Category Archives: Liturgy

Lenten Reflection from His Holiness: Fifth Sunday

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Tommy Piolata

Once again, I ask for your forgiveness as I am almost a week late in getting this reflection up. Regardless, I do want to say a few things regarding this last Sunday’s reading as His Holiness puts it in his 2011 Message for Lent. Here is what he says:

On the fifth Sunday, when the resurrection of Lazarus is proclaimed, we are faced with the ultimate mystery of our existence: “I am the resurrection and the life… Do you believe this?” (Jn 11: 25-26). For the Christian community, it is the moment to place with sincerity – together with Martha – all of our hopes in Jesus of Nazareth: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who was to come into this world” (Jn 11: 27). Communion with Christ in this life prepares us to overcome the barrier of death, so that we may live eternally with him. Faith in the resurrection of the dead and hope in eternal life open our eyes to the ultimate meaning of our existence: God created men and women for resurrection and life, and this truth gives an authentic and definitive meaning to human history, to the personal and social lives of men and women, to culture, politics and the economy. Without the light of faith, the entire universe finishes shut within a tomb devoid of any future, any hope.

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Lenten Reflection from His Holiness: Third Sunday

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Tommy Piolata

Today’s Gospel reading is about Jesus’ dialogue with the Samaritan woman about thirst and water. The Holy Father’s brief synopsis from his lenten reflection is the following:

The question that Jesus puts to the Samaritan woman: “Give me a drink” (Jn 4: 7), is presented to us in the liturgy of the third Sunday; it expresses the passion of God for every man and woman, and wishes to awaken in our hearts the desire for the gift of “a spring of water within, welling up for eternal life” (Jn 4: 14): this is the gift of the Holy Spirit, who transforms Christians into “true worshipers,” capable of praying to the Father “in spirit and truth” (Jn 4: 23). Only this water can extinguish our thirst for goodness, truth and beauty! Only this water, given to us by the Son, can irrigate the deserts of our restless and unsatisfied soul, until it “finds rest in God”, as per the famous words of St. Augustine.

My favorite part of this interpretation is found in the ending, when the Holy Father tells that it is the Holy Spirit alone who can “irrigate the deserts of our restless and unsatisfied soul”. The human person is thirsty. Without a doubt, there is some sort of primeval emptiness in the human heart, a perennial search for completeness. What can satisfy the heart, the core of man?

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Lenten Reflection from His Holiness: Second Sunday

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Tommy Piolata

Continuing on with our journey through Benedict’s Message for Lent this year, we come to the Second Sunday of Lent, which is the Transfiguration. The Holy Father writes:

The Gospel of the Transfiguration of the Lord puts before our eyes the glory of Christ, which anticipates the resurrection and announces the divinization of man. The Christian community becomes aware that Jesus leads it, like the Apostles Peter, James and John “up a high mountain by themselves” (Mt 17:1), to receive once again in Christ, as sons and daughters in the Son, the gift of the grace of God: “This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favor. Listen to him” (Mt 17:5). It is the invitation to take a distance from the noisiness of everyday life in order to immerse oneself in God’s presence. He desires to hand down to us, each day, a Word that penetrates the depths of our spirit, where we discern good from evil (cf. Heb 4:12), reinforcing our will to follow the Lord.

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Lenten Reflection from His Holiness: First Sunday

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Tommy Piolata

In Jeffrey Morrow’s recent post, he suggests a prayerful reading of Pope Benedict XVI’s lenten message. I second that suggestion. The Holy Father’s words are touching, beautiful and enlightening. As somewhat a response to Morrow’s post, I have decided to write a brief, personal reflection over the text of the Pope’s lenten message. What I would like to do is develop this into a short series given each week of Lent. I propose this because the Holy Father, in his message, offers a theological synopsis of each Gospel reading on the given Lenten Sundays. Hence, he writes this message with a chronological, theological flow in mind. As best I can on a blog and with my limited theological knowledge, I want to reflect upon and follow the theology weekly. And I invite you, reader, to accompany me on the journey! Let us begin:

The Holy Father begins with an invitation to the Church: to intensify her journey in purifying the spirit, “so as to draw more abundantly from the Mystery of Redemption the new life in Christ the Lord”. Through this invitation, Benedict introduces Baptism, explaining that this life “was already bestowed upon us on the day of our Baptism, when we ‘become sharers in Christ’s death and Resurrection’, and there began for us ‘the joyful and exulting adventure of his disciples’”. After quoting from the writings of Paul, the Holy Father comes to a beautiful conclusion:

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And So, We Begin Our Lenten Pilgrimage

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Jeffrey L. Morrow

Lent is upon us. It is a time of renewal, a time of purification. I thought I would post just a few comments to help get us in the right frame of mind.

