Friday 10th January 2025
2024 Year of Prayer podcasts
St Thomas Aquinas on Oration
Category: Media
10 December 2024
Pope Francis | The Year of Prayer
By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)
We end our series of reflections on the Year of Prayer where it began—with Pope Francis. We hope that these reflections have been helpful to you, your friends, and your family. The Holy Father convoked this Year of Prayer so that we might more readily enter the joyous festivity of the Jubilee Year 2025 with renewed vigour in our Christian faith, and we hope that our brief look at prayer through the eyes of the saints and the liturgy might help our listeners prepare for the great Jubilee.
To close this Year of Prayer, then, perhaps let us allow Pope Francis to speak to us. Prayer is important for all the reasons we have covered this year, but perhaps an underrated reason for prayer is that Christ himself—God made flesh—also prayed! In the Gospels, the Pope tells us,
we learn that Jesus not only wants us to pray as he prays, but assures us that, even if our attempts at prayer are completely vain and ineffective, we can always count on his prayer. We must be aware of this: Jesus prays for me. Once, a good bishop told me that in a very bad moment in his life, a great trial, a moment of darkness, he looked up in the Basilica and saw this phrase written: “I, Peter, will pray for you”. And this gave him strength and comfort. And this happens every time that each of us knows that Jesus prays for him or for her. Jesus prays for us. In this moment, in this very moment. Do this memory exercise, repeat this. When there is a difficulty, when you feel the orbital pull of distractions: Jesus is praying for me. But, father, is this true? It is true! He said it himself. Let us not forget that what sustains each of us in life is Jesus’ prayer for every one of us, with our first and last name, before the Father, showing him the wounds that are the price of our salvation.May our prayers become one with Christ’s prayer that we might be one with him.
26 November 2024
Pope Benedict XVI | The Year of Prayer
By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)
In a ten-part series of Wednesday catecheses beginning 4 May 2011, Pope Benedict XVI—with his characteristic intellectual depth and historical rigour—explained how prayer is common to every civilization; and then, passing through the entire span of salvation history, traced the growth of human beings in prayer from the Pentateuch unto consummation in Christ. These reflections, available on the Holy See website, constitute a most edifying distillation of Pope Benedict’s deeply biblical spirituality, reminding us that our own prayer should make recourse to sacred scripture as an ever-renewing source of inspiration.
However, in this brief reflection, let us focus on the humble simplicity which lay at the heart of Pope Benedict’s intellectual erudition. As one of the greatest theological minds ever to succeed Saint Peter, Benedict enjoyed a stellar university career and continued to publish important works as a cardinal and as pope. From completing his doctorate summa cum laude at the age of twenty-six despite the interruption of the Second World War, to writing his brilliant Jesus of Nazareth trilogy near the end of his life, Pope Benedict’s faith was marked by a loving and untiring quest for the truth made known in the person of Jesus Christ.
After taking the dramatic decision to resign the papacy, Pope Benedict humbly and dutifully made way for a successor while continuing to support the Church silently through his prayer. The frailty of old age took his mobility, his ability to write, and even his voice, but in his last months he remained steadfast with total trust in the Lord. What a wonderful paradox it is to know that, after nearly nine decades of life, thousands of pages written, hundreds of speeches and sermons delivered, that Pope Benedict’s final utterance was a simple, three-word prayer as though from the heart of a child: “Gesù, ti amo”—“Jesus, I love you.”
As Saint Paul wrote to Corinth, “If I speak with the tongues of men or of angels but have not love, then I am nothing but a clashing gong or a clanging cymbal.” This passage—which Joseph Ratzinger himself quoted in a famous homily to the cardinals on the eve of his election—seems to have been taken to heart by this pope himself. All his theological erudition and eloquence was rooted in an abiding love for Christ the Lord. His second encyclical, Caritas in Veritate is likewise a testimony to the inseparability of truth and love. Even if we cannot speak in the tongues of angels, or even with the eloquence of a younger Pope Benedict, let us also remain steadfast in the Lord, such that when our voices fail at the door of death, we still might say loudly in our hearts, “Jesus, I love you!”
