The Queen of Heaven is so revered for her relationship with Christ and her love and guidance of her earthly children, the Catholic Church has dedicated the month of May in her honor.

In his 1965 encyclical, “Mense Maio,” Pope Paul VI wrote about the importance of Mary’s intercession for all the world, explaining that those who encounter her, encounter her Son, Jesus:

“For what other reason do we continually turn to Mary except to seek the Christ in her arms, to seek our Savior in her, through her, and with her? To Him men are to turn amid the anxieties and perils of this world, urged on by duty and driven by the compelling needs of their heart, to find a haven of salvation, a transcendent fountain of life.”

Pope Paul VI went on to write May is the month Christians offer the Virgin Mother more “fervent and loving acts of homage and veneration; and it is the month in which a greater abundance of God’s merciful gifts comes down to us from our Mother’s throne.”

During the month of May, we honor her motherly and queenly majesty from every corner of the earth.

Fr. Oliver Mohan, in residence at St. Timothy Parish in Mesa, said Mary is our advocate, and the spiritual mother of all humanity.

“Even for people who are not Catholic,” Fr. Mohan said. “She is the Queen of All Nations. Every country is her field of jurisdiction.”

He said Marian feasts vary from country to country, and that they are specific holy days of the liturgical year that Christians celebrate because of their local, regional, national or international importance.

One example is Knock, County Mayo, Ireland, where Mary appeared in 1879. Today, it ranks among the world’s major Marian shrines.

“It’s the same Mary, she just has the whole world,” Fr. Mohan said.

Pope Francis consecrated his papacy to Mary, under the title of Our Lady of Fatima, and he invited everyone to consecrate themselves to her tender, loving care.

By faith, we become the sons and daughters of Jesus, so it should be natural for us to ask Mary to intercede on our behalf.

“Just as a child goes to their mother, we go before her with confidence and she will present our prayers on our behalf,” said Fr. Alphonsus Bakyil, SOLT, pastor, St. Frances Cabrini Parish in Camp Verde.

Fr. Bakyil said the faithful will use the month of May to add more Marian prayers, like the Litany of Loreto, crown an image of Mary with flowers or pray a rosary daily with family or friends.

“Praying the rosary with dignity and respect is a good beginning,” he said. “Through prayer, we connect with Mary’s role in our lives.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls Mary our model of faith and charity, and devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship.

“The Church rightly honors the Blessed Virgin with special devotion. From the most ancient times the Blessed Virgin has been honored with the title of ‘Mother of God,’ to whose protection the faithful fly in all their dangers and needs…This very special devotion…differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and greatly fosters this adoration. The liturgical feasts dedicated to the Mother of God and Marian prayer, such as the rosary, an epitome of the whole Gospel, expresses this devotion to the Virgin Mary.” (§971)

Traditionally, the month of October is “rosary month” in the Catholic Church while the month of May is devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Among the most prominent Marian feast days in May, according to the ordinary Roman Catholic Calendar:

May 1, Queen of Heaven; May 13, Our Lady of Fatima; May 24, Mary Help of Christians; and May 31, Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

St. Bernard was quoted as saying, “If the winds of temptation arise, look at your star, invoke Mary; if the greatness of your crimes troubles you, think of Mary.”

Gina Keating, a regular contributor to The Catholic Sun, leads children’s faith formation and sacramental preparation at St. Theresa Parish. “Our Faith” is a special Year of Faith feature that seeks to clarify often misunderstood Catholic teachings.
photo credit: Catedrales e Iglesias via photopin cc

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted and more than 30 priests heard confessions on the Grand Canyon University campus Feb. 8. (J.D. Long-Garcia/CATHOLIC SUN)

The most underused sacrament of our Catholic faith is arguably the one people need to receive more frequently — reconciliation.

Reconciliation, also known as penance or confession, is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. Through this healing sacrament, the penitent experiences God’s love, mercy and forgiveness.

Read Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted’s pastoral letter on reconciliation:
“Apostles of Mercy.”
catholicsun.org/tag/pastoral-letter

“I realize the sacrament of reconciliation is not for God’s benefit, but for my benefit. I need it,” said Chris Zajdzinski, founder of Tempe-based Virtuous Life Ministries. “There’s a real human need to be authentic, and a need to confess that to another person. We want to hear the words of Christ, not our neighbor.”

Catholics confess their sins to a priest because God, in the person of Jesus, authorized the priests of the Church to hear confessions and empowered them to forgive sins in His name.

“Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, so I send you.’ When He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit, if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’” (John 20: 21-23).

When Catholics confess their sins to a priest they are, in reality, confessing to God because it is God who hears their confessions and it is God who does the forgiving.

“Confession is examining our conscience, and humbly bringing our sins to the Lord,” said Fr. Charles Goraieb, pastor of St. Timothy Parish in Mesa. “Pope Benedict said the New Evangelization goes through the confessional. It’s where people get restored and encounter God; we have our spirits refreshed.”

