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PAGE 4—The Southern Cross, December 16,1976
One More Week
Not too long after the Annunciation
when Mary conceived Jesus, she set out
to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, whom the
angel had said was now six months
pregnant. It was not to see if the angel
was telling the truth that she made the
journey but to see what help she could
be to her cousin.
On this fourth Sunday of Advent, the
Church in the Gospel selection tells us
what happened as Mary entered
Elizabeth’s house. The older woman said
to the younger one: “Blessed are you
among women and blessed is the fruit of
your womb. But who am I that the
mother of my Lord should come to me?
The moment your greeting sounded in
my ears, the baby stirred in my womb
for joy. Blessed is she who trusted that
the Lord’s words to her would be
fulfilled.”
How often the Church invites us to
look to Mary that we might learn from
her and in this Gospel selection
Elizabeth clearly points out what . we
must imitate: “Blessed is she who
trusted that the Lord’s words to her
would be fulfilled.”
And what an appropriate time to call
his trust of Mary to our attention as we
prepare to celebrate the fulfillment of
God’s promise to His chosen people -
the birth of His Son.
At the end of this week, we will
celebrate an event that took place in
history; an event that takes place each
day of our lives - Christ present not only
in our midst but within us. To really
sense this truth requires trust in God’s
word on our part.
And look what happens when we trust
in God and like Mary think not so much
about our own “condition,” our own
needs but the conditions and needs of
others to whom we, like Mary, have been
called to minister. Look what can
happen -- we can bring joy and peace and
happiness by the very sound of our
voice. We can help people worried at
their worth as did Elizabeth by helping
them know that at Christmas Christ'
came for all men, that He comes now
and everyday to those who will receive
Him.
In this year 1976, there are more
people in the world who do not believe
the Christmas message than there are
who do. Many of these people are our
neighbors and our friends. There are
some who have never really understood
what Christmas is all about and others
who for one reason or another no longer
trust in God’s revelation.
Can we do something about this? Can
we help others to experience His
presence, His love, His concern? Yes, if
like Mary we trust that the Lord’s words
will be fulfilled.
May we experience to the fullest the
joys of celebrating His birth so that at
the sound of our “Merry Christmas”
people will know it is His birthday we
celebrate.
(Reprinted from THE CATHOLIC BANNER,
Charleston, S.C.)
OUR PARISH
A Letter From The Pope
You can’t be gentle all the time. Pope
Paul has gone to great lengths to be
gentle with traditionalist Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre, but the archbishop has
failed to respond in obedience.
In a letter earlier this fall the Pope
told the archbishop, “In effect, you and
those who are following you are
endeavoring to come to a standstill at a
given moment in the life of the Church.”
The October 11 letter, recently
released, was sent to Lefebvre one
month after he visited the Pope at the
Vatican September 11. The archbishop
has rejected Vatican II dfecrees and has
been the object of widespread publicity
in recent months as he has celebrated
Tridentine Masses in various parts of
Europe.
In June this year the archbishop
defied a direct order from the Pope not
to ordain seminarians at the seminary he
founded in Econe, Switzerland. In his
letter, the Pope told the archbishop that
while pluralism in the Church is
legitimate, it must be a licit pluralism
rooted in obedience.
The Pope said the archbishop, rather
than practicing obedience, had
propagated and organized a rebellion.
This, he added, “is the essential issue” in
the archbishop’s regard.
In his letter, the Pope outlined his
conditions for rectifying matters with
Lefebvre, including a call for a
declaration from the archbishop
affirming adherence to Vatican II, a
declaration that, among other things,
retracts accusations or insinuations
levelled against the Pope.
The letter is a strong one. Our Holy
Father has demonstrated heroic restraint
and boundless charity in this whole
matter.
But now the Church is threatened by
the possibility of schism, and
Archbishop Lefebvre has been directed
to obey. Still, he has not been
excommunicated and this stands as
witness to Pope Paul’s love of the
Church of Jesus Christ. He clearly will
not abandon any possibility for unity..
The Sustaining Motives
Rev. James Wilmes
According to a fable, a dog once boasted he
could outrun any creature on four legs. One
day he chased a rabbit that easily outdistanced
him. At this, the other dogs began to mock him
as a “blowhard,” but he only smiled.
