On
the National Thanksgiving Day, which was established in late 18th
Century to commemorate Poland's patriotic struggle for independence,
thousands of the inhabitants of Warsaw took part in an annual open-air
Holy Mass, also massively attended by top state officials with the
President-Elect Andrzej Sebastian Duda in person.
During
the Holy Communion a sudden gust of wind blew off one of the
consecrated Hosts from the chalice that was held by a priest giving the
Corpus Christi to the gathered believers. Unseen by any of the
participants, a small Host dropped on the ground and then driven by the
wind rolled along the pavement for a several meters before It finally
stopped in front of the kneeling and praying newly elected President
Andrzej Duda. Having spotted the Holy Host rolling on the ground, the
President spontaneously rushed to catch It with his hands and then
strode up to the altar where he handed It over to the Cardinal Nycz, who
was celebrating the Mass.
This
unprecedented event was caught by the camera eye and could be observed
on TV screens by millions of Poles all across the country.
Toward the end of the presidency of George H.W. Bush, America stood alone at the top of the world — the sole superpower.
After five weeks of "shock and awe" and 100 hours of combat,
Saddam's army had fled Kuwait back up the road to Basra and Bagdad.
Our Cold War adversary was breaking apart into 15 countries. The
Berlin Wall had fallen. Germany was reunited. The captive nations of
Central and Eastern Europe were breaking free.
Bush I had mended fences with Beijing after the 1989 massacre in
Tiananmen Square. Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin were friends.
The president declared the coming of a "new world order." And
neocons were chattering about a new "unipolar world" and the "benevolent
global hegemony" of the United States.
Consider now the world our next president will inherit.
Sir Winston Churchill's legacy as wartime
leader, statesman and a man was remembered as a sculpture and stained
glass window were unveiled to mark the 50th anniversary of his death.
Sir Winston Churchill's legacy as wartime leader, statesman and a man
was remembered as a sculpture and stained glass window were unveiled to
mark the 50th anniversary of his death.
In the quiet parish church of St Martin in the Oxfordshire village of
Bladon where Churchill was buried, the Duchess of Cornwall unveiled a
new window that depicts elements of his life in stained glass.
The former prime minister received the rare honour of a full state funeral following his death on January 24 1965.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Winston
Churchill and the 150th anniversary of the assassination of Abraham
Lincoln—two men whose lives and achievements shed light on the fragility
of freedom and the statesmanship necessary to preserve it.
As noted in my recent essay, “Champion of Liberty: Winston Churchill and His Message to America,”
both were leaders of democracies in wartime and had to make the case
their causes were worth fighting for, resistance was both sensible and
praiseworthy, and citizens should prefer struggle and sacrifice over
capitulation. Both men connected the life of their regimes compellingly
to a noble cause.
The number of abortions has gone down by 12 per cent since 2010
An American priest has attributed a drop in the abortion rate to the ‘implosion’ of the abortion industry. An Associated Press (AP) survey of abortion in the United States has
revealed that the number of abortions has revealed that the number of
abortions has gone down by 12 per cent since 2010. Father Frank Pavone, the national director and chairman of Priests
for Life, based in Staten Island, New York, said on Sunday:”It’s
important to realise, first of all, that the factors accounting for this
are multiple, complex and often hard to measure.”
Corpus Christi (Body and Blood of Christ) is a Eucharistic solemnity,
or better, the solemn commemoration of the institution of that
sacrament. It is, moreover, the Church's official act of homage and
gratitude to Christ, who by instituting the Holy Eucharist gave to the
Church her greatest treasure. Holy Thursday, assuredly, marks the
anniversary of the institution, but the commemoration of the Lord's
passion that very night suppresses the rejoicing proper to the occasion.
Today's observance, therefore, accents the joyous aspect of Holy
Thursday.
The Mass and the Office for the feast was edited or
composed by St. Thomas Aquinas upon the request of Pope Urban IV in the
year 1264. It is unquestionably a classic piece of liturgical work,
wholly in accord with the best liturgical traditions. . . It is a
perfect work of art.
— Excerpted from The Church's Year of Grace, Pius Parsch.
In the words of St. Thomas:
"How
inestimable a dignity, beloved brethren, divine bounty has bestowed
upon us Christians from the treasury of its infinite goodness! For there
neither is nor ever has been a people to whom the gods were so nigh as
our Lord and God is nigh unto us.
"Desirous
that we be made partakers of His divinity, the only-begotten Son of God
has taken to Himself our nature so that having become man, He would be
enabled to make men gods. Whatever He assumed of our nature He wrought
unto our salvation. For on the altar of the Cross He immolated to the
Father His own Body as victim for our reconciliation and shed His blood
both for our ransom and for our regeneration. Moreover, in order that a
remembrance of so great benefits may always be with us, He has left us
His Body as food and His Blood as drink under appearances of bread and
wine.
"O banquet most precious! O
banquet most admirable! O banquet overflowing with every spiritual
delicacy! Can anything be more excellent than this repast, in which not
the flesh of goats and heifers, as of old, but Christ the true God is
given us for nourishment? What more wondrous than this holy sacrament!
In it bread and wine are changed substantially, and under the appearance
of a little bread and wine is had Christ Jesus, God and perfect Man. In
this sacrament sins are purged away, virtues are increased, the soul is
satiated with an abundance of every spiritual gift. No other sacrament
is so beneficial. Since it was instituted unto the salvation of all, it
is offered by Holy Church for the living and for the dead, that all may
share in its treasures.
"My dearly
beloved, is it not beyond human power to express the ineffable delicacy
of this sacrament in which spiritual sweetness is tasted in its very
source, in which is brought to mind the remembrance of that
all-excelling charity which Christ showed in His sacred passion? Surely
it was to impress more profoundly upon the hearts of the faithful the
immensity of this charity that our loving Savior instituted this
sacrament at the last supper when, having celebrated the Pasch with His
disciples. He was about to leave the world and return to the Father. It
was to serve as an unending remembrance of His passion, as the
fulfillment of ancient types — this the greatest of His miracles. To
those who sorrow over His departure He has given a unique solace."
MOSCOW, June 5, 2015 (LifeSiteNews)
– Churches that have deemed homosexuality morally acceptable have
rejected Christianity and are preparing their followers to accept the
Anti-Christ, according to one of the leading figures in the Russian
Orthodox Church.
His statement came as the Russian Orthodox Church announced that it
is ending "formal contacts" with the United Protestant Church of France
and the Church of Scotland over those churches' abandonment of
traditional Christian sexual morality. In its statement, the church said
ecumenical dialogue was pointless after France's United Protestant
Church last month voted to allow pastors to officiate at same-sex
"marriages" and the Church of Scotland approved ordaining clergy who are
in same-sex civil unions.