Holy Family Adoration Chapel blessing and opening:

2017: Fatima Centenary Year
July 29-30:  Ordinary Time 17th Sunday

Holy Family Adoration Chapel blessing and opening:

This coming Saturday evening, August 5, we cele-brate liturgically the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord.  It is indeed a  fitting feast day to inaugurate our new Adoration Chapel.
  

Bishop Vincent will celebrate our 6pm parish Mass, and the Mass will conclude with the transfer of the Blessed Sacrament, in procession, to the new chapel. The final blessing of the Mass will be given after the placing of the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel taberna-cle.
  

People will be free to pray in the chapel after the blessing and final dismissal.
  

There will also be light refreshments and some formalities in the hall immediately after the final     dismissal. All parishioners are welcome to share in the celebration in the hall.
  

If you would like to bring a plate to share, please bring it to the hall before Mass if you can. 

 

The chapel and surrounds are substantially complete. There are gates and a small fence to be inserted in the garden area in the next few weeks, and a couple of    minor furnishings yet to come for the chapel.

When you come to the hall, feel free to enjoy the supper on entry. Shortly after we enter, we shall have some formalities:

1. Bishop Vincent: an opportunity to address us.
2. Fr Brendan: A word of thanks.
3. Mr Paul Newton, artist, will speak about his art works which adorn the chapel walls (Early Catholics of Sydney, Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop, and Father John Joseph Therry)
4. Mr M Seecy, project supervisor.
5. A musical feature.

William Davis, priestless Sydney 1818-1820,

the Blessed Sacrament and St Patrick’s Church, The Rocks

 

First Catholics of  Sydney, circa 1818
Artist: Paul Newton

From May 1818 until 1820 there was no Catholic priest in Sydney. Each Sunday the Catholics gathered at the home of William Davis at The Rocks, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament left behind by Fa-ther Jeremiah O’Flynn before his deportation in 1818. There the little community recited the Mass prayers and prayed the rosary.

Built in the early 1840s, St Patrick’s stands in Syd-ney’s historic Rocks area, with a history reaching back to the very beginnings of Catholic life in Australia. In-separably linked with St Patrick’s history is the name of William Davis, an Irishman transported for his part in anti-British uprisings in Ireland in 1798. Davis ob-tained land in The Rocks in 1809, and in the early years of the colony, when there was no resident priest in Sydney, his home became a centre of Catholic prayer.

In 1840 William Davis donated the land on which St Patrick’s is built, gifting that section of his 1809 grant bounded by Gloucester and Grosvenor Streets. The foundation stone was blessed on 25 August 1840, and the now elderly Davis astonished everyone when he came forward and placed a cheque for £1000 on the stone, an incredible sum in those days. Davis had pros-pered over the years through his business ventures, which included interests in grazing and licensed prem-ises. Davis’ donation was matched by an equal grant from the colonial government.

Third Fatima Apparition: July 13 1917 [Part 2]

2017: Fatima Centenary Year
July 22-23:  Ordinary Time 16th Sunday

Third Fatima Apparition: July 13 1917  (Part 2)
In her memoirs, Lucia described the July message from Our Lady in three parts, three ‘secrets’...

2. World War II foretold: Our Lady told the children:
“If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI.

When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.”      

(Jan 25-216 1938:  an extraordinary aurora borealis that   illuminated the night skies of Europe and parts of America for almost five hours. Lucia, a nun at the time, regarded it as the God-given sign that the next world war was near.   Germany annexed and occupied Austria on March 12 1938.) 
3 a)   The spread of Communism and an age of martyrs. “I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the

First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be   converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecu-tions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be   annihilated.
1 The Bolsheviks took power in October 1917, bringing the rule of Communism.  During the first fifty years of Commu-nist ascendancy, there were more Christian martyrs than there were in all the previous years of Christian history combined. (Communist revolutions and rule have caused an estimated 100 million casualties.)
Ultimate triumph:  “In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world. In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved.”

3 b)    The intervention of Our Lady and the shooting of Pope John Paul II: 
Our Lady did not speak. The children saw a series of     images, a ‘prophetic vision’, unfolding before them.
The Angel with the flaming sword… Our Lady intervenes.   
    
Lucia’s memoirs: “At the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance,   Penance, Penance!’ ”
(Cardinal Ratzinger’s 2000 commentary, when the ‘third  secret’ was released:
     
“The future is not in fact unchangeably set, and the image which the children was is in no way a film preview of a future in which nothing can be changed. Indeed, the whole point of the vision is to bring freedom onto the scene and to steer freedom in a positive direction. The purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed    future.  Its meaning is the exact opposite: it is meant to   mobilise the forces of change in the right direction.