12 November 2024
Saint John Paul II | The Year of Prayer
By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)
Saint John Paul II’s monumental twenty-six year pontificate is full of eloquent moments, quotations, and actions whose inexhaustible depth cannot be summarized in these few words. And despite carrying the immense responsibility of shepherding a truly global Church, with so many causes for both rejoicing and sorrowing, John Paul always made time—even incredible amounts of time—for his own personal prayer. Those close to him recalled how he would spend up to six hours at a time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, while his own devotion to Mary ensured a prominent place for the Rosary in his daily schedule. “In prayer,” the Pope said, “you become one with the source of our true light – Jesus Himself.” And as he liked to often say, we come to Jesus only through his Mother—ad Iesum per Mariam.
The Rosary is my favorite prayer. A marvelous prayer! Marvelous in its simplicity and its depth. In the prayer we repeat many times the words that the Virgin Mary heard from the Archangel, and from her kinswoman Elizabeth… To pray the Rosary is to hand over our burdens to the merciful hearts of Christ and His mother.
Like St Therese and Mother Teresa before him, John Paul found comfort in the words passed on to us through the tradition of the Church. At times when our own eloquence and expressiveness might fail, one can never do wrong by leaning on the prayers we have learned from those who passed on the faith. In doing so, we imitate Mary’s surrender, saying with the Church her fiat mihi—be it done to me—allowing the gifts of these timeless prayers to renew our souls.
Closeness to the Eucharistic Christ in silence and contemplation does not distance us from our contemporaries but, on the contrary, makes us open to human joy and distress, broadening our hearts on a global scale. Through adoration the Christian mysteriously contributes to the radical transformation of the world and to the sowing of the gospel. Anyone who prays to the Eucharistic Saviour draws the whole world with him and raises it to God.
May we follow the example of Saint John Paul II by attentively praying the Rosary and visiting Christ often in the Blessed Sacrament, confident that we will be drawn up through Mary’s embrace into the heart of her Son.
Friday 18th October 2024
St Thomas More & Religious Freedom
Dr Marcus Cole
An open lecture on St Thomas More and Religious Freedom, by Dr Marcus Cole.
With a welcome by Stefan Kaminski, Director of the CHC, and an introduction by the Lord Alton of Liverpool.
Approximate running time: 47 minutes
29 October 2024
Ven. Francis-Xavier Van Thuan | The Year of Prayer
By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)
Francis-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan’s story is one of remarkable perseverance under severe anti-Christian repression. Ordained a bishop in 1967, he was arrested after the fall of Saigon in 1975, being imprisoned in a Communist re-education camp for thirteen years, nine of which were spent in solitary confinement. He never reached the post appointed to him by Pope Paul VI—the important Diocese of Saigon—and upon his release in 1988, he remained under house arrest in Hanoi. In 1991, he was allowed to visit Rome, but never to return to Vietnam. Bishop Van Thuan served Pope John Paul II in various capacities in the Roman Curia before being named a cardinal in February 2001. He died in Rome of cancer on 16 September 2002, and declared Venerable by Pope Francis in May 2017.
One who has undergone harsh imprisonment, torture, and solitary confinement for over a decade, as did Cardinal Van Thuan, would be well tempted to lose faith. And yet, he remained steadfast to God, adopting “ten rules of life” which fostered his perseverance even in the most difficult of times. We cannot hear review all ten rules, but in the context of the Year of Prayer, the Cardinal’s third rule is especially fitting: “I will hold firmly to one secret: prayer.” Yet what exactly did he pray? The Cardinal tells us:
I prayed with the word of God, the Psalms. I said the prayers I had recited in the family chapel every evening when I was a child. The liturgical songs came back to me. I often sang the Veni Creator, the hymns of the martyrs, the Sanctorum Meritis, the Credo… To truly appreciate those beautiful prayers, it is necessary to have experienced the darkness of incarceration, conscious of the fact that your suffering is offered for faithfulness to the Church.
Cardinal Van Thuan drew strength from his memories of the liturgy, singing the Psalms, the Creed, and even some of the great medieval Latin hymns whose use, unfortunately, has been eclipsed in most of the Church. His recourse to the great ninth century hymn Sanctorum Meritis places him in the company of another great saint who endured an unjust imprisonment—Thomas Aquinas—who used Sanctorum Meritis as an inspiration for one of his own Eucharistic hymns, Sacris Solemniis.
