Cantalamessa - Truly the Son of God

Here is Father Raniero Cantalamessa's Good Friday homily (ZENIT reports both this and this as the 'Good Friday homily' - go figure).

Cantalamessa - Our Great High Priest

Adoration of the Mystic Lamb - Jan Van Eyck

Father Cantalamessa expounds on violence and redemption in his Good Friday Homily, presided over by Benedict XVI, in We Have a Great High Priest.

Praying for 'This Generation'

When our Lord describes his generation, what simile does He use? He says in Luke 7,32:

"To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the market place and calling to one another, `We piped to you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep.'"

And that was only His generation. Or, was it only His generation? Elsewhere in Matthew 12, 39b-45, He describes the plight of a man who believes he can, on his own, whisk clean his "house" of evil spirits:

"An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nin'eveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here ... "When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest, but he finds none. Then he says, `I will return to my house from which I came.' And when he comes he finds it empty, swept, and put in order.

Then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. So shall it be also with this evil generation."

Gil Bailie posits that what our Lord means by "this generation" is "business as usual" in terms of how culture is always generated among fallen human beings, the taxonomy of which is most clearly spelled out by René Girard's mimetic theory, a worthy tool in the hands of the Church's Magisterium. (For example, cf. especially the work and homiletics of Father Raniero Cantalamessa, ofmcap.)

"This generation" is what Satan offers our Lord during His temptations in the wilderness (Mtt 4,8ff).

The staggering thing is to be living and moving and having our being as people who affirm Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church among leaders of nations, industry, and global policy who are plainly and willfully citizens of "this generation." They cannot begin to accept the beliefs of the Church's deposit of faith, the Magisterium, and lordship of Jesus Christ. And so, they are like the cleaner of the evil spirit; like children in the marketplace - all cleaned up and so blindly naive to the realities of Satan in their lives, their thinking, their politics and policies.

Good reason to pray during this season of Lent. Very good reason. And very good reason to join in-arms in Marian chivalry in this godless age in need of the hope and glory our Lord offers.

Cantalamessa - A Special Faith and Love

The Household Papal Preacher, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, shared with the Holy Father a special faith that fully believes in God's love for us in his second Lenten sermon here.

Cantalamessa - Rationalism

Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household, continued his series of homilies given in the presence of the Holy Father this Advent. He began with scientism, secularism, and, now, rationalism. Full text of his talk can be viewed here.

ZENIT and Cantalamessa

If you are not aware of ZENIT, you really should be. As opposed to the phalanx of "news services" that invariably raise your blood pressure with absurdities of the day (read: scandalizing and titillating check-out counter headlines), ZENIT leads with matters pertaining to Catholic faith and truth, the Holy Father, and matters deep and from the heart.

For example, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household, is offered by ZENIT here.

Communication Award Given

It couldn't happen to a finer fellow, priest, and soul guide.

'Thank you, Father Cantalamessa'

'We are bad listeners'

The Jerusalem Post's Alon Goshen-Gottstein expresses precisely what I have thought and felt since I read the text of Father Raniero Cantalamessa's extraordinary Good Friday homily to the Holy Father here.

Laughable if it weren't so sad

Who are you going to trust?

It would be laughable if it weren't all so ridiculously sad. The MSM gets Fr Cantalamessa's superb analysis wrong - why? Because they latched onto something they thought they heard; namely, a comparison of (a) the continuing vitriolic junkyard-dog attacks on the Holy Father with (b) the nearly everlasting scapegoating of the Jews in world history.

Cantalamessa was correct and, beyond that, did an exquisite job of explicating Girard's mimetic theory. He showed mimetic theory to be a powerful servant and tool for the magisterium of the Church right there in front of God, the Holy Father, and - unfortunately - a selectively listening mainstream media. The MSM was as selective, I will hasten to add, as were the Pharisees were when they followed Our Lord around trying to find evidence for pinning Him to the wall.

Again, for proof read Fr Cantalamessa's homily in full here. See for yourself. Don't listen to the pharisaical, scapegoating, looking-for-trouble MSM.