To understand the need for the sacrament of reconciliation, it’s important to understand the definition of sin; sin is something we say, do, or desire that is against God’s law.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as ‘an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law’” (§1849).

Fr. Goraieb said sin not only ruptures our personal relationship with God, but with the Mystical Body of Christ.

“The nature of sin isolates us from God,” he said, “it is so profound and wounding that it causes us guilt and remorse. Our emotions are so great we can’t hear God forgiving us on our own because of the intensity of the emotions.”

Satan, also known in the Book of Revelations as “the accuser,” is quick to remind sinners of their guilt and remorse.

“Satan plays on those two emotions,” Fr. Goraieb said. “We need someone to tell us we are absolved of our guilt, and it can’t be done by a friend or well-intentioned counselor. It can only be done by someone with authority, and Jesus Himself set it up so that a priest is authorized by the Church, and can do that for us.”

It is through the sacrament of reconciliation that sins committed after baptism are washed away by the blood of Christ, and the sinner is forgiven and reconciled with God.

Fr. William Schmid, parochial administrator of St. Mary Magdalene Parish in Gilbert, said the faithful need to understand the sacrament is a gift God gave to everyone.

“The sacrament of confession is beautiful, but a lot of people misunderstand it,” he said. “It is not about condemning somebody, or embarrassing them or making people ashamed. The sacrament is there to heal the damage caused by sin in someone’s life.”

All too often society tells us we can experience life on our own terms, and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. When we confess, it’s an admission that we’re not perfect, don’t know everything or control everything.

“The sacrament of confession says you can’t do it alone, that you need healing and forgiveness,” Fr. Schmid said. “People are so afraid to face their vulnerability that they can’t do it by themselves.”

Typically, there are six parts to the sacrament of reconciliation: examination of conscience, reflecting on the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount; act of contrition, a prayer asking God’s forgiveness; welcome, a greeting and/or prayer by the priest; confession, or disclosure of sin; absolution, the words of forgiveness; and penance, an expression of prayer or action to show sorrow for our sins.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that we pray an act of contrition because our souls are filled with sorrow, and we detest our sins. We also promise to try not to sin again (§1451).

The Precepts of the Catholic Church state that Catholics need to confess their sins once a year. Mortal sins must be forgiven through the sacrament of reconciliation, and it must be done prior to receiving the Eucharist.

However, we are encouraged to receive the sacrament regularly.

“Even venial sins can harden our hearts,” Fr. Goraieb said. “The sacrament connects us and restores us to God.”

“Our Faith” is a special Year of Faith feature that seeks to clarify often misunderstood Catholic teachings.

Alex Vera outside her home. (Joyce Coronel/CATHOLIC SUN)

Alex Vera grew up in St. Joseph, Mo., during the 1940s — a time when European immigrants arrived fleeing World War II. Although she was baptized Catholic by her mother, Vera was actually raised as a Methodist.

“The Methodist church had a big home there for displaced persons,” Vera said. “There were Romanians, Slavs, Armenians — people from many nations. I learned a lot of different cultures and languages just being around them.” She also learned their musical styles and began piano lessons at age 6 in the Wesleyan House.

Most of Vera’s immigrant friends were Catholic and attended St. James Church, which stood across the street from the family’s Methodist church. On Sundays, Vera used to wait for her friends outside on the steps of St. James.

“I could smell the incense and I could hear the organ playing and I know that’s what fascinated me,” Vera said. Later, she embraced the Catholic faith, the Irish pastor telling her that “she knew the Scriptures better than anybody,” since as a Methodist she memorized the Psalms and other Bible passages.

In the late 1950s she and her husband moved to Phoenix and bought a house next to St. Catherine of Siena Church. When the pastor found out that the mother of seven played the organ, sang, and knew the Psalter, prayers and rituals, he quickly volunteered her for the Sunday Masses. She also volunteered teaching music at the parish school.

So how did a woman with a large family accomplish all that?

“I never knew if I was going to get up in the morning and play for a funeral,” Vera said with a laugh. “After you get your kids off to school, what do you look like?” She wore her hair short, in what was known back then as a pixie cut, donning a turban for Mass.

“My kids always knew where to find me,” Vera said. “If I had a baby, they would send an eighth grade girl to take care of him.”

She volunteered with the Guadalupanas group and found out that many of her fellow Spanish-speaking Catholics did not know their faith.

After the Second Vatican Council, the pastor gave her the council documents, which she studied. She invited Spanish-speaking parishioners to her home so that she could teach them about the Mass and the catechism.

Vera also attended workshops around the country, networking with other liturgists, and served on national boards and commissions. She became a charter member of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians and wrote music reviews for the publication for decades. She was also a charter member of the Instituto Nacional de Liturgia Hispana and volunteered at the office of worship for the Diocese of Phoenix.

