CSVF Blog

A message from the Sisters of Life:

If you’ve been to some amazing young adult retreats and yet you still have that hunger to go deeper, this is the retreat for you! There are still some spots left for the upcoming “Living the Confidence of the Saints” women’s retreat, but not for long! The retreat will begin on Friday, November 14 with dinner at 5:30 pm and conclude after Brunch on Sunday, November 16. Hosted by the Sisters of Life, the retreat will include conferences on how to pray in silence, learning to live with the confidence of the Saints, and healing. There will be Mass everyday, extended Eucharistic adoration, opportunity for confession, and an opportunity for a personal meeting with a Sister as well. If you’re ready for some one-on-one time with the Lord in preparation for Advent, this is it.

We will be picking up retreatants on Friday at LaGuardia Airport at 3:30 pm and at Westchester Airport at 4pm and dropping off retreatants on Sunday to Westchester at 1:30 pm and to LaGuardia at 2pm. We’ll also be picking people up at the Stamford train station.

The cost of the retreat is a donation (unnamed) towards the works of the Sisters of Life.

If you are interested, you have two options to register. Please either:

1) call Villa Maria Guadalupe at 203.329.1492. If the machine is on, feel free to leave a message that you’re interested in the women’s retreat, your name, age, phone # and mode of transportation to the retreat.

2) e-mail Sr. Mary Gabriel (just respond to this e-mail) that you’re interested in the women’s retreat, your name, age, phone #, and mode of transportation.

Know you are in our daily prayers! We love to hear from you…

In Christ, our Life,

Sr. Mary Gabriel, S.V.

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This blessed bishop loved Christ with all his strength and had no fear of earthly rulers; though de did not die a martyr’s death, this holy confessor won the martyr’s palm.

The life of St. Martin of Tours captured the imagination of the early Church. Devotion to him spread like wildfire throughout the ancient world, and in the Middle Ages it reached fever-pitch.  Because of his popularity, Martin’s hagiography is extensive.  Even today, accounts of his life run longer than the perfunctory paragraph we ordinarily find given to the saints in modern collections of their lives.    

In St. Martin we discover major themes of the Christian life writ large—conversion, reconciliation, and peace.  His life demonstrates the gentleness of God’s work in human souls.  This gentle work then manifests itself in the gentleness of the transformed soul.  ”Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Mt 5:9).

Here is a brief biography of St. Martin posted at Catholic Online:

When Sulpicius Severus first metMartin of Tours he was stunned. Not only did the bishop offer him hospitality at his residence — a monk’s cell in the wilderness instead of a palace — but Martin washed Sulpicius’ hands before dinner and his feet in the evening. But Sulpicius was just the kind of person Martin showed the greatest honor to — a humble manwithout any rank or privilege. People of nobility and position were turned away from his abbey by chalk cliffs, out of fear of thetemptation to pride. From that visit, Sulpicius became Martin’s disciple, friend, and biographer. Little is known of many of the saints who died in the early years of Christianity but thanks to Sulpicius, who wrote his first biography of Martin before the saint died and who talked to most of the people involved in his life, we have a priceless record of Martin’s life.

Born in 315 or 316 in Pannonia, a Roman province that includes modern Hungary, Martin came into a world in transition. Christians were no longer persecuted by the Roman empire but Christianity was still not accepted by all. Martin’s father, an Roman army officer who had risen through the ranks, remained faithful to the old religion and suspicious of this new sect, as did Martin’s mother. Therefore it was Martin’s own spiritual yearning and hunger that led him to secretly knock on the door of the local Christian church and beg to be made a catechumen – when he was ten years old. In contemplative prayer, he found the time to be alone with God that he ached for. In the discussion of the mysteries, he found the truth he hoped for.

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PRAYER FOR DECEASED VETERANS

O God, by whose mercy the faithful departed find rest, look kindly on your departed veterans who gave their lives in the service of their country. Grant that through the passion, death, and resurrection of your Son they may share in the joy of your heavenly kingdom and rejoice in you with your saints forever. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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As president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Francis Cardinal George of Chicago opened the body’s fall general assembly yesterday with an address that acknowledged first of all the historical significance of last week’s presidential election.  Given our nation’s early acceptance of race-based slavery, the cardinal commented about Senator Obama’s victory: “In this, I truly believe, we must all rejoice.”  George then placed the election within the context of the Church’s ongoing promotion and defense of the common good.  It is not difficult to hear in the cardinal’s words overtones of the general concern that many bishops expressed during the campaign that the full force of the Church’s social teaching was not being adequately applied to the issue of abortion.  In this regard, Cardinal George observed:

In working for the common good of our society, racial justice is one pillar of our social doctrine. Economic justice, especially for the poor both here and abroad, is another. But the Church comes also and always and everywhere with the memory, the conviction, that the Eternal Word of God became man, took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, nine months before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. This truth is celebrated in our liturgy because it is branded into our spirit. The common good can never be adequately incarnated in any society when those waiting to be born can be legally killed at choice. If the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision that African Americans were other people’s property and somehow less than persons were still settled constitutional law, Mr. Obama would not be president of the United States. Today, as was the case a hundred and fifty years ago, common ground cannot be found by destroying the common good.

Below you can read the full text of Cardinal George’s address.

Today the bishops are scheduled to discuss how best to clarify the Church’s moral teaching in the public square, especially as it pertains to the Christian obligation to protect innocent human life.  Also on the agenda is how the bishops should engage Catholic politicians who work actively against the stated moral teaching of the Church. 

PLENARY SESSION ADDRESS BY CARDINAL GEORGE

Dear Brother Bishops:

At the opening session of the recently concluded Roman Synod on the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church, Pope Benedict XVI reflected on Psalm 118, that magnificent chorus praising the law, the order, that unites us to God. “The Word of God,” the Pope said,” is solid, it is the true reality upon which to base one’s life. Let us recall the words of Jesus: ‘…Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away’…It is words that create history, it is words that give form to thoughts…the Word of God is the foundation of everything, it is the true reality. And to be realists, we must truly count on this reality.”

The Holy Father offered these reflections in the face of bank closures, the collapse of giant corporations, the uncertainty of political regimes, with full awareness of the insecurity and suffering of so many around the world. His words echoed what he had told us in our own country last April, when he constantly directed our thoughts and actions toward the Word of God made flesh, whom the Pope called “Our Hope.”

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