Wow, that's quite plenty of orders yeah? any specific reason why there's alot of order of mass?
When the apostles brought the Gospel to the major cultural centers of their day the essential elements of religious practice were inculturated into those cultures. This means that the essential elements were clothed in the symbols and trappings of the particular people, so that the rituals conveyed the desired spiritual meaning to that culture. In this way the Church becomes all things to all men that some might be saved (1 Cor. 9:22).
November is the month of Prayer for the Holy Souls in Purgatory; a time to remember our beloved dead.
This striking sculpture of Our Lady giving relief to the Holy Souls is in the monastery church of the Dominican nuns in Buffalo.
People are often confused by such images because they mistakenly associate the flames with hellfire. However this is, in fact, an artistic attempt to depict Purgatory!
For the Holy Souls, the flames are indicative of divine Love (think of the Holy Spirit who comes as flame, or of Christ's words in Luke 12:49) purifying them of their venial sins, which are symbolised by the shackles. As our loving prayers can help and comfort them, and the Sacrifice of Christ in the Mass sanctifies them, so, this November, especially on All Souls day, let us not neglect to pray for the dead, to visit cemeteries and offer Rosaries for them, and to have Masses said for the Holy Souls in Purgatory.
I dunno if you heard of this guy name, He is a preacher that escaped from China, during the days He was in China the China Communist government setup a state controlled church that they are the only recognized church in Whole China, which all underground churches including Catholics as well today refused to acknowledge.
From time to time, those underground church was raided by the Communist government.
The guy whom i mentioned is Brother Yun, he was tortured for his faith and refusal to acknowledge the Communist sanctioned church
Young man, be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.
Remember, too, every day, and whenever you can, repeat to yourself, ‘Lord, have mercy on all who appear before Thee today.’ For every hour and every moment thousands of men leave life on this earth, and their souls appear before God. And how many of them depart in solitude, unknown, sad, dejected that no one mourns for them or even knows whether they have lived or not! And behold, from the other end of the earth perhaps, your prayer for their rest will rise up to God though you knew them not nor they you. How touching it must be to a soul standing in dread before the Lord to feel at that instant that, for him too, there is one to pray, that there is a fellow creature left on earth to love him too! And God will look on you both more graciously, for if you have had so much pity on him, how much will He have pity Who is infinitely more loving and merciful than you! And He will forgive him for your sake.” (The Brothers Karamazov, book 6, chapter 3 (g) - Conversations of Fr Zossima: Of prayer, of love, and of contact with the other worlds)
Ok show provide the info here. Have you been to Shanghai? There's an underground church there. I won't say it here though.
Yes I've been to Shanghai. Can't understand a single word from the Shanghainese dialect, it sounded more Japanese than any of the Chinese dialects that I know of.
Pope St. Leo reigned twenty-one years as pope in the 5th century, and is the first pope to be titled "the Great." He truly was a great Pope, defending the Faith, and confirming the primacy of the Successors of St. Peter. But perhaps the most exciting thing Pope Leo did was when he had a confrontation with the infamous and cruel military leader, Attila the Hun. This is the story.
The Huns were a nomadic people, originating probably in Mongolia, but they migrated westward, sacking and pillaging whatever cities or towns that were in their way. Until the time of Attila in the 5th century, the Huns were comprised of a loose confederation of tribes, not really a unified people at all – that is, until Attila came on the scene. He unified them, and they were making their sweep across Europe. By the time of Pope Leo, Attila the Hun was busy ransacking most of Italy, and his plan included the sack of Rome. Attila hoped to add it to his possessions, not only for the riches it would give him, but he was also trying add to his number of wives, and the young woman he had his eye on would be impressed with his taking Rome, or so he thought.
Pope Leo, of course, wanted to protect Rome and keep its citizens alive, but here was Attila, looking to attack and plunder the city, and destroy the Church. With the approach of Attila and his mob of soldiers, Pope Leo went into prayer, committing his papacy to the patronage and protection of St. Peter, the apostle and first pope, and then Leo did a very brave thing – he arranged a meeting with Attila just outside the city of Rome. Nobody thought this was a very good idea – in fact, everyone in Rome was sure that Pope Leo would be immediately martyred by this conqueror who never hesitated to murder and destroy anything or anyone who got in his way.
