What, Exactly, is the Mass?

The Mass is believed by Catholics to be an unbloody sacrifice in which by the power of God, the institution of Christ, and the ministry 'of the priest, the body and blood of our blessed Saviour are produced upon the altar, under the appearances of bread and wine; and are there offered to the Almighty, not only as a propitiation for the sins of mankind, but also in testimony of the adoration or homage which is his due; in thanksgiving; for benefits received, in which view it is eucharistic; and to beseech future favors, whereby it is impetratory.

A Catholic church is a Christian temple, erected for the purpose of having the holy sacrifice of the Mass offered therein. This sacrifice is made upon an altar, which is a table sufficiently large to sustain the offerings, the book and other necessaries. Formerly the holy sacrifice was offered in the catacombs, upon the tombs of the martyrs. And frequently since that period, when splendid temples were erected, their bodies or remains have been removed from those obscure resting places, and enshrined in rich sarcophagi, over which the table of the altar was placed. The relics of other saints have been also, in several instances, thus entombed.


The rapt Evangelist beheld under" the heavenly altar, where stood the immolated Lamb, the souls of those slain for the word of God. Glorious in their blood, they reposed in celestial bliss until their expected companions should arrive; whilst under the altars upon the earth, their bodies rested honorably enshrined in those places where the Lamb was produced as slain, and offered in the midst of the holy choirs below.

The crucifix or image of the Saviour in his state of bloody immolation, is very appropriately placed upon the centre of the altar where that commemorative immolation is to be made. On each side candles are lighted, not only as a token of joy, but also as by their blaze they mystically exhibit the descent of the Holy Ghost in the form of tongues of fire, for the purpose of endowing the Apostles, the first ministers of the Catholic Church, with power from on high, to perform the stupendous works for which they were commissioned by an incarnate God.

The altar is a consecrated stone. This has been the case during upwards of fifteen hundred years, previously to which period, no law prescribed any particular material. The Church also by the very color of the front of the altar, and of the vestments, leaches her children the nature of the solemnity which she celebrates. Thus, for instance, white is used upon the great festivals of the Trinity, of the Saviour, of his blessed mother, of angels, of saints, who without shedding their blood gave their testimony by the practice of exalted virtues; and on some other occasions. Red is used on the feast of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost descended in the form of tongues of fire; on the festivals of martyrs, and the like. In limes of penance, violet is used, green on days when there is no special solemnity, and black on Good Friday, and on occasion of offices for the deceased.

Ceremonial:
for the use of the Catholic Churches of the United States of America.
Published by Order of the First Council of Baltimore,
with the approbation of the Holy See

The Heroic Minute

(Taken from http://newtheologicalmovement.blogspot.com/2012/02/heroic-minute-immediately-upon-waking.html )

The heroic minute, immediately upon waking - the first battle of the day

A Carthusian monk, from the film "Into Great Silence"

5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Mark 1:29-39

Rising very early before dawn, [Jesus] left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.

After exorcising a demoniac, healing St. Peter’s mother-in-law, and curing many others, Jesus teaches us the absolute primacy of the interior life by rising early the next morning, before it was day, so as to go to a deserted place and pray.

Fr. Conrelius a’ Lapide tells us: “Learn here from Christ to give the early morning to prayer, and to rise up with the dawn, so as to have leisure for meditation, and to give the first-fruits of the day to God. For the dawn of day is a friend of the Muses, but a greater friend of God and the angels.”

It is better to pray in the morning

Together with all the spiritual doctors before and after, St. Francis de Sales recommends that mental prayer (including the Rosary) be done in the early morning [Introduction to the Devout Life II,1]:

“Give an hour every day to meditation before dinner [i.e. the noon meal];—if you can, let it be early in the morning, when your mind will be less cumbered, and fresh after the night’s rest. Do not spend more than an hour thus, unless specially advised to do so by your spiritual father.”

Further, the Doctor of the Catholic Press writes:

“If it should happen that your morning goes by without the usual meditation, either owing to a pressure of business, or from any other cause, (which interruptions you should try to prevent as far as possible,) try to repair the loss in the afternoon, but not immediately after a meal, or you will perhaps be drowsy, which is bad both for your meditation and your health. But if you are unable all day to make up for the omission, you must remedy it as far as may be by ejaculatory prayer [e.g. “My Jesus, I love you.”], and by reading some spiritual book, together with an act of penitence for the neglect, together with a stedfast resolution to do better the next day.”

The morning offering of St. Alphonsus

St. Alphonsus offers the following prayer as an example of how every Christian should pray immediately upon rising:

My God! I adore You, I love You with my whole heart.

I thank You for all Your benefits, especially for having preserved me during the past night.

