Nicola Perin loved rugby and fishing, but he loved God more.

August 31 - September 1 2019: 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Nicola Perin loved rugby and fishing, but he loved God more.

He’s been compared to the likes of Chiara Luce Badano and Carlo Acu-tis, and he was included in an exposi-tion called "The Saints Next Door" (I santi della porta accanto) in the lead-up to the Synod on Youth. He was an athlete, a star student, and a lover of fishing and outdoor activities. His name was Ni-cola Perin, and although he isn’t well known yet, his example is already inspiring people in his native Italy to do good works and pray for his intercession.
 
Rugby, fishing, and school


Born February 2, 1998, to Adriana and Roberto Perin, Nicola was charismatic and energetic. He began playing rugby when he was 6 years old, later playing on the regional junior team in nearby Rovigo (northeastern Italy) as the scrum-half. His pas-sion for the game came from his father, and it was a factor of unity between the two of them, according to an interview by Ermanno Luzi with his parents in Italian magazine Medjugorje: The Presence of Mary Rugby wasn’t the only sport he enjoyed; he also loved to fish and engage in other outdoor activities. At the same time, he knew how to employ his energy in the class-room, where he excelled both as a student and as a friend, gain-ing the affection and respect of his teachers and peers. He was always ready to help others, and got along with kids of all ages.

In his diary, he wrote, "Living forgiveness, friendship, solidar-ity, and hospitality in the concrete reality of each day

gives me great joy." This and other texts came to light for the public in his biography in Italian, God’s Scrum-Half: Nicola and his incurable will to live by Cristian Bonaldi.

When he entered high school, he seemed to have a bright future before him. However, he started to tell his parents that he was suffering from fatigue and other symptoms, and they took him to the hospital for tests. In 2013, at the age of 15, he was diagnosed with leukemia.

 

Faith and courage in the face of suffering
He received the diagnosis with surprising strength of spirit. Soon, he had the spiritual guidance of Capuchin priest Gianluigi Pasquale, who became his confessor and spiritual director. Nicola had a special devotion to Padre Pio and to the Virgin Mary, although in an interview with Aleteia, his mother said that his favorite prayer was the Our Father: "That was his prayer," she told reporter Paola Belletti.

Nicola was patient and humble throughout all the tests, therapies, and poking and prodding involved in his treatment. "My son was always smiling. He was the one who carried us and the doctors, who sustained us," his mother told Luzi. He suffered with "great serenity and peace," never complaining, and often encouraging and playing with younger patients.

That’s not to say that suffering was easy for him. "We found some of Nicola’s writings in which he asked Mary and the Lord to forgive him for not managing to pray, or not having the strength to do so," his mother revealed to Luzi. Still, "he defi-nitely showed great faith and a very intense rapport with God."
 
Still thinking about others

 

Nicola wrote in his diary about how his illness helped him appreciate every day of his life. "I always imagined I’d grow old, that one day I’d have wrinkles and my hair would turn white. I’ve dreamed of building a family. That’s the way life is. Fragile, precious, and unpredictable. Every day that goes by isn’t our right, but a gift we’re given. I love my life, I’m happy, and I’m in debt to my loved ones. I don’t know how long I’ll live, so I don’t want to waste time being sad."

He kept his focus on others, apologizing to his parents for mak-ing them suffer on his behalf, and playing with younger children in the cancer ward to lift their spirits. His mother recounts how at one point Nicola was given an iPad; when he realized he was-n’t going to be around to use it, he said, "It doesn’t matter. That means we can sell it and help other children and other families."

Although he underwent all the treatment possible, including two bone marrow transplants (one from his father and one from his mother), he didn’t get better.

He was fully aware of the gravity of his situation, but he didn’t give up hope. He continued his high school studies in the hospi-tal, attending classes via Skype. After his first transplant, he even won a scholarship for his academic performance.
 
The sign of the cross: his last gesture

Eventually, he became too weak to carry on any activities. Two days before his death, he asked his father to help him make the sign of the cross: the last gesture he would ever make. He died on December 24, 2015, at the age of 17. "He offered up his suffering and accepted it to the very end," his mother said to reporter Luzi. Now, just a few years later, many people visit his grave to pray and ask for his intercession. "There are people who’ve received help; we’re collecting many testimonies, following the bishop’s indications; then we will present them to him next year," his mother says.




