O.Carm
Celebrating At Home - 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time
Lord, Who Shall We Go To
(Jn 6: 60-69)
The affirmation of faith in God by the people in the first reading from the Old Testament book of Joshua is echoed by Peter’s affirmation of faith in Jesus in the Gospel. Joshua says: It’s decision time. Who will be your God? The people answer: We remember what God has done for us. We have no intention of deserting the Lord our God - unlike some of the followers of Jesus in the Gospel.
Our excursion into the ‘Bread of Life’ passages of Chapter 6 of Saint John’s Gospel comes to an end today.
Over the last four Sundays, St John has taken us on a journey of discovering Jesus as the living Word of God who nourishes and strengthens us on our journey; as the living bread who gives his very self (flesh and blood) for the life of the world; and, today, as the bread of faith. Those who share the bread of faith are those who have chosen to believe in Jesus and follow him.
Only by drawing life from Jesus can one be drawn into the life of God. We feed on Jesus so that he becomes part of us and his life continues to grow in us and our life becomes caught up in his. That life draws us into communion with the life of God. We become sharers in that life, our awareness of which is nourished and strengthened as we eat and drink.
This meditation from John is about how Jesus is still present and a source of faith and nourishment in the life of the post-resurrection Christian community. The ‘real presence’ of Jesus lives on in the community. That presence is perceived by faith and received as living Word, food and drink, nourishing disciples in their journey to be the ‘real presence’ of Jesus in the world, the everlasting sign of God’s love for all.
At Eucharist we gather in communion with each other, with Jesus the Word, with Jesus the Bread and Wine. We are doing in a sacramental way what Jesus is doing in a real way within us. The Eucharist is teaching us how to live our lives as Christian disciples: how to be in communion with God and each other through our communion with Jesus.
What we physically eat and drink become us. Food changes and transforms cells, blood, muscle, tissue and organs. The purpose of Christian life is for us to become Christ. Having faith, being nourished by him changes and transforms us into his body and blood for the life of the world. We become the real presence of Jesus in the world today.
Connections to the Eucharist
The words of the Gospels of these five Sundays parallel our experience of celebrating the Eucharist. There are three ‘holy communions’ at mass, not one. There is the communion of believers, as the people of Christ gather to celebrate the Eucharist; the communion of the Word when we listen together to the Scriptures; and the communion of the Bread and Wine when we eat and drink together. These communions are holy because, through Christ, God and human beings are in communion with one another and God is at work nourishing, healing, redeeming and forming the face of his Son within us – so that we may be the living presence of Christ in the world today.
Feasting on Christ in Word and Sacrament, we too, are called to nourish and strengthen each other on our journey to God.
- pdf Celebrating At Home - 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time [PDF] (2.92 MB)
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- pdf Celebrando en Familia - XXI Domingo del Tiempo Ordinario (518 KB)
- pdf Celebrando in Casa - XXI Domenica del Tempo Ordinario (528 KB)
- pdf Celebrando em família - XXI Domingo do Tempo Comum (518 KB)
Celebrating At Home - 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Communion with Jesus and One Another
(Jn 6:51-58)
The first reading this weekend tells how Wisdom has built a house and invited the foolish (those who are not yet wise) to feast on the food of her teaching. Those who eat the bread and drink the wine of Wisdom perceive God’s saving action and understand the life to which they are called as God’s own people.
This first reading provides us with an introduction to listening to the words of the Gospel. Jesus is the living wisdom of God. Like Wisdom in the first reading, Jesus also invites us to feed on him so that we, too, may become wise in the ways of God, perceive God’s saving action in him, become the people of God and have life, not only now, but for ever.
In the Gospel, the dialogue between Jesus and the people continues. This time they are arguing about how Jesus could possibly give them his flesh to eat. Jesus insists that if they don’t eat it they will not have life in them and they will not have eternal life.
Underlining the message by talking about his flesh being real food and his blood being real drink immediately connects this teaching of Jesus to the Eucharistic celebration. Some of these verses may well have been used by the Christians in John’s time during their liturgy. But this reading is not only about the Eucharistic celebration, but also about what that celebration symbolises – the very life of God made present and visible in the person of Jesus and received in the sacramental signs of Bread and Wine. It is a celebration of being in communion with Jesus and the Father. Following the teaching of Jesus, it is also a celebration of being in communion with one another.
