The Weekly Francis is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc., which I also cross-post on Jimmy Akin’s blog.
This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week, from 27 June 2024 to 30 July 2024.
Angelus
Messages
Speeches
Papal Instagram
Many people who have been Catholic for a length of time come to have a similar problem. Just what do you do with all the blessed sacramentals you have accumulated that have seen better days?
You have worn a scapular so long that you can no longer tell which image is the front or the back or it has become so tattered that it is basically now a string.
Your cat or your own clumsiness has knocked over a statue so many times that the hands, arms, and even the head are reattached multiple times with superglue.
You have a drawer full of rosary parts from broken rosaries you are going to get around to fix one day.
Or perhaps the crucifixes broken and now accidentally a Tau cross and you’re not a Franciscan. Or the ones where, apparently, Jesus answered the mocking Pharisees by coming down from the Cross.
Then there are the tarnished and corroded religious medals that you’re keeping around or will clean up later.
So exactly what do you do about this?
Eventually, sacramentals wear down. Crucifixes break, as do rosaries. Candles burn out, and scapulars tear. If a sacramental reaches a state where it is beyond repair or its effective use, the object should be disposed of properly. Even in a tattered state, the object has been blessed by the Church and should be treated correctly, even in private possession.
The proper way to dispose of a sacramental is to burn it or bury it. Not only do these methods of disposal show the correct reverence, but they prevent the sacramental from falling into the wrong hands and from desecration—the loss of a particular quality of sacredness. Sacramentals are desecrated by abusive behavior, crude use, or destruction to the point of being unusable. Even desecrated sacramentals, to maintain the reverence due to them, should be disposed of in the ways laid out above. Shaun McAfee, Catholic Answers magazine
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The Weekly Francis is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc., which I also cross-post on Jimmy Akin’s blog.
This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week, from 29 June 2024 to 15 July 2024.
Angelus
Homilies
Messages
Speeches
Papal Instagram
The Weekly Francis is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc., which I also cross-post on Jimmy Akin’s blog.
This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week, from 24 June 2024 to 10 July 2024.
Apostolic Letter
Messages
Speeches
Papal Instagram
Pope Francis recently appealed once again about the length of homilies.
And the homily, that comment by the celebrant, must help to transfer the Word of God from the book to life. But for this, the homily must be brief: an image, a thought and a sentiment. The homily must not go on for more than eight minutes, because after that, with time attention is lost and the people fall asleep, and they are right. A homily must be like that. And I want to say this to priests, who talk a lot, very often, and one does not understand what they are talking about. A brief homily: a thought, a sentiment and a cue for action, for what to do. No more than eight minutes. Because the homily must help transfer the Word of God from the book to life. General Audience, 12 June 2024
If your parish is looking for maximum parish engagement, we here are Homilelectrics have a range of devices to reign in long homilies and people falling asleep. This is more than a problem where people lose interest. It is also a public danger, as St. Paul found out.
On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight. There were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered. And a young man named Eutychus, sitting at the window, sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer. And being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But Paul went down and bent over him, and taking him in his arms, said, “Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.” (Acts 20:7–10)
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The Weekly Francis is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc., which I also cross-post on Jimmy Akin’s blog.
This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week, from 21 June 2024 to 30 June 2024.
Angelus
Apostolic Letter
Homilies
Speeches
Papal Instagram
Considering today’s Gospel, if I had an investor, I would create this business.
Every meal in this sandwich shop would cost $12. Exception would be a free meal for those who had spent all their money on physicians.
There would also be the Talitha cumi special, which you couldn’t tell anybody about.
Plus, all sandwiches would be delivered “immediately.”
If you are unfamiliar with the term “Markan sandwich.”
Mark’s ordering of the events may be chronological. However, Mark also has a special way of ordering material, which scholars call the “Markan sandwich.” A sandwich occurs when Mark interrupts one story with another before returning to the first. This allows Mark to contrast the two stories so that they shed light on each other. Jimmy Akin
The Weekly Francis is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc., which I also cross-post on Jimmy Akin’s blog.