Cardinal Van Thuan is perhaps most famous for finding ways to celebrate Mass in prison (when not in solitary confinement). With the aid of other Catholic faithful outside the prison, as well as through the sympathy of his guards (some of whom later converted), he acquired small quantities of bread and wine. In his words:
I wrote home saying ‘Send me some wine as medication for stomach pains’. On the outside, the faithful understood what I meant. They sent me a little bottle of Mass wine, with a label reading ‘medication for stomach pains,’ as well as some hosts broken into small pieces. The police asked me: ‘Do you have pains in your stomach?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Here is some medicine for you!’ I will never be able to express the joy that was mine: each day, three drops of wine, a drop of water in the palm of my hand. I celebrated my Mass… At nine-thirty every evening at lights out everyone had to be lying down. I bent over my wooden board and celebrated Mass, by heart of course, and distributed Communion to my neighbours under their mosquito nets.
Not only did the cardinal draw strength from the prayers of the liturgy—he continued to draw strength from the source of the liturgy—Christ himself. If we are at times tempted to discard the rote prayers given to us by the Church, as if they would be less meaningful than something new or spontaneous, let us follow the example of Cardinal Van Thuan, who, in the most dire circumstances, found the in stable prayers of the Church a link to the unshakeable faith of the confessors and martyrs. With him, may the Church sing the words of that venerable hymn:
Sing, O Sons of the Church sounding the Martyrs’ praise!
God’s true soldiers applaud, who, in their weary days,
Won bright trophies of good, glad be the voice ye raise,
While these heroes of Christ ye sing!
Sanctorum meritis inclyta gaudia
pangamus socii, gestaque fortia:
gliscens fert animus promere cantibus
victorum genus optimum.
15 October 2024
Saint Maria Goretti | The Year of Prayer
By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)
Prayer is ordered not only to our own personal good, but for the good of our neighbours. For this reason, the central part of Mass has the people ask that the sacrifice might be made acceptable to God “for our good and the good of all his holy Church.” The graces which flow from the Mass can extend to all people, and are meant to bring everyone, from the holiest saint to the most unrepentant sinner, into communion with God. The story of Saint Maria Goretti is a most remarkable example of how the effects of prayer can extend to even one who, in one moment in life, might have been seen as an enemy of Christ and his Gospel.
The third of seven children, Maria was devoutly dedicated to the Lord, living with her family in impoverished conditions. When she was nine, her father died, forcing the family to live in a shared house with the Serenelli family. On 5 July 1902, one of the Serenelli sons, the troubled nineteen year old Alessandro, took a lustful liking to the young Maria. In a moment when they were alone at the house, Alessandro threatened to stab Maria if she did not submit to his advances. She refused, warning Alessandro of his mortal sin. Still, the young man persisted, attempting to force himself on her, choking her as she resisted with all her might. Finally, in a fit of rage, Alessandro stabbed Maria fourteen times. Maria, gravely wounded, reached for the door, but Alessandro stabbed her three more times.
Maria was rushed to the hospital and Alessandro was arrested. She survived incredibly for a day, with the surgeons amazed that she had not succumbed to so many wounds to her heart and lungs. However, her resistance was only temporary. She breathed her last on 6 July, but not before pronouncing, “I forgive Alessandro Serenelli, and I want him with me in heaven forever.”
Instead of a life sentence, the court imposed a thirty year sentence, acknowledging Alessandro’s harsh upbringing and consequent mental illness. He was unrepentant for three years, until a bishop visited him. After this visit, he wrote to the bishop, saying how Maria appeared to him in a dream, in which she gave him white lilies which burned in his hand. From that day, Alessandro repented of the murder. He was released after twenty-seven years, whereupon he immediately sought out Maria’s mother and begged her forgiveness. She responded, “If my daughter can forgive him, who am I to withhold forgiveness?”
In 1947, Pius XII beatified Maria, and after a rapid canonization process, raised her to the altars in 1950. Her canonization Mass is remarkable in that not only the parents of the martyr were present, but also her murderer. Alessandro Serenelli, now a lay brother of the Capuchin Franciscans, joined the throng of Christian faithful praising God for the gift of Maria’s example.
