A most succinct summary of the human person

When the hundreds of pages of Theology of the Body need to be summarized in a minute or two, it's difficult to know what to say.  How to say enough without saying too much?

In the current issue of the "National Catholic Register," Katie van Schaijik fulfilled the task admirably.

To be a human person is to be made in the image and likeness of God. It is to be absolutely unique and unrepeatable. It is to exist from love and for love, with others and for others. It is to be embodied, incomplete and in need. It is to be called to a life-giving union and communion with God and others — or, with God through others.

Read more of her thoughts on "Personalism and Pope Francis" and the recent Synod at http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/personalism-and-pope-francis/#ixzz3JdyvgVny.  

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"We are led to believe that success in life lies primarily in our being able to bring credentials, and yet, who would dream of saying to another person: ‘I love you because you are the most efficient secretary I have met in my life,’ or because ‘you are the teacher who best organizes the material.’ Love is not concerned with a person’s accomplishments, it is a response to a person’s being: This is why a typical word of love is to say: I love you, because you are as you are."

-- Dietrich Von Hildebrand

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"Ironically, in a day when Catholics often decide that 'The New Evangelization' means “go online” we may need to rethink our approach. Maybe in an overly digitized age, the New Evangelization means that we must also go out of our way to meet real people, in real life, face to face.

“'Love God above all else' cannot possibly mean 'pin a Divine Mercy picture on your Pinterest page.' 'Love your neighbor as yourself' has to mean more than 'Like all your neighbor’s status updates that aren’t too political.'"

-- Tom Hoopes in "Only Christianity Can Save the West from Falling"

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“Matrimony is a Gospel in itself, a good news for the world of today, especially the de-Christianized world.” -- Pope Benedict XVI

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"I have been able to celebrate Holy Mass in chapels built along mountain paths, on lakeshores and seacoasts; I have celebrated it on altars built in stadiums and in city squares... This varied scenario of celebrations of the Eucharist has given me a powerful experience of its universal and, so to speak, cosmic character. Yes, cosmic! Because even when it is celebrated on the humble altar of a country church, the Eucharist is always in some way celebrated on the altar of the world. It unites heaven and earth. It embraces and permeates all creation. The Son of God became man in order to restore all creation, in one supreme act of praise, to the One who made it from nothing." -- St. John Paul II

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“The mutual love of Christian spouses is enfolded within Christ’s love, which reinforces the bond of fidelity that is already an integral part of natural marriage. Indeed, by lifting human love into his relationship with the Church, Christ the Bridegroom transforms that love’s innate promise of eternity into an expression of his total yes of unconditional faithfulness to his Bride. In exchanging their marriage vows, the spouses receive the Holy Spirit, who seals their mutual self-giving within the indestructible, or indissoluble, love between Christ and the Church. Just as the unbreakable bond of natural marriage is rooted in the Creator’s love, the indissolubility of Christian marriage (which reinforces the bond of natural marriage) is rooted in the love of Christ. The husband and wife share in the indestructible union between Christ and the Church, which is the real basis of their fidelity” --“Called to Love” (180-181) by Fr. Jose Granados and Carl Anderson

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"In seeking the deepest roots of the struggle between the 'culture of life' and the 'culture of death,' we cannot restrict ourselves to the perverse idea of freedom mentioned above.  We have to go to the heart of the tragedy being experienced by modern man: the eclipse of the sense of God and of man, typical of a social and cultural climate dominated by secularism, which, with its ubiquitous tentacles, succeeds at times in putting Christian communities themselves to the test.  Those who allow themselves to be influenced by this climate easily fall into a sad vicious cycle: when the sense of God is lost, there is also a tendency to lose the sense of man, of his dignity and his life; in turn, the systematic violation of the moral law, especially in the serious matter of respect for human life and its dignity, produces a kind of progressive darkening of the capacity to discern God's living and saving presence." -- SAINT John Paul II (Evangelium Vitae #21)