All seven of her children attended
St. Mary’s High School, and Vera took a job at the governor’s office to help pay tuition. She worked for several Arizona governors, serving as the protocol officer and in many other capacities, including helping to get funding to educate the children of migrant workers.

Vera’s co-workers fondly referred to her as “Mother Superior” as she was known for taking off work on Holy Days in order to be able to attend Mass.

Her youngest son, Rene, has moved back to take care of her in the family home, which sits at the foot of South Mountain. Looking back over a lifetime of service to the Church, the 86-year-old Vera said the highlight was participating in the diocesan chorale that sang for Blessed John Paul II when he visited Phoenix in 1987.

Year of Faith:

She prays the Liturgy of the Hours each day, sitting at her prayer table with a candle burning in front of a small portrait of her late husband. “Every Psalm, I can tell you what it is,” Vera said.

Parish:

St. Mary’s Basilica

Faith in a nutshell:

My faith is grounded in music because it is universal language and it’s one I have used to interpret the Scriptures and of course the Psalms.

What do you love about being Catholic?

I love the freedom. In my lifetime, I’ve had the freedom to acquire the knowledge that I have acquired.  It’s been open — there’s been no restriction, no government or anything to keep me from it.

“The Screwtape Letters” first appeared in London’s Guardian newspaper during the dark days of World War II. In 1942, the Letters were published in book form in England — dedicated to Lewis’ friend J.R.R. Tolkien. The following year, the book appeared in America to great acclaim. (Courtesy http://www.screwtape.com)

Editor’s Note: On the occasion of the Year of Faith, the following is the second in a series of “letters” from a demonic supervisor to his underling regarding a plan to dismantle a family and ruin souls, written by Mike Phelan, director of the Marriage and Respect Life Office of the Diocese of Phoenix. In this series of fictional letters, keep in mind that the letters are written by a fictional demon. Therefore his “likes” are a horror and the Enemy he refers to is God Himself. All the while, the Guardian Angels of the family are battling in ways mostly hidden both to us the readers and to the devils for the family’s strength and salvation.

My Dear Little Gluestick,

You take cues well. As I wrote in my last letter, we look this time at the affront of the human animals’ covenantal institution of marriage. You proactively sent details from early observations of the Barr marriage, only one of which was news to me, yet I nonetheless note with approval your attempt to exceed expectations.

Dis-membering a family is always an excellent first step, hence your work as a DTAD. And the key to family dismemberment is prevention or dissolution of matrimony. How so? Let us look again at the Divine founding of this human horror.

I retell here the Creation Account in the Luciferian Memoirs — Our Terrible Leader Below writes: “Nothing prepared me for the outrage of the creation of woman from the side of the Adam.

“Up until that point I was cautiously in favor of much of what He-Who-Goes-Unnamed had brought about. The Adam was alarming I will admit — this bizarre admixture of water and dirt and spiritual soul — but alone he posed little threat to spiritual excellence, and I supposed he was a sort of “toy” to the Godhead. Indeed, the man was physically impressive, perhaps an earthbound version of something like Myself — perhaps the plan (which was never, ever disclosed, even to Me) was to echo the excellence of Myself on the physical plane, I thought. But an Eve!? Equally striking, and yet quite different, complementary to the Adam. An animal-communion? A unity of bodies with spirits — and thereby a reproduction? Disgust is too weak a word to describe the prelude to my Just Spiritual Rage.

“The moments of the human Parents’ first meeting set many of my angelic comrades singing with a new and servile joy. Not I, and not all. Indeed my silence left a hole in the melody noticed immediately on High. But the song grew in strength and self-forgetfulness, and the trees of the garden, and the wind and the birds and insects and beasts and the whole dirt-driven display returned a volley of notes, and the man and woman themselves showed naïve but Vocal skill and added an unheard-of strain…

“… then, in a moment burned on my Dark and Powerful Mind, began the Dance. And the woman and man moved together, and their dance mirrored the music and affected it as well, and the whole creation — Angels too!! — fit the music to the movement of the man and woman. They were not toys but somehow beloved of the Godhead, somehow given a free share — beasts given a share! — in the harmony of the world. And I had but one recourse. The music would be not stop. I waited. When the unendurable moment was over, a grave silence fell. The man and woman slept. And my voice, absent from the music but now tuned to the fullness of its beauty-clothed-in-rage, was heard. “No! I will not share the harmony with beasts! Non Serviam!”

Hence the Great War began. Gluestick, my serf, you will recall that my own rise to this position of demonic prominence followed my lecture Stop the Dance: The Threat of Matrimony and the Demonic Task. Stop the dance. This is our objective in the attack on every marriage.

