(Vatican Radio) On Saturday evening, Pope Francis celebrated Mass at the Roman church of “Ognissanti” – All Saints’ – in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the first Mass offered in Italian.
It was in the church of Ognissanti, fifty years ago, on the First Sunday of Lent, 1965, that Pope Paul VI offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass predominantly using the vernacular – the language of the people. Describing the event, Pope Paul said, “Across the world this date marks the first time a new way of praying, of celebrating Holy Mass has been inaugurated.”
In his homily on Saturday, Pope Francis recalled the Gospel account of the cleansing of the temple, and Jesus’ famous remark, “Do not make My Father’s house a marketplace!” This expression, the Pope said, did not just refer to those doing business in the temple; it refers to a certain type of religiosity. Jesus’ gesture is one of “cleansing, of purification.” God is not pleased with material offerings based on personal interests. Rather, Jesus is calling us to “authentic worship, to the correspondence between liturgy and life – a call that is true for every age, and also for us today.”
Recalling the Second Vatican Council’s constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, Pope Francis said, “the Church is calling us to have and to promote an authentic liturgical life, so that there may be harmony between what the liturgy celebrates, and what we live in our daily existence.” The liturgy, he said, “is the privileged place to hear the voice of the Lord, who guides us on the path of righteousness and Christian perfection.”
The liturgy, he continued, invites us to a journey of conversion and penance, especially during Lent, “the time of interior renewal, of the remission of sins, the time in which we are called to rediscover the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, that makes us go from the darkness of sin to the light of grace and friendship with Jesus.” The Pope said we must never forget “the great strength that this Sacrament has for the Christian life: it makes us grow in union with God, makes us regain lost joy and experience the consolation of knowing we are personally welcomed by the merciful embrace of the Father.”
Pope Francis concluded his homily noting that the church of Ognissanti was built “thanks to the apostolic zeal of Saint Luigi Orione.” And he recalled that it was here, “in a certain sense,” that Blessed Paul VI “inaugurated the liturgical reform” with the celebration of the Mass “in the language of the people.” Pope Francis expressed his hope that this occasion would revive in everyone a great “love for the house of God.”
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) On Saturday evening, Pope Francis celebrated Mass at the Roman church of “Ognissanti” – All Saints’ – in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the first Mass offered in Italian. It was in the church of Ognissanti, fifty years ago, on the First Sunday of Lent, 1965, that Pope Paul VI offered the…
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THE PATH TO FREEDOM Most of us, if we were asked “Does the phrase ‘the Ten Commandments’ appear in the Bible?” would likely get it wrong, because the answer is “no.” “The Ten Commandments” is a post?biblical, phrase that developed along with an image of God as police officer that is not found in today’s…
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Bulletin: March 8, 2015-Third Sunday of Lent
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis received members of the Communion and Liberation movement – at least 80 thousand of them, from nearly 50 nations – on Saturday, in St. Peter’s Square, to remember the group’s founder, Msgr. Luigi Giussani, and to mark the 60 th anniversary of the movement’s founding.
CL began in 1954 in Italy, at a secondary school in Milan that followed the classical curriculum, when Father Luigi Giussani started an initiative of Christian presence, to teach the basics of the faith to those who did not know them, primarily by lives of radical and radically authentic witness to the transformative power of Christ and the Good News of His resurrection in all areas of human endeavor, and down to the most intimate depths of each and every human soul.
The name, Communion and Liberation, appeared for the first time in 1969: it brings together the conviction that the Christian event, lived in communion, is the foundation of the authentic liberation of the human person.
In his remarks to the members of the movement in St Peter’s Square on Saturday, Pope Francis recalled that bringing those who most need it to an encounter with Christ is the central ethos of Communion and Liberation. “Centered on Christ and in the Gospel,” he said, “you can be the arms, the hands, the feet, the mind and the heart of a Church that is ‘out and about’.”
The Holy Father went on to say, “The way of the Church is that of going abroad in order to seek out those who are far off, in the peripheries, to serve Jesus in every person who is marginalized, abandoned, without faith, disappointed with the Church, a prisoner of his or her own selfishness.”
(from Vatican Radio)…