New years

Just a word or two for the new year May all have a Holy healthy happy New Year and grow even stronger in our love for the Lord.Even though we are all in different places we all have one goal. to score in the house of the Lord. So lets huddle up and make it a winning Year.

Our Humanity

This is a nice meditation which I received through the courtesy of Father Peter. I would like to share it with all of the members of the CRSPChat. It really is good food for thought.

Our Humanity

We are all born as sons and daughters of Adam and so we are marked with Adam's instincts. These tendencies within each may vary in number and intensity. In the 12th chapter of his constitutions, St. Anthony M. Zaccaria states that "the major enemy is within themselves; in fact, it is themselves". He speaks of our natural attitudes and core values which lie deep within our beings.

St. Paul says "I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not intend to do". (Rom. 7:19) At times, we may want to do one thing but soon realize we have done quite the opposite. It is the enemy within; the demons we carry along with us. It takes much practice to keep them "on hold".

We must remember we are weak and at times may slip and these natural tendencies may prevail. Our selfishness could sneak upon us by placing the warmest cup of coffee at our place. We can allow our prejudice to have its way by our laughter at a certain joke. These activities seem to be done unconsciously.

We must keep our conscience and our consciousness alert to ward off these unconscious attacks from these foul attitudes and tendencies. Bells should go off in our head telling us "Warning! Beware! Danger Approching!"

It is very difficult, especially at the beginning, to honestly admit to these tendencies, attitudes, and shortcomings. The saints themselves have taken years to do such self-examination and the task is never complete. One of the best ways to accomplish it is to ask our friends, family members (especially siblings), and most definitely those with whom we do not get along to point out to us such tendencies, attitudes, and shortcomings that may exist within us. With such information, it will become easier to examine our conscience.

I implore you to begin a daily examination of conscience. Ask yourself when felt most loved and also most loving during the day. Then see when you felt the least loved and the least loving. Then look at the attitude behind these in order to reveal some inner tendencies that exist at the core your being.

This is an excellent meditation. In my own spiritual life, I have learned to embrace my humanity knowing that I do indeed have faults. A great way to examine one's conscience is during Night Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours. This is an excellent aid in examing ourselves at the end of the day.

I would like to thank Father Peter for sharing this meditation with me!

Prayer for the Remainder of the Christmas Season

Your birth, O Christ our God, has shed upon the world the light of knowledge; for through it those who worshipped the stars have learned from a star to worship You, the Sun of Justice, and to recognize You as the Orient from on high. Glory be to you, Lord.

Christmas

Hello Men of God and those of us trying to be. When I made my post if you saw it you may have noted the time 2:40AM that was following,the midnight Mass at the Fatima Shrine.We all know where that is. It is one of the most peaceful places in the world or one of the most hectic depending on the season. I am setting here with my TV. on listing to the replay of midnight mass form Rome and I was remembering those peaceful times,and how we let them get away from us. So on this Christmas day and throught the Octive of Christmas,we need to pray for peace in our hearts and peace in the world. Just as the birth of Jesus brought peace to the world,we can help by loving our neighbor what ever part of the world they live in.Again a Merry Christmas to all and we hope and pray for a more peaceful world in 2008.

Merry Christmas to all

Hope all are well and enjoy the Blessed Christmas season.

Prayer For Vocations

May Mary, ensure, in our times, an increase in the number of consecrated persons, who go against the current, living the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience, and give witness in a prophetic way to Christ and His liberating message of salvation. Amen

2007 World Day of Prayer for Vocations

Blessed and Happy Christmas

Blessed and Happy Christmas to all of the Barnabite Fathers and to all of those who have the joy and happiness to be touched by their various ministerial works and their joyous presence! May all who visit the CRSPChat be blessed by the Infant who is our Savior!!!!!!!!

Saying Words differently

Sometimes it can be amusing and even very comical the way we say various words. Some may say tomahtoe, others may say tomaytoe, depending upon which region of the country we live in and how we were raised or even taught to speak. In any case, life can be amusing and it always good to maintain a good PMA - Positive Mental Attitude.

Scripture from Baruch

Arise, Jerusalem and stand on hight, and look about towards the East, and behold your children gathered together from the rising to the setting of the sun, by the word of the Holy One, rejoicing in the remembrance of God. For they went out from You on foot, lead by the enemies: but the Lord will bring them to You, exalted with honor as children of the kingdom

Saint Anthony Mary

Saint Anthony Mary Zaccaria is not simply the memory of a saint who lived long ago. Saint Anthony Mary Zaccaria is very much alive in the charism of the Barnabite Fathers and Brothers and in the many people who are devoted to honoring this special saint. Hopefully St. Anthony M. Zaccaria is a saint that can be better known. His writings are wealth of spiritual truth and realism that are as alive & relevant now as in the days when this great & holy man lived. I would like to also add, If I may, that his memory is also cherished among the Angelic Sisters of Saint Paul!

Brief Prayer for Communion

Here is a very brief prayer that I like to pray just before the reception of Communion:

That I may worthy to welcome the King of All, invisibly escorted by ranks of angels

Advent Anthems

These are some short prayers which can help one prepare for the Feast of Christmas.

O Wisdom, who did proceed out of the mouth of the Most High, reach from end to end, with might and sweetness disposing all things, come and teach us the way of prudence!

