Kolkata, India, Aug 26, 2019 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- Hundreds of Missionaries of Charity gathered at their headquarters on Monday to commemorate the birthday of the order’s founder, Mother Teresa.
Archbishop Thomas D'Souza of Calcutta, whose birthday falls on the same day, celebrated Mass on Aug. 26 to recognize what would be the 109th birthday of Saint Mother Teresa.
“It was a splendid celebration. The 109th anniversary of the birth of our beloved Saint Mother Teresa was a moment of thanksgiving through prayer and joy,” said Father Dominic Gomes, vicar general of the archdiocese.
“The chapel was packed with people of all social origins,” he told Asia News.
The event was held at the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata. After Mass, an estimated 300 nuns and novices gathered around the saint’s tomb and sang “Happy Birthday.”
Catholics normally commemorate the feast day of a saint – which often corresponds with the day they died – but the Missionaries of Charity have continued to celebrate Mother Teresa’s birthday as well, even after her death in 1997. During Mother Teresa’s life, her birthday had been a major celebration at the house.
The nuns told UCA News that they celebrate Mother Teresa’s birthday in all 700 of their homes across the world. The nuns will begin a nine-day novena on Aug. 27 in preparation for the saint’s feast day on Sept. 5.
“There can be no feast day without a birthday,” one of the nuns told UCA News. “So, our birthday celebrations could be seen as preparation for the feast day.”
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu Aug. 26, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia. After joining the Sisters of Loretto at age 17, she was sent to Kolkata, where she later contracted tuberculosis, and was sent to rest in Darjeeling.
On the way, she felt what she called “an order” from God to leave the convent and live among the poor.
After she left her convent, Mother Teresa began working in the slums, teaching poor children, and treating the sick in their homes. A year later, some of her former students joined her, and together they took in men, women and children who were dying in the gutters along the streets.
In 1950, the Missionaries of Charity were born as a congregation of the Diocese of Calcutta. In 1952, the government granted them a house from which to continue their mission of serving Calcutta's poor and forgotten. Today, they operate in 176 countries, serving the “poorest of the poor.”
Mother Teresa was canonized in 2016.
During his homily, Archbishop D'Souza said Christ invites everyone to service and pointed to Mother Teresa as a model of selfless love.
“Jesus invites us to love one another. The Mother served the poorest of the poor with selfless service and passionate love, giving them to Jesus through her work,” he said, according to Asia News.
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A reconstruction of an ancient church recently discovered in Armenia. The newly discovered church measures about 100 feet across and is shaped like an octagon with “cruciform annexes oriented east-west and north-south,” according to Achim Lictenberger, who noted the discovery of a similar structure from a slightly later period found in Abchazia (Sebastopol). / Credit: AGAP
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 24, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).
A team of German and Armenian researchers made a groundbreaking discovery last week of an ancient church in Armenia dating back to the fourth century, making it the oldest documented church in Armenia, which is considered the first Christian nation in the world.
In an email correspondence with CNA, co-directors of the project Achim Lichtenberger and Torben Schreiber of the University of Münster and Hayk Gyulamiryan of the Armenian Academy of Sciences explained the significance of the discovery made by the team at the site of the ancient city of Artaxata. The project’s fourth co-director, Mkrtich H. Zardaryan, could not be reached for comment by the time of publication.
Historic roots of Christianity in Armenia
“Being the first country which adopted Christianity at the state level, and where the apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew preached Christianity in the early first century, this discovery is a very important fact for Armenians,” Gyulamiryan told CNA, further stating that “the findings are among the most important in Armenia in recent decades.”
Lichtenberger also emphasized the site’s particular importance, as the church was discovered near the monastery of Khor Virap, where Gregory the Illuminator had been kept in prison before he converted the Armenian king Tiradates III to Christianity in the fourth century.
The monastery of Khor Virap and Ararat in Armenia. Credit: AGAP
As Gyulamiryan stated, although the roots of Christianity may be traced back to the time of the apostles in Armenia, it was not until 301 that Christianity was proclaimed the official religion of Armenia.
