St. Andrew the ApostleReligious Education

NewsletterNovember 2016

"Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."

-St. John Paul II

Issue 62 November 2016

Director’s Notes ……………………………………………….…….3

Catechist Corner……………………………………………….……..4

Saints for the Month………………………………………….……....9

Liturgy, Art, Beauty………………………………………….………11

Dates to Remember………………………………………….……….15

Book Selection……………………………………………….………16

Prayers……………………………………………………….……….17

Helpful Websites……………………………………………….…..…18

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MARIAN UNION MONTHLY CATECHETICAL NEWSLETTER

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Greetings! This month of November will see several changes! The Church will conclude the Year of Mercy and we also move into the season of Advent. Don’t forget to stop by the RE office and check out our new resources for teaching about the liturgical seasons. There are some great Advent ideas that you can incorporate into your classes.

This year our parish will be celebrating our patronal feast day in a special way! Stay tuned for more details about the Parish Mission.

I would like to thank all the priests and volunteers for their efforts in making the All Saints Day Party a success once again.

As we kick off November with the feast of All Saint we are reminded to make the lives of the saints come alive for our students. I encourage you to tell a story of a saint at every class so they can become familiar with our holy heroes!

Remember to keep our new bishop, Bishop Burbidge in your prayers as he prepares to take over leading the Arlington Diocese next month. His installation will be at St. Thomas More Cathedral on December 6th.

In Christ,

Sarah SalmonSarah SalmonDirector, Religious Education

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Director’s Notes

Who is Frances Cabrini?

The youngest of thirteen children, Frances Cabrini was born on July 15, 1850 in a small village called S’ant Angelo Lodigiano near the city of Milan, Italy. She grew up enthralled by the stories of missionaries and made up her mind to join a religious order. Because of her frail health, she was not permitted to join the Daughters of the Sacred Heart who had been her teachers and under whose guidance she obtained her teaching certificate.

However, in 1880, with seven young women, Frances founded the Institute of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She was as resourceful as she was prayerful, finding people who would donate what she needed in money, time, labor and support. She and her sisters wanted to be missionaries in China; she visited Rome to obtain an audience with Pope Leo XIII. The Pope told Frances to go “not to the East, but to the West” to New York rather than to China as she had expected. She was to help the thousands of Italian immigrants already in the United States.

In 1889, New York seemed to be filled with chaos and poverty, and into this new world stepped Mother Frances Cabrini and her sister companions. Cabrini organized catechism and education classes for the Italian immigrants and provided for the needs of the many orphans. She established schools and orphanages despite tremendous odds.

Soon, requests for her to open schools came to Frances Cabrini from all over the world. She traveled to Europe, Central and South America and throughout the United States. She made 23 trans-Atlantic crossings and established 67 institutions: schools, hospitals and orphanages.

Her activity was relentless until her death. On December 22, 1917, in Chicago, she died. In 1946, she was canonized a saint by Pope Pius XII in recognition of her holiness and service to mankind and was named Patroness of Immigrants in 1950.

Today the Missionary Sisters, their lay collaborators and volunteers work as teachers, nurses, social workers, administrators and members of institutional boards of trustees. They can be found on six continents and 15 countries throughout the world – wherever there is a need.

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Catechist Corner

Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne’s Story

Born in Grenoble, France, of a family that was among the new rich, Philippine learned political skills from her father and a love of the poor from her mother. The dominant feature of her temperament was a strong and dauntless will, which became the material—and the battlefield—of her holiness. She entered the convent at 19 and remained despite family opposition. As the French Revolution broke, the convent was closed, and she began taking care of the poor and sick, opened a school for homeless children, and risked her life helping priests in the underground.

When the situation cooled, she personally rented her old convent, now a shambles, and tried to revive its religious life. The spirit was gone, and soon there were only four nuns left. They joined the infant Society of the Sacred Heart, whose young superior, Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat, would be her lifelong friend.

