ABVM PARISH COMMUNITY

  A NEW LITURGICAL YEAR             The Church follows a liturgical and seasonal pattern of worship because God revealed to the Hebrews that this is the way he wants to be worshipped.   When they escaped from Egypt and Pharaoh’s army God led them to Mount Sinai to make a covenant with them and form them into his people.   Moses ascended the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments and instructions on the form of worship that would seal and preserve the Covenant.   Fidelity to the liturgical laws was synonymous with fidelity to the Covenant.   Besides special days and seasons set in the Jewish calendar there was the weekly observance of the sabbath.   This pattern and cycle give both form and sense to the life of observant Jews, as the pattern and cycle of the Christian year gives form and sense to the lives of faithful Christians.                  Jesus and his disciples followed the cycle of religious Jewish festivals.   We know that they also kept the sabbath because in the Gospe

  AUGUSTINE ON THE SECOND COMING             Saint Augustine was the bishop of Hippo (now Annaba, Algeria) from 396-430.  He was a prolific writer and is honored as a Doctor of the Church.  His writings have had more impact on Catholic theology than any other Father of the Church.  Fortunately, hundreds of his sermons and discourses were written down by his listeners and are accessible to us today.  One of his discourses on the Psalms is the subject of this article because it provides a beautiful reflection on the second coming of Christ, a theme which the Church highlights as we come to the close of the liturgical year.             Jesus spoke about his second coming towards the end of his public ministry as he approached the time of his Passion.  Last week we heard him say in the Gospel of Mark that in the days following much tribulation “they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory, and then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from th

  WHY AND HOW WE CAN HELP THE HOLY SOULS             As I mentioned in my homily on All Souls Day, God in his goodness has given us the gift of praying for the dead.  This prayer is not empty but is efficacious since it is a gift of God, who would not have us do anything that is useless.  It has no effect on their eternal salvation, for that is determined at the moment of death by Christ in what is called the particular judgment.  Those who are saved but still carry the effects of personal sin, however great or little, are “sped” through the process of purification by our prayers and penances.  Their purification is necessary because, according to Scripture, nothing “unclean” can enter heaven (Rev. 21:27).  For heaven to be heaven, where God is all in all, there can be no lingering effects of sin.  Only those souls who are completely free of the temporal punishment of their sins enter directly into heaven at the moment of death, for there is nothing in them to hold them back from God.

THE LAMB OF GOD AND HIS PRIESTLY PEOPLE             The Gospels teach that the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary was willed by the Father for the salvation of the world in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies.  The Baptist proclaims, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” (Jn 1:29).  They see him as the Lamb and the suffering servant of Isaiah: “But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins, upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we are healed...the Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all” (Is 53:5-6).  Jesus applied this passage to himself (cf. Mat 20:28, Lk 24:25-24 & 44-45).  Christ is revealed as the sacrificed Lamb magnificently in the Book of Revelation, where the twenty-four elders, representing the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles, worship “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain.”  It concludes with the marriage feast of the Lamb and his Bride, the Church (cf. Rev 5 & 19).