Real Catholic Blog

This prayer is a translation from the Arabic and is from LebaneseSaints.com.

O Heavenly Father, the source of all holiness, You are glorified in your saints. You have bestowed grace upon Mar Nimatullah, so He forsake the world to live for You and with You in the solitude of the monastery.

O Lord Jesus, the Holy One of all saints, You have called Mar Nimatullah and filled Him with Your grace and blessing. So He could follow You on the harrow path of perfection and holiness. He followed Your path carrying His cross with joy, the cross of communal life, by which He was sanctified.

O Holy Spirit, Sanctifier of saints, You have inspired our patron Nimatullah, so that He became a monk and lived with His brethren in the monastery, where He educated them and managed all things wisely and prudently. He was ideal and encourager to Saint Charbel His disciple and many others.

We beseech You, O Holy Trinity, through Mar Nimatullah to enlighten the path of salvation before us, for You are the first and last aim. Bring us back to You so that we may renew the image and the likeness that You have installed in us.

We thank You and glorify You with our mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, of whom Mar Nimatullah was a devout, and with Yous saints, You who live and reign in holiness for ever, Amen !

Ben Stein is one of my favorites. The man who stole the show in ’80s movie classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (the teacher who repeated in his monotone, “Bueller? Bueller?”) and constant TV ad pitchman truly is a Renaissance man: actor, writer, presidential advisor, comic, securities lawyer, economist, professor, conservative thinker and pro-life supporter, among many other things, and an incredibly smart man. So smart, in fact, he even hosted his own game show in the late 1990s called Win Ben Stein’s Money, where winning contestants won his paycheck for each show in which they answered more questions correctly than he. That’s how confidently intelligent Mr. Stein is.

Once, Mr. Stein lost, in part, by getting the meaning of The Immaculate Conception wrong (see Jennifer Hartline of Catholic Online). He was adamant that the Holy Day celebrated the conception of Christ into the Blessed Virgin Mary’s womb. He’s not alone. Most non-Christians, protestants and Catholics themselves think this. I’ve even had Catholics tell me tell me they were taught this in their formation! What else could it mean, after all, if Jesus was conceived not by man and woman but by the Holy Spirit through Mary? Ask most any Catholic and they will tell you this feast day celebrates the Lord’s conception.

For those who attended Mass yesterday, you should know. Still, it is important that we, as Catholics, understand what the Feast Day is about so as to not let misunderstandings undermine the Faith from within — Catholics trying to explain something to non-Catholics that isn’t correct to begin with — and to correct those misunderstandings by those of other faiths who think they know what we believe, and use this incorrect understanding in an attempt to misguide others about Catholicism.

In short, the Feast of The Immaculate Conception (see Catholic Encyclopedia) is the belief that in order for Christ to come into the world, He of no sin, would have to born without original sin. For that to happen, his parents would have to be free of original sin. God, the Father, of course is, but his human mother would have to be as well. Thus, Mary, at her conception and birth, was blessed by God to have been born without original sin, the only human to be born so.

That is the Feast of The Immaculate Conception. Next question, Ben.

On behalf of Brother John and myself, please accept our warmest wishes and prayers for a bountiful and blessed Thanksgiving, full of family and fun.

Although an American holiday and not overtly religious, it is, nevertheless, a reverent time to give thanks to the Lord our God for all the blessings he has bestowed on us — individually, our families and our country. After all, prayer was a the foundation of the very First Thanksgiving (in Virginia!) (See video). Each proclamation since, whether by the Continental Congress or the President of the United States, has called for prayer to our Creator and God for the special blessings He has granted this country.

Here, then, is a Catholic prayer of Thanksgiving for this special American holiday:

Father in Heaven, Creator of all and source of all goodness and love, please look kindly upon us and receive our heartfelt gratitude in this time of giving thanks.

Thank you for all the graces and blessings. You have betowed upon us, spiritual and temporal: our faith and religious heritage. Our food and shelter, our health, the loves we have for one another, our family and friends.

Dear Father, in Your infinite generosity, please grant us continued graces and blessing throughout the coming year.

This we ask in the Name of Jesus, Your Son and our Brother. Amen.