“… a Bishop dressed in white… killed by a group of soldiers….”

Cardinal Ratzinger’s commentary: “In the vision, the Pope too is killed along with the martyrs. When, after the attempted  assassination on May 13 1981, the Holy Father had the text of the third part of the ‘secret’ brought to him, was it not inevitable that he should see in it his own fate? He had been very close to death, and he himself explained his survival in the following words: “…it was a mother’s hand that guided the bullet’s path and in his throes the Pope halted at the threshold of death” (13 May 1994)  . That here a ‘mother’s hand’ had  deflected the fateful bullet only shows once more that there is no immutable destiny, that faith and prayer are forces which can influence history and that in the end prayer is more powerful than bullets, and faith more powerful than armies.”

 

From Fr Andrew Apostoli CFR, Fatima for Today: the urgent Marian message of hope,  (Ignatius Press, San Francisco 2010)

Third Apparition at Fatima: July 13 1917 [Part 1]

2017: Fatima Centenary Year
July 15-16:  Ordinary Time 15th Sunday

The appearances of Our Lady in July  and October of 1917 were the most  powerful and important of all the  Fatima apparitions.

By the time Our Lady appeared on July 13, word of the apparitions had spread throughout Portugal. About four thousand people attended the July 13 apparition at the she can help you.”
Lucia asks: “I would like to ask you to tell us who you are, and to work a miracle so that everybody will believe that you are appearing to us.”
Our Lady promised to reveal her identity and perform a miracle in October.
In her memoirs, Lucia described the July message from Our Lady in three parts, three ‘secrets’.

1. A vision of hell.

Our Lady said to the children: “Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and say many times, especially when you make any sacrifice: O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins   committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”
     
She then opened her hands as she had done in her two previous apparitions. Rays of light once again came from her hands, but what the children saw was far different from what they had seen the first two times.    
      
The children were given a vision of hell, later described by Lucia. Lucia later said that if our Lady had not already told them that they were going to heaven, they might have died of fright. Witnesses at the Cova at the time, though not knowing what the children saw, said that after the July apparitions their faces showed signs of fear, terror and shock. 

Why did Jesus and Mary allow such a terrifying vision of hell? She came to lead men back to God, who has been so grievously offended by their sins. The children did not need to see the vision of hell for their own sakes; they  had already been assured by our Lady that they would be going to heaven and they were living  good and holy lives pleasing to God. They were given the vision of hell to remind us that hell is real.

That in turn reminds us that we must live our lives in such a way that we stay close to God. We must make our salvation our main purpose in life.
      
Lucia wrote that the vision of hell profoundly affected all three of the visionaries, but that Jacinta, the youngest of them, seemed to be especially moved.
      
“The vision of hell filled her with horror to such a degree, that every penance and mortification was nothing in her eyes, if it could only prevent souls from going there.”
     
The vision of hell had such an impact on Jacinta that she wished everyone could see it and be persuaded to stop sinning. Though so young, Jacinta showed an ardent love for souls and a tremendous capacity for sacrificing for others. For example, she often gave up food for those who ate too much. Even when sick, she went to a week-day Mass for those who failed to go on Sunday.
 
The final and most telling example of little Jacinta’s zeal for souls came at the end of her brief life on earth. Our Lady appeared to her and her brother when they were suffering from influenza. Our Lady told her she would take Francisco to heaven soon, but asked her if she wanted to remain longer on earth to convert more sinners. Jacinta agreed to stay and suffer longer. Francisco died on April 4, 1919, six months after he and his sister fell ill. Jacinta lingered until February 20, 1920, when she died in a Lisbon hospital.

2. World War II foretold:
Our Lady told the children:

July 4: Feast of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati [Part 2]

2017: Fatima Centenary Year
July 8-9:  Ordinary Time 14th Sunday

July 4: Feast of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati
April 6 1901- July 4 1925) Part 2

Mountain climbing was one of his favourite sports. Outings in the mountains, which he organized with his friends, also served as opportunities for his apostolic work. He never lost the chance to lead his friends to Mass, to the reading of Scripture, and to praying the rosary.
    
He often went to the theatre, to the opera, and to museums. He loved art and music, and could quote whole passages of the poet Dante.
    