In a short time, Philippine was a superior and supervisor of the novitiate and a school. But her ambition, since hearing tales of missionary work in Louisiana as a little girl, was to go to America and work among the Indians. At 49, she thought this would be her work. With four nuns, she spent 11 weeks at sea en route to New Orleans, and seven weeks more on the Mississippi to St. Louis. She then met one of the many disappointments of her life. The bishop had no place for them to live and work among Native Americans. Instead, he sent her to what she sadly called “the remotest village in the U.S.,” St. Charles, Missouri. With characteristic drive and courage, she founded the first free school for girls west of the Mississippi.

It was a mistake. Though she was as hardy as any of the pioneer women in the wagons rolling west, cold and hunger drove them out—to Florissant, Missouri, where she founded the first Catholic Indian school, adding others in the territory.

“In her first decade in America, Mother Duchesne suffered practically every hardship the frontier had to offer, except the threat of Indian massacre—poor lodging, shortages of food, drinking water, fuel and money, forest fires and blazing chimneys, the vagaries of the Missouri climate, cramped living quarters and the privation of all privacy, and the crude manners of children reared in rough surroundings and with only the slightest training in courtesy” (Louise Callan, R.S.C.J., Philippine Duchesne).

Finally, at 72, in poor health and retired, Philippine got her lifelong wish. A mission was founded at Sugar Creek, Kansas, among the Potawatomi. She was taken along. Though she could not learn their language, they soon named her “Woman-Who-Prays-Always.” While others taught, she prayed. Legend has it that Native American children sneaked behind her as she knelt and sprinkled bits of paper on her habit, and came back hours later to find them undisturbed. She died in 1852 at the age of 83 and was canonized in 1988.

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Elizabeth of the Trinity: A Saint for Our Timeby Anthony Lilles

The Church celebrates St. Elizabeth of the Trinity — canonized Oct. 16 — on her feast day of Nov. 8. Her spiritual mission is to help us pass through the difficulties of our time with a certain greatness of soul, a fitting reminder for Election Day 2016.

In her own words, “We must be mindful of how God is in us in the most intimate way and go about everything with him. Then life is never banal. Even in ordinary tasks, because you do not live for these things, you will go beyond them.”

On Nov. 9, 1906, at the age of 26, she succumbed to the final stages of Addison’s disease, an adrenal disorder which, at the time, was incurable. Her death came amid great social uncertainty for the Church and her Carmelite community in Dijon, France. Earlier that spring, the French government turned against the Church, by advancing a more aggressive secularism. The local Church was already racked with scandal, the local bishop having been removed from office by the Holy See. The state was taking legal action to confiscate Church property and put the Carmelites in exile. Anxiety over social concerns affected daily life for many — except for, perhaps, St. Elizabeth, her Carmel and those to whom she wrote.

When everything seemed to be falling down around her, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity witnessed to the power of the presence of God to establish deep peace in souls. In every lucid moment before her death, even if it was just for a moment, she did everything she could to encourage those she loved. Whether in whispered conversations or responding to letters she received, her messages were tender and filled with compassion. She managed to write a retreat for her sister, a young mother, a second retreat for her Carmelite community and numerous letters.

In the midst of their own questions and concerns, Elizabeth helped her friends discover the mysterious and transforming ways God discloses himself even surrounded by distress. As she explained, “Everything is a sacrament that gives us God.”

St. Elizabeth of the Trinity first discovered the transforming power of God’s presence through her parents and first holy Communion. Hailing from a military family and the elder of two sisters, she was born and baptized at a military camp in 1880. Afterward, the family moved to Dijon, where she grew up and entered a Carmelite monastery.

Joseph Catez, her father, a self-made decorated officer and former POW, died in 1887, when Elizabeth was still a child, but left her with a desire for heaven. Her mother, Marie Rolland, had a profound conversion before her marriage and deeply influenced her husband’s piety.

As a widow with two young girls, Marie moved to an affordable part of town, a few blocks from the parish church of Saint-Michel and across the street from the Carmel that Elizabeth

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would someday join. Together with her sister, Marguerite, piano, prayer and pilgrimages were important parts of Elizabeth’s upbringing. Also important were vacations with friends and family.