Your notes indicate in the Barr marriage much of what is already known to us. The marriage is sacramental — those demons formerly charged with preventing this grace-laden consent have been, er, given other assignments. (One, Slipknot, nearly as well-regarded once as yourself is now un-named Slippers, and serves neatly in warming my own “feet.” FYI.) The sacramentality of their union is an obstacle, but not an impossible barrier by any means.

Husband Barr comes from a lifelong marriage, though his father was reserved and somewhat alcoholic. Passivity is in your male project’s bones, much to our advantage. Wife Barr is the childhood product of divorce, a lightly neurotic if not un-virtuous woman with the nagging sense that all could fall apart at any moment. This we knew. But the news you share of his new potential friendship with a real-believing Catholic Christian man of the parish is not lightly received. Get that relationship off track immediately.

Persevere at your post. Stop the dance. Get-In-Between. The orchestration of our temptation-plan of Husband Barr is our subject for next time.

LameWorm

“The Screwtape Letters” first appeared in London’s Guardian newspaper during the dark days of World War II. In 1942, the Letters were published in book form in England — dedicated to Lewis’ friend J.R.R. Tolkien. The following year, the book appeared in America to great acclaim. (Courtesy http://www.screwtape.com)

Editor’s Note: On the occasion of the Year of Faith, the following is the second in a series of “letters” from a demonic supervisor to his underling regarding a plan to dismantle a family and ruin souls, written by Mike Phelan, director of the Marriage and Respect Life Office of the Diocese of Phoenix. In this series of fictional letters, keep in mind that the letters are written by a fictional demon. Therefore his “likes” are a horror and the Enemy he refers to is God Himself. All the while, the Guardian Angels of the family are battling in ways mostly hidden both to us the readers and to the devils for the family’s strength and salvation.

My Friend, Gluestick,

Your first month with the Barr family, hidden in the shadows of the kitchen junk drawer (an excellent choice of observing posts — the stomach-driven animals spend so much time there), has been a moderately successful start. You might make a middling Domestic Temptation Anti-choir Director (DTAD) yet, if your Disastermas Morning initial report was accurate.

Thanks to some apparent coordination on your part, the Barrs find themselves entering the New Year in greater financial debt than ever before. One of the few benefits to us of this whole giving extravaganza each December is that the little moles overspend with regularity. While it takes some time to understand fully — we demons have no need of cash — the delightful anxiety that financial problems and economic concerns cause can be of great service. A spouse or parent in debt has a chain around his neck that drags his eyes downward, from heaven to earth, right where we want them.

Let us recover some basics of your homebound task of temptation. The review here may seem pedantic to you; you assume that all must have been covered in your initial debrief — let me assure you that we mentor-devils find that the fundamentals of our soul-capturing efforts cannot be repeated often enough. This is especially the case with you younger devils, if I may add, who have the attention span of houseflies. And NO, you may not TEXT me your future reports!

Your new work of temptation is tricky, but most rewarding upon success. The dismantling of a human family, which greatly aids (never guarantees — the family is a means to an end, both for Us and for Them) the ultimate damnation of as many of the members as possible, you will see, proves remarkably slippery. Look closely from your position in the kitchen. When the family is together — indeed, strangely, “when two or more are present” — do you not see the nearly impossible cobweb linking them all? It is a web of rooted affection, unlike any other source of natural comfort the humans have. You not only must gain intimate knowledge of the personalities, strengths and weaknesses of each family member, but you must take account of each thread of this web — you will particularly notice, if the family has any health at all, the seeming tangle emanating from the wife/mother to her husband and to each child in a hundred places. What a tangled web family love weaves! But this seems to be our Enemy’s plan.

I will never forget my own first family temptation assignment. The complexity of the linking cables nearly drove me to despair. It was patient work, but both spouses have joined the eternal wailing throng, and the children seem readily on their way to our House Below. A DTAD that proves himself worthy must become an orchestra conductor of the first rate, each of your underling tempters must be a violinist on these “relational cords”.

Your enemies in the home, the assigned Guardian Angels of each family member, do not lack for cleverness or assistance from Him directly. (It is not fair play!) The Guardian Angels seek to build a harmony on the relational chords between the members, and even following our discordant victories with sin, even when a key thread between husband and wife seems ready to break(!), we can lose due to the problem of forgiveness, an awful musical chord that can drive a devil mad.

That will wait for next time, when my counsel focuses on our main obstacle to victory over every family, the abomination of marriage.

LameWorm

Courtesy of Catholic Communication Campaign/CNS

Although Mary is honored with countless titles, none is grander than, “Mary, Mother of God.”

The Catholic Church views the Blessed Mother with such reverence that the octave of Christmas, Jan. 1, is a holy day of obligation. The feast day reminds us of the role she had in the plan of salvation, which began with her simple answer of, “yes,” to God.

Mary’s fiat can be found in Luke 1:38, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Biblical scholars refer to Mary’s answer to the angel as her, “fiat,” because that is the Latin word for, “be it done,” or “let it be done.”