“Remember,” he said, “the rabbit was running
for his life, while I was only running for the fun
of it.”
Well, neither running scared, nor running for
fun, are sustaining motives for the long haul. It
was a third generation of the Vanderbilt family
who illustrated this: “I was never destined to be
happy; I had nothing to struggle for or strive
against.”
What are some of the great and sustaining
motives? The poet, Edward Guest, named one.
“To leave some simple mark behind, to keep
my having lived in mind.” Ben Franklin named
another; “What is the noblest question in life?
What good may I do in it?”
Again, think how many mortals have been
sustained by hope, the universal virtue that
stays when nothing else is left. Faith is another
undying emotion, “the antiseptic of the soul.”
Still another is an undiscourageable good will -
the desire to see everyone and everything
working together. And of course, the sense of
obedience to the Divine Will, to do what the
Lord expects of us.
Yes, there are motivations enough to sustain
one to the bitter or better end. The sad fact is
that so many men and women have no higher
ambition than to gratify some passing whim or
gain some trivial satisfaction.
RESOLUTION: Be “something beautiful for
God,” one of His great masterpieces, so He can
look on us “well pleased” as He did on Jesus at
His baptism. Use His talents well, daily, for not
other reason than that He be pleased with us, as
parents are with good children, a farmer with a
good crop, an artist with a good work. Each of
us is truly unique in God’s loving presence.
SCRIPTURE: “Take heed not to do your
good before man in order to be seen by them;
otherwise, you shall have no reward with your
Father in heaven. And when you fast, do not
look gloomy like hypocrites who disfigure their
faces in order to appear to men as fasting.
Anoint your head to be seen fasting by your
Father who will reward you.” Mt. 6, 1-16.
PRAYER: Just as I am, thine own to be, to
live the best that I can be, for truth and
righteousness and Thee, Jesus, Lord of my life,
I come. Amen.
The Southern Cross
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A Rededicated Nation
Joseph Breig
At their Fall meeting in Washington, the U.
S. bishops took many steps that made headlines
in the newspapers. But in the fully Catholic
view - the view that sees everything ultimately
dependent upon God -- the most important
action of the bishops was one that got no
mention in most of the news media.
I refer to the rededication of America to the
Virgin Mary under the title with which she
introduced herself in appearing to Bernadette at
Lourdes. “I,” she said, “am the Immaculate
Conception.” Bernadette did not understand;
had never before heard the words; but she
reported them faithfully and undeviatingly.
The rededication of America took place in
the splendid National Shrine of the Immaculate
Conception in the nation’s capital - an edifice
erected over a period of many years with the
contributions of generations of American
Catholics.
One of the striking features of the shrine is
the fact that the many chapels are donated by,
and celebrate the cultural and religious
backgrounds of, the nationalities out of which
was formed the one-in-many, many-in-one
unity of the United States.
The rededication of this country to its
patroness, by the nation’s bishops assembled at
Mass, was the first such reaffirmation in 130
years. America was first dedicated to the
Immaculate Conception in 1846 by the then
bishops meeting at the Council of Baltimore.
That was eight years before Mary’s immaculate
conception was defined as a matter of faith in
which the whole worldwide Church joins in
believing.
The meaning of the Immaculate Conception
can be simply stated. Because she was chosen to
be the woman from whom God, in his
incarnation as one of us in Jesus, would take his
human nature, Mary was sanctified from the
instant she was conceived in her mother’s body.
Adam, in sinning, lost for us the supernatural
inheritance of perfect concordance of soul and
body and oneness with our creator. There was
introduced into humankind a disorder, a
turning from holiness, which we all know that
we bear as a burden and a sorrow.
From that disorder, Mary was preserved from
the beginning of her existence. To her was
applied, by anticipation, the saving sacrifice
with which her Son was to redeem his people.
Thus she could say to St. Bernadette, “I am the
Immaculate Conception.”
This 200th year of the American nation was
an ideal moment for a rededication of the
United States to the Immaculate Conception.
Not only was it a signal celebration of our
bicentennial; it was also a prayer for America to
be delivered from the fear and hatred of new
life, the ignorance about the rights of the
unborn, which is slaughtering a million infants
in the womb each year.
