HOMILIE ABOUT FAMILY OF THE 1 SEPT. IN TORRECIUDAD, BY PRELATE OF OPUS DEI.

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"Share this joyful and hope-filled vision of the family"

Homily of Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz, at the 28th Marian Day of the Family held in the shrine of Torreciudad on September 1, with over 16,000 people taking part.

HOMILIES09/03/2018

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“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Responsorial Psalm: Lk 1:46-47). When repeating these words of Our Lady in the responsorial psalm, we have expressed our desire to accompany our Mother in her attitude of thanksgiving and praise to God. We have many reasons to raise our hearts to God, who wants to carry out great things in us, and through us in our families, in society and in the whole world.

Today, in celebrating this Marian Day of the Family close to Our Lady of Torreciudad, we raise our hearts to God with these words of holy Mary. Certainly, we are and we realize we are very little, greatly in need of God’s help in order to be good children of his and bring forward our families in accord with his will. But with our Mother in Heaven we can pray this prayer of thanksgiving to God: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

In the Gospel we have seen how an angel restored peace to Saint Joseph’s heart, in a complicated moment in the history of the family of Nazareth (cf. Mt 1:18-23). We are amazed to see how Mary and Joseph also encountered difficulties in bringing forward their family! The history of their home is not an idealized one. The Holy Family was without doubt the happiest family the world has ever seen or will see, but nevertheless they had to confront real setbacks and problems.

“We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him” (Rom 8:28). We have heard these words of Saint Paul in the second reading. Many of us will recall how Saint Josemaria summed them up in three words: omnia in bonum, everything works for the good. How often these words will have helped us to embrace God’s will, also when we don’t understand why He allows something that makes us suffer or that causes others to suffer. We can also apply them in the context of each home. Everything works for the good: a financial problem that requires a change of plans, the challenges involved in raising children, the difficulties in trying to make compatible a demanding job with the needs of the home… Everything works for the good, if we put everything in God’s hands. He will give us the strength needed to turn it into an opportunity to grow as a family, to find in these small or great challenges a way to be more united, because everyone bears them with love.

“I thank God,” says Pope Francis, “that many families, which are far from considering themselves perfect, live in love, fulfil their calling and keep moving forward, even if they fall many times along the way” (Apost. Exhort. Amoris laetitia, 57). These are hope-filled words. At the same time, they invite us to ask ourselves: are we aware of the great good that families do when they strive to be a school of communion, of forgiveness, of solidarity? Truly, families can give light and warmth to other families, to friends, neighbors, school or work colleagues. “God wants every family to be a beacon of the joy of his love in our world. What does this mean?” the Holy Father asked a few days ago in Ireland. “It means that we, who have encountered God’s saving love, try, with or without words, to express it in little acts of kindness in our daily routine and in the most hidden moments of our day” (Address, Dublin, 25 August 2018).

To attain this, there is no need to wait until everything in one’s own home is going perfectly. “Every Christian home,” Saint Josemaria said, “should be a place of peace and serenity. In spite of the small frustrations of daily life, an atmosphere of profound and sincere affection should reign there together with a deep‑rooted calm, which is the result of authentic faith that is put into practice” (Christ is Passing By, no. 22). This is how families can cooperate very directly and effectively in building up and strengthening the civilization of love that Saint John Paul II spoke about.

In the Collect prayer today we have addressed God with these words: “In your commandments the family finds its authentic and sure foundation.” This is truly the rock that gives stability to the family: the loving and wise plan of our Creator and Father for the family. Therefore we want to get to know and appreciate ever better the features of this marvelous divine plan, and spread it joyfully in every sector of society.

Let us also renew today, close to Our Lady, the resolution to live the Communion of Saints intensely. Let us pray for the Church, for the Pope, and for all the shepherds and faithful. And may we raise our prayer to Heaven today especially for all the world’s families, asking that they receive the strength of the prayer and sacrifice that accompanies each of our days.

Our Mother, Our Lady of Torreciudad, with your help we want to share this joyful and hope-filled vision of the family with those around us. We ask you to teach us to go forward together, as a family, towards the encounter with God and with other men and women. And that we not become discouraged when the path becomes hard, or when we stumble, because we know that you always accompany us.

Taken from 31 to 36 of Enciclical from Pope Franciscus, Fratteli Tutti, Oct. 2020.