Mary’s fiat is her willingness to submit herself fully to the will of God so that He could restore humanity into communion with Himself.

Larry Fraher, director of catechetical ministries at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Scottsdale, said it’s important to note that the doctrine of Mary developed from the doctrine of Jesus; how we get to Christ’s divinity is by understanding who Mary is.

“In others words, how we perceive Christ fully human and fully divine [dictates] how we must understand Mary as His mother,” Fraher said.

The Year of Faith, which began in October 2012, calls Catholics to turn back to Jesus and enter into a deeper relationship with Him.

“Essentially, then, we have to say as Catholic Christians the pure God isn’t going to come to us through an impure human being. Mary’s purity is essential to be the one to present Christ to all humanity.”

God came to earth through the family, more specifically, by being born of a human woman. The doctrine of our faith tells us God became man without losing His divinity, and the Church confesses that Mary is the Mother of God.

One of the earliest titles given by Christians to the Blessed Virgin is Theotokos, which means, “God-bearer.”

The Catechism says, “Mary, the all-holy ever-virgin Mother of God, is the masterwork of the mission of the Son and the Spirit in the fullness of time. For the first time in the plan of salvation and because His Spirit had prepared her, the Father found the dwelling place where His Son and His Spirit could dwell among men. In this sense the Church’s tradition has often read the most beautiful texts on wisdom in relation to Mary. Mary is acclaimed and represented in the liturgy as the ‘Seat of Wisdom.’” (§721)

Trent Horn, staff apologist for Catholic Answers based in San Diego, said our salvation centers around Jesus Christ, the God-man becoming flesh and dying for the sins of the world. Still, many heresies have claimed that Jesus was not truly God and thus God did not become incarnate for mankind.

“The heretic Nestorius claimed that Mary was merely the mother of the ‘Christ’ or the ‘Christokos,’ but this view was deemed heretical at the Council of Ephesus in 431,” Horn said. “Mary was not the mother of a man who later became divine, but she was instead the mother of one of the persons of the Trinity.”

The catechism states, “In fact, the One whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who truly became her Son according to the flesh, was none other than the Father’s eternal Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity” (§495).

Mary, the first and most perfect disciple, is a model of love and service for us all, but it can be difficult to say, “Yes,” to God on a constant and daily basis due to fear and sinfulness.

Fraher said the afterglow of the Christmas season leaves behind “warm fuzzies” of baby Jesus in the arms of His mother.

“But if one pays close attention to the images, the person will notice the similarities in both form and substance to the Pieta,” he said. “Mary is embracing the babe of Bethlehem and the man of Golgotha.”

How do we follow the example of Mary to submit fully to God in the joys and sorrows of our own lives?

Fraher said it’s important to create space to be filled by God, make prayer time meaningful and not mechanical and emulate Mary by sharing the love of God with the world; through friendships, work-related encounters and with family.

Horn said Mary is an exceptional model of faith for all believers.

“We should remember in Mary that our greatness comes not in our accomplishments, but our willingness to say, ‘yes’ to God, in both large matters, and the innumerable small ones.”

“Our Faith” is a special Year of Faith feature that seeks to clarify often misunderstood Catholic teachings.

“The Screwtape Letters” first appeared in London’s Guardian newspaper during the dark days of World War II. In 1942, the Letters were published in book form in England — dedicated to Lewis’ friend J.R.R. Tolkien. The following year, the book appeared in America to great acclaim. (Courtesy http://www.screwtape.com)

Editor’s Note: On the occasion of the Year of Faith, the following is the first in series of “letters” from a demonic supervisor to his underling regarding a plan to dismantle a family and ruin souls, written by Mike Phelan, director of the Marriage and Respect Life Office of the Diocese of Phoenix. It is not an original idea, but a variation on a theme begun by the great C.S. Lewis in his classic satirical book, “The Screwtape Letters.” If this series succeeds in getting more Catholics reading that book, it will have done what the author had hoped.

Lewis’s book observes the temptation of a single individual soul in World War II London. This short series observes the temptation of a “typical” Catholic family in our own nation, in our own time, in fact during the Year of Faith called for by our Holy Father. It is not the picture of any one concrete living family, but rather a fictional glimpse of 21^st century Catholic home realities in the land of the wannabe-free and the homes of the wish-we-were-brave.

Keep in mind that the letters are written by a fictional demon. Therefore his “likes” are a horror and the Enemy he refers to is God Himself. All the while, the Guardian Angels of the family are battling in ways mostly hidden both to us the readers and to the devils for the family’s strength and salvation.