I offer You all my actions and sufferings of this day, in union with the actions of Jesus and Mary; and I make the intention of gaining all the indulgences that I can gain.

I purpose, O Lord! to avoid offending You this day.

[It is good to make a resolution, particularly about the fault into which we fall the most often.]

I beg You, for the love of Jesus, to grant me the grace of perseverance.

I resolve to conform myself to Your holy will, and particularly in those things that are contrary to my inclination, saying always, O Lord I Your will be done. My Jesus, keep Your hand over me this day. Most Holy Virgin Mary, take me beneath your mantle. And do You, O Eternal Father, help me for the love of Jesus and Mary! O my angel guardian and my holy patron saints, assist me.

[Say: Our Father, Hail Mary, Creed; three Hail Marys: in honor of the purity of Mary.]

Notice that St. Alphonsus is speaking in holy aspirations or ejaculatory prayers – quick and sweet acts of love, of faith, of thanksgiving, of petition. Some (perhaps not all) will find that these are much easier in the morning than a long memorized prayer, they are also more effective in exciting the will to the love of God.

Further, the resolution to avoid some particular vice: Every day we must either grow or decrease in virtue. The soul is a living being and, like all things living, it cannot in this life maintain perfect neutrality – every organism, including the supernatural organism which is the soul, is either growing or dying. Thus, first thing in the morning, we ready ourselves for the spiritual warfare of the coming day, and we resolve to mortify (to put to death) that fault which is most dangerous to our spiritual growth.

Finally, with distrust of self but great confidence in God, St. Alphonsus tells us to be resigned to the divine will. This is the key to holiness: Conformity, and even abandonment, to divine providence. Whatever comes this day is given or at least permitted by God for my spiritual benefit, if only I make good use of the occasions he provides me! Most especially, any sufferings or humiliations which are assigned by God for me in the coming day are the greatest means of my growth in holiness – I must not seek to avoid them.

We pray to Mary, to the saints, and to our guardian angel for protection and assistance. The Hail Mary, said three times in the morning and at night, is the great means of overcoming lust and persevering in chastity – every Christian should employ this powerful tool.

A mortification in the morning

St. Josemaría Escrivá, the Father and Founder of Opus Dei, tells us:

“The heroic minute. It is the time fixed for getting up. Without hesitation: a supernatural reflection and ... up! The heroic minute: here you have a mortification that strengthens your will and does no harm to your body. If, with God’s help, you conquer yourself, you will be well ahead for the rest of the day. It’s so discouraging to find oneself beaten at the first skirmish.” (cf. The Way 206)

As the season of Lent is soon approaching, perhaps we may consider incorporating this early mortification into our discipline.

Planned Parenthood

(Taken from http://gkupsidedown.blogspot.com/2012/02/money-and-sex.html)

Money and Sex

That headline got your attention didn't it?

This week we have witnessed jubilation in pro life ranks about Komen's decision to withdraw funding from Planned Parenthood. Then jubilation turned to lamentation when Komen seemed to reverse their decision. Now there is recrimination, bitter and angry words being dished out towards Planned Parenthood and the liberals in the media and politics who seem to have pressured Komen to reverse their decision.

Planned Parenthood and their supporters are being blamed for a 'mafia like shakedown' of Komen. The politicians behind Planned Parenthood are being blamed for pressuring Komen. The pro aborts are accused of lying and scheming and planning to close Komen down for good.

Much talk on both sides has been blathered about "saving women's lives", "women's health", "serving women and curing breast cancer."

Fuhgeddaboudit. It's about money and sex. Lots of money and lots of sex.

If it was about saving women's lives, then we would all listen to the increasing voices reminding us that birth control pills cause breast cancer and we'd stop prescribing birth control pills. But if we stopped prescribing birth control pills we would not be able to have "free love" any more. Furthermore, the hugely profitable business of supplying birth control pills would take a hit.

So much talk about saving women's lives, but if we wanted to save women's lives and improve women's health we would stop abortion because abortion hurts women physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. But if we stopped abortion we would not have the solution to our "free love" when the contraception doesn't work. Furthermore, abortion is big business. There are lots of people employed in the abortion industry. They'd lose their jobs and their incomes.

Has anyone also noticed how much money is involved in the "women's health charities"? Millions of dollars flow in and around and through both Komen and Planned Parenthood. Charity is big business, and it's hard work getting all those donations, all that government funding, and keeping the money flowing. Politicians have to be lobbied. Fat cats have to be schmoozed. Expensive publicity campaigns have to be undertaken. Expensive fund raising events have to be organized. There are plenty of jobs in the charitable industry, and plenty of people who want to build a safe barn for their cash cow.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of saving women's lives and improving women's health. But that is not the real priority for the worldlings. The first priority is to get as much sex and money as possible as soon as possible and to keep both as long as possible. Every technology and propaganda tool will be used to 'correct' any problems (like a pregnancy, an unwanted marriage or a sexually transmitted disease) that come from the indulgence in sex and hoarding of money. Every power, position and force will be used to preserve the flow of money and sex, and any person or movement that threatens either the money or the sex will be met with all the snarling fury of a cornered beast.

