VM286 (2005-15)         April 15, 2005

 

We HAVE A POPE !!!!!!

Pope Benedict XVI

"Dear brothers and sisters, after our great pope, John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble worker in God's vineyard,"

"I am consoled by the fact that the Lord knows how to work and how to act, even with insufficient tools, and I especially trust in your prayers."

"In the joy of the resurrected Lord, trustful of his permanent help, we go ahead, sure that God will help. And Mary, his most beloved mother, stands on our side."

Viva il papa!!!

Long live the pope !!!

 

James 1:17

I was away in Washington on business and I would like to thank, Sue Atkinson for stepping in (with hardly any notice) to edit VM283.  Then our beloved Papa, Pope John Paul II the Great, went home to be with the Lord and webmaster Todd Winn, very appropriately, made a simple VM284, John Paul II's Death Announced  "Final Hours Marked by Uninterrupted Prayer" from Zenit.  Thank you both!

Then another BIG thank you to our brother John Pacheco and all of his team, for putting on a great rally, despite all of the words / press clippings / shots that were said or not!  What an amazing array of speakers!  Quoting Stockwell Day, "thank you Paul Martin for bringing together so many people of different faiths.  David MacDonald another yeoman job.

Many items on this topic, which include: Outrageous reporting; fallout; 1-800 OCanada; rally pictures; illuminating marriage conference; C-38 amendment- let's HELP JOHN = $$$$$ ... click here

VMers - I challenge you, were you on the hill? You should have been! Did you put money in a bucket?  I heard two brothers, say to me at breakfast yesterday, that they never saw the buckets.  Well, besides the fact that John puts in so many hours - for you - as he tries to build up HIS kingdom, he shouldn't have to pay out of his pocket.  Put your hand in your pocket, and lets get it to him.  My second challenge, is for ONE of you to come forward and offer to collect this for John. When you click on the attachment above, you will see that he is running again! Do you remember his last attempt?

FOLKS - the array of quality speakers that we had speak to us on the hill last Saturday, would be worth, at least whatever you paid the last time that you went to a theatre or hockey game.

What will you do?

James 1:17 Go to Graham's Corner for Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's homily for the funeral of Pope John Paul II.
Kim, Justin and Melodie Hello family and friends!  No need to reply.  (You can if you want to though.)  I'm just excited and wanted to share our baby's latest photo which was taken on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 30th.

Here she is again, our dear little Melodie Elizabeth Hanekom, at one day short of 31 weeks in mommy's womb.  She was sleeping when the photos were taken.  I am now into my 32nd week (my eighth month) with less than eight weeks to go...yeah!  I'm feeling great and baby's doing well and moving around lots.  We are naming her Melodie after my mom and Elizabeth because we love the meaning.  Elizabeth means one consecrated to God.  We are so thankful to God for blessing us with Melodie, our little miracle baby.  She is a true witness to the power of prayer.  

Love and God's peace to you all,
Kim, Justin and Melodie
Laura Kelly

Okay so if I understand correctly, Frank Opisso will be having surgery to correct his hip prosthesis.  He has been having trouble walking for a long time now - over a year I believe.  April 20th is the day to pray for his doctors that they may make all repairs necessary so that Frank will be able to walk, pain free, after the surgery that day.

Thanks,

Laura Kelly

Richard Donnelly

Hi everyone,

Here's some pictures from the march for marriage yesterday. http://www.stmarysottawa.ca/MarchForMarriage/

Pacem, Rich

Stan Cor & Frank Gernon

Liturgies and prayers

for use

from the time of the death of Pope John Paul II

to the inauguration of the pontificate of his successor

Click here for the 24 page Word document

And then click here for a powerpoint presentation as a Tribute to Pope John Paul II, provided from Frank Gernon & Deborah Gibson