Young Elizabeth had a fiery temper. In a special way, her parent’s faith helped her gain a degree of self-mastery, and this was especially true at her first Communion. Witnesses testified to a profound change after Mass. The mystery of Christ’s presence drew her to prayer. In St. Elizabeth’s own words, she was no longer hungry because “God has fed me.”

Her deep prayerfulness impressed the nuns of her community even before she entered. As a teenager, she self-identified with Teresa of Avila’s descriptions of the prayer of union. She was also among the first to read an early version of Therese of Lisieux’s Story of a Soul. After reading this work, she resolved to be a Carmelite nun even over the objections of her mother. She had come to see herself as a bride of Christ.

This devotion to Christ moved her to be very involved with her parish before she entered Carmel. She catechized troubled children, first by befriending them and then by teaching them how to draw close to God in prayer. In Dijon, she is honored as much for this work as she is for her spiritual writings.

According to one of the former pastors of Saint-Michel, some of the descendants of the young people that she instructed helped to build a private school now named after her.

In her final days, Addison’s disease had emaciated Elizabeth, rendering her unable to eat or drink except for a few drops of water. Difficult thoughts sometimes tormented her as her whole body burned with pain. Yet, throughout everything, she remained devoted to Christ crucified and was completely focused on others. She promised that it would increase her joy in heaven if her friends asked for her help. She was convinced that her mission would be to help souls get out of self-occupation and enter into deep silence in order to encounter the Lord in a transformative way. To this end, she advocated faith in “the all-loving God dwelling in our souls.”

Elizabeth regarded the Trinity as the furnace of an excessive love. When her prayer evokes “My God, My Three,” she invites us to take personal possession of the Trinity. The Trinity is, for her, an interpersonal and dynamic mystery: the Father beholding the Son in the fire of the Holy Spirit. She insisted that, in silent stillness before God, the loving gaze of the Father shines within our hearts until God contemplates the likeness of his Son in the soul. Through the creative action of the Holy Spirit, the more the soul accepts the Father’s gaze of love, the more it is transformed into the likeness of the Word made flesh.

Tradition calls this loving awareness and silent surrender to the gaze of the Father mental prayer or contemplation. Elizabeth roots this in adoration and recollection and advocates its fruitfulness. Through this prayer, we gain access to our true home, the dwelling place of love

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for which we are created — and this is not in some future moment, but already in the present moment of time, which Elizabeth calls “eternity begun and still in progress.”

Such prayer not only sets the soul apart and makes it holy, but it glorifies the Father and even extends the saving work of Christ in the world. She called this “the praise of Glory” and understood this to be her great vocation.

By canonizing Elizabeth of the Trinity, the Church has not only validated her mission, but re-proposed the importance of silent prayer for our time. While she was not engaged in politics, St. Elizabeth was certainly concerned for her friends who were immersed in it. There is power in her prayer. Her community was never evicted or exiled, but moved years later only because it outgrew its original location. The Carmel remains a place of spiritual refreshment to this day.

Through the witness of St. Elizabeth, the Carmelites and her friends chose to allow God to establish them “immovable” in his presence. No political or cultural power deserves an absolute claim over our existence. If we call on St. Elizabeth, the Church affirms that the “Mystic of Dijon” can also help us become “the Praise of Glory,” a sign of hope for others even in the midst of social rancor.

Anthony Lilles is the academic dean for St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California.

He completed his graduate and post-graduate studies in Rome at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas,

and his dissertation researched St. Elizabeth of the Trinity.