The Holy Father’s homily yesterday at the canonization of the five saints starts out strong and only gets better — a must read! These are just the first two paragraphs, but you can read it in its entirety, here, courtesy of ZENIT. It’s about 2,000 words.

His emphasis is the example of the saints. “Come, follow me!” They followed Jesus, unlike the rich man in the Gospel. They put themselves aside to serve Jesus, rejected the temptation of a life of self, and rejected cultures that rejected God. It is hard, no question, and requires great humility. But isn’t anything worthwhile hard? Aren’t the greatest reward realized after hard work? Is there a greater reward than Heavenly salvation? 

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?” This is the question that opens the brief dialogue we heard in the Gospel, between a man, identified elsewhere as the rich young man, and Jesus (cf Mk 10:17-30). We do not have very many details about this nameless character: all the same from the little we do have we are able to perceive his sincere desire to attain eternal life by living an honest and virtuous existence on earth. In fact he knows the commandments and has obeyed them since childhood. And yet all of this, while important, is not sufficient — says Jesus — there is one thing missing, but it is an essential thing. Seeing then that he is willing, the Divine Master looks at him with love and proposes the qualitative leap, he calls him to the heroism of sanctity, he asks him to abandon everything and follow him: “Sell what you own and give the money to the poor . . . then come, follow me!” (V. 21).

“Then come, follow me!” This is the Christian vocation that flows from a proposal of love by the Lord, and that can be realized only thanks to our loving reply. Jesus invites his disciples to the total giving of their lives, without calculation or personal gain, with unfailing trust in God. The saints welcome this demanding invitation and set about following the crucified and risen Christ with humble docility. Their perfection, in the logic of a faith that is humanly incomprehensible at times, consists in no longer placing themselves at the center, but choosing to go against the flow and live according to the Gospel. This is what was done by the five saints who today, with great joy, are being put forward for veneration by the universal Church: Zygmunt Szczęsny Feliński, Francisco Coll y Guitart, Jozef Damiaan de Veuster, Rafael Arnáiz Barón, Marie de la Croix (Jeanne) Jugan. In them we can contemplate the realization of the words of the Apostle Peter: “Look, we have left everything and followed you” (V. 28) and the consoling reassurance of Jesus: “There is no one who has left house, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children or land for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times as much…and persecutions too, now in this present time and, in the world to come, eternal life” (VV. 29-30)

If you are not familiar with Catholics Come Home, take some time to do so. It does great work.

You may have seen its videos on EWTN, or if you live in the Diocese of Phoenix you may know its work first hand. Its mission is to bring back Catholics who have left the Church for whatever reason or reasons, and it is doing so through modern media techniques. It has produced three world class videos/commercials that inspire even the hardest hearts.

While it has received air time on EWTN, through the Internet and some news programs, CCH now is hitting its stride. In the last year it developed a plan to buy commerical air time in each diocese in the country. It started in the Phoenix Diocese during Lent 2008 and was responsible for bringing back to the Church 92,000 Catholics (see CNS article here).

We are called to bring people to the Lord. A good place to start is reaching out to family, friends, associates, even people we don’t know that well, who have stopped attending church. If you think it’s an odd proposition, remember, Jesus sent the Apostles out to visit strangers and preach to them.

When the priest ends Mass with “Let us now go forth to love and serve the Lord,” it is our commission to spread His Word. As Pope Benedict XVI said at his first World Youth Day homily in 2005: Every day we have good news we can’t wait to share with family and friends — good grades at school, a promotion at work — but how often do we share the Good News of the Gospel?

Probably not often. But a good way to start is to share the Catholic Come Home videos. (Forward this link with the first video. We’ll post the others in the near future.) Visit its Web page and find out how you can help it with its goal, and see if you can facilitate its work in your diocese. It can also provide tips as to what you can do within your parish. Or simply speak to that someone you are concerned about and ask them to come to Church with you Sunday.

A priest I know told the story of a woman who told him she wanted to come back to the Church, but had been away for years and didn’t know how. He replied, “Just come back.” It’s not complicated. 

An epic video worth sharing.