Fr. Robert Barron Discusses "The Joy of the Gospel"

Altar Servers: Training Ground for the Priesthood

Two Sense Films

The following video from Two Sense Films aptly depicts why boys serving as altar servers is a gateway to discerning a vocation to the priesthood.

Altar Boy

If you are like me, you served as an altar boy when you were young. I actually served all the way through my high school years. I remember I how much I enjoyed putting on the cassock and the surplice (these are the black and white garments that look like the priest's); it made me feel "priestly." In fact, while I never formally discerned for the priesthood, serving as an altar boy gave me pause to think about the priesthood as a vocation (of course I didn't know at the time that was what I was doing). I remember thinking that serving on the altar was serious stuff. 

Fathers & Sons

I have very strong opinions about the need to get more young men and boys active as altar servers. I believe this is the training ground for future priests. The purpose of this post is not to criticize the relatively recent move to permit girls as altar servers. Instead, I am simply saying that it is an opportunity to give young men a glimpse into the possibility of the priesthood as a vocation. Countless priests have said their vocations began on the altar, serving as altar boys. I believe fathers have a responsibility of encouraging their boys to serve in this capacity. Two things we can focus on : 1) they will be serving God and their community and 2) they will belong to a special team. Boys like belonging to teams.

Immaculate Heart of Mary

Immaculate Heart of Mary, Melissa Breeland

Today the Catholic Church celebrates the Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The feast is celebrated on the Saturday after the Second Sunday after Pentecost.

Origin
The feast grew out of the exisiting devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

After the consecration of the world to the most sweet and motherly Heart of Mary in 1942, many petitions were sent to the Roman Pontiff asking him to extend to the whole Church the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary that already existed in some places. Pius XII agreed in 1945 cenain to find in her most loving Hean ... the safe haven in the midst of the tempest that everywhere assails us. Through the symbol of her heart we venerate in Mary her most pure and perfect love for God and her motherly love for each one of us. In that heart of hers we can find a refuge in the midst of all the and temptations of life, and we ask her to prepare for us the safe way - iter para tutum - the way by which we will soon reach her Son (In Conversation with God, Vol. 6, p. 330)

Sweet & Immaculate Heart
St. Josemaria taught that we should "get accustomed to entrusting your poor heart to the Sweet and Immaculate Heart of Mary, so that she may purify it from so much dross, and lead it to the Most Sacred and Most Merciful Heart of Jesus" (Furrow, 830). This is what our Blessed Mother always does – leads us back to Jesus.


Blessed Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II prayed the following before the :

O Mother of all men and women, and of all peoples, you who know all their sufferings and their hopes, you who have a mother's awareness of all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, which afflict the modern world, accept the cry which we, moved by the Holy Spirit, address directly to your Heart. Embrace with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord, this human world of ours, which we entrust and consecrate to you, for we are full of concern for the earthly and eternal destiny of individuals and peoples. In a special way we entrust and consecrate to you those individuals and nations which particularly need to be thus entrusted and consecrated. ‘We have recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God!' Despise not our petitions in our necessities. 

Sacred Heart of Jesus

Sacred Heart, Michael D. O'Brien

Origins
Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The feast is held the Friday after the Second Sunday after Pentecost. We can trace the origin of the devotion back to the Middle Ages.

This devotion already existed in the Middle Ages as a private devotion; it appears as a liturgical feast in 1675 following the apparitions of Our Lord to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. In these revelations the saint was given to know with special depth the need to make reparation for her personal sins and for the sins of the whole world, and to respond to Christ's love. Our Lord asked her to extend the practice of frequent Communion, especially on the first Friday of every month, in a spirit of reparation. He asked for the first Friday after the octave of the Most Holy Sacrament to be dedicated to a special feast to glorify his Heart. The feast was celebrated for the first time on the 21 June 1686. Pius IX extended it to the whole Church. In 1928 Pius XI gave it the splendour it has today (In Conversation with God, Vol. 6. p. 315).

