.::Firmum Est::. - - My Heart is Steadfast

Just a few oddities that exist all around the world but may have found their way to my vision.

1) Cab Driver’s Convention
I don’t really know why. It’s pretty much unexplainable. I counted about 20 cabs on our hill.

2) Hell’s Angels - Italian Style
Except they don’t have same presence of sound with their german and italian bikes - so they had to honk their way through the streets to get recognized. Sorry - No picture!

A few weekends ago, the ten brothers studying for Washington traveled to Gubbio in the Region of Umbria for an overnight. This town made its way on to the religious map when St Francis tamed a wolf that had been eating the townspeople.
The story is that the wolves of the region were fierce to begin with, but one of them was famished and furious because of its extraordinary size. This one ate both animal and man. Francis confronted the raging wolf in his holiness (some would have said craziness). “Brother Wolf, come here. In Christ’s name, I forbid you to be wicked,” the saint said. The wolf was promised by Francis, “If you agree to make peace, brother wolf, I will tell the people to feed you as long as you live, for I know that it was hunger that drown you to commit so many crimes.”
In Franciscan spirituality, this is key. We have a tendency to want to provide for ourselves in all areas of our lives; to be autonomous. Sometimes this requires sin as it takes away from others freedom to seek the good and the true. Francis loved the generosity of God and always trusted in His Providence. “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink … Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Mt 6:25-26) Each of us are very much beloved by our Father in Heaven.
In recently reading a book on Francis by Omer Englebert, I found it interesting that Francis didn’t like all animals. I have heard that he wasn’t a fan of ants. “He did not quite forgive the ants for what appeared to him their feverish haste and exaggerated foresight.” They didn’t trust in their Lord and make to provide all things for them for “your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Mt 6:8)

May we pray to the Lord for an increase in trust, that in freedom we may love Him fully and our neighbors for his sake.

Today is the Feast of the Dedication of Saint John Lateran - the Cathedral church in Rome. It is here, not at St Peter’s, that the cathedra - the chair of the Bishop - is found. This church was the most important in Rome because if was the home of the Popes for the first thousand of years of the church.

As the readings from the Office today reflect the feast, they remind us that after Baptism we are to be true and living temple of God. “For God does not dwell only in structures fashioned by human hands, in homes of wood and stone, but rather he dwells principally in the soul made according to his own image and fashioned by his own hand.”

“Whenever we come to church, we must prepare our hearts to be beautiful as we expect this church to be. Do you wish to find this basilica immaculately clean? Then do not soil your soul with the filth of sins. Do you wish this basilica to be full of light? God wishes that your soul be not in darkness, but that the light of good works shine in us.

“Just as you enter this church building, so God wishes to enter into your soul, for he promised: I shall live in them, and I shall walk the corridors of their hearts.

The gem at the Basilica is the Baptistry - where thousands of Christians have died and risen with Christ in the Sacrament of Baptism. In 435, Sixtus III had an inscription carved on the cornice of the columns there that reads “Generated by the Spirit who rendered these waters fecund. Here is that source of life, which cleanses the whole universe, gushing from Christ’s wound. This water which receives the old man has a new man arise. There is no difference among those who are reborn. A one and only baptism, a one and only spirit, a one and only faith: they are one.”

As this brings us back to the reason why the whole church celebrates this Feast today - of a church that most Christians have never even set foot inside. The Basilica, as the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, represents that same Bishop, the Holy Father, the successor of Peter, the vicar of Christ on Earth. He who is given the chrism to call all Christians to that unity of Faith in Christ.

Happy Feast!

I don’t do many ’shout outs’ on this site. I would like to use it today for someone’s Birthday - Jon Reardon, a very close brother. Even though he looks 19 he isn’t (he is in the middle).

I also ask for prayers for him and his family. His father, Robert, is struggling in his health. His mother, Linda, is caring for him. Please keep his family in your prayers.

Simple words of the Holy Father today:

Behold the meaning of today’s solemnity: Gazing upon the luminous example of the saints the great desire to be like the saints is awakened in us; happy to live near to God, in his light, in the great family of the friends of God. Being a saint means living close to God, living in his family. And this is the vocation of all of us, vigorously reaffirmed by the Second Vatican Council, and on this day brought to our attention in a solemn way.

But how can we become saints, friends of God? An initial response to this question is this: To be saints it is not necessary to perform extraordinary deeds and works, nor is it necessary to possess exceptional charisms. But this only tells us what sainthood is not. The positive answer is that to become a saint it is above all necessary to listen to Jesus and then to follow him and not lose heart in the face of difficulties.

“If anyone wants to serve me,” he says, “he must follow me, and where I am there also is my servant. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him” (John 12:26). Whoever entrusts himself to him and loves him with sincerity, will die to himself as the grain of wheat buried in the earth.