With so many different “churches” offering opportunities to “worship” one must ask the question, “What is worship?” “Where does it come from and how do you do it?” This talk explores the origin of Christian worship in the Old Testament, showing that it was God who first asked us for worship and the essence of this worship was expressed through offering sacrifice. But what place does offering sacrifice have in worship today? Are there any “rules” for worship, or do we just make it up and do whatever we like? Understanding how we are in fact called to offer sacrifice is the key to understanding the Mass and…the meaning of life.

This talk was given to a group of Catholic students and permanent community from the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center in Lawrence, KS. The talk was a part of their new “Theology on Tap” series and was given at Old Chicago in Lawrence.

The Holy Father gave some particular words of encouragement to priests. He urged them: “live the liturgy and worship with joy and love: It is action that the Risen One carries out through the power of the Holy Spirit in us, with us and for us. [...]

“And I would also like to invite each priest to celebrate and live the Eucharist with intensity, which is at the heart of the task of sanctifying; it is Jesus who wants to be with us, to live in us, to give himself to us, to show us the infinite mercy and tenderness of God.”

I can imagine the media being rather befuddled wondering, “in the wake of so much crisis” (as they love to remind us), why would the Pope would choose to remind priests about the importance of the Sacred Liturgy? When things seem to go badly for the Church and the priesthood, how many people would look to the liturgy as the answer? Yet this is exactly the solution (and the problem). We are blessed to have a very smart Pope who knows the liturgy well.

There is an ancient axiom with regard to the liturgy that is paraphrased as lex orandi, lex credendi, “The law of praying is the law of believing.” I like to say that if we pray correctly, we will believe correctly, and we will act correctly. If, therefore, we find problems in the way we are acting, the first place we should look ought not be to a “study” or “poll” or “experts.” Rather, we should look to the liturgy. If things are messed up in the Church, there’s almost a sure bet that things are messed up in the liturgy.

Many people think a cathedral is just a really big or beautiful church. Actually, any church could be a cathedral. A cathedral gets its name from the Latin word cathedra which means “chair.” Each diocese has a church which houses a special chair reserved for the bishop. This chair represents his governing and teaching authority over the diocese. A Bishop’s church which contains his chair, his cathedra, is therefore called a cathedral.

Today we celebrate the dedication of the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome, the Basilica of St. John Lateran. The bishop of Rome is of course also the Pope and thus, if you go to the Lateran basilica you will find a chair upon which Pope Benedict sits which represents his authority over the diocese of Rome and indeed over the entire universal Church. Today’s feast is thus a commemoration of the historical event in 324 when the physical building was first dedicated, but it also serves as a spiritual reminder. The Pope and his successors teach with authority given to them by Jesus. It is only through this ongoing presence of Jesus to His Church that unity is achieved.

Pope Benedict may well be remembered as the “Pope of Christian Unity” one day. His recent welcoming of many Anglicans back into union with the Church is just one example. Jesus promised that he would not allow the Pope to lead His Church into error in matters of faith and morals. This is a divinely protected gift that works often in spite of the sinfulness of the man himself. We thank God for the example of our present Holy Father today and pray for the continued unity of all Christians.

This past weekend’s funeral Mass for Sen. Edward Kennedy has been the cause of scandal for many people, but not necessarily for the right reasons.

Many question whether or not Sen. Kennedy should have been given the “honor” of a Catholic funeral. Given that no lawmaker ever did more to champion the cause of abortion on demand than Sen. Kennedy, it is understandable that people would be concerned that he would not be eligible for a Catholic funeral. If he had not repented from his position this would in fact be the case. However, the Church allows that, if one repents at the end of one’s life, he or she is entitled to Christian burial. It appears that Sen. Kennedy did call for a priest at the end of his life and did receive the sacraments. While this is certainly not the public repentance demanded by the very public sins of his life, the Church is very lenient and errs on the side of mercy if there exists even minimal evidence of “repentance.” I therefore concur with notable canon lawyer Ed Peters that Sen. Kennedy was entitled to a Catholic funeral Mass (go here for detailed information why).