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Four Crowned Martyrs

November 1 All Saints Day

November 2 All Souls Day

November 3 St. Martin de Porres; Mystic; Patron of black people, hair stylists, innkeepers, Peru, poor people, public education, race relations, television

November 4 St. Charles Borromeo; Archbishop; Patron against ulcers, apple orchards, bishops, catechists, catechumens,

seminarians, starch makers

November 8 The Four Crowned MartyrsSt. Elizabeth of the Trinity

November 9 Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome

November 10 St. Leo the Great; Pope

November 11 St. Martin of Tours; Bishop & Confessor; Patron against alcoholism, beggars, geese, horses, hotel-keepers, Swiss Guards, tailors, vintners

November 12 St. Josaphat; Archbishop & Martyr; Patron of Ukraine

November 13 St. Frances Xavier Cabrini; Virgin & Foundress; Patron of immigrants and hospital administrators

November 15 St. Albert the Great; Doctor of the Church; Patron of medical technicians, natural sciences, philosophers, scientists, students

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Saints for the Month

November 16 St. Margaret of Scotland; Queen; Patron of large families, death of children, learning, queens, widows, Scotland

St. Gertrude the Great; Mystic; Patron of nuns, travelers

November 17 St. Elizabeth of Hungary; Princess; Patron of hospitals, nurses, bakers, brides, exiles, lacemakers, dying children

November 18 Dedication of the Basilicas of Sts. Peter and PaulSt. Rose Philippine; Founder & American Missionary

November 21 Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

November 22 St. Cecilia; Martyr; Patron of Church music, great musicians, poets Feast of Christ the King

November 23 St. Clement I; Pope; Patron of boatmen, marble workers

November 24 St. Andrew Dung-Lac & Companions; Vietnamese Martyrs

November 25 St. Catherine of Alexandria; Virgin & Martyr; Patron of apologists, archivists, wheelwrights, educators, lawyers, librarians, mechanics, students, secretaries, spinsters,

unmarried girls

November 30 St. Andrew the Apostle; Apostle & Martyr; Patron of Scotland, Russia, Sicily, Greece, Romania, Amalfi,

Malta, Prussia, Army Rangers, Mariners,ropemakers, singers, performers

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Beauty and the Liturgy: A Program for the New Evangelization

Authored by Timothy P. O’Malley in Issue #1.4 of The Catechetical Review

When my son was a newborn, we brought him to the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at the University of Notre Dame for a Sunday Lenten Eucharist. Unable to comprehend the theologically rich prayer texts, he nonetheless was fascinated by the drama of light and darkness playing out in the stained glass windows, together with the choir’s sublime interpretation of a Palestrina motet. Such beauty was formative of his identity, teaching him something essential about the splendor of the triune God even before he could begin to understand the meaning of such words.

Nonetheless, for many Catholics worshipping on a regular basis, the experience of liturgical beauty is noticeably absent from their lives. Churches, rather than eliciting awe and wonder from the worshipper, are too often designed as monuments to suburban banality. The narrative of salvation, once tangible and substantial in mosaics, frescos, and statuary, is traded in for bare walls and empty spaces. The highest standards of musical excellence relative to composition sometimes give way to mere sing-ability. Preaching and liturgical presiding can be performed clumsily. The problem with such inattention to liturgical beauty is not merely a concern of the aesthete; rather, a liturgy without beauty stifles the joy of the Gospel itself. As Pope Francis writes, “Evangelization with joy becomes beauty in the liturgy, as part of our daily concern to spread goodness. The Church evangelizes and is herself evangelized through the beauty of the liturgy, which is both a celebration of the task of evangelization and the source of her renewed self-giving.”[i] A non-beautiful liturgy is not about bad art; it is about a failure of the Church to evangelize.

Attending to liturgical beauty must be a significant part of the Church’s approach to the new evangelization. In this essay, I offer three fundamental theses about the evangelizing gift of liturgical beauty. First, liturgical beauty makes possible a distinctive way of knowing, one that is necessary for a renewal of catechesis as a whole. Second, liturgical beauty, as it is made incarnate in art, is an important aspect of the Church’s tradition that must be learned. Third, the beauty of the liturgy is not ultimately oriented toward itself but rather discipleship.

Liturgical Beauty and Knowing

It is normative, for most of us, to find ourselves moving from day to day without attending to the world around us. We follow the same route to work on a daily basis without much awareness of the natural or architectural beauty that we encounter along the way. The

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Liturgy, Art, Beauty

relationships that are dearest to our identity become so much a part of our lives that we no longer wonder at the gift of these women and men, who surround us on a daily basis. To abide in a world in which there are bills to be paid, children to be fed, and work to be accomplished, means that it is difficult for us to assume a perpetual posture of wonder.

