Hello,
For Saturday's Bible Study of Luke Chapter 4, please read the following link
entitled "Luke's Vision of Jesus' Jubilee Year" from Tim Gray's "Mission of the
Messiah" (pages 31-42).  Printed handouts will be given out as well on Saturday.

http://books.google.com/books?id=qffUIEkWEqsC&lpg=PA5&ots=g19jqC1T_g&dq=mission%\
20of%20the%20Messiah%20tim%20gray%20chapter%204&pg=PA31#v=onepage&q=&f=false

-------------- Original message from kelleher craig <cmk4868@...>: --------------

 

--- On Mon, 12/7/09, patrick.langrell@archny.org <patrick.langrell@archny.org> wrote: From: patrick.langrell@archny.org <patrick.langrell@archny.org> Subject: Tuesday 8th: Open House for the Gianna Center for Women To: cmk4868@yahoo.com Date: Monday, December 7, 2009, 11:28 AM Dear friends, Just a reminder that The Gianna Center, New York City's first authentically Catholic healthcare center for women, is having its Open House tomorrow evening from 5 – 8pm. Come along – it’ll be a great way to meet all the awesome staff and to learn how the Center can serve women’s healthcare needs. Light refreshments will also be served. It’s just three blocks away from Grand Central station, at 15 East 40th st, Suite 101. Details about the Gianna Centers mission and services can be found at www.svcmc.org/gianna Patients interested in scheduling an appointment can also call the office at 212-481-1219. Your friend in Christ, Patrick Langrell Director of Young Adult Outreach Archdiocese of New York 1011 First Avenue New York, N.Y. 10022 catholicnyc.com "In the Church there is always a struggle taking place between the desert and the garden, between the sin that parches the earth and the grace that waters it so that it produces abundant fruits of holiness" Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, December 6 Copyright ©2009 CatholicNYC.com

-------------- Original message from kelleher craig <cmk4868@...>: --------------

 

--- On Mon, 12/7/09, patrick.langrell@archny.org <patrick.langrell@archny.org> wrote: From: patrick.langrell@archny.org <patrick.langrell@archny.org> Subject: Tuesday 8th: Open House for the Gianna Center for Women To: cmk4868@yahoo.com Date: Monday, December 7, 2009, 11:28 AM Dear friends, Just a reminder that The Gianna Center, New York City's first authentically Catholic healthcare center for women, is having its Open House tomorrow evening from 5 � 8pm. Come along � it�ll be a great way to meet all the awesome staff and to learn how the Center can serve women�s healthcare needs. Light refreshments will also be served. It�s just three blocks away from Grand Central station, at 15 East 40th st, Suite 101. Details about the Gianna Centers mission and services can be found at www.svcmc.org/gianna Patients interested in scheduling an appointment can also call the office at 212-481-1219. Your friend in Christ, Patrick Langrell Director of Young Adult Outreach Archdiocese of New York 1011 First Avenue New York, N.Y. 10022 catholicnyc.com "In the Church there is always a struggle taking place between the desert and the garden, between the sin that parches the earth and the grace that waters it so that it produces abundant fruits of holiness" Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, December 6 Copyright �2009 CatholicNYC.com

-------------- Original message from kelleher craig <cmk4868@...>: --------------

 

--- On Mon, 12/7/09, patrick.langrell@archny.org <patrick.langrell@archny.org> wrote: From: patrick.langrell@archny.org <patrick.langrell@archny.org> Subject: Tuesday 8th: Open House for the Gianna Center for Women To: cmk4868@yahoo.com Date: Monday, December 7, 2009, 11:28 AM Dear friends, Just a reminder that The Gianna Center, New York City's first authentically Catholic healthcare center for women, is having its Open House tomorrow evening from 5 – 8pm. Come along – it’ll be a great way to meet all the awesome staff and to learn how the Center can serve women’s healthcare needs. Light refreshments will also be served. It’s just three blocks away from Grand Central station, at 15 East 40th st, Suite 101. Details about the Gianna Centers mission and services can be found at www.svcmc.org/gianna Patients interested in scheduling an appointment can also call the office at 212-481-1219. Your friend in Christ, Patrick Langrell Director of Young Adult Outreach Archdiocese of New York 1011 First Avenue New York, N.Y. 10022 catholicnyc.com "In the Church there is always a struggle taking place between the desert and the garden, between the sin that parches the earth and the grace that waters it so that it produces abundant fruits of holiness" Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, December 6 Copyright ©2009 CatholicNYC.com