Lara Pacheco A letter from Rome by Father Peter Mitchell 

April 11, 2005

Rome

It is now Monday morning and the rain that began on Friday almost immediately after the Funeral Mass continues to fall steadily. Remarkable, not only because of how these heavy, overcast skies rolled in at the very moment of John Paul's burial, but also because during the entire week when hundreds of thousands were keeping vigil during the Pope's last hours, waiting in line to view his body and
camping on the streets, not a drop of rain fell. More than once I have been at Masses with John Paul II where dramatic weather timed itself perfectly to coincide with his speaking: a perfect rainbow appeared over Mile High Stadium in Denver on August 12, 1993, just as the Pope led us in singing the "Pater Noster," and a dramatic front swept through Toronto on Sunday morning, July 28, 2002, transforming a torrential downpour into brilliant sunshine just as the Gospel was read and the Pope began to preach. Even in death John Paul II has had a remarkable cooperation of the elements in forming the backdrop to his dramatic exit from the stage of life.

I want to share some of the numerous stories that are being passed around Rome this week, as we all take a deep breath and try to comprehend the monumental import of the last ten days. They give just a glimpse of how much grace was being poured out on the Eternal City during the salvific moment of John Paul the Great's passing, to say nothing of the grace being poured out on the entire world as it watched from afar on its knees. These vignettes follow in no particular order and attempt to paint a picture in words to the praise and glory of God for the impact John Paul II has had on the Church and the whole world during his final days.

Last week I personally met a group of students from Franciscan University of Steubenville (three bus-loads, to be precise!) who are spending the semester studying near Vienna, Austria. When news of the pope's death reached them, they spontaneously decided to come and get in line to view the pope's body. The school administration cooperated with the students' initiative by canceling classes for two days. They chartered buses, left Austria at 5 p.m. on Monday evening, April 4, drove all night, and arrived in Rome at 6 a.m. on Tuesday morning. They then immediately got in line and waited six hours to see the Pope's body (a relatively short wait given conditions later in the week). They then had a few hours free in the afternoon - a few came to Mass at the chapel at my residence. Then at 7 p.m. they re-boarded their buses and drove home to Austria, arriving at 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning, at which point they went to class. 26 hours in a bus, two consecutive nights without a bed or showers, six hours in line, all to walk past the body of the Pope for a few brief seconds. I cannot tell you how inspired I was by the devotion and faith and love for the Pope (to say nothing of the love for Christ!) of these 20 and 21-year-olds. The future of the Church is bright based on this glimpse I had of the John Paul II generation in action.

A priest who lives with me went down early one morning (about 4 a.m.) and got in line. During the following hours as they waited together, he befriended a group of ten Spanish men, all university students, who had spontaneously decided to hop on a plane from Madrid. As they talked to the priest, it became clear that none of them went to church or practiced their faith, although as Spaniards all were baptized Catholics. When they finally went past the Pope's body, these young men all began crying, and then went to the side where they could pray for a few moments. At this point, one of the young men asked the priest if he could go to confession. After he went, another asked the same question, and then one by one all ten men went to confession for the first time in many years. The priest spent about two hours listening, advising, and absolving these students. In God's Providence there can be no coincidences. I am confident that this story has been repeated hundreds if not thousands of times in the last week on the streets of Rome. Priests were hearing confessions all over this town, in the most unlikely places (again, reminiscent of conditions at the World Youth Days).

A Polish nun who works as sacristan at our house recounted the story of a Polish man who, after viewing the Pope's body, went to confession for the first time in forty-five years.

An American woman who lives in Rome came down to the square on the night before the Pope died, more out of curiosity than anything, and found herself standing next to a group of American high-school students who prayed the Rosary and knelt in prayer for nearly three straight hours from 9 p.m. to midnight. She was moved to tears, told one of the teachers of the school that she had never witnessed anything more beautiful, and said that her entire life had been changed by those few hours in St. Peter's Square.

John Paul is bearing fruit in death apparently even more abundantly than he did in life. This should come to us as no surprise: Christ tells us: "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit (John 12:24). What is true of Christ is no less true of his saints.


Speaking of saints, one of the best ideas I have heard yet is that John Paul II should be beatified as quickly as possible, and then he and Mother Teresa of Calcutta should be canonized together. The crowd for that Mass might even exceed last week's!

