🧀The Cheese & Crackers = Quotes by St. John Chrysostom, St. John Eudes, and St. John Paul II
🌽The Veggies = My 2💰
🍟The Potatoes = “A Tabernacle of the One True God”, by Θεόφιλος
🍗The Meat = “The Priestly Life and Witness of St. John XXIII”, by Fr. Roger Landry (Part I of VII)
🍰The Dessert = YouTube Video: “Spiritual Warfare and Communism, “Hypocrisy”, by Fr. Chad Ripperger (Part 03 Segment 12)
🔻 “Our wish, our object, our chief preoccupation must be to form Jesus in ourselves, to make His spirit, His devotion, His affections, His desires and His disposition live and reign there. All our religious exercises should be directed to this end. It is the work which God has given us to do unceasingly.” By St. John Eudes
🔘 It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you.” By St. John Paul II
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = I hear no voice,
👂🏻tmm= But to pray, I still make the choice
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = I feel no touch
👂🏻tmm= Yet I know I’m loved so very much
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = I see no glory
👂🏻tmm= But I happily envision what is promised at the end of the story
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = bright
👂🏻tmm= The victory is assured with God, of that we should never lose sight
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = but yet I know
👂🏻tmm= Lurking around in some form or fashion there will be always be a foe
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = that God is near
👂🏻tmm= What a blessing it is to hold that truth dear
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = in darkness as in light
👂🏻tmm= God is all powerful, wrongs easily He can make so right
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = God watches ever by my side
👂🏻tmm= It’s for me in Him to day by day abide
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = and hears my whispered prayer
👂🏻tmm= Not a single doubt, for sure He hears, and by my side, yes, He camps out there
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = A God of love for a little child
👂🏻tmm= Favor for a life time, not just for a short while
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = both night and day does care
👂🏻tmm= Operating quietly, working in the soul without much fanfare
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = Amen
👂🏻tmm= Placing all my trust in the Lord, to His love my heart is wide open
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = I Love You
👂🏻tmm= You love me and your actions witness that you really,really do
👂🏻A prayer: God Listens = Jesus
👂🏻tmm= So sweet a name, showcasing the Father, serving as an excellent treatise
tmm/TruGIG
GOD LISTENS
I hear no voice, I feel no touch, I see no glory bright but yet I know that God is near, in darkness as in light.
God watches ever by my side and hears my whispered prayer. A God of love for a little child both night and day does care. Amen. ∼ I Love You, Jesus ∼
https://www.daily-prayers.org/angels-and-saints/prayers-of-saint-francis-de-sales/
info from this site: lifeondoverbeach.wordpress.com/2021/06/23/a-tabernacle-of-the-one-true-god/
“There is a story told that once upon a time God played a game of “hide and seek” with humans. As the story begins, God is conversing with an angel: “Where shall I hide myself so that they won’t know where to look for me?” God pondered. “I know,” offered the angel, “I know just the place, a place they’ll never know to look for you. Go to the tallest mountain, climb up, and hide on the top!” God thought for a moment, “No, humans like to climb mountains, particularly tall ones, just because they’re there, they say. They have strong arms and legs and have developed all that rappelling equipment to help them. No, I think that they would find me there sooner or later.”
“Well,” said the angel, “You could hide at the deepest place in the ocean, down where it is dark and dangerous. They’d be too afraid to look there.” “Oh, but not as afraid as you would think,” God said. “They are terribly curious about everything. They have invented special equipment for deep sea diving just to find out what there is down in the deep, dark waters. No, I think that they will find me there too.” “Well, how about deep in the earth?” inquired the angel, who by this point was running out of ideas. It would be so much trouble to dig deep down into all of that soil and rock.”
But again God was doubtful. “It is amazing to what lengths humans are willing to go to to find out what is deep in the earth. With all of the drills and shovels and other heavy equipment they have, before long they would find me there too.” After this, God and the angel continued to think and think and there was silence for quite some time. Then God had an idea. “I have it!” exclaimed God. “I know just the place where I can hide myself! I will hide myself within each of them, deep in their own hearts. They will never in a million years suspect that I could be dwelling right there inside of them!”
