{"id":3556,"date":"2007-01-10T08:47:04","date_gmt":"2007-01-10T08:47:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/its-wednesday-1.html"},"modified":"2007-01-10T08:47:04","modified_gmt":"2007-01-10T08:47:04","slug":"its-wednesday-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/its-wednesday-1.html","title":{"rendered":"It’s Wednesday…"},"content":{"rendered":"

The General Audience:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Evoking the story of the first martyr, Benedict XVI first of all drew attention to the fact that he is linked to the institution of the diaconate, \u201ca term however absent in the Acts of the Apostles\u201d that instead speak of the first martyr. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, continued the Pope, the Church of Jerusalem included people coming from Israel who were called Jews and others from the diaspora, especially in Greece, who were known as Hellenists. The latter, especially widows, ran the risk of being neglected and living in hardship. Thus the apostles \u201cdecided to appoint seven men of good reputation to assume the task of looking after them\u201d. The first, cited by Luke, was Stephen. The seven chosen men were \u201cpresented\u201d by the apostles who \u201cafter having prayed, laid their hands on them.\u201d In the Old Testament, the gesture indicated the transmission of an important task, as revealed by the gesture of Moses with Aaron. <\/p>\n

To underline the importance of the gesture, the pope recalled that Paul had written \u201cnot to be in a hurry to lay hands on someone, not to make yourself an accomplice in another\u2019s sins.\u201d The phrase is linked to the explanation of the diaconate, however to Polish ears it could sound like an indirect reference to the episode of Mgr Wieglus. <\/p>\n

In the case of Stephen and his friends, continued the pope, the laying of hands \u201cis certainly the transmission of a task and the grace to undertake it.\u201d After this gesture, Stephen carried out a work of evangelization among the \u201cHellenists\u201d apart from works of charity. <\/p>\n

Stephen was stoned and his killing was followed by local persecution aimed at the disciples of Jesus, the first in the history of the Church. It prompted the disciples to quit Jerusalem and to disperse. But in this way they \u201cbecame missionaries\u201d. \u201cPersecution became proclamation, mission.\u201d In their journey, the disciples of Jesus went to Antioch, where the Gospel was announced for the first name to pagans, and the name Christians was used. <\/p>\n

Benedict XVI said the story of Stephen \u201cteaches that one need never make a distinction between charity and the courageous proclamation of faith. Charity and proclamation always go together.\u201d <\/p>\n

But from this arises also the certainty that \u201cthe cross remains ever central to the history of the Church and also to our personal life.\u201d Benedict XVI said: \u201cPersecution will never be lacking,\u201d but it will be \u201ca source of new Christians\u201d and he recalled a phrase from Tertullian: \u201cBlood is the seed of new Christians\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If you ever have time to waste, head over to the Vatican Photo site – <\/a>photographers snap madly and constantly during any Papal appearance (and you can go to the L’Osservatore Romano offices and search the photos for any given event, to see if you’re in one, and purchase prints.). It’s fascinating and amusing to see the amount of stuff people bring to gift the Pope with at these times:<\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I have no idea what they’re giving him, but I love the photo, even with the watermark:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

By the way, worth noting in regard to attendance figures for papal events in 2006. <\/a> Sandro Magister noted that the figures are on average, double the figures recorded for John Paul II at the height of his papacy.<\/a><\/p>\n

Who knows what it reflects. Tourism is up in Rome, partly, the conventional wisdom is, because of the attention brought to Rome during April and May of 2005, and partly because of the rise of budget European airlines like RyanAir. But still…twice as many. Hmm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The General Audience: Evoking the story of the first martyr, Benedict XVI first of all drew attention to the fact that he is linked to the institution of the diaconate, \u201ca term however absent in the Acts of the Apostles\u201d that instead speak of the first martyr. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, continued…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nIt's Wednesday... - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/its-wednesday-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It's Wednesday... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The General Audience: Evoking the story of the first martyr, Benedict XVI first of all drew attention to the fact that he is linked to the institution of the diaconate, \u201ca term however absent in the Acts of the Apostles\u201d that instead speak of the first martyr. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3556\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}