While in college I learned a little bit of computer programming and it continues to be a hobby.  One of my projects has been a program that can generate the Catholic liturgical calendar.  While not perfect, it has reached the point that I feel comfortable sharing the fruits of this hobby with you, the faithful blog readers.

The link at the end of this post will direct you to a .csv file that you can download.  The file can be imported into the calendar software on your computer.  It contains the liturgical calendar from January 1, 2011 through December 31, 2020.  Each day is categorized by the color of vestment to be worn at Mass.  Days with optional memorials have the color of the season and the color of the memorial.  This calendar follows the General Roman calendar and the saints and feasts of the United States.  On days where there is an optional memorial on both the Roman and US calendars, the US calendar is used.  The Ascension is on a Sunday in this calendar as well.

In Microsoft Outlook you can create a separate calendar to import this file into or import it into an existing calendar.  To import the file, open your calendar and then select File -> Import and Export.  Next, choose “Import from another program or file” and then select “Comma Separated Values (Windows)”.  Then browse and select the .csv file you downloaded from the link and press next.  Select the calendar where you want to have the information.  Next, hit “Map Custom Fields” and verify that the subject, location, categories, description, and start date are mapped correctly.  Then hit finish.

Once the information has been loaded, the events can be colored by modifying their categories (depending on your version of Outlook).  If you open an event it should be labeled with a category e.g. “† Green”.  There is a menu item to change categories and within that menu a choice for “All categories”.  Within the “All categories” menu you can modify the color e.g. choose green.  Once this is done, all events with this category will be green.  The other option is to create all of the categories used before importing.  The categories used all start with the † followed by a space and then Gold, Green, Mary, Red, Rose, Violet, or White.

Okay, enough of the technical stuff.  The goal is that you can have a color coded Catholic liturgical calendar with all of the other events on your computer calendar.  May Jesus bless each of you abundantly and have a blessed Thanksgiving.

Liturgical Calendar

Blake Stork

Greetings!

It's been a while since I've posted one of these.  However, World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid, Spain, was such an amazing experience, that I wanted to share some of the details with you, even though it's been nearly three months since World Youth Day.

Our pilgrimage group from the Diocese of Sioux City traveled to Fatima, Portugal; Madrid, Spain; and Lourdes, France, as well as a few other stops along the way.  It was a very moving event, to say the least.  Personally, I had three very unique opportunities to exercise my role as a deacon in the Church.

One of the highlights of our time in Spain was visiting the Love and Life Center.  This was a "home" if you will for English speaking pilgrims from all over the world, operated by the Sisters of Life and the Knights of Columbus.  There were people there from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, even countries from the Far East.  We were able to celebrate Mass together and share fellowship.  The daily keynote addresses and catechesis sessions with bishops from around the globe will be something to remember.  Best among these, in my very humble opinion, was the address given by Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York.

The first day we were there, however, I went off and found someone in charge of liturgy.  I introduced myself to this sister, and I must confess, I forget her name, and told her that I was a deacon.  I asked if there was anything I could do to help with the liturgy.  She informed me that they would have all of the deacon process in and we might help with distributing Holy Communion (it takes a lot of people to distribute Communion to over 30,000 people).  But, she went on, there was not as of yet a Deacon of the Eucharist, and she asked if I would like to serve in this role.  I said that I would, and so I was blessed to be able to be seated with the bishop during the celebration of the Mass and to stand next to him distributing Holy Communion to the faithful.

The second unique experience happened to me at the closing Mass with Pope Benedict XVI.  Again, about three hours prior to the Mass, I made my way to the area where the priests and deacons would be vesting.  I met a number of other deacons from around the world, and joined them in praying the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer in Spanish.  Following this, one of the priests in charge of the liturgy picked 16 of us to be seated in the main sanctuary with bishops and cardinals from around the world.  Our job would be to hold chalices and ciboria with the hosts and Precious Blood so the bishops could receive communion.  Within the liturgy, every bishop and priest who is concelebrating must receive the Eucharist that was consecrated at that Mass; he can't receive a host consecrated at another Mass.  So, with literally hundreds of bishops, you can understand that they needed a large number of chalices and ciboria.  So, as fate would have it, I was one of the deacons selected for this role.  I was literally a stone's throw away from Pope Benedict XVI, the Vicar of Christ, the Successor of Peter.

