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.

My Favorite Sacramentals

Sacred Signs
I wear three sacramental medals in addition to my Brown Scapular. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reminds us that sacramentals are instituted by the Church.

These are sacred signs which bear a resemblance to the sacraments. They signify effects, particularly of a spiritual nature, which are obtained through the intercession of the Church. By them men are disposed to receive the chief effect of the sacraments, and various occasions in life are rendered holy (CCC, 1667).

Three Medals – Holy Men of God
The three medals I wear on a simple leather cord include a papal medal of Pope John Paul II, a St. Josemaria Escriva medal and  St. Joseph the Worker. Each of these medals has particular significance to me and play a part in my morning prayers.

Pope John Paul II
The JP2 medal is a papal medal obtained in Rome and blessed by Pope John Paul II. The medal was given to me by one of my CRHP Brothers while we were going through formation. These last two years that I have been working no my IPT studies, I have often asked for Blessed John Paul II's intercession when I have been reading or writing on the documents of Vatican II.

St. Josemaria
This medal commemorates the canonization of St. Josemaria and to my knowledge is no longer available. I got mine years ago when I first began spiritual direction with a priest of Opus Dei. If you have read Joe Catholic for any length of time you know I have a great devotion to this saint of the ordinary. I ask him daily to pray for me to answer God's call to holiness in the ordinary circumstances of my life.

St. Joseph the Worker
This small medal is a reminder of this just and righteous man who protected and provided for the Christ child and Blessed Mother Mary. I turn to him daily to be my model and intercessor that I might be a better husband and father.

Not Good Luck Charms
These medals are not to be treated like some lucky coin or rabbit's foot; they are not good luck charms. In and of themselves, the sacramental objects possess no power. The significance of these items is drawn from the blessing, prayer and how they are utilized to draw us closer to God. Sacramentals should be used as daily reminders to live a life of virtue - answering the call to universal holiness, even in our own ordinary lives. I hope I have demonstrated this in how I use my medals in daily prayer. These sacramentals should draw us deeper into prayer and a life more reflective of Christ and His saints.

What are your favorite sacramentals? Why?

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+.

Year of Faith - Midway Checkpoint

Half-Way Point
We've long passed the half way point of the Year of Faith. What have you done either personally or through your parish to learn more about your Catholic faith?

If the answer is nothing or very little, there is still time to set out to consciously learn more about our rich Catholic faith. Here are some suggestions.

The Catechism
It is not too late for you to register to get the daily emails to read the Catechism in a year. Granted, you aren't going to be able to accomplish the complete reading without going back and reading archived posts, but you could start today. You can register to receive the daily emails at Flocknote. If reading the Catechism through the emails isn't to your liking, you could pick one of the main sections of the Catechism and read it. I would recommend reading Part One, The Profession of Faith.

Documents of Vatican II
You still have time to read some of the documents of Vatican II. I recommend the following:

• Lumen Gentium - Dogmatic Constitution on the Church
• Dei Verbum - Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation
• Apostolicam Actuositatem - Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity
• Gaudium et Spes - Pastoral Consitution on the Church in the Modern World
• Sacrosanctum Concilium - Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy

Despite what you may have heard or assumed, these are wonderful documents. One theologian described them as the "Christmas gift that has gone unopened." If you need a little help understanding them, you can listen to Father John Trigilio's EWTN show, Council of Faith: the Documents of Vatican II. 

A Review of Weigel's Evangelical Catholicism

From Catholic World Report

Church Mission to Evangelize

George Weigel, who is best known as the premier biographer of Blessed John Paul II, turns his attention to the Catholic Church of the 21st Century in his new book Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st Century Church. While the title of the book may be disconcerting to some, Weigel’s primary premise is that the Catholic Church must live out the teaching mandates of the Second Vatican Council to be effective in it mission to evangelize to all the nations (Matt 28:19). He asserts that the People of God, collectively and individually, manifest Evangelical Catholicism when they live their lives in friendship with Christ as witnesses to the world of faith, hope and charity.

