First Sunday of Advent Year B: Mark 13.33–37

November 30, 2017, 8:53 am

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Mark 13

Jesus said to his disciples:

"Be watchful! Be alert!

You do not know when the time will come.

It is like a man travelling abroad.

He leaves home and places his servants in charge,

each with his own work,

and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch.

Watch, therefore;

you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming,

whether in the evening or at midnight,

or at cockcrow, or in the morning.

May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.

What I say to you, I say to all: 'Watch!'"

my source: Lectio Divina

Theophylact: The Lord wishing to prevent His disciples from asking about that day and hour, says, “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.”

For if He had said, I know, but I will not reveal it to you, He would have saddened them not a little; but He acted more wisely, and prevents their asking such a question, lest they should importune Him, by saying, neither the Angels, nor I.

Hilary, de Trin., ix: This ignorance of the day and hour is urged against the Only-Begotten God, as if, God born of God had not the same perfection of nature as God. But first, let common sense decide whether it is credible that He, who (p. 270) is the cause that all things are, and are to be, should be ignorant of any out of all these things. For how can it be beyond the knowledge of that nature, by which and in which that which is to be done is contained? And can He be ignorant of that day, which is the day of His own Advent? Human substances foreknow as far as they can what they intend to do, and the knowledge of what is to be done, follows upon the will to act. How then can the Lord of glory, from ignorance of the day of His coming, be believed to be of that imperfect nature, which has on it a necessity of coming, and has not attained to the knowledge of its own advent?

But again, how much more room for blasphemy will there be, if a feeling of envy is ascribed to God the Father, in that He has withheld the knowledge of His beatitude from Him to whom He gave a foreknowledge of His death. But if there are in Him all the treasures of knowledge, He is not ignorant of this day; rather we ought to remember that the treasures of wisdom in Him are hidden; His ignorance therefore must be connected with the hiding of the treasures of wisdom, which are in Him.

For in all cases, in which God declares Himself ignorant, He is not under the power of ignorance, but either it is not a fit time for speaking, or it is an economy of not acting.

But if God is said then to have known that Abraham loved Him, when He did not hide that His knowledge from Abraham, it follows, that the Father is said to know the day, because He did not hide it from the Son. If therefore the Son knew not the day, it is a Sacrament of His being silent, as on the contrary the Father alone is said to know, because He is not silent. But God forbid that any new and bodily changes should be ascribed to the Father or the Son.

Lastly, lest He should be said to be ignorant from weakness, He has immediately added, “Take ye heed, watch and pray, for ye know not when the time is.”

Pseudo-Jerome: For we must need watch with our souls before the death of the body.

Theophylact: But He teaches us two things, watching and prayer; for many of us watch, but watch only to pass the night in wickedness; He now follows this up with a parable, saying, “For the Son of Man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave his servants power over every work, and commanded the porter to watch.” (p. 271)

Bede: The man who took a far journey left his house is Christ, who ascending as a conqueror to His Father after the Resurrection, left His Church, as to His bodily presence, but has never deprived her of the safeguard of His Divine presence.

Greg, Hom in Evan, 9: For the earth is properly the place for the flesh, which was as it were carried away to a far country, when it was placed by our Redeemer in the heavens. “And he gave his servants power over every work,” when, by giving to His faithful ones the grace of the Holy Ghost, He gave them the power of serving every good work.

He has also ordered the porter to watch, because He commanded the order of pastors to have a care over the Church committed to them. Not only, however, those of us who rule over Churches, but all are required to watch the doors of their hearts, lest the evil suggestions of the devil enter into them, and lest our Lord find us sleeping.

Wherefore concluding this parable He adds, “Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning: lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.”

Pseudo-Jerome: For he who sleeps applies not his mind to real bodies, but to phantoms, and when he awakes, he possesses not what he had seen; so also are those, whom the love of this world seizes upon in this life; they quit after this life what they dreamed was real.

Theophylact: See again that He has not said, I know not when the time will be, but, “Ye know not.” For the reason why He concealed it was that it was better for us; for if, now that we know not the end, we are careless, what should we do if we knew it? We should keep on our wickedness even unto the end. Let us, therefore, attend to His words; for the end comes at even, when a man dies in old age; a midnight, when he dies in the midst of his youth; and at cockcrow, when our reason is perfect within us; for when a child begins to live according to his reason, then the cock cries loud within him, rousing him from the sleep of sense; but the age of childhood is the morning. Now all these ages must look out for the end; for even a child must be watched, lest he die unbaptized.

Pseudo-Jerome: He thus concludes His discourse, that the last should hear from those who come first this precept which is common to all; wherefore He adds, “But what I say unto you I (p. 272) say unto all, Watch.”

Augustine, Epist., 199, 3: For He not only speaks to those in whose hearing He then spake, but even to all who came after them, before our time, and even to us, and to all after us, even to His last coming. but shall that day find all living, or will any man say that He speaks also to the dead, when He says, “Watch, lest when he cometh he find you sleeping?”

Why then does He say to all, what only belongs to those who shall then be alive, if it be not that it belongs to all, as I have said? For that day comes to each man when his day comes for departing from this life such as he is to be, when judged in that day, and for this reason every Christian ought to watch, lest the Advent of the Lord find him unprepared; but that day shall find him unprepared, whom the last day of his life shall find unprepared.

A Reading from a Homily by Godfrey of Admont

Christ, Proclaimer of the Gospel.

Chartres

my source: Liturgical Press (O.S.B.; U.S)

Take heed, watch, and pray, the Scripture says. By these words our Lord

and Saviour admonished not only his disciples whom he was addressing in the flesh; by these same words, he also made clear to us what we must do, and how we should keep watch. The three parts of this saying plainly show how all destined to be saved, who forget what lies behind them and desire to press on toward what lies ahead, can attain the summit of perfection which is their goal.

Those then who moved to compunction by divine grace, have decided to renounce the world and its desires, must have their eyes open and take heed, according to the warning of the word of God at the beginning of the

gospel reading. In other words, they must begin by distinguishing between what should be done and what should be avoided.

However, people intending to change their way of life will not reach perfection simply by knowing what is right. After learning how to live a good life they must also strive to be watchful by performing good works. Hence, after warning his disciples to take heed, the Lord fittingly adds,

Watch and pray.

The command to watch means that we must strive to put our understanding of what is right into practice. We must turn our backs on the lazy, indolent way of life into which we had fallen, and eagerly watch for anything that we can do.

But to those who thus keep watch by the zealous performance of good deeds, the Lord shows a yet higher way. He immediately adds the admonition:

"and pray". All the elect are commanded to pray, which means that

their desires are to be for things eternal; their only motive in performing

a good deed should be their hope of a reward in heaven. It would seem to be perseverance in this kind of prayer that the apostle Paul enjoins on his disciples when he tells them to pray without ceasing. We pray without ceasing if for performing a good deed we have not the slightest desire to receive the glory of earthly praise but think longingly only of what is eternal. Take heed, watch and pray, our text says; meaning, take heed by understanding what is right; watch by doing what is good; pray by desiring what is eternal. And the following words show clearly why they must be so very heedful, watchful, and prayerful. You do not know, the text says when the time will be. So since we are ignorant of the time of this great visitation, we must be always watching and praying; that is to say, for the grace of so great a visitation we must prepare the innermost recesses of our hearts by vigilant effort.

Godfrey of Admont, Festal Homilies, 23: PL 174, 724–6

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HEAVEN ON EARTH- MONASTICISM

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St Paul the Hermit's Monastery

The first Christian hermits seem to have established themselves on the shores of the Red Sea, where in pre-Christian times the Therapeutae, an order of Jewish ascetics, had been established. Not long afterward the desert regions of Upper Egypt became a retreat for those who fled from the persecutions of the Christians so frequent in the Roman Empire during the 3rd century, and for those who found the vices of the world intolerable. The earliest form of Christian monasticism was, probably, that of the anchorites or hermits; a later development is found in the pillar saints, called Stylites, who spent most of their time on the tops of pillars in order to separate themselves from the world and to mortify the flesh. After a time, however, the necessities of the religious life itself led to modifications. In order to combine the personal seclusion of individuals with the common exercise of religious duties, the early hermits had an aggregation of separate cells called laura, to which they could retire after their communal duties had been discharged. From the union of the common life with personal solitude is derived the name cenobite (Greek koinos bios,"common life"), by which a certain class of monks is distinguished.

St. Anthony, who embraced solitude, established himself at Alexandria, and the fame of his sanctity, as well as his gentleness and learning, drew many disciples to him. Most of his followers accompanied him when he retired to the desert. One of his disciples, St. Pachomius, who established a great monastery on an island in the Nile River, is regarded as the founder of the cenobitic manner of living. Pachomius drew up for his subjects a monastic rule, the first regulations of the kind on record. Many thousands of disciples flocked to him, and he founded several other monasteries for men and one for women under the direction of his sister. All of these houses recognized the authority of a single superior, an abbot or archimandrite. They constitute the original type of the religious order.

(source here)

Visiting the monastery of St Antony of Egypt

Hermit Father Lazarus Al-Anthony of St Anthony's Monastery

His Testimony

modern monks seek God in an ancient monastery

Tradition at the heart of Renewal

by Anthony Mahoney

my source: International Journal for the study of the Christian Church

The Egyptian desert is not only the home of monasticism but of monastic revival which is at the heart of the reform and renewal of the Coptic Orthodox Church. This monastic revival is not the work of one person but of a series of spiritual gifted individuals, in particular Patriarch Cyril VI (1902–1971), Matta el-Meskeen (1919–2006) and the current Patriarch Shenouda III (elected in 1971), who have demonstrated leadership and vision in shaping Coptic Christianity in the modern era. The monastic renewal has also been made possible by the growth in monastic vocations, both male and female, which have made this structural renaissance possible in the Coptic Church. Members of the episcopate in the Coptic tradition are chosen from the ranks of the monks, thus the spiritual character of monastic renewal has become the face of the Church. Today the monasteries are intimately integrated into parish life and the ascetic and spiritual reading of the Desert Fathers have found a new home in the wider Coptic Christian community.