Inside St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican Grottoes underneath the main floor of the church have been closed since the funeral and will not open until later this week. John Paul was buried in these grottoes in the former crypt of Blessed John XXIII, whose relics were brought up into the main basilica when he was beatified by John Paul II during the Great Jubilee of the year 2000. It seems that the grottoes are
remaining closed for a few days in an attempt to empty Rome of pilgrims and reduce the massive numbers of people who continue to visit the basilica. But the Polish pilgrims will not be deterred - each day there have been people kneeling at prayer throughout the day over the "air vents" which lead down to the grottoes from the floor of the main basilica. These round holes are covered with brass manhole-like covers, which have holes in them that one can partially see through into the grottoes. On Monday morning at 7:15 a.m. there were over 50 people kneeling at these hol es and praying, causing a bit of chaos for the St. Peter's altar servers trying to direct priests to the various altars for morning Mass. The veneration of the tomb of John Paul the Great has begun!

Last week Sister Nirmala, successor to Mother Teresa as Mother General of the Missionaries of charity, flew to Rome from Calcutta for the funeral.  She came to the basilica to venerate the Pope's body and sat in the back row of the chairs near the bier reserved for bishops and cardinals. After spending some time in prayer, she was getting up to leave when she brushed the arm of Bishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Pope's personal secretary, who was of course at the Pope's side when he died and spent many hours in prayer as the body lay in the basilica last week. When Bishop Dziwisz looked up and saw Sister Nirmala, he jumped up, took her arm, led her right up next to the body of the Pope, and let her kneel there for an extended period of prayer. Certainly as Mother General of the Missionaries of Charity Sister Nirmala had a special relationship with John Paul II, but her relationship is in fact even more special. Some years ago, Mother Teresa approached the Pope with the idea that every one of her sisters would spiritually adopt a priest to pray for, in the same way that St. Therese of the Child Jesus, the French Carmelite who died in 1897, adopted two priests as "spiritual brothers" whom she prayed for throughout her life. The Pope wholeheartedly endorsed the idea, but then turned to Mother Teresa and said, "But Mother, I am a priest, who will adopt me?" Mother Teresa turned to her secretary and said, "Sister Nirmala will adopt you." And so last week, kneeling next to John Paul's body in St. Peter's Basilica, Sister Nirmala bade farewell to her adopted brother who was also her Holy Father.

Each day this week, for nine consecutive days or Novem Diales, a solemn funeral Mass is being celebrated at the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica, and these Masses are attracting massive numbers of Romans and other pilgrims. I attended the Mass at 5 p.m. on Sunday evening, celebrated by Cardinal Ruini, Vicar General for the Diocese of Rome, which drew over 30,000 people to the basilica with another 20,000 overflow crowd outside, a larger number than any Easter or Christmas in recent memory. The mayor of Rome announced yesterday that Rome's central train station, Stazione Termini, is going to be renamed Stazione Giovanni Paolo II. The response of the Roman people to the death of John Paul II continues to be astounding.

As the conclave approaches, let us not forget our serious duty to pray for the Cardinal-electors. A priest friend of mine saw an American cardinal in St. Peter's Basilica yesterday and called out, "We're praying for you, Your Eminence!" The cardinal stopped, grabbed the priest's hand, looked him straight in the eyes, and whispered, "Please!" I think that sums up the weight on these men's shoulders in the coming days.

Each cardinal will make the following oath each time he individually casts his written vote: "I call as my witness Christ the Lord who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected." This oath will be taken by each Cardinal as he stands before Michelangelo's dramatic painting of The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. Pope John Paul specifically decreed in 1996 that the papal election must take place in the Sistine Chapel, "where everything is conducive to an awareness of the presence of God, in whose sight each person will one day be judged" (from his Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis). Let us pray that each cardinal will act in a way worthy of eternal reward from the Lord in the coming days.

