Recent Posts

Most Used Categories

Category: Christian Witness

You are Here :
Christian Witness, Homilies, PNCC, , , ,

Homily of the Ecumenical Patriarch concerning the Liturgy

08.JPG

Fr. John T. Zuhlsdorf’s blog What Does The Prayer Really Say? offers a transcript of the Ecumenical Patriarch’s homily on the Holy Mass delivered during the celebration of the Divine Liturgy on the Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle.

Both the homily and Fr. Zuhlsdorf’s commentary in Homily of the Ecumenical Patriarch before Benedict are worth a read.

As a member of the PNCC I am in full agreement. The holiness, solemnity, and care used in both the Traditional and Contemporary Rites of the Holy Mass in the PNCC are a testament to our living connection to —the kingdom of heaven where the angels celebrate; toward the celebration of the liturgy through the centuries; and toward the heavenly kingdom to come.—

My thanks to Fr. Jim Tucker for pointing to this in Constantinople Patriarch on Sacred Liturgy.

Christian Witness, Current Events, Political

The abortion mill next door

One of the Berger Commission recommendations:

Kingston and Benedictine Hospitals should be joined under a single unified governance structure, contingent upon Kingston Hospital continuing to provide access to reproductive services in a location proximate to the hospital. The joined facility should be licensed for approximately 250 to 300 beds.

Benedictine Hospital’s Mission Statement is as follows:

Our Mission

The Care of the sick must rank above and before all else so that they may truly be served as Christ. Faithful to the Gospel values of its Roman Catholic heritage and its 1500-year-old Benedictine tradition of hospitality, community, stewardship, respect of persons, and peace, Benedictine Hospital is dedicated to the provision of health care services through the use of available resources to meet the needs of the people who come for care. As part of its healing ministry, Benedictine Hospital upholds the sacredness of life at all stages, recognizes the dignity of each person and provides for the spiritual as well as the physical needs of those it serves.

Perhaps Benedictine’s mission statement scared the Commission because they are recommending (and the only time it is mentioned in regard to combining Catholic and secular hospitals) that Kingston’s abortion mill be moved next door.

Stay tuned and pray.

Christian Witness, Perspective,

Signpost – the desert experience

desert ahead

In the spiritual life, the desert experience is a time of preparation, a time where the Spirit works within us, tearing out the old man and building up the new.

During those times of darkness and abandonment in our lives, especially when we get the sense that we have been abandoned by God, our prayers become just words and time spent in contemplation seems to be an empty torture. Sometimes it seems quite difficult to stick with God.

I often reflect on the times I felt this way. When I saw the sign on Huw’s site it was the first thing that came to mind. I offer up my prayers this evening for all who are experiencing this time of darkness.

If you want to make a custom sign thingy – check out Custom Road Sign.

Christian Witness, Current Events, Perspective

The ring-a-ding-ding season

Our PNCC seminarian Adam points to an article on Wal-Mart’s efforts to put the ring-a-ding-ding back in its cash registers (or ATM terminals) for Christmas. From USA Today: Wal-Mart wishes you a Merry Christmas

Wal-Mart will put “Christmas” back into the holidays this year, the retailer plans to announce Thursday.

A year after religious and other groups boycotted retailers, including Wal-Mart (WMT), for downplaying Christmas, the world’s largest retail chain will have an in-your-face Christmas theme this year.

“We, quite frankly, have learned a lesson from last year,” says Wal-Mart spokeswoman Linda Blakley. “We’re not afraid to use the term ‘Merry Christmas.’ We’ll use it early, and we’ll use it often.”

The operative word being use.

Wal-Mart told about 7,000 associates of the plans at a conference last month and “was met with rapturous applause. … We know many of our customers will feel the same,” says John Fleming, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president of marketing.

Fleming says the retailer, which recently lowered prices on toys and electronics, will be pitching Christmas almost as much as “value” to holiday shoppers.

…

The Christmas spirit is spreading. Macy’s, the largest U.S. department store chain, plans to have “Merry Christmas” signs in all departments. All of Macy’s window displays will have Christmas themes. At New York’s Herald Square, the theme will be “Oh, Christmas Tree.”

“Our intention is to make every customer feel welcomed and appreciated, whether they celebrate Christmas or other holidays,” spokesman Jim Sluzewski says.

Good Polish tolerant conservatism from Mr. Sluzewski.

As at Wal-Mart, Macy’s employees are encouraged to consider wishing customers holiday greetings that are appropriate to their race or religion, including Happy Kwanzaa or Feliz Navidad.