According to tradition, Armenia’s conversion is attributed to St. Gregory the Illuminator, a Christian evangelist and convert from Zoroastrianism who miraculously cured the nation’s pagan king of a peculiar “illness” after no other pagan priest was able to do so.
The widely-adopted story of how Armenia became Christian draws from a mythical history promulgated by the fifth-century author Agathangelos, the Armenian researcher explained.
As the legend goes, the pagan king of Armenia had become fascinated by the beauty of St. Hripsime, a nun who had fled with her abbess and community from persecution in Rome. The king offered to marry and make her queen, but Hripsime refused and was able to ward off the king’s advances through miraculous strength.
After the king ultimately had Hripsime and her community killed, historians claim he was “turned into a wild boar who tore at his own flesh” and could not be cured by any priests of pagan or Zoroastrian temples who attempted the feat.
Eventually, the king’s sister persuaded him to appeal to St. Gregory, whom the king had imprisoned for the past 15 years. Once St. Gregory was released, he cured the king of his “disease” and converted him and the entire royal family to the Christian faith.
Artaxata, where these events are believed to have taken place, is “a major place related to early Christianity in Armenia,” Lichtenberger told CNA.
St. Gregory is revered both in the Orthodox Armenian Apostolic Church and in the Catholic Church traditions. In 2005, Pope John Paul II erected a 19-foot statue of St. Gregory in the north courtyard of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.
The excavation area of the archeological site where the remains of an ancient church were found in Armenia. Credit: AGAP
The discovery
The newly-discovered church measures about 100 feet across and is shaped like an octagon with “cruciform annexes oriented east-west and north-south,” according to Lichtenberger, who noted the discovery of a similar structure from a slightly later period found in Abchazia (Sebastopol).
Although the Araxata site was previously discovered, Lichtenberger told CNA that the church had been buried underground and gone undiscovered until the team carried out its magnetic prospections and excavations this past spring.
The researchers confirmed in September the age of the church to be from about 350 A.D. using radiocarbon dating techniques on a series of samples taken from a wooden platform belonging to the original construction of the building.
Ahead of the autumn excavations this year, Gyulamiryan told CNA he remembered thinking that the team “should confidently dig up the next chapter of the history of Armenia.”
The massive mortar wall of the recently discovered ancient church believed to be the oldest in Armenia. Credit: AGAP
According to Lichtenberger, the radiocarbon date from the wooden samples corresponded with pottery shards that were also discovered inside the church and with “the overall construction technique of the building using substantial amounts of mortar.”
“In the center of the church we encountered significant amounts of marble decoration that suggest that this part was prominently adorned,” he said. Interestingly, the German researcher noted that the state of the building upon discovery indicated that it had perhaps met a hostile end.
“The building was heavily destroyed (maybe intentionally),” he wrote, “the marble construction smashed, parts of the floor tiles removed, the roof set on fire, and all was buried in a huge collapse of roof tiles and burnt roof beams.”
However, according to Lichtenberger, there are no primary literary sources that correspond to the church, as “literary sources only relate to a seventh-century A.D. church in Artaxata.”
By contrast, while the Armenian literary tradition attests that the oldest church in the country is the Etchmiadzin Cathedral, Lichtenberger noted, “archeological evidence from this place does not date back to the mid-fourth century A.D.”
“This does not mean that Etchmiadzin is younger than the Artaxata church, it only means that the Artaxata church provides earlier archaeological evidence,” he added. “Therefore we assume that the Artaxata church is the oldest archaeologicallyattested church in Armenia.”
The Etchmiadzin Cathedral, which Armenian literary tradition attests is the oldest church in the country. But Achim Lichtenberger says this “does not mean that Etchmiadzin is younger than the Artaxata church, it only means that the Artaxata church provides earlier archaeological evidence. Therefore we assume that the Artaxata church is the oldest archaeologically attested church in Armenia.” Credit: Madalaine Elhabbal
Future of the project
Schreiber shared with CNA in another email chain that analysis of data collected from the site will play a significant role in future archeological measures.
“The interaction of the excavation results, the geophysical survey, and the scientific investigations (natural sciences) will keep us busy in the coming year,” Schreiber said. “However, we are certain that these measures will provide us with a very comprehensive picture of this extraordinary and important find.”
