Esta semana recordamos el nacimiento de uno de nuestros propios héroes: César Estrada Chávez, quien nació en Arizona en 1927 y falleció en Los Ángeles, California en 1993. El racismo y la injusticia de su tiempo, obligaron a él y su familia a salir de su natal Arizona, pues sus padres perdieron sus tierras a causa de unos malhechores. En 1938 el destino lo llevó a Los…

The church slowly developed customs of reserving some portion of the eucharistic sacrifice for the sake of the dying. Today’s custom of placing this portion in a tabernacle for prayer and adoration by the faithful cannot be traced back much beyond the year 1,000, much to almost everyone’s surprise. There is simply no historical evidence of the Blessed Sacrament being present in a church for the purpose of having the faithful…

TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION By the early 1950s some scholars were calling for the restoration of Communion of the faithful on Good Friday, since by then only a priest received, consuming the host from the Holy Thursday repository. In 1955 the new Good Friday liturgy was timed to begin at three o’clock everywhere, and included the option of Holy Communion, but without the Precious Blood that had originally been part of…

TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION In brushing up for “Catholic Jeopardy,” it might help to know that there is only one feast on the calendar for a thing, rather than a person or mystery. It’s for a chair: Saint Peter’s chair in fact. After the Resurrection, there can be no doubt that the disciples reserved a special place for Simon Peter in the upper room. Later, Peter became the bishop…

When the custom of the stational liturgies was revived in the city of Rome in the early days of the twentieth century, the papal liturgy for Good Friday was appropriately housed in the stational church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, the Holy Cross of Jerusalem. The church is off the tourist track today, but true pilgrims would never miss it. It stands on the grounds of the Sessorian Palace, the…