This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week, from 14 June 2024 to 20 June 2024.
Angelus
General Audiences
Speeches
Papal Instagram
The Weekly Francis is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc., which I also cross-post on Jimmy Akin’s blog.
This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week, from 5 April 2024 to 13 June 2024.
Angelus
General Audiences
Letters
Messages
Speeches
Papal Instagram
From the pierced Heart of Christ, symbol of the love which immolated Him on the Cross for us, came forth the Sacraments, represented by the water and the Blood flowing from the wound, and it is through these Sacraments that we receive the life of grace. Yes, it is eminently true to say that the Heart of Jesus was opened to bring us into life. Jesus once said, “Narrow is the gate… that leadeth to life” (Mt 7,14); but if we understand this gate to be the wound in His Heart, we can say that no gate could open to us with greater welcome. (Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., “Divine Intimacy”)
I like this metaphor of following the narrow way into Jesus’ heart. An image that shifts the focus from the narrowness and implied difficulty of the path to what we are created for. Teleology has fallen out of fashion, in part, to let us define for ourselves the meaning of all aspects of our life. In seeking to shed limits, we impose heavier limits on who we are and our call to holiness.
I know my concupiscent heart desires both to be drawn to Jesus’s heart and to the stone heart of the world in materialistic pleasures. In avoiding the narrowness of the path, I become more narrow by not expanding my trust. Jesus speaks of a narrowness that implies a focus, and not the narrowness of pride collapsed in on itself.
If you make “Temporary Promise” as a Secular Discalced Carmelite, you are supposed to take on a religious name used occasionally within the community. When I did so, my motive was initially to pick something super pious and impressive. Maybe something long to make it even more pious. Obviously, I have a long way to go regarding my motives. I finally settled on the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a personal focus of his love for us. I am not drawn too much of the imagery of the Sacred Heart in Catholic art, as it is does not fully conform to the beauty I sense in this image. More kitsch as in sentimental, than my mental tenuous grasp of the deeper meaning of this.
The name I ended up with was “St Thomas of the Sacred Heart.” The St. Thomas is two-fold. The Apostle St. Thomas who demanded empirical knowledge as I did in my days as an atheist. Along with the St. Thomas as in Aquinas who replied _Domine, non nisi Te_—that is, “Lord, nothing except you.” in answer to Jesus’ question to him for what reward he desires for his labour.
Getting back to Father Gabriel’s point that “we can say that no gate could open to us with greater welcome.”
29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:29–30)
I often struggle with this and think of it as counterintuitive. Knowing that this is true, while once again trying to do something apart from him. Avoiding commitment and inconvenience in dumb hope to coast towards Christ, I find more difficulty and pain. My avoidance of suffering has only led to more suffering.
Grace constantly gives us the opportunity to accept it. To reduce the discrepancy between knowing a truth and living conformed to that truth.
Joe Heschmeyer recently wrote about the establishment of The Feast of the Sacred Heart.
… we find devotion to the Sacred Heart throughout the Middle Ages, but it goes from being a personal devotion to a liturgical feast in no small part in response to the heresy of Jansenism. In the words of Pope Pius XI, “the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was instituted at a time when men were oppressed by the sad and gloomy severity of Jansenism, which had made their hearts grow cold, and shut them out from the love of God and the hope of salvation.”
There is so much that I find important and consoling in what Joe Heschmeyer wrote, that I want to quote extensively from it, but please read it yourselves.
“even now, in a wondrous yet true manner, we can and ought to console that most Sacred Heart which is continually wounded by the sins of thankless men.” (Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas)
The cure for my thanklessness is to be thankful.
Our grounds for gratitude are really far greater than our powers of being grateful. (G. K. Chesterton, “Negative and Positive Morality”)