Excavations in the ancient ruins of a church recently discovered in Armenia, the oldest Christian nation in the world. Credit: AGAP
The research team from the University of Münster and the Armenian Academy of Sciences have been at the Artaxata site since 2018 and have also made other noteworthy discoveries, including an unfinished Roman aqueduct, a Hellenistic sanctuary, and the remains of an Urartian settlement, according to Lichhtenberger.
The team of researchers also includes 10 students from the German university along with various internal and external specialists who consulted with the team on different groups of materials at the site, including animal and human bones, plants, or “archaeobotanical” matter, marble, plaster, pottery, and roof tiles — “of which we found a lot,” Lichtenberger said.
“We will continue the work of the Armenian-German Artaxata Project in the future,” he told CNA.
Sydney, Australia, Apr 10, 2018 / 06:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid attacks on the seal of confession in Australia, Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney has said priests will suffer punishment before betraying their sacred obligations.
Confession “is threatened today both by neglect and attack. But priests will, we know, suffer punishment, even martyrdom, rather than break the seal of Confession,” Archbishop Fisher said April 1 during his homily for Easter Sunday at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney.
“For Confession is a privileged encounter between penitent and God; here the Christian enters the silence and secrecy of the Tomb, to be re-Eastered; and no earthly authority may enter there.”
Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended last year that priests be legally obliged to disclose details of sexual abuse revealed in the confessional, and that failure to do so be made a criminal offense.
Archbishop Denis Hart of Melbourne has also opposed any moves to mandate violation of the seal, having said that confession “is a fundamental part of the freedom of religion, and it is recognized in the Law of Australia and many other countries. It must remain so here in Australia…(but) outside of this, all offenses against children must be reported to the authorities, and we are absolutely committed to doing so.”
The Archbishop of Sydney’s comments came as part of his teaching on the sacraments and eternal life.
In the sacraments “Christ’s Paschal mystery is remembered, its fruits applied to us here and now, and a heavenly life promised us,” he said. “To miss the sacraments or receive them only half-heartedly, is to fail really to participate in Holy Week. For it’s through the Eucharist and Priesthood that we join Jesus’ Last Supper; in Confirmation and Matrimony that we experience the climax of Good Friday; and with three more sacraments that we rise from the Empty Tomb.”
“Baptism is inextricably tied to Holy Week because Jesus Himself described the crucifixion as the ‘Baptism’ He must suffer; Jesus Himself gave forth water from His pierced side as the source of Baptism; Jesus Himself appeared at Easter to tell His disciples to go out evangelizing and baptizing. This the Church has done ever since. As St Paul explained, to be baptized is to die with Christ, be buried with Christ, and be raised up with Christ to new life. Baptism is the sacrament of rebirth, purification, justification, eternal life…”
Archbishop Fisher noted that in the Soviet Union, baptism was called a “health menace”, and, moreover, that “as recent testimony before the Ruddock Inquiry into Protection of Religious Freedom in Australia highlighted, we cannot take the freedom to hold and practice our beliefs for granted, even here in Australia.”
“Powerful interests now seek to marginalize religious believers and beliefs, especially Christian ones, and exclude them from public life. They would end funding to faith-based schools, hospitals and welfare agencies, strip us of charitable status and protections, cast us as ‘Public Enemy No. 1’. We may not always be as free as we are now to evangelize and baptize as Jesus mandated at the first Easter.”
He then moved from baptism to confession, noting that baptism “cannot be repeated as sin, sadly, can”, and thus there is the “second baptism” of confession.
“From Old Testament times we heard the call to confess our sins and we learnt of God’s boundless mercy,” the archbishop said. “In the fullness of time Christ came absolving sins … the newly Risen Christ passed the authority to absolve contrite sinners to the apostles, saying, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit: those who sins you forgive, they are forgiven; those whose sins you retain, they are retained.’ So Confession is another beautiful Easter gift, stirring us to contrition and resolve to sin no more, enabling a life-long journey of conversion, reconciling us to God and the Church, and giving us ‘pardon and peace’.”