Christ taught us to love our enemies, and Maria Goretti followed this commandment perfectly. May we also pray for those who wrong us, that they too might return to the loving embrace of God.
Sunday 22nd September 2024
CLF: a week of prayer, study and friendship for teens
Stefan Kaminski
It was with both excitement and a dash of trepidation that I awaited the arrival of our second cohort of students, counting off yet again a mental list of to-dos and anxiously searching for some overlooked item of potentially life-threatening bureaucracy. At the back of my mind was the temptation to compare the incoming assembly of teenage faces to the first and original cohort, who inevitably have thus far held a special place in my memory as the personification of our Christian Leadership Formation programme.
The memories of the first group appeared to take on an even rosier tinge as I anxiously scanned the awkward interactions during the first ice-breaker. Small groups had coalesced, and appeared to be politely resisting my gentle suggestions that any one person’s correct partner (as determined by the random stickers on their forehead denoting one of a pairing of foodstuffs) was yet to be discovered elsewhere. Furthermore, beyond the natural diversity to be found amongst a random sampling of Catholic, sixth-form students from around England, additional variety was provided by having opened up this year’s programme to year 13 students too, and by the admission of two young ladies hailing from France, bringing a dash of je ne sais quoi to the mix.
A need for peer support
A reassuring sense of the consistency of both Western society and human nature rapidly returned, however, when we asked the assembled students about their expectations for the course. Southerners and northerners, Englishmen and Frenchwomen alike, all had similar preoccupations: they wanted to meet like-minded, Catholic young people, and they wanted to understand more concretely how their faith was applicable to the secular world of work that they were preparing to enter.
Whilst neither of these should have come as a great surprise, I nonetheless found it striking to hear the students admitting to their relative loneliness as practicing Catholics, given that they were all coming from Catholic educational settings. The positive surprise, in this respect, is that the students were actively conscious of the lack of peer-support in their faith and had a yearning for it.
The importance of this ‘community’ dimension for faith formation is perhaps hard to overestimate. It takes great courage and conviction to swim against the tide, and even the most resilient and intellectually-grounded of young people will feel the pressure of mass religious incredulity. Providing something of an antidote to this – an actively faith-filled and intelligent environment for the students to immerse themselves in (or, “a properly ‘Catholic’ environment”, as one student put it) – was precisely part of the vision for our Christian Leadership Formation programme.
“I feel much more secure in my faith now, even if only from knowing that there are other young people like me in the world”
Thus, and despite my initial apprehensions, it was deeply gratifying to see the initial barriers break down and a real cohesion built on mutual respect and friendship develop over the days that followed. And the feedback the students provided bore ample testimony to this. One young lady noted how she felt “much more secure in my faith now, even if only from knowing that there are other young people like me in the world.” Boniface, a year 12 student, praised “the experience of living, praying and studying as a community”, seeing as one of its fruits the fact that “everybody… started the week as total strangers and ended as friends”.
Community builds culture
This community dimension – the integration of prayer, of study and of recreation with wholesome, interpersonal relationships – is essential to any formative experience, whether the family home, the school community, a seminary or religious community, or a short programme like ours. And it is intrinsically related to the second concern the students brought with them: that of understanding the practical relevance of our Catholic faith in today’s world.
We have arguably reached a point where Christianity is now totally absent as the principal point of reference for our society’s collective imaginative vision. The intellectual framework of the modern mind is completely decoupled from its Christian foundations: from the conception of the very basic act of knowledge, through to that of the universal reality, both material and spiritual (assuming that one admits of the latter in the first place). It is thus difficult, if not impossible, for many young people (and indeed adults) to see a practical interaction between their ‘private’ faith and public life, as the two are constituted by imaginative paradigms that have very different points of reference.
The challenge for any formation project, then, is to create an environment that actively ‘speaks’ of the Christian vision and imaginative process in all its fullness. Such an environment should be able to promote a holistic engagement of heart and mind with the Catholic faith. An email from Rafael, one of this year’s cohort, straight after the first module, seemed to confirm that we had achieved something along precisely these lines: “I have relished the opportunity to consider big and challenging questions, and have done a lot of soul searching. But now, as the week ends, I find myself with greater clarity and stronger convictions.”
