De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

The theme of this Sunday's Gospel was obedience. As a fundamentally disobedient person, I reflect on this issue quite a lot! In my parish, the homily yesterday reflected this theme: you can listen to it here .  In it my Parish Priest says that to obey means to submit my will to a higher authority. He quotes St Thomas in saying that "the road to holiness is our willingness to obey others." I have to admit that I can't find that reference, though I have looked, and St Thomas seems to say something different to me in Question 104 Article 5 of his Summa : Accordingly we may distinguish a threefold obedience; one, sufficient for salvation, and consisting in obeying when one is bound to obey: secondly, perfect obedience, which obeys in all things lawful: thirdly, indiscreet obedience, which obeys even in matters unlawful. St. Thomas teaches discernment, and that we are to be obedient insofar as we are being obedient within the parameters of competence for any specific auth...

Monday, January 28, 2013 St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) By universal consent, Thomas Aquinas is the pre-eminent spokesman of the Catholic tradition of reason and of divine revelation. He is one of the great teachers of the medieval Catholic Church, honoured with the titles Doctor of the Church and Angelic Doctor.  At five he was given to the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino in his parents’ hopes that he would choose that way of life and eventually became abbot. In 1239 he was sent to Naples to complete his studies. It was here that he was first attracted to Aristotle’s philosophy.  By 1243, Thomas abandoned his family’s plans for him and joined the Dominicans, much to his mother’s dismay. On her order, Thomas was captured by his brother and kept at home for over a year. Once free, he went to Paris and then to Cologne, where he finished his studies with Albert the Great. He held two professorships at Paris, lived at the court of Pope Urban IV, dir...

"The Eucharist "is the great school in which we learn to see the face of God, we enter into an intimate relationship with Him, and we learn at the same time to turn our gaze towards the final moment of history, when He will satisfy us with the light of his face." ~Pope Benedict XVI, Jan. 16, 2013, General Audience ~ This week (Wednesday 16th February) at Our Lady of Lourdes School, the Parish of Our Lady of Lourdes & St. Joseph, Leigh-on-Sea will be presenting the 7th Session of Fr. Robert Barron's excellent and epic Catholicism Project . This fantastic series of documentaries attempt to redress the modern situation that we encounter of other people telling the Catholic story, and telling it wrong! Instead, we need to tell our own story, we need to re-invigorate ourselves with all the beauty, colour and texture of our incredible faith. This series sets out to do that, it is our story told by us. This week, we are looking at the The Church's Sacrament a...

Dear friends This week we watched the third lesson in Fr. Robert Barron's Catholicism Project THE INEFFABLE MYSTERY OF GOD : THAT THAN WHICH NOTHING GREATER CAN BE THOUGHT. (That felt strangely appropriate in capitals!). I think we all agreed it was a tough session. Most people I have spoken to agree that there is a lot to take in in every session of the Project, but this week's subject matter made it especially challenging. You may find this overview of the topics covered useful in aiding you to digest the abundant material presented in the programme. The Name of God Our journey begins with the story of Moses and the burning bush ( Exodus 3:1-14 ). YHWH is an incomprehensible Hebrew word, however we can trace its root back to the root hayah = to be. This is accompanied by the clarification of verse 15  that YHWH is the God of Israel's fathers. This constituted a radical break from the norm: in a world swarming with gods, locally defined and limited deities perce...

The Church was born of the Paschal mystery and thus the Eucharist, the Sacrament of the Paschal mystery, stands at the centre of the Church’s life. ( Ecclesia De Eucharistia , n. 3) For St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274),   The source and summit of the whole Christian life is Christ. So this Sacrament [the Eucharist] perfects the others by joining us to Christ. ( In Sent   IV d.8 q.1 art.1.) The Second Vatican Council reiterates what St. Thomas says: that the Eucharist constitutes “the source and summit of the Christian life”. ( LG 11, c.f . Ecclesia De Eucharistia , n. 1. ) The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, explained four ways in which we encounter Christ in His Church; through the actions of the priest, “His minister”, through the proclamation of His Word and when the Church prays and sings ( c.f. Matt 18:20), but special emphasis is placed on the fact that Christ is present “especially under the Eucharistic species.” ( SC 7, CCC 1373 )...