I love the season of Lent. It is the perfect time to get one’s life in order. It is the perfect season to reflect upon our relationship with God in an even deeper way than usual. We have many disciplines to help us, especially the practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. To be clear, it is important that we pray at all times and in all seasons, not just in Lent. Likewise, it is good for us to fast and habitually practice small mortifications, small penances, small acts of loving reparation, throughout our lives even outside of Lent (and outside of Fridays throughout the year). And, it’s never a bad time to give alms; “now” is always the perfect time. But in Lent, the Church lays a special emphasis on these practices to help us through our desert journey. In Lent, we travel with Jesus (and with all of the saints who have gone before us) into the wilderness, toward the joy which Easter brings.

Posted in Holidays (Holy Days), Liturgical Year, Prayer | 1 Comment

Wired For Silence

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Jeremy Priest

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence.  See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.”  -Blessed Mother Theresa

Wired with Sound

The average college-aged male spends between 4 and 14 hours a day in electronic media.  If you add-in sleep, our time for work, and personal interactions, there’s not much time for anything else.

I often find myself having to really focus on paying attention to people in everyday surroundings; avoiding the temptation to multi-task while I’m around others.

Entering Into the Silence: Reflection

The silence of the church is so different than the constant sensation we find outside.

Coming from such a sound and media-saturated environment, it’s hard to get settled into the silence.  Why do we find it so difficult?

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There and Back Again: Biblical Time and Church Architecture

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Jeremy Priest

Summer Time, Biblical Time, and Church Renovations, Oh My!

Summer goes by so quickly. It’s amazing to think that football will be starting soon, and for many school will be restarting! It’s a comfort to know that biblical time is somewhat different than these passing days of summer.

Biblical time stands out from the way other cultures understood time. This is contrasted with the ancient pagan idea that the cosmos was eternal and time was something cyclical, without beginning or end, doomed to repeat without end. It sounds strange and simplistic to say, but biblical time has a beginning and an end to it. Yet, it’s not so dull as all that.

St. Augustine said that he knew what time was until someone asked him what it was. Though there’s so much more to biblical time, I thought it would be beautiful to contemplate an aspect of it.

There and Back Again – an Architectural / Liturgical Journey

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Let the Soul Soar as a Bird

Posted on July 20, 2010 by Tommy Piolata

Without a doubt, the voice is an integral part of the Divine Liturgy. Whether it be a response, a prayer, or singing, the voice is a part of the Mass. The human voice becomes, especially in the Holy Mass, an instrument through the ministry of the Mystical Body to participate in that beautiful and sacred “exchange of man’s (really Christ’s) homage and Gods life” [1]. It only seems necessary, then, that the voice partakes in the Mass in the most proper way–the most beautiful and majestic way fit for honoring the King of kings. We can come to know what is best through the Spirit that works through the Church. It is this post’s purpose, thence, to present that the most authentic praise and song fit for the Divine Liturgy is founded in the form of Gregorian Chant–as has been taught and continues to be affirmed by Mother Church.

Pope Pius X writes, in his Motu Propio Tra Le Sollecitudini promulgated in 1903, that

[Gregorian Chant is] the Chant proper to the Roman Church, the only chant she has inherited from the ancient fathers, which she has jealously guarded for centuries in her liturgical codices, which she directly proposes to the faithful as her own, which she prescribes exclusively for some parts of the liturgy, and which the most recent studies have so happily restored to their integrity and purity.

Posted in Liturgy, Orthodoxy | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

The Knees of Adoration

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Tommy Piolata

In the letter to the Philippians, there is a beautiful passage, a hymn and prayer of the early Church that confesses faith in Jesus Christ:

[T]hough he [Christ] was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness…he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth. (cf. Phil 2:6-11)

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This is My Daily Bread

Posted on June 14, 2010 by Jeremy Priest

“Why Be Catholic?”

The Most Rev. Robert Carlson, now Archbishop of St. Louis, answered this question at a talk he gave at Central Michigan University in January of 2009.  His answer: “because of the Eucharist.”

Jesus is made present to us in the liturgy in many ways: through His word proclaimed; through His priests in His Sacraments; through two or three fellow believers gathered together; and most profoundly through the Sacrifice of His Body and Blood made present in the Holy Eucharist.  Yet, the Eucharistic presence surpasses the others.  Pope Paul VI said it this way: “This presence is called ‘real’ – by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be ‘real’ too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present.” (CCC 1374; Mysterium Fidei 39)

Rediscovering the Eucharist

Midway through my freshman year of college I experienced a profound conversion where I came to know Jesus as so personally present to me as to be next to me or ‘in me.’  I never knew such closeness to God before.  I came to know Christ so deeply while pursuing God in the Scriptures and asking Him to help me to believe in His Son (as I later discovered, He was pursuing me).

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