Encountering Christ:

Fear of Death: November 2 occupies a unique place in the Catholic calendar because we remember all who have died in Christ. With the notion of Christ our Redeemer, we are relatively comfortable. But what of death? We imagine death as the black-robed scythe, the termination of life, growth, and laughter. Death is a pall and a chilling of the bones. The passing over from life to death frightens us. In death, all that is familiar is stripped from us—except for Christ. Christ promises, “I will not reject anyone who comes to me.” The fear of death is the fear of an ultimate rejection—that we as persons will be rejected by life itself. But Christ has conquered death. Because he welcomes us into new life, death no longer has the power of ultimate rejection. Reflect on Christ’s promise, “I will not reject anyone who comes to me. I will not.”

Christ Loses Nothing: In the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Mr. Rogers said, “Death is human. Everything human is mentionable. And everything mentionable is manageable.” If death were an absolute loss and complete annihilation, it would be unmentionably dark. But death is meant to be a conversion, a passing from darkness into light. Christ lets nothing essential be lost. “This is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me.” Not anything. Nothing given to Christ is lost. And so I give him my love, my life, my time, my personality, my quirks, my pastimes. All of it is taken up, embraced, redeemed, transformed, and preserved for eternal life. We are God’s children; he wants nothing that is authentically ours to be lost.

Exaltation and Life: “I shall raise him on the last day.” With this brief statement, the Messiah opens grand vistas. We shall be raised by him, exalted on high. It shall be on the last day, the great day of redemption. “We firmly believe, and hence we hope that, just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives forever, so after death the righteous will live forever with the risen Christ and he will raise them up on the last day” (Catechism 989). Just as we hope and believe this for ourselves, so we hope and believe it for our departed loved ones. Together with the whole Church, let us pray for them.

Conversing with Christ: Jesus, death will never seem nice to me. It is cold and hard, just as it was for you on the cross. The psalms tell me that you do not rejoice in the death of your loved ones. Knowing that you welcome us into eternal life—that changes everything!

Resolution: Lord, today by your grace I will make an effort to stop by the cemetery to pray for the dead.

St. Martin's Parish Prays For Those In Need:      

Paula Aguilera

Carl Austin

Isabella Barriere

Pat Carathers

Domingo Castillo, Sr.

Gabriel Castillo

Lucia Castillo y Sierra

Leonora Deanda

Shantelle Elser 

Jeanie Friedel

Norman Friedel

Maria Hernandez

Bobby Holman

Cliff Kreitz

Roberta Kreitz

Alicia Lopez

Dottie Lopez

Hope McCoy

Grace McKenzie and the McKenzie family

Clark Nicholl

Debby Nicholl

Larry Nicholl

Msgr. Rex Nicholl

Jeanne Orta

Mary Orta

Mary Riggs

Ruth Ann Roberts

Alfredo Rodriguez

Hope Rodriguez

Lydia Rodriguez

Socorro Rodriguez

Eleanor Schwab

Daniel Sisneros

Linda Stone

Carlos Vega

Isabel Vega

L.A. Walker

Nelwyn Wiley

Julia Woolsey

Robin and Lucy Woolsey

Lord hear our prayer. Amen 

Lay this body anywhere, let not the care for it trouble you at all. This only I ask, that you will remember me at the Lord’s altar, wherever you be.

St. Monica of Hippo

Please continue to pray for Msgr. Rex as he recovers from his surgery and undergoes rehabilitation following his hip replacement surgery.  

Please be sure to welcome Father Anthony and thank him for presiding at Mass for us this weekend.

All Saints' Day in the USA is on Saturday, November 1, 2025. Because it falls on a Saturday, the obligation to attend Mass is suspended for Catholics this year.

 

Clara Valdez                                                                                                                      

Over the centuries the Rosary has stood the test of time and remains one of the most popular devotions in the Catholic Church. It is a prayer that is embraced by both old and young and has been the prayer of choice of many saints.

Here is a complete guide to the Rosary, including its origin and various ways to pray it.

While most attribute the invention of the Rosary to St. Dominic, for many centuries there existed various practices among the laity of counting 150 Our Fathers or Hail Marys to correspond to the 150 Psalms that priests and religious would recite in the Divine Office.