 

31. In this world that races ahead, yet lacks a shared roadmap, we increasingly sense that “the gap between concern for one’s personal well-being and the prosperity of the larger human family seems to be stretching to the point of complete division between individuals and human community… It is one thing to feel forced to live together, but something entirely different to value the richness and beauty of those seeds of common life that need to be sought out and cultivated”.[29] Technology is constantly advancing, yet “how wonderful it would be if the growth of scientific and technological innovation could come with more equality and social inclusion. How wonderful would it be, even as we discover faraway planets, to rediscover the needs of the brothers and sisters who orbit around us”.[30]

PANDEMICS AND OTHER CALAMITIES IN HISTORY

32. True, a worldwide tragedy like the Covid-19 pandemic momentarily revived the sense that we are a global community, all in the same boat, where one person’s problems are the problems of all. Once more we realized that no one is saved alone; we can only be saved together. As I said in those days, “the storm has exposed our vulnerability and uncovered those false and superfluous certainties around which we constructed our daily schedules, our projects, our habits and priorities… Amid this storm, the façade of those stereotypes with which we camouflaged our egos, always worrying about appearances, has fallen away, revealing once more the ineluctable and blessed awareness that we are part of one another, that we are brothers and sisters of one another”.[31]

33. The world was relentlessly moving towards an economy that, thanks to technological progress, sought to reduce “human costs”; there were those who would have had us believe that freedom of the market was sufficient to keep everything secure. Yet the brutal and unforeseen blow of this uncontrolled pandemic forced us to recover our concern for human beings, for everyone, rather than for the benefit of a few. Today we can recognize that “we fed ourselves on dreams of splendour and grandeur, and ended up consuming distraction, insularity and solitude. We gorged ourselves on networking, and lost the taste of fraternity. We looked for quick and safe results, only to find ourselves overwhelmed by impatience and anxiety. Prisoners of a virtual reality, we lost the taste and flavour of the truly real”.[32] The pain, uncertainty and fear, and the realization of our own limitations, brought on by the pandemic have only made it all the more urgent that we rethink our styles of life, our relationships, the organization of our societies and, above all, the meaning of our existence.

34. If everything is connected, it is hard to imagine that this global disaster is unrelated to our way of approaching reality, our claim to be absolute masters of our own lives and of all that exists. I do not want to speak of divine retribution, nor would it be sufficient to say that the harm we do to nature is itself the punishment for our offences. The world is itself crying out in rebellion. We are reminded of the well-known verse of the poet Virgil that evokes the “tears of things”, the misfortunes of life and history.[33]

35. All too quickly, however, we forget the lessons of history, “the teacher of life”.[34] Once this health crisis passes, our worst response would be to plunge even more deeply into feverish consumerism and new forms of egotistic self-preservation. God willing, after all this, we will think no longer in terms of “them” and “those”, but only “us”. If only this may prove not to be just another tragedy of history from which we learned nothing. If only we might keep in mind all those elderly persons who died for lack of respirators, partly as a result of the dismantling, year after year, of healthcare systems. If only this immense sorrow may not prove useless, but enable us to take a step forward towards a new style of life. If only we might rediscover once for all that we need one another, and that in this way our human family can experience a rebirth, with all its faces, all its hands and all its voices, beyond the walls that we have erected.

36. Unless we recover the shared passion to create a community of belonging and solidarity worthy of our time, our energy and our resources, the global illusion that misled us will collapse and leave many in the grip of anguish and emptiness. Nor should we naively refuse to recognize that “obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction”.[35] The notion of “every man for himself” will rapidly degenerate into a free-for-all that would prove worse than any pandemic.

SOME THINGS ABOUT THE HOLY SPIRIT

SOMETHING ABOUT THE HOLY SPIRIT.

It has been said that the great unknown is Thy Holy Spirit, it is allwais good to remember Thy, pray to Thy and maditate about all what Thy does for each one of us and for the the unique Church of Christ. To start, we can say that Thy is the source of all unity, that in Pentecost gave the Apostols the gift of tongues, and since then they remembered and understood all the teachings of Jesus, that came to form the writen Gospels and the Holy Christian Tradition. We should not expect the same gifts, this are other times and circumstances, but Thy gives us gifts that are very valuable, to start the possibility of intuition of God. He came to it´s church and to us, as promised by Jesus Christ himself, after his Resurection and before going to his Father in Heaven.

The Psalm 104,30 says:

WHEN YOU SEND YOUR SPIRIT, THEY ARE CREATED, AND YOU RENEW THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

The Psalmist celebrates the glory of Creation. The earth was not in order, and was empty, darkness covered the abism and THE SPIRIT OF GOD  MOVED OVER THE SURFACE  OF THE WATERS.

