Today on the Liturgical Calendar
Who is Saint Valentine?
What we seem to be able to say for sure is that the one associated with February 14th died in 270, and was a priest in Rome. He assisted St. Marius with tending to the sick and wounded Christians who were imprisoned during the reign of Claudius II. Later, he was arrested and asked to renounce his faith. He
would not do this and so was sentenced to be beaten with clubs and then beheaded. This execution was done on February 14, which is the day we celebrate this Feast.
While little is known about the lives of any of the early Valentines, we can speculate a little more about why the name and date became associated with romantic love. Some historians recount the early Roman custom of boys drawing girl’s names on February 15th as a celebration to honor the pagan goddess of fertility, Februata Juno. The bishops supposedly “baptized” this holiday by substituting the girl’s names with the names of Saints, Valentine being the most popular name because of the proximity of his feast day.
For our modern practice of exchanging cards and gifts and calling your sweetheart “Valentine”, we must look for a more recent origin. In the Middle Ages, in France and England, it seems that February 14th was first associated with lovers because that was the date tradition had it that birds would pair off to mate for the spring. According to the romantic literature of the 14th and 15th centuries, it was common on this day to send a love token or a letter to your desired mate, in imitation of the birds. Since this day also was the feast day of St. Valentine, the practice arose of calling the one you sent the token to your “Valentine”. So it turns out that the cards we exchange have nothing to do with the Saint at all, although I am sure he would be pleased at the expression of
love done in his name.
Some people today might look at the pagan origins of this holiday and write it off as un-Christian and therefore something we should discourage. You find the same thing being said about Halloween and even Easter and Christmas! But the early Church absorbed many pagan celebrations and made them holy, by turning the purpose of the festivities towards God. And certainly God wants us to love one another. Christ himself, when asked what the greatest commandment is, replied, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt 22:37-39)
What is the “World Day of Prayer for the Sick?”
On February 11, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, we observe once again the “World Day of Prayer for the Sick.” Illness—our own or that of a loved one, in whatever form and at whatever age—is a real challenge to all, for through illness we are reminded of our own mortality.
The Church in her ministry to the sick and their families seeks to help make the time of illness a unique and an opportune time to help the ill person to find adequate responses to the ultimate questions abut human life—questions on the meaning of pain, suffering and death itself, considered not only as an enigma difficult to face, but as a mystery in which Christ incorporates our lives into Himself, opening them to a new and definitive birth for the life that will never end. And so, to those who are injured or sick, the Church through her ministry of pastoral care says: courage, God has not forgotten you. Christ suffers with you. And by offering up your sufferings, you can collaborate with Him in the redemption of the world. In this way, Jesus gives meaning to all human suffering.
Pope Benedict XVI has released his message for the 2012 ”World Day of Prayer for the Sick.” The day’s theme is “Stand Up and Go; Your Faith Has Saved You” (Luke 17:19). The Holy Father focuses on the sacraments of healing: the Sacrament of Penance – “the medicine of confession” – and the Anointing of the Sick. Pope Benedict, in speaking of the latter, says, ”Anointing of the Sick should not be held to be almost a ’minor sacrament’ when compared to the others.” Attention to and pastoral care for sick people, while on the one hand, a sign of God’s tenderness towards those who are suffering, on the other brings spiritual advantage to priests and the whole Christian community as well, in the awareness that what is done to the least, is done to Jesus Himself (cf. Mt. 25:40).
Human Life & Dignity
For the Church, there is no distinction between defending human life and promoting the dignity of the human person.
Pope Benedict XVI writes in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, that “The Church forcefully maintains this link between life ethics and social ethics, fully aware that ‘a society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it assets values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized” (no. 15).
As a gift from God, every human life is sacred from conception to natural death. The life and dignity of every person must be respected and protected at every stage and in every condition. The right to life is the first and most fundamental principle of human rights that leads Catholics to actively work for a world of greater respect for human life and greater commitment to justice and peace. The Bishops of United States have pledged to affirm the intrinsic (fundamental] value of human life and the dignity of every human being in a way that transforms the culture by implementing “The Life and Dignity of the Human Person” priority plan for 2010-2021. To achieve this goal, the priority plan includes ongoing education, prayer, policy, and advocacy efforts to mobilize the Catholic community on issues of life, justice, and peace. In this way, the community celebrates the gift of human life and witnesses to the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Changes to the Missal
#1 – The Roman Missal is going through the Third Edition. The Roman Missal is the book of prayers and responses prayed by the celebrant and the people during any given Mass. There re two significant changes, which we will look at for the next two weeks. Today we want to offer a background explanation as to why we’re having a Third Edition. The first English translation of the Roman Missal after Vatican II aimed at easy intelligibility in the vernacular, putting greater value on what is called “functional equivalence” with the original Latin than on word-for-word fidelity. The resulting texts became quite understandable, but often at the expense of the full richness and meaning of the words that the Christians of the early centuries of the Church used to celebrate the Mass. The revised edition of the English Missal seeks to recover the full original meaning, rich in poetry, theology, and biblical allusions. To make the transition more fruitful, it is valuable to give some attention to two of the changes that people have found most confusing.
#2 – “And with your spirit” – The first change concerns the response to the priest’s greeting “The Lord be with you.” The faithful will begin to respond “And with your spirit,” instead of the now—customary “And also with you.” The Lord (be) with you (Dominus vobiscum) is a powerful biblical greeting, used in both Old and New Testaments, especially when a messenger from God, such as an angel or an apostle, meets someone to whom he was sent. Most famously, these are the words with which the angel greets Mary (Lk 1:28). He states the fact that the Lord God is with Mary in a uniquely intimate way– but he also expresses the wish that the Lord may be even more powerfully present in her when she will conceive the child Jesus in her wwomb. The greeting, then, is an acknowledgment of the Lord Jesus’ presence in the congregation and the minister, and a wish that His presence may fill us with His Spirit and transform us unto His image and likeness.
#3 – The second possibly confusing change coming up in the Roman Missal, concern’s the priest’s repetition of Christ’s own words at the consecration of the chalice. In the phrase “this is the cup of my blood… which will be shed for you and “for all,” the last word will be changed from “all” to “many” (in accord with the Latin term “multis” ). When Pope Benedict explicitly requested this change in translation, confusion arose among some Catholics: they were afraid that such wording might create the false impression that the Church believed that Jesus did not die for all human beings. However, the change in translation was not because it is wrong to say Jesus died ?for all, but because saying that he would die “for many” is a more faithful translation of what Jesus actually said. When quoting Jesus at the Last Supper, the Greek Bible and the earliest Greek and Latin Masses, the closest witnesses we have to Jesus’ own words, all clearly choose phrases that mean “for many” and not “for all”. It seems that Jesus choose to say “for many” at the Last Supper to show that He fulfills the role of the Suffering Servant as foretold by Isaiah: the one Servant who would take away the sins of “many”, and will justify “the many” by his vicarious suffering and death (53:11,12). The “many” means here an indefinitely large multitude consisting of both Israel and many other nations.
A final thought to ponder: It would seem that at the Last Supper Christ said “for you and for many” instead of “for you and for all” to remind us that the Eucharist is a Covenant meal, one which must be embraced by both the offerer and the recipient. Entry into the New and Eternal Covenant is truly open to all, but the benefits of the Covenant belong to those who have freely accepted it!