Devotion

We can consider the advise of St. Josemaria who explains how we should think about the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

[W]hen we talk about the heart of Jesus, we stress the certainty of God's love and the truth of his commitment to us. When we recommend devotion to the sacred heart, we are recommending that we should give our whole self to Jesus, to the whole Jesus — our soul, our feelings and thoughts, our words and actions, our joys. That is what true devotion to the heart of Jesus means (Christ is Passing By, 164) 

For a great overview of this solemnity, I suggest you watch the following video from the Apostleship of Prayer apostolate.

Top 5 Catholic Apps

I normally write about Catholic technology and social media as part of my Tuesday Tech Talk series. Today is the first of several theme writing days for the WordCount Blogathon so I am giving snapshot reviews on the Top 5 Catholic Apps I use the most often.

St. Josemaria - So I will tell you up front that this app is priced at $14.99, but is worth every penny. For those of you who participate in the formation activities of Opus Dei, the application contains a reminder for Daily Norms with links to various prayers and devotions. The app also includes EVERY book written by St. Josemaria (worth far more than $15 if bought separately) and the New Testament. It also includes a built ability to add your own prayers or ebooks as PDF's. The app also includes information about Opus Dei and St. Josemaria.

iBreviary- this app is available for FREE on iTunes. iBreviary was developed by an Italian priest, Father +Paolo Padrini who is known to follow Joe Catholic on occasion and is a consultant to the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications. The application essentially has three components: Liturgy of the Hours, the Daily Missal and the Catholic Prayers/Rituals. The application is available in five languages and several operating system platforms including Android, Blackberry and iOs (Apple). I most often use The Liturgy of the Hours also known as the Divine Office or Breviary. This is the "official prayer of the Church" (EWTN).  You have to sync the app daily or weekly to update the prayers.

iMissal - this app is the closest electronic version of the Roman Missal I have been able to find. It has all the Eucharistic Prayers, the Order of the Mass and all the readings. It lacks the ability to switch over to optional Feast Days, but often does provide choices for Holy Days of Obligation and Solemnities. The app has a Catholic news feed that links to Catholic News Agency. The designers of the app have added more prayers and an email subscription to get information about new developments in the app. Additionally, they have included the ability to purchase the Saint a Day app within iMissal.

Saint of the Day - this application was developed by American Catholic/St. Anthony Messenger. The material is derived from the book of the same name authored by Father Leonard Foley, OFM. The application is straight forward and allows you to search saints by name, cause and date. Additionally, the application has a short audio file link for each saint entry. There are also other features that connect the app to the American Catholic web with snippets.

 iPieta – Some of you may be familiar with the Pieta blue book that you see many people carrying with them, especially those who attend daily Mass. Like the paper version, iPieta contains a collection of traditional Catholic prayers, but this has much more than that. The application is organized into four categories: Bible, Calendar, Prayers and Veritas. I have written a more detailed review entitled iPieta: The Little Blue Book & More on Your Phone.

What are your favorite Catholic apps? Please write your answers in the Comments of Google+.

Where Were You When You Heard the News?

Where were you when you heard the news that we had a new pope?

I was sitting at my computer and had just finished working on a new blog post. I was putting on my shoes to go get lunch when I received a text from my brother +Matt Gonzalez. His text actually beat the texts from the PopeApp and PopeAlarm by a few seconds. I immediately went online to CatholicTV and began watching the streaming video. My WiFi wasn't cooperating and kept causing the video to buffer.  I decided to move my laptop and books  to the bedroom to watch EWTN's coverage on the TV. I was supposed to be studying for my IPT classes, but instead I stayed glued to the TV until the announcement was made. I cannot describe the level of anxious excitement I felt as I waited. Then after over an hour of waiting, I heard the words, Habemus Papam! I was only able to make out the name Jorge and then Francis. Was it Cardinal O'Malley, I thought for a moment? No, that couldn't be because his name isn't George. As I pondered this, EWTN's commentators finally piped in and said that our new Holy Father was former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina.