In these circumstances, we risk losing the desire to wonder at anything at all. We do not stop and contemplatively gaze upon the seasonal transformation of that tree that we pass each day. We can become so distracted by the business of caring for our children, that we no longer have time to be grateful for the sheer presence of these remarkable human beings in our lives. Everything in the world exists as an object to be trammeled upon, owned, or made more efficient. Hans urs von Balthasar, describing this de-mythologized way of knowing, writes:

The moon, which for Goethe was the symbol of man’s purest emotions…is now merely a target for American and Russian missiles. This is called demythologizing but it is much more. It is in fact the elimination of the sacred and the loss of the “power of the heart”…to sense the “majesty of being”…in the immediacy of God.[ii]

The path to atheism in the modern world is not necessarily reading sophisticated philosophical texts about the implausibility of God’s existence; rather, it is letting this de-mythologized way of knowing become our primary way of understanding reality.

Liturgical beauty offers the possibility of a restored way of seeing the created order as sheer gift. In beautiful liturgy, the purpose of our prayer is not a matter of efficiency, of technical innovation, but wonder at the gift of the created order. It would be far quicker to read the words of Psalm 51 in the context of our prayer, but to pray with Allegri’s Miserere within the liturgy is to encounter a musical text that reveals to us what penance sounds like. It invites us to participate in this act of penance not merely through a cognitive assent. Instead, penance is “performed” in our presence, if we have the ears to hear.

In this way, liturgical beauty offers us an imaginative way of perceiving both the world and ourselves. Music in the liturgy is not simply about an interesting way of presenting words to the hearer. Instead, as the aesthetic philosopher Roger Scruton notes:

Just as we learn about the human face from painting, so do we learn about movement and life from music. Not that we learn new facts; rather that we come to see movement and life in another way; to sense its inward meaning, and to respond to it as in a dance. Our own life is transfigured as we listen, sensing the movement in ourselves, and the other in appearance that life can achieve.[iii]

In the context of the Church’s worship, then, liturgical beauty forms us to know the world anew. We learn to see the created order for what it is, as matter intended to be eucharistically offered to God.

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Of course, the attention to beauty and to the arts in liturgical worship has extensive implications for catechesis. In the case of liturgical catechesis, it is not simply a matter of paintings serving a decorative purpose. Rather, the encounter with great art is itself an invitation toward personal and social transformation, toward an encounter with Jesus Christ. Relative to catechesis, this means that our pedagogy must employ the arts as a way of inviting Christians into a contemplative way of knowing. If the definitive aim of catechesis “is to put people not only in touch but in communion, in intimacy with Jesus Christ,”[iv] then the liturgical arts are a privileged way to foster this encounter.

Liturgical Beauty and Tradition

On a recent pilgrimage to Rome, I was asked by a fellow traveler about a common image, repeated frequently in iconography of Christ’s nativity, in churches and museums alike. Just below Jesus in the manger, the viewer encounters Christ being bathed, presumably for the first time, by his mother. Jesus’ first bath, absent from the Scriptures, presents to the viewer a moment for contemplating the mystery of Jesus’ self-emptying love. Here, the Christ child enters into the fullness of the human condition. Those who have parented children know that this moment of the first bath is more than a pious motif of early Christian iconography. For the child, the first bath is a terrifying entrance into what it means to be human. The same waters that cleanse the child may also kill; and the newborn seems to have an innate sense of this fact. In encountering this iconographic motif, the Christian pilgrim is invited into a lived, tangible sense of Christ’s self-emptying love, his total sharing in the precariousness of human life. What is proposed in the Scriptures is made visible in stone and mortar, and is encountered now in every eucharistic celebration.