Regardless of which saint “invented” the Rosary as we know it today, what is true is that many Dominicans has spread this devotion since the 15th and 16th centuries and remain to this day the chief promoters of the devotion around the world. 

The Rosary became viewed spiritually and in art as a way to present a garland of roses to the Blessed Mother in a similar way that roses would be picked for a person’s earthly mother.

The purpose of the Rosary is fulfilled by the meditating on the Mysteries of the Rosary while the individual recites the prayers and keeps count on the beads. It can lead to a profound experience in Christian meditation, deepening one’s knowledge and love of Jesus Christ.

Typically when praying the Rosary, an individual will announce a particular mystery from the life of Jesus Christ before each decade of Hail Marys. In order to deepen your meditation on this mystery, some have found it beneficial to read a short passage from the Bible that corresponds to each mystery of the Rosary.

This will naturally lengthen your time of prayer, but it will also enrich it and provide you with many images to meditate on from the life of Jesus Christ and his Mother.

Each rosary (the string of beads) has a crucifix at the end of a short extension below the loop. Begin by holding the crucifix and making the sign of the cross.

The Rosary is divided up into five sections known as “decades,” called so because each decade contains 10 small beads. During these decades it is customary to mediate on a “mystery” from the life of Christ. Tradition assigns different mysteries of the Rosary to each day of the week, but individual piety is not bound to it.

The most common way of praying the Rosary consists of meditating on five mysteries that are taken from various events from the life of Jesus Christ. An individual is directed to meditate on these different mysteries while praying five decades of Hail Marys.

However, that is not the only way to pray the Rosary.

In the Golden Manual, a book of devotion from the 18th century, the author recommends praying on a single mystery during the entire five decades.

While it’s true that Guardian Angels will do whatever it takes to get us to Heaven, they are still created spirits and are unaware of our thoughts, unless we intentionally reveal them. They have not been given special access to our thoughts, whereby they force themselves into our mind. Only God is able to know exactly what is going on in our mind, as he is the creator and sustainer of us all. As a result, if we want our Guardian Angel to finish our Rosary, we need to ask him to do it. 

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has chosen Catholic media companies Ascension and Word on Fire to publish the Liturgy of the Hours, Second Edition.

The Liturgy of the Hours, also known as the Divine Office, is a set of daily prayers that priests and religious are obliged to pray and that many lay Catholics also partake in. The prayers are set according to the Church calendar and are composed of Psalms, hymns and readings from Scripture.

In November 2012, the U.S. bishops voted to revise the translation, following English translations of the Roman Missal, Third Edition, and the 2001 Vatican document Liturgiam  Authenticam.  The approval process was completed in November 2024 and on May 29 of this year, the USCCB sent the completed manuscript to the Holy See for confirmation.

Ascension and Word on Fire, both known for their print, online and video works, announced Oct. 7 that they will each publish the new version of the Liturgy of the Hours. A release date for the daily prayer will be shared upon final approval from the Vatican.

The current edition was translated and designed in the 1970s, making the new version the first updated English translation of the prayer in more than 50 years. It has been developed over the past decade by the USCCB in collaboration with the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL).

“Our goal is to create a reverent and beautiful edition that embodies the dignity of the Church’s common prayer. This new translation marks an extraordinary moment for Catholics everywhere,” said Jonathan Strate, president and CEO of Ascension, in an announcement. Strate said Ascension is “honored to serve the Church” by being one of the publishers.

Ascension, known for its popular podcast The Bible in a Year with Father Mike Schmitz, reported that publishing the prayers “furthers its mission in creating resources to help Catholics deepen their prayer life, joining the universal Church in encountering the truth and beauty of the Catholic faith.”

“When you pray the Liturgy of the Hours, you are uniting your prayer to the entire Church,” Father Schmitz said in a recent video explaining the Liturgy of the Hours. He added: “It gives us the opportunity to create holy time … by stopping at various moments throughout the day and calling upon the Lord, renewing our mind with his word.”

“This is more than a publishing project — it is a spiritual mission,” Word on Fire founder Bishop Robert Barron said in a press release. “We want to help thousands of priests, religious, and laypeople pray more deeply and more beautifully each day.” The new version, he said, is “a profound service to the Church and to the world.”