Here's a moving and well-produced video from CatholicVote.  As you reflect back on that moment, please share your story on how you heard the news and where you were when you heard the news. Please write these in the Comments or on Google+.

The Place to be on Planet Earth

Photo obtained thru The PopeApp

I don't know about you, but I am still processing the fact that we have a new pope, a Latin American pope and a Jesuit. My first impression of Pope Francis was immediately that he is a humble man. I was profoundly moved by his request that the people bless him before he blessed them.

Father Robert Barron offers his reflections on the announcement and what our new Holy Father may bring to the Church.

The Pope App

As we count the hours to the end of Pope Benedict's pontificate and await the beginning of the Conclave, we might want an easy way to keep up with all things from the Vatican. The Pope App is the perfect way to accomplish this.

After initially opening the app to the title page, the screen opens to an image which lets you know when you can follow the pope live. For example in this image taken a few minutes ago, we can see it will be 3 hours until the pope can be seen live.

The Pope App is organized into 9 different screens. These include the ability to view LIVE feeds, check a calendar of upcoming EVENTS, read messages From the Pope, see NEWS, view IMAGES, archived VIDEOS, and WEBCAMS from the Vatican. The app even includes a page dedicated to all things VATICANO.

The LIVE feed not only shows the events that are upcoming, but also allow you to set reminder alarms to check in. This will come in handy once the Conclave begins.

The NEWS feed captures articles on the pope and his messages. They come from a variety of sources including Vatican Radio and L'Osservatore Romano.

The Vaticano page links to several media outlets from the Vatican including the Pope's twitter feed that will continue to be active assuming the new pope chooses to tweet.

The Pope App is powered by the official Vatican Media and is currently only available in iOS format (Apple products). The app is FREE.

Year of Faith & The Catechism

Universal Catechism
When Pope Benedict announced that the Church would be celebrating a Year of Faith, he suggested we read the documents of the Second Vatican Council and that we read the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). This makes sense because this year is the 50th anniversary of Vatican II and it is also the 20th anniversary of the promulgation of the Catechism.

Norm for Teaching the Faith
The CCC is only the second universal catechism handed down by the Church. The Catechism of Trent is the other and was written in 1566 primarily written for priests. The CCC is one of the fruits of Vatican II and is intended as resource for ALL members of the Church. Blessed John Paul II called the CCC "a sure norm for teaching the faith" and he asserted that it would help "serve the renewal" of the Church.

Four Pillars of Faith
The CCC is organized into four pillars of the faith: Profession of Faith (The Creed), Celebration of the Christian Mystery (The Sacraments & Liturgy), Life in Christ (Commandments and Beatitudes) and the Universal Call to Prayer (Our Father). The CCC is written like an encyclopedia and organized by paragraph numbers. In the back of the "big green" version are a number of cross reference tools for scripture, papal documents and documents of the councils. It is written in easy to understand prose and calls upon the writings of the Church fathers, the saints and the Magisterium.

This weekend the men of Joe Catholic will be breaking open the CCC and reviewing how to implement it into our daily lives. Please enjoy this video from Father John Riccardo of Our Lady of Good Counsel. The first 5 minutes are dedicated to talking about the CCC and the Year of Faith.

Additional Resources on CCC:

• Joe Catholic Toolbox - introduction to CCC and links to free copies of CCC and documents about the CCC; includes video from the New Evangelizers
• Read the Catechism in a Year
• USCCB's Online CCC as eBook 
• Catholic Cross Reference - online tool that allows you to cross reference the CCC with scripture, papal documents and the documents of Vatican II

10 Apps for Lent

(Note: These are NOT the apps in the video)

Normally I would save this type of post for Tuesday Tech Talk, but since we are already in the second week of Lent, I thought I would post it today. Technology, properly ordered, can be a useful tool that can help you enhance your Lenten season. Here is a video from Catholic@pps highlighting 10 apps that can aid you this Lenten season. (They review each of these apps in greater detail on their site.) Maybe you just haven't been able to find a way to get into the swing of things this Lent. Here is my list of resources from last year.