BENEDICTINE MONASTICISM

Benedictines carry on a monastic tradition that stems from the origins of the Christian monastic movement in the late third century. They regard Saint Benedict as their founder and guide even though he did not establish a Benedictine Order as such. He wrote a Rule for his monastery at Monte Cassino in Italy and he foresaw that it could be used elsewhere. Monte Cassino was destroyed by the Lombards about A.D. 577 and was not reestablished until the middle of the eighth century. Meanwhile the Rule found its way to monasteries in England, Gaul, and elsewhere. At first it was one of a number of rules accepted by a particular monastery but later, especially through the promotional efforts of Charlemagne and his son Louis, it became the rule of choice for monasteries of Europe from the ninth century onwards.

The early medieval monasteries of Europe, those for men and women, followed the Rule of Benedict with local adaptations needed in different climes and cultures. They continued, however, the tradition of community life with its common prayer, reading, and work. Some of the monasteries were founded as centers of evangelization of peoples; others carried on a program of education, art and architecture, and the making of manuscripts. Many monasteries were centers of liturgy and learning in the midst of chaotic times and shifting kingdoms....

During the course of the 1800s, however, Benedictines experienced a revival. Some congregations, e.g., the Solesmes and Beuronese Congregations, restored a kind of Benedictine monasticism that stressed the enclosed life with its round of liturgical prayer performed with great precision and splendor.

Other congregations; e.g., the St. Ottilien Congregation and groupings of American Benedictine women, stressed the missionary endeavors of evangelizing, teaching, and health care. Men and women Benedictines continued to establish new houses in many countries right up to the time of Vatican Council II (1962-1965). Since then the number of Benedictines has declined once again, at least in the First and Second World, but it has increased in other regions, e.g., East Africa and South Korea.

One Day in the Life of a Monk
Tyniec Benedictine Monastery in Poland

Orthodox Monasticism

Although not considered as one of the sacraments of the Church since it is not essential to the Christian life as such and is not a necessary element for the very existence of God’s People, monasticism has played an important role in Christian history and is highly valued by the Orthodox Church.

In the Orthodox Tradition the monastic calling is considered to be a personal gift of God to the individual soul for his salvation and service to the Body of Christ. The monastic vocation is the calling to personal repentance in a life dedicated solely to God. The ultimate Christian virtue of love is sought by the monk or nun primarily through prayer and fasting, and through the exercise of the Christian virtues of poverty, chastity, humility and obedience.

The monastic Christian does not normally exercise any particular ministry in the Church such as that of priest, pastor, teacher, nurse or social worker. The monk is normally a layman and not a cleric, with each monastery having only enough clergy to care for the liturgical and sacramental needs of the community itself.

In Orthodox Christian history many missionaries, teachers and bishops have come from men with monastic vocations. For centuries the bishops have been traditionally selected from among the monks. These additional callings, however, are considered to be acts of God’s will expressed in his people, and are not the purpose or intention of the monastic vocation as such. Indeed, one must enter a monastery only in order to repent of his sins, to serve God and to save his soul according to the ideals of monastic ascetism. The ceremony of monastic profession indicates this very clearly. Thus, for example, Saint Herman of Alaska was first dedicated to the monastic life, and only then, in obedience to his spiritual father, left his solitude to become a great missionary.

The Monastic Ranks

The Orthodox monastic tradition has four classical ranks that apply equally to men and to women. The first step is that of novice, which in church terminology is called the rank of obedience. At this first stage the candidate for monastic profession simply lives in the monastery under the direction of a spiritual father or mother.

The second step is that of riasa-bearer, which means that the person is more formally accepted into the community, and is given the right to wear the monastic robe, called the riasa. At this stage the candidate is not yet fully committed to the monastic life.

The third rank is that of the small schema which means that the person is a professed monastic. He or she now receives a new name and wears the monastic schema (a cloth with the sign of the cross), the veil and the mantle (mantia). At this stage the person pledges to remain in the monastic community in perpetual obedience to the spiritual leader and to the head of the monastery, called the abbot or abbess (igoumenos or igoumenia). The service of profession, in addition to the hymns and prayers, includes a long series of formal questioning about the authenticity of the calling, the tonsuring (i.e., the cutting of the hair), and the vesting in the full monastic clothing.

The final rank of the monastic order is that of the great schema. This last step is reserved for very few, since it is the expression of the most strict observance of the monastic ideals, demanding normally a state of life in total seclusion in perpetual prayer and contemplation. With this final profession a new name is again received, and a new monastic insignia—the great schema—is worn.

In the Orthodox tradition there is no prescribed length of time that a person must remain in one or another of the monastic ranks. This is so because of the radically personal character of the vocation. Thus, some persons may progress rapidly to profession, while others may take years, and still others may never be formally professed while still remaining within the monastic community. The decision in these matters is made individually in each case by the spiritual director and the head of the community.

Types of Monasticism

Although the Orthodox Church does not have religious orders as the Latin Church does, there are in Orthodoxy different styles of monastic life, both individually and in community. Generally speaking some monasteries may be more liturgically oriented, while others may be more ascetic, while still others may have a certain mystical tradition, and others be more inclined to spiritual guidance and openness to the world for the purpose of care and counseling. These various styles of monasticism, which take both a personal as well as a corporate form, are not formally predetermined or officially legislated. They are the result of organic development under the living grace of God.

In addition to the various spiritual styles of monastic life, three formal types of organization may be mentioned. The first is that of coenobitic monasticism. In this type all members of the community do all things in common. The second form is called idiorhythmic in which the monks or nuns pray together liturgically, but work and eat individually or in small groups. In this type of monasticism the persons may even psalmodize and do the offices separately, coming together only for the eucharistic liturgy, and even then, perhaps, only on certain occasions. Finally, there is the eremitic type of monasticism where the individual monks or nuns are actually hermits, also called anchorites or recluses. They live in total individual seclusion and never join in the liturgical prayer of the community, except again perhaps on the most solemn occasions. In the rarest of cases it may even happen that the Holy Eucharist is brought to the monk or nun who remains perpetually alone.

In the Orthodox Church today in the Western world there are only a few communities with a genuinely monastic life. In the traditional Orthodox countries monasticism still thrives, although with greatly reduced numbers due to the political and spiritual conditions. In recent years, in some places, there has been a renewed interest in monasticism, particularly among the more educated members of the Church.

Day in the Life in a mens' monastery

Mount Athos - CBS Documentary

Sisters in love
Contemplative Catholic nuns

St. Therese's Life in the Carmel of Lisieux and the Influence of Her "Little Way."

Taken from:

CARMELITE SPIRITUALITY

by PAUL MARIE DE LA CROIX

of the Order of Discalced Carmelites

Those who concentrate on the life and doctrine of this child of Carmel who died at the age of twenty-four are seized with wonder and admiration. They discover, in fact, that her contribution to spirituality is as original as it is profoundly traditional. They also discover that under the Gospel-like simplicity of her message of "the little way of childhood" is hidden a spiritual structure both strong and perfectly balanced from the theological point of view.

No doubt this structure embodies the most authentic elements of the Order to which Theresa belongs; but Theresa has divided and arranged them according to her own genius. Better still, a very sure instinct, given by the Holy Spirit, enabled her to discern and sometimes to rediscover, not without merit, Carmel's purest spirit.Those who concentrate on the life and doctrine of this child of Carmel who died at the age of twenty-four are seized with wonder and admiration. They discover, in fact, that her contribution to spirituality is as original as it is profoundly traditional. They also discover that under the Gospel-like simplicity of her message of "the little way of childhood" is hidden a spiritual structure both strong and perfectly balanced from the theological point of view.

Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus truly made this interior and radiant spirit incarnate. Her life of love of the absolute and of absolute love is of rare depth and fullness. It was a combination of certain inter-related spiritual principles and constitutes a true doctrine: this is "the little way of childhood" that we must now try to describe.

This doctrine is derived from a re-discovery of the central teaching of the Gospel which may be expressed in this sentence: We are, in Christ, God's children and we ought to love our Father in heaven with a filial love full of confidence and abandonment.

Christ taught us that God is our Father. Saint Theresa adheres to this teaching with all her strength and gives to it its whole meaning.

She had a deep understanding of the truth that such a teaching has two complementary aspects: a keen realization of God's fatherhood toward us; and the need of developing in us a filial attitude of absolute confidence toward God our Father.

If the confidence of Saint Theresa in the goodness of her Father in heaven is absolute, this is because God is a father and this father is God. She comes to this basic affirmation: "We can never have enough confidence in God who is so good, so powerful, so merciful".

From this we can understand how on her lips the words "Papa the good God" are not childish. On the contrary they testify to the simplicity of her intimate relations with Him and to a confidence so absolute that she can dare to say: "I know what it means to count on His mercy".[67]

One might be tempted to believe that such confidence was based on the assurance that had been given her that she "had never committed any mortal sins". But she hastens to correct this idea: "Make it clear, Mother, that if I had committed all possible crimes, I would still have the same confidence. I would feel that this multitude of offenses would be like a drop of water cast into a blazing fire"[68] "How could there be any limits to my confidence?"[69]

Saint Theresa could not have reached this point, it is certain, had she not had a deep experience of God's love. Even though she always claimed that she had not known extraordinary graces, and she never stressed the grac

More than this: she sought a way that depended on this very weakness. Had not the Apostle said: "When I am weak then I am strong" (2 Cor. 12: 10). So that in searching the Gospels she found the words of the Master: "Let the little children be, and do not hinder them from coming to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 19: 14).