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"True love, love that is interiorly full, is one in which we choose a person for his own sake; thus in it a man chooses a woman and a woman a man not merely as a 'partner' for sexual life, but as a person to whom he or she wants to give his or her life." -- Bl. John Paul II in "Love and Responsibility"

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Quite possibly the most succinct, poignant definition of the new evangelization I have ever heard:

"What's new about the new evangelization? I'll tell you what's new about it.  It's intended for the baptized.  In other words, we're not targeting the pagans with the new evangelization.  We're talking about those who have actually been baptized and confirmed and perhaps married in the Church.  That's what John Paul II had in mind with the new evangelization.  Doesn't it occur to anybody that that is an extraordinary admission by a pope?  That that vast number of those who claim to be Catholic are themselves sacramentalized but not evangelized?" -- Al Kresta on "Kresta in the Afternoon" on October 21, 2013

Happy feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe

Three years ago when Kenosis: Teen Disciples for Love and Life began, the high school students chose two patrons -- Bl. Chiara "Luce" Badano and St. Maximilian Kolbe.  Today is the latter's feast, and in his honor, a quote from him:

"No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hetacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we are ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?"

Quote book -- World Youth Day edition

"And then, Jesus did not say: “One of you go”, but “All of you go”: we are sent together. Dear young friends, be aware of the companionship of the whole Church and also the communion of the saints on this mission. When we face challenges together, then we are strong, we discover resources we did not know we had. Jesus did not call the Apostles to live in isolation, he called them to form a group, a community." -- Pope Francis at World Youth Day 2013

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"Every Christian marriage is blessed by God and is fruitful in him, whether through the blessing of children, or the blessing of sacrifice.  If God chooses the second alternative, the spiritual fruitfulness of marriage is increased and widened out invisibly so that it flows into the whole community." -- Adrienne von Speyr

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"Clearly, then, the fundamental problem of youth is profoundly personal. In life, youth is when we come to know ourselves. It is also a time of communion. Young people, whether boys or girls, know they must live for and with others, they know that their life has meaning to the extent that it becomes a free gift for others. Here is the origin of all vocations -- whether to priesthood or religious life, or to marriage and family. The call to marriage is also a vocation, a gift from God. 

Jerzy Ciesielski and his wife

"I will never forget a young man, an engineering student in Krakow, who everyone knew aspired with determination to holiness. This was his life plan. He knew he had been 'created for great things,' as Saint Stanislaus Kostka once expressed it. And at the same time, he had no doubt that his vocation was neither to priesthood nor to religious life. He knew he was called to remain the secular world. Technical work, the study of engineering, was his passion. He sought a companion for his life and sought her on his knees, in prayer. I will never forget the conversation in which, after a special day of retreat, he said to me: 'I think that this is the woman who should be my wife, that it is God who has given her to me.' It was almost as if he were following not only the voice of his own wishes but above all the voice of God Himself. He knew that all good things come from Him, and he made a good choice. I am speaking of Jerzy Ciesielski, who died in a tragic accident in the Sudan, where he had been invited to teach at the University. The cause for his beatification is under way." 

-- Bl. John Paul II in "Crossing the Threshold of Hope"

Happy birthday to Archbishop Fulton Sheen!

It's the 118th birthday of Venerable Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.  Anyone who has listened to his talks or watched a few moments of his network television shows knows how captivating Archbishop Sheen was in his delivery of the faith.  And then there are his books that taught with a simplicity and a depth that are quite remarkable.  

In honor of the day, here are a few of my favorite quotes from Archbishop Sheen.

• “To a great extent the level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood.  When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her.  The higher her virtue, the more her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her.  The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.” ("The World's First Love")

• "There are not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions of people who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church — which is, of course, quite a different thing."