Matthew Green | Aug 25, 2019

Former prisoner from China has helped hundreds become Catholic

August 24-25 2019: 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time.
 
Former prisoner from China has helped hundreds become Catholic
 
It’s almost as if Teresa Liu is making up for lost time. Liu is an 86-year-old Catholic woman in Sydney, Australia who

has guided hundreds of ethnic Chinese into the faith, years after spending a significant part of her youth in a communist Chinese prison.

Liu had an evangelistic spirit from a young age. As a young woman, she joined the Catholic organization the Legion of Mary in her native Guangzhou (Canton), in southern China. The group, which operates worldwide, seeks to spread the Catholic faith. She had also been discerning a religious vocation with the Carmelite nuns.

Two events interrupted the life she had envisioned for herself. If she was uncertain whether God wanted her to be a consecrated religious, she seems to have found an answer when John Bosco Liu came into her life. “He told her that he loved her,” according to a profile of her written for Catholic News Service. But their plans to marry were interrupted as well, because of their membership in the Legion of Mary, considered an “antirevolutionary” organization.
It was the late 1950s, and the communist rulers of the People’s Republic of China were exerting more and more control over religion. They set up an alternative to the Catholic Church in order to neutralize the influence and control over segments of the population by a foreign power—the Vatican. The Legion of Mary itself was seen as a “anti-revolutionary” organization, and Teresa and John Bosco’s membership earned them prison sentences. They also refused to join the state-established Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

Teresa never had a trial, but ended up serving 20 years. John Bosco was behind bars for 22. The two lovebirds actually spent some of their time in the same prison in Guangzhou. But if they dared to speak or show signs of affection, it could lead to severe punishment. Teresa herself was kept in solitary confinement for several long periods—once for seven months. She knew, however, that she was never alone. Christ was with her. Though they could not attend any kind of religious service while in prison, of course, Teresa maintained her life of prayer in secret. Once she was able to lie down to sleep at night, she would pray the Rosary, for example.

“I felt very close to God at that time because in my heart I said, ‘Jesus, now I have nothing but you. Don’t let me leave you,'” she told CNS. She finally was released in 1977, in the wake of China’s oftenviolent Cultural Revolution and a new opening to the West. She and John Bosco were married in 1979 and moved to Australia the following year. But John lived only for 10 more years. He had a massive heart attack one day at Mass, just after receiving Communion.

Teresa carried on, catechizing new immigrants from her native land. Providing them one-on-one faith formation in their own language — Cantonese or Mandarin — she has guided hundreds into the Catholic Church, her pastor, Fr. Janusz Bieniek, pastor and a member of the Congregation of St. Michael the Archangel, said. “She is very supportive of all initiatives in the parish, especially the work of evangelization with people from China who are thinking of becoming Christian,” said Fr. Bieniek, himself an immigrant, from Poland. “She gathers them, talks to them, personally keeps contact with them and encourages them.”

Recently, Liu was invested as a dame in the Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great in recognition of her “outstanding commitment to faith” demonstrated “through her Christian outreach to and conversion of many people in the Archdiocese of Sydney.” Investiture in the order is the highest honor the Church bestows on lay people and is given in recognition of extraordinary service to the Church, CNS explained.

“She is a very credible witness to the faith and at the same time very quiet and unassuming,” he said. “People know about her past, her experiences and sufferings, but she doesn’t boast about this. She … never has any kind of talk about revenge or hatred. She has no anger, so that makes a very big impression on people.”

Liu said she has forgiven her captors, saying they were just doing their job. “They also are victims of the communist system,” she said. She urged prayers for China, saying the situation for the faithful now is in some ways worse than it was for the Catholics of the 1950s. “They want to destroy every religion,” she said

John Burger | Aug 01, 2019

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August 17-18 2019: 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time.



"Every fall, even if it be very grave and repeated, serves us always and only as a little step towards a higher perfection." Saint Maximilian Kolbe

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The fervour of the builders of Chartres Cathedral

August 10-11 2019: 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

The fervour of the builders of Chartres Cathedral

The people of France began building the 34 majestic Gothic cathedrals in the 12th century that still dot its territory. Recently, in April 2019, a sudden fire partially destroyed one of them, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.