However, in the midst of this experience, the Lord seemed to reveal something to my heart during the consecration at Mass.  I was looking to my right, eyeing Pope Benedict, when the Lord seemed to gently speak to me, "I'm right here.  Don't watch my vicar; watch me."  And I realized that I was holding wine that was literally being changed into the Precious Blood of Jesus right before my very eyes.  It was amazing to think that the next time I have such a privilege, I will be holding the chalice in my own hands as I utter those words of Christ as a priest, "This is the cup of my blood...do this in memory of me."

Third and finally, while visiting Lourdes, France and the Marian shrine there, our group was able to participate in a large, multi-lingual and multi-national liturgy.  The Gospel would be proclaimed in French, Italian, Dutch, and English.  Low and behold, who should the priest who was in charge come up to but me!  He asked me if I spoke English, and I said I did.  He said, "Good.  You will proclaim the Gospel in English."  He didn't really even ask me if I wanted to do so or give me the option to decline!  It was an amazing honor which I was not at all expecting.

Each of these three stories show some element of God's providence at work.  There are days when I wish I was doing something else with my life. But, the Christian life is the life of the Cross, because it is the life of our Lord.  Right now, I participate in that as a deacon, and God willing, in six short months, I will participate in that life as a priest.  However I participate in this life though, the cross will never be far behind.  Anytime we try to live life without the cross, whatever else we may be doing, we most certainly are not living the Christian life.  Our Lord's words were clear, "If you wish to be my disciple, you must renounce yourself, take up your cross, and follow me."  The point is that though there are days when I can feel the weight of the cross our Lord has asked me to carry, most days, that cross is light as a feather.  Most days are filled with joy and these three stories from World Youth Day, hopefully, illustrate that.

If you are reading this, presumably, you are thinking about the priesthood.  The best advice I can give to you is this:  Do not fear the cross of Christ!  It is only through the cross that salvation comes to the world!  It is only through the cross that death and sin are conquered!  It is only through His throne on the Cross that Christ our King reigns!  And, it is only through the cross that we share in His high priesthood, His prophetic witness, and His kingly reign.  Parents, do not fear the cross for your sons and daughters!  There is no such thing as the Christian life without the cross!  But, do not fear!  Our Lord also said that His yoke is easy and His burden light!  He gives us more consolations and joys than I can adequately recount here!

Finally, and this is admittedly looking ahead a little bit, but, if you have never experienced a World Youth Day, I invite you to prayerfully consider going to WYD 2013, in Rio de Janiero, Brazil.  Your encounters with the cross of Christ will be many here.  You will sleep very little, and when you do sleep, it will be on hard floors, in hot, overcrowded locales.  You will be hungry, sweaty, thirsty, hot, tired, irritable, and wanting nothing more than a nice mocha latte with a little chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream on the side.  But, in encountering the cross, you will encounter Christ.  World Youth Day will literally change your life, so please, pray about this, and consider going.

May God bless you!

Deacon Patrick Behm

Greetings,

We adore you O Christ and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

As I look back over the past six years of my seminary formation I have a lot to be grateful for. The Lord has given me so many bountiful graces in my years of formation and I know I could not have done it without Him and His grace. You see, I have dyslexia, a learning disability which makes it very challenging for me to read and write. Even in third and fourth grade I was spending anywhere between four and seven hours a night on homework. I don't believe that most of my classmates spent more than an hour at this time on homework. Let's be honest most high school students do not spent seven hours a night studying. In grade school I had a teacher who did not think that I would go to college because school was such a challenge for me. While this teacher did not say it up front, it was implied. In high school as I approached my senior year and graduation I had to make a decision about whether to go to seminary, or even to go to college. I knew that God was calling me to enter seminary, and possibly even calling me to be a priest, but I had to overcome a hurdle that seemed to be insurmountable before any of that could occur. The hurdle I faced was to be accepted into a college. The only way that I could see overcoming this hurdle is if the Lord gave me the grace. On many occasions in high school I told the Lord that if he wanted me to be a priest, he would have to get me there because I could not do it on my own. After high school I entered seminary and the Lord did not take away my dyslexia, but every time I hit a wall the Lord showed me a way through. I graduated college on time and with the class in which I entered. The Lord has now brought me to major seminary (grad school). As I have said the Lord did not take away my dyslexia and there have been many times even in seminary where I hit a wall and wanted to leave. I have said it many times previously and I will say it again I have encountered Christ in such a profound way and have experienced His love countless times so I must respond. Even though seminary has been a challenge, by the grace of God, I have persevered through the challenges and have given God my all.