Such a statement corresponded too well to her knowledge, both of her weakness and also of God's fatherly heart, for it not to have been a true light. It served, too, as a link between her spirit of childhood and her confidence in the divine fatherhood.

"I leave to great souls and lofty minds the beautiful books I cannot understand, much less put into practice and I rejoice that I am little because children alone and those who resemble them will be admitted to the heavenly banquet. I am glad that there are many mansions in the Kingdom of God, because if there were only those whose description and whose road seem to me incomprehensible, I could never enter there."[70]

This, therefore, was her way. God Himself had pointed it out and declared its efficacy. On it Theresa was to advance unfalteringly and to draw all the necessary conclusions with courage.

No one will deny that weakness is the characteristic of little children. But this weakness is the surest of guarantees to those who care for them and love them. Teresa remembered a text of Isaias that she copied in a little notebook she used:

"You shall be carried at the breasts, And upon the knees they shall caress you. As one whom the mother caresseth, So will I comfort you" (Is. 66: 12).

Moreover, having learned from experience about this "motherly" goodness of God, and knowing that the smaller the child, the more it can count on merciful help and attentive care, Theresa intended to remain little, that is to say, she would no more be concerned about her powerlessness, on the contrary she would rejoice in it. "How happy I am to realize that I am little and weak, how happy I am to see myself so imperfect". She does not count on her works, or on her merits, she "keeps nothing in reserve" and she is not to be discouraged even about her faults.

"It is needful to remain little before God and to remain little is to recognize one's nothingness, expect all things from the good God just as a little child expects all things from its father; it is not to be troubled by anything, not to try to make a fortune. Even among poor people, a child is given all it needs, as long as it is very little, but as soon as it has grown up, the father does not want to support it any longer and says: "Work, now you are able to take care of yourself". Because I never want to hear these words I do not want to grow up, feeling that I can never earn my living, that is, eternal life in heaven. So I have stayed little, and have no other occupation than of gathering flowers of love and sacrifice and of offering them to the good God to please Him.

Saint Theresa had very great desires, yet she would never admit that she was a great soul or that she had the strength necessary to do great things, like the saints who had been proposed to her as models. So she had to find a way in keeping with this littleness of which she was so deeply conscious.

"For a long time I had been asking myself why souls did not all receive the same amount of grace. Jesus deigned to instruct me about this mystery. Before my eyes He placed the book of nature and I understood that all the flowers created by Him are beautiful... that, if all the little flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime garb. The same is true of the world of souls, the Lord's living garden."To be little also means not to attribute to one's self the virtues that one practices, believing that one can do something, but to acknowledge that the good God has placed these treasures in the hands of His little child so that the child can make use of them as needed, but always as the treasures of the good God.

Finally, it means not be to discouraged by one's faults because children often fall but they are too little to hurt themselves badly."[71]

This is a pleasant intuition and one that affords many fruitful applications for the spiritual life.

Most especially it drew Theresa along the path of a confidence that was not only a virtue but the life in us of the true theological virtue of hope. Advancing with great boldness to the end of this hope and wishing to place no limits to God's mercy for those who love Him with filial love, she wrote to a sister:

"You are not sufficiently trusting, you fear God too much. I assure you that this grieves Him. Do not be afraid of going to purgatory because of its pain, but rather long not to go there because this pleases God who imposes this expiation so regretfully. From the moment that you try to please Him in all things, if you have the unshakable confidence that He will purify you at every instant in His love and will leave in you no trace of sin, be very sure that you will not go to purgatory."[72]

And again:

"O, how you hurt me, how greatly you injure the good God when you believe you are going to purgatory. For one who loves there can be no purgatory.[73]

It seems to me that there will be no judgment for victims of love, or rather, the good God will hasten to reward, with eternal delights, His own love which He will see burning in their hearts."

Saint Theresa's confidence in God's infinite mercy leads her to this other certitude, as theologically sound as the preceding, that if God divides His graces unequally, He does so because of the same love.

God's love is revealed just as much in the most simple soul who does not resist His graces as in the most sublime."[75]

Lastly this confidence in God leads Saint Theresa, by paths of poverty of spirit and self-forgetfulness, to a wonderful simplification of spiritual life. In fact, how could she have failed to notice that the kingdom of heaven is offered not only to little children but also to the poor in spirit, and almost in the same words: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5: 3). "Unless you turn and become like little children, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 1 8: 3). "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for of such is the kingdom of God" (Mark 10: 14).

As Theresa made spiritual childhood her own, so she made her own poverty of spirit. She aspires to be nothing more than "a poor little child" who looks to her Father for everything and who obtains everything from Him because of this same poverty. She cultivates this poverty and wants to keep nothing for herself, not even her merits and her good works.

"There is only one way to force the good God not to judge at all, and that is to present one's self to Him with empty hands.

When I think of this word: 'I will soon come and I carry My reward with Me to give to each one according to his works ', I say to myself, He will be very embarrassed for me because I have no works. Well, He will have to give me according to His own works."

She is forgetful of herself and counts on nothing, she is truly poor: "It is necessary to consent to remain poor and weak; this is hard ". "I have always longed to be unknown, I am resigned to being forgotten". "It is necessary to count on nothing".

Theresa arrived at perfect detachment but in her own humble, hidden "little way".

"I know well that it is not my great desires that please God in my little soul, what He likes to see is the way I love my littleness and my poverty; it is my blind hope in His mercy, this is my only treasure.... The weaker one is, without desires or virtues the more ready one is for the operations of this consuming and transforming love.... God rejoices more in what He can do in a soul humbly resigned to its poverty than in the creation of millions of suns and the vast stretch of the heavens."

She buries herself with delight deep in this radical poverty. "I tell you that it is enough to recognize one's nothingness and to abandon one's self like a child in the arms of God.[76]

Theresa is marvelously free from herself and marvelously free for God. Her soul is wide open to the invasions of divine love. We, in fact, prevent God from coming to us and "flooding our souls with waves of His tenderness", because we do not open to Him the place He wants to occupy. Only when poverty is united with confidence, is He able to realize in us the desires of His love. It is difficult for us to understand much less to describe how great was Saint Theresa's desire to love. Nevertheless she who wished "to love and to make Love loved", perhaps wished even more "to be loved" by this infinite Love. The deep reason for this will be evident when we remember that she wrote:

"Merit is not to be found in doing much or in giving much, but rather in receiving and in loving much. It is said that it is far sweeter to give than to receive, and this is true. But when Jesus wants for Himself the sweetness of giving, it would not be gracious to refuse. Let Him take and give whatever He wants."

To take and to give, in these two cases, Theresa will remain poor, in order that she can receive the love that God thirsts to pour out on her.

"I beg You to allow the waves of infinite tenderness hidden in You to overflow into my soul so that I may become a martyr of Your love."

Because she will not keep this love for herself but will pour it out on others, she adds:

"As for me, if I live until I am eighty I shall always be just as poor, I do not know how to economize. All that I have, I spend immediately to buy souls."[77]

Theresa has given us the secret of this outpouring of love and its apostolic fruitfulness: her love is crucified. In offering herself to merciful Love, she gave herself up without any reserve to trial and suffering which from this moment mark her life as with a seal. From the day that "love penetrated and possessed her" suffering seized her as if she were its prey. The victim offered in holocaust had been accepted.Saint Theresa was really flooded with divine love and that is why her life bore such fruit. This charity transfigured two qualities that in her were always to remain united: love of God and love of neighbor. And when we consider her fraternal charity which was so practical, so delicate, so heroic and which flowed from a charity for God that was so faithful that "from the age of three she had never refused" Him anything and was willing to suffer all things in silence for His love and for the love of souls, then no one can any longer oppose contemplation and action, prayer and the apostolate, the service of God and the service of the Church.

She who had carried so far confidence and abandonment never ceased to multiply her own most concrete and generous efforts.

It is because of this confidence and fidelity that God could communicate the plenitude of His own life that transformed her soul and opened it to the dimensions of infinite Love.

From the beginning of her religious life, Theresa, like a true daughter of Elias, is devoured with apostolic ardor. Was it not love for souls, especially for the souls of priests, that she came to Carmel? To save souls she would have liked to have fulfilled all vocations. She would have liked to have been preacher, apostle, missionary, martyr.

Yet it was only after she had offered herself to the divine outpouring and surrendered herself to merciful Love that she discovered the vocation God destined for her.

"I understand that love includes all vocations. I realize that all my desires are fulfilled. I have found my vocation. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love."

It was only then, too, that her vocation reached its full apostolic dimension and revealed its limitless fruitfulness. In fact, henceforth, Theresa was to think and to speak only in universal terms: "I shall spend my heaven in doing good upon earth". "Yes, until the number of the elect shall be complete, I shall take no rest".

Just as blood flows from the heart and moves with life-giving power into every part of the whole body, so this apostolic spirit springs from the love that possesses her and extends to the whole Church.

"From her little cell, as from a broadcasting station, wonderful waves escape night and day. The souls whom they reach are unaware of their origin. They merely murmur: 'Someone has prayed for me.'"[78]

But knowing that God had never before shown her so much love and that such trials also made it possible to prove her love for Him, Theresa accepted them with heroic generosity and even with joy. "I would not want to suffer less. "She offered her sufferings for souls until the last ounce of her strength: "I walk... for a missionary".

