A Blessing for All

This is a beautiful Irish Blessing I like to share with everyone.

The Year for Priests

This year we are marking the 150th anniversary of the St. John Mary Vianney (the Cure of Ars) who is the universal patron of parish priests. Because of this, Pope Benedict XVI has declared this year to be the Year for Priests. He opened it last June 16, 2009, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This year for Priests will end will last until the Feast of the Sacred Heart next year (2010).

In his Letter proclaiming this Year for Priests, Pope Benedict said that this year is meant "to deepen the commitment of all priests to interior renewal for the sake of a more forceful witness to the Gospel in today's world." During this year, the whole Church, clergy and laity alike, is asked to reflect on the gift of priesthood that Christ our Lord gave to the Church.

Once, St. John Mary Vianney said: "A good shepherd, a pastor after God's heart, is the greatest treasure which the good Lord can grant to a parish, and one of the most precious gifts of divine mercy... O how great is the priest!.. If he realized what he is, he would die... God obeys him: he utters a few words and the Lord descends from heaven at his voice, to be contained within a small host... Without the Sacrament of Holy Orders, we would not have the Lord. Who put him there in that tabernacle? The priest. Who welcomed your soul at the beginning of your life? The priest. Who feeds your soul and gives it strength for its journey? The priest... Leave a parish for twenty years without a priest, and they end by worshiping the beast there... The priest is not a priest for himself, he is a priest for you."

We priests tremble at these words of the Cure of Arse as he reminds us of the great responsibility that has been laid on our shoulders. These words humble us for truly we cannot but feel so unworthy of this great privilege and task the Lord has entrusted to us. Yet it is good to be reminded of the great gift of the priesthood and of what the priesthood is really all about, for nowadays both lay and clergy have the tendency to conceive of priests and the priesthood in secular, corporate terms. Nowadays, how often do we hear of priests likened to a CEO? Or how often is he expected to act like a showbiz personality in his homilies or in the way he runs the parish? I submit to you that the idea that people usually have of priests and their expectations of them do not quite match what the Lord really intends them to be. This is one of the causes of deep misunderstandings in the parish sometimes. Hopefully this Year for Priests will also be an occasion for the lay people to purify their notions and expectations of the priesthood and priests.

For me, this Year for Priests is not about putting them on a pedestal. Above all, it is about praying for them. They too, like anybody else, struggle hard on the road to holiness. Certainly, they are not as perfect as the angels. This Year for Priests is also about "re-configuring" our expectations of them. One of the greatest source of inspiration for us priests is when we see lay people try to take their faith seriously and make efforts to really live that faith. When we see lay people who are like that we also grow.

Finally, may this Year for Priests inspire parishes to really pray for vocations. We lack priests in our diocese. Pray, therefore, the Lord of the harvest to send laborers in his vineyard.

Receiving Holy Communion by the Hand

Pope Benedict XVI, in his book "God is Near Us," gives us some instructions on how to receive Holy Communion by the hand in a proper, reverential way. He quotes St. Cyril of Jerusalem (4th century A.D.) who tells candidates for baptism what they should do at communion. He says: "They should make a throne of their hands, laying the right upon the left to form a throne for the King, forming at the same a cross. This symbolic gesture, so fine and so profound, is what concerns him: the hands of man form a cross, which becomes a throne, down into which the King inclines himself. The open, outstretched hand can thus become a sign of the way that a man offers himself to the Lord, opens his hands for him, that they may become an instrument of his presence and a throne of his mercies in this world."

The Holy Father continues to say that when we receive communion, we should cultivate "an inner submission before the mystery of God that puts himself into our hands. Thus we should not forget that not only our hands are impure but also our tongue and also our heart and that we often sin more with the tongue than with the hands. God takes an enourmous risk - and at the same time an expression of his merciful goodness - in allowing not only our hand and our tongue but even our heart to come into contact with him. We see this in the Lord's willingness to enter into us and live with us, within us, and to become from within the heart of our life and the agent of transformation." (God is Near Us, p. 71)

My Blog

To know more about John Paul II's Theology of the Body, may I invite you to visit my blog: http://theologyofthebody-frboyet.blogspot.com/

John Paul II's Theology of the Body, the first major catechetical project of his 27-pontificate, has been making an impact on Catholics nowadays. Parishes in the US and Canada, Europe, Latin America, Australia, have set up parish study groups to study and learn from this excellent and enriching legacy left us by our beloved Pope John Paul II.

"Theology of the Body" is the working title given by the Holy Father to a series of 129 Wednesday Audience addresses on the Christian meaning and value of the human body, as well as on human sexuality and marriage. He delivered these address at the Vatican from September 5, 1979 to November 28, 1984.

George Weigel, the author of the Pope's biography entitled, "Witness to Hope," suggests that John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" is a theological time bomb set to go off, with dramatic consequences, sometime in the third millenium of the Church." Fr. Richard M. Hogan, author of "The Theology of the Body in John Paul II: What It Means, Why It Matters," affirms: "Many in the Church (today) would agree that the bomb has already exploded."

Today, the Theology of the Body is the subject of a host of books, articles, conferences, study guides and parish seminars. All across the US and Canda, Europe and Latin America, parishes have set us study groups to study and learn from this remarkable legacy left us by our beloved John Paul II.

Unfortunately, here in the Philippines, Catholics - even renewal groups dedicated to the renewal of families - have hardly heard of the Theology of the Body. Many of the books and materials now available in the US (check Amazon.com) have yet to show up in our local bookstores. At any rate, when they reach the shelves of our local bookstores, the prices of these imported materials will be so prohibitive to many of our countrymen who will hardly be able to afford to buy them.

To partly remedy this situation, and in an effort to help make the Theology of the Body more accessible to Filipinos, I have embarked on a project of writing and publishing a 4-part series of reader-friendly books on the Theology of the Body so that more and more Filipino Catholics will come to know about this wonderful legacy left us by the late Holy Father.

So far, I have published two of the books in the series, namely, Book One: The Body in Creation, and Book Two: The Body, Fallen yet Redeemed. Both are available in Catholic Book Center and in some St. Paul outlets. I hope to come up with Bk Three: The Resurrection of the Body, Marriage and Celibacy, and Bk Four: Conjugal Spirituality, very soon. I have been invited around to give talks on the Theology of the Body - an opportunity I am most grateful for. The Family Rosary Crusade has been very supportive of this project and I have had four interviews in their weekday program on TV. For this, I express my deepest gratitude to them.

I wish to encourage Filipino Catholics to learn more about these very enriching, biblically-based and very refreshing reflections given us by the late John Paul II on the meaning of the human body, human sexuality and marriage.