Even before the Declaration of Independence
which asserted the equal rights of all human
beings from the moment of their Creation,
there were perceptive men who warned that
this country, under God’s justice, must some
day pay for the crime of slavery. Now we are
appealing for the prayers of Mary that America
may soon halt the crime of abortion, through a
Human Life Amendment protecting all human
life from the moment of conception, the
moment in which we are created - and created
equal, in the eyes of God and of all right and
good human law.
Called
By
Name
Georgia Carolina Ministry
Sister Genevieve Sachse, O.S.B.
Associate Director
of Vocations
Archdiocese of Atlanta
HOSEA - Call to Fidelity
The book of Hosea is one of the richest in
the imagery of Israel as the unfaithful wife and
God, as the relentless, everfaithful Lover.
As time after time Hosea went to bring back
his prostitute wife, he came to understand how,
in a much more dramatic way, God called Israel
back to His love.
Often the first reaction of the person
challenged to consider a Church vocation is
“Who me? I’m not the type,” by which type is
generally meant the ultra pious and proper
person. That characature is hardly the criteria
used by Christ when He picked his motley crew
of apostles. Jesus’ criteria, even for working
miracles, was that of faith, fidelity to His
promise of salvation.
The call of every Christian, and in a special
way, the call of the priest and religious, is a call
to fidelity in spite of - not because of - the
kind of person he or she is.
Sometimes, like the pharisee who went up to
the Temple to pray, one hasn’t been very bad
and may actually have really worked at being
good. We rarely see ourselves as having been
particularly unfaithful, and therefore, it is easy
to slip into the subconscious assumption of
having “earned” our way into the House of the
Lord.
Saul of Tarsus fit that picture and had to be
knocked off his horse in order to see - not how
faithful HE had or had not been - but how
faithful the Lord had been regardless of Paul’s
own doing. The same is true for us.
Over and over again in his epistles Paul
hammered away at the fact that even the good
deeds we do are contingent upon our faith, our
fidelity, and that very same faith is itself a gift
of a totally faithful God who has loved us into
goodness.
Everyone who responds to a call to ministry
must at some time be overwhelmed at the
awesomeness of the fidelity of a God Who
would call someone like himself or herself,
sensing in some way the immensity of the
condescension in such love. The old mystique
by which a priest or religious was somehow
automatically elevated to a higher plane of
holiness by the fact of one’s state of life, missed
one of the most magnificent aspects of the
mystery of God’s grace which faith-fully
operates in us day after day after day.
The call to fidelity is our call to respond to a
faithful God; our fidelity lies in our recognition
of and our response to that fact.
What One Person Can Do
Rev. Richard Armstrong
KAY F. MARSOLAN, COUNTY PLANNER
As Director of Planning for Douglas County,
Georgia, Kay F. Marsolan serves as guardian for
the fastest growing county in the Atlanta
metropolitan area. It is the home of over
39,000 people, and also contains the Dog River,
described by environmentalist John Milton as
“one of the most beautiful rivers in North
America.”
A native North Carolinian, Ms. Marsolan
studied at Marshall University, Huntington,
West Virginia, in preparation for a career in the
foreign service. But after graduation, she landed
a job with the Kentucky State Planning
Department, becoming the first female planner
to be certified by that state. She moved onto a
similar job with the state of Georgia and then
to an educational television station in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1973, she joined
the Douglas County planning department.
When her boss left, Kay Marsolan was asked
to take over the department. She did, bringing
to the job 14 years of planning experience.
“What my goal is for this county,” she says, “is
an equal balance of residential, commercial and
industrial.”
Out of a conviction that “citizens definitely
have a role to play - particularly in zoning
hearings,” Ms. Marsolan frequently speaks - and
listens - at civic clubs and other organizations.
She wants to see Douglas County develop as a
community.
“I love this place,” she explains, “where you
can start with the new, the fresh ideas.”
One person with creativity can do a lot. Kay
Marsolan is proving it.
For a free copy of the Christopher News
Notes, “Build Up, Don’t Tear Down, send a
stamped, self-addressed envelope to The
Christophers, 12 E. 48th St., New York, N. Y.
10017.