O Lord and Leader of the House of Israel, who did appear to Moses in the fire of the flaming bush, and did give him the law on Sinai, come and save us!

O Root of Jesse, who are a signal to all people, pray come and deliver us now and delay not!

John Doucette

Well, I have to admit that I am pleased that I have finally been successful in becoming a member of the CRSP chat! I hope that all will enjoy my posts!

Take care and God Bless!

Greeteings to All on the CRSP Chat!

Hello Father Peter, Father Robert, and Jim:

Hopefully all of you are doing well on this snowy Sunday of the Advent season as we make preparations for the coming of the Word made flesh among us!

See amid the winters snow
Born for us on earth below
See the tender lamb appears
Promised from eternal years
Hail thou ever blessed morn
Hail redemptions happy dawn
Shout for all the world to hear
Christ is born in Bethlehem!

Glory to God in the Highest

Great Barnabite Dates For December

Barnabite December dates: (any I missed?)

• Early in the month the birth of our Holy Founder St. Anthony M. Zaccaria
• Dec 1, 1543 - Bull of Pope Paul III granting perpetual exemption from local jurisdiction to the Order.
• December 11, 1904 - Canonization of St. Alexander Sauli by Pope Pius X
• December 14, 1894 - Death of Fr. Francesco Denza - meterologist, astronomist, restorer of the Vatican Observatory
  
• December 19, 1528 - Deacon Ordination of St. Anthony M. Zaccaria
• December 18, 1987 - Death of Bishop Placido Cambiaghi, Bishop of Novara and Council Father Vatican II
• December 21, 1963 - Death of Fr. Egidio Caspani - first Chaplain to the Italian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, one of the Founding Fathers of the North American Province.

(Source: Jubilee Calendar 2002 (Italian))

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger on St. Anthony Zaccaria

The image of this saint [Anthony Mary Zaccaria] is dear to me because he is one of the great figures of Catholic reform in the 1500’s, engaged as he was in the renewal of Christian life in an era of profound crisis in the area of faith and customs.

His life coincides with a turbulent period in which Luther, in his own way, attempted to reform the Church, an attempt that, as we well know, ended in the tragic division of Christianity.

In dealing with the problems of his personal life and of his times, Luther had discovered the person of St. Paul, and with the intention of following the apostle’s message, began his journey. Unfortunately, he placed St. Paul in contrast to the hierarchical Church, the law against the Gospel, and in doing so, even though he rediscovered him, he detached the saint from the totality of the Church, from the message of the Sacred Scripture.

Anthony Mary Zaccaria also discovered St. Paul; he wanted to follow his evangelical dynamism and he saw him in the totality of the divine message, in the community of the Holy Church. It seems to me that St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria is a saint of great current relevance, an ecumenical and missionary figure, who invites us to display and to live the Pauline message within the Church itself. He shows our separated brethren that St. Paul has his true place in the Catholic Church, and it is not necessary to place his message in contrast with the hierarchical Church. Rather, there exists in the Catholic Church plenty of space for evangelical freedom, for missionary dynamism and for the joy of the Gospels.

The Catholic Church is not only a Church of law, but it must also concretely prove itself as the Church of the Gospel and of its joy to open the way to unity.

Saint Anthony Mary Zaccaria, born exactly five centuries ago, deserves to be rediscovered in his moral greatness and for his appeal to the fundamental values of Christianity and to the perennial lesson of evangelical radicalism. His entire brief existence—first as a young layperson, doctor and catechist, and then as priest and religious—is dominated by what the liturgy of July 5 calls “the over eminent science of Jesus Christ,” and is animated by the “folly of the cross,” as acquired at the school of the “learned Paul,” his model and mentor.

In this light shines his extraordinary devotion to the two fundamental mysteries of our faith, the Crucifix and the Eucharist, which he considered with genial intuition to be “the living Crucifix.”

It’s not always easy to draw near to the image and the life of a saint—only God has the key to enter into the secret of a soul dedicated to Him. It is even more difficult when that man lived in a distant era, among the most complex and troubled in the history of the Church.

(...) [St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria] was an authentic man of God and of the Church, a man burning with zeal, a demanding forger of consciences, a true leader able to convert and lead others to good.

[His action has been] described as the action of a “bonus miles Christi” (A Good Soldier of Christ) even in persecutions, which, however, did not prevent him from anticipating the times and preparing for the great event that was the Council of Trent. Anthony Mary Zaccaria’s life was a constant struggle against the vice of spiritual “lukewarmness” and mediocrity that so “reigned” among his contemporaries. In his Letters and Sermons, and not the least in his Constitutions, there resonates an incessant call to sainthood.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Pope Benedict XVI
Rome, October 11, 2001


The text of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is a translation
of his Prefazione (Preface) to FUOCO NELLA CITTÀ:
Sant’Antonio Maria Zaccaria (1502–1539)
by Angelo Montonati.
© Edizione San Paolo 2002.
Translated from Italian by Elvira G. Di Fabio
and the Barnabite Fathers
© Barnabite Fathers 2007—All rights reserved.

New User

Welcome Jim,
You made your first post. Now if Eddie or maybe John could join a discussion we could actually use this blog ;-).

John, See if you can get an account and write us something, please.

hay have good day

help I am illiterate