http://catholicexchange.com/2009/12/08/124435/
by Robert J. Gieb


Just after the beginning of the season of
Advent, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the Church gives us
a front row seat both to the tragic story of the pride and disobedience
that led to the fall of man and to the story of faith and humble
obedience that culminated in our redemption. The readings selected by
the Church for this feast set before us the story of man’s sin, and
God’s plan to save man from his sin. A plan that includes “the woman,”
Mary, as an integral part.
In the first reading, from the Book of Genesis (3:4-15), we hear
again the ancient story. God the Creator has given man life, and all
that is essential to sustain his life in loving communion with Him. But
that is not enough, and man must have more. He lusts for the power not
to just be the image of God (as he truly is), but to be a god himself,
co-equal with his Creator.
Unfortunately, this tale of rebellion and lust for power will repeat
itself over and over in the course of human history right up to our own
time and culture, infected with the same overweening pride and lust for
power.
The story of the fall of Adam and Eve is always relevant. Satan
appears as a snake. The snake we find out is in sales, promoting
certain ideas and theories. He strikes up a conversation with Eve,
hyping the powerful human, even cosmic, benefits which come to those
who eat apples from the tree of life. It is the first real snake oil
story.
Eve falls for the phony sales pitch, and then gets Adam into the
act. He falls for it too. Satan rings up his first sale of sin to man,
and then, we imagine, tries to make a quick garden getaway. The two
sinners are left standing under the apple tree, naked and holding the
equivalent of a bottle of worthless snake oil. When it finally dawns on
them what their pride has led them to do, they hide in the bushes,
feeling very guilty.
The Creator asks for an explanation of their disobedience. Adam
blames his wife: She made me do it. Eve blames the snake: The devil
made me do it. Then, reproved by their Creator and instructed on the
consequences of their sinful conduct, they are ushered out of the
garden by the angel.
By this point in the story we have witnessed sin and the punishment
that must follow the sin. But as the story continues we will also
witness God’s faithfulness to his creation, because while Adam and Eve
are punished, they are still loved, and along with all mankind will
always be loved by Him who is eternal love.
As Adam and Eve are leaving the garden we learn that the Satan has
not made his getaway and is still there. At that point in the drama the
Creator makes a great promise to Eve and to Satan: “I will put enmity
between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will
strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.” God announces for
the first time the coming “of the Messiah and Redeemer, of a battle
between the serpent and the woman, and of the final victory of a
descendant of hers” (Catechism of the Catholic Church , # 410) .
In the reading from the Gospel of St. Luke (1:26-38) we see that,
after centuries of man’s sin, punctuated by his periodic faithfulness,
the ever faithful Creator makes good on His promise made in the Garden
of Eden. He sent his Son to redeem man. The pride and disobedience that
led to the fall is surpassed by the humble and obedient cooperation of
Mary in God’s plan for redemption. The Immaculate Conception of Mary is
an integral part of that plan.
“In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of
her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that
she be wholly borne by God’s grace” (CCC #490) . Based on that
truth Pope Pius IX, on December 8, 1854, solemnly proclaimed to the
world: “The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her
conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by
virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race,
preserved immune from all stain of original sin.” Ineffabilis Deus . The
magnificent truth of the sinless conception of Mary in the womb
of her mother, St. Anne, became an official dogma of the Church.
The solemn proclamation by Pius IX was the culmination of years of
theological debate. While early on in the Church there was an
understanding of the Immaculate Conception, it was not universally
accepted by theologians. St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Thomas
