THE SISTINE CHAPEL

http://www.vatican. va/various/ cappelle/ sistina_vr/ index.htmlk 
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Click on this link above the photo and, when the picture is formed, use your mouse to point at the area you want to see.  There is a plus sign "+" to enlarge and a minus sign "-" to return to normal.   It is said that this picture took three years to compose.   You can examine the Sistine Chapel in detail at the mere click of a mouse.  HAPPY WATCHING!




Pope Benedict XVI presides at Solemn Vespers, with the "Pueri Cantores" of the Sistine Chapel singing the Magnificat.  This really is Liturgy!!!



Here we have Psalm 50, the Miserere, composed by Allegri exclusively for the Sistine Chapel Choir.  Here  it is sung by the boys of Kings College Chapel Choir at Cambridge.  This is a wonderful piece of music with a single treble voice soaring above the rest in a way that is qute stunning.

NOV EMBER 3RD: ST MARTIN DE PORRES

When I lived in Tambogrande, I used to stay at the Dominican priory in Lima whenever I visited that city.   St Martin de Porres lived and died in that "Convento Santo Domingo", and I saw every day the crucifix he kissed in the sacristy, high over my head.   I passed his cell which is now a chapel; and I saw the statue which was made - they say - by someone who knew him.   He was,of course, black, but with a straight nose, high forehead and thin lips.   He also had a very strong, broad shouldered body.  Anyway, I feel I know him.   He was a wonderful saint, the most famous Peruvian in the world.- Fr David
Saint Martín de Porres (December 9, 1579 – November 3, 1639) was a Dominican cooperator brother who was beatifiedin the year 1837 by Pope Gregory XVI and canonized in 1962 by Pope John XXIII. He is the Patron Saint of mixed-race people and all those seeking interracial harmony.

He was noted for work on behalf of the poor, establishing an orphanage and a children's hospital. He maintained an austere lifestyle, which included fasting and abstaining from meat. Among the many miracles attributed to him were those of levitation, bilocation, miraculous knowledge, instantaneous cures and an ability to communicate with animals.

Contents  [hide] 1 Account of his life as given by Roman Catholic devotees 2 Death and commemoration 3 References 4 External links

[edit]Account of his life as given by Roman Catholic devotees

Juan Martin de Porres was born in the city of Lima, in the Viceroyalty of Peru, on December 9, 1579, the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a young priest, black former slave^[1] who was born in Panama. He had a sister named Juana, born three years later in 1581. He grew up in poverty; when his mother could not support him and his sister, Martin was confided to a primary school for two years, then placed with a barber/surgeon to learn the medical arts. This caused him great joy, though he was only ten years old, for he could exercise charity to his neighbor while earning his living. Already he was spending hours of the night in prayer, a practice which increased rather than diminished as he grew older. Until his death he would whip himself three times every night, for his own failings and for the conversion of pagans and sinners.^{[citation needed]}

At the age of 15 he asked for admission to the Dominican Convent of the Rosary in Lima and was received first as a servant boy, and as his duties grew he was promoted to almoner. Eventually he felt the call to enter the Dominican Order, and he was received as a tertiary. Years later, his piety and miraculous cures led his superiors to drop the racial limits on admission to the friars, and he was made a full Dominican christian brother. It is said that when his convent was in debt, he implored them: "I am only a poor mulatto, sell me. I am the property of the order, sell me please!"^{[citation needed]} Martin was deeply attached to the Blessed Sacrament, and he was praying in front of it one night when the step of the altar he was kneeling on caught fire. Throughout all the confusion and chaos that followed, he remained where he was, unaware of what was happening around him.^[2]

When he was 34, after he had been given the habit of a Coadjutor Brother, Martin was assigned to the infirmary of that , where he was placed in charge and would remain in service until his death at the age of sixty. His superiors saw in him the virtues necessary to exercise unfailing patience in this difficult role, and he never disappointed them. It was not long before miracles were attributed to him. Saint Martin also cared for the sick outside his convent, often bringing them healing with only a simple glass of water. He begged for alms to procure for them necessities the Convent could not provide, and Providence always supplied what he sought.^{[citation needed]}

One day an aged beggar, covered with ulcers and almost naked, stretched out his hand, and Saint Martin, seeing the Divine Mendicant in him, took him to his own bed. One of his brethren, considering he had gone too far in his charity, reproved him. Saint Martin replied: “Compassion, my dear Brother, is preferable to cleanliness. Reflect that with a little soap I can easily clean my bed covers, but even with a torrent of tears I would never wash from my soul the stain that my harshness toward the unfortunate would create.”^{[citation needed]}