It is Jesus Christ who will make clear to us that the Holy Spirit is one of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity, God´s love for menkind is aforded to us throug the Holy Spirit, God is love and his love to us is given trough his Spirit.

“The Grace of Jesus Christ, the Charity of God, and the communion of the HolySpirit, be with us all”. We have to be able to discern of the action of the Holy Spirit , over our children, if one of them shows a vocation of a religious life, we should not take away the opportunity, and without forcing, take her or to a well prepared priest in these matters, or a the ideal person to chat with. It migth be a vocation or just devotion, God is who gives the vocations, so we as parents, should prudently investigate.

When we are bautized, the Grace of God Father is our new reborn, it is given to us by the Holy Spirit, in Jesus Christ. Due to the conduction of the Son, since the Son presents them to the Father and the Father in return gives the incorruptibiity, so without the Holy Spirit it would be imposible to see the Son of God, and without Son no one can get near God, because the knowledgment of the Father is through the Son and knowing of the Father is through the Holy Spirit.

Our faith also comes to us by the Holy Spirit, and along all our lifes Thy will be with us, with his inspiration, in the words of Christ in his last dinner with his Apostols he said that it would be the Holy Spirit who would keep them in the truth of his Revelation, and until the end of times.

The Holy Spirit is a gift to us by God, and he has 7 gifts to us, and this allows us to make our life a gift to God. these gifts are:

1)      WISDOM.-  that allows a person to know the truth.

2)      UNDERSTANDING.-  trough it, we gain a certitude about our beliefs.

3)      COUNSEL.- because Thy will guide us in defending those truths

4)      FORTITUDE.- courage against evil.

5)      KNOWLEDGE.-  desire to live up to the meaning and purpose of God, as ability of knowing.

6)      PIETY.- the perfection of the virtue of religión, to worship God and serve Thy.

7)      FEAR OF THE LORD.- taking in account our smallness and Thy greatness, puts us in perspective.

These informations are taken from the sciptures, and are and will be for all mankind the effective forum of the faith that saves us. We should prey or the capacity and comprehension of the messages that come from Jesus Gospels, that are a set of truths and comming from his own voice. The Gospels are Christ Thyself, Eucaristy, Confession, Praying.

Discerning about the the influence in our children is an important matter, if one or more of them show, signs of a religious vocation, we should not ignore it, but without forcing them they shoud be taken to a wise priest or a well prepared person in this, and let them talk alone, as many times as necessary. The Holy Spirit will do the rest.

The enemies of our Church, Religion, and beliefs, are alwais trying to influence our children, with idelogys that are bad for them, being nowdays the “Gender Ideology”, of wich we have to take all posible precautions, and get information that allows to know its dangers and corruption of the tiny minds of our minors. Lets pray to the Holy Spirit to donate us, what is necessary to guide our minors agaist the perverse influence of the Ideology of Gender.

Jorge Casas y Sánchez.

IN THIS OPPORTUNITY LETS PRAY WITH HOMILY OF POPE FRANCISCO.

I have negglecteds this blog but my intention is to, again work on it, due to my difficulties in expressing my own thinking I will include in my posts homilies, prayers, information etc. from other persons in it, this way you will be able to go to the original writers also. God Bless you.

PRAYING

 

PRAYING.-

Praying is the most important activity that a human person can have. There is no other activity that can be called better than it.  So we should not miss our daily time dedicated to God,  concentrated on Christ of course. Thereis a wide panorama of forms of prayer, all with beneficent effects, personal, to the human living society, and for those in purgatory. ¿Why concentrated in Christ?, lets follow this advice from the Church, “the best way to God Father is trough the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, with the Holy Virgen, Mother of God Jesus Christ, son of the Living Father”.

It is our faith that prepares us to speak with the Trinity, we could say: “chat with God”, due to the confidence that we have with thy. And there are many things to chat about, our happenings, our family, the difficulties of life, our needs, the needs of the others, our main concerns of piety, mortificatios, acomplishments, our professional activity, the proper and others health, for peace,in the world, the Pope, the Church, remembering the death, and a long Etc., remembering that by ourselves alone we can not acomplish any thing, but with God´s help we could move mountains. Some times it may be necessary to be guided, by readings, it is a good idea to have the Gospels              at hand, and other apropiate books,  nothing is better for us than being evangelical persons.

