Carmel Cloud

 from the Avila Institute newsletter:

Do you know that devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel is tied to the story in 1 Kings when the prophet Elijiah implored God to send rain? Elijiah told his servant to look toward the sea and watch for a sign that his prayer had been heard. The servant came back, saying, “There is nothing.” Elijah sent him back seven times, and on the seventh time, the servant returned saying, “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.” And it began to rain. 

 

The small cloud is seen by many Christian saints and mystics—especially in the Carmelite tradition—as a symbol of Mary, who brings the hope of salvation just as the cloud brought rain to the dry land. 

 

In preparation for the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, I invite you to pray with the first stanza of the poem, “The Cloud of Carmel” by Jessica Powers (Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD) and meditate on how Our Lady encloses us within herself like a cloud, hiding us in her tender motherhood: 

 

The Cloud of Carmel

 

Symbol of star or lily of the snows,

Rainbow or root or vine or fruit-filled tree:

These image the Immaculate to me

Less than a little cloud, a little light cloud rising

From Orient waters cleft by prophecy.

And as the Virgin in a most surprising 

Maternity bore God and our doomed race,

I who bear God in mysteries of grace

Beseech her: Cloud, encompass God and me. 

Collapsing while rebuilding

excerpt from an article in Huffpost:

From research participants and grief scholars, I’ve come to understand this as the loss of self-familiarity. We aren’t sealed-off individuals, we’re co-created through our relationships. So when someone central to you dies, it’s not just grief. It’s the slow, disorienting unraveling of who you were in their presence...

Because what grief did to me and to other mourners wasn’t just emotional. It was embodied. It was cognitive. It was identity-shattering...

When you begin to lose yourself, you realize you are made of multiple parts. Some are intact — even strengthened — and others are still collapsing...

And here is what becoming unfamiliar with yourself does: It makes it incredibly hard to rebuild and heal. People ask you what you need and you have no clue. You don’t like what you used to. What used to bring you joy no longer does. And so, you lose trust in yourself. You become alienated from yourself and from others...

It is possible to rebuild, but let’s not pretend this is simple. It is complex, layered, and you have to start from scratch in places you thought were solid...It’s not a clean return. It’s slow. Layered. And still, somehow, holy.

Sacred Heart of Jesus!

 My daughter, look into My Merciful Heart and reflect its compassion in your own heart and in your deeds, so that you, who proclaim My mercy to the world, may yourself be aflame with it (Diary, 1688).

Way of the Beatitudes

Evangelization, dear brothers and sisters, is not our attempt to conquer the world, but the infinite grace that radiates from lives transformed by the Kingdom of God. It is the way of the Beatitudes, a path that we tread together, between the “already” and the “not yet,” hungering and thirsting for justice, poor in spirit, merciful, meek, pure of heart, men and women of peace. Jesus himself chose this path: to follow it, we have no need of powerful patrons, worldly compromises, or emotional strategies. Evangelization is always God’s work.        -Pope Leo XIV, on the vigil of Pentecost

The Order of the Lay Faithful

"Loaded with gifts" - from the homily of Fr. Riccardo for his brother priest, Abp. Byrnes, with whom I once served at young adults masses, when he was still rector of the seminary:

Fr. Riccardo also invoked St. Joan of Arc, patron of the parish where Archbishop Byrnes served as an associate pastor from 1996-99, and where he spent his final years until he died on May 30, St. Joan of Arc’s feast day.

Fr. Riccardo likened St. Joan of Arc’s story to that of Archbishop Byrnes’ time leading the Archdiocese of Agaña, a Church that was in great distress upon his arrival.

St. Joan of Arc's determination and obedience to God led her to take part in a "resistance movement" in France, Fr. Riccardo noted, “so it could come back under its proper leadership.”

“Mike was fond of thinking of the Church in that way," Fr. Riccardo said. "We need to remember, as disciples of Jesus, we have no human enemy. The only enemy is Satan and his minions, and the weapons that we use are love and character and mercy and kindness and truth and beauty.

“He was eager to mobilize the Church, both here and in Agaña,” Fr. Riccardo continued. “And especially the laity, whom he saw as something like a new religious order: Men and women loaded with gifts, waiting for marching orders.”

Archbishop Byrnes was eager to remind everyone that while the Church's mission is to evangelize, "it's not enough to proclaim the Gospel," Fr. Riccardo said.

"There's also the work of re-creation," Fr. Riccardo said. "And that's the mission: to not just proclaim the Gospel, but to allow the Gospel to penetrate and perfect every dimension of human life: sports, health care, law, education, entertainment, you name it. And that's your task."

All of Archbishop Byrnes’ life is a lesson that to believe in Jesus Christ is to acknowledge that death has been defeated, forever, Fr. Riccardo said, and to live a life proclaiming Christ’s kingdom is the greatest life anyone could live.

