Tag: Christianity

At least 15 people were killed in an attack by gunmen on Catholics gathered for Sunday Mass in a Burkina Faso village Feb. 25, according to multiple news reports.

Twelve Catholics were dead at the scene in the village of Essakane, with another three dying while being treated at a health center, and two others wounded, according to a statement from Bishop Laurent Birfuoré Dabiré of the Diocese of Dori in Northern Burkina Faso, which includes Essakane.

“In these painful circumstances, we invite you to pray for the eternal rest of those who have died in the faith, for the healing of the wounded and for the consolation of sorrowful hearts,” the bishop said in the statement, written in French and shared on the bishop’s behalf by Father Jean-Pierre Sawadogo, the diocese’s vicar general.

“We also pray for the conversion of those who continue to sow death and desolation in our country. May our efforts of penance and prayer during this period of Lent bring peace and security to our country, Burkina Faso,” the bishop said.

According to AP, no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but jihadis who have perpetuated similar violence are suspected of carrying it out. Christians in Burkina Faso have been increasingly targeted in recent years by terrorist groups amid political and social upheaval.

Burkina Faso is located in Africa’s Sahel region, which separates North Africa from Sub-Saharan Africa and has one of the largest Christian communities in the region.

Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic organization that assists the church in places where Catholics are threatened by persecution and poverty, notes that the West African nation was long “considered an example of peaceful coexistence between religions.” Of its population of 21 million, about 25% is Christian, and 60% is Muslim.

“Since 2015, however, the northern and eastern parts of the country have become a hotspot of violent extremists,” Aid to the Church in Need reports, adding that “Burkina Faso is now the main theater of jihadist terror in the Sahel,” the band of savanna that spans the width of Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

The violence and upheaval, which escalated following two coups in 2022, has resulted in more than 1 million people fleeing their homes, parishes and schools being deserted, and children forcibly recruited to be child soldiers.

The Feb. 25 attack came a week after Burkina Faso’s bishops publicly expressed concern about the country’s “situation of persistent insecurity” in a statement issued Feb. 18 at the end of their weeklong plenary assembly in the Diocese of Kaya.

“Overall, some thirty parishes and their associated structures (presbyteries, religious communities, health and education facilities, etc.) remain closed or inaccessible,” the Catholic Bishops Conference of Burkina and Niger said in the statement, according to multiple reports.

“The corollary of this is the decline of socio-economic works in some places, the casualization of pastoral workers, the impoverishment of the population, especially in the affected areas, and the continuing phenomenon of internally displaced persons, which is causing socio-demographic upheavals in a noxious social climate,” the statement said.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of Burkina and Niger is currently led by Bishop Dabiré of Dori.

Kiev, February 26, 2024

Photo: Ukrainian Orthodox Church (YouTube)     

Though there are many different types of prayer, the most powerful prayer is that which is offered from a state of humility, the primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church preached yesterday on the pre-Lenten Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee.

Through the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, the Lord “reminds us what prayer should be like,” His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine said during his homily in the St. Agapit Church of the Holy Dormition-Kiev Caves Lavra, reports the UOC’s Information-Education Department.

“Fasting and prayer are the main virtues by which a man is spiritually improved and acquires the likeness of God,” His Beatitude said. “Prayer is an appeal, a conversation with God, breath for the soul, through which man receives the Divine grace that nourishes him.”

The Ukrainian primate enumerated the various types of prayer: supplicatory, penitential, praise, and thanksgiving, noting that supplicatory and penitential prayers make up the bulk of our daily prayers, “but it’s very important to thank God for everything and always. The most powerful prayer is humble.”

“As we heard in the Gospel reading, the most powerful is humble prayer,” His Beatitude noted. “For the Lord resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble (Js. 4:6). And those who exalt themselves will sooner or later be humbled. And those who humble themselves will be exalted by God in due time (cf. Mt. 23:12).”

Met. Onuphry also reminded his flock that all the gifts we have are from God.

“May the Lord help us to try to remember in prayer that God is the Creator, and we are His creation. This understanding obliges a man to humble himself. He who prides himself on gifts appropriates them for himself and becomes a transgression. The man who relies on God shows that the gifts are not his, but God’s. In this way, a man properly relates to his Creator, and God multiplies the talents in such a man” His Beatitude said.Top of Form

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This Lent, Christians should become “seekers of light” by keeping their sights set on the light of Jesus through prayer and participating in the sacraments, Pope Francis said.