Aquinas both taught that Mary was not conceived withoutoriginal
sin. They reasoned that if Jesus came to save all humanity, then that
humanity must include Mary, honored and favored though she may be.
The philosopher and theologian Duns Scotus offered a reasoned, but
inspired solution. Mary, he said, had to be saved from sin, but that
does not mean that she could not have been saved by being excluded from
original sin. Scotus argued that it is a more excellent benefit to
preserve a person from evil than to permit him to fall into it and then
deliver him from it. Simply put, while we are saved from original sin
by the waters and grace of Baptism after our creation as human beings,
God granted Mary an even greater gift and preserved her from original
sin from the moment of her creation as a human being. “The ‘splendor of
an entirely unique holiness’ by which Mary is ‘enriched from the first
instant of her conception’ comes wholly from Christ: she is ‘redeemed
in a more exalted fashion’ by reason of the merits of her Son” (CCC #492) .
The debate was settled in 1854 with the proclamation of the dogma,
and so the Catholic Catechism now teaches: “Mary benefited first of all
and uniquely from Christ’s victory over sin: She was preserved from
stain of original sin and by a special grace of God committed no sin of
any kind during her whole earthly life” (CCC # 411).
Mary was the third human being without original sin, Adam and Eve
being the first two. But unlike Adam and Eve, Mary did not sin, and
became an instrument for the redemption and salvation of all mankind.
Through her cooperation and unique role in the Divine plan Jesus became
man to save man, and to show him the way to His Father. This
cooperation allowed the Incarnation of Jesus in her womb by the
overshadowing of the power of the Most High, and the birth of the
infant Jesus nine months later.
But what if Mary had not co-operated? Adam and Eve were free of
original sin from the moment of their creation, but they sinned. What
if Mary had not said: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done
to me according to your word?”
While Mary was the beneficiary of “a special grace of God,” that
same God gives every human free will, and Mary’s love and obedience had
to be freely given or else it would not be true love and obedience
“‘God sent forth His Son,’ but to prepare a body for Him He wanted the
free cooperation of a creature” (CCC #488) .
At the Annunciation the angel Gabriel greets Mary: “Hail, favored
one!” He then announces God’s plan and Mary’s role in that plan. But it
is clear that the plan depends on her co-operation with His plan.
Before “the woman” responds to the angel all humanity is in
suspense. As St. Bernard said of this moment, the salvation of man
seems to hang in the balance. Then the tension is broken. “Let it be
done according to thy will.”
The obedient new Eve by “the power of the Most High” will conceive
the obedient Son of the Most High, and that Son will draw all men to
the Most High, His Father. “Mary responded with the obedience of faith.
Thus, giving her consent to God’s word, Mary becomes the mother of
Jesus” (CCC #494 ).
Mary Immaculate is the patroness of the United States, and the dogma
that she was from the moment of her conception preserved immune from
the stain of original sin is important in the battle for the life and
dignity of the unborn. Only human beings have original sin. The life
that gave birth to the Word made flesh was preserved immune fromoriginal sinat
the moment of her conception because, like all human beings, she was human life
at the moment of her conception. She
did not become a human being — an “I” — at some point in the second
trimester or after her birth.  In short, the dogma recognizes the
unique status of Mary as God’s “favored one,” but at the same time it
confirms to our abortion-crazed society the full humanity and dignity
of all human beings from the very moment of their conception in the
womb. This truth was stated gently but clearly by “the woman” herself.
In 1858, four years after Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma, a
peasant girl was an audience of one when Mary graciously appeared to
her. She spoke only five words in this apparition to Bernadette
Soubirous: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
Robert
J. Gieb has practiced probate law in Ft. Worth, Texas for thirty years.
He is local counsel for Catholics United For Life of North Texas.

