BISHOP OLMSTED

On Dec. 30, 2016, the Feast of the Holy Family, a revised Rite for Marriage began to be used throughout the English-speaking Church. It is called The Order of Celebrating Matrimony. Though much of the Rite remains the same, the changes serve to deepen the beauty of the symbolic expression of marriage, as well as to radiate the unchanging truth of marriage in our culture.

Para la mayoría de ustedes, fue la primera vez que experimentaron la semana más sagrada del año, no en su iglesia parroquial, sino en su propia casa. Podría parecer que nuestra Cuaresma no ha terminado, como si aún estuviéramos atrapados en el desierto.

In September of AD 1772, Friar Junípero Serra returned to San Diego, exhausted in body and spirit. He had just walked for three weeks, travelling all the way from northern California to the first mission he had founded. Despite his usual optimistic disposition, he was worn down by the scarcity of food, hampered by the sharp pain shooting from the incurable wound in his leg, and above all ensnarled in a heated dispute with Pedro Fages, the lieutenant governor of the Las Californias province of New Spain.

Friendship with Jesus does not begin with our human initiative. It begins with Him. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,” He tells us (Cf. Jer 1:5), “before you were born I dedicated you.”

On this special edition of The Bishop's Hour, listen to Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted's remarks from the Sept. 23 "State of the Church" luncheon in downtown Phoenix.

In this fourth part of our series, we shall now consider the third stage of education for freedom, which is known as maturity in charity.

“Take the child and his mother, flee into Egypt …” With this command from the Angel, Joseph, in the middle of the night, fled the massacre that King Herod intended for the child Jesus; and the Holy Family became refugees (Mt 2:13f).

El amor de un padre por sus hijos y su esposa es capturado en una palabra de tres letras: con. Esto lo vemos en la vida de San José, el padre adoptivo de Jesús. Aunque es mencionado varias veces en los evangelios de Mateo y Marcos, ninguna de sus palabras fue escrita. Lo que importó fue que José estaba allí, presente junto a María y Jesús, siempre dispuesto a escuchar y animarles, a proteger y proveer.

Scandal is not a happy topic. It is fodder for gossip and fuel for rumors. It is a favorite of modern media and a weapon in decadent politics. But scandal, even if enticing to the curious mind, cannot make the heart sing. It weighs down the human spirit. It leads a person towards hell.

The fruit of the womb is holy. Every child is a blessing. A child is never an evil, even if the circumstances that led to the beginning of a new human person were not morally upright.