youth rally, Mass at Capital One Area, the adult and family rally at St. Matthews Cathedral, or the Prayer Vigil for Life at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

In addition, the usual conditions for a plenary indulgence must be met: that the individual be in the state of grace by the completion of the acts, have complete detachment from sin, and pray for the Pope’s intentions. The person must also sacramentally confess their sins and receive Communion, up to about twenty days before or after the indulgenced act.

The letter also noted that “the aged, sick and all those who due to grave reason are not able to leave home” are also able to receive the plenary indulgence so long as they “spiritually join themselves to the holy ceremonies, while also having offered prayers and their sufferings or the ailments of their own life to the merciful God.”

An indulgence is the remission of the temporal punishment due to sins which have already been forgiven.

The March for Life, an annual peaceful protest against abortion, has taken place for the past 44 years in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., to publicly oppose the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion across the country.

The march remains one of the largest political protests in the United States today.

Last year, hundreds of thousands of pro-life individuals were gathered in solidarity and prayer in the fight against abortion. Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the 2017 event, making him the highest ranking White House official to ever speak at the March for Life.  

This year, the theme for the 45th annual March for Life is “Love Saves Lives.”

The March will take place at the National Mall Jan. 19 and include speakers such as Pat Tebow, the mother of professional football and baseball player Tim Tebow. Other keynotes include former NFL player Matt Birk, U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski, U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, and Sr. Bethany Madonna of the Sisters of Life.

“May the efforts of all across this great nation to lift up the value and dignity of each life continue to bear fruit,” the letter said, adding, “May we all experience God’s blessings in this noble undertaking.”

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Forgetting our baptism is to forget our identity, Pope Francis says

January 7, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Jan 7, 2018 / 04:27 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday Pope Francis spoke of the importance of remembering the day of our baptism, which he said is more than just a date on the calendar, but is the moment we receive our Christian identity and are immersed in the grace and forgiveness of God.

“The feast of the Baptism of Jesus invites every Christian to remember their own baptism,” the Pope said Jan. 7, explaining that to forget one’s baptism “means exposing oneself to the risk of losing the memory of what the Lord has done for us.”

In the end, we consider the day “only as a fact that happened in the past,” rather than recognizing as the day on which “we became new creatures and are also capable of forgiving and loving whoever offends us and does us harm.”

More than just the day that “sociologically marks the parish register,” the day that we were baptized is the day that “constitutes the demanding identity card of the believer,” he said.

Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his Sunday Angelus address, which this week falls on the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus.

Prior to praying the Angelus, Pope Francis celebrated Mass inside the Sistine Chapel, during which he baptized 34 babies in commemoration of the special feast day, which he does every year.

In his address, the Pope noted how the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus marks the end of the liturgical Christmas season.

Turning to the day’s Gospel, he recalled how those who came to John for baptism recognized their sin and wanted to be cleansed in order to start a new life. Because of this, we understand “the great humility of Jesus,” who did not have sin, but put himself “in line with the penitents, mixed among them to be baptized in the waters of the river.”

By doing this, Jesus what we celebrated at Christmas: his own availability “to immerse himself in the river of humanity, to take upon himself the shortcomings and weaknesses of men, to share with them the desire for freedom and of overcoming everything that distances us from God and makes us strangers to our brothers,” Francis said.

Again pointing to the day’s Gospel reading from Matthew, he noted how it recounts that Jesus, “when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove.”

The Holy Spirit, who worked at the beginning of creation and guided Moses and the people through the desert, “now descends in fullness on Jesus in order to give him the strength to fulfill his mission in the world.”

“It is the Holy Spirit who is the author of Jesus’ baptism,” Pope Francis said. “It is the the Holy Spirit who opens the eyes of the heart to the truth, the entire truth. It is the Holy Spirit who pushes our lives on the path of charity.”

The Holy Spirit, he said, “is the gift that the Father has made to each one of us on the day of our baptism. It is the Holy Spirit who transmits to us the tenderness of divine forgiveness.”

Francis noted that it is precisely in the moment when the Jesus makes solidarity with sinners that he hears the voice of his Father, “who confirms his identity and mission.”

In off-the-cuff remarks, the Pope then asked the pilgrims present if they they know the date of their baptism, since most of them likely received the sacrament when they were children. If the answer is no, he told them to “go home and ask your mom or dad, your grandmother or grandfather, your godmother or godfather,” because it is the day of grace and forgiveness that we should all remember.

He closed his address praying that Mary would intercede so that all Christians “can increasingly understand the gift of baptism and commit themselves to living it with coherency, bearing witness to the love of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

After leading pilgrims in the traditional Angelus prayer, Pope Francis noted how earlier that morning he had “the joy” of baptizing several infants, and prayed that the Mother of God would protect them, “so that, helped by the example of their parents and godparents, they may grow as disciples of the Lord.”

He closed telling pilgrims “don’t forget you homework: what is the day of my baptism? On what day was I baptized?” and asked for prayers.

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