When an epidemic struck Lima, there were in this single Convent of the Rosary sixty friars who were sick, many of them novices in a distant and locked section of the convent, separated from the professed. Saint Martin is said to have passed through the locked doors to care for them^{[citation needed]}, a phenomenon which was reported in the residence more than once. The professed, too, saw him suddenly beside them without the doors having been opened. Martin continued to transport the sick to the convent until the provincial superior, alarmed by the contagion threatening the religious, forbade him to continue to do so. His sister, who lived in the country, offered her house to lodge those whom the residence of the religious could not hold. One day he found on the street a poor Indian, bleeding to death from a dagger wound, and took him to his own room until he could transport him to his sister’s hospice. The superior, when he heard of this, reprimanded his subject for disobedience. He was extremely edified by his reply: “Forgive my error, and please instruct me, for I did not know that the precept of obedience took precedence over that of charity.”^{[citation needed]} The superior gave him liberty thereafter to follow his inspirations in the exercise of mercy.

In normal times Saint Martin succeeded with his alms to feed 160 poor persons every day, and distributed a remarkable sum of money every week to the indigent — the latter phenomenon hard to explain by ordinary calculations.^{[citation needed]} To Saint Martin the city of Lima owed a famous residence founded for orphans and abandoned children, where they were formed in piety for a creative Christian life. This lay brother had always wanted to be a missionary, but never left his native city; yet even during his lifetime he was seen elsewhere, in regions as far distant as Africa, China, Algeria and Japan. An African slave who had been in irons said he had known Martin when he came to relieve and console many like himself, telling them of heaven. When later the same slave saw him in Peru, he was very happy to meet him again and asked him if he had had a good voyage; only later did he learn that Saint Martin had never left Lima. A merchant from Lima was in Mexico and fell ill; he said aloud: “Oh, Brother Martin, if only you were here to care for me!” and immediately saw him enter his room.^{[citation needed]} And again, this man did not know until later that he had never been in Mexico.

[edit]Death and commemoration

San Martin de Porres Catholic Church in Laredo, Texas

St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church in Jensen Beach, Florida

Martin was a friend of both Saint John de Massias and Saint Rose of Lima. When he died in Lima on November 3, 1639, Martin was known to the entire city. Word of his miracles had made him known as a saint throughout the region. As his body was displayed to allow the people of the city to pay their respects, each person snipped a tiny piece of his habit to keep as a relic. It is said that three habits were taken from the body. His body was then interred in the grounds of the monastery.

After he died, the miracles and graces received when he was invoked multiplied in such profusion that his body was exhumed after 25 years and said to be found intact, and exhaling a fine fragrance.^{[citation needed]} Letters to Rome pleaded for his beatification; the decree affirming the heroism of his virtues was issued in 1763 by Pope Clement XIII. Pope Gregory XVIbeatified Martin de Porres in the year 1837. Nearly one hundred and twenty five years later Blessed Martin was canonized in Rome by Pope John XXIII on May 6, 1962. His feast day is November 3. He is the Patron Saint of people of mixed race,innkeepers, barbers, public health and more besides.

He is comemorated at the Calendar of Saints of the Church of England at 3 November.

In iconography, Martin de Porres is often depicted as a young mulatto friar (he was a Dominican brother, not a priest, as evidenced by the black scapular and capuce he wears, while priests of the Dominican order wear all white) with a broom, since he considered all work to be sacred no matter how menial. He is sometimes shown with a dog, a cat and a mouse, eating in peace from their dish.

[edit]

Servants of the Presence of God

The Whole Community in France, 2008.
Servants of the Presence of God

One of the signs of the invisible unity between Catholicism and Orthodoxy is the way spiritual events and movements on one side are often matched by a parallel movement on the other. Just a couple of instances that were pointed out to me by an Orthodox Church historian\; how the time of great mystical movement in England which produced “The Cloud of Unknowing” and a number of other classics (which were preserved for posterity at the time of the Reformation by the monks and nuns of the English Benedictine Congregation), have as their parallel movement the outpouring of grace with St Gregory Palamas and the Hesychast movement. One reason that the Byzantine liturgy is so long, in comparison with the Roman liturgy, is that it took shape at the time of Cluny, when it was customary in the West to make liturgy last as long as possible.


The nuns of Minsk, founded out of a lay group dedicated to help mental patients etc.

This parallel movement of Grace is illustrated dramatically by two religious houses of women that the Belmont Community are involved with. One is in Minsk in Bylo-Russia and is Orthodox, and the other has a house in Pachacamac in Peru where Belmont has its foundation, and it is Catholic . Both look to the year 1990 when, in Minsk and in France, groups of laity were formed to care for the abandoned, the rejected and the suffering. Out of both, by a process of spontaneous growth, were formed religious communities which have not stopped identifying themselves with the lay groups which gave them birth. The two communities do not know each other, and the only connection between them is the Holy Spirit. I have already told you something in a previous article about the Convent of the Glorious Modern Martyr St Elizabeth: I shall now concentrate on the “Servants of the Presence of God.”