I want to close with an extended quotation from John Paul II about the dramatic days that are about to unfold for the Church. In 2003, Pope John Paul published three poems in a book called Roman Triptych: Meditations. The second poem is called "Meditations on the Book of Genesis at the Threshold of the Sistine Chapel." After powerful meditations on Creation (depicted on the ceiling) and the Last Judgment (depicted on the front wall), John Paul has an epilogue about the dramatic moment of the conclave, which takes place in what is perhaps the most powerful artistic space in the world. He takes the word, "conclave," meaning literally "with the keys" (a reference to the fact that the cardinals are locked in the Sistine Chapel), and gives it a spiritual interpretation, referring to the power of the keys given to Peter with which he governs Christ's Church. His words serve as a profound meditation to us about the spiritual power at work in next week's conclave:

It is here, beneath this wondrous Sistine profusion of color
that the Cardinals assemble - the community responsible for the legacy of the keys of the Kingdom. They come here, to this very place.
And once more Michelangelo wraps them in his vision. "In Him we live and move and have our being."  Who is He?  Behold, the creating hand of the Almighty, the Ancient One, reaching towards Adam.  In the beginning God created. He, who sees all things.  The colours of the Sistine will then speak the word of the Lord: Tu es Petrus - once heard by Simon, son of John. "To you I will give the keys of the Kingdom."
Those entrusted with the legacy of the keys gather here, letting themselves be enfolded by the Sistine's colors, by the vision left to us by Michelangelo - So it was in August, and again in October, in the memorable year of the two Conclaves, and so it will be once more, when the time comes, after my death. Michelangelo's vision must then speak to them. "Con-clave": a shared concern for the legacy of the keys, the keys of the Kingdom.

Lo, they see themselves in the midst of the Beginning and the End,
between the Day of Creation and the Day of Judgment. It is granted man once to die, and thereafter, the Judgment! Final transparency and light. The clarity of the events - the clarity of consciences - During the conclave Michelangelo must teach them - Do not forget: Omnia nuda et aperta sunt oculos Eius. You who see all, point to him! He will point him out.

Don & Maureen Hall

Abortionist doctor Henry Morgentaler is receiving an honorary degree from University of Western Ontario. You can cast your vote on the UWO newspaper Gazette by clicking on the link below.

It is interesting how the Holy Spirit guides us. We overheard 2 men talking in an elevator in downtown Toronto last week. We caught the words "Morgentaler" "Abortion" & "University".  We asked politely if they were talking about the proposed honorary degree to be given to Henry Morgentaler in June. To our amazement the one gentleman turned out to be the Chairman of the Board for the University of Western, and he stated that he had just learned about it through an email from an alumni. He was not in favour of it nor was he impressed that he was unaware of it!   Both Rita and I spoke out that we were astonished that the University of  Western Ontario would even consider giving Morgentaler such and Honour,  this was a slap in the face to everyone who has ever attended the University as well for those who are in attendance now. The fact that there are 2 Catholic Universities which are part of the University of Western this was just unconceivable. As he and the other gentleman he was riding the elevator with began to walk away he turned and came back to me and said "just so you know we are on the same page on this".  Give him some ammunition with the rest of the Board. Email his assistant Jan Van Fleet vanfleet@uwo.ca  who will pass on to him any letters you send.

This is an unbelievable outrage!

Vote Against UWO's Morgentaler Degree

http://www.gazette.uwo.ca/feedback.cfm?month=03&day=24&year=2005

Mike Staples

Friends:

Just as a follow-up on the email from last March. After spending 14 days in the hospital Matthew has been at home for the past month, under watch until his surgery.

We are relieved to have a date now set for surgery, it is next Thursday

April 21 at 1:00 pm. The surgeon will perform a laparoscopy, view the region, and depending on the state of the appendix, either remove it then or withdraw and perform a full surgical incision to do the operation. We pray that all will go fine, free of any complications.

Again thank you for best wishes and continued prayers.