Intimate relationship (being in communion) with Jesus the ‘bread of life’, is the way in which Jesus feeds his people with his very self - his own flesh and blood – everything that he is. Food sustains and supports life and growth. To eat Jesus is to be caught up in the communion of life he shares with the Father and to feed on the very life of God. It is how we are sustained in and grow in our relationship with God. Eternal life is part of sharing the life of God.
- pdf Celebrating At Home - 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time [PDF] (2.94 MB)
- default Celebrating At Home - 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time [ePub] (4.71 MB)
- pdf Celebrando en Familia - XX Domingo del Tiempo Ordinario (554 KB)
- pdf Celebrando in Casa - XX Domenica del Tempo Ordinario (554 KB)
- pdf Celebrando em família - XX Domingo do Tempo Comum (553 KB)
Celebrating At Home - 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Living Bread that Nourishes Life
(Jn 6:41-51)
At the end of last week’s Gospel, Jesus said: I am the bread of life, those who come to me will never be hungry; those who believe in me will never thirst. In other words, Jesus feeds us with the living bread of God’s word, which is himself. But this word can only be received by those who believe, that is, who are in relationship with Jesus. The first step is to recognise where Jesus comes from (God).
In a great example of unbelief the Jewish authorities reject Jesus at the beginning of this week’s Gospel because they know where he comes from and therefore he cannot be ‘from heaven’. Once again they are unable to read the face of God in Jesus. They think they know exactly who Jesus is - we know his father and mother. And their focus remains firmly fixed on the bread they ate, not the person who provided it.
Jesus tells them to stop complaining and insists that only those drawn by God can believe in him. Jesus insists again that God draws people to belief in him. One cannot be taught by God apart from hearing and believing the word of Jesus. And those who believe have eternal life.
Jesus again insists that he is the Bread of Life. Referring to his earlier conversation with the crowd in last week’s Gospel, Jesus says that those who ate the manna in the desert are dead; and those who eat the bread of life he is offering will live. Life comes from being in relationship (in communion) with Jesus.
The Gospel concludes with Jesus once again stating that he is indeed the living bread which has come down from heaven. Those who eat this bread will live for ever. The bread that Jesus will give is his own flesh offered on the altar of the cross for the life of the world and given in prophetic sign at the Last Supper.
If we enter into communion with Jesus we can become the living bread through whom God continues to feed his people with wisdom, compassion, hope, forgiveness and love.
- pdf Celebrating At Home - 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time [PDF] (2.89 MB)
- default Celebrating At Home - 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time [ePub] (3.89 MB)
- pdf Celebrando en Familia - XIX Domingo del Tiempo Ordinario (503 KB)
- pdf Celebrando in Casa - XIX Domenica del Tempo Ordinario (501 KB)
- pdf Celebrando em família - Décimo Nono Domingo do Tempo Comum (500 KB)
St. Teresa Margaret Redi (OCD), Virgin
1 September Optional Memorial
Saint Teresa Margaret Redi was born in Arezzo on 1st September 1747 into the noble family of Redi. In 1764, she entered the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites in Florence, changing her baptismal name of Anna Maria to that of Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
She grounded her spiritual and religious life in devotion to the Eucharist and to Our Lady, and in her dedication to the Sacred Heart which she described as a "giving of love for love". She led a humble and hidden life in the love of God and the total offering of herself and she gave caring and continuous service to her sisters. She died of peritonitis on 7th March 1770. She was beatified in 1929 and canonised by Pope Pius XI on 13th March 1934.
Bl. Jacques Retouret, Priest and Martyr
26 August Optional Memorial
Bl. Jacques Retouret was born at Limoges in France on 15th September 1746 to a merchant family. He was a serious young man, a lover of books and greatly gifted. At fifteen years of age, he entered the Carmelite house in his native city. After ordination, his zeal and learning were widely admired and large crowds of people were attracted by his way of preaching. Unfortunately, he was often unable to fulfil all his engagements, due to his persistent bad health which plagued him throughout his life.
