CAPG's Blog 

Stop missing out on the Mass, to understand what is happening there, to make the Eucharist the source and summit of your Christian life, follow our online training THE MASS IN MY LIFE. More information and free registration on

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The videos are in French with English subtitles.

The Church celebrates the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the United States of America as a holiday of obligation. The bishops of our country have dedicated our nation to the protection of our Lady under this title. Fittingly is this so, for in the Declaration of Independence, we read: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Hence our Founding Fathers made clear their belief in the Creator and in the fact that He has endowed us with rights and liberties. These rights and liberties come from God. We are dependent upon God for them and not upon any State.

The bishops of the United States, in one of their recent statement, made it clear that there could be no peace in the world until nations agree on the true nature of man, namely, that man has a dignity consisting in the fact that man is a creature of God and not a creature of the State.
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception clearly identifies for Catholics the doctrine of the dignity of man. It was Mary's privilege to have been conceived without sin. That privilege was given to no other human being. And God, in bestowing this renowned privilege upon one of His creatures, paved the way for the Redemption of man through His only-begotten Son who was to be born of this same Virgin Mother.

This privilege of Mary goes very deep into God's plans for all mankind. By the teaching of the Redemption and of Mary's Immaculate Conception, we are made aware of the fact that man is no machine - he is not a composition of matter that passes back into the earth. Man has dignity apart from his ability to labor and to store up material wealth. Man is a creature of God composed of body and soul and made to the image and likeness of his Creator. Man has faculties of soul, intellect, and free will, which are to be trained according to their true ends and purposes. They are spiritual faculties and are meant for man's knowing and loving God. The solution to the world's crisis today rests in the answer to the question: are we men or are we beasts? There can be no peace until there is an agreement upon man's true dignity, for man is God's creature and not the State's! He is soul as well as body.

The world's excitement, its greed for wealth, its love for inordinate pleasure, its love for speed and distraction is not just an external quality of our times. It has become intrinsic to our nature all too often! This spirit of the world has seeped down into the very souls of men. It is not just the plane or the train of our age that speeds, but our minds and our souls! As haste is the death of devotion, so too, do greed, distraction and pleasure spell death to those who should be devoted to the things of the soul. The noise of the world is too great a distraction to many who should spend moments of prayer and make an examination of conscience before God's Eucharistic Presence in some quiet little chapel. The spirit of the world is not the spirit of those who are inspired by the doctrine of the Redemption and the teaching of the Immaculate Conception. For they who are cognizant of man's dignity know that they were created not for the amassing of wealth for the State, but for the purpose of living for God here, and enjoying the Beatific Vision for all eternity!

If men, today, would return to a belief in their true nature to a belief in their soul and its immortality, if they would have a continuation and preservation of their inalienable rights, they must return to the Creator from whom these rights came. There can be no peace until all mankind recognizes its true dignity.

Of this it is that Mary, Virgin most venerable, reminds us! All is not yet lost even though God "seems" far away. Like a mother, who reassures her children, Mary reminds us that God is very close to souls who are close to His Mother. We should resolve to cherish the Virgin most venerable, and to pray always to live according to our true dignity, for God made us just a little less than angels.

Prayer: Mary, you are all fair and there is no stain in you. We salute you as "our tainted nature's solitary boast": and we sing to you the sweet angel's song of "Ave Maria"- Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen

Source: Spiritual Steps to Christmas by Very Rev. Msgr. Aloysius Coogan 1953

Stop missing out on the Mass, to understand what is happening there, to make the Eucharist the source and summit of your Christian life, follow our online training THE MASS IN MY LIFE. More information and free registration on

https://www.massinmylife.org/

The videos are in French with English subtitles.

Stop missing out on the Mass, to understand what is happening there, to make the Eucharist the source and summit of your Christian life, follow our online training THE MASS IN MY LIFE. More information and free registration on

https://www.massinmylife.org/

The videos are in French with English subtitles.