Our testimony of our believes, is an example to others, that in no way can be better showed than in our behavior inspired by love, our love of God, must grow to loving thy creatures, specially the humans, and after that the natural world, that we should treat in the best of our capacity, keeping it as clean of contamination as posible. It is a task, not easy, not agreeable some times, but it is what takes us to Christian adulthood, and gain of inner mayurity, if, to this way of life, we add the frecuency of Sacraments, and prayer, we are in the way to salvation, ¿what can beat this? Noting absolutely.

Christ risen from the dead after his Passion gave his apostols, several advices, one episode of those forty days that he spent among us, before his elevation to God Father, was in a mount, we do not know wich, but we know that in order to pray he, on many times went to  mounts, since there he found the lonlyness, and tranquility, he wanted so as to pray. In this opportunity he told his apostols, among other things: “go and predicate all men, all razes and baptism them in the name of the Father,  and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them all what I have ordered you”, and in those orders, there was,  that of praying.

After they returned from the mount, they were together  in hope, waiting to the promise received,  that in due time would take place, they were in prayer when at the Pentecostes celebration the Holy Spitit  came to them.

In our life, praying, is something that God expects from us, it is said that praying is talking to God, and listening to what he has to say to us. Lets have frecuent daily conversatios with our Lord.

Jorge Casas y Sánchez.

SALVATION BY FAITH

Salvation by faith

 On the basis of this sharing in Jesus’ way of seeing things, Saint Paul has left us a description of the life of faith. In accepting the gift of faith, believers become a new creation; they receive a new being; as God’s children, they are now "sons in the Son". The phrase "Abba, Father", so characteristic of Jesus’ own experience, now becomes the core of the Christian experience (cf. Rom 8:15). The life of faith, as a filial existence, is the acknowledgment of a primordial and radical gift which upholds our lives. We see this clearly in Saint Paul’s question to the Corinthians: "What have you that you did not receive?" (1 Cor 4:7). This was at the very heart of Paul’s debate with the Pharisees: the issue of whether salvation is attained by faith or by the works of the law. Paul rejects the attitude of those who would consider themselves justified before God on the basis of their own works. Such people, even when they obey the commandments and do good works, are centred on themselves; they fail to realize that goodness comes from God. Those who live this way, who want to be the source of their own righteousness, find that the latter is soon depleted and that they are unable even to keep the law. They become closed in on themselves and isolated from the Lord and from others; their lives become futile and their works barren, like a tree far from water. Saint Augustine tells us in his usual concise and striking way: "Ab eo qui fecit te, noli deficere nec ad te", "Do not turn away from the one who made you, even to turn towards yourself".[15] Once I think that by turning away from God I will find myself, my life begins to fall apart (cf. Lk 15:11-24). The beginning of salvation is openness to something prior to ourselves, to a primordial gift that affirms life and sustains it in being. Only by being open to and acknowledging this gift can we be transformed, experience salvation and bear good fruit. Salvation by faith means recognizing the primacy of God’s gift. As Saint Paul puts it: "By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God" (Eph 2:8).

 Faith’s new way of seeing things is centred on Christ. Faith in Christ brings salvation because in him our lives become radically open to a love that precedes us, a love that transforms us from within, acting in us and through us. This is clearly seen in Saint Paul’s exegesis of a text from Deuteronomy, an exegesis consonant with the heart of the Old Testament message. Moses tells the people that God’s command is neither too high nor too far away. There is no need to say: "Who will go up for us to heaven and bring it to us?" or "Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us?" (Dt 30:11-14). Paul interprets this nearness of God’s word in terms of Christ’s presence in the Christian. "Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down), or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)" (Rom 10:6-7). Christ came down to earth and rose from the dead; by his incarnation and resurrection, the Son of God embraced the whole of human life and history, and now dwells in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Faith knows that God has drawn close to us, that Christ has been given to us as a great gift which inwardly transforms us, dwells within us and thus bestows on us the light that illumines the origin and the end of life.

 We come to see the difference, then, which faith makes for us. Those who believe are transformed by the love to which they have opened their hearts in faith. By their openness to this offer of primordial love, their lives are enlarged and expanded. "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20). "May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith" (Eph 3:17). The self-awareness of the believer now expands because of the presence of another; it now lives in this other and thus, in love, life takes on a whole new breadth. Here we see the Holy Spirit at work. The Christian can see with the eyes of Jesus and share in his mind, his filial disposition, because he or she shares in his love, which is the Spirit. In the love of Jesus, we receive in a certain way his vision. Without being conformed to him in love, without the presence of the Spirit, it is impossible to confess him as Lord (cf. 1 Cor 12:3).