My Friend Thorn,

Welcome to your new assignment in the Family Temptation Special Unit Forces (FTSUF). In analyzing your file (letter by letter, you will find I miss nothing), I am both cautiously optimistic and deeply concerned with your recent record. Tempter’s Academy named you Uberdaemon upon graduation and your natural gifts are not commonly paralleled outside the inner circle of Our Father Below. And yet, the flaws are glaring.

How you, the young prince of simmering hope, talented but naïve, were given such a Christian to tempt in her final days is beyond me. The bottom line remains: you lost. Your loss is ours. How sweet it might have been to savor a potential saint’s fury at He-who-goes-unnamed, her final despair which seemed all too ready to burst just days before her death. She, who had been so close to her Master, was on the verge of “curse God and die.” But you couldn’t resist, could you? You simply had to drive the nail in the coffin by a foolish frontal appearance, devilish grin and all. And there, near final victory over a truly tasty human soul, at the foot of the disorienting hospital bed, she glimpsed with horror (not with the vampiric-victim lust you’d hoped) the disparity between your malice and His mercy. She laughed aloud at the clarity! All was undone. The patient work of your betters bitterly wasted.

I carefully noted as well your intake form, containing a level of disgust at the mediocrity of the new assignment both in general, the concept of Familial Temptation, and in particular, the trudging lowpoint of this particular small herd of human animals. Beneath you, are they? What threat do they pose, you ask?

Foolish questions. It is not with exaggerated fear that the Lowerarchy has always regarded the human family and especially the disgusting affront of matrimony. We are the Special Forces for good reason. In the family, our demonic hosts find a snaggle of defenses which frustrated our methods at every turn. Not only do the Guardian Angels assigned to each member seek incessantly to strengthen the bonds among the wretches, but any natural inclination toward charity, forgiveness, affection and stubbornly sticky virtue education done there seems to be nearly irremovable. We find the most natural instance of soul-defense given to the talking beasts right here, in the home. Your work of directing the anti-choir of assigned tempter-devils at this home is of great import, and, I may remind you, of great consequence for yourself if you fail.

This Year of Faith called for by the Church — I mention Her once here for sake of clarity and will try not to curse in future correspondence — seems to have Our Father Below, er, energetically concerned. Not that they tell me everything — and not that I’m complaining! But they have assigned me you and specified the target, an unusual circumstance. Oh, and equally unusual, they have recognized my authority to un-name; yes, your dignified title of “Thorn” recognized in the horrid Scriptures themselves is to be replaced by one of my making. Get used to your new name: its domesticity, its humiliation, its mission-in-a-nutshell effect. I HEREBY UNNAME YOU THORN, AND NAME YOU GLUESTICK. Get thee into the deepest shadow of the family craft closet, and stay hidden and alert. I look for your first report by Disaster-mas morning, the twenty-fifth.

Oh, and while I will save the non-filed details from the spouses’ families-of-origin, much of which work in our favor, this was missed: both families associated this repugnant Incarnational season with happiness and even fell into some joy, a happy memory for both husband and wife. This is to be undermined. Get to work on that now. Encouraging thoughts of shopping in the place of shalom is a good place to begin.

Your “Friend,”

LameWorm

The Nativity is depicted in a mural titled “Birth of Jesus” in the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception at Conception Abbey in Conception, Mo. Painted by Benedictine monks in the late 1800s, the artwork is the first appearance of the German Beuronese s tyle in a U.S. church. Christians celebrate the incarnation of the divine word — the birth of Christ — Dec. 25. (CNS photo courtesy Conception Abbey)

Judging by the numerous bumper stickers, billboards and signs at sporting events, John 3:16 is arguably one of the most quoted Bible verses in Scripture:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

The Incarnation, the Son of God becoming man, is one of the central mysteries of our faith. Incarnate means to take on flesh.

By the Incarnation, it is meant that the Son of God, retaining His divine nature, took a human nature of a body and soul like ours. Jesus, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, became human.

The Incarnation is a result of an incomprehensible love God has for each and every one of us, and we recite this belief when we pray the Nicene Creed: “and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”

The creed is not a list of ideas, but a summary of our faith that has been handed down through the centuries, beginning with the Apostles.

Fr. Doug Lorig, pastor of St. Maria Goretti Parish in Scottsdale, said the Incarnation of Jesus had its beginning with the fall of man.

“They severed their conversation with God by not being repentant,” he said. “Jesus didn’t simply come just to die on the cross — that wasn’t the focus. The focus was to restart the conversation with the Father that Adam and Eve ended.”

Jesus came to tell humanity that God loves us, especially the sinners. One parable that focuses on this deep, abiding love is the Prodigal Son.

“This is the true image, an icon, for the love that God has for His children,” Fr. Lorig said. “As part of His own creation, He didn’t descend on us in a flash of light as an eternal God. He came very, very small and that was the appeal to love. Love is the key to all of it.”

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a Montessori-based approach to the religious formation of young children rooted in sacred Scripture and liturgy, teaches the youngest hearts how to adore God.

