CHRISTIAN MORNING MEDITATIONN:Lectio Divina: Luke 11:37-41Tuesday, October 15, 2019Ordinary Time1) Opening prayerLord,our help and guide,make your love the foundation of our lives.May our love for you express itselfin our eagerness to do good for others.You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit,one God, for ever and ever. Amen.2) Gospel Reading – Luke 11: 37-41Jesus had just finished speaking when a Pharisee invited Him to dine at his house. He went in and sat down at table. The Pharisee saw this and was surprised that He had not first washed before the meal. But the Lord said to him, ‘You Pharisees! You clean the outside of cup and plate, while inside yourselves you are filled with extortion and wickedness. Fools! Did not He who made the outside make the inside too? Instead, give alms from what you have and, look, everything will be clean for you.3) Reflection• In today’s Gospel there is the continuation of the tense relationship between Jesus and the religious authority of his time. But in spite of the tension there was a certain familiarity between Jesus and the Pharisees. Invited to eat at their house, Jesus accepts the invitation. He does not lose his freedom before them, and neither do the Pharisees before him.• Luke 11: 37-38: The admiration of the Pharisees before the liberty of Jesus. “At that time after Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited Him to dine at his house. He went in and sat down at table. The Pharisee saw this and was surprised that He had not first washed before the meal”. Jesus accepts the invitation to eat at the house of the Pharisee, but He does not change his way of acting, sitting at table without washing his hands. Neither does the Pharisee change his attitude before Jesus, because he expresses his surprise at the fact that Jesus did not wash his hands. At that time, to wash the hands before eating was a religious obligation, imposed upon people in the name of purity, ordered by the law of God. The Pharisee was surprised by the fact that Jesus does not observe this religious norm. But in spite of their total difference, the Pharisee and Jesus have something in common: for them life is serious. The way of doing of the Pharisee was in the following: every day, they dedicated eight hours to study and to the meditation of the law of God, another eight hours to work in order to be able to survive with the family and the other eight hours to rest. This serious witness of their life gives them a great popular leadership. Perhaps because of this, in spite of the fact of being very diverse, both Jesus and the Pharisees understood and criticized one another without losing the possibility to dialogue.• Luke 11: 39-41: The response of Jesus. “You Pharisees you clean the outside of the cup and plate, while inside yourselves you are filled with extortion and wickedness. Fools! Did not He who made the outside make the inside too? Instead, give alms from what you have and, look, everything will be clean for you”. The Pharisees observed the law literally. They only looked at the letter of the law and because of this they were incapable to perceive the spirit of the law, the objective that the observance of the law wanted to attain in the life of the persons. For example, in the law it was written: “Love the neighbor as yourself” (Lv 19:18). And they commented: “We should love the neighbor, yes, but only the neighbor, not the others!” And from there arose the discussion around the question: “Who is my neighbor?” (Lk 10: 29) The Apostle Paul writes in his second Letter to the Corinthians: “The letter kills, the spirit gives life” (2 Co 3: 6). In the Sermon on the Mountain, Jesus criticizes those who observe the letter of the law put transgress the spirit (Mt 5: 20). In order to be faithful to what God asks us it is not sufficient to observe the letter of the law. It would be the same thing as to clean the cup on the outside and to leave the inside all dirty: robbery and injustice so on. It is not sufficient not to kill, not to rob, not to commit adultery, not to swear. Only to observe the law of God fully, beyond the letter, goes to the roots and pulls out from within the person the desires of “robbery and injustice” which can lead to murder, robbery, adultery. It is in the practice of love that the fullness of the law is attained (cf. Mt 5: 21-48).4) Personal questions• Does our Church today merit the accusation which Jesus addressed against the Scribes and the Pharisees? Do I deserve it?• To respect the seriousness of life of others who think in a different way from us, can facilitate today dialogue which is so necessary and difficult. How do I practice dialogue in the family, in work and in the community?5) Concluding prayerLet your faithful love come to me, Yahweh,true to your promise, save me!Give me an answer to the taunts against me,since I rely on your word. (Ps 119: 41-42)dailymeditations www.stswithuns.org.uk/event/dr-15102019 … See MoreSee Less

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CHRISTIAN MORNING MEDITATION:Lectio Divina: Luke 11:29-32Monday, October 14, 2019Ordinary Time1) Opening prayerLord,our help and guide,make your love the foundation of our lives.May our love for you express itselfin our eagerness to do good for others.You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit,one God, for ever and ever. Amen.2) Gospel Reading – Luke 11: 29-32The crowds got even bigger and Jesus addressed them, ‘This is an evil generation; it is asking for a sign. The only sign it will be given is the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of man be a sign to this generation.On Judgement Day the Queen of the South will stand up against the people of this generation and be their condemnation, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, look, there is something greater than Solomon here.On Judgement Day the men of Nineveh