Pope Leo XIII
Weigel begins his examination of the Church by reflecting on the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII. One of his primary contentions is that the new reform that is currently taking place in the Catholic Church did not begin with the Second Vatican Council, as most would assume, but rather that it began during the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII. According to Weigel, “Leo XIII set in motion a profound transformation of Catholicism in which the Church slowly moved beyond the catechetical-devotional model that had been dominant since the sixteenth-century Counter-Reformation to a new model— a model that is best described as Evangelical Catholicism” (11). Weigel considers Pope Leo XII instrumental in the beginning of this Evangelical Catholicism because he did so much to prepare the Church for modernity by laying the groundwork for the New Evangelization.

[D]uring a reign that lasted over a quarter of a century, he quietly, steadily, and doggedly set about creating the conditions for a new Catholic engagement with modern cultural, political, economic, and social life. He reformed the Church’s philosophical and theological mind by mandating a close reading of Thomas Aquinas’s original texts, which were to become the foundation from which to build a distinctive Catholic intellectual engagement with modernity. He was the papal father of modern Catholic biblical studies, which he thought necessary to meet the deconstructive aspect of the challenge posed by the historical-critical method of reading ancient texts. He fostered serious historical scholarship in an effort to determine what was truly enduring and constitutive— and what was transient— in the life of the Church (13).

Counter-Reformation Catholicism

Weigel defines this counter-reformation Catholicism as one “which sought to preserve Catholicism through simple, straightforward catechetical instruction and devotional piety” and one that is still trapped in a misguided mindset of triumphalism (15). While this form of Catholicism did much to restore, secure and spread the faith, it was ill equipped for the challenges of the 21st Century because it lacked the deeper assimilation of the faith to withstand the Christo-phobic mindset of the ambient culture. Counter-Reformation Catholicism was mostly dependent on an enculturation through osmosis that required little “more of Catholics than (to take American reference points) memorizing the Baltimore Catechism and wearing the Miraculous Medal” (p. 15). Certainly Weigel is deliberately exaggerating, but the point is well taken, that many, if not most, Catholics, then and now, may know about Jesus, but do not know Jesus. Although he never directly states it, Weigel’s contention is that Evangelical Catholicism is the embodiment of the New Evangelization and its aim is to bring its members into deeper friendship with Jesus Christ, who gave His life so that they may have life in Him (1 Thes 5:10).

Counter-Culture Catholicism
Weigel organizes the book into two parts: the first is an outline of his view of the ecclesiology of Evangelical Catholicism and the second is a detailed blue print on how to implement necessary reforms to see this vision into fruition. He organizes his vision of Evangelical Catholicism into ten key primary characteristics. These range from the personal – experiencing friendship with Christ – to the apostolic notion that Catholic should stand out in the crowd, that their lives be remarkably different from the ambient culture because they have entered into friendship with Christ.

The New Evangelization
Not surprisingly, Weigel believes that Blessed John Paul the Great “gave the Council an authoritative interpretation led the Church into the kind of new Pentecost that John XXIII had envisioned, through the experience of the Great Jubilee of 2000” (10) and set the Church on the path to fulfilling its 21st Century mission of New Evangelization. In the pontificates of the Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Weigel sees the blue print for continued reform of the Catholic Church of the 21st Century. While it is unfortunate that Weigel chose a title that may cause undo confusion, his driving premise is that Evangelical Catholicism is the very expression of the ressourcement and aggiornamento expected from Vatican II. It is the New Evangelization.

Weigel gave an interview on Catholic Answers Live answering questions about the book.

What is Corpus Christi Sunday?

