VIEWS

A hundred years ago, on the 13th day of every month from May through October of 1917, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to three children near Fatima in Portugal, bringing them an urgent message, calling for repentance and prayer, a message that has no less urgency today.

Hace cien años, el día 13 de cada mes de mayo a octubre de 1917, la Santísima Virgen apareció a tres niños cerca de Fátima en Portugal, trayendo un mensaje urgente, pidiendo arrepentimiento y oración, un mensaje que no tiene hoy en día menos urgencia.

St. Paul sounds extreme sometimes, but not so extreme as some modern atheists. Here’s Paul: “If Christ has not risen, then our preaching is groundless and your faith is groundless.” He writes that to the Christians, some of whom seem to have been claiming that the dead don’t rise again.

Hope is a concept we can speak about blithely until everything falls apart. It’s when troubles abound that we find out how much we need the unshakeable hope that’s rooted in Christ and His triumph over sin and death.

Years ago I met a man from the former Soviet Union who had grown up in a family of atheists. He was living with his girlfriend when I first got to know him, but a few weeks later, he had moved out.

What better time to remind ourselves of the value of life than at Lent, when the message of sacrificing for others beckons us to see and respect the value of all humanity.

They finished praying the Rosary and then started in on the singing of hymns. We sat there in the little mission church, waiting for Mass to begin. But would it?

On Dec. 30, 2016, the Feast of the Holy Family, a revised Rite for Marriage began to be used throughout the English-speaking Church. It is called The Order of Celebrating Matrimony. Though much of the Rite remains the same, the changes serve to deepen the beauty of the symbolic expression of marriage, as well as to radiate the unchanging truth of marriage in our culture.

En 30 de diciembre de 2016, en la fiesta de la Sagrada Familia, un Rito Revisado para el Matrimonio comenzó a ser utilizado en toda la Iglesia anglosajona. Se llama la Orden para Celebrar el Matrimonio. Aunque gran parte del Rito sigue siendo el mismo, los cambios sirven para profundizar en la belleza de la expresión simbólica del matrimonio, así como para irradiar la verdad inmutable del matrimonio en nuestra cultura.

La Iglesia nos ha dado una nueva traducción al inglés de su orden de celebración de matrimonio. Este nuevo documento litúrgico nos ofrece una buena oportunidad para la catequesis sobre la vocación del matrimonio en la Iglesia y la sociedad. Teniendo en cuenta esto, a partir de hoy, examinaré algunas de las ideas frescas y nuevas prácticas litúrgicas encontradas en este maravilloso nuevo ritual.