Nonetheless, Pope Leo went to meet Attila. And then, one of the most dramatic moments in Christian history takes place: Attila calls off the sack of Rome. And Leo goes safely back to Rome. What happened? What made Attila retreat?
This is the account of that meeting: while Attila and Leo were conversing, Attila was shaking in his boots, because that during that conversation, Attila saw a vision like he had never seen before! Attila saw St. Peter himself hovering over Leo's head . . . with a huge sword drawn and pointed directly at him! Attilla was certain he would be immediately killed if he didn’t withdraw and leave the area, so to save his own skin, Attila ran away from the Pope, who was armed only with the Truth.
And that is the story of how Pope Leo the Great saved Rome from being destroyed.
O Lord Jesu Christ, who didst strengthen thy holy Bishop and Doctor, Pope Leo, to maintain both by word and deed the verity of thy sacred Humanity: grant, we beseech thee; that guided by the light of his doctrine, we may earnestly defend the faith of thy holy Incarnation; who livest and reignest with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
“When you buy an automobile, the manufacturer gives you a set of instructions. He tells you the pressure to which you ought to inflate your tires, the kind of oil you ought to use in the crankcase, and the proper fuel to put in the gas tank. He has nothing against you by giving you these instructions as God had nothing against you in giving you commandments. The manufacturer wants to be helpful; he is anxious that you get the maximum utility out of the car. And God is anxious that we get the maximum happiness out of life. Such is the purpose of His commandments.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Preface to Religion)
4 Literally Awesome Facts About Our Lady of Guadalupe
The great Bill Engvall once lamented that we use the word “awesome” way too casually. He said,
“Webster’s dictionary defines awesome as ‘anything that leaves you in awe and wonder.’ Like winning the lottery … twice. That would be awesome. Getting a phone call from the IRS saying you’ve been audited and they owe you $50,000. That would be awesome.”
Know what else would be awesome?
Seeing an apparition of Mary, having her grow roses in the middle of winter and use them to create a miraculous image to prove it to the archbishop, then converting 9 million Aztecs within seven years.
That would be….wait…that was awesome.
On December 12th of each year, the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, marking the day when, in 1531, the Blessed Mother appeared in Mexico to a 57-year old peasant named Juan Diego. According to the earliest reliable account of the story, Juan Diego was walking near what is now Mexico City (Tepeyac Hill) when he came upon an apparition of a “maiden” who he soon came to recognize as the Virgin Mary. In trying to convince the archbishop of what he had seen, Juan Diego eventually was asked for a sign to prove what he had seen.
Upon returning to Mary and sharing this with her, Juan Diego was instructed to climb to the top of the hill to gather flowers to bring back to the bishop. Reaching the crest of the hill, Juan Diego found Castilian roses, which were neither in season nor native to the region. The Blessed Mother arranged the flowers herself in Juan’s tilma (a burlap-type cloak) and instructed him to open the cloak only upon return to the bishop.
When Juan Diego arrived back at the bishop’s residence and opened his cloak, the flowers fell to the floor and left on the surface of the tilma was the image that’s come to be known as “Our Lady of Guadalupe”.
What happened next is history. The image became the wellspring of a conversion movement the likes of which have rarely been seen before or since. The fact that the Virgin Mother not only spoke to Juan Diego in his native language, but appeared to be wearing the dress of an Aztec princess sparked millions of conversions to the Catholic faith in just under seven years. The shrine that was subsequently built on the spot, where the original tilma can still be seen, remains one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in the world.
But this article isn’t about the whole apparition story so much as it is about the tilma, Juan Diego’s cloak, on which the image of the Blessed Mother was imprinted. In the centuries following the event, some amazing and unexplainable qualities have been discovered about it.
