Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Meanings of Suffering and A Holy Death

+Father Kenneth Baker, S.J., reminds us that Ash Wednesday is reality check even for the rich and powerful in Dust thou art.

+Pope Benedict XVI encourages us to reflect on the meaning of suffering.

+Father Antoninus Wall, O.P., asks - and answers - thirteen questions about terminal illness.

+Bishop John Steinbock of Fresno died, age 73, of lung cancer. He wrote on the blessings of cancer.

+Monsignor Ronald Knox tells us a holy death does not mean that we should not fear death. Or what was our Lord doing in Gethsemani?

+A journalist asked Mother Teresa of Calcultta, "Are you afraid to die?" Here is what she said to him.

+ Before leaving Portugal, Pope Benedict asked the suffering and dying to help save the world.

+Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, California, explains with simple and honest wisdom why sick and dying pilgrims to Lourdes who are not physically healed, are not disappointed.

+ After he contemplated and knelt before the Shroud of Turin, the Holy Father told his listeners that in the hour of our extreme solitude and even in our death, we will we will never be alone.

+ Pope Benedict XVI says that Christ our Lord wants us in Heaven with Him.

+ Yvonne taught her friends and family how to let others serve her in Christ-like love.

+ J. R. R. Tolkien, who wrote The Lord of the Rings, according to scholar Ralph C. Wood, said that modern people commit the heresy of "mortalism" - the belief that life is an end in itself. Tolkien wrote his masterpiece to help us see otherwise.

+Cardinal Angelo Comastri stares down suffering, pain, and death. We do not fly from nothingness to nothingness. God is in the pain.

+A must-read for understanding redemptive suffering, or
offering it up.

+Monsignor Charles Pope preaches a funeral homily and confronts his listeners - and us:
You are going to die. Are you ready to meet God?

+Frank Weathers quotes Blaise Pascal's beautiful - and long - sentence about holy dying from a letter to his sister,
here.

+Pope John Paul II
on Purgatory.

+Bishop Wenskie speaks words of hope, promise, and eternal life in
Death and Hospice.

+ Dawn Eden at Headlinebistro.com comments on the first guide for dying well since
since St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Preparation for Death.

+ In 1957, Jacques Fesch died under the guillotine for the crime of murder. In prison, he underwent a profound conversion. He tells of a
little door through which we all must, and may, pass strengthened by God's grace.

+ Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, tells how our suffering and dying become freedom, united with Christ
in the praetorium.

+ Monsignor Charles Pope on
the ‘beauty’ of dying.

+ Archbishop Vincent Nichols in England rejects the notion of a "right to death" as in the case of the conductor and wife who recently committed the mortal sin of
"joint suicide."

+ Awesome Marian chivalry in action. His last words were
I forgive you.

+ Even the very young can live, suffer, and die in the beauty of the Lord. Like
Gloria.

+ A pharmacist who sees meaning and purpose in human suffering asks,
Could our persistent search for the utopian, hardship-free world, be blinding us to the great value of suffering?

+ A prayer written by Ruth, a mother of eight who died of cancer, for asking your Guardian Angel to
go to Mass for you when you can't.

+ Pope Benedict says that Heaven begins on earth, now. And if we say "Yes" like Mary,
"in the same measure of this our 'yes,' this mysterious interchange will also happen for us and in us: We will be assumed into the dignity of the One who has assumed our humanity."

+ St. Francis de Sales
on Purgatory.

+ The curious smile of Elder Joseph. The smile that came after
he died.

+ On indulgences: by
Jimmy Akin, Catholic Answers, and the Vatican.

+ Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk shares his expertise on
The Authentic Transformation of “Useless” Human Suffering.

+ Saint John Vianney on
what souls in Purgatory can do for their benefactors.

+ Far, far from worthless, our suffering is, if offered up,
an apostolate.

+ The incomparable British convert, Monsignor Ronald Knox, on the least appreciated friend of the human race,
Mort.

+ Amy Welborn ponders the loss of a
friend and her husband.

+ Zenit tells the touching story of
a woman called ‘Anna’ and the Pope. "Like the Virgin and so many other worthy and holy people," continued Anna, "I didn’t want to rebel, but wanted to say: 'Here I am. I'm ready ...'"

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