22 February 2012

On Wednesday night we continued working on the letter of Paul to the Philippians.  We read, and completed all the commentary and questions for Philippians chapter 2.  In the book we answered question through number 13 on page 97.

The Pope's audience message:
Today the Church celebrates Ash Wednesday, the beginning of her Lenten journey towards Easter. The entire Christian community is invited to live this period of forty days as a pilgrimage of repentance, conversion and renewal. In the Bible, the number forty is rich in symbolism. It recalls Israel’s journey in the desert, a time of expectation, purification and closeness to the Lord, but also a time of temptation and testing. It also evokes Jesus’ own sojourn in the desert at the beginning of his public ministry, a time of profound closeness to the Father in prayer, but also of confrontation with the mystery of evil. The Church’s Lenten discipline is meant to help deepen our life of faith and our imitation of Christ in his paschal mystery. In these forty days may we draw nearer to the Lord by meditating on his word and example, and conquer the desert of our spiritual aridity, selfishness and materialism. For the whole Church may this Lent be a time of grace in which God leads us, in union with the crucified and risen Lord, through the experience of the desert to the joy and hope brought by Easter.

Special Announcement

We will NOT be meeting at St. Matthew's on Wednesday the 8th.  We are attending Fr. Barron's lecture at Elmhurst College.  Details can be found at http://public.elmhurst.edu/calendar?eventID=131537208

1 February 2012

Last night we began working on Paul's letter to the Philippians.  As you'll remember, that's where he was when we left him at the end of chapter 16 in Acts.  While this letter was written many years later, it was sent to the people we have been reading about in Acts.  We read chapter one of the letter, and the first page-and-a-half of the commentary on pages 91-92.  We answered questions 2-5.  As we go we will be filling in question 1.

From this week's Papal audience:
In our continuing catechesis on Christian prayer, we now turn to the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane, the Garden of Olives, following the Last Supper. As the Lord prepares to face his death, he prays alone, as the eternal Son in communion with the Father. Yet he also desires the company of Peter, James and John; their presence is an invitation to every disciple to draw near to Jesus along the way of the Cross. Christ’s prayer reveals his human fear and anguish in the face of death, and at the same time shows his complete obedience to the will of the Father. His words, “not what I want, but what you want” (Mk 14:36), teach us that only in complete abandonment to God’s will do we attain the full measure of our humanity. In Christ’s “yes” to the Father, Adam’s sin is redeemed and humanity attains true freedom, the freedom of the children of God. May our contemplation of the Lord’s prayer in Gethsemane help us better to discern God’s will for us and for our lives, and sustain our daily petition that his will be done, “on earth as it is in heaven”.