World Mission Sunday, organized by the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, is a day set aside for Catholics worldwide to recommit themselves to the Church’s missionary activity through prayer and sacrifice. In 2012, World Mission Sunday is celebrated on October 21.
Annually, World Mission Sunday is celebrated on the next-to-last Sunday in October.
On Thursday of this week (October 11), the Church will be celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council and the 20th Anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s promulgation with the initiation of a very special Year of Faith.
In his apostolic letter Porta Fidei, Pope Benedict XVI called for this special year —which will conclude on November 24, 2013 — with the primary aim “to arouse in every believer the aspiration to profess the faith in fullness and with renewed conviction, with confidence and hope.” He also intends this year to be “a good opportunity to intensify the celebration of the faith in the liturgy, especially in the Eucharist,” and to “intensify the witness of charity.”
As the faithful enter this Year of Faith, they will be called to give witness to their faith more and more. In Porta Fidei, Pope Benedict wrote, “faith grows when it is lived as an experience of love received and when it is communicated as an experience of grace and joy.”
In a time when the virality of a message and success in communications is often measured by the number of views a video gets on YouTube and how many times an article is shared on Facebook, it makes sense that Catholics would feel like their message and witness is not easily or rapidly spread through the world today.
Mother Church Rejoices! With his typically optimistic words, Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962. Today, we share that same joy as we commemorate the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Council that Pope John frequently referred to as “a new Pentecost.”
The first document issued by the Council was the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. It was one of only four Constitutions (which are of the highest rank of Church teachings) issued by the Council. The goals of the entire Council are laid out in the first paragraph: to increase the vigor of people’s Christian life, to adapt those things which may be changed to the needs of our own times, to promote Christian unity, and to help all people come to know Christ in the Church.
“Don’t you want to be a teacher?” asked my friend Joan just weeks before we were to graduate from Madonna High School in Aurora, Ill.
This was the all-girls’ class of 1945, where we were taught by Franciscans Sisters. We had both been accepted by St. Ben’s in Minnesota, where we would be taught by Benedictines.
I was confused. “What do you mean, a teacher? I don’t want to be a nun, you know.”
Are you checking out the obituaries every day like Mark Twain did to see if you are on the list?
Or do you just average the ages to hopefully find some of the deceased are older than you? Either way, it’s a sure sign that you’re aware that you aren’t getting any younger. You are nearing the finish line. Ouch!
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As a child I idolized my grandfather. One of my fondest memories is of him taking us to a neighborhood restaurant that had a little juke box in each booth. He would give my sisters and me a few quarters and we’d flip to the oldies to play Grandpa’s favorites.
From time to time I still hear those classics playing in my memory from “Moon River” and “Doctor Zhivago” to “Love is a Many Splendored Thing.”
Q: My father is an alcoholic and was never “involved’ in my life as I grew up.
My mother passed away five years ago after a lifetime of enabling him.
Now he is ill and wants help from me, but I don’t feel much like helping since he was never there for me. I feel bad that I have these feelings, it is not very Christian, is it? (From Beloit)
Q: I understand the importance of Power of Attorney for both health care and finances, but my mother, aged 82, says, “I have a will and that is good enough!”
I have not been able to successfully convince her that she needs to make more formal arrangements. What can I say to her? (A daughter in Portage).
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A friend of mine who is a nun and fellow journalist, asked me to write a column on civility. But my immediate response was that civility didn’t really apply to the social justice and peace theme of my column.
But then the obvious hit me.