The reason I share this little part of me with you, is not for my own praise and glory, or for you to feel sorry for me, but it is to give God the glory for any success that I have had in seminary. I also share this looking into the future, to give God glory for what ever affect my dyslexia may have on those around me. If it were of my own accord I doubt that I would have made it through high school. (The teacher I talked about was right and “I” cannot have done it of my own accord.) The Lord has given me a remarkable grace to persevere with the cross he has given me. Brothers and sisters the cross is not light, but the Lord gives us the grace to carry our crosses with strength, if we but trust in him and accept help. If you are reading this, or any of my blogs for that matter, and think that I have made many mistakes in spelling and punctuation you are probably right. I am constantly at the mercy of others to correct even my blogs. (I would like to thank my mom who looks over so much of what I write even today.) If we give the Lord our crosses, and if we allow the Lord to help us carry the crosses he has given us, the Lord will bring good even out of the pain-and-suffering that our crosses may bring. Dyslexia keeps me humble, and that is a true grace. I've had many people tell me that I am incredibly intelligent, but with dyslexia it is hard for me to show it without the help of others.

"Christ Carrying the Cross" by Hieronymus Bosch

The second reason I share this story with you, and perhaps the main reason, because I'm posting this on a seminary blog, is that the Lord does not often call the strong, worthy, or the most likely to His service. The Lord often times calls the weak and the unworthy to serve, because it is in our weakness that Christ is strong. Look at some of the Saints that Christ has raised up to holiness. St. John Vianney was called stupid because he struggled to learn Latin, and yet he heard countless confessions and led many souls to Christ. Venerable Solanus Casey struggled so much in school that he was not ordained with the full faculties of a priest, and yet the people of Detroit and the Bronx flocked to this lowly porter for advice and prayers. Moses stuttered, and yet the Lord called him to lead Israel out of Egypt. St. Augustine had a mistress, and yet he was called by God to repent of his ways and serve him as a priest and then Bishop, becoming one of the great Church Fathers. The reason we look up to these men is because they gave Christ the glory and the credit over themselves. Regardless of how Christ calls us to serve Him may we learn to accept our crosses, whether we have brought them on ourselves, or Christ has given them to us. May we then ask God to bring about his greater glory through our weaknesses.

Men in Christ, Men of the Church, Men for Others

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

Aaron Pohlen

During a seminary class the other day we were discussing the reason for Christ going to the cross.  The presenter, using a quote from Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict's) book 'Introduction to Christianity', was trying to dispel the popular notion (among both Protestants and Catholics) that Jesus Christ was merely a vessel for the Father's wrath.  A common analogy used for this interpretation of the Cross is that of a judge and his son.  The son is caught committing a crime which has a large fine as its penalty and is brought before his father the judge (for the sake of the analogy we will ignore the glaring conflict of interests such a case would present).  If the judge is just and believes in the legal system for which he is a steward he will sentence his son, even if he knows his son has no money.  The judge may then be merciful to his son and pay the fine for him.  In the context of theology, the crime would be our original sin and actual sins and the punishment would be eternal separation from God to satisfy His wrath.  However, Christ pays the price for our sins by enduring the Father's wrath for us, and thus salvation is open to all who accept it.

While this view is not entirely inaccurate it is not complete, in fact it is far from it, and leaving the story there can do serious damage to our understanding of our relationship with God.  For example, if we focus on Jesus taking on the punishment for our sins without balancing our being made in the image and likeness of God and the presence of the Holy Spirit within us, we end up with the 'total depravity' in Calvinism or Luther's description of man as so depraved that even God's grace acts no more than snow covering a pile of 'feces'  as we are saved by Jesus' suffering and death.  Such a view goes too far.

Christ does not just "cover" us over in a top-down fashion of imputed grace where salvation is achieved by the arbitrary mercies of a distant source.  He loves every single one of us and seeks to dwell within us, literally.  God wishes to infuse us with His grace through the gift of Himself in the Sacraments, particularly in the Holy Eucharist.  Why does God seek us so radically that He would bear the cross to gain us back?  It is because He loves us, with a burning love.  We may ask with the psalmlst, "What is man that you take notice of him?' (Psalms 144:3)  The Bible responds (many times) to this question with the imagery of a coming wedding between Christ and His bride the Church.  The message of Jesus' passion and death was not that a price was paid on a debt that was owed, while that did happen, the more important message is that we were made for intimate communion with the Holy Trinity forever!  God does not want to lose us to the powers of sin and Hell.  Thus, the Cross is not so much a vessel of divine wrath, but of divine love.  Jesus is not merely seeking to pay for our sins, but to bring us, His beloved, back from the dead.  We as His disciples, are called to do that same for the sake of our love for the Lord and for our loved ones, because as Jesus said, " No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." (John 15:13)

Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever!  Pax! -Bill K.