“This is a good Lenten resolution: cultivating a welcoming outlook, becoming ‘seekers of light,’ seekers of the light of Jesus, both in prayer and in people,” he told visitors in St. Peter’s Square before praying the Angelus with them Feb. 25.

The pope had canceled his previous day’s meetings due to mild flu-like symptoms, the Vatican said, but he spoke to the estimated 20,000 people gathered at the Vatican without obvious signs of difficulty.

Reflecting on the day’s Gospel reading from St. Mark, Pope Francis said that Jesus’ transfiguration — when he radiated before his disciples in a dazzling white light — “reveals to them the meaning of what they had experienced together up to that moment.”

“The preaching of the kingdom, the forgiveness of sins, the healings and the performed signs were, indeed, sparks of a greater light, namely, of the light of Jesus, of the light that Jesus is,” he said. “And from this light, the disciples are never to direct their eyes away, especially in moments of trial, like those of the Passion which was near at this point.”

Pope Francis said that the message of the Transfiguration is that Christians should “never direct your eyes away from the light of Jesus,” and he encouraged them to be like farmers who keep their eyes fixed on a distant point to stay in a straight line when plowing fields.

“This is what we are called to do as Christians while we journey through life: to always keep the luminous face of Jesus before our eyes,” he said.

The pope told Christians to “be open to welcome the light of Jesus,” who is love and “life without end.”

“Along the roads of existence, which can be tortuous from time to time, let us seek his face, which is so full of mercy, fidelity and hope,” he said.

Prayer, listening to the word of God, and participating in the sacraments — especially confession and the Eucharist — “help us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus,” the pope said.

“Do I make space for silence, prayer, adoration?” Pope Francis encouraged Christians to ask themselves. “Do I seek out every little ray of Jesus’ light, which is reflected in me and in every brother and sister I encounter? And do I remember to thank him for this?”

Houston, February 26, 2024

Photo: goarch.org     

The Houston branch of the Orthodox nonprofit FOCUS North America held a kickoff meeting last May dedicated to opening a pregnancy resource center, after which local faithful set about researching programs, identifying a location, and fundraising.

According to a new report from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, FOCUS Houston has found a home and will soon be able to open the much-needed center.

FOCUS (The Fellowship of Orthodox Christians United to Serve) “exists to serve the poor by bringing together Orthodox Christian churches and community partners to provide Food, Occupation, Clothing, Understanding, and Shelter and other assistance to address the needs of local communities,” according to the organization’s mission statement.

FOCUS “works to address the ultimate cause of poverty in the world: disconnection from Christ and disconnection from one another. It does this by providing people with opportunities to serve alongside and discover their kinship with others while addressing needs in their local communities.”

The organization provides food, clothing, shelter, and more throughout the country, including in Cleveland, Minnesota, Detroit, Southern California, Gateway City, and West Central Pennsylvania.

Thanks to the tireless labors of the Orthodox community in Houston, FOCUS’ new pregnancy resource center will be moving into a 1,700 square foot space on the campus of the Orthodox St. Constantine School.

The center will offer help to young families and mothers in the Houston area, where 27.6% of homes are run by a single parents and 19.5% of the population lives below the poverty line.

“FOCUS Houston will empower mothers by offering necessities, opportunities, and guidance.”

FOCUS Houston Director, Susanne Haddad said: “We envision a community where expecting mothers, new mothers, and children can experience Christ’s unconditional love through a supportive, accepting, and compassionate environment.”

Thanks to a matching grant, donations to FOCUS Houston up to $5,000 will be doubled.

Learn more about and support FOCUS Houston at the FOCUS North America site.

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For many American Catholics, the immense footprint left by Our Lady of Guadalupe in the hearts and lives of millions of their co-religionists in the Southern Hemisphere remains something of a secret. This is a great shame, for she has been the Empress of the Americas since 1945 by papal decree, and, one could say, by heavenly mandate since her apparition in 1531.  

A new movie, “Guadalupe: Mother of Humanity,” which opened Feb. 22 in the U.S., proposes to break open the whole glorious story to a people that are no less in need of evangelization than the indigenous inhabitants of 16th-century America.