That having been said, I do believe that the funeral Mass was a huge scandal. The reason the Church is lenient in allowing Christian burial for even minimally repentant public sinners is precisely because the central purpose of the funeral Mass is to implore God’s mercy for the deceased. To a point, you could say the bigger the sinner, the more appropriate a funeral Mass would be. Having a funeral Mass is in not intended to “honor” the person. The sadness of this particular funeral was that someone who very much needed our prayers instead received only praise. Tragically, the uncharitable pretended ignorance of the man’s grave sins cost him the one thing that could have really helped him, the potential prayers of thousands.

Perhaps the most serious scandal of this funeral Mass was that all this praise being heaped upon Sen. Kennedy was really not for him at all. The real purpose of so much show and ceremony was to provide reassurance to all those Catholics who, like Kennedy, reject the teaching authority of the Church. Can you still be a “good Catholic” and be in favor of abortion? Apparently. To the average person, here was “the Church” heaping countless praises upon the champion of abortion, homosexual activity, and scores of other moral outrages that the Church is supposedly against. What clearer teaching could there be? Actions speak louder than words.

Again, I am not saying that there shouldn’t have been a funeral Mass. I even think it should have been every bit as big and public as it was. I just wish it would have actually been a Catholic funeral Mass. What took place in Boston this weekend was a secular funeral shoved into a Catholic church. I actually hoped that the Cardinal would in fact preach and would use well the “teachable moment.” So many so-called Catholic politicians are leading lives in the same disastrous state as Sen. Kennedy. Here was a perfect opportunity to truly exercise the “care of souls” in an urgently needed way. Instead, more fuel was added to the already blazing scandal of Catholics in political life.

Might I suggest that much of the scandal of this weekend would have been avoided if an actual Catholic funeral Mass would have been celebrated according to the instructions for such a Mass. As I said, the central focus of the Mass is to pray for mercy upon the deceased. This is done with time-honored prayers and chants. The one thing that is not at all characteristic of a Catholic funeral is a speech. The Mass is for prayer, not making speeches, eulogies, remembrances, or whatever else you want to throw in. The instructions for the funeral Mass are clear:

“At the funeral Mass there should, as a rule, be a short homily, but never a eulogy of any kind.” (General Instruction of the Roman Missal #382)

Why were there not just one, but three eulogies at this so-called “funeral Mass?” Why were the General Intercessions perverted into political statements quoted from political speeches? The list of abuses goes on and on. If you just follow the instructions for Mass, most of what took place this weekend would not have happened.

The ancient counsel of the Church is evident here; lex orandi, lex credendi- the way we pray reflects and shapes what we believe. The manner of prayer this weekend (if you could call it prayer) clearly states that we believe that the good deeds done in life are sufficient to outweigh any sins, no matter how great and, most tragically, that the dead do not need our prayers. That is obviously what the people assembled in Boston believed as evidenced by how they prayed. The final scandal is to think about how people might have been helped to believe correctly if they had just prayed correctly.

May the soul of Edward Kennedy and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

A Eucharistic miracle similar to the one I described in Lanciano apparently took place in Buenos Aires in the 1990′s. I mentioned that there have been many other miracles like Lanciano over the years, so I wasn’t particularly surprised to hear of one in Buenos Aires. What struck me about this particular presentation were some key similarities between the known miracle in Lanciano and this new one in Argentina.

Apparently a consecrated host began to show signs of a sort of bleeding. The doctor indicates that he gave a sample to be tested by multiple independent doctors who didn’t know where the sample came from. They each reported the same conclusion, that the sample was from a human heart. Additionally, they also reported that the tissue showed the strange sign of responding as living tissue and was actually beating.

I was of course noticing that all of this sounded very similar to what was found with the Lanciano miracle. The speaker then goes on to mention the Lanciano miracle and he too notes the similarities. Then he says something that really made me stop for a second. I don’t fully get the details from the video, but apparently he was able to compare his results with the results of the doctor who did the Lanciano investigation and they were able to determine from the DNA that the samples from Lanciano from 750 and from Argentina in 1996 are from the same person!

I always knew that the blood type of the Lanciano sample was found to be AB and that this matched the blood type from the blood on the famous Shroud of Turin, also AB. However, being able to link this miracle in Buenos Aires to Lanciano as being not just the same blood type but matching DNA of the same person…well that’s really something now. Does anyone have more info on this connection or more official scientific results? The video is certainly worth a watch and I’d like to find out more myself.

Watch the Video

One of Many Websites with Info on Lanciano