Before departure she gave us not only the assurance of a wonderfully efficacious help: "Because I never did my will on earth, the good God will do all that I want in heaven", but she told us how she was able to realize her contemplative and missionary vocation in all its fullness: "I do not regret having surrendered myself to Love".

When we look at the life of Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus we are struck by its simplicity and wonderful transparency. We are amazed to discover through her, not only the purest Gospel teaching but Christ Himself. We also notice that the unity of her spiritual life is unique and profound. In fact, all her words, acts, sufferings, life and death are of a piece, yield the same tone and are proof of an equal plenitude. Like her Master, Theresa is true, and also like Him, her person and her message are one.

It must also be noticed that the Christian instinct was not deceived. In search of a spirituality that is adapted to life and is livable men turned to Saint Theresa. Not the least original thing about this cloistered religious who died at the age of twenty-four was that she has given to our times the most "incarnate" and at the same time the most supernatural doctrine that there is. Transcendence and immanence. Her life prolongs the message of the Gospel in our midst. This, no doubt, is the reason that devotion to her, surprisingly enough, was not limited by the boundaries of France but became worldwide, truly universal, because her spirit is truly Catholic.

Saint Theresa brought a maximum of depth and supernatural efficacy to spiritual life. She is as apostolic as she is contemplative, and that with a minimum of means. "Purely and simply", she succeeded in being both.

It is not only our utilitarian age (and this is true even in spiritual matters) that is conscious of her success, it is Christian life in general which has been enriched by a new way leading to sanctity, a way as quick and sure as it is evangelical.

If Saint Theresa received from Carmelite spirituality a great part of the wealth she used--and they are forgetful who fail to connect her with her "family" or who minimize what she owes it--she knew how to increase her heritage. She offers us a style of spiritual life that is so detached, so simply reduced to the essential, so supple in its absolute surrender to love, so generous in the gift to the Church and to her brothers. She made her life a reality that is so near to us and so lived in God, that to breathe the fragrance of this flower of Carmel is to breathe the fragrance of eternal life.

LIFE IN HIDDEN LIGHT

"There is only one thing worth knowing: that God loves you and wants to be loved."

(words of an old Carmelite nun,)

AN EXCELLENT AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING VIDEO

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DEC. 8th THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION and DEC. 10th, 2nd SUNDAY IN ADVENT

December 6, 2017, 8:22 am

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It came to me as a blow in the dark that, if my understanding of the Church is correct, if Orthodox churches and Catholic churches are identical, each being the same body of Christ because all participate in the same Eucharist, then, where the two churches are most opposed, if we dig far enough, we will discover underneath the opposed theologies an identical faith which, till now, has only been inadequately expressed by the mutually exclusive theologies. I came to this conclusion when studying and meditating on the Immaculate Conception.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is a conclusion reached by theologians of the Franciscan school who accepted another doctrine much beloved by the Church Fathers of the East but accepted in a western context. Anyone who studies and explores through prayer the wonders of the Incarnation will realise that so great a mystery cannot be plan B, devised simply to rescue us from sin. The Incarnation and the consequent divinization of the universe through humankind are what creation is all about. Adam and Eve are simply reverse images of Christ and his mother and, through their disobedience, simply set the scene for the obedience of Jesus and Mary. Jesus, the new Adam, and Mary, the new Eve, have, through their obedience, brought about the new race of risen people who have chosen in Christ life over death and thus will share in the life of the resurrection in the new heaven and the new earth: "The glory of God is man fully alive."

This is what St Irenaeus has to say about the new Adam and the new Eve:

The Lord, coming into his own creation in visible form, was sustained by his own creation which he himself sustains in being. His obedience on the tree of the cross reversed the disobedience at the tree in Eden; the good news of the truth announced by an angel to Mary, a virgin subject to a husband, undid the evil lie that seduced Eve, a virgin espoused to a husband.
As Eve was seduced by the word of an angel and so fled from God after disobeying his word, Mary in her turn was given the good news by the word of an angel, and bore God in obedience to his word. As Eve was seduced into disobedience to God, so Mary was persuaded into obedience to God; thus the Virgin Mary became the advocate of the virgin Eve.

Just as the disobedience of Eve was a prelude to the disobedience of Adam by which sin and death entered the world, so the obedience of Mary who said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord..." made possible the obedience of Christ "unto death" by which we were saved. In the Church, the obedience of Christ who became our salvation through obedience meets the obedience of Mary who received the Lord into herself through obedience and the Church becomes one body, and, likewise, Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin become the new Adam and the new Eve.

However, Duns Scotus who first formulated the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception sees Mary in an even wider context. Here is a quotation:

Scotus’ Lectura on the Third Book of Sentences of Peter Lombard deals with the mystery of the Incarnation. The Christological basis for Scotus’ theology on the Immaculate Conception is fundamental in order to understand this privilege of the Virgin Mary in its correct theological setting. Scotus builds a theology centred upon Christ, who is eternally predestined by God the Father to assume human nature in the Incarnation. According to the Subtle Doctor the Incarnation was not primarily intended to be the condition for the redemption of humanity from sin. In God’s provident plan, the Incarnation of the Word in the person of Jesus Christ was, first and foremost, the apex of the act of creation by God the Father. All creation has been fashioned according to the image of the Incarnate Word, and is the result of a pure and free act of love on the part of God. Creation, in this way, enters in a mysterious but real way into a loving relationship with God as a Trinity of Persons. Each and every creature, being complete in itself and unique in its essence, is a model of God the Son, who became Incarnate in order to glorify His Father for the beauty of creation. This vision is a direct result of Franciscan spirituality at its best. It is true that, in the history redemption, the Incarnation was then orientated toward the salvation of humankind from sin, but this aspect, important though it may be, could not be the only reason for the Incarnation. Otherwise God would not be seen as the personification of the primacy of the free will, expressed in love which overflows from Him onto His creatures.
It is in this Christological view of the world and of redemption that Scotus speaks about the Virgin Mary as Mother of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God. She becomes the embodiment of all perfection in creation, freed from sin and from its effects through the saving power of Jesus Christ, the universal Mediator between God and humankind. It was fitting that God would choose a Mother for His Son, who would be totally free form any stain of original and actual sin, in order to become a channel of grace to us all. Having explained in a few words Scotus’ Christological vision of creation and redemption, we can now try to understand how he explains the privilege of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary within this theological context. Scotus expresses his conclusion to all the arguments he brought forward to defend the privilege of the Immaculate Conception:

"I am the Immaculate Conception

“We can therefore say that it was possible that the Blessed Virgin was not conceived in original sin. This assertion does not diminish in any way the universal redemption of her Son, as we have outlined above. We can furthermore confirm this, since the passion of Christ was immediately and principally ordered to delete original guilt as well as actual guilt, in such a way that all the Trinity, since it had the foresight of the merits of the passion of Christ, applied them to the Virgin and preserved her from all actual sin, and also from all original sin.” [John Duns Scotus and his Defense of the Immaculate Conception]

Alma Redemptoris Mater

Gethsemane Abbey

monastery of Thomas Merton

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception is an Advent feast in that Mary is the perfect soil in which the most perfect flower of God's creation was planted, through which the whole of creation was to be divinized, the Incarnate Word.

A very good sermon on the Immaculate Conception

Live promotion of Pope Francis on this feast

2nd SUNDAY OF ADVENT

What is unique about Advent?

2nd sunday of advent reflections

Mark 1:1-8

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,who will prepare your way;the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,make his paths straight,’”John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