Through the profound gesture of genuflection, children learn what it means to make themselves very small before God.

“When we kneel at the crèche, we make ourselves small enough to be with Him,” Fr. Lorig said. “God is not impressed with size or loud sounds, but with the smallness of the heart that knows how to love.”

Unlike our birth, Jesus enters into not only the womb of Mary, but the womb of the entire creation of God so as to make it whole.

Ryan Hanning, director of parish leadership support for the Phoenix Diocese, said next to knowledge of the Trinity, the Incarnation is an essential aspect of the basic Christian kerygma, or proclamation, “that God so loved the world” He entered into His creation to save us from sin.

Hanning said people often underestimate how essential the teaching is. The Catechism reminds us, “Belief in the true Incarnation of the Son of God is the distinctive sign of Christian faith.” (§463).

Hanning said some of the earliest heresies were fought over the nature of Christ — that He was both true God, and true man.

The Arians thought that He wasn’t completely God, while others taught that He wasn’t completely man, i.e., monophysitism.

“Today we can run this risk by falling into error by forgetting that Jesus was true God, in which we domesticate Him into just a good teacher among many, or forgetting that Jesus was true man, in which we don’t think Jesus can understand our temptations or brokenness,” Hanning said.

Jesus Christ is God because He is the only Son of God, having the same divine nature as his Father. Jesus Christ is man because He is the Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary and has a body and soul like ours.

“The One who becomes created in order to start a conversation with God loves us unto the end,” Fr. Lorig said. “Jesus didn’t walk away from death. The Father honored that and received His blood for the sins of the world — all out of love.”

Sr. John-Mark Maria of the Poor Clare Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Tonopah explained that in our humanity we participate in God’s love by accepting and giving love to those around us.

“His love for us was so great that He shares Himself, as He knows we know, through the gift of self to the other,” Sr. John-Mark said.

There are many Scripture passages written about the Incarnation, 1 John 1:1-3 and 1 Timothy 3:16, for example.

Galatians 4:4-5 says, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”

The Incarnation truly is a mystery, and it’s one that Sr. John-Mark says parents need to pass on to their children.

“Believe in it, hope in it, trust in it, and let it permeate our actions, thoughts, and decisions of everyday life,” she said. ✴

Gina Keating, a regular contributor to The Catholic Sun, leads children’s faith formation sacramental preparation at St. Theresa Parish. 

The Year of Faith, which Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed would begin this past October, calls Catholics to turn back to Jesus and enter into a deeper relationship with Him.

An indulgence is the remission before God of the temporal punishment for sin the guilt of which is already forgiven, which a properly disposed member of the Christian faithful obtains under certain conditions. (Canon 992) A Plenary indulgence totally frees the soul from temporal punishment due to sin. (Canon 993).

Between now and the end of the Year of Faith (Nov. 24, 2013), plenary indulgences can be obtained by members of the faithful in the Diocese of Phoenix by visiting one of the following historic Churches and praying for the intentions of the Holy Father (an Our Father and a Hail Mary).

Indulgences may also be obtained by attending Mass or the Liturgy of the Hours at any sacred place in the diocese and making a Profession of Faith on feast days of American saints listed below.

The person seeking the indulgence must have received sacramental confession and Holy Communion within a week of the visit. Further, in order for the indulgence to be plenary and not partial, the individual must be free from sin (even venial). Only one plenary indulgence may be gained on a day.

Indulgences may be gained by visits to these churches*:

• St. Mary’s Basilica (Phoenix)
• Old St. Mary’s (ASU Newman Center, Tempe)
• Immaculate Heart of Mary (Phoenix)
• Our Lady of Guadalupe (Flagstaff)
• San Xavier del Bac (Tucson)
• Ss. Simon and Jude Cathedral (Phoenix)

Feast days for indulgences:

• Jan. 4 (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton)
• Jan. 5 (St. John Neumann)
• Jan. 23 (St. Marianne Cope)
• March 3 (St. Katherine Drexel)
• May 10 (St. Damien de Veuster of Molokai)
• July 1 (Blessed Junipero Serra)
• July 14 (St. Kateri Tekawitha)
• Oct. 3 (St. Mother Theodore Guerin)
• Oct. 19 (North American Martyrs)
• Oct. 22 (Blessed John Paul II)
• Oct. 28 (Sts. Simon and Jude)
• Nov. 6 (Blesseds Eduardo Farre and Lucas Tristany)
• Nov. 13 (St. Francis Cabrini)
• Nov. 18 (St. Rose Philippine Duschesne)

Granted on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, 2012.

— Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted

*For maps to these locations: www.diocesephoenix.org/places.php.