UPDATE: Jeffrey Tucker's measured comments on all of the above: The Troubles of the Catholic World

Cantalamessa - Crimes Against Women

PREACHER DECRIES VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Says Christ Is Ally in Fighting This Crime

VATICAN CITY, APRIL 2, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The preacher of the Pontifical Household is denouncing violence against women, especially in the domestic realm, and is pointing out that Christ is the first to fight this crime.

Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa stated this today in his homily at the Celebration of the Passion of the Lord, presided over by Benedict XVI in St. Peter's Basilica.

Speaking about the brutal death of Jesus, and the violence that has always been present to a certain extent in human history, the priest pointed to a "grave and widespread" manifestation of this savagery.

"I am not speaking here of violence against children," he said, though he acknowledged that some clergy are "stained" by this crime. On this topic, "there is sufficient talk outside of here," he said.

Rather, the preacher highlighted the crime of violence against women.

"This is an occasion to make persons and institutions that fight against it understand that Christ is their best ally," he said.

Father Cantalamessa asserted that "it is a violence all the more grave in as much as it is often carried out in the shelter of domestic walls, unknown to all, when it is not actually justified with pseudo-religious and cultural prejudices."

"The victims find themselves desperately alone and defenseless," he said. "Only today, thanks to the support and encouragement of so many associations and institutions, some find the strength to come out in the open and denounce the guilty."

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Katz - Pink Slip the NYT

Here is a perfect example of the veracity of Jon Katz's dictum: "If cultural anthropologists could write, a lot of journalists would have to find other work. And if journalists were given the time, education, and training anthropologists receive, we might better grasp some of the complicated problems we face."

For students of Girard, the text of Father Raniero Cantalamessa's homily highly featured - and inexcusably torn out of context - by the NYT. He is an extremely astute and knowledgeable homilist who utilizes mimetic theory as an instrument of the magisterium of the Church. From his homily:

In 1972 a famous French thinker launched the thesis according to which "violence is the heart and secret spirit of the sacred."[2] In fact, at the origin and center of every religion there is sacrifice, and sacrifice entails destruction and death. The newspaper "Le Monde" greeted the affirmation, saying that it made of that year "a year to mark with an asterisk in the annals of humanity." However, before this date, that scholar had come close again to Christianity and at Easter of 1959 he made public his "conversion," declaring himself a believer and returning to the Church.

This enabled him not to pause, in his subsequent studies, on the analysis of the mechanism of violence, but to point out also how to come out of it. Many, unfortunately, continue to quote René Girard as the one who denounced the alliance between the sacred and violence, but they do not speak of the Girard who pointed out in the paschal mystery of Christ the total and definitive break of such an alliance. According to him, Jesus unmasks and breaks the mechanism of the scapegoat that makes violence sacred, making himself, the victim of all violence...

Read it all here. Then ask yourself: How on earth could the NYT have written the above story and so idiotically misconstrued Fr Cantalamessa? How can anyone believe the New York Times is NOT scapegoating the Catholic Church, given these facts?

Ultimately one must ask oneself: Who are you going to trust? I've made my decision. But I,for one, would not want to be in the shoes of those who so glibly cast doubt into the hearts of those who need Christ's holy Church for salvation.

Cantalamessa - In the Praetorium

Jesus in the praetorium is the image of man who has "given God's power back to him." He expiated all the abuse we have made and continue to make of our freedom; this freedom we want no one to touch and which is nothing other than slavery to ourselves. We must impress this episode of Jesus in the praetorium well into our hearts, because the day will come when we will also find ourselves in this state, either due to man or to age, and then only Jesus will be able to help us understand and sing, amid tears, our newfound freedom.

There is an intimacy with Jesus that can only be obtained by staying close to him, cheek to cheek, in the hour of his and our ignominy, we too bearing "his abuse" (see Hebrews 13,13). Many people have been condemned by illness or a disability to a helplessness similar to Christ's in the praetorium and have to spend their lives in wheelchairs, or in bed. Jesus reveals the secret greatness hidden in these lives if lived in union with him.

- Father Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M.Cap.