Catholic For A Reason on NET TV - Brooklyn Diocese Network. Thanks to all who made it happen and thanks to Net TV for their work. Check it out. It begins on the exact time 10:30 (Not the time of the day, but the time on the Vid).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTij_M4cA9Q

Please keep us in your prayers.

Happy Advent


Juan Rodriguez "Arthanius"
Defenders of the Holy Trinity
St. Mary's Church, 28 Attorney St, NYC 10002 / 646-262-3046
WWW.LANDOFARTHANIUS.ORG

Some background on today's Feast of the Immaculate Conception of our Blessed
Mother:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm

Feast Day Tonight - Holy Day of Obligation - Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Dec 7th Vigil and Dec 8th Masses - Contact your Church or the churches nearest your work place. Spread the Word. Check out Land of Arthanius for info on the feast and why we celebrate it.

Click on the ICON


Juan Rodriguez "Arthanius"
Defenders of the Holy Trinity
St. Mary's Church, 28 Attorney St, NYC 10002 / 646-262-3046
WWW.LANDOFARTHANIUS.ORG

Here is a description of Saint Nicholas, on whom we base Santa Clause and whose
feast day is today:
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=371

How fitting that this week's Gospel Reading is Luke 3 after it was just covered
in Bible study last week.

  By
Father Thomas Rosica, CSB
TORONTO, DEC. 1, 2009 (Zenit.org).-
In today's Gospel text, the evangelist who Dante Alighieri called the
"scriba manuetidinis Christi" (scribe of the gentleness of Christ),
presents his theme of the universality of salvation, which he announced earlier
in the words of Simeon (Luke 2:30-32).
He does this by casting the call of John the Baptist in the form of an Old
Testament prophetic call (Luke 3:2), and by using the quotation from Isaiah
found in Mark 1:3 (Isaiah 40:3), and adding the next two verses in Luke 3:5-6.
Let us consider several historical details offered by Luke in today's prophetic
call story.
Tiberius Caesar succeeded Augustus as emperor in A.D. 14 and reigned until A.D.
37. The 15th year of his reign would have fallen between A.D. 27 and 29.
Pontius Pilate was prefect of Judea from A.D. 26 until 36. The Jewish historian
Josephus describes him as a greedy and ruthless prefect who had little regard
for the local Jewish population and their religious practices (Luke 13:1). The
Herod who is mentioned is Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great who ruled
over Galilee and Perea from 4 B.C. to A.D. 39.
Luke not only situates the call of John the Baptist in terms of the civil
rulers of that period, but he also mentions the high priesthood of Annas and
Caiaphas, the religious leadership of Palestine. Annas had been high priest
from A.D. 6-15. After being deposed by the Romans in A.D. 15, he was succeeded
by various members of his family and eventually by his son-in-law, Caiaphas,
who was high priest from A.D. 18-36.
Against the backdrop of this sweeping history, the word of God came to John in
the Judean desert. Luke is alone among the New Testament writers in associating
the preaching of John with a call from God. The evangelist thereby identifies
John with the prophets whose ministries began with similar calls. Later on,
Luke separates the ministry of John the Baptist from that of Jesus by reporting
the imprisonment of John before the baptism of Jesus (Luke 3:21-22).
Luke uses this literary device to serve his understanding of the periods of
salvation
history. With John the Baptist, the time of promise, the period of Israel,
comes to an end; with the baptism of Jesus and the descent of the Spirit upon
him, the time of fulfillment, the period of Jesus, begins.
In his second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, Luke will introduce the third
epoch in salvation history, the period of the Church. In Luke 7:26, John will
be described as "more than a prophet"; he is also the precursor of
Jesus (Luke 7:27), a transitional figure inaugurating the period of the
fulfillment of prophecy and promise.
In describing the expectation of the people (Luke 3:15), Luke is characterizing
the time of John's preaching in the same way as he had earlier described the
situation of other devout Israelites in the infancy narrative (Luke 2:25-26,
37-38). In Luke 3:7-18, Luke presents the preaching of John the Baptist who
urges the crowds to reform in view of the coming wrath (Luke 3:7, 9), and who
offers the crowds certain standards for reforming social conduct (Luke
3:10-14), and who announces to the crowds the coming of one mightier than he
(Luke 3:15-18).
Authenticity
The true prophets of Israel help us in our struggle against all forms of
duplicity. John the Baptist is the patron saint par excellence of authenticity.
How often our words, thoughts and actions are incoherent! Combined in John the
Baptist is the very paradox of Advent: the coming triumph of God manifest
precisely in the darkness of the present evil age.
John the Baptist heard, experienced and lived God's liberating word in the
desert and was thus able to preach it to others so effectively because his life
