"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Being in the image of God the human individual possess the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone.
He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons.
And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead.
– Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 357
Anyone who knows me knows that I love going to the movies. Movies are powerful. They have the ability to entertain and inspire, as well as to teach. Do you like “The Breakfast Club”, “She’s All That”, “Back To The Future”, … I’ll admit, there are a couple of movies here I quite like. However, what kind of lessons do they teach us?
“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
there’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!*” – Hilaire Belloc
* Latin for “Let us bless the Lord”. This phrase is sometimes used as the dismissal at the end of Mass instead of “Ite missa est”.
In our First Reading this week Isaiah consoles Israel, promising a time will come when wrongs will be made right, when “the ears of the deaf [will] be cleared” and the dry lands be refreshed. From the very beginning of the Bible, a Saviour was promised, a Messiah who would heal the rupture between man and God. Isaiah’s words find their fulfillment in this Sunday’s Gospel Reading as Jesus restores a man’s hearing, a sign that the long awaited Messiah had finally come…
In recent years it has been a difficult time to be Catholic. In addition to the priestly abuse scandals, there have been declining Mass numbers, as well as an increasingly secular society openly hostile to traditional Catholic morality.
However, amid these problems we still have hope. After all, Christ Himself promised us in Matthew 28:20 that He would be with His Church until the end of time!
We see other signs of hope as well. The priests graduating from seminary during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI have been of the highest caliber and the traditional religious orders are flourishing. Oh, and it turns out that Obi-Wan Kenobi is Catholic.
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