Because we’ll all being wearing tags that identify our race and religious preference (maybe they could miniaturize it and put it in the microchip on my credit card).

All of this brings up so many issues.

In the end, yes, take down the decorations, stop saying happy anything (although they should try to be polite), be who you are – a secular company, and please, stop co-opting and corrupting the Incarnation of God among us.

Otherwise most will come to believe that yes Virginia, there is no Jesus – just Santa.

Christian Witness

Bringing along new faith bloggers

The Social Media Club, a project of the non-profit BrainJams organization has a very interesting site and some admirable projects in the hopper.

The Social Media Club states that they are:

…organized for the purpose of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy around the emerging area of Social Media.

I am particularly interested in their Adopt A Blogger project. In regard to the project they state:

The idea came from our discussions with BrainJams in New Orleans – to formalize some practices in which many bloggers are already engaged – to help people who don’t know about blogging to learn how and make the most of the tools.

This is particularly important for those of us who are among the leaders in representing underrepresented Churches in the social media sphere.

You can easily count the number of Orthodox (Eastern, Western, and Oriental) as well as PNCC social media sites on the web.

It is my feeling; a feeling echoed by others, that we need to bring along faith bloggers, most especially the young who are strong witnesses to orthodox faith. We need to teach them about responsible communication (versus polemics, sophistry, or demogogary), good web design, good web ethics, and proper standards.

It looks like a great project, one I would love to lead, at least in our Church. Faith, witness, ethics, apologetics, and technology for all. That’s at the core of responsible Christian social networking. Web 2.2 here we come…

Christian Witness, Perspective

Righteous suffering

Peter of The Age to Come comments on the Prayer of Jabez and on our false notions of who and what God is. In pointing to this post the Young Fogey states, —God is not a vending machine.— Exactly right, God is not a slot machine dispensing happiness because we deserve it or ask for it.

I’ve reflected on this line of thinking from the perspective of the disaffected person seeking Christ, the person disaffected by our definition of them.

You know who ‘they’ are, the homosexual, the liberal, the conservative, the widow, the orphan, the aged, the poor, the Arab, the ‘free choice’ supporter, the person seeking cures through embryonic stem cell research.

It is our obligation as Christians to witness to these people, to acknowledge their pain and suffering, to lighten their load by our humanity and support, and in the end to show them that the world’s concept of an entitlement to happiness is a straw man.

We need to get away from hellfire condemnation (you have no right to suffer because your suffering is pure selfishness) and move to truthful charity.

This is not calling an evil good – we cannot veer from, or change God’s message. It is rather an act of catechetical guidance, helping them along the path to regeneration and from there on the road to Theosis. We need to assist them, and the world, in understanding that suffering is an on-going act of righteousness. Righteous suffering being suffering with purpose, and that purpose having true affect.

Christian Witness

God in our humanness

From a beautiful reflection on our humanness from Huw Raphael: The Icon of God

In his homily Father Victor wondered how many of us could look at another human and see the icon, no matter how damaged.

…and upon expansion reveals why Thou shall not kill (murder, war, abortion, the death penalty, killing oneself through smoking, drugs, etc.) is a grave affront to God.

Christian Witness, Current Events, Media

Standing in the dock – for the truth

Robert Fisk writing in The Independent takes a stand against Holocaust deniers in Turkey. He’s ready to stand-up for the truth.

Check out: Let me denounce genocide from the dock: Suddenly, those Armenian mass graves opened up before my own eyes

This has been a bad week for Holocaust deniers. I’m talking about those who wilfully lie about the 1915 genocide of 1.5 million Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Turks. On Thursday, France’s lower house of parliament approved a Bill making it a crime to deny that Armenians suffered genocide. And, within an hour, Turkey’s most celebrated writer, Orhan Pamuk – only recently cleared by a Turkish court for insulting “Turkishness” (sic) by telling a Swiss newspaper that nobody in Turkey dared mention the Armenian massacres – won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In the mass graves below the deserts of Syria and beneath the soil of southern Turkey, a few souls may have been comforted.

While Turkey continues to blather on about its innocence – the systematic killing of hundreds of thousands of male Armenians and of their gang-raped women is supposed to be the sad result of “civil war” – Armenian historians such as Vahakn Dadrian continue to unearth new evidence of the premeditated Holocaust (and, yes, it will deserve its capital H since it was the direct precursor of the Jewish Holocaust, some of whose Nazi architects were in Turkey in 1915) with all the energy of a gravedigger…

A thank you to Serge, the original blogging Young Fogey (ref. here) for pointing to this.

All Right Reserved © 2005 - 2023