Fondness for the epistles of St. Paul sparked his zeal for fraternal charity, and the fiery sermons of the Renaissance preacher and reformer Girolamo Savonarola and the writings of St. Catherine impelled him in 1922 to join the Lay Dominicans (Third Order of St. Dominic). He chose the name Girolamo after his personal hero, Savonarola. “I am a fervent admirer of this friar, who died as a saint at the stake," he wrote to a friend.

Like his father, he was strongly anti-Fascist and did nothing to hide his political views. He physically de-fended the faith at times involved in fights, first with anticlerical Communists and later with Fascists. Participating in a Church-organized demonstration in Rome on one occasion, he stood up to police violence and rallied the other young people by grabbing the group’s banner, which the royal guards had knocked out of another student’s hands. Pier Giorgio held it even higher, while using the banner’s pole to fend off the blows of the guards.

Just before receiving his university degree, Pier Giorgio contracted poliomyelitis, which doctors later speculated he caught from the sick whom he tended. Neglecting his own health because his grandmother was dying, after six days of terrible suffering Pier Giorgio died at the age of 24 on July 4, 1925.
    
His last preoccupation was for the poor. On the eve of his death, with a paralyzed hand he scribbled a message to a friend, asking him to take the medicine needed for injections to be given to Converso, a poor sick man he had been visiting.
    
Pier Giorgio’s funeral was a triumph. The streets of the city were lined with a multitude of mourners who were unknown to his family -- the poor and the needy whom he had served so unselfishly for seven years. Many of these people, in turn, were surprised to learn that the saintly young man they knew had actually been the heir of the influential Frassati family.
   
Pope John Paul II, after visiting his original tomb in the family plot in Pollone, said in 1989: “I wanted to pay homage to a young man who was able to witness to Christ with singular effectiveness in this century of ours. When I was a young man, I, too, felt the beneficial influence of his example and, as a student, I was impressed by the force of his testimony."
    
On May 20, 1990, in St. Peter’s Square which was filled with thousands of people, the Pope beatified Pier Giorgio Frassati, calling him the “Man of the Eight Beatitudes.”
    
His mortal remains, found completely intact and    incorrupt upon their exhumation on March 31, 1981, were transferred from the family tomb in Pollone to the cathedral in Turin. Many pilgrims, especially students and the young, come to the tomb of Blessed Frassati to seek favours and the courage to follow his example.

July 4: Feast of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati [Part 1]

2017: Fatima Centenary Year
July 1-2:  Ordinary Time 13th Sunday

Pier Giorgio Michelangelo Frassati was born in Turin, Italy on April 6, 1901.

His mother, Adelaide Ametis, was a painter. His father Alfredo, was the founder and director of the newspaper, “La Stampa," and was influential in Italian politics, holding positions as an Italian Senator and Ambassador to Germany. 
    
At an early age, Pier Giorgio joined the Marian Sodality and the Apostleship of Prayer, and obtained per-mission to receive daily Communion (which was rare at that time).
    
He developed a deep spiritual life which he never hesitated to share with his friends. The Holy Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin were the two poles of his world of prayer. At the age of 17, he joined the St. Vincent de Paul Society and dedicated much of his spare time to serving the sick and the needy, caring for orphans, and assisting the demobilized servicemen returning from World War I. 

He decided to become a mining engineer, studying at the Royal Polytechnic University of Turin, so he could “serve Christ better among the miners," as he told a friend. 

Although he considered his studies his first duty, they did not keep him from social and political activism. In 1919, he joined the Catholic Student Foundation and the organization known as Catholic Action. He became         a very active member of the People’s Party, which promoted the Catholic Church’s social teaching based on the principles of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical letter, Rerum Novarum.
    
What little he did have, Pier Giorgio gave to help the poor, even using his bus fare for charity and then running home to be on time for meals. The poor and the suffering were his masters, and he was literally their servant, which he considered a privilege. His charity did not simply involve giving something to others, but giving completely of himself. This was fed by daily communion with Christ in the Holy Eucharist and by frequent nocturnal adoration, by meditation on St. Paul’s “Hymn of Charity” (I Corinthians 13), and by the writings of St. Catherine of Siena. He often sacrificed vacations at the Frassati summer home in Pollone (outside of Turin) because, as he said, “If everybody leaves Turin, who will take care of the poor?”
     



In 1921, he was a central figure in Ravenna, enthusiastically helping to organize the first convention of Pax Romana, an association which had as its purpose the   unification of all Catholic students throughout the world for the purpose of working together for universal peace.

(To be continued)