Father Thierry de Roucy was superior general of the “Servants of Jesus and Mary”, a French community which is formed in the spirituality of St Francis de Sales but has strong links with the Cistercians who provided the first members with a noviciate in Hauterive in Switzerland and where they remained until the end of the Second World War. Father Thierry had travelled to India and was moved by the poverty and misery there.

The Peruvian Postulant.

One incident was important for the future spirit of the movement he founded. He was playing with some children outside a soup kitchen where they were waiting to receive food. They became so absorbed in their game that they did not notice the time passing until after the soup kitchen had closed its doors. When Fr Thierry realized that these hungry children had missed their food because of him, he was filled with guilt and apologised profusely to them. They were not the slightest bit put out. They assured him they would not have missed their game for the world. He the realized that these kids, undernourished as they were, had a greater hunger for attention, for respect, for friendship, for love, than they had for food. They were “untouchables”, the lowest of the low, street children in a city which rejected them. Then along came this foreigner who appreciated them, who enjoyed their company, who respected them: this was worth an empty stomach till the next day.

In 1990, while at prayer, Farther Thierry hot upon the idea of starting a youth movement called “Points-Coeur”, which they translate into English as “Hearts Home” It would be for young people who give one to three years of their lives entirely to God. They would live among the most neglected, suffering, poor people. They would live an intense life of prayer and adoration, with the Divine Office (minus Matins), rosary and Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament, and would attend Mass every day. So filled with God, they would be able to allow God to use them as signs of his compassion for the poor, the sick and the suffering. Since then, Points-Coeur has sent well over a thousand young people to all the continents. Their houses have become centres of compassion, and they have founded several villages “Points-Coeur” where the sick, the suffering and abandoned children can re-build their lives.

Of course, as in Minsk, when people give their whole lives to God and neighbour, even if only for a time, anything can happen because the Holy Spirit has space to move. It was planned for people to be members of “Points-Coeur” between school and university or just after, and before marriage, work and other commitments made it impossible to spare the time; their membership was designed to be temporary: only the effects were meant to be permanent. Ten years later, there are now lay men and women who have taken private vows and have made adoration and compassion their vocation for life. There are now priests attached to “Points-Coeur” and, for the first time this last year, priests ordained for “Points-Coeur”, and there is also a community of sisters who are called “Servants of the Presence of God”.
When, in 1994, some members of the movement approached Fr Thierry de Roucy because they wanted to becomes sisters within the movement, he was stumped. How could they make their noviciate? He talked it over with a Trappist abbess who was a friend of his. In the parlour of the monastery, the abbess was accompanied by the nun who was novice mistress, but she was without novices as the convent was dying out. “Why cannot we give them their noviciate?” she asked the abbess. After Vatican II, the Cistercian nuns had moved out of dormitories into cells. To accommodate the incoming novices for this new community, the nuns went back into the dormitories and gave their cells to the novices. The new community adopted the brown habit of a Cistercian lay sister, lay sisters having been abolished after Vatican II. After they had left at the end of their noviciate, the Trappist convent that had given them hospitality closed down for lack of numbers, and their first novice mistress is now an abbess of a flourishing monastery elsewhere. One result of their time in the Cistercian monastery is that the sisters practise “lectio divina”.

In 1999, the new congregation was approved by the Bishop of Beauvais, and the opened houses in El Salvador and Peru; which is why they are our neighbours. There are about twenty six sisters in the community, six of whom live in Pachacamac. Their charisma is to incarnate the spirit of compassion in the place where they live, always among the poor, and to serve the “Points-Coeur” movement. This can only be God’s work, a true charisma, if they live a life of prayer and adoration. In fact, the sisters, the priests, the consecrated lay people, and the young people who dedicate a few years of their lives to God, all live identical lives, have the same very demanding prayer programme, and the same commitment to the poor and suffering, first to befriend them, become their very real and genuine friends, and then help them within this context. Besides normally living in one of their three convents, the sisters also spend some extended times in houses of “Points-Coeur” or in the villages they have built in different parts of the world. In the house in our valley, there are two postulants, one French and one Peruvian. The last superior of the house was from Argentina; but most are French..


Their life is a contemplative one because they realize the truth that only a contemplative can adequately fulfil an apostolic vocation. In the village of Guayabo, in the valley of Pachacamac, they act as parish sisters, in charge of catechetical instruction for first communions and confirmation. They also make a point of befriending children, young people, the sick and the old. From time to time, one goes away for a time, visiting the “Points-Coeur” house in the Argentine or Brazil, and they come fairly often to Mass in our monastery. They are a wonderful community.

LINKS

Servants of God's Presence and the movement, called in English "Hearts Home"

The Convent of the Glorious Modern Martyr St Elizabeth in Minsk, Bylo-Russia