The French Revolution did not spare him. Like the majority of his fellow clergy, Jacques refused to accept the civil law, unilaterally introduced by the state, which decreed, among other things, the election of bishops and parish priests by the people, only afterwards to be approved by the hierarchy and the pope. In addition to this refusal, Jacques was accused of siding with a group of political emigres who had invaded the country against the revolutionaries. He was arrested and condemned, together with many other priests and religious, and sentenced to exile in French Guinea in South America. Taken to Rochefort, he was held there in a prison ship. The British navy, at this time, was blockading the French coast and so preventing the departure of the prison ships. The conditions for the prisoners were beyond description: they were crowded together, hungry, plagued by sickness, and suffered from either the heat or the cold in overpowering smells, and persecuted by their gaolers.
Jacques died at Madame Isle, some miles distant from Rochefort, on 26th August 1794 at the age of 48 years. He was beatified, together with 63 other priests and religious, as martyrs for the faith, on 1st October 1995 by Pope John Paul II.
St. Mary of Jesus Crucified (OCD), Virgin
25 August Optional Memorial
Mariam Baouardy was born at Abellin in Galilee on 5th January 1846 to very poor parents who were good living and devoted Greek-rite Catholics. She was left an orphan after the death of her parents at only three years of age when, together with her brother Paul, she was entrusted to the care of an uncle,who had moved to Alexandria in Egypt a few years earlier. She never received any formal education and remained unable to read. At thirteen years of age, wanting to give herself only to God, she firmly refused the marriage which her uncle, according to the Eastern custom, had arranged for her.
Blessed Angelus Augustine Mazzinghi, Priest
17 August Optional Memorial
The year of birth of Bl. Angelus Mazzinghi in Florence, Italy, or nearby, is unknown but it was certainly before 1386.
He was received into the Order in 1413 and was the first member of the reform at Santa Maria delle Selve.
He was prior there from 1419-30 and again in 1437, and in Florence from 1435-37. A lector in theology, he was particularly noted for his preaching of the word of God.
He died in Florence in 1438.
Blessed Isidore Bakanja, Martyr
12 August Optional Memorial
Bl. Isidore Bakanja, a member of the Boangi tribe, was born in Bokendela (Congo) between 1880 and 1890.
In order to survive, even as a boy, he had to work as bricklayer or in farms. He was converted to Christianity in 1906. He was working in a plantation run by a colonialist in Ikili and was forbidden by the owner to spread Christianity among his fellow-workers.
On 22 April 1909, the superintendent of the business tore off the Carmelite Scapular, which Isidore was wearing as an expression of his Christian faith, and had him severely beaten even to drawing blood.
He died on 15 August of the same year as a result of the wounds inflicted in "punishment" for his faith and which he bore patiently while forgiving his aggressor.
He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 24 April 1994.
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (OCD)
9 August Memorial (Feast in the provinces of Europe: Patron of Europe)
Edith Stein was born at Breslau on 12th October 1891 to German Jewish parents, and after her secondary education, she enroled in the department of philosophy in the city university.
She read the autobiography of Teresa of Avila and became aware of being called to become a Catholic; she was baptized on 1st January 1922. She made her First Communion the same day and was confirmed on the following 2nd February. After her conversion, she felt herself attracted to the religious life but circumstances forced her to delay this decision until 1933. When in 1933 she lost her teaching post as a result of the anti-Jewish laws, she entered into the Carmel at Cologne on 14th October 1933, taking the name of Teresa Benedict of the Cross.
On 31st December 1938 she was moved to the Carmel at Echt in Holland so as to escape the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
Sister Teresa, accompanied by her sister Rosa who had also become a Catholic, was taken to Amersfort on 2nd August 1942. On 3rd August, she was transferred to Westerbork. On 7th August, she and her sister together with other deportees were locked in railway wagons and taken by train to the extermination camp at Auschwitz, a voyage which took two days.
Sister Teresa Benedict of the Cross died in the gas chamber the same day that she arrived at the camp at Auschwitz, Sunday 9th August 1942, and her body was burned in one of the crematoria there. She was beatified on 1 May 1987 and canonized on 11 October 1998 by Pope John Paul II. On 2 October 1999 the same Pope proclaimed her co-patron of Europe.
St. Albert of Trapani, Priest
7 August Feast
Born in Trapani (Scilia) in the 13th century. He distinguished himself for his dediction to mendicant preaching and the notoriety of his miracles. In the years 1280 and 1289 he was in Trapani and shortly afterwards in Messina. In the year 1296 he was prior provincial of the Carmelite Province of Sicily. He was celebrated for his passionate love for purity and prayer. He died in Messina most likely in 1307.
