This is an amazing story. A student of the Royal College of Art is using rapid prototyping technology to turn MRI images of developing fetuses into 3D plastic models.  Remarkable.

 

 

A foetus at 21 weeks

... (and I'll especially miss it since he and I have been friends since around 1995, so I enjoyed our time blogging together on HMS), check out his other blog, Classic Catholic.

Check out especially this post.

And if you have any of those kinds of opportunities to offer, put Robert at the top of your list.

Our Mass readings this Sunday include a couple of references to one of the ways in which people can react to prophecy. God tells Ezekiel that "whether [the Israelites] heed or resist ... they shall know that a prophet has been among them." And in our Gospel passage, Jesus' hearers in his hometown of Nazareth recognize his "wisdom" and his "mighty deeds" - they recognize that he is a prophet - yet still take offense at him, refusing to respond in faith to God's Word.

How is this possible? How can one recognize a prophet, and resist his message? Certainly, one can understand how some people would be motivated to ignore what God is saying through a prophet. In some cases, people are too attached to their sins to respond to the call to conversion. In other cases, people are scandalized at the idea that someone like them - another human being, maybe even from one's own native place, or from a humble family, or whatever - could possess God's gift and mission of prophecy.

But would such motives not lead to something more like denial that the prophet is, in fact, a prophet - rather than recognition of this fact, coupled with resistance to his message? Apparently not. We have before our eyes examples in Scripture of such resistance. There are others too. For example: Not long after the incident involving Jesus in Nazareth, St. Mark recounts the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist at the hands of Herod. Herod, as we recall, "liked to listen to" John. And Herod "was deeply distressed" by the request for John's death. Herod recognized something special in John, even if Herod would not have called him a "prophet." And yet, Herod refused to heed John's words about Herod's sinful life, and Herod did have John killed.

Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of all the prophets. The Church, united to him by the Holy Spirit, shares in his prophetic office. The members of the Church therefore share in this office. Those who make up the Church's Magisterium do so in their own way; so do all the faithful. The Church's Magisterium exercises the prophetic office in teaching about faith and morals. We, the faithful, likewise exercise this office in conveying the Church's teaching to others. We know that there is a certain recognition in the world that the Church has something interesting to say. Consider the fascination that so many - including many non-Catholics and even non-Christians - have shown in response to the words of the Servant of God Pope John Paul the Great, and to our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI.

And yet, very often, the world does not, in the end, heed the Church's message about God and the human person. We might consider this fact in connection with our celebration this weekend of Independence Day. There is much, very much, that is good in the Declaration of Independence. But there is also much, very much, that is bad in how Americans live. There are many ways in which we as a nation are at odds with God's will as made known through the prophetic office of Christ and his Church. In his homily last Sunday evening for the beginning of the celebration of the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, Pope Benedict mentioned the need for us to be "committed to the inviolability of human life from its first instant," and "to recognize marriage between a man and a woman for the whole of life as the Creator's plan, newly re-established in Christ." This was hardly the first time that the Church has taught these things.

And yet, we as a nation are still far - and perhaps moving even further - from making this commitment and having this recognition. Our Holy Father himself notes in his homily that so many people today - one might add, many in America, as well as in Europe and elsewhere - insist on a "do-it-yourself faith." One might say that much as the people of Nazareth resisted Jesus, so Americans, and others, today resist the Church. People cannot accept that someone else, let alone someone who is saying things that are challenging, might be conveying God's message.

In the face of this phenomenon, we need to recognize, first, that it is, again, nothing new, nothing that was not already seen two millenia and more ago. Second, we need to put all our hope in God and in his saving plan. Third, we need to persevere - and even grow - in our own fidelity to God and his Church. Fourth, as part of this, we need to recommit ourselves to carrying our our own share in the Church's prophetic office, even in the face of resistance, ridicule, persecution, and the like, remembering that, as St. Paul says in our second reading, when we share in Christ's weakness, then we share in divine strength.

May God bless our country and our whole world with many people who will speak God's word, and many others who will listen. May God thus bless us with renewal and happiness.

Kim and I want to extend our condolences to, and promise our continued prayers for, your whole family.

I would like to ask for prayers for my mother, Elsie Craig, who passed away yesterday morning at 8:15 from cancer.  She died at home with my dad, her husband, by her side.  Even though we knew it couldn't be long, I can't believe she is really gone.  She was a wonderful mother and grandmother.  I miss her so much.