The feast of our Lady coming in Advent affords us an opportunity to thing of the part womankind should play in the ever present drama of life. For Mary is the model of all Christian womanhood. Women are endowed by the Creator with fine sensibilities and a most noble love. They are meant to be the inspiration of men. If the ideal of womankind is high, if she is exalted in men's estimation, if she is loved for her virtue, then the opportunity for good that is afforded mankind is tremendously great.

Paganism degraded womanhood and robbed her of her native dignity with which the Creator had endowed her. Mary's advent into the world, bringing the Savior of mankind, changed all that. She is "our tainted nature's solitary boast." But alas, the new days of paganism are with us. This time again, the sad opportunity is afforded women to step down. A changing world in the guise of emancipation offers womankind an opportunity to lower her standards, to degrade her dignity, to debase her prerogatives for childbearing and motherhood.

The Church has through the centuries watched over and guided the noble prerogatives of woman kind, not because the Church bestowed these sacred rights, but because she preserves what has been restored through our Lady and the Redemption. When woman is an ideal, man is, strictly speaking, a builder of the spirit. He builds within himself the great edifice of a spiritual character where the Holy Spirit dwells as in a temple. When woman is an ideal, men build homes, and children are received as the hope of a better world. The boy is looked up to so that he will carry on and build again as did his father, and the girl is cherished as the sweet daughter and mirror of the wife whose inward beauty grows more graceful with the passing years.

But the new paganism is threatening again! It is, of course, always in the name of emancipation women are to be freed from the very duties that make them beautiful with a lasting beauty - motherhood and sharing in creation!

Women are meant to be builders, too, in the strictest sense of the term. They are the heart of the home. It is through then that men learn to live and to love great ideals and to build character. It is through the mother, definitely closer to the child than any other living human, that young habits and fine characters are formed. Women are the cornerstone of civilization in this respect. They are the hope of the world! "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."

Anyone who calls himself a Christian and a follower of Christ must think often of the Mother of Our Blessed Savior who was closest to Him all through the years that led up to Calvary. Anyone who respects women must know that it was Mary's role in Christian history to plae women on the high pedestal they now enjoy. Anyone who has forebodings regarding the changes in our modern world will go to Mary and fervently pray that the rights, spiritual rights, of women be preserved, that they become modern Bethlehems in which Christ comes to dwell and not worldly inns that refuse children's birth.

None of us can live through a social revolution and come out of it unchanged ourselves. The world changing simply means that men and women of our day are changing. We must hold fast to Christian ideals, particularly the ideal of womankind as it come to us from our Savior and from His Blessed Mother. If we lose this ideal, if women degrade themselves, they are not meeting, as we would have them meet the challenge of a pagan world. They are succumbing! They are delivering themselves to the enemies of Christian civilization. They are undoing the work of Redemption. They are despising our Lady. That is unthinkable! Women are the builders of a more secure world, where men may live as brothers because they have a common Father and a Blessed Mother.

Prayer: Our Lady of the hills and the valleys, look down from your throne in heaven an intercede with God in our behalf. As we live in a vale of tears preparing for the day when we may ascend the hill of heaven, pray for us, O Mary, that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ.

Intercede with God, that we may in imitation of you, follow Jesus along the way, though it be sorrowful - via dolorosa - out to the clear blue of the day, all the way up the hill, like you, to Calvary We are sinners, like Magdalene. Accept us into your company. Few of us are like John, the beloved disciple. None of us is like you. Teach us to love Calvary and to see the sweet wood of the cross upon which hangs the Redeemer and our hope for eternal life.

Source: Spiritual Steps to Christmas by Very Rev. Msgr. Aloysius Coogan 1953

One of the great tragedies of life is finding one upon whom so much love and kindness has been bestowed, totally unconscious of the gifts that have been so abundantly bestowed upon him. Sometimes it happens that a wife is untrue to her husband. She may even be the mother of children, in which case we should expect to find an increase of that love which is so characteristic of womankind, and yet, somehow, the true stream of human affection has become poisoned and love is unrequited. Passion sometimes takes the place of true love, and where affection should abound hatred and disappointment take its place.