Spanish filmmaker Pablo Moreno weaves together the narrative of Our Lady’s apparitions on the hill Tepeyac to Juan Diego, a humble convert, with heartfelt testimonies of modern individuals who have also felt her presence in their lives, including LA’s own Archbishop José H. Gomez. 

The result is a compelling, moving, piece of art with the potential to win over new hearts to Our Lady and her son. 

The film treats viewers to aerial views of the thousands who throng up the long and wide avenue to her shrine in Mexico City on her feast day, carrying bouquets and babies, or dragging themselves along on their knees as a sign of penitence. 

The mariachis sing her special song, “Las Mañanitas,” which is also the typical song Mexicans sing to their loved ones on the days of their santos, (“patron saints”). At her shrine we see the pilgrims who have traveled from all over the world to see and venerate the miraculous image, and we watch their awe as they take in their first sight of La Morenita’s face.

In one sense, the 500-plus year story is the story of an image, a painting on cloth which has mesmerized millions over the centuries. It has been reproduced more often than any other image, according to the narrator, and it has been diffused over the whole world. 

The image has been closely studied, and we learn about one particularly moving finding: Drawn infinitesimally small in her pupils are two sets of people. In one are those who were watching when Juan Diego revealed the image on his tilma (“cloak”). In the other is an image of a family, the mother at its center, with baby and child, father and grandparents.

The message in her eyes? My family, your family, is in the special care of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Moreno reverts to the pretty scene of 1531— the shimmering Lady on the dry and rocky mount again and again, seeking to explain the enormity of the transformation she provoked. The situation in New Spain was dire, as far as transmission of the faith was concerned. 

The conquistadors (“conquerors”) found a culture bathed in the blood of innocents, worshiping pagan gods that demanded sacrifice and whose thirst was never quenched. Up to 20,000 babies, children, and adults a day, tortured and torn on the great pyramids, to ensure the rising of the sun and the regularity of the rains. 

When the Franciscan friars introduce the bizarre idea that God’s mercy falls unmerited on the earth and its inhabitants, out of a concept called “divine love,” it seemed incomprehensible to these people.

But the film’s scenes of Juan Diego’s encounters with Our Lady reveal the clues to her success. (After her apparition many millions converted, and we are told of priests hounded and harried by throngs of men and women begging for baptism.) It is her serene confidence and her warm tenderness, that of the perfect mother, whose very gaze is enough to soothe the most troubled heart. Her words to Juan Diego have been immortalized:

“Hear me and understand well, my little son, that nothing should frighten or grieve you. Let not your heart be disturbed. Do not fear any sickness or anguish. Am I not here, who is your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within the fold of my mantle, within the cross of my arms?”

The Virgin (played by Angelica Chong) speaks to Juan Diego with infinite sweetness and calm strength, laying a difficult task on him:

“Tell the bishop to build me a little house on this plain … so that I may therein exhibit and give all my love, compassion, help, and protection, because I am your merciful mother.”

 In that temple, she says, she will “listen there to their lamentations, and remedy all their miseries, afflictions, and sorrows.”

The movie-watcher who learns for the first time of the radical transformation of the Americas achieved by Our Lady of Guadalupe’s apparition on Tepeyac begins to understand. A people whose conception of the divine was inseparable from cruelty and terror were introduced instead to a God of compassion, mediated by the tenderness of the ideal mother, a tenderness they can understand as all humans can.

She offers them a transcendent vision in which each one of them, from the lowly Juan Diego to the most afflicted, is caught up in soft but powerful arms — arms that cradle but also ward off the terrible sadism of the pagan gods that took so much from them. In the image she stands on the moon and blocks the sun, symbols of the discarded tyrants.

There is a timeliness to this movie. Our modern culture is not so different from the one that Our Lady of Guadalupe transformed over 500 years ago. We also suffer under strange and bloodthirsty gods — of radical individualism and hedonism. We toil to placate the god of wealth and honor, and our families implode. The most common altar of our sacrifice? Abortion, where our unborn children die by the many hundreds of thousands because we believe it makes us free.

Our Lady may visit us again, and transform us anew. But until she does, this film may be a sign to many that the only God is the God of love, and his mother is the sure road to His Heart.

