Real Catholic Blog

It’s been an eventful year and we feel blessed to have taken part in it with you. Thank you for joining with us as we’ve explored various aspects of the Faith and the culture. We very much look forward to 2011 and a more active, more involved, much improved RealCatholicBlog.com. We hope you join us. 

This year has been an important one for the Church. For example, Pope Benedict XVI was extraordinarily active over the last 12 months (Kevin Clarke/Zenit.org/Catholic.net): Five foreign trips, including a ground breaking one to England to beatify Cardinal Newman (Fr. Richard J. Shiefen/CatholicInsight.com), the Year of the Priest and the canonization of several saints (NewsAhead.com) were only a few of the visible accomplishments. He continues to right the direction of the Church, speak out against evil, and rejuvenate the flock. 

Year-ends allow us to reflect and ponder, and look forward with renewed vigor. It’s good for all of us to take some time off and recharge and renew. Whether you are one to make resolutions or not, it is important to refocus and approach our lives with a new vigor. That includes our spiritual lives, which requires consistent introspection.

From Brother John, myself and the team at RealCatholicBlog and RealCatholic.com, our online Catholic book an merchandise store, have a blessed, safe, healthy, prosperous and joyful New Year. Until we return shortly after the New Year, we leave you with this commentary on the meaning of the Christmas season and how to act upon it: The Word made flesh, Emmanuel, God Among Us. It is important that not only do we renew ourselves through Mass and the sacraments this New Year, but to bring others with us. We are called to God’s Grace but also, as Jesus tells us, to be a reflection of Him and win souls to him for their salvation.

Please view this video from Michael Voris of RealCatholicTV.com (no connection), who is at his most eloquent:

Cooperate with His Grace To be restored to the heights of Heavenly Communion with our infant savior  . . . is the quintessential gift. …

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Pio Of Pietrelcina, commonly known as Padre Pio. Born Francesco Forgione in 1887 to a devout family in the village of Pietrelcina, Italy, in which devotion flourished among all of its residents, he knew as early as age five he wanted to give his life to God in the priestly ministry (read more at EWTN.com).

He entered the monastery as a young teenager, but only after his father moved to the United States to make enough money to pay for the private tutor he would need to bring his education up to the level where the monastery would accept him. This is an extraordinary act of love, not only to his son, but to God. So although much has been written about Padre Pio —his stigmata inspired hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to seek the sacraments from him and attend the Masses at which he presided — by believers and non, it his parents from whom I draw the lesson.

Both were illiterate (imagine being illiterate in your language, not to mention moving to a new country) but had memorized Scripture and Bible stories, taught them to their children, as well as the Rosary and all other prayers. Early on his parents instilled in the Faith in him and his siblings. Not only that, but they lost two children at birth — what devotion and love for God!

At Baptism, the parents are called to raise their child in the Faith; they are reminded that their child’s first teachers of the Faith. How many parents take this responsibility in more than a perfunctory way? Is it one more thing they slough off to Sunday school or even the Catholic school? I hope there is a renaissance of parenting in the Catholic tradition, where parents teach their children from the very earliest of ages how to pray and about the Church and Faith, who actively involve themselves in their children’s formation. Teaching rights and wrongs in a civil sense, which is what some parents reduced their moral responsibility to, is irrelevent without formation and a foundation.

Padre Pio heard God’s call through his formation from his parents.

Pope Benedict told an audience of visiting from Brazil last week that the role of the priest is irreplaceable and that a shortage of priests does not mean the priesthood will secularize anymore than it means the laity will vocationalize. Priests will be priests and laity will be laity, each with distinct and vital roles in the Church.

However, he was clear on the unique nature of the priesthood as an office descended from the Apostles and Christ Himself. From Vatican Information Service via Catholic Online:

. . . the particular identity of priests and laity must be seen in the light of the essential difference between priestly ministry and the “common priesthood.” Hence it is important to avoid the secularisation of clergy and the “clericalisation” of the laity.

He also said:

. . . the lack of priests does not justify a more active and abundant participation of the laity. The truth is that the greater the faithful’s awareness of their own responsibilities within the Church, the clearer becomes the specific identity and inimitable role of the priest as pastor of the entire community, witness to the authenticity of the faith, and dispenser of the mysteries of salvation in the name of Christ the Head.

The function of the clergy is essential and irreplaceable in announcing the Word and celebrating the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist. … For this reason it is vital to ask the Lord to send workers for His harvest; and it is necessary that priests express joy in their faithfulness to their identity.

The Holy Father also invoked Saint John Vianney, the patron saint of priests. As this is the Year for Priests, marking the the 150th anniversary of the saint’s death, Pope Benedict XVI indicated that St. John Vianney . . .

continues even now to be a model for priests, especially in living a life of celibacy as a requirement for the total giving of self, expressed through that pastoral charity which Vatican Council II presents as the unifying centre of a priest’s being and actions.

In this Year for Priests, with the intercession of Saint John Vianney, let us all make a commitment to pray fervently for an increase in vocations as well as for the spiritual, physical and mental well being of all priests.