From The Passion of the Christ

Origin of Solemnity

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ also known as the Corpus Christi Sunday. The Solemnity originated in the 13th century and began in the diocese of Liege. It was instituted for the whole Church in 1264 by Pope Urban IV . "The meaning of this feast is the consideration of and devotion to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The centre of the feast was to be, as Pope Urban IV described it, a popular devotion reflected in hymns and joy" (In Conversation with God, Vol. 6, p. 262). This celebration has traditionally included Eucharistic Procession and Benediction and Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Today, Pope Francis included one other component – a worldwide Holy Hour of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.

The Real Presence

The Solemnity presupposes a knowledge and understanding of the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. The Church teaches that Christ is really, truly, wholly and substantially present in the Eucharist (CCC, 1374). For more on the real presence watch Father Robert Barron's explanation below.

Advice for Graduating Seniors and Their Parents

Later this morning, I will be attending and reading the names at another Judge Barefoot Sanders Law Magnet graduation. This time of year is always a joyful one as parents, friends and family congratulate the students on successfully completing high school. One of the frequent themes during "Senior Week" leading up to graduation is that this is not the end of the journey, but the beginning of the next chapter in their lives. Some of us older folks get an opportunity to impart some advice to our seniors, like I did at the Senior Gentlemen's Brunch.

Here's some of the advice I give our seniors:

The 15 Hour Rule
Most college and universities require that undergraduate students register for 12 hours of course work to be classified as full-time students. Additionally, this has implications for financial aid as most scholarships and grants require that the student maintain a full-time status. I recommend to all my students that they take at least 15 hours so they build in wiggle room, in case they get into a bind in a class. I share my story about only taking 13 hours my first semester at SMU. I had a visiting professor for my Economics class who I could not understand. I sought help from my advisor and learned I couldn't drop the class because of my scholarship. As it turned out, I still failed the class and I was placed on academic probation for a year and nearly lost my scholarship. It's not worth the stress. Take the 15 hours. 

8AM Classes
Many students will need to make some adjustments to their study and organizational habits. If possible, I recommend that first year college students NOT take any 8AM classes. Interestingly, when students get to college, sleep outweighs most other needs, including eating.

Test Banks
Many professors file their old tests with their department Help Study Desk. Some of this may even be available online now. Some campus organizations, like fraternities, sororities and even the Catholic center might have their own test banks. Professors are only human and they tend to use information (sometimes repackaged) from old tests on current ones. This is NOT cheating; professors openly advocate that students read their old tests so they can get an idea of how the professor assesses his students.

Short-Term Loans
It is often not advertised on university websites, but most schools provide short-term (normally 30 days), no interest loans, to help cover the expenses of books or fill gaps when all of your aid does not arrive in time. There were a few times I needed to do this while I was at SMU and it made it possible for me to purchase books while aid was coming in.

Free Meals
I tell college bound students that whenever an adult invites them out to a meal or over to their house that is an opportunity for a free meal. I advise them to take advantage of that. I often invite my former students to visit me and I will take them out for lunch. After a semester of campus food, they get what I mean.

To Those Who Much is Given
By the time they have graduated, my students have heard my mantra over 100 times: "To those who much is give, much is required." Regardless of whether or not my students are Catholic or atheists, I always exhort them to not forget where they came from. Many of my students will be the first from their families to attend college. I encourage them to give back to their communities with time, talent and treasure.

Stay Spiritually Connected
Many young people get spiritually lost when they go off to college. I drifted away from my Catholic faith while in college and it took nearly 20 years for my return. Find out where and when Mass is celebrated on or nearby campus. You can use the Mass Times app to find out. Many major universities now have two major organizations to help Catholic students. The first is FOCUS, Fellowship of Catholic University Students. It's kind of a Campus Crusade, for Catholics that ministers to all types of campus with teams of speakers. The founder of the organization is Ralph Martin and I have had the opportunity to hear him speak. He is top notch.

The other is group is the Cardinal Newman Society which is exclusively on Catholic university campuses. They too strive to promote the New Evangelization. Additionally, their aim is to restore the authenticity of Catholic higher education.