Here’s four (literally) awesome facts about the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe:
1) It has qualities that are humanly impossible to replicate
Made primarily of cactus fibers, a tilma was typically of very poor quality and had a rough surface, making it difficult enough to wear, much less to paint a lasting image on it. Nevertheless, the image remains, and scientists who have studied the image insist there was no technique used beforehand to treat the surface. The surface bearing the image is reportedly like silk to the touch, while the unused portion of the tilma remains coarse.
What’s more, experts in infrared photography, studying the tilma in the late 1970s, determined that there were no brush strokes (none!), as if the image was slapped onto the surface all at once. And it was discovered by Dr. Phillip Callahan, a biophysicist at the University of Florida, that the difference of appearance with its texturing and coloration of Our Lady’s skin up close compared to a small distance away is impossible to recreate:
“Such a technique would be an impossible accomplishment in human hands. It often occurs in nature, however, in the coloring of bird feathers and butterfly scales, and on the elytra of brightly colored beetles … By slowly backing away from the painting, to a distance where the pigment and surface sculpturing blend together, the overwhelming beauty of the olive-colored Madonna emerges as if by magic.”
This, along with an iridescent quality of slightly changing colors depending on the angle at which a person looks and the fact that the coloration in the image was determined to have no animal or mineral elements (synthetic colorings didn’t exist in 1531), provide a lot of seemingly unanswerable questions.
That’s awesome.
2) People say it’s just a painting, yet the tilma has outlived them all, in time and in quality
One of the first things skeptics say about the image is that it somehow has to be a forgery or a fraud, but every time an attempt has been made to replicate the image, the original never seems to fade, while its duplicates have deteriorated over a short time. Miguel Cabrera, an artist in the mid-18th Century who produced three of the best known copies (one for the archbishop, one for the Pope, one for himself for later copies) once wrote about the difficulty of recreating the image even on the best surfaces:
“I believe that the most talented and careful painter, if he sets himself to copy this sacred image on a canvas of this poor quality, without using sizing, and attempting to imitate the four media employed, would at last after great and wearisome travail, admit that he had not succeeded. And this can be clearly verified in the numerous copies that have been made with the benefit of varnish, on the most carefully prepared canvases, and using only one medium, oil, which offers the greatest facility…”
Dr. Adolfo Orozco, a researcher and physicist at the National University of Mexico, spoke in 2009 about the remarkable preservation of the tilma compared to its numerous copies. One copy created in 1789 was painted on a similar surface with the best techniques available at the time, then encased in glass and stored next to the tilma. It looked beautiful when painted, but not eight years passed before the hot & humid climate of Mexico caused the copy to be discarded due to faded colors and fraying, broken threads.
However, Dr. Orozco said, no scientific explanation is possible for the fact that “the original Tilma was exposed for approximately 116 years without any kind of protection, receiving all the infrared and ultraviolet radiation from the tens of thousands of candles near it and exposed to the humid and salty air around the temple.”
That’s awesome.
3) The tilma has shown characteristics startlingly like a living human body
This is where it gets really crazy.
In 1979, when Dr. Callahan was analyzing the tilma using infrared technology, he apparently also discovered that the tilma maintains a constant temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (36.6-37 deg. Celsius), the same as that of a living person.
When Dr. Carlos Fernandez de Castillo, a Mexican gynecologist, examined the tilma, he first noticed a four-petaled flower over what was Mary’s womb. The flower, to the Aztecs, was called the Nahui Ollin and was the symbol of the sun, as well as a symbol of plenitude. Upon further examination, Dr. Castillo concluded that the dimensions of Our Lady’s body in the image were that of an expectant mother due quite soon (Dec. 9, the day of the unveiling, is barely two weeks from Christmas…).
Finally, one of the most common attributions and reported discoveries lie with the Virgin’s eyes in the image. When Dr. Jose Alte Tonsmann, a Peruvian ophthalmologist, conducted a study, one of his tests involved examining the eyes at 2,500 times magnification. With the images of her magnified eyes, the scientist was reportedly able to identify as many as 13 individuals in both eyes at different proportions, just as the human eye would reflect an image. It appeared to be a snapshot of the very moment Juan Diego unfurled his tilma before the archbishop.
That’s awesome.
4) It appears to be virtually indestructible
Two distinct events have threatened the tilma over the centuries, one occurring in 1785 and the other in 1921.