Rediscovering the intelligence of Christianity
Thus, the intention behind the academic content of the week’s course – led by the hugely experienced lecturer and highly-regarded philosopher, Dr Andrew Beards – was to offer the students a thorough and coherent, philosophical and theological grounding for those concepts that underpin our understanding of the common good; concepts that were fully refined in the light of Christian revelation and thought, but have since become meaningless in a de-Christianised (and dare I say de-rationalised) world. “Exploring topics like dignity, law, and human rights in a Christian light and comparing them to inconclusive secular views helped shed light on the logic of Christian thought”, said 18-year-old Maia.
At the heart of this exploration is the recognition that all people “have an innate desire to ‘seek the truth and act accordingly,’” as Qiyi, a year 12 student, put it. It is the rationality afforded by our spiritual nature, which leads us to search for knowledge and understanding, that is at the heart of what it means to be human, and is essential ground for the dignity that we claim for our species.
Recognising this primary truth, and the objectivity that is inherent to this claim, is that which provides a foundation for building up a society where “true justice is rooted in love, truth and the common good”, in the words of another year 12 student, Santiago.
The theme of justice was central to the week, as the students explored its practical application in a number of scenarios, whether preparing for a student union debate on the abortion of unborn children with Down’s Syndrome or analysing a legal case relating to a terminally-ill patient. What the students readily saw from these exercises was that for justice to truly flourish, our understanding of human life and of that which is proper to its flourishing requires solid ground. Rafael summed this up as follows: “Human Rights are principles agreed upon by a body of people representing society, they can be said to be in the service of preserving human dignity, but this can only be guaranteed if they are rooted in Natural Law”.
Engaging with others and engaging with Christ
The heavy lifting of the week’s academic content was given welcome relief by a generously-spaced timetable, which allowed not only for the students’ own recreation, but also some organised fun in the shape of various, and slightly zany, team-building activities. Communication and the harnessing of collective skills were the general objectives, but plenty of hilarity ensued as teams competed for points over the course of the week. The timetable was rounded out by the sparkling input of Georgia Clarke, who delivered a thoroughly-engaging series workshops in media and public speaking, which culminated in a mock interview at the week’s end.
Evenings were also an opportunity for relaxation and socials, with a dinner at one of our characterful local pubs a part of the schedule, alongside a pizza and film night. The discussion that followed the screening of “Eye in the Sky” took on an unexpected quality as the previous, U.S. Army career of the CHC’s second member of staff, Dr Joey Belleza, was revealed, and the group benefitted from some rather fascinating insights into the military realities portrayed in the film!
We were privileged to have one of the last evenings in the company of Lord Alton, who came to speak to the students, and engage with them over a dinner and discussion. His keynote speech providentially drew together many of the strands of the preceding days’ discussions as he showed the students how his Catholic faith had served as a lodestar throughout his political career and how the concepts that they were studying were so critical in enabling a truly flourishing society. For many of the students, this was a powerful, first testimony to the positive role that our faith has to play even in today’s society.
I have perhaps deliberately left till last what is the most important element of the programme, that which gives meaning to and draws all the above together into a cohesive whole: the life of prayer. Although the practical focus of the programme often, inevitably, ends up on the academic content – advertising the topics, flagging the academic benefits, noting the societal import of such weighty matters – I am always most struck by the lesser-seen impact of the liturgical rhythm of the course. This only really reveals itself after the event, once the students have sent in their written evaluations at a week or two’s distance. The experience of daily Mass, Liturgy of the Hours, and regular opportunities for Eucharistic Adoration and meditation, is one that is generally new to most students. The impact that this has, however, is clearly marked. From bringing them “a sense of order and discipline… [and] closer to God”, to seeing “productivity, enjoyment and work output improved”, the practically- and spiritually-essential nature of prayer and of the Church’s sacramental rites hit home in tangible ways, and sent the students away with a renewed sense of commitment to coming to know and love their saviour, Jesus Christ. If this was the only outcome of the programme, I would say it was all worthwhile!