Medieval chronicler Robert du Mont wrote that Chartres Cathedral (1), built between 1194 and 1220, was built amid deep popular fervour:

"It was at Chartres that we saw for the first time, men pulling with all their strength carts laden with stone, wood, food, and all the provisions necessary for the construction of the church, whose towers were slowly rising.

Whoever has not seen these wonders will never see them again, not only here but in Normandy, in all France and in many other countries. Everywhere can be seen humility, suffering, repentance, forgiveness of offences, groans and tears. We can see men, even women, dragging themselves on their knees through muddy swamps, beating their breasts and asking heaven for mercy, all this in the midst of many miracles that elicit songs and shouts of joy."
(1) In 876, King Charles the Bald, grandson of Charlemagne donated to the cathedral the holy relic of the "Veil of the Virgin" (formerly thought of as the "Holy Tunic"). This event made Chartres a prominent shrine.

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THANK YOU, LORD, FOR SAYING "NO".

 Lord, thank you for not answering all my prayers. All my life I’ve prayed for special favours. I’ve pestered you for many things that weren’t worthy of your attention. I’ve asked you to solve problems of my own creation that I should solve myself. I have prayed that you would make life easy for me. I have asked you to help me answer questions which I ought to answer by working and thinking for myself.

I have prayed for sure ways to success and short cuts to wealth when I should have been working to attain goals that really satisfy. I have asked for good health instead of exercising my body and being more careful about my diet and health habits. I have asked you to help me understand my fellow man when I should have been listening and trying to help him with his problems.


 I realise now that if you had answered all my prayers, I would be weak, dependent, and lazy. By forcing me to work out some of my own problems, you have helped me to become strong. Now I face the world with the belief that it can be conquered and there is reason to ‘be of good cheer.’
You have helped me to become a person I can respect. My days are full of opportunity to help others. That’s the most important thing I could have prayed for. So thank you, Lord, for helping me to become the person you knew I could become – not by giving me my every wish but by refusing to answer some of my prayers in the way I wanted them answered. (contributed by a parishioner.)

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Jane Frances de Chantal

"To be sure, I am convinced, and experience has taught me, that nothing so wins souls as gentleness and cordiality. I beg you, dearest, follow this method, for it is the spirit of our blessed Father [Francis de Sales]. Curtness in words or actions only hardens hearts and depresses them, whereas gentleness encourages them and makes them receptive..."

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St. Ignatius’ rules for decluttering your home: Before Marie Kondo, there was St. Ignatius of Loyola.

August 3-4 2019: 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

St. Ignatius’ rules for decluttering your home: Before Marie Kondo, there was St. Ignatius of Loyola.

Marie Kondo, widely known as a "tidying expert," in-structs people to go through their house and ask themselves if a particular item "sparks joy" within them. If the item does not elicit a joyful response, then it is discarded or sold.

While St. Ignatius of Loyola did not have a hit Netflix show, he did provide his own rules for evaluating a person’s use of material things.

Ignatius provides his rules at the very beginning of his Spiritual Exercises, and explains how, "Man is cre-ated to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that they may help him in [attaining] the end for which he is created."

This same truth is expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in this way.


The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for. (CCC 27)
Our creation by God and for God should form our every action, and in a particular way, our use of mate-rial things.
St. Ignatius continues and instructs the reader that, "From this it follows that man is to use [material things] as much as they help him on to his end, and ought to rid himself of them so far as they hinder him as to it."
From this point of view, St. Ignatius would advise the modern-day person to tidy their house by examining each item and questioning whether or not it helps them draw closer to God.

While practically speaking this is often difficult to discern, on the other hand, the opposite is much easier to discover. When thinking about a specific item, there are certain things that can easily be classified as a hindrance to our salvation, or prevent us from developing an intimate relationship with Jesus.

For some people this may mean giving up many things, while for others, it may not be as much. There is no clear-cut answer for everyone, and it takes care-ful discernment to arrive at an appropriate decision.

The key for St. Ignatius is a particular "indifference" to created things. It requires a detachment from the things of this world, realizing that eternal life is much more important.

St. Ignatius ends with a potent reflection that should guide us in our use of created things and remind us how to order our lives.


 For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things in all that is allowed to the choice of our free will and is not prohibited to it; so that, on our part, we do not prefer health rather than sick-ness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, long rather than short life, and so in all the rest; desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created.
Philip Kosloski , Aleteia, Jul 31, 2019

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