Sunday 21 July 2013
Requiescat In Pace
With great sadness I heard yesterday of the dying of a young priest Rev. Dr. Fr. Amin Abboud
whilst at a retreat in NSW on July 18th. It appears that he died in his sleep, at this time thought from a heart attack.
Fr Amin was 48 years of age of the Opus Dei Prelature. He was a Registered medical doctor, had a PhD in Moral Philosophy and a book on the moral philosophy of Peter Singer pending publication.
He had been a priest for only aa few years.
Rest in Peace dear Fr Amin and thank you for your strong witness to life. Surrounded by the babies you were escorted home.
Anne
Monday 15 July 2013
Redeeming Grief-Abortion and its Pain.
Dear friends, my book Redeeming Grief is out at last both here in Australia and UK.
In Australia through Freedom Publishing and UK through Gracewing Publishing and I love some of the comments reviews being made. Have a look at this one. Yeah.....Anne
http://jasmineyow.wordpress.com/tag/anne-lastman/
Sunday 14 July 2013
Hail Holy Queen - Salve Regina
The prayer Hail Holy Queen which we pray after the Rosary is a most ancient prayer and beautiful. We declare that Mary the Mother of Jesus is "Holy" is "Queen" "Mother of all Mercy" (Jesus).
She is our "hope". We cry to Mary because before Mary's "Fiat" and the beginning of the work of our Redemption we were indeed "poor banished children of "Eve" (hawah-mother of all living) and in some ways we still are because we can no longer meet our creator face to face as "Eve" did in the garden. Today we meet our God and creator only with the eyes of faith. The Sin of Origins (of our first parents) deprived for us the experience of visual and "face to face" intimacy” (He walked with Adam in the cool of the garden) with Him. As we live on this earth and it is His joy and ours that we do so, we are deprived of the same intimacy of our "Father" as we have the visible and tangible intimacy with our own fathers. As all of us I have an intimacy with our children.
We sigh and are sad because of this barrier that prohibits us from embracing our Heavenly Father as we embrace our own living children.
"This Valley of Tears" is the earth and our life as we live it.
My own life is strewn with tears and all human beings in one way or another experience much sorrow and loss and the tears shed often feel like we could fill a whole valley with our tears (poetically). So collectively the tears of the human beings in our daily lives fill a whole valley and form a river and fill and top up the ocean.
"Turn then most gracious advocate thine eyes of Mercy towards us" A new title for Our Blessed Mother. Gracious Advocate. Remember Jesus on the Cross gave her to us as "our Mother" so we can turn to "our Mother" as we turn to our human mother for advocacy, for comfort, support, for intimate needs, so we turn to our heavenly mother for comfort for our soul’s needs, to help us to carry that heavy cross like my own deeply regretted two decisions which changed the trajectory of my life.
"And after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb....Jesus"
And in this exile/banishment from the embrace and vision of my own true Father, we ask, "Mum, when we come to the end of this journey, would you take me by the hand and introduce me to your Son who gave you to me and who bought for me this new and intimate relationship with Our Father/my Father?
I believe wholly completely and totally that I receive the body, blood, soul and divinity of my Lord Jesus when I receive the Eucharist and as I said in the past if I close my eyes I can see the beauty of the light of my Lord Jesus of the Transfiguration. But it is only through the imagination and not the visual.
We are meant to be perfect as Our heavenly father is perfect, but the reality is that we are not and whilst we remain on this earth we can and do fail the ideal. None of us is sinless. We all sin and fall far short of the glory of God. However, for this and for the reason of His great love for us, He has left for us the remedy for this our inclination towards failing the ideal.
Yes Jesus has conquered the Sin of World, but this knowledge has to be taken on board, acquired and made one's own and again the reality is that we are human beings who are frail and like St Paul says, I want to do good things but I fail.
The prayer "Hail Holy Queen" has written within it a most marvellous catechesis and if it could be "delivered" it would open the eyes of the soul. Within this catechesis, is the story of God, creation, sin, redemption and return to Our Father.
To the best of our knowledge seek Christ in His integrity, unbroken just as His mother and Father gave Him to us. This is what the journey is all about. Finding the Total and Whole and Complete Christ in His divine essence.
That we should love our enemy is a given. That we get hurt with our enemy's arrows, is also a given and in our labour to forgive is when we grow deeper in the dimension of the Cross and in the finding Christ in His integrity.
Thursday 11 July 2013
Marriage Covenant-a Heavenly Reality
MARRIAGE
COVENANT -A HEAVENLY REALITY.
In this decisive moment where marriage and
family life is being challenged and threatened, it is important that we restate
exactly what marriage is. What
constitutes marriage? And why it is so crucial to begin again to learn why
marriage is a covenant between a male and a female. Unless this happens then all other types of
“marriage” become possible. Just as some
wish to redefine marriage to incorporate various combinations so those who
believe marriage to be a covenant need to fight to reclaim and teach what is
the true nature of marriage. To this end
understanding what is a covenant? What
is a contract? And what is the difference between the two and how this
difference is the essence of a true marriage.