01 October 2024
Saint Pio of Pietrelcina | The Year of Prayer
By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)
Saint Pio of Pietrelcina is one of the great prophetic voices of the twentieth century, with great insight into the spiritual problems of the individuals who came to him for advice, as well those of the world at large. He once lamented that “today’s society does not pray. That is why it is falling apart.” Living in an age marked by the most destructive wars in human history and the great crises of secularization that followed, Pio was astutely aware that a world alienated from God was caused by a deep spiritual malaise among peoples, which allowed the forces of evil to take root in modern societies. But he also identified a solution to the problem, a solution that must be taken to heart by individuals who might heroically lead society back to the embrace of the merciful Saviour: “Prayer is the best weapon we possess, the key that opens the heart of God.” In classic Capuchin Franciscan fashion, he encourages us to unite our spiritual turmoil to the sufferings of Christ crucified.
Pray that God will console you when you feel the burden of the Cross, for in doing so you are in no way acting against the will of God, but you are placing yourself beside the Son of God who asked His Father during the Agony in the Garden to send Him some relief. But if He is not willing to give it be ready to pronounce the same ‘Fiat,’ ‘So be it,’ that Jesus did.
Of course, conformity to Christ’s sufferings on Calvary is granted most perfectly through the celebration of the Eucharist, and unsurprisingly, the Mass holds a central place in Padre Pio’s prayer life. “It would be easier for the world to exist,” he says, “without the sun than without the Holy Mass.” He was also an ardent advocate of Eucharistic adoration, saying that “one thousand years of enjoying human glory is not worth even an hour spent sweetly communing with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.” Therefore, he exhorts us:
Kneel down and render the tribute of your presence and devotion to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Confide all your needs to him, along with those of others. Speak to him with filial abandonment, give free rein to your heart, and give him complete freedom to work in you as he thinks best.
May we visit Christ in the Blessed Sacrament often as Padre Pio did, uniting ourselves with the Passion of Christ, that we too might share the glory of the Resurrection.
18 September 2024
Saint Therese of Lisieux | The Year of Prayer
By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)
Maintaining a consistent prayer life is often difficult, requiring the discipline that Saint Teresa of Avila mentions throughout her autobiography. The ascent to true union with God, as Teresa and Bonaventure have shown us, is often plagued by the distractions of daily life, to the point that we might even fall out of the habit of prayer. Starting again from zero, as it were further hinders our growth in virtue, and the task of entering into that discipline again can be discouraging. One saint who understood this struggle well was a latter day French disciple of Saint Teresa—Saint Therese of Lisieux, also known as Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, or simply “the Little Flower.”
Saint Therese of Lisieux is rare among the Doctors of the Church, in that she died very young (at the age of 24) and that she therefore did not enjoy the elite formal education of the others. And yet, by numbering her among the Doctors, the Church extols her example of simple faith and simple wisdom as having a spiritual and intellectual value comparable to that of other great teachers like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Teresa.
“Sometimes when I am in such a state of spiritual dryness that not a single good thought occurs to me,” Therese write, “I say very slowly the ‘Our Father,’ or the ‘Hail Mary,’ and these prayers suffice to take me out of myself.”
“I take refuge, then, in prayer, and turn to Mary, and our Lord always triumphs.”
This is the essence of her “Little Way,” that is, her simple way of uniting herself daily to Christ though humble acts of prayer and devotion. And while the breadth and complexity of the liturgy is proposed to us by the Church as a maximal and most secure means of receiving the graces of Christ, the extra-liturgical modes of conformity to Christ are also necessary for the life of faith.
“For me, prayer is a burst from my heart, it is a simple glance thrown toward heaven, a cry of thanksgiving and love in times of trial as well as in times of joy… Frequently, only silence can express my prayer.” Even the silence of our hearts can express our longing for God, our utter dependence on him. Thus, with many modes of prayer at our disposal, she exhorts us: “Let us not grow tired of prayer: confidence works miracles.”
Saint Therese, in her simplicity, has rightly taken her place among the great Doctors of the Church. And yet, as Thomas and Bonaventure stood on the shoulders of Aristotle, Saint Therese stood on the example of Archimedes when she said: “Our fulcrum is God; our lever, prayer; prayer which burns with love. With that we can lift the world!” Let us take heart from the humble example of Saint Therese, who faced moments of spiritual dryness not with despair, but with humble recourse to the prayers which Christ and his Church have given us.