will appear against this generation and be its condemnation, because when Jonah preached they repented; and, look, there is something greater than Jonah here.3) Reflection• The Gospel today presents a very hard accusation of Jesus against the Pharisees and the Scribes. They wanted Jesus to give them a sign, because they did not believe in the signs and in the miracles which He was working. This accusation of Jesus continues in the Gospels of the following days. In meditating on these Gospels we have to be very attentive not to generalize the accusation of Jesus as if it were addressed to the Hebrew people. In the past, this lack of attention, unfortunately, contributed to an increase in anti-semitism among Christians, which has caused so much harm to humanity throughout the centuries. Instead of pointing the finger against the Pharisees of the time of Jesus, it is better to look at ourselves in the mirror of the texts to discover in them the Pharisee which may live hidden in our Church and in each one of us, and who merits this criticism from Jesus.• Luke 11: 29-30: The sign of Jonah. “At that time, the people crowed and Jesus began to say: This is an evil generation; it is asking for a sign. The only sign it will be given is the sign of Jonah”. The Gospel of Matthew says that it was the Scribes and the Pharisees who were asking for a sign (Mt 12: 38). They wanted Jesus to work a sign for them, a miracle, in such a way that they could become aware if He was the one sent by God, as they had imagined. They wanted Jesus to submit himself to their criteria. They wanted to fit Him into the framework of their own idea of the Messiah. There was no openness for a possible conversion in them. But Jesus did not submit himself to their request. The Gospel of Mark says that Jesus, before the request of the Pharisees sighed profoundly (Mk 8: 12), probably because He was upset and sad in the face of such blindness. It serves nothing to try to show a beautiful picture to a person who does not want to open their eyes. The only sign that will be given is the sign of Jonah. “For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of man be a sign to this generation “. How will this sign of the Son of man be? The Gospel of Matthew responds: “For as Jonah remained in the belly of the sea-monster for three days and three nights, so will the Son of man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights” (Mt 12: 40). The only sign will be the resurrection of Jesus. This is the sign which will be given in the future to the Scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus, who was condemned to death by them and to death on the cross, will rise from the dead by God and will continue to resurrect in many ways in those who believe in him. The sign which converts is not the miracles but the witness of life!• Luke 11: 31: Solomon and the Queen of the South. The reference to the conversion of the people of Nineveh associates and recalls the conversion of the Queen of the South: “The Queen of the South will stand up against this generation and be their condemnation; because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and look, there is something greater than Solomon here”. This reminder of the episode of the Queen of the South who recognizes the wisdom of Solomon shows how the Bible was used at that time. It was by association. The principal rule for the interpretation was this one: “The Bible is explained by the Bible”. Up until now, this is one of the more important norms for the interpretation of the Bible, especially for the reading of the Word of God in a climate of prayer.• Luke 11: 32: And Look there is something greater than Solomon here. After the digression on Solomon and on the Queen of the South, Jesus returns to speak about the sign of Jonah: “The men of Nineveh will appear against this generation and be its condemnation, because when Jonah preached they repented”. The people of Nineveh were converted because of the witness of the preaching of Jonah. He denounces the unbelief of the Scribes and of the Pharisees because “something greater than Jonah is here”. Jesus is greater than Jonah, greater than Solomon. For us Christians, He is the principal key for Scripture (2Co 3: 14-18).4) Personal questions• Jesus criticizes the Scribes and the Pharisees who managed to deny the evidence, rendering themselves incapable to recognize the call of God in the events. As Christians today, personally and collectively, do we deserve the same criticism of Jesus?• Níneveh was converted because of the preaching of Jonah. The Scribes and the Pharisees were not converted. Today, the calls of reality cause changes and conversions in people in the whole world: the ecological threat, urbanization that dehumanizes, consumerism which standardizes and alienates, injustice, violence, etc. Many Christians live far away from these calls of God which come from reality.5) Concluding prayerPraise, servants of Yahweh,praise the name of Yahweh.Blessed be the name of Yahweh,henceforth and for ever. (Ps 113: 1-2)dailymeditations www.stswithuns.org.uk/event/dr-14102019 … See MoreSee Less