All Hollows Eve Greetings,

A couple weeks ago I had a conversation with Nick, one of my good friends in the seminary.  In the conversation we were discussing sanctity and how this is our ultimate goal in life.  As I have said before, we are not necessarily going to achieve becoming capital “S” Saints (that is to say we may never be canonized Saints by the Catholic Church), but we are called to be holy and set apart.  We talked about two Saints in particular, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Augustine.  Thérèse wrote that were it not for the grace of God she would have been the greatest of sinners.  Saint Augustine, for those of you who have not read “The Confessions” or do not know about his life, constantly proclaimed or confessed God's mercy.  In “The Confessions” Augustine wrote about how he rejected and refused religion for many years before he finally said yes to God.

There are only three words that separate Saints from sinners (the dammed).  The three words that I am talking about are “I will serve”.  On the opposite side of the coin are the words “I will not serve.”  These words go back to the very beginning, when God was creating the Angels.  The Angels, because they are non-corporeal beings (do not have bodies) exist outside of time and space.  When God created them they instantaneously had to look God in the face and either accept or reject Him.  Many of the Angels that God created looked into His eyes and saw truth, goodness, and beauty itself and said “I will serve” to the Lord of lords and King of kings.  However, there were other Angels among them including Lucifer (Satan) who knew of their great power and beauty.  These Angels realized that their purpose would be to serve both God and humanity and humanity was below their status.  They became proud because they were above humans and wanted to be gods themselves and so as they looked into the all-powerful face of God they said “I will not serve!”  In an instantaneous moment this second group of Angels were cast out of heaven and are now “prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8-9).

Just like the Angels we too have a choice, however our choice is not made in one moment, or at one time (like many of our Protestant brethren believe - which for them would be the moment where they "accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior").  As Catholics we believe that we have chosen, are choosing, and will choose throughout our entire life, in every action, in every decision and in every interaction we choose whether we will respond to God's love and will with the words “I will serve”.  There's a lot of pressure in the world today to, just like the fallen angels, to try to make ourselves into gods, and we do this by rejecting God's will and in effect saying “I will not serve.”  However, we do not walk through our road in life alone.  We walk the road with the Choirs of Angels and saints, particularly with the saints who constantly had to battle the world, the flesh, and the devil, to choose God over everything else.  Thérèse of Lisieux constantly had to live a life of making little "yesses" to her Beloved, who is Jesus; she said that she would have been the greatest of sinners because she could see her tendency toward great pride, just like Lucifer.  Thérèse constantly had to reach out to those Ssters in her religious community with whom she struggled the most to love, that is what prepared her to say "yes" to the Lord.  When Saint Augustine wrote about his early childhood he proclaimed his life of rebellion and how he rejected the faith.  In order for Saint Augustine to say "yes" to God he had to give up a concubine and many other things so he could make his "ye"s with firm conviction.

I just finished reading the book “No Turning Back” by Fr. Donald Calloway.  In his book Fr. Callaway shares the beautiful story of his conversion and how his conversion lead him to the priesthood.  Fr. Callaway, before the age of 20, lived the high life - literally.  He was into girls, drugs, and alcohol to the point where he spent time in jail and was so out of control that he was kicked out Japan.  Callaway ultimately blasphemed God and Christianity.  Today he is a priest because he had the courage to say “yes” first in small ways and then in big ones.

We each have to choose daily whether we will look into the face of God and say "I will serve" or like to act like the dammed who say no. I'm going to do what I want to do, not matter what is given to me or asked of me.  Some of the great yesses alter the course of humanity, like Mary's Fiat, while some are only great in the sense that they alter your life, like saying yes to giving seminary a shot or saying yes to the Bishop at ordination.  These yesses are important but because we are creatures of habit we will not be able to make them unless we are able to make the small yesses in our daily life.  These small yesses can be as seemingly insignificant as going to mass during the week, or turning off the radio in the car and praying a short prayer, or even just going out of your way to say hello to someone you do not particularly get along with.

(The ceiling of the baptistery in Padua, with the court of Heaven centered around Christ)

On this Eve of All Saints Day the Choirs of Angels and saints pray for us as we continue on our road to conversion.

All holy men and women, Pray for us.

Men in Christ, Men of the Church, Men for Others +

Aaron Pohlen