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Artist: John Martin     

Christ is in our midst, my dear readers!

Today we often hear people talking about the end of the world again. We sense some eschatological events looming in the air. I think the apostles and the first Christian community in Jerusalem felt the same way. They were so sure that the Second Coming of Christ was about to happen that they sold their possessions, their lands—everything they had, and handed it over to the apostles. The early Christians, gathering together, spent time in fasting and prayer, waiting for the Lord to come down again from Heaven.

If we look at the entire history of humanity, we probably won’t find a time when there weren’t signs of the imminent end of the world. There have always been wars, famines, epidemics, diseases, the waning of faith, and so on. The same is happening now. Christianity is degenerating, and Christians themselves have ceased to be the salt of the earth. Countries for which the Gospel faith was a cultural and state-forming factor have been de-Christianized. Today, people do not see the saints or the devout as examples to emulate, but instead, the stars of the stage and screen. Politicians have erected an idol out of the golden calf, before which they themselves dance and pull everyone around them into this dance. In times like these, the Lord always sobers people with sorrows and disasters. But when people come to their senses, they are granted an extension of life. Nineveh, as we know from the Old Testament, was destined to perish, but repentance changed God’s intention.

Not long ago, during the Second World War, people recognized their sinfulness and feared God’s judgment, and so came church in such large numbers that the churches were overcrowded. Today, despite the serious calamities we are experiencing, there is no repentance. On the contrary, people are becoming more and more hard-hearted. All this indicates that sorrows will increase, because God will fight to the end for the salvation of human souls.

Where this will lead and how it will end, I do not know. I am sure only of one thing—the fate of our world depends on our faith and repentance. It is also necessary to understand that the end of the world will be not only universal, but also personal. We may not live to see the global end, but we will definitely reach the end of our own life, which will be the end of the world for us. We need to prepare for this all our life, because our eternal fate will be determined not by how others lived, but by how we ourselves lived.

St. Alexander succeeded St. Achillas as bishop of Alexandria in 313. He was a champion of orthodox Catholic teaching, and spent the majority of his ministry fighting against the Arian heresy. At the time, Arius, a priest of Alexandria, was claiming that Jesus was not truly God, and that at one time, the Son did not exist.

Although Alexander corrected Arius gently at first, when the heresy began to spread to a larger following, he excommunicated Arius in 320. Alexander’s writings on the Arian heresy survived, and are still an important part of ecclesiastical literature.

Historians assume that St. Alexander drew up the acts for the first General Council of Nicea in 325, which officially condemned Arianism. He died in Alexandria two years after returning from the council.

St. Alexander is also remembered for his charity to the poor and his doctrine on life.

In today’s Gospel, the prayer of the publican is shown drawing God’s mercy to him. This prayer consisted of the following words: God be merciful to me a sinner (Lk. 18:13). It is worthy of our attention that God heard such a short prayer, and that it was pronounced in the temple, during the common worship services, during the reading and chanting of psalms and other prayers. This prayer is commended in the Gospels; it is set forth as an example of prayer, and it becomes our sacred duty to piously contemplate it.

Blessed Maria Adeodata Pisani was born in Italy in 1806, to a noble family. Her father, an alcoholic, was exiled after participated in a revolt, and Maria was raised by her grandmother. When her grandmother died, Maria was sent to a boarding school at the age of 10, where she remained until she was 17.

Even as a young woman, Maria declined several proposals of marriage, preferring to live a simple life of prayer. At 21, she entered the Benedictine Community in St. Peter’s Monastery in Malta, taking the name Maria Adeodata. Two years later, she made her vows.

Maria was a seamstress, sacristan, porter, teacher, and novice mistress. She was known for her charity in and out of the cloister. She also spent these years writing, and her best-known work is a collection of personal reflections, written from 1835-1843, called “The mystical garden of the soul that loves Jesus and Mary.”

Maria served as abbess for two years, but had to retire due to heart problems. Only a few years later, on Feb. 25, 1855, Maria was in extremely ill health, but dragged herself to Mass against her nurse’s advice. Once she received Communion, she was carried back to bed, and died soon after.

St. Maria Adeodata was remembered for her love of the poor and her ecstasies, during which she could be seen levitating. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 2001 at Floriana, Malta.