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Local woman’s cure leads to Cardinal Newman canonizationMelissa VillalobosPope Francis announced July 1 that he will declare Blessed John Henry Newman, the 19th-century British cardinal, a saint Oct. 13. The cure of a local woman was the second miracle needed for canonization.Melissa Villalobos, 42, became interested in Cardinal Newman in 2000 after watching the EWTN show “Newman 2000” that featured scholars and priests talking about the great work and legacy of Cardinal Newman. Her devotion to him began a few years later.“Fast forward to the year 2011, my husband brought home a couple of holy cards with Cardinal Newman’s picture on them. I put one in the family room and one in our master bedroom,” said the mother of seven who lives in the Chicago suburbs.Even though he lived in the 1800s, Cardinal Newman looked like someone who could be alive today, she said, and she was drawn to his image.“I would pass his picture in the house and I would say little prayers to him for whatever our family’s needs were at the time — the children, my husband, myself. I really started to develop a very constant dialogue with him,” Villalobos said.Her prayers had a miraculous result in 2013. That was when the Northwestern University law school graduate started bleeding during a pregnancy. At the time she had four children — ages 6, 5, 3 and 1 — and a previous pregnancy that ended in miscarriage.“I started bleeding in my pregnancy and I was losing a lot of blood,” she said. “When I went to the doctor, he did an ultrasound and he said the placenta had become partially detached from the uterine wall, so there was a hole in the placenta and that hole was allowing blood to escape.”Also of interest…Blessed Newman’s life, canonizationVillalobos also developed a sub-chorionic hematoma, which is a blood clot in the fetal membrane. It was two and a half times the size of the baby.Since the pregnancy was only in the first trimester and the baby — who would later be born a girl and named Gemma — was still growing, the doctors could only recommend bed rest.“There was no medicine or procedure we could do to seal this up,” Villalobos said. “I was definitely nervous about even a sneeze coming out of the blue, which could end the pregnancy and the life of my unborn child.”This happened in May and the baby wasn’t due until January.On Friday, May 10, 2013, Villalobos went to the emergency room because the bleeding worsened.Again, the doctor recommended strict bed rest.“He said, ‘I want you to do as little as possible, just lay in bed, for the duration of the pregnancy, so that possibly you can begin to heal,’” Villalobos said. “This news, of course, was given to us with a heavy heart because the doctor knew I had four children, my husband had to work and the thought that I could lay in bed from May 10 to Jan. 1 and do virtually nothing was not possible.”The doctor also told the couple that a miscarriage was likely. If the baby survived the pregnancy she would likely be born prematurely because she would be small.So Melissa went home and spent the weekend in bed, but that didn’t help.“The bleeding was still going. It wasn’t slowing down. I thought, ‘Gosh, how much more still can I be? What else can I do?’” Villalobos recalled.Added to the stress was the fact that Villalobos’ husband, David, had to go back to work on Monday and to leave for an upcoming mandatory business trip out of town on Wednesday. The couple worried what they would do if Villalobos had to be in bed for months, especially given David’s demanding work schedule.They got through the next few days and in the early hours of May 15, David left on his business trip.“Wednesday morning I woke up in bed in a pool of blood. My husband was already in an airplane on his way to Atlanta,” Villalobos said.She put off calling 911 because she didn’t know who would care for the kids if she was taken in an ambulance to the hospital.“I knew in my heart I didn’t have a lot of options here but I was going to try my best,” she said.She put together simple breakfasts for the children, wanting to them to start eating so she could then lie down in private. She asked them, firmly, not to get out of their chairs no matter what.“My fear was that they would get out of their seats and get hurt and I was in no position to administer care. Or that they would sneak up on me and see me bleeding so profusely and I didn’t want to traumatize them,” Villalobos said.She went upstairs to her bedroom, entered the bathroom and shut the doors to both rooms, hoping to hear the children coming so she could hide the bleeding from them before they saw her.“Now the bleeding was really bad because I had just gone up the stairs, which I really shouldn’t have done. I kind of collapsed on the bathroom floor out of weakness and desperation.”Villalobos lay there thinking she should now call 911 but she realized she didn’t have her cell phone. She also knew the force of yelling for her kids would cause more damage and bleeding.She was hoping one of her children would wander into her room so she could ask them for her phone to call 911, but that didn’t happen. She heard nothing from her children and the silence made her even more worried. With thoughts of losing her unborn baby, worry for her children downstairs and wondering if she could die, Villalobos uttered her fateful prayer.“Then I said, ‘Please, Cardinal Newman, make the bleeding stop.’ Those were my exact words. Just then, as soon as I finished the sentence, the bleeding stopped.”She got off the floor and verified there was no more bleeding and said, “Thank you, Cardinal Newman. Thank you.’ Just then the scent of roses filled the bathroom,” Villalobos said. “The strongest scent of roses I’ve ever smelled.”She inhaled deeply for a few seconds.“Then the smell stopped and I said rhetorically, ‘Cardinal Newman, did you just make those roses? Thank you.’ And then there was a second burst of roses,” Villalobos said. “I knew it was him.”Villalobos said she instinctively knew she and her baby were OK. She hurried downstairs to check on her other children. It was too quiet, so she was expecting they were up to some mischief, but they were still sitting there at the table in their chairs.“I thought to myself in that moment, ‘Oh my goodness! My baby is OK. I’m OK. My four children are OK. We’re all OK. And I said, ‘Thank you, Cardinal Newman,’” Villalobos said.That’s when she smelled roses a third time. She asked the children if they could smell them, too, but they couldn’t.That afternoon Villalobos’ cure was confirmed during a weekly ultrasound. The doctor told her everything was “perfect” and there was no more hole in the placenta.