Word on Fire has “spent the past three years introducing tens of thousands of Catholics to this rhythm of daily prayer through our monthly booklets,” said Brandon Vogt, senior publishing director at Word on Fire. “This four-volume series is the next step … that will draw countless more into the Church’s ancient prayer, day by day, hour by hour.”

The Liturgy of the Hours is “the Church’s highest prayer outside the Mass and sacraments,” Vogt said. “Our aim is simple — to create the most beautiful, most prayerful, most accessible edition of the Liturgy of the Hours ever produced.”

The Catholic Church is on a collision course with the Trump administration. And likewise with governments across the developed world that are tightening their borders and carrying out — or at least, threatening — mass deportations of illegal immigrants. In an address on Thursday, Pope Leo XIV denounced “inhuman measures” and “serious crimes” against migrants, even as he granted that “states have the right and duty to protect their borders.”

Two weeks earlier, the pope instructed the American bishops to take a stronger stance in defense of migrants caught in the Trump administration’s dragnet. The pontiff suggested that he would “love” to see a statement from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, according to one bishop who attended a meeting with him. Another attendee reported that the pope would like to see the US church speak “forcefully and in unity” on migrants’ rights.

Already, many individual US bishops and Catholic groups are doing just that. Yet for such interventions to prove fruitful, the Church must take a more wholistic, nuanced, and, indeed, Catholic approach: one that takes into account not just the needs of people moving out of the Global South, but also the limitations of the Global North; not just the dignity of the migrant, but also that of workers and the poor in recipient countries; not just the threat of Western xenophobia, but the imperative to ensure a decent baseline of cultural cohesion.

To be sure, there is much to object to in Washington’s stance: the White House posting photos on X (formerly Twitter) of  “deportation porn” of rows of men being flown out in shackles; the government’s foot-dragging when ordered by the courts to facilitate the return of a man who had been mistakenly deported to El Salvador; the difficulties in getting pastoral care to illegal immigrants being held at the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in Florida; and much else of the kind. These are among the excesses for which the Trump administration’s enforcement efforts can justly be criticized.

But with immigration enforcement as in other areas, abusus non tollit usum — the abuse of a thing does not negate its proper use. And when we neglect the proper use in order to avoid abuse, we risk falling into an opposite extreme error. 

As the bishops themselves sometimes acknowledge at least in passing, the general policy of enforcing immigration laws is legitimate. And while the Trump administration’s efforts have been excessively harsh at times, the surge in illegal immigration under President Joe Biden was so massive that any attempt to reverse it was bound to seem draconian by comparison. It is contrary to reason and justice to speak as if only Trump’s critics have a moral leg to stand on.

It is also contrary to the Church’s own longstanding teaching. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that prosperous nations are obliged “to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin.” But it qualifies this by adding that such nations are obliged to do so only “to the extent they are able.”  

And the Catechism goes on to say: “Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws, and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”

The Church acknowledges, then, that a nation may put conditions on immigration, that it need not take in all those who want to enter it, and that those it does allow in must follow the law. 

The Catechism reflects the longstanding teaching of the popes. For example, Pope Pius XII, while commending the United States for its generosity toward immigrants, observed in 1946 that “it is not surprising that changing circumstances have brought about a certain restriction being placed on foreign immigration. For in this matter, not only the interests of the immigrant but the welfare of the country also must be consulted.”

The economic needs of its own citizens are among the considerations a government may weigh when determining how many immigrants to let in. In a 1996 address, Pope St. John Paul II affirmed that “illegal immigration should be prevented” and that “the supply of foreign labor is becoming excessive in comparison to the needs of the economy, which already has difficulty in absorbing its domestic workers.” Likewise, in a 2011 address, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged that host countries also have a “legitimate concern for security and social coherence” so that “states have the right to regulate migration flows and to defend their own frontiers” and “immigrants … have the duty to integrate into the host country, respecting its laws and its national identity.”

And in a 1988 document from the Pontifical Commission on Justice and Peace, we read that “it is up to the public powers who are responsible for the common good to determine the number of refugees or immigrants which their country can accept, taking into consideration its possibilities for employment and its perspectives for development, but also the urgency of the need of other people.” Overly heavy migration waves, the document warns, can lead to “rejection,” especially when “another culture is perceived as directly threatening the identity and customs of the local community that receives them.”