The "women's health" racket is just that--a racket. I reckon the best way to improve women's lives is to encourage the family. The woman's life I want to improve the most is the life of my wife, my mother, my sister, my daughter and their friends. Not only do I want to improve their life materially, and look after their health and welfare with them, but I want them to improve their lives and health and welfare. The first way to encourage the family is to encourage men to take responsibility for their actions, and to work with the woman they love to build a solid family unit which gives the woman and her children the health, welfare, security and happiness they need.

The other way to improve women's lives and women's health is to encourage chastity--and by this I don't mean to blame women for promiscuity. It takes two to tango. If men and women were committed to life long faithfulness in marriage and no sex outside marriage, then the health, welfare, self esteem and happiness of women would take a quantum leap forward.

But all of this would mean that we would all have to put up with having less money and less sex. We'd have to be monogamous and faithful and self disciplined. Men would have to respect and honor women for more than just sex. Women would have to learn to please men in other ways than just flopping down to give them sex. Both men and women would have to learn how to behave with self control, dignity and self respect. Marriage takes hard work. We would have to learn more about love and less about sex. We'd have to learn how to make sacrifices and live for someone other than ourselves.

Planned Parenthood

Here is an interview with Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Just watching the first 3 minutes is very telling. This has some obvious interest for the current HHS issue.

Do You Have a Vocation to the Religious Life?

BENEDICTINE MONKS








BENEDICTINE NUNS




DOMINICAN NUNS

CARMELITE MONKS

POOR CLARES



LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR

Merry Christmas!

When Mary gave birth, the heavens were glad and the earth rejoiced and hell was shaken and trembled. The heavens gave him a bright and beaming star and a glorious host of angels gathered in praise and singing: 'Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will.' The exultant earth offered him shepherds giving glory to God, and magi worshipping and presenting their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. Hell's contribution from out of its turmoils was an impious king and the rage of soldiers wreaking violence on the innocent, slaughtering without pity the unweaned infants snatched from the breast. So it was that the good of the one who would reward the good rejoiced and the wicked were dismayed when Mary was delivered of the one who would reward the good and mete out due requital to the wicked. She labored and gave birth: imagine the happy smile on the face of all creation as the whole earth praised its Lord! Imagine the night sky in its beauty, all clouds swept aside and the stars saying 'Here we are!' and shining merrily. Imagine the night flooding the darkness with light and supplying brilliance in the place of murk. Before the rising of the sun, that night had shed abroad a light that eclipsed the sun's splendor, for that was the night of which the Psalmist said: 'The night will shine bright as the noonday.'(Psalm 138:12) And if all created things rejoiced and were glad, what must his mother's joy and happiness have been? The tongue stumbles, the heart shrinks back and the mind gapes before such an overwhelming joy as this.

Mary understands that in her are fulfilled the promises made to the patriarchs, the words of the prophets who foretold that Christ would be born of a virgin, and the hopes of our forefathers who yearned for his coming. She sees the Son of God committed to her care and rejoices that the world's salvation is entrusted to her. She hears the Lord God speaking to her and in her: 'Behold, I have chosen you from all flesh and have blessed you among women. I have committed my Son to your care, I have entrusted to you my only Son. Do not be afraid to suckle the one you bore, to rear the child you have brought forth. See in him not only your God but also your son. My son and yours. My son through His Godhead, yours through the manhood he has assumed.'No human being knows with what fondness and zeal, humility and reverence, love and devotion she fulfilled this charge; it is known to God who tries the minds and hearts, to God who weighs the spirits. Often - we may imagine - forgetting food and drink, ignoring the body's needs, she would spend sleepless nights, her mind and eyes alike intent on Christ who was her whole desire, the object of her adoration.

When she yielded her limbs to sleep, she would rest peacefully in the same flow of thought that had filled her waking mind. There where her treasure was, there too was her heart, and where her glory was, there was her awareness focused. She loved her God, who was her son, with all her heart and all her mind and all her strength: with all her heart, because she loved him with the full depth of her feeling; with all her mind, because her understanding was entire; with all her strength, because she carried out her charge with wholehearted intent. She saw with her eyes and dandled in her hands the Word of life. Happy she to whom it was given to cherish the one who fosters and nourishes all creation, to carry the ground and stay of all that is, to suckle the child who fills the very breasts he sucks, to feed the all-provider who gives even the birds their food! Round her neck clung the Father's Wisdom and in her arms nestled the power that moves the universe. The little Jesus leaned on his mother's breast, and in her virgin lap reposed the eternal rest of the saints in heaven. Jesus, babbling gently, called that mother whom every spirit calls upon in need. She meanwhile, filled with the Holy Spirit, held her son breast to breast and pressed his face to hers. Sometimes she kissed his hands and arms and with a mother's freedom stole sweet kisses from his sacred lips. She never tired of feasting her eyes with looking and her ears with listening, for was he not the one whom many prophets and kings desired to see, and never saw, to hear, and never heard?