Such iconographic motifs present in churches are part and parcel of the Church’s understanding of Revelation itself. The revealed Word of God is not limited to the Scriptures alone but “Tradition and Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church.”[v] And as Dei Verbum makes clear, Tradition is not simply a series of cognitive propositions:

The Tradition that comes from the apostles makes progress in the Church, with the help of the Holy Spirit. There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on. This comes about through the contemplation and study of believers who ponder these things in their hearts (see Lk 2:19 and 51). It comes from the intimate sense of spiritual realities which they experience. And it comes from the preaching of those who, on succeeding to the office of bishop, have received the sure charism of truth. Thus, as the centuries go by, the Church is always advancing towards the plenitude of divine truth, until eventually the words of God are fulfilled in it.[vi]

In other words, the Church’s Tradition is not limited to the Creed. Rather, it includes those profound insights into the mystery of faith that liturgical art presents for the contemplation of

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believers.[vii] In some sense, ignorance of this tradition of liturgical beauty is akin to lacking knowledge of the term consubstantial or how to engage in contemplative prayer.

In liturgical catechesis, our inattention to the tradition of liturgical beauty has been profound. Few of our students learn the essential chants of the Church. They are not introduced to those classic mosaics or frescos that substantiate and pass on the faith of the Church to new generations. Many have never heard the polyphony of Palestrina, the Corpus Christi texts of Thomas Aquinas, or the brilliant liturgical music of the modern composer James MacMillan. Liturgical catechesis, if it is to be faithful to the robust sense of the Tradition presented by Dei Verbum, must form disciples in the artistic tradition of the Church. For it is within this tradition that we come to encounter not simply schools of artistic thought but also the very mystery of faith, which makes possible our salvation.

Liturgical Beauty Is Oriented Toward Discipleship

Of course, too great an emphasis upon beauty in the liturgy risks creating cultural aesthetes, who are more interested in the aesthetical dimensions of liturgical prayer than becoming a disciple of Christ. They attend not to the beauty of the crucified God-man but to the idol of the pretty and the pleasant. Hans urs von Balthasar notes the intimate union that must accompany our encounter with the beautiful and discipleship in the life of the Church:

In the Christian scheme the joy and rapture experienced by the individual must ever and again be made subservient to the law of suffering on behalf of the community, and consequently the vision according to him must constantly submit to being obscured by the ordinary activities of life. In these the good to be done here and now, the sober truth, counteracts all that beguiles and enchants…[viii]

The greatest work of art in the Catholic imagination is not produced by a William Byrd, a Fra Angelico, or a Flannery O’Connor. Rather, the highest piece of art in the Catholic imagination is the God-man stretched out in love upon the cross. This God reveals to us that the meaning of human existence is the totality of self-gift and that to become this kind of beauty comes with the cost that we must give ourselves away entirely.

Liturgical beauty, then, does not exist for itself. Catholics should be profoundly suspicious of any sense of beauty divorced from life within the world. The beauty that is created in the liturgy should lead us to desire to become that beauty for the life of the world.

Perhaps this fact is realized most in the frescos that adorn the multiple layers of the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. Indeed, the colors of these frescos are riveting to the eyes. They present a series of scenes from Christ’s own life interspersed with those of Saint Francis, providing a visual theology in line with St. Bonaventure’s own life of Francis. Many of these frescos are important insofar as the artist, Giotto, is presenting a visual realism, which anticipates the artistic developments of the Renaissance itself; but to the one who prays within

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this space, who participates in the Eucharist, this art is not an invitation for aesthetic perception alone. It is instead an encounter with the stunning beauty of the Crucified One, as well as that of Saint Francis, who took upon himself this beauty and became it for the world to behold. Also, if the imagination is piqued (and it will be), then we may begin to wonder in the course of this prayer, if we too could become this beautiful, if such beauty is meant not simply for those frescos but for every corner of the world.

Timothy P. O’Malley is director of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy in the Institute for Church Life, and Associate Professional Specialist, University of Notre Dame.