The dictum, corruptio optimi pessima - "The corruption of the best is the worst," typifies what we mean. The greatest harm is often done not by those who have no knowledge of the faith, but by those who once were infused with divine goodness and love and then permitted their illumined minds and inspired wills to become perverted and corrupted.

When those who once loved each other in marriage and were two in one flesh decide to separate, the human race loses a partnership and receives a blow that strikes at the very cornerstone of the social structure. When husband and wife decide that love has now ceased to hold any attraction, not only do they personally suffer a loss, but through them and the solidarity of the human race all mankind suffers.

Unrequited love is the tragedy of our day. Passion is mistaken for affection and love is confused with lust and sin as though love consisted only of sensual satisfaction and concupiscence. The Church, wise with the wisdom of the ages, stands as the beacon light in the tempest that surrounds the shipwrecked folly of our age. The Church proclaims the blessedness of marital union, and while she is thoroughly conscious of the powerful instincts found in every man and woman and entrusted by almighty God for the propagation of the race and for the allaying of concupiscence, wise Mother that she is, she emphasizes the tender affections of the human heart that can be nurtured only on the finer things of the spirit.

Those who have experienced the conflicts that arise between spouses and who have spent long hours in listening to marital difficulties and in giving advice, tell us that most of the pain that is caused and most of the rifts that occur are occasioned by little things, such as the tone of voice, attitudes, the irate response, the lack of attention, and the many little irritants of daily living.

It is a common fault of human nature, and one of which many of us are frequently guilty, that we fail properly to appreciate the little courtesies that make life easier and our neighbor's lot a trifle less difficult.

Unrequited love is one the tragedies of America's divorce counts! When love of God is unappreciated and not repaid by a creature, life's darkest hour is experienced. When man the creature, shows no appreciation for God, the Creator, we have the greatest tragedy possible.
Today, one of Advent's steps to Christmas affords us the opportunity to return gratitude and to make reparation to God, to thank Him for the many blessings and benefits, and to repair the harm we have done by unrequited love.

Christmas affords us an occasion to make a gift of love to God and neighbor by trying to become more aware and conscious of our gifts and opportunities.

Prayer: Jesus, take our hearts today and purify them in the fire of Your love so that no stain of hatred or enmity may be present to us. Teach us to be conscious of the insignificant little courtesies of life, that we may be grateful for Your love.

Source: Spiritual Steps to Christmas by Very Rev. Msgr. Aloysius Coogan 1953

Stop missing out on the Mass, to understand what is happening there, to make the Eucharist the source and summit of your Christian life, follow our online training THE MASS IN MY LIFE. More information and free registration on

https://www.massinmylife.org/

The videos are in French with English subtitles.

We have said that the Church, in her Advent Story, tells us the most beautiful of all the stories of earth, the story of God becoming man. Today, and every Advent day, she continues the tale. Just as a great artist uses many colors to bring out the beauty of his detail - and just as a tapestry weaver uses many colored skeins to beautify the design - and yet there always remains a prominent hue in this texture - so the greatest mother of them all, holy Mother the Church, paints for us today, by her liturgy of Advent, the picture of Christ's coming, and the dominant thread in the great detail of this tapestry of beauty which she is weaving is that of courage. The Divine Office of the Church is filled with the notes of joy, hope, and courage with which the soul awaiting Christ should be animated.

Holy Mother the Church says today to every Catholic heart, "Come with me." As loyal subjects, as children, we follow and in spirit we pass over the waters to a church in the City of Jerusalem, the Basilica of the Holy Cross. In the language of Sacred Scripture, Jerusalem is the image of the faithful soul. From the cross we are to take courage and hope. Of old the cross was an instrument of crucifixion. It was an object of horror and derision, but today, by virtue of the grace of God, the cross is an object of veneration. From the cross comes courage. St. Thomas a kempis says, "In the Cross is joy of spirit, in the cross is freedom from our enemies. Take up your cross and follow Jesus and you shall enter into eternal life."