A secular
understanding of the term “covenant” suggests that it is an agreement, with
certain stipulations, which must be met by the covenant parties. The reduction of the term “covenant” to such
an understanding can and does cheat mankind of an understanding of “covenant”
as something more than contract.
The covenant idea is central to our knowledge of God and Scripture.
While our society uses the terms
“covenant” and “contract” interchangeably, the differences
between them are profound. With a contract what is exchanged are “things”
whereas with covenant what is
exchanged is “essence of self”.
Contracts exchange the material. Covenants
exchange the essence of the human being.
D.J. McCarthy defines covenant, “ as
a means by which the ancient world took to extend relationships beyond the
natural unity of blood”. To be related
by blood means a familial relationship.
However, to extend this type of relationship, it is done via means of a
covenant. Indeed covenant is a type of familial bond based on an oath.[1] The Hebrew word for covenant berit means to “bind” or to “fetter” and
in its etymology the word means to bind together by blood.(Lv 1:5e) There is sacredness to the relationship,
which is related by blood or by
extension, by covenant, because these relationships cannot be broken as the
individuals are “fettered.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say, “The entire
Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the
Church. Already Baptism, the entry into
the People of God is a nuptial mystery; it is so to speak, the Eucharist. Christian Marriage in its turn becomes an
efficacious sign, the sacrament of the covenant of Christ and the Church. Since it signifies and communicates grace,
marriage between baptized persons is a true sacrament of the New Covenant.” (CCC 1617)[14]
Indeed it can truly be called a sacrament of the new covenant because it is a
sacrament of persons in love with one another. The covenant of marriage is a covenant
preserved by one clause – love, faithfulness and endurance and this model
of love is based upon the love of Christ (bridegroom) for His very own bride. “It is the model and pattern of all human
love.”[15]
Redefinition of marriage to
incorporate other combinations (same sex and other types of coupling) is
therefore illegitimate and cannot be called “marriage” because marriage in its
original design (since time immemorial) has inscribed within it nuptial
fecundity which is only possible between male and female. Not fecundity outside
of the couple but as an encounter which forms one fruitful flesh. It is in marriage that human beings are most
like God (God self donates in love perpetually and is fruitfully)
creative. God blessed them and commanded
them also to be fruitful and multiply. (Gn 1-3) In the natural plane same sex
coupling and other coupling cannot be fruitful.
God designed one male and one female (Gn 1:27) so that they have natural
affinity. They have natural
complimentarity. She is a part of him and he is a part of her but they are
different. They fit together. They complete one another. What is lacking in male is brought to him by
the female. What is lacking in the female is brought to her by the male. (they
socialize and humanize one another). Together
they form the “one flesh” which in due course is open to “one flesh” plus one
new one, child fruit of marriage between one man and one woman, freely entered
into and for the duration of life.
[1] D.J.
McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant: A Study in
Form in the Ancient Oriental Documents and in
The Old Testament, Anacleta Biblica 21a
(revised text) Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome , 1978,
Pp
253,256,295,296. cited in P.J. Elliott, What
God Has Joined…pp 175
[2] M.G. Lawler, Secular Marriage, Christian Sacrament, (Mystic: Twenty-third
Publications, 1985) p8
[3] B. Haring, C.SS.R. The New Covenant (London :
Burns & Oates) p 203.
[4] Martos,
J. Doors to the Sacred (London: SCM
Press 1981) p407
[5] A.G. Martimort, The Signs of the New Covenant (Minnesota: The Liturgical Press,
1963) p282
[6] A.G. Martimort, The Signs of the New Covenant, p282, 283
[7] R.Haughton,
The Theology of Marriage p21
[8] M.G. Lawler, Secular Marriage, Christian Sacrament, p 11
[9] R. Haughton, The Theology of Marriage
[10]
Geoffrey Robinson, “God’s Plan for Marriage, in Marriage and Nullity: A Guide to the Annulment
Process in the Catholic Church. (Melbourne: CollinsDove, 1989) pp1-13
[11] P.J
Elliot, What God Has Joined…The sacramentality of Marriage (Homebush: St.
Paul, 1990) p173
[12] P.J.
Elliott, What God has Joined… p 174
[13] John
Paul II Familiaris Consortio: The Role of
the Christian Family in the Modern
world.(Homebush: St. Paul Publications, 1982) p 26
[14] Catechism of the Catholic Church. Official Edition for Australia & New Zealand (Homebush:
[15]
Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem of
the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II. (Homebush: St. Paul
Publications, 1988) p92.
[16]
Elliott, P.J., What God has Joined… p
175
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