“So the Easter sacrament of Baptism regenerates the spirit; the Easter sacrament of Penance renews the heart; but it is the Easter sacrament of Anointing that restores the body,” he preached.
“Our sacrament for the sick is not green tea or cloning. Our aid to the dying not the secular sacrament of euthanasia, either … But in a country with few religious liberty protections and many pressures for euthanasia, how free will Christian health providers like St Vincent’s be in the future, how free our health professionals, how free patients even, to reverence life from conception to natural death, especially when others think them burdensome or better off dead?”
“The future of our religious freedoms – and so of our sacraments – will depend whether our generation protects both the freedoms and the sacraments,” Archbishop Fisher said.
He noted that “The women go to the Tomb today to anoint the broken body of Jesus and instead find it is risen.”
“Like the Church after the Royal Commission and amidst many humiliations and challenges, like each of us when we feel broken of body or bruised of spirit: we need the healing power of God, anointing the sick person, even the sick Church, so we can be rebuilt, given new purpose and strength.”
“There’s something even better than açai and kale here,” he said, referring to “our culture’s secrets to living forever or till it feels like forever.”
“The Maundy Thursday sacraments of Holy Eucharist and Holy Orders teach the Church to live with Christ for worship and service. The Good Friday sacraments of Holy Confirmation and Holy Matrimony reveal she must die with Christ for inspiration and love. And the Easter sacraments of Holy Baptism, Holy Penance and Holy Unction show we must repent and let Christ transform our spirits, hearts and bodies, that He might raise them up to eternal life.”
Chittagong, Bangladesh, Dec 6, 2018 / 10:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As new evidence emerges of atrocities committed in Burma’s Rakhine state, the president of Caritas International visited Monday a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh.
In 2017 the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group, faced a sharp increase in state-sponsored violence in Burma, also known as Myanmar. The violence reached levels that led the United Nations to declare the crisis “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled across the border to Bangladesh, and are living in refugee camps, many of which are located in a swampy sort of “buffer zone” along the border between the two countries.
Researchers with the Public International Law and Policy Group, contracted by the U.S. State Department to investigate Burma’s treatment of the Rohingya, found “reasonable grounds to believe that genocide was committed against the Rohingya,” in a report published Dec. 3.
The researchers interviewed more than 1,000 refugees, who shared their experiences of “mass shootings, aerial bombardments, gang rapes and severe beatings, torture and burning” by Burma’s armed forces.
Seventy percent of the Rohingya interviewed had witnessed their homes or villages being destroyed and 80 percent witnessed the killing of a family member, friend, or personal acquaintance.
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Cardinal Luis Tagle of Manila visited Kutupalong refugee camp, more than 100 miles south of Chittagong, Dec. 3, describing it as “a cry to the whole world for a better politics based on compassion and solidarity.”
“When will we learn our lessons and be able to stop a crisis of this magnitude happening again? How as an international community and a human family can we get back to the basics of dignity, care and compassion?” continued Tagle.
The Filipino cardinal is the president of Caritas International, a group that has served the Rohingya refugee population since the crisis began.
Caritas has helped nearly 500,000 refugees by providing shelter, water, sanitation, hygiene, and living supplies.
“The situation of refugees from Myanmar was heartbreaking for me when I came first, but I’m seeing things improve,” Tagle said. “We wish for a permanent solution for these people who are stateless and helpless. It is our responsibility to be with them. We want them to have a happy life.”
Tagle found particular hope in seeing the efforts of the Caritas Bangladesh volunteers and staff to help the refugees during the Advent season.
“Here I am this first week of Advent with a people waiting for a future,” Tagle said. “For us Advent is waiting not for something but for someone. Jesus, who was born poor, who became a refugee but who never stops loving. I hope this message coming from this camp will encourage all of us never to get tired of loving.”
Bangladesh and Burma have agreed to a repatriation program which began last month, but few if any Rohingya have chosen to return to their homeland.
The Burmese government refused to use the term Rohingya, and considers them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They have been denied citizenship and numerous other rights since a controversial law was enacted in 1982.
Saint MT of Kolkata taught the world to serve the weak, the sick, the downtrodden and the disabled. Long live the memory of her inspiring engagements.