Auxiliary Bishop Eduardo A. Nevares celebrates Mass Nov. 1 at Ss. Simon and Jude Cathedral. The Mass was part of the Oct. 28-Nov. 2 Eucharistic Congress held at the diocese’s mother church. (J.D. Long-Garcia/CATHOLIC SUN)

The Eucharist can be a comfort to those in distress, like the thousands suffering in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, said Marian Father Mark Baron, minister to the Pentagon.

Fr. Baron, who serves as superior of formation in Washington, D.C., spoke about the healing power of the Blessed Sacrament during the Oct. 29-Nov. 2 Eucharistic Congress at Ss. Simon and Jude Cathedral.

“I had the blues [after Sandy], so I went and sat there in front of the Eucharist,” Fr. Baron said in a keynote address Nov. 1. “There’s an exchange: We give Him our junk — our problems — and He gives us His peace. I don’t know what I would do without the Blessed Sacrament.”

He noted that the Gospels speak of those who physically touched Jesus and were healed.

“Well, when we receive him in Communion, come on! We receive Him and He’s inside of us,” Fr. Baron said. “Give God permission to work in your life.”

God is especially interested in healing people from sin, he said, but God also heals spiritual ailments.

“Sometimes it’s hard to believe in the Eucharist at first,” Fr. Baron admitted, referring to John 6. “St. Peter didn’t get the Eucharist at first, but because he believed in Jesus, he stayed… Stop wrestling with the Eucharist with your mind. But because Christ said it, say with Peter, ‘I believe.’”

The congress featured a Vatican exhibit of eucharistic miracles, a holy hour led by Catholic recording artist Michael John Poirier and 24 straight hours of confession.

“We need to receive Jesus in a state of grace,” Fr. Baron said, calling Catholics to regular confession. “He’s ready to feed you.”

Auxiliary Bishop Eduardo A. Nevares celebrated Mass before Fr. Baron’s talk, and also referred to John 6 in his bilingual homily.

“It reminds us what a precious jewel we have in the Blessed Eucharist,” he said. He noted that the Second Vatican Council proclaimed the Eucharist as “the source and summit of the Christian life.”

The Blessed Sacrament “draws all of God’s holy people to Jesus Christ, who is the same ‘yesterday, today and forever,’” the bishop said, also citing the Scripture where Christ says, “I will be with you always.”

“As the Father gives us the Son, Jesus gives Himself to us in the Eucharist,” Bishop Nevares said. “In Jesus Christ, every time we go to Mass, Heaven is wedded to Earth and Earth is wedded to Heaven.”

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is as close as human beings will come to heaven on Earth, he said.

“In heaven, we will all be brothers and sisters gathered around the heavenly crown, gazing in adoration of the beauty of the Godhead,” the bishop said. “What a precious gift we have in the Sacrament of the Altar. What a precious gift we have in our Catholic faith.”

Fr. John Muir, assistant director of All Saints Catholic Newman Center in Tempe, spoke with teenagers about the miracles of the Eucharist.

“How amazing and wonderfully scary the eucharistic Lord is,” he said. In the eucharistic miracle of Lanciano, the host was transformed into actual flesh and the wine into actual blood. This physical reality confirmed the Catholic teaching of transubstantiation — at every Mass the bread and wine are transformed into the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.”

Scientists have tested the blood and confirmed the blood is human blood — type AB, the same blood type found on the Shroud of Turin. And the flesh is real human heart flesh.

The flesh and blood, which were transformed in the eighth century, have been miraculously preserved despite being exposed to natural elements for hundreds of years.

Fr. Muir also spoke of the Miracle of Santarem. “This one has to do with a bad romantic relationship,” Fr. Muir quipped, “which you guys probably know nothing about. This guy was a real jerk.”

This miracle involved a host which began to bleed in the year 1247. This happened after a woman wrapped a host in her scarf and brought It home. She was convinced it would change her husband, who was unfaithful to her. The couple woke up in the middle of the night to find the host shedding brilliant rays of light, and the discovered angels adoring the Host, which was bleeding.

Theresa Serrano, who led a committee to organize the Eucharistic Congress, first approached Fr. Dan McBride, pastor of St. Mary-Basha Parish in Chandler, to have a congress there in 2009. The parish hosted the first and subsequent congresses during Lent.

This year, the congress moved to the cathedral and was held in conjunction with the beginning of the Year of Faith. Serrano said Catholics came from across the diocese for the event. One family came from Prescott.

“If we believe in the Real Presence, then why on Earth would we not spend time with Him?” she said of eucharistic adoration. “We’re so busy. We don’t stop in silence to hear. It’s time to do that.”

Serrano wanted to reach Catholics who’d “pass by the tabernacle without knowing they’re passing by the same body that hung on the cross.” She hopes the congress helped her brothers and sisters in Christ recognize His presence in the Blessed Sacrament.

“Once we believe in the Blessed Sacrament, our Communion is different,” she said. “We want to receive Him, adore Him, spend our life with Him. That’s what I want everyone to experience.”