Note that the Church here explicitly affirms that it is not churchmen, but rather “the public powers who are responsible for the common good” who have the right and responsibility to determine how many immigrants to let in. Note, too, that the Church acknowledges that in making this determination, public authorities may take account of economic considerations, as well as those having to do with social and cultural cohesion.

The legitimacy of this concern for national identity is something that has been affirmed repeatedly in the Catholic tradition. In his book Memory and Identity, first published in 2005, John Paul II affirmed that the duty of patriotism is an extension of our obligation to honor our parents, and writes: “Patriotism is a love for everything to do with our native land: its history, its traditions, its language, its natural features. It is a love which extends also to the works of our compatriots and the fruits of their genius. Every danger that threatens the overall good of our native land becomes an occasion to demonstrate this love.” 

Several popes have been quite frank about the social problems that can develop when a minority cultural group fails to assimilate to the larger culture in which it resides. For example, in the encyclical Pacem in Terris, Pope St. John XXIII observed that “these minority groups, in reaction, perhaps, to the enforced hardships of their present situation, or to historical circumstances, frequently tend to magnify unduly characteristics proper to their own people.  They even rate them above those human values which are common to all mankind, as though the good of the entire human family should subserve the interests of their own particular groups.” He went on to call for such groups to associate themselves more closely with the majorities among whom they live, and not to harness their identity to separateness.

Pope Francis, too, acknowledged the problem. In a 2016 press conference, he noted that while “hearts must not be closed to refugees … those who govern need prudence … A political price can be paid for an imprudent judgement, for accepting more than can be integrated.” Non-integration, Francis warned, leads to migrants becoming “a ghetto. A culture that does not develop in relationship with another culture, this is dangerous.”

Most recently, Pope Leo XIV, in an address in which he praised Italy’s generosity to migrants, immediately went on to underscore “the importance of constructively integrating those arriving into the values and traditions of Italian society.” 

Yes, there are yahoos and jingoists who go beyond a healthy love of country to a sinful hostility towards people of other nations. But it is unjust and uncharitable to accuse all of those who are concerned about the cultural cohesion and economic needs of their own country of harboring this dishonorable motivation.

For its part, the Church has treated immigration as it does every other major question of public policy: not just a matter of individual rights and dignity — though these are indeed important — but also of duties to the common good of the whole. Thought of this way, the Catholic position on immigration doesn’t lend itself well to simplistic “pro” or “anti” posturing.

The truth is that there are two, equally Catholic sides in the debate over immigration. One side thinks that the imperative to welcome the migrant is what most needs emphasis today. The other thinks that preserving law and order, and the economic well-being and cultural identity of the nation is what is currently most urgent. Both can appeal to moral premises rooted in the Catholic tradition. Their dispute is about how best to balance the various relevant considerations under contemporary circumstances — a matter of prudential judgment about which reasonable people can disagree.

In the 21st century, that prudential determination must take into account new realities: such as the fact that many of today’s newcomers are economic migrants relying on strained asylum systems to get through borders; and the fact that developed economies are already bereft of high-wage, reliable manufacturing jobs, pushing many native-born workers into service sectors buffeted by even cheaper migrant labor; and the identitarian turmoil wrought by decades of high migration and failed assimilation. 

The bishops have a pastoral obligation to acknowledge the concerns of both sides, rather than speaking as if only one side is truly Catholic. It is precisely when people think their legitimate concerns are not being taken seriously that they are most tempted to fall into extremism. In his essay “A Defense of Patriotism,” G. K. Chesterton warned that when a nation does not cultivate a sober “patriotism of the head and heart,” it will sink instead into a thuggish chauvinism “of its fists and its boots.” 

The remedy to this excess is not to retreat to the opposite error, but to insist on holding the middle ground — the true patriotism described by St. John Paul II as a part of the Fourth Commandment to honor father and mother. “What we really need for the frustration and overthrow of a deaf and raucous jingoism,” advised Chesterton, “is a renascence of the love of the native land. When that comes, all shrill cries will cease suddenly.”