Notes

[i] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, art. 24.[ii] Hans urs von Balthasar, “Revelation and the Beautiful” in Explorations in Theology, I. The Word Made Flesh, trans. A.V. Littledale with Alexander Dru (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 109.[iii] Roger Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 235-36.[iv] John Paul II, Catechesi Tradendae, art. 5.[v] Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, art. 10.[vi] Ibid., art. 8.[vii] Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium, art. 122-124.[viii] Hans urs von Balthasar, “Revelation and the Beautiful,” 119.This article was originally on pages 6-8 of the printed edition.

November 1 … All Saints DayNovember 12 … Diocesan Catechetical ConferenceNovember 20 … MSOTNovember 22 … Book ClubNovember 24 … Happy Thanksgiving!November 30 … St. Andrew the Apostle Feast Day

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Dates to Remember

With tens of millions killed and thousands of Catholics incarcerated because of rigged trials, China under Mao's dictatorship was the Asian version of the Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet Gulag. It's one of the darkest moments in Church history one that continues to be played out to this day through a historic abuse of power and a seemingly endless hunt for believers in Jesus Christ and His Church.

Now the stories of these brave Catholic counter-revolutionaries are brought to you for the first time. These four autobiographical testimonies will leave you speechless and inspired. You'll witness the endless strength and hope these brave men displayed despite years of shocking psychological and physical abuse.

Nothing short of miraculous, you'll hear their miraculous stories in the face of hunger, torture, interrogation, indoctrination, and the humiliation of the people's trials. There emerged from these souls the crystalline faith of those brave enough to accept their own Calvary for fidelity to Christ without ever becoming slaves of hatred.

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Book Club

Diaries of the Chinese Martyrs: Stories of Heroic Catholics Living in Mao’s ChinaEdited by Gerolamo Fazzini

THE MEMORARE

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known,

that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or

sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired by this

confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins my Mother, To thee

I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the

Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear

and answer me. Amen!

Novena Prayer to Saint Philomena

O faithful virgin and glorious martyr, Saint Philomena, who works so many miracles on behalf of the poor and sorrowing, have pity on me. Thou knowest the multitude and diversity of my

needs. Behold me at thy feet, full of misery, but full of hope. I entreat thy charity, O great saint! Graciously hear me and obtain from God a favorable answer to the request which I now humbly

lay before thee (make your request here). I am thoroughly convinced that through thy merits, through the scorn, the sufferings, the death thou didst endure, united to the merits of the passion and death of Jesus thy spouse, I shall obtain what I ask of thee and in the joy of my heart I will

bless God, who is admirable in his saints. Amen.

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St. Philomena – Virgin, Martyr, and Wonder Worker

The very name of Philomena contains the words: filia luminis, daughter of light. She is the enlightener of a

dark and corrupt age confounding the sneers of materialism. She is the Patroness of the Children of

Mary. Her mission today is to draw us to the Immaculate Heart of Mary through imitation of her

heroic virtues of purity, obedience and humility. Saint Philomena is an anchor of hope in this dark age of

despair.

St. Andrew the Apostle Religious Education………………..www.standrewsreligioused.org

Diocese of Arlington………………………………………………..www.arlingtondiocese.org

New Advent………………………………………………………………..www.newadvent.org

Catechist Resources…….. http://truthandcharity.net/10-incredible-and-free-resources-for-catechists/

Catholic Coloring Pages…………………………………..…..www.catholicplayground.com

Catholic Craft Ideas……………………………….….. www.equippingcatholicfamilies.com

http://catholic-resources.org/Art/Koch-ChristianSymbols.htm

www.catholicicing.com

EWTN…………………………………………….……………………….……..www.ewtn.com

Quiz Maker………………………………………………..………..…………www.quizlet.com

Presentation Website…………………………..……………………...………..www.prezi.com

Bishop Barron’s Website……………………..……………………..…..www.wordonfire.org

Saint Stories……………………………...……….………….www.roman-catholic-saints.com

Weekly Mass Activities, Books, Videos, etc………………………..…...www.holyheroes.com

Free Printable Lessons and Crafts…..……..………..….www.MassExplained.com

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Helpful Websites