I hope your May 27 article about Catholics supporting Israel will inspire more.
I realize I left a crucial component of my own trip to activism out of my interview with your reporter: my lifelong research into the extensive Catholic support for Jews during the Holocaust, from Pope Pius XII, who hid Jews in his Vatican and summer residences, on down to Irena Sendler, who helped children escape from the Warsaw Ghetto.
I recommend Mark Riebling’s Church of Spies: the Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler, Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s List, Gordon Zahn’s In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jagerstatter, and Michael Gilbert’s The Righteous—the Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust.
Steve Weatherbe
Victoria
Re the May 20 article “The world is colonizing us”:
Is it really the world that is colonizing us? How much time are we wasting in our parishes not forming small prayer groups, small groups that look at every word of the Creed?
The story reports that 70 per cent of Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Meanwhile, Evangelicals believe more strongly that Jesus was God on earth and in the Resurrection and the Trinity.
I’m not sure what some of our priests and bishops worldwide believe. About 10 years ago, I attended Mass in a village in Europe where the priest, in his sermon, clearly stated that the Eucharist is only symbolic.
I was shocked and wanted to shout out, “Not true!” But I wasn’t sure if that would cause scandal since one doesn’t contradict a priest during the sermon. On the other hand, I felt like a coward since we must stand up for the truth, comfortable or not.
I have a question for any priest who cares to answer. What is the right way to act?
Marianne Werner
Vancouver
In his May 13 article “Synodality is easier to live than to describe,” Father Pierre Ducharme, OFM, states regarding the Road to Emmaus, “Never does Jesus give advice. He is attentive and attractive. He gets invited to dinner. Salvation is presented in the breaking of the read, not in his words.”
With all due respect to Father Ducharme, I have a different understanding of the Road to Emmaus.
Does Scripture not tell us that the two were downcast? Jesus walks with them, not allowing himself to be recognized, so that he can listen to them. He did not let them continue in their misunderstanding, but began to teach them the Truth as revealed in the Scriptures, beginning from the time of Moses to his death and Resurrection. (Lk 2:24-25, 27)
Having their minds opened, they invited the mystery man to dinner. Was it not in the blessing and breaking of the bread that they recognized him as the Christ? Was it not absolutely because of his words that they were no longer in ignorance?
We are not called to a worldly understanding of Jesus. Only his Word reveals the Truth which is accompanied by deep joy in our hearts that helps us to follow him in obedience.
C. Wharton
Langley
Re Father Hawkswell’s recent article on meditation and letters in reply:
I have been a meditator for almost 24 years, thanks to the late Sister Charlotte Girard, SEJ, who formed a group at St. Mary’s Church in Vancouver in 2001.
Meditating twice a day has deepened my faith, especially being conscious of God’s presence in my daily life. It has made going to Mass and receiving the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, so much more meaningful.
I usually start my meditation by reading one of Father John Main’s writings. In his book Word Into Silence, he says, “I have often found when I have talked to people about meditation that it is the non-Christian, even the person with no religion, who first understands what meditation is about.”
To many ordinary churchgoers and many priests, monks, and sisters, he writes, it can seem at first suspicious, exotic, or a form of therapy that can help you relax but is not Christian. “This is a desperately sad state of affairs. So many Christians have lost touch with their own tradition of prayer. We no longer benefit as we should from the wisdom and experienced counsel of the great masters of prayer.”
These masters agree that “in prayer it is not we ourselves who are taking the initiative. We are not talking to God. We are listening to his Word within us. We are not looking for him, it is He who has found us.”
Father Main continues: “Walter Hilton expressed it very simply in the fourteenth century. He wrote: ‘You yourself do nothing, you simply allow him to work in your soul.’”
The advice of St. Teresa of Avila was in tune with this, says Father Main. “She reminds us that all we can do in prayer is to dispose ourselves, the rest is in the power of the Spirit who leads us.”
(Mrs.) Corazon Alcuitas
Vancouver
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