In 1785, a worker was cleaning the glass encasement of the image when he accidentally spilled 50% nitric acid solvent onto a large portion of the image itself. The image and the rest of the tilma, which should have been eaten away almost instantly by the spill, reportedly self-restored over the ensuing 30 days, and remains unscathed to this day aside from small stains on the parts not bearing the image.
In 1921, an anti-clerical activist hid a bomb containing 29 sticks of dynamite in a pot of roses and placed it before the image inside the Basilica at Guadalupe. When the bomb exploded, most everything from the marble altar rail & floor just feet away from the blast, to windows 150 meters away were broken…yet the image and the glass surrounding it remained untouched. The only damage that occurred in close proximity to the tilma was a hefty brass crucifix, which was twisted and bent back by the blast.
Actually, what are the differences between Catholicism and Christianity?
How do Catholics view Christians?
Catholics are Christians.
Christianity is the just a generic term for followers of Christ, while Catholic Christians holds on to the Faith handed down through the ages from the Apostles. "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church" is specifically mentioned in the Nicene Creed. The Church that Christ founded is one, not many, has unity in faith and morals, holds on to holy doctrines, is universal, and has line of succession from the time of the Apostles up to the present age.
The Church that Christ founded cannot be in chaos with many different conflicting doctrines as what you see in the other various denominations.
“Make known to men and women how they would benefit from remembering that I, the Son of God and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, always stand before God for the salvation of the human race, and that should they commit some sin through their weakness, I offer my unblemished Heart to the Father for them.”
The real Blessed Lucy of Narnia was even more amazing than CS Lewis’s imagination by Stephen Bullivant posted Wednesday, 16 Nov 2016
A fresco in Narnia depicting Blessed Lucy Today is the feast day of the actual Blessed Lucy of Narnia. It really, really is
In the midst of a turbulent week (aren’t they all, eh?) in the world, in the Church, and I dare say in the individual details of your own lives… here’s something to cheer you right up. Well, two things actually.
Here’s the first: today is the actual feast day of the actual Blessed Lucy of Narnia. It really, really is. I promise you.
Of all the great characters from children’s literature, who better to have a namesake to intercede for us in heaven? (At least, in the absence of a St Bofa of Sofa.) After all, it was she, of all the Pevensie children, who first believed. Nor should we forget, not least as we approach Advent, that it was she who once said:
In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.
The second thing, however, is even more cheering than the first. The life of the real Lucy is even more magical and wondrous even than the one CS Lewis imagined for “Queen Lucy the Valiant”.
Born in the late fifteenth century, Blessed Lucia (“Lucy” in English) Brocadelli was from the ancient Umbrian town of Narni (“Narnia” in Latin). A pious child, she is said to have received visions from an early age. Following her father’s death in her early teens, she was married off by her uncle to Pietro, Count of Milan, though they lived as brother and sister.
As Countess, she was famed for her life of prayer and care for the poor, baking bread for them herself (ably assisted, it is said, by a number of Saints from Heaven). The lure of religious life proved irresistible. And the couple separated, she to become a Dominican tertiary, and he ultimately to join the Franciscans.
Among much else, Lucy of Narnia received the stigmata and became prioress of a convent, before ultimately spending her final four decades locked up by her successor. She died in 1544. In 1710, her body incorrupt, she was beatified by Pope Clement XI.
Of course, much of Lucy’s biography sounds fantastical. The more sceptical among you might well think that, at the very least, not everything attributed to her really, truly happened. And perhaps you might be right.
But suppose that just the barest bones of this story is true. That there once was a little girl called Lucy. That she lived a life of faith, hope, and charity. That she suffered much, but loved more. And that she is now, in her true home, in the company of her Lord.
Now that, as CS Lewis would be the very first to admit, is an infinitely more amazing, delightful, and cheering thing than all the wardrobes, Turkish Delight, and magical lions you care to imagine.
Blessed Lucy of Narnia, pray for us.
This post has been edited by yeeck: Nov 19 2016, 03:50 AM
Nov 3 2016, 02:40 PM
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