“I was able to resume my full active life as a mom,” she said. “I had missed being a normal mom. I missed holding my children, especially my 1-year-old.”Baby Gemma was born Dec. 27, 2013, after a full pregnancy, weighing 8 pounds 8 ounces. She had no medical problems.Villalobos waited until after Gemma was born to report the case to the canonization cause for Cardinal Newman. In fall 2014, representatives from Newman’s cause visited Chicago and met with Villalobos and her husband.The cause started the formal process of investigating Villalobos’ miracle through the intercession of Cardinal Newman. After the local process for the miracle, which was conducted by officials from the Archdiocese of Chicago, concluded, it was sent to Rome for another series of investigations. The outcome was revealed on Feb. 13, when Pope Francis announced her miracle was accepted and that Cardinal Newman would be canonized.“It makes me feel filled with joy and gratitude, but I also want to make sure that I serve God as much as I can in my life knowing that he’s given me this cure, that I don’t want to waste my life. I want to be of service to others and to my children and husband and really express my love for them and for the people in my life as much as I can and as often as I can,” she said. “I was cured through Newman’s intercession so that I could continue an ordinary life, if you will, but at the same time be completely devoted to him and especially God himself and our church.” … See MoreSee Less

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October 13, 2019The Canonization of Saint John Henry Newman His character as mellow as a breeze, his writing as elegant as a swan, once he discovered the fullness of truth, his steps never deviated from the path to RomePope Benedict XVI, a professional theologian, did not typically perform beatification ceremonies, instead entrusting them to his Cardinals. But such was Benedict’s immense respect for Cardinal John Henry Newman’s life and thought that the Pope not only personally celebrated Newman’s beatification Mass but even traveled to England, Newman’s homeland, to do so in September 2010. Cardinal Newman is known to most American Catholics as the namesake of the Newman Centers, which are found on the campuses of many secular universities in the United States. Yet Newman’s profile casts a much broader shadow than these university centers alone. John Henry Newman was a man of vast learning culled from a life of prodigious reading. He was a one-man library who mastered both Greek and Latin, had a comprehensive knowledge of Scripture, and was conversant with the theological nuances of every great theologian of the first five centuries of the Church. In addition, Newman elucidated complex theological material in a prose so elegant that the words of his many essays and books seem to glide across the page. It was precisely in his writing where Newman’s gifts sparkled. He had that elusive gift called style. Newman’s swan-like gracefulness can be favorably compared with any other man or woman who has ever put pen to paper in the English language. Newman’s ability to express lyrically and precisely his every thought would have counted for little if he had had nothing to say. But, of course, Newman did have something to say. He had much to say, in fact. The silken threads of Newman’s words weave like a loom. His intricate sentences thread over and under and around each other, creating a taut and beautiful garment of masterful theology, original insight, and deep historical awareness. When a foe pulled at this or that thread of his theological fabric, Newman would unsheath his pen from its inkwell and wield it like a rapier to slice into shreds his opponent’s arguments, but never his character. Newman did not make personal attacks. Newman’s exquisite works make for compelling reading, provided the reader concurs. If not, Newman was, and is, a gigantic problem who must be confronted. John Henry Newman was a convert to Catholicism. He was raised as an Anglican and was somewhat evangelical in his youthful love of the Lord Jesus. As his head sunk deeper and deeper into books in adulthood, however, he concluded that to be immersed in history was to cease to be a Protestant. His conversion to Catholicism shook the English academic world and led to decades of adversarial letters, books, and essays arguing disputed theological points between Newman and his colleagues. But Newman’s ability to express his ideas on the page were so superior, his arguments so unassailable, and the personal cost he paid for converting so agonizing, that the totality of his witness ultimately carried the day. He was more than just a brain in a jar. His bravery in converting to Catholicism manifested steely resolve and deep virtue not otherwise apparent in his genteel and sensitive personality. His conversion cost him almost everything—status, friendship, income, prestige, academic positions—and on and on. Yet his example emboldened numerous others in subsequent decades to walk the same path to Rome which Newman had first trod alone. A whole generation of English academic converts to Catholicism trace their theological lineage to Cardinal Newman. In the last few years of his life Newman lived like a monk without a desert. Though he was never ordained a Bishop, Father Newman was named a Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. It was a well-deserved honor crowning a long life dedicated to synthesizing afresh the intellectual patrimony of the Church. This Sunday’s canonization is the final flourish on a great man’s quiet holiness, brave perseverance, immense erudition, and unequalled polish in composing from within the most dramatic work he ever authored—the story of his own holy life. … See MoreSee Less

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