LITURGICAL REFLECTIONS

my source: Vatican Radio
Is 40:1-5, 9-11; 2 Pt 3:8-14; Mk 1:1-8
Homily starter anecdote: Conversion of an IRA bomber: For 300 years the people in Ireland have lived in the past. For 350 years, really, all they have done is remember the past, taking revenge on one another. But slowly, one by one, on both sides, people have begun to repent, to look, not to the past, but to the future. One of the first to do so was a man named Shane O'Doherty. He was the first former IRA member to come out publicly for peace. Twenty years ago, he was sent to jail for mailing letter bombs. At his trial as a terrorist for the IRA, he had to sit and listen to people tell what it was like to open those letters. Fourteen people testified against him, all innocent victims, many of them mutilated because of what he had done. He said it was sitting in that court, face to face with people who had been harmed by his actions that his conversion began. But it was completed in prison, in his cell, as he was reading Scripture. First, he experienced Jesus' love for him. Then he experienced Jesus' requirement of him. He knew he had to change. When he got out of prison, O'Doherty started to talk about building a new future in Ireland, instead of just repeating the past. He found that his life was now being threatened by his former colleagues. But he continued to do it, because, he said, "I believe that one person is able to make a difference just by talking about peace, just by making his witness. It begins in any nation, in any community, with one person, then another, and then another, saying, ‘I'm going to accept the future that God is giving to us, rather than simply repeating the past.’" Every year in Advent they are there, both John and Jesus, challenging us, "Repent; for the time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom is at hand." God is offering us a new future. Let us choose it, turn away from the past, and accept what God is offering us.
Introduction: Advent means coming. During the Advent season, we reflect on the past coming of Jesus into our world two thousand years ago as a little baby, the daily coming of Jesus through the Sacraments, through the Holy Bible and through the worshipping community and the future coming (Second Coming) of Jesus at the end of the world. Today’s readings remind us that the past, present and future comings of Jesus into the world are the fulfillment of the saving plan of God. Today’s Scripture readings deal with coming home – Babylonian exiles coming home, the shalom or perfect peace of coming home, our going home with Jesus at his Second Coming, and Jesus, the Savior, “coming home” into our lives during Advent.
Scripture lessons summarized: All three readings for Advent II Sunday focus on the absolute necessity of our readying ourselves by repentance and reparation for Christ’s coming. In the first reading, Isaiah assures his people that the Lord will restore their homeland to them and care for them as a shepherd cares for the sheep. Today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps 85) also speaks of the return of shalom (perfect peace), and pardon to the people. The second reading gives an answer to those who scoff at the expectation of the Second Coming of Christ, explaining that God’s way of reckoning time is different from ours and that God has His own reasons for delaying Christ’s second coming. Peter gives us the assurance that Jesus is sure to come again although we do not know when. Hence, while we wait, we should be leading lives of holiness and godliness. Finally, the Gospel tells us that the restoration of the fallen world has already begun, starting with the arrival of John the Baptist, the messenger and forerunner of the Messiah. John speaks of one, more powerful than he – Jesus Christ – who will baptize us with the Holy Spirit. Each of us has received the gift of the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and now we live in the Spirit each day, waiting for the return of our Lord. Thus, we become John the Baptist's successors, preparing for Christ's return which will bring a new and perfect world.
The first reading: Is 40:1-5, 9-11 explained: Isaiah consoles the Jews in exile in Babylon, giving them Yahweh’s assurance that their 60 years of Babylonian captivity will end soon and that they will be going home as free people. He assures them that they will be brought back to Israel by the power of God. Isaiah is not shy about saying that the Exile was a punishment for sin. But Israel’s sins are forgiven now, and the exile is over. Isaiah wants the people to consider their return journey as their second Exodus, with Yahweh once more their loving Father and faithful Shepherd. He describes God's marvelous love for the undeserving. If Yahweh is now their Redeemer rather than their punisher, then their relationship with Yahweh also has to change. Isaiah instructs the exiles that they are to return home in a grand religious procession, with God leading them. To pave the way for this procession, valleys and mountains are to be leveled, and a highway is to be created in the wilderness. God will lead them to Judah and, within Judah, to the city of Jerusalem and, within Jerusalem, to Zion, the hill where their Temple had stood. Seeing the procession in his mind, the prophet exclaims with joy, “Here comes your God with power!" Then he presents the tender picture of God leading the exiles as a shepherd cradles lambs.
Isaiah originally spoke these words in the 6th century BC. On one level they were fulfilled when Persia conquered Babylon, and those who had been exiled from Judah to Babylon were allowed to return home. God first accomplished the salvation proclaimed by Isaiah by leading the exiles back from Babylon. However, on a deeper level this word foretold the coming of Jesus. The words of Isaiah about the "voice of one crying out in the desert: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths,'" were a prediction of John the Baptist. He was calling upon people to prepare for the coming of the Lord. And the Lord was Jesus who brought about true liberation from the bondage of sin for all mankind. It is because of this deeper meaning of the prophet's words that this reading has been chosen for Advent.
Second Reading, 2 Peter 3:8-14 explained: Taken from the second letter of Peter, this reading makes it clear that the salvation promised by Isaiah was not completely accomplished even by the first coming of Jesus. It is only when Jesus comes again at the end of time that Isaiah's words will be entirely fulfilled. Hence, Peter warns against false teachers who have given up any expectation of Christ’s return because of its long delay. As the years rolled by, non-Christians began ridiculing those Christians who still expected Christ’s second coming. A few Christians, in fact, began to believe that it would never happen. They laughed at what they thought was error and delusion. So Peter reminds them that even though the Second Coming seems to be delayed, Christ will indeed come as promised. Peter also reminds them that God doesn't reckon time the way we do since, to Him “one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as a day” (Psalm 90). In other words, the risen Lord is eternal and infinite and so is not restricted or measured by time in fulfilling promises. Besides, God “is patient” with us, giving us more time to repent of our sins and renew our lives. The longer we are allowed to wait for Christ’s Second coming the more people will have an opportunity to be converted and take part in God’s glory. So Peter assures his people that Christ’s promise will be fulfilled. That is why we say in the Nicene Creed, “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His Kingdom will have no end.” We, then, are expected to wait, leading lives of holiness and godliness. We should be holy in conduct and devotion, being "eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace."
Gospel exegesis: The context: While Matthew and Luke start their Gospels by giving us a brief account of the conception, birth, and early boyhood of Christ and John begins his Gospel by pointing to the eternal life of Christ as the Word of the Father, Mark opens his Gospel with the preparation for Christ's public life, in which the chief actor is John the Baptist. This wilderness prophet proclaims the "here-ness" of an event and person every Jew has been anticipating. "One more powerful than I," John announces, "is to come after me....I have baptized you in water; He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit." The essence of the Baptizer’s message is “repent and return to the ways of the Lord.” John preaches that the appropriate behaviour for those preparing "the way of the Lord" is to be baptized "as they confess their sins."
Malachi’s view of the mission of the Messiah: “I send my messenger before you and he will prepare your road for you” Mark cites Isaiah as his source for the whole of the quotation with which his Gospel opens. This first sentence appeared originally in the prophecy of Malachi (Malachi 3:1). In its original context, it was a threat and warning from God to the Temple priests. In those days, the priests were living lazy lives and were failing in their duty by offering the blemished and the second-best as sacrifices to Yahweh. Hence, the messenger was to cleanse and purify the worship of the Temple before the Anointed One of God emerged upon the earth. Coupled with Isaiah’s “voice crying in the wilderness,” however, the prophecy becomes an invitation to all Israel to prepare for the coming of the Messiah whom John would announce. So Malachi anticipates the mission of John the Baptist as one of purification. John gives the them some down-to-earth advice on changing their lives for the better. He wants them (and us as well), to fill in the valleys of prejudice, level the mountains of pride and straighten out the crooked paths of injustice. Preparing a way for God in our hearts is a time-consuming and costly business. It demands our listening to what God is saying to us and then making changes in our behavior. Welcoming God also involves removing all blockages and obstacles which keep Him from coming close to us. “Although Mark attributes the prophecy to Isaiah, the text is a combination of Malachi 3:1; Isaiah 40:3; and Exodus 23:20 … this prophecy of Deutero-Isaiah concerning the end of the Babylonian exile is here applied to the coming of Jesus; John the Baptist is to prepare the way for him” (New American Bible footnotes).
Repent and return to the Lord – the priorities set by John: There are two traditions from which John’s baptism could be derived: One is the ritual washings by which people cleansed themselves of spiritual impurity. Ritual bathing was especially important in the Qumran community with which John may have had some connection. The other tradition is proselyte baptism of Gentile converts to Judaism, an initiatory cleansing rite performed by immersion. It seems likely that John borrows from both traditions (ritual washings and proselyte baptism), but establishes his own baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John recommended a baptism of repentance in the river Jordan to the Jews who were familiar with ritual and symbolic washings (Lev.11-15). The Jews insisted that when a male Gentile became a Jew, he had to do three things: i) accept circumcision as the mark of the covenant people; ii) offer sacrifice because he stood in need of atonement, and iii) undergo baptism by immersion in water, which symbolized his cleansing from all pollution. The most amazing thing about John's baptism was that he, a Jew, was asking fellow-Jews to submit to that which only a Gentile was supposed to need. John was convinced of the truth that even the chosen people needed true repentance and renewal of life to receive their long-awaited Messiah. We tend to think of repentance as feeling guilty about our sins, but it is more—much more. The Greek word, metanoia, means a change of mind or direction. It is related to the Hebrew word tesubah, used by prophets to call Israel to abandon its sinful ways and to return to God. Both words (metanoia and tesubah) imply “a total change of spiritual direction.” The baptism of a Gentile was accompanied by a confession made to three different recipients as a sign of repentance for sin. (i) A man must make confession to himself because the first step in repentance is to admit his sin to himself. (ii) He must make confession to those whom he has wronged. This involves humiliation and is a test of real repentance since there can be no forgiveness without humiliation. (iii) He must make confession to God because it is when a man says, "I have sinned," that God gets the chance to say, "I forgive."
John's message calls us also to confront and confess our sins; to turn away from them in sincere repentance; to receive God's forgiveness; and most importantly, to look to Jesus. Do we need to receive God's forgiveness? There are basically two reasons why we fail to receive forgiveness. The first is that we fail to repent, and the second is that we fail to forgive. Jesus was very explicit about this second failure in Matthew 6:14-15. He says, "For if you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions." Is there someone we need to forgive today? Let us not allow what others have done destroy our life. We can't be forgiven unless we forgive. Let us let go of that bitterness and allow God to work healing in our life. Perhaps we need to draw closer to Him. Like the prodigal son’s father, God will run to meet us. He will throw His arms around us and He will forgive us and restore us. He will receive us as His sons and daughters. Let us draw close to Him today, and He will draw close to us.
The effectiveness of John’s ministry: John’s ministry was effective primarily because his life was his message: he lived what he preached. He was a man from the desert. In its solitude, he had heard the voice of God, and, hence, he had the courage of his convictions. His camel’s hair garment and leather belt resembled those of Elijah and other great prophets of Israel. His food, too, was very simple: wild locusts and honey. The Israelites had not had a prophet for four hundred years, and the people were waiting expectantly for one. John’s message was effective also because he was completely humble. His role was to serve Jesus and to serve the people. "He must increase, I must decrease," he says elsewhere (John 3:30). That is why he publicly confessed that he was not fit to be a slave before the Messiah. He frankly admitted that he was the Messiah’s humble and obedient messenger, preparing a straight way for the Messiah in the hearts and lives of the Jews. His message combined three Scriptural passages familiar to the Jews, namely, Exodus 23:20, Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3. That is why John's influence continued to live on after his death. When the apostle Paul went to Ephesus nearly 30 years later, he found a group of John's disciples (Acts 19:1-7).
Life messages: 1) We need to prepare for the rebirth of Jesus: We are invited by the Church to prepare for Christmas by repenting of our sins and renewing our lives so that Jesus may be reborn in us. Let us ask with Alexander Pope the challenging question, “What do I profit, if Jesus is born in thousands of cribs all over the world unless he is born in my heart and in my life?”
2) We need to allow Jesus to be reborn in our lives, radiating his presence all around us. People around us should recognize Jesus’ rebirth in our lives by our sharing love, unconditional forgiveness, compassionate and merciful heart and spirit of humble and committed service. Let us accept Jesus as our personal Savior and Lord during this Christmas season and remain, or become, true Christians in our daily conduct. Let us use these days of preparation for Christmas to ready ourselves for Christ’s daily coming and Second Coming, remembering that the Second Coming will occur for each one of us on the day of our death, or on the Day of the Lord, whichever comes first.