Mike

Dan Gutoskie

Subject: Helping a Visiting Priest

Dear Friends,  

    I've received a special request from an African priest studying here in Ottawa who needs help purchasing an alb.  He needs an extra $110 (after my modest donation) to help him buy the alb.   If you would like to help (or know someone who might help), then e-mail (or forward it to a friend) me at danskeyboard@virtualministry.com and I'll give you/them the name of the priest (who's only here until May 6th when he returns to his native land).

God Bless,   Dan 

Steve and Debbie Daigle

Madeleine Thomson

 

IMPORTANT ACTION BULLETIN!

Marriage Referendum Campaign
April 13, 2004

Tell Stephen Harper to force an election!

Bill C-38, the Liberals' homosexual marriage act, passed its first real test Tuesday by a vote of 164 to 132 in the House of Commons.

The Bill still has to clear second and third reading, before going up to the Senate. (Tuesday's vote was on a Conservative second-reading amendment.)

With a margin of 32 MPs supporting it, the Bill can be defeated only if 17 MPs switch sides in the next vote (second reading proper) or the one after (third reading).

What would kill the Bill right now, however, is a vote of nonconfidence in the government supported by the Conservatives, Bloc and NDP. It would cause the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and call an election.

All legislation still in process (including this Bill) would die instantly. Whether or not the Bill would be reintroduced by the next government depends on which party forms that government.

This Bill needs to be stopped, and the issue put to a national referendum as soon as possible.

In light of yesterday's vote, we think Steve Harper should force an election now.

Send a personalized email to Stephen Harper

You can do this one of three ways:

1. Draft your own letter and send it to Harper.S@parl.gc.ca. Be sure to carbon copy it to the Citizens Centre at contact@citizenscentre.com.

2. Use our easy-click system with a prepared letter by going to the MarriageReferendum.ca website and clicking on "Kill Bill C-68 - Demand an Election", or go directly to the page by clicking here.

Sincerely,

Link Byfield
Fr. John Vandenakker

Greetings.

We are not alone! Here's a link to another group of 'Companions of the Cross': http://www.companions.8k.com/main.html

Fr. Rick, prepare a plan for battle! Fr. John V.

Editor's note - is that Fr Scott in that picture?

Tim Kennedy

 

PUBLIC LECTURE

 

MONDAY, APRIL 25, 2005

7:30 p.m.

 

Saint Paul University

223 Main Street, Ottawa

Room 1124 (Amphitheatre)

 

 

"The Meaning of Marriage:

A Defining Moment in Canadian Society"

 

Douglas Farrow,

Associate Professor of Christian Thought, McGill University

 

Professor Farrow will speak on the implications of Bill C-38, which attempts to re-define marriage. He is the co-editor of Divorcing Marriage: Unveiling the Dangers in Canada's New Social Experiment, and the editor of Recognizing Religion in a Secular Society.

Cost: Good will offering at the door

Free parking at the University

Harvey and Gloria Winn VIRUS ALERT: MSN Messenger Virus

A new RANDEX worm  appears to have been delivered via MSN Messenger, exploiting a vulnerability within Microsoft's Instant Messaging client.

If you are running an Instant Messenger client, especially MSN Messenger, please do not accept any file downloads. If you do receive a request to download a file, even from someone you know, do not execute the file. This particular outbreak has a link labeled "it's you!" or "Picture of you". Do not click on the link. These actions could result in your PC becoming infected.

To avoid risk of infection, upgrade to MSN 7.0 at http://messenger.msn.com/Download/. 

James 1:17 THE LAST WORD THIS WEEK - artists, Webbers, designers etc...

VIRTUAL MINISTRY is looking for a logo

We would prefer that you submit your submissions to logo@virtualministry.com

I would also need a few judges - feel qualified? Willing to help?

Editor's note: I am feeling blessed, due to some positive replies!  First off, there have been a few responses to my requests for help with Virtual Ministry.  Sue's editing, and Bryan Sabourin's offer are both uplifting ... look for some new developments

 What will you do?    

 

JAMES 1:17

Hey kids - did you know that Jim is an avid hockey fan? Get this: http://www.eagletribune.com/features/nhl-proposal.htm