The Miraculous Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe

SCIENCE STUNNED BY VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE'S EYES

Engineer Sees a Reflection, Literally, From a Scene in 1531

ROME, JAN. 14, 2001 (ZENIT.org) .- Digital technology is giving new leads in understanding a phenomenon that continues to puzzle science: the mysterious eyes of the image of Virgin of Guadalupe.

The image, imprinted on the tilma of a 16th-century peasant, led millions of indigenous Indians in Mexico to convert to the Catholic faith. Last week in Rome, results of research into the famed image were discussed by engineer José Aste Tonsmann of the Mexican Center of Guadalupan Studies during a conference at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum.

For over 20 years, this graduate of environmental systems engineering of Cornell University has studied the image of the Virgin left on the rough maguey fiber fabric of Juan Diego’s tilma. What intrigued Tonsmann the most were the eyes of the Virgin.

Though the dimensions are microscopic, the iris and the pupils of the image’s eyes have imprinted on them a highly detailed picture of at least 13 people, Tonsmann said. The same people are present in both the left and right eyes, in different proportions, as would happen when human eyes reflect the objects before them.

Tonsmann says he believes the reflection transmitted by the eyes of the Virgin of Guadalupe is the scene on Dec. 9, 1531, during which Juan Diego showed his tilma, with the image, to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga and others present in the room.

In his research, Tonsmann used a digital process used by satellites and space probes in transmitting visual information.

He insists that the image "that has not been painted by human hand." As early as the 18th century, scientists showed that it was impossible to paint such an image in a fabric of that texture. The "ayate" fibers used by the Indians, in fact, deteriorated after 20 years. Yet, the image and the fabric it is imprinted on have lasted almost 470 years ago.

Tonsmann pointed out that Richard Kuhn, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, has found that the image did not have natural, animal or mineral colorings. Given that there were no synthetic colorings in 1531, the image is inexplicable.

In 1979, Americans Philip Callahan and Jody B. Smith studied the image with infrared rays and discovered to their surprise that there was no trace of paint and that the fabric had not been treated with any kind of technique.

"[How] it is possible to explain this image and its consistency in time without colors, on a fabric that has not been treated?" Tonsmann asked. "[How] is it possible that, despite the fact there is no paint, the colors maintain their luminosity and brilliance?"

Tonsmann, a Peruvian engineer, added, "Callahan and Smith showed how the image changes in color slightly according to the angle of viewing, a phenomenon that is known by the word iridescence, a technique that cannot be reproduced with human hands."

The scientist began his study in 1979. He magnified the iris of the Virgin’s eyes 2,500 times and, through mathematical and optical procedures, was able to identify all the people imprinted in the eyes.

The eyes reflect the witnesses of the Guadalupan miracle, the moment Juan Diego unfurled his tilma before the bishop, according to Tonsmann. In other words, the Virgin’s eyes have the reflection that would have been imprinted in the eyes of any person in her position.

In the eyes, Tonsmann believes, it is possible to discern a seated Indian, who is looking up to the heavens; the profile of a balding, elderly man with a white beard, much like the portrait of Bishop Zumárraga, painted by Miguel Cabrera, to depict the miracle; and a younger man, in all probability interpreter Juan González.

Also present, Tonsmann believes, is an Indian, likely Juan Diego, of striking features, with a beard and mustache, who unfolds his own tilma before the bishop; a woman of dark complexion, possibly a Negro slave who was in the bishop’s service; and a man with Spanish features who looks on pensively, stroking his beard with his hand.

In a word, the Virgin’s eyes bear a kind of instant picture of what occurred at the moment the image was unveiled in front of the bishop, Tonsmann says.

Moreover, in the center of the pupils, on a much more reduced scale, another scene can be perceived, independent of the first, the scientist contends. It is that of an Indian family made up of a woman, a man and several children. In the right eye, other people who are standing appear behind the woman.

Tonsmann ventured to express why he believes the Virgin’s eyes have a "hidden" message for modern times, when technology is able to discover it. "This could be the case of the picture of the family in the center of the Virgin’s eye," he says, "at a time when the family is under serious attack in our modern world."