3) We need to accept the challenge of John the Baptist to turn this Advent season into a real spiritual “homecoming” by making the necessary preparations. John’s preaching reminds us also of our important task of announcing Christ to others through our lives at home and in the community. When we show real love, kindness, mercy and a spirit of forgiveness, we are announcing the truth that Christ is with us. Thus, our lives become a kind of Bible which others can read. John the Baptist invites us to turn this Advent season into a spiritual homecoming by making the necessary preparations. (Fr. Antony Kadavil).

Prophet Zachariah the father of St John the Baptist

Commemorated on September 5

Troparion & Kontakion:

The memory of Your prophets Zachariah and Elizabeth / We celebrate today, O Lord. / By their prayers, we beseech You, / O Christ God, save our souls!

Troparion — Tone 4

Robed in the vestments of the priesthood, / according to the Law of God you offered whole-burnt offerings in a sacred manner, wise Zachariah. / You became a luminary and a seer of the mysteries, / bearing within yourself the signs of grace, all-wise one. / Slain by the sword in the temple of God, O prophet of Christ, / intercede together with the Forerunner / that our souls may be saved.

Kontakion — Tone 3

Today the prophet Zachariah, priest of the Most High / and parent of the Forerunner, / has prepared a banquet to his memory to nourish the faithful, / mixing the drink of righteousness. / Therefore we praise him as a divine initiate of the grace of God.

The Holy Prophet Zachariah and the Righteous Elizabeth were the parents of the holy Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord, John. They were descended from the lineage of Aaron: Saint Zachariah, son of Barach, was a priest in the Jerusalem Temple, and Saint Elizabeth was the sister of Saint Anna, the mother of the Most Holy Theotokos. The righteous spouses, “walking in all the commandments of the Lord (Luke 1:6), suffered barrenness, which in those times was considered a punishment from God.

Once, during his turn of priestly service in the Temple, Saint Zachariah was told by an angel that his aged wife would bear him a son, who “will be great in the sight of the Lord” (Luke 1:15) and “will go before Him in the spirit and power of Elias” (Luke 1:17).

Zachariah doubted that this prediction would come true, and for his weakness of faith he was punished by becoming mute. When Elizabeth gave birth to a son, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit she announced that his name was John, although no one in their family had this name.

They asked Zachariah and he also wrote the name John down on a tablet. Immediately the gift of speech returned to him, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, he began to prophesy about his son as the Forerunner of the Lord.

When King Herod heard from the Magi about the birth of the Messiah, he decided to kill all the infants up to two years old at Bethlehem and the surrounding area, hoping that the new-born Messiah would be among them.

Herod knew about John’s unusual birth and he wanted to kill him, fearing that he was the foretold King of the Jews. But Elizabeth hid herself and the infant in the hills. The murderers searched everywhere for John. Elizabeth, when she saw her pursuers, began to implore God for their safety, and immediately the hill opened up and concealed her and the infant from their pursuers.

In these tragic days Saint Zachariah was taking his turn at the services in the Temple. Soldiers sent by Herod tried in vain to learn from him the whereabouts of his son. Then, by command of Herod, they murdered this holy prophet, having stabbed him between the temple and the altar (MT 23: 35). Elizabeth died forty days after her husband, and Saint John, preserved by the Lord, dwelt in the wilderness until the day of his appearance to the nation of Israel.

On the Greek calendar, Saints Zachariah and Elizabeth are also commemorated on June 24, the Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist.

St John the Baptist: from conception to beheading

National Gallery

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THOMAS MERTON'S LAST DAY: DECEMBER 10th, 1968 by JIM FOREST

December 10, 2017, 6:34 am

≫ Next: December 12th, 2017: OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE, A WESTERN MIRACULOUS ICON.: not made by human hands

≪ Previous: DEC. 8th THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION and DEC. 10th, 2nd SUNDAY IN ADVENT

Thomas Merton (Fr Louis) and the Dalai Lama

my source: Many thanks to Jim Forest for sending this to me

winner of the International Thomas Merton Society’s “Louie” award:
The Root of War is Fear: Thomas Merton's Advice to Peacemakers
http://jimandnancyforest.com/2016/06/root-of-war-is-fear/

Thomas Merton died in Thailand on the 10th of December 1968. Here is an extract from Living With Wisdom, my biography of Merton, describing that day:

The last event of Thomas Merton’s life was participation in a conference of Trappist and Benedictine monks at the Sawang Kaniwat (Red Cross) Conference Center Samutprakan, 29 miles south of Bangkok. Merton arrived in the afternoon of December 9, 1968, and was housed on the ground floor of Cottage Two. The conference began the next day with a welcoming address from the Supreme Patriarch of Thai Buddhism. Events of the day included an evening discussion on marriage and celibacy.

Few of the monks got much sleep that night. A chorus of cats had come out to sing the night office on nearby roofs. Following crescendos of cat howling, those in adjacent rooms heard Merton’s laughter.[i]

Merton’s paper, “Marxism and Monastic Perspectives,” so much on his mind for many weeks, was presented the following morning. Merton, under orders from his abbot to avoid the press, was made nervous by Dutch and Italian television crews which had turned up to film his lecture.

One of the crucial issues confronting the monk, Merton pointed out, is what his position is and how he identifies himself in a world of revolution. This wasn’t simply a matter of how to survive an enemy who is intent on either destroying religion or converting those of religious convictions to atheism. Rather, it was a matter of understanding, beyond present models of Marxism and monasticism, the fundamental points of similarity and difference.

He recognized significant similarities. The monk, after all, “is essentially someone who takes up a critical attitude toward the world and its structures ... [saying] that the claims of the world are fraudulent.” In addition, both monk and Marxist share the idea that each should give according to his capacity and receive according to his need. But while the Marxist gives primary emphasis to the material and economic structures of life, seeing religious approaches as empty mystification, the monk is committed to bringing about a human transformation that begins at the level of consciousness.

“Instead of starting with matter itself and then moving up to a new structure, in which man will automatically develop a new consciousness, the traditional religions begin with the consciousness of the individual seeking to transform and liberate the truth in each person, with the idea that it will then communicate itself to others.”

This is emphatically the vocation of the monk “who seeks full realization ... [and] has come to experience the ground of his own being in such a way that he knows the secret of liberation and can somehow or other communicate it to others.” At the deepest level, the monk is teaching others how to live by love. For Christians, this is the discovery of Christ dwelling in all others.

Only with such love, Merton went on, is it possible to realize the economic ideal of each giving according to his ability and receiving according to his need. But in actuality, many Christians, including those in monastic communities, have not reached this level of love and realization. They have burdened their lives with too many false needs and these have blocked the way to full realization, the monk’s only reason for being.

Merton told a story he had heard from Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche of a Buddhist abbot fleeing from his Tibetan monastery before the advance of Chinese Communist troops. He encountered another monk leading a train of twenty-five yaks loaded with the treasures of the monastery and “essential” provisions. The abbot chose not to stay with the treasure or the treasurer; traveling light, he managed to cross the border into India, destitute but alive. The yak-tending monk, chained to his treasure, was overtaken by the soldiers and was never heard of again.

“We can ask ourselves,” Merton said, “if we are planning for the next twenty years to be travelling by a train of yaks.” Monasticism, after all, is not architecture or clothing or even rules of life. It is “total inner transformation. Let the yaks take care of themselves.” The monastic life thrives whenever there is a person “giving some kind of direction and instruction to a small group attempting to love God and reach union with him.”

Authentic monasticism cannot be extinguished. “It is imperishable. It represents an instinct of the human heart, and it represents a charism given by God to man. It cannot be rooted out, because it does not depend on man. It does not depend on cultural factors, and it does not depend on sociological or psychological factors. It is something much deeper.”[ii]

Finishing the talk, Merton suggested putting off questions until the evening session. He concluded with the words, “So I will disappear,” adding the suggestion that everyone have a Coke.

At about 3 p.m., Father François de Grunne, who had a room near Merton’s, heard a cry and what sounded like someone falling. He knocked on Merton’s door but there was no response. Shortly before 4 o’clock, Father de Grunne came down again to get the cottage key from Merton and to reassure himself that nothing was the matter. When there was no answer he looked through the louvres in the upper part of the door and saw Merton lying on the terrazzo floor. A standing fan had fallen on top of him. Father de Grunne tried to open the door but it was locked. With the help of others, the door was opened.

There was a smell of burned flesh. Merton, clearly dead, was lying on his back with the five-foot fan diagonally across his body. Dom Odo Haas, Abbot of Waekwan, tried to lift it and received an electric shock that jerked him sideways, holding him fast to the shaft of the fan until Father Celestine Say pulled the plug.