“If you had been there on the Friday we call ‘Good,’ we would have thought it was a waste,” Fr. Riccardo said. “And we would have been wrong because the Cross redeemed the world. So our crosses, joined to Jesus’, help in the redemption of the world…

“Brothers and sisters, we do not know how much time we have. It might be decades, it might be weeks," Fr. Riccardo said. "Whatever time we have left, let’s be great. Let’s be the kind of men and women who will say to us, ‘It’s just enough to see you. You make me strong. You remind me who Jesus is. You encourage me to have hope, to trust him, to bank my life on him, to surrender to him day in and day out, and to live my life with joy, even when I’m sharing in the Cross.'”

https://www.detroitcatholic.com/news/archbishop-byrnes-allowed-god-to-write-the-story-of-his-life-funeral-homilist-says

Succinct

Responsible Parenthood vs. Contraceptive Mentality

One is a constant journey of discernment and surrender; the other seeks control over fertility in ways that reject its nature.

https://refinelife.co/what-is-contraceptive-mentality/

Facelift

Vatican.va has been updated. What was panned for being a "beige" background is actually parchment. I always thought that was clever, to have their webpages be pages of parchment. 

I like the way the information is being organized on the homepage. 

Get with it

A voice of reason at the helm of the JPII Institute:

In an interview with The Pillar during the 2024 consistory, Reina said that the antidote to secularization was “a new evangelization, as John Paul II already called for more than two decades ago now.”

Asked if the Church should adapt its teaching to the times, Reina said “the Church always listens to what man lives today. Yet, the moral teachings have a solid foundation: the teachings of Holy Scripture and what God has always revealed.”

“So, the Church does not need to adapt to the times but must act in such a way that the times adapt to the logic of the Gospel,” he added.

https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/paglia-replaced-at-jpii-institute

Crucified

Jesus said to me today, You often call Me your Master. This is pleasing to My Heart; but do not forget, My disciple, that you are a disciple of a crucified Master. Let that one word be enough for you. You know what is contained in the cross (Diary, 1513).

St. Louis the Widower

 “During the month of May, 1888, he went to Alençon, and in his old parish church, which was associated with so many memories for him, he had a particular grace, which he related to his three Carmelites on his return, in a visit to the parlor: ‘Children, I have returned from Alençon, where I received in the Church of Notre Dame such signal graces and such consolations that I made this prayer: “My God, it is too much! I am too happy; it is not possible to go to heaven this way. I wish to suffer something for you, and I offered myself…” The word victim expired on his lips, writes Thérèse, he did not wish to pronounce it before us, but we understood!’” (Céline Martin, The Father of the Little Flower, 71–72).

Into Mystery

Evangelization in the modern world must find the appropriate means for redirecting public attention away from spectacle and into mystery.  - Pope Leo XIV

“The sympathy for anti-Christian lifestyle choices that mass media fosters is so brilliantly and artfully engrained in the viewing public that, when people hear the Christian message, it often inevitably seems ideological and emotionally cruel by contrast to the ostensible humaneness of the anti-Christian perspective.

It is not sufficient for the Church to own its own television media or to sponsor religious films. The secular media will always be stronger in this field. And while it is vital that the Church be actively engaged in and with the media, we cannot successfully compete with the secular media.

In his City of God, Augustine teaches that mystery focuses the imagination on the darkness surrounding death—specifically, on the darkness of Christ’s crucifixion, which St. Augustine saw echoed in the deaths of the Christian martyrs. Spectacle, on the other hand—with its companion features: celebrity and heroism—offers people a false comfort by distracting the mind from its instinctive fear of death. Augustine saw this false comfort present in Roman theatre, sports events, secular festivals, and military honors.”

-from his statement to the 2012 Synod of Bishops as Cardinal Prevost

https://amywelborn.wordpress.com/2025/05/12/still-in-process/

caveat-- he may not stand by this previous statement from 13 years ago 

Update on St. Rita Day: Kathryn Jean Lopez commented on Relevant Radio, "Pope Leo XIV isn’t here to be a celebrity. He’s here to be a shepherd. And in a time when the world is overloaded with noise and spectacle, his calm, Christ-centered example may be exactly what the Church needs."

Collective sigh of relief

Pope Leo is the moderate choice, able to appeal to both sides, and that alone will bring unity. He will tidy up things, shore up others, and generally conduct himself as a Pope ought to do, as one nuncio put it:

“We can begin to count on a papacy capable of guaranteeing stability and relying on existing structures, without overturning or disrupting them.”

https://www.ncregister.com/news/cardinals-voting-patterns-emerge-as-leo-xiv-is-welcomed-as-a-pope-of-peace

He is only 'American' in the broader, hemispheric sense of the term. He has lived romanitas since he became a seminarian, and he has more pastoral connection to Peru than Chicago. 

That sense as he emerged onto the loggia, radiating warmth and sincerity, and then as he proclaimed peace, confirm what many have observed, that he is a better representative of our nation than our elected leaders:

"They must have seen in Prevost, who is also highly esteemed in Rome, not the leading exponent of the world's leading power, but the best expression of a West that does not bask in the mirror but is capable of launching itself beyond its limits." https://cathcon.blogspot.com/2025/05/ebb-and-flow-of-conclave-italian.html

New Leo, New Rerum

"I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor."

Tolle et lege