“You want to do something for the Lord … do it. Whatever you feel needs to be done, even though you’re shaking in your boots, you’re scared to death – take the first step forward. The grace comes with that one step and you get the grace as you step. Being afraid is not a problem; it’s doing nothing when you’re afraid.”
Pierce Brosnan knows he has had a wonderful life and still has, but his faith has been his “constant” support. “God has been good to me. My faith has been good to me in the moments of deepest suffering, doubt and fear. It is a constant, the language of prayer,” he stated in Irish TV RTE’s Late Late Show.
The feast of Saint Cecilia that we celebrate on November 22, reminds us once again to understand the community value of music. Good music strengthens social bonds in a positive sense, while bad music strengthens them in a negative sense. I have often related a fact as an example. When I was a professor in Macau, I gave my college students a theme, to explain their favorite song to me. Some entertained me about bands and songs honestly unknown to me, but what struck me was the fact that some of my students preferred songs that almost incited suicide.
The liturgical reform was made for pastoral reasons: to bring the people closer to the liturgy and to make it understood by the ordinary people who frequent it. Isn’t a return to the precise observance of the rubrics and the literal pronunciation of prayers out of place, when a looser dynamic helps to capture the attention of the faithful, especially children?
The concept of Christian spirituality is complex and very rich, indeed. Hereafter we mention and explain briefly its main dimensions.
In the seminary, we were taught that the liturgy must be easily understood by the people, but often in its texts, there are technical terms, proper to systematic theology. In the new editions of the liturgical books, there is a continuous effort to propose translations that are more and more suited to common speech. How to respond to this need without indulging in an annoying and continuous change of language?
The Curé of Ars was very humble, yet as a priest, he was conscious of being an immense gift to his people: “A good shepherd, a pastor after God’s heart, is the greatest treasure which the good Lord can grant to a parish, and one of the most precious gifts of divine mercy”.
As a child her family and her uncle and aunty shared the same house – 22 people crammed into two small flats above the family shop with no fresh tap water. The house later burned down. Her father was paralyzed at 40, her priest brother died at 33, the other brother seven years later. Schidell’s husband died of Alzheimers. Shidell said faith got her through those challenges.
I am a seminarian and I really like your editorial line, which is precise and moderate. I want to ask you the following question: Didn’t the Council simplify the liturgy and many other things? Why again do we want to complicate things with a return to a ‘rubricism’ that is now past?
When we come to the month of November it is but natural that we are mindful of our deceased faithful, as we celebrate the liturgical feast of the All Souls on November 2. It is obvious that we fix our minds on that great mystery that awaits us and that frightens us. We cannot pretend indifference to the most significant passage of our existence, the one on which some of us have bet in a Pascalian way for future life.
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