Our infallible teacher and guide now guides us gently into the liturgy of the Mass, and, in the Epistle and Gospel we hear again the dominant note of courage inspired by a strong faith, a lively hope and an ardent charity.

In the Epistle, St. Paul, the great Apostle to the Gentiles, says: " Brethren, whatsoever things were written, were written for our learning; that through patience and the comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope." Again the great Apostle exhorts us to rejoice. In the Gospel of the day we are exhorted to have faith in Jesus, for "the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them." Here is the groundwork of our courage, a deep faith in Jesus Christ.

Finally, the third of the three virtues must be manifest in our courage, namely charity. This greatest of the virtues makes us most like unto God, who is love, just as the lack of it makes us most like unto the devil who hates fiercely! The members of Christ's Mystical Body must be motivated by love if their courage is to have deep-rooted effects. The members of anti-Christ have no place in their meetings for charity. Their Gospel is one of hatred. Red truly is the color of a heart inflamed, red is the color of martyrs, and red is the color of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love and charity. We must revolutionize not bodies in rebellions of hate, but souls in rebellion against sin. Members of Christ's Mystical Body must be motivated by love for God. This battle of courage and love must be waged under our banner of red, which symbolizes the martyrs' blood and the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love.

Like Christians warriors of old, panoplied in faith, hope, and charity, which constitute the armor of God, by Advent prayer and penance we will find our courage renewed! Despite the hardships of life and perversities of men, we "will take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them," for God is on our side.

Let us not think that this battle can be won except with the grace of God. Holy Mother the Church takes us in the spirit of the liturgy to Jerusalem, the city typifying the faithful soul. The Church in accents of liturgical chant and in colors of penitential purple shows us the holy cross and its reliquary, the Basilica of Jerusalem, in order to stir up our courage motivated by faith, hope, and charity.The Church gives us a model in today's Gospel, St. John the Baptist, who was not a reed shaken by the wind, nor a man clothed in soft garments, but rather a prophet, of whom it was written,"I send my angel before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee."

We can win this battle only with Christ! Are we blind? then let us come to Him who is the Light of the world. Are we lame? He will cure us so that we can walk! Do we suffer from the leprosy of sin? He will cleanse us! Are we deaf to the dangers of perversion corrupting even the very salt of the earth? He will cause us to listen to the sweet inspiration of God's grace in our souls! Are we dead in sin? He will make us live the life of grace, the life of God. Are we poor? He will preach to us the Kingdom of Heaven, where "neither rust nor moth doth consume, nor thieves break through to steal." Come, Lord Jesus, we pray, come into our souls, renew our courage with deep sentiments of faith, hope, and charity. The world needs Your Advent! The world, as Isaias has said, is sickened and the whole body is sad. Yet, we have ardent hope for, like the voice of the captain on the bridge in a stormy peril at sea, we can hear above the din and noise of the turbulent waves the voice of our Master, "Lo, I am with you all days even unto the consummation of the world."

Prayer: Dear Jesus, teach me to forgive even my enemies that I may be forgiven. Show me the true motive of love which binds up the wounds and refuses to count the cost. Calvary is our great lesson. Help me to reflect upon it every day of my life. Bethlehem and Calvary are cycles - returning over and over again and teaching me of God's love and forgiveness. The Babe at Bethlehem and the God-Man on the cross both - the one and same divinity - extend arms of love and mercy.

Source: Spiritual Steps to Christmas by Very Rev. Msgr. Aloysius Coogan 1953

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Stop missing out on the Mass, to understand what is happening there, to make the Eucharist the source and summit of your Christian life, follow our online training THE MASS IN MY LIFE. More information and free registration on

https://www.massinmylife.org/

The videos are in French with English subtitles.

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Stop missing out on the Mass, to understand what is happening there, to make the Eucharist the source and summit of your Christian life, follow our online training THE MASS IN MY LIFE. More information and free registration on

https://www.massinmylife.org/

The videos are in French with English subtitles.
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