Here is a listing of the apps as they appear in the video:

• My Year of Faith
• Catholic Sermon
• The Pope App
• Steubenville
• Fighter Verse
• Mea Culpa
• Catholic Meditations for Lent by Thomas Aquinas
• John Paul II (eVotions)
• Lighthouse Catholic Media Bible (Promo Code: 102318)
• Magnificat Lent Companion

EWTN & the Internet

EWTN is consistently on the cutting edge of technology, making use of online video streaming and even archiving their major programing onto Mp3 downloads and podcasts. Their website contains a bountiful collection of print and audio resources in their libraries. They even allow you to stream their shows on mobile devices and have recently been added to iHeart Radio.

Today they released a video that gives great insight into the use of the Internet.

Pope's Resignation & the Media

If you are like me, you are probably still a bit numb from the news that Pope Benedict XVI has announced his resignation as pope effective February 28th. Over the coming weeks we are going to hear all sorts of news stories in the secular press. I recommend we stay abreast of this historic moment in the Church by following ongoing developments on reliable Catholic news feeds. Here are some recommendations:

• National Catholic Register - written news feed
• Catholic News Agency - written and video news feeds
• EWTN - links to news and live streaming of programming

Here's a sample of video from Catholic News Agency:

Notre Dame: Not the Only Catholic Team on Prime Time

BCS Coach's Trophy, wikimedia commons

Notre Dame wasn't the only Catholic team on prime time television last night. (Ok, no jokes about them not showing up.) The team from Catholics Come Home had a prime time commercial spot during the second half of the game. Catholics Come Home is an apostolate of the new evangelization. They put together media resources (video and online) to help parishes and other Catholic groups (and individuals) bring home Catholics who have left the Church.

The ad ran earlier in the bowl season too. If you didn't catch it, here it is.

Catholic Media & New Evangelization

From New Evangelizers

I got the idea to write this post from reading CatholicMom's charge to go to silent yesterday. While I did not officially go silent yesterday, I did devote a brief post to the topic. Today, Lisa Hendey challenged her readers to answer the following question:

“What in Catholic Media has had an impact on me during the past year?” 


The Short Answer
I became serious about becoming a new evangelizer by utilizing social media to spread the Gospel of Christ. My first major step was relaunching Joe Catholic in a serious attempt to blog on a regular basis.

The Blogathon

This time last year I was completing my participating in the 2011 WordCount Blogathon. While I successfully wrote 31 posts during the challenge, I didn't have a true sense of what I was doing with the blog. In fact, I was all over the map. Michelle Rafter, the organizer of the contest and author of WordCount, recommended I focus my writing on a particular interest. I decided on devoting my time to developing the Joe Catholic blog that had only been a place to post notes from the gatherings.

The Book

I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I was posting sporadically and hadn't learned any of the tools of the trade. In late July, Brandon Vogt's book The Church and New Media was published. I read the book in two sittings and it opened my eyes to the possiblities. I recognized that social media was a means to cast the nets into deeper waters. It was an opportunity to evangelize within and outside of the Church.

The Result

Now, one year later, Joe Catholic has seen a dramatic increase in its readership. We went from barely getting 200 page views a month to nearly averaging that number per day now. We certainly aren't one of the most viewed Catholic sites, but we have become a resource for the men in our parish and hopefully a few others. We know we have a lot of work to do. In fact, we are planning a meeting to story board some upgrades to this blog and incorporating our Twitter and YouTube presence into one comprehensive site.

What in Catholic Media has had an impact on you during the past year?” 

Comment below and at the New Evangelizers.