A long, raw third-degree burn about a hand’s width ran along the right side of Merton’s body almost to the groin. There were no marks on his hands. His face was bluish-red, eyes and mouth half open. There had been bleeding from the back of the head. The priests gave Merton absolution, then Dom Odo went to get the Abbot Primate of the Benedictines, Dom Rembert Weakland, who gave Merton extreme unction. A doctor arrived, Mother Edeltrud Weist, prioress of Taegu Convent in Korea. She checked for a pulse and eye reaction to light.

A police test of the fan showed that a “defective electric cord was installed inside its stand... The flow of electricity was strong enough to cause the death of a person if he touched the metal part.”

After Merton’s body was released to Dom Weakland, it was washed, then taken to the chapel. There was a prayer vigil throughout the night at the side of the body.

The next day Merton’s body was taken to the United States Air Force Base in Bangkok and from there flown back to the United States in company with dead bodies of Americans killed in Vietnam. From Oakland, California, it continued by civilian carrier, at last reaching the Abbey of Gethsemani the afternoon of December 17.

The monks at the abbey had been informed of the death by Dom Flavian during their mid-day meal on December 10. In the days that followed, The Seven Storey Mountain was read aloud during meals in the refectory. “Some of us saw a considerable irony in the fact that the refectory reader was Father Raymond Flanagan,” recalls Father Patrick Reardon, then a member of the community, “who had been carrying on a running feud with Father Louis for about as long as any of us could remember.”

One of the brothers drove a truck out to the hermitage of Dom James Fox to bring him back for the funeral. Dom James remarked that Merton “now knows more theology than any of us.” The brother responded, “Well, Reverend Father, he always did.”[iii]

Dom Flavian and Father John Eudes Bamberger identified the body at the undertakers in New Haven, where the casket was briefly opened. “I readily identified the body though it was already bloated and swollen considerably,” Father John Eudes wrote. “There was no doubt it was Father Louis.”

The casket arrived at the monastery only a couple of hours before the afternoon funeral Mass and was placed in the abbey basilica. Father Timothy Kelly, later to succeed Dom Flavian as abbot, and Father Patrick Reardon prayed the psalms over the body for the hour or more prior to the funeral.

The funeral Mass was composed by Father Chrysogonus Waddell. On the cover of the Liturgy booklet was a text from The Sign of Jonas: “I have always overshadowed Jonas with My Mercy.... Have you lost sight of me "Jonas My Child"? Mercy within mercy within mercy.” Part of the Book of Jonah was read aloud. At the end of the Mass, there was a reading from The Seven Storey Mountain, concluding with the book’s prophetic final sentence, “That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the burnt men.”

His brother monks buried Merton in their small cemetery next to the abbey church. Normally Trappists were buried without a casket. Merton was one of two exceptions. The other had been Dom Frederick Dunne, the abbot who had received Merton in 1941 and encouraged him to write. Dom Frederick had also died while travelling.

“A whole bunch of us grabbed shovels to fill in Father Louis’s grave at the end of the service,” Father Patrick recalled. “I remember Father Raymond going at it with the gusto he brought to every enterprise. Toward the end of the burial, it began to rain, so we were quite damp when we returned to the church.”[iv]

With the body came an official declaration of Merton’s effects, appraised in dollars. The items listed included these five:

1 Timex Watch $10.00

1 Pair Dark Glasses in Tortoise Frames Nil

1 Cistercian Leather Bound Breviary Nil

1 Rosary (broken) Nil

1 Small Icon on Wood of Virgin and Child Nil[v]

There was also the memory of Merton’s last words. Following the morning conference, Father de Grunne told Merton that a nun in the audience was annoyed that Merton had said nothing about converting people.

“What we are asked to do at present,” Merton responded, “is not so much to speak of Christ as to let him live in us so that people may find him by feeling how he lives in us.”

The icon Merton had with him contains its own last words, silent on one side, and on the back a brief extract from the Philokalia, written in Greek in Merton’s hand:

If we wish to please the true God and to be friends with the most blessed of friendships, let us present our spirit naked to God. Let us not draw into it anything of this present world — no art, no thought, no reasoning, no self-justification — even though we should possess all the wisdom of this world.[vi]

[i] Among various accounts of Merton’s last days, the most thorough that I know of is by Michael Mott; see The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, 561-68.
[ii] “Marxism and Monastic Perspectives,” Asian Journal, pp 326-43.
[iii] Story included in an e-mail from Father Patrick Reardon dated September 25, 2007.
[iv] According to the memory of Brother Patrick Hart, the rain turned to sleet. He recalls the way it was hitting and bouncing off the coffin.
[v] The list of personal effects did not include Merton’s journals, camera, or the eight relics of saints that he had carried with him throughout his final journey. The PanAm docket for the later return of other personal effects, chiefly books, accounted for four packages weighing 36 kilos.
[vi] St John of Karpathos, from section 49 of “For the Encouragement of the Monks in India,” included in The Philokalia: The Complete Text, compiled by St Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St Makarios of Corinth, translated by G.E.H Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware, Volume One, p 309-10 (London: Faber & Faber, 1979).

new book:
At Play in the Lions' Den: a biography and memoir of Daniel Berrigan
http://jimandnancyforest.com/2017/06/daniel-berrigan-bio/

books in print: http://jimandnancyforest.com/books/
web site: https://www.jimandnancyforest.com
photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/albums/

Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/jimforest

↧

December 12th, 2017: OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE, A WESTERN MIRACULOUS ICON.: not made by human hands

December 11, 2017, 4:54 am

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Misa Criolla for Our Lady of Guadalupe, 2014.

from the Vatican

4 Literally Awesome Facts About Our Lady of Guadalupe
Dec 11, 2014 | Posted byMatthew Sewell

my source: ChurchPOP

“Am I not here, I, who am your mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, the crossing of my arms? Am I not the source of all your joy? What more do you need? Let nothing else worry you, disturb you.” – The Virgin Mary, to St. Juan Diego at Tepeyac Hill

The great Bill Engvall once lamented that we use the word “awesome” way too casually. He said, “Webster’s dictionary defines awesome as “anything that leaves you in awe and wonder.” Like winning the lottery … twice. That would be awesome. Getting a phone call from the IRS saying you’ve been audited and they owe you $50,000. That would be awesome.”

Know what else would be awesome?

Seeing an apparition of Mary, then having her grow roses in the middle of winter to prove it to the archbishop, then converting 9 million Aztecs within seven years.

That would be….wait…that was awesome.

On December 12 of each year, the Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, marking the day when, in 1531, the Blessed Mother appeared in Mexico to a 57-year old peasant named Juan Diego. According to the earliest reliable account of the story, Juan Diego was walking near what is now Mexico City (Tepeyac Hill) when he came upon an apparition of a “Maiden” who he soon came to recognize as the Virgin Mary. In trying to convince the archbishop of what he had seen, Juan Diego eventually was asked for a sign to prove what he had seen.

Upon returning to Mary and sharing this with her, Juan Diego was instructed to climb to the top of the hill to gather flowers to bring back to the bishop. Reaching the crest of the hill, Juan Diego found Castilian roses, which were neither in season nor native to the region. The Blessed Mother arranged the flowers herself in Juan’s tilma (a burlap-type cloak) and instructed him to open the cloak only upon return to the bishop.

When Juan Diego arrived back at the bishop’s residence and opened his cloak, the flowers fell to the floor and left on the surface of the tilma was the image that’s come to be known as “Our Lady of Guadalupe”.

What happened next is history. The image became the wellspring of a conversion movement the likes of which have rarely been seen before or since. The fact that the Virgin Mother not only spoke to Juan Diego in his native language, but appeared to be wearing the dress of an Aztec princess sparked millions of conversions to the Catholic faith in just under seven years. The shrine that was subsequently built on the spot, where the original tilma can still be seen, remains one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in the world.

But this post isn’t about the whole apparition story so much as it is about the tilma, Juan Diego’s cloak, on which the image of the Blessed Mother was imprinted. In the centuries following the event, some amazing and unexplainable qualities have been discovered about it.

Here’s four (literally) awesome facts about the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe:

1. It has qualities that are humanly impossible to replicate.

Made primarily of cactus fibres, a tilma was typical and of very poor quality and had a rough surface, making it difficult enough to wear, much less to paint a lasting image on it. Nevertheless, the image remains, and scientists who have studied the image insist there was no technique used beforehand to treat the surface. The surface bearing the image is reportedly like silk to the touch, while the unused portion of the tilma remains coarse.

What’s more, experts in infrared photography, studying the tilma in the late 1970s, determined that there were no brush strokes (none!), as if the image was slapped onto the surface all at once, and it was discovered by Dr. Phillip Callahan, a biophysicist at the University of Florida, that the difference of appearance with its texturing and coloration of Our Lady’s skin up close compared to a small distance away is impossible to recreate:

Such a technique would be an impossible accomplishment in human hands. It often occurs in nature, however, in the colouring of bird feathers and butterfly scales, and on the elytra of brightly coloured beetles … By slowly backing away from the painting, to a distance where the pigment and surface sculpturing blend together, the overwhelming beauty of the olive-coloured Madonna emerges as if by magic.

This, along with an iridescent quality of slightly changing colours depending on the angle at which a person looks and the fact that the colouration in the image was determined to have no animal or mineral elements (synthetic colorings didn’t exist in 1531), provide a lot of seemingly unanswerable questions.

That’s awesome.