• "Those who glorify the ego, or the seeming-self, often develop a vicarious interest in solving problems which do not concern them, as a substitute for tackling their own problem of selfishness.  One wonders if the contemporary interest in movie murder mysteries, thrillers, and newspaper horror stories is not an admission that millions of men feel the need to solve important personal problems; but rather than facing the riddles of self, which are indeed difficult, they shift the problem and study baffling events in other lives, instead.  The man who has horrors tormenting his own soul may like to hear of greater horrors in others, or to see them on the screen, in order that he may for a moment forget his own hell within." ("Lift Up Your Heart")

• "But the Catholic mother finds a model of pregnancy in the Mother who began the bringing of God to man. Physical trials become more bearable when she sees herself a co-worker with God in the making of life.  A dying man in a country region of France, unable to receive the Eucharist, asked that poor person be brought to him so that he might at least have Christ in a lesser way.  The woman with the child may sometimes be unable to receive Holy Communion, but she can, with an act of faith, see that she already is bearing a lesser host within the tabernacle of her body." ("Three to Get Married")

• "All love craves a cross by the very fact that love is forgetful of self for others." ("Three to Get Married")

• "A woman may love God mediately through creatures, or she may love God immediately, as Mary did, but to be happy she must bring the Divine to the human." (The World's First Love"

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To married couples -- "Your vocation is not easy to live, especially today, but the vocation to love is a wonderful thing, it is the only force that can truly transform the cosmos, the world." -- Pope  Benedict XVI

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"Nowhere is the dogma of the worth of a man better preserved and practiced than in the family. Everywhere else man may be reverenced and respected for what he can do, for his wealth, his power, his influence, or his charm; but in the family a person is valued because he is. Existence is worth in the home." -- Archbishop Fulton Sheen

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“Femininity is a conquering and appealing feature; femininity in a soul consecrated to God should be so sweet and gentle to draw anyone to it, and then lead them to God... I am glad to be a woman, because the Lord gave to women the gift of intuitive intelligence and it's so good to sense other people's needs, and to be maternal and understanding...”. -- Ven. Carla Ronci

Quote book -- First Sunday of Advent

"My mother had this little idiosyncrasy of always wanting to see how the book ended.  When she began to read, she would always read the end, and then she would diligently go back to the beginning and read the book through.It used to amuse me as a child, and I started to do the same thing because you always like to do what your mother does.  

We want to see how it is going to turn out.  And we do know.  We know what is at the end of the path.  And so, if we die of anticipation, we should be dying of joy, dear sisters.  When we are not anticipating rightly because we are not going firmly forward on the path, is it not because we are anticipating lesser things?  I listed some of them here: What do we anticipate?  Do we waste our energy sometimes on anticipating how it is going to turn out?  We think: things are going to get worse and worse, and I don't think I can do this, and I don't think I can make that much effort, and maybe it won't come out right anyway, and I'd better not do it at all because maybe I can't -- and so I excuse myself from effort.

This is what we do.  We anticipate the wrong things.  Why do we not anticipate the best things?  Because even in the things that cause us the most suffering, God always has in mind something wonderful for which we need to be purified by suffering.  And so we know where the path ends." -- Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C. in "Come Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Art of Waiting" 

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"In the name of liberation from male 'domination,' women must not appropriate to themselves male characteristics contrary to their own feminine 'originality.'  There is a well-founded fear that if they take this path, women will not 'reach fulfillment,' but instead will deform and lose what constitutes their essential richness.  It is indeed an enormous richness.  In the biblical description, the words of the first man at the sight of the woman who had been created are words of admiration and enchantment, words which fill the whole history of man on earth." -- Bl. John Paul II 

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"Man needs this loving look.  He needs to know that he is loved, loved eternally and chosen from eternity.  At the same time, this eternal love of divine election accompanies man during life as Christ's look of love.  And perhaps most powerfully at the moment of trial, humiliation, persecution, defeat, when our humanity is as it were blotted out in the eyes of other people, insulted and trampled upon.  At that moment the awareness that the Father has always loved us in his Son, that Christ always loves each of us, becomes a solid support for our whole human existence.  When everything would make us doubt ourselves and the meaning of our life, then this look of Christ, the awareness of the love that in him has shown itself more powerful than any evil and destruction, this awareness enables us to survive.

"My wish for you then is that you may experience what the young man in the Gospel experienced: 'Jesus, looking upon him, loved him.'" -- Bl. John Paul II ("Dilecti Amici" #7)