Category: Adult Faith Formation

Pope and Ukrainian Patriarch meet

This morning Pope Leo XIV met with His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, major archbishop of Kyiv-Halyč, Ukraine. Is wasting no time getting down to work by having meetings with visiting bishops and others. This is the key way a pope gets to know those collaborating with him in ministry.

On May 14, the Pope met with the participants from the Eastern Churches in Rome for the Jubilee for Eastern Churches –the Holy Year. Various heads of the Sui Iuris Churches are in Rome for prayer, fraternity and meetings. Here’s Leo’s address. It is an excellent address and difficult to pull out just one paragraph for consideration. But perhaps this one –in addition to the one given in the image above– gives a sense of how Eastern Christianity is crucial in the overall picture of Catholicism:

“Your traditions of spirituality, ancient yet ever new, are medicinal. In them, the drama of human misery is combined with wonder at God’s mercy, so that our sinfulness does not lead to despair, but opens us to accepting the gracious gift of becoming creatures who are healed, divinized and raised to the heights of heaven. For this, we ought to give endless praise and thanks to the Lord. Together, we can pray with Saint Ephrem the Syrian and say to the Lord Jesus: “Glory to you, who laid your cross as a bridge over death… Glory to you who clothed yourself in the body of mortal man, and made it the source of life for all mortals” (Homily on our Lord, 9). We must ask, then, for the grace to see the certainty of Easter n every trial of life and not to lose heart, remembering, as another great Eastern Father wrote, that “the greatest sin is not to believe in the power of the Resurrection” (SAINT ISAAC OF NINEVEH, Sermones ascetici, I, 5).”

Study the Nicene Creed

Studying the Nicene Creed is a great way of knowing and living more deeply our Catholic Faith.

Here is a free course of study on the Nicene Creed with Fr. David Anderson and the Institute of Catholic Culture (ICC). The course is offered at no charge.

More information.

Some Thanksgiving Advice from St. Paul

“And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And BE THANKFUL. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs WITH GRATITUDE in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, GIVING THANKS to God the Father through him.” [Col. 3:15-17]

Happy Thanksgiving!

All Souls

There are 5 All Soul’s Saturdays. 2, 3, and 4 were on Saturdays during the Great Fast on days that had no other commemoration (e.g. the Miracle of Theodore and Akathistos). This is due to the liturgical law that fasting periods are more conservative and retain ancient customs. Saturday, the day our Lord was in the tomb was a day for remembering the departed, and that has persisted until the present in Lent.

The All Souls’ Saturday before Meatfare Sunday was due to the Church Year. Meatfare Sunday was the Gospel of the Last Judgment and, in a way, concluded the regular cycle of Gospel beginning with Pascha and lasting until the next Great Fast (beginning with Cheesefare Sunday). It was natural, therefore, to remember the departed as we pray for all before the final and last judgment. The fifth All Souls’ Saturday the day before Pentecost does not have clear origins. Some have said that it is the Christianization of the pagan feast of Rosalia, which remembered virgins who have died a violent death. Their souls were locked in trees and were released on this feast day.

The Christians generalized this into a general feast for all the departed. Some find this controversial, since the ideology is that Christians owe nothing to pagans. We have no concrete evidence one way or the other. It might be connected with All Saints, which in the Byzantine Church was the Sunday after Pentecost, but this does not explain the one week delay. At any rate, though Pentecost is the Christian feast of the 50th day, corresponding directly to the Jewish feast of the Mt. Sinai covenant (note the Upper Room), it was also called Rusalka (in Slavonic) since it happened closely to the pagan feast.

The All Saints feast was originally “All Martyrs,” namely those who died a violent death in witness to Christ. Rome originally celebrated it at the same time as the Byzantines, but moved it to November 1, the Dedication of the Pantheon, the pagan temple made into the Christian Church of the All Saints. In our faith and worship, though, this all has a clearly Christian meaning.

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A new liturgical year begins today, a new year of grace

“The beginning of the New Ecclesiastical Year urges us to sanctify the time of our earthly life as a time of salvation.”
– Patriarch Daniel

September 1st is known as the first day of the New Liturgical Year for those who follow the Byzantine Church. It’s an observance we had since the 4th century. Here is Father David Petras’ brief explanation:

We call this the “Church” New Year, but it was, of course, the civil New Year of the Byzantine Emperor. The book, Mapping Time, by E. G. Richards, says, “In AD 312 Constantine had instituted a 15-year cycle of indications (censuses of people’s ability to pay taxes). These started on 1 September …. The Byzantine year started on 1 September and this system was used by the supreme tribunal of the Holy Roman Empire until it was abolished by Napoleon in 1806.” The ancient Roman Empire began the year on January 1, and therefore September was the seventh month (from the Latin word for seven, “septem”). Of course, it is now the ninth month (!) Because of the interpolation of July (for Julius Caesar) and August (for August Caesar). Many seriously advocate making September 1 the New Year again, because, after all, this is the beginning of the school year and fall programs. It would also enable people to get home on dry roads rather than on snow and ice.

In any case, the gospel today has the blessing of our Lord on the New Year, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19).

Blessings for a New Church Year, which we start today in our Greek Catholic Church!