and message were one. He certainly didn't mince words. John the Baptist
shatters the silence of the wilderness with his cry: "Repent, for the
kingdom of heaven has come near." Not just "repent," change the
way we live, but repent and prepare for the coming of the kingdom of heaven,
which will upset all our securities and overturn anything we try to leave in
place. The joy and the challenge of Advent is that in Jesus Christ our God is
coming, and our aching and longing for God will be met. But this God who comes
is disturbing.
There was nothing politically correct about the Baptist's message. He got right
to the point and said what needed to be said. He told the first people who came
to him to share. He told the tax collectors to be just. He told the soldiers to
make peace.
The Baptist taught the people of his day and our day that the Messiah comes to
save us from the powers of duplicity, despair, darkness and death, and to put
us back on the path of peace and reconciliation so that we might find our way
back to God. John the Baptist's life and mission remind us how badly we need a
Savior to save us, in order that we might be all that we are called to be and
do all that we have to do to live in the Light. So often we fail to recognize
the one among us who is our Way, our Truth and our Life. This is what Advent is
all about: finding our way back to God.
Transformation of our deserts
Advent is a mystery that transforms and not simply informs. Advent remains with
its paradoxical combination of waiting and hastening, suffering and joy,
judgment and deliverance, apocalyptic woe and eschatological hope.
Unfortunately for our culture of instant gratification, hope requires
incompleteness. To hope, in the true Advent fashion, is to live with the
certainty of unfulfilled desire.
The God who was a highway engineer making new ways through the wilderness, a
gardener turning deserts into flower gardens, is now the artist painting a new
perspective of the age-old messianic promise of hope. Hope in God cannot stand
still, because -- as Isaiah reminds us, we hope in a God who is constantly
doing a new thing. Does our hope in God hold fast in the face of chaos and
confusion in our life? How do we live with the Word of God? How can we live
with the silence of God?
Advent teaches us that if we are quiet in our hearts long enough, we will
discover the God still carves out highways and turns the desert places of our
lives into oases of wonder, life, beauty, even though nothing will be as we
expected. Any transformation of the wilderness depends on water.
Throughout the Old Testament, God is spoken of as the one who gives or
withholds water -- an image easily understood by people for whom water is a
precious and controlled commodity. Few of us in the First World have an idea of
drought. Our water piped into our homes deprives us of an image of God as the
one on whom our very existence depends; similarly, electricity deludes us in to
thinking we have the darkness under control. Together they rob us of daily
experiences that could give vibrancy to the Advent invitation to revisit our
dependence on God, to revisit our desire for God and to discover through the
night of waiting that God does indeed come.
The message of Advent is not that everything is falling to pieces. Nor is it
that God is in heaven and all is therefore well with the world. Rather the
message of Advent is that when every fixed star on the moral compass is
wavering, when all hell is breaking loose on earth, we hear once again the
Baptist's consoling message: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be
made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made
smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."
Yet even with the birth of Jesus, we learn that Jerusalem and Israel still
awaited their redemption. The world still awaits its freedom from hunger, war,
oppression, violence, persecution and suffering. We all await our redemption.
Advent challenges us to look at the ways that we wait, the ways that we long
for God, and the ways that we hope. What and who is the source of our Advent
hope?
John the Baptist's life can be summed up in the image of a finger pointing to
the one who was coming: Jesus Christ. If we are to take on John's role of
preparing the way in today's world, our lives also will become the pointing
fingers of living witnesses who demonstrate that Jesus can be found and that he
is near. Jesus is the fulfillment of our longing, our hoping and waiting. Jesus
alone can transform the deserts of our lives into living gardens of beauty and
nourishment for the world.
Come, Lord Jesus! We need you now more than ever!
[The readings for the 2nd Sunday of Advent are Baruch 5:1-9; 1 Philippians
1:4-6, 8-11; and Luke 3:1-6]
* * *
Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, chief executive officer of the Salt and Light
Catholic Media Foundation and Television Network in Canada, is a consultor to
the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. He can be reached at:
rosica@...