This is, of course, a facetious story. God has not hidden from us. He has gone to great lengths to reveal Himself to us. God has revealed to us through His prophets, Apostles and martyrs, but chiefly through His Son, Jesus Christ. And He has told us of His will to make a home in our hearts. Because of this, each of us can become a sacred dwelling. Every child of God that we meet is a tabernacle of the one true God. Take a moment to consider what it means that to say that the Creator and Redeemer of the world has chosen to make a home in your heart. What kind of humility and gratitude should that elicit from you? Let us ask for the faith to believe in this more truly, and to live out that belief more authentically”
📖 Psalms 132:13-14 “Yes, the LORD has chosen Zion, desired it for a dwelling: “This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I desire it”
📖 Psalms 139:7-12 “Where can I go from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee? If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in Sheol, there you are.If I take the wings of dawn and dwell beyond the sea, Even there your hand guides me, your right hand holds me fast. If I say, “Surely darkness shall hide me, and night shall be my light”. Darkness is not dark for you, and night shines as the day. Darkness and light are but one”
📖 Psalm 27:5 “For in the day of trouble He will conceal me in His tabernacle; In the secret place of His tent He will hide me; He will lift me up on a rock”
(Part I of VII)
Info from this site: www.catholicpreaching.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/The-Priestly-Life-and-Witness-of-John-XXIII-Copy.pdf
“Introduction
• The beauty of the priestly life and witness of Pope John XXIII was summarized aptly by the fellow successor of St. Peter with whom he will be canonized Pope John Paul II, in his homily for John’s beatification, September 3, 2000, which I was privileged to be able to attend and at which distribute Holy Communion to the crowd overflowing St. Peter’s Square: “Today we contemplate in the glory of the Lord ... John XXIII, the Pope who impressed the world with the friendliness of his manner which radiated the remarkable goodness of his soul. ... Everyone remembers the image of Pope John's smiling face and two outstretched arms embracing the whole world. How many people were won over by his simplicity of heart, combined with a broad experience of people and things! The breath of newness he brought certainly did not concern doctrine, but rather the way to explain it; his style of speaking and acting was new, as was his friendly approach to ordinary people and to the powerful of the world. It was in this spirit that he called the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, thereby turning a new page in the Church's history: Christians heard themselves called to proclaim the Gospel with renewed courage and greater attentiveness to the ‘signs’ of the times. The Council was a truly prophetic insight of this elderly Pontiff who, even amid many difficulties, opened a season of hope for Christians and for humanity. In the last moments of his earthly life, he entrusted his testament to the Church: "What counts the most in life is blessed Jesus Christ, his holy Church, his Gospel, truth and goodness." We too wish to receive this testament, as we glorify God for having given him to us as a Pastor.
• In the days before and after his canonization, I saw an outpouring of devotion for Pope John that was really moving. I will still a spark in the eternal Nous when John led the Church, but being in Rome during those days I was able to witness first hand a love for him, especially among the Italians, that I’ll never forget. Two weeks after his beatification, I went to St. Peter’s Basilica one Sunday morning to celebrate Mass. During the Jubilee Year, when there were canonizations, beatifications or Jubilee Masses in the Square such that the Basilica was officially closed, I was often the only priest not only celebrating Mass in the Basilica but in the Basilica at all. Most of the priests who celebrated Mass there each morning who worked in the Vatican had weekend pastoral assignments and visiting priests didn’t know how to get in, so I would often be alone. So on September 17, I entered the basilica with a priest friend of mine to celebrate Mass, we thought, privately at our pick of all the altars in the Basilica, for which I normally celebrated over the tomb of Pope Gregory the Great or Pope Leo the Great. But that day, the sacristan came over to me and asked if we wouldn’t mind celebrating the Mass in Italian at the tomb of Pope John XXIII, because many of the sisters who had worked behind the scenes in the Vatican and would be occupied later during the Jubilee Mass for the Elderly were all in the Basilica at the altar of Pope John XXIII.
We said we would be happy to do so. So we got ready and processed out. Normally on these Sundays, there was no one in the Basilica, but that morning there were about 70 sisters all waiting for whichever priest showed up, hoping that they would have the chance for a Mass at Pope John’s altar. To see their love for him, and their gratitude to us for celebrating Mass for them there, was very moving. Incidentally, that’s a Mass I’ll never forget for another reason. At the time of Sanctus, I leaned over to the concelebrant, Fr. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute, a past speaker at this Seminar, and said that I wasn’t feeling so good, that all of a sudden I was dizzy, had an upset stomach, and was beginning to wonder whether I was going to be able to finish the Mass. His response was, “The formaldehyde was nauseating him, too,” which is when I realized why I had suddenly taken ill. The embalming fluid with which John had been filled after his death was so strong that it was able to exude from a crystal and bronze casing under the altar and almost knock out priests celebrating Mass 37 years later. We needed to take a few steps back after the consecration and celebrate Mass down the two steps of the altar to finish.
• I first came to know Pope John XXIII through his Journal of a Soul that I got for $1 in a used book store a few months before I entered the Seminary. I was at the time oblivious to the larger narrative about him inside and outside the Church, that he was “il Papa buono” in implicit comparison to “il Papa cattivo,” his predecessor. I just knew he was a pope with a short reign who summoned the Second Vatican Council. I barely knew anything else about him and so I read his Journal, the diary of God’s inner workings within him from the age of 14 through his death. It was a chance to get to know him on the inside, to enter into his own spiritual life, his first hand experience of life, and it was enormously helpful to me. Seeing his maturity as a teenage seminarian with regard to his prayer life, study, ascesis and discipline all helped me to put my own game face on. Having had the chance to know and in a sense befriend him through this posthumously published Journal, I would later get offended by the caricatured narratives of him as someone who opened the windows of the Church basically so that the spirit of dissent and disobedience, sanctuary jackhammers, liturgical license, bill control pills and priests and women religious abandoning their vocations together could all enter. As soon as we had decided on the topic of Priestly Models of Holiness for Parish Priests Today as the theme because of the impending double canonization, I volunteered to take John XXIII so that I’d have a chance to refamiliarize myself with his holy life and be better prepared in various media around his canonization to bring the real Don Angelo Roncalli to life.
• In this talk on his priestly life and lessons, I would like to break it down into two basic parts. In the first section, I’d like to go over his very rich biography, which certainly influenced the style of his papacy. I’ll focus on ten different stages in his life. In the second half, I’d like to focus on ten different things we can learn from his words and witness to strengthen us in our own vocations.
Biography — We can break down his life into ten main formative periods.
• Birth and young childhood
☄️Fourth of 13 children, oldest boy, born Nov 25, 1881. Parents Giovanni and Marianna. The baptismal register reads, “In the year of 1881, 25 November, I, Francesco Rebuzzini, the priest of this Chuch of San Giovanni Battista of Sotto il Monte, baptized the infant born today of the lawfully married couple Giovanni Battista Roncalli and Marianna Mazzola, from Brusico in this parish. The infant was given the names Angelo Giuseppe.
☄️Sotto il Monte, outside of Bergamo
☄️The Roncallis were poor sharecroppers who had lived “under the mountain” for five centuries. He would say as pope, “there are three ways of ruining oneself — women, gambling and farming. My father chose the most boring.”
☄️They lived with their six cows in the first floor of a house that had 32 of his aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins.
☄️Went to local elementary school for 3 years where the education was quite poor. His godfather arranged for him to have Latin lessons from a priest in Carvico, Don Pietro Bolis, who was quite demanding and abusive. After a year of blows, he went as a 9 year old to the bishop’s school in Celana, founded by St. Charles Borromeo as a pre-junior seminary. He lived with relatives four miles away from the school, to which he would walk back and forth each day. But the schooling wasn’t effective. He was pulled by his hero, Fr. Francesco Rebuzzini, pastor of Santa Maria de Brusicco, who had baptized him and had helped to arrange for his education. He educated young Angelo himself and got him ready for the junior seminary in Bergamo. As Pope, John would recall him as “the saintly guardian of my childhood and vocation” and from whom, after his death, he purloined his well-used copy of the Imitation of Christ that he tried to enflesh.
☄️About his family, he would later say in a letter to his parents, “Ever since I left home, towards the age of ten, I have read many books and learned many things that you could not have taught me. But what I learned from you remains the most precious and important, and it sustains and gives life to the many other things I learned later in so many years of study and teaching.”
☄️His father said about him when he was leaving, “He is a poor farmer’s son. He’ll make a poor priest.”
(Part II next week)
Video link:
youtu.be/wSa3RLqF7Wo