2. People say it’s just a painting, yet the tilma has outlived them all, in time and in quality.

One of the first things sceptics say about the image is that it somehow has to be a forgery or a fraud, but every time an attempt has been made to replicate the image, the original never seems to fade, while its duplicates have deteriorated over a short time. Miguel Cabrera, an artist in the mid-18th Century who produced three of the best-known copies (one for the archbishop, one for the Pope, one for himself for later copies) once wrote about the difficulty of recreating the image even on the best surfaces:

I believe that the most talented and careful painter, if he sets himself to copy this Sacred Image on a canvas of this poor quality, without using sizing, and attempting to imitate the four media employed, would at last after great and wearisome travail, admit that he had not succeeded. And this can be clearly verified in the numerous copies that have been made with the benefit of varnish, on the most carefully prepared canvases, and using only one medium, oil, which offers the greatest facility;

Dr. Adolfo Orozco, a researcher and physicist at the National University of Mexico, spoke in 2009 about the remarkable preservation of the tilma compared to its numerous copies. One copy created in 1789 was painted on a similar surface with the best techniques available at the time, then encased in glass and stored next to the tilma. It looked beautiful when painted, but not eight years passed before the hot & humid climate of Mexico caused the copy to be discarded due to faded colours and fraying, broken threads.

However, Dr. Orozco said, no scientific explanation is possible for the fact that, “the original Tilma was exposed for approximately 116 years without any kind of protection, receiving all the infrared and ultraviolet radiation from the tens of thousands of candles near it and exposed to the humid and salty air around the temple.”

That’s awesome.

3. The tilma has shown characteristics startlingly like a living human body.

a documentary on the scientific evidence

This is where it gets really crazy. In 1979, when Dr. Callahan was analyzing the tilma using infrared technology, he apparently also discovered that the tilma maintains a constant temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (36.6-37 deg. Celsius), the same as that of a living person.

When Dr Carlos Fernandez de Castillo, a Mexican gynaecologist, examined the tilma, he first noticed a four-petaled flower over what was Mary’s womb. The flower, to the Aztecs, was called the Nahui Ollin and was the symbol of the sun, as well as a symbol of plenitude. Upon further examination, Dr Castillo concluded that the dimensions of Our Lady’s body in the image were that of an expectant mother due quite soon (Dec. 9, the day of the unveiling, is barely two weeks from Christmas…).

Finally, one of the most common attributions and reported discoveries lie with the Virgin’s eyes in the image. When Dr. Jose Alte Tonsmann, a Peruvian ophthalmologist, conducted a study, one of his tests involved examining the eyes at 2,500 times magnification. With the images of her magnified eyes, the scientist was reportedly able to identify as many as 13 individuals in both eyes at different proportions, just as the human eye would reflect an image. It appeared to be a snapshot of the very moment Juan Diego unfurled his tilma before the archbishop.

That’s awesome.

4. It appears to be virtually indestructible.

Two distinct events have happened involving the tilma over the centuries, one occurring in 1785 and the other in 1921.

In 1785, a worker was cleaning the glass encasement of the image when he accidentally spilled 50% nitric acid solvent onto a large portion of the image itself. The image and the rest of the tilma, which should have been eaten away almost instantly by the spill, reportedly self-restored over the ensuing 30 days, and remains unscathed to this day aside from small stains on the parts not bearing the image.

In 1921, an anti-clerical activist hid a bomb containing 29 sticks of dynamite in a pot of roses and placed it before the image inside the Basilica at Guadalupe. When the bomb exploded, most everything from the marble altar rail & floor just feet away from the blast, to windows 150 meters away were broken…yet the image and the glass surrounding it remained untouched. The only damage that occurred in close proximity to the tilma was a hefty brass crucifix, which was twisted and bent back by the blast.

the cross bent by an explosion near the tilma of Guadalupe

That’s awesome.

the importance of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Pope Francis

Bishop R. Barron on Our Lady of Guadalupe

↧

THOMAS MERTON AND HENRI NOUWEN: WESTERN EXPLORERS OF THE CHRISTIAN EAST by Jim Forest

December 12, 2017, 6:05 pm

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≪ Previous: December 12th, 2017: OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE, A WESTERN MIRACULOUS ICON.: not made by human hands

mosaic at the church of Sts Cosmas & Damian in Rome

At different periods of my life, Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen were spiritual parents to me. Both were excellent confessors and counsellors. Both made it possible for me to share parts of myself that were painful, awkward and embarrassing. Each helped me survive hard times and survive close encounters with despair. So I say at the beginning that whatever light I can shine on them is not the result simply of studying their writing, identifying major themes, trying to see where their thoughts converge or diverge, or analyzing them as if I were studying them through a telescope. They were both people who played — indeed still play — a significant role in my life.

For all their differences, they had a great deal in common. Both were Europeans who made their home in North America. Both lived a life that centred in the Eucharist. Both were Catholic priests. Both were deeply responsive to the suffering of others. Both were involved in opposition to war, racism and social injustice, for which they were sometimes regarded as liberals or even radicals, yet both took a dim view of popular political ideologies, for which they were sometimes regarded as conservatives. Liberal? Conservative? Neither label fits.

Both were restless, searching men.

Thomas Merton entered the limelight after the publication of his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. In it, he recounts one of the hardest decisions he faced as a young man — whether to become a monk or to be a full-time member of a community of hospitality, Friendship House, in Harlem. He had been volunteering at Friendship House while teaching at St. Bonaventure’s University. Even after deciding on the monastic path, a part of Merton continued to feel a powerful connection with those who centred themselves in the works of mercy, especially the Catholic Worker movement that Dorothy Day had founded.

Once grafted into monastic life at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, he seemed to say there was no better place on earth to be than his contemplative outpost in rural Kentucky. But in fact it wasn’t easy for him to maintain stability. Some of Merton’s letters in later years almost catch fire with complaints about the shortcoming of life in his chosen monastery. On several occasions, Merton sought permission to leave Gethsemani with the idea of sharing in the life of a poorer, smaller, more primitive monastery either in Latin America or some other part of the world. Yet one of the remarkable achievements of his life was how steadfast he was in his monastic; he remained a monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani from 1941 until his death his in 1968. Still, there was a basic restlessness. It is somehow appropriate that he should die while on pilgrimage on the other side of the planet while attending a monastic conference in Thailand after weeks of travel in India and Sri Lanka.

Henri had no monastic vows to limit his travels nor was his bishop in Utrecht inclined to rein him in. His restlessness brought him from Holland to America. He taught at Notre Dame, then Yale, then Harvard, but could not bring himself to stay at any of these distinguished institutions. Searching for community, he was for an extended period a temporary brother at a Trappist monastery, but found monastic life, though it helped clear his mind and re-center him, wasn’t what he was searching for. He had a sabbatical in Latin America and for a time thought he was perhaps called to remain there, but then decided this also wasn’t his calling. He finally found a home for himself not in academia or monastic life but with the L’Arche community in Canada — not among the best and the brightest but the mentally disadvantaged plus their downwardly-mobile assistants. But even there he was often on the move.

Like Merton, Henri died while traveling — two heart attacks in his homeland, Holland, while en route to Russia where he intended to make a film about Rembrandt’s painting of the Return of the Prodigal Son.

There are still other Merton-Nouwen similarities:

Both Merton and Nouwen produced a flood of books, many of which refuse to go out-of-print. Few writers on religious life have been so widely read or so often translated into other languages as these two. Thanks to their writings, both still have a huge influence on the lives of many people decades after their deaths. Both had a remarkable gift for communicating to others the fact that to follow Christ is a journey of endless pilgrimage.

Both of them died relatively young. Merton age 53, Henri at 64.

Another commonality: They had a shared appreciation of the Orthodox Church and deep distress regarding the Great Schism. Both felt that the healing of East-West divisions within Christianity could be assisted by a process of East-West integration in one’s spiritual life. As Merton put this in one of his journal-based books, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander:

If I can unite in myself the thought and devotion of Eastern and Western Christen-dom, the Greek and the Latin Fathers, the Russian and the Spanish mystics, I can prepare in myself the reunion of divided Chris¬tians. From that secret and unspoken unity in myself can eventually come a visible and manifest unity of all Christians. If we want to bring together what is divided, we cannot do so by imposing one division upon the other. If we do this, the union is not Christian. It is political and doomed to furth¬er conflict. We must contain all the divided worlds in ourselves and transcend them in Christ.

Both of them had a perceptive appreciation of icons as focal points of prayer and contemplation and as non-verbal theological declarations. It’s this commonality I’d like to focus on today. Merton and Nouwen have played a major role in this quiet movement of rediscovering icons and their role both in private and communal prayer. It is partly thanks to the two of them that, in recent years, one often finds icons — an art form chiefly associated with Orthodox Christianity — in Catholic and even Protestant churches as well as in retreat centers, monasteries, homes and offices.

Before going further, let me explain how these two gifted men enter my life.

My contact with Merton started in the summer of 1961 not long after I had been granted an early discharge from the U.S. Navy as a conscientious objector and had joined the Catholic Worker community in New York City, a house of hospitality mainly for homeless street people. At the time I had the idea that the Catholic Worker would be a way station en route to the monastery, a vocational aspiration that had been in part nurtured by reading Merton’s autobiography.

I was astonished to discover that Dorothy Day, leader of the Catholic Worker, was one of Merton’s correspondents. Aware I was a Merton reader, she shared with me his letters to her. It was Dorothy who urged me, indeed instructed me, to write to Merton. To my surprise, he responded. The first letter led to many more. From 1961 until his death in 1968 I wrote to Merton often, and he to me, perhaps on average a letter per month in both directions. In The Hidden Ground of Love, an anthology of Merton letters, his letters to me take up sixty pages. There were not only letters from him, but cards and copies of manuscripts. There were also occasional packages — I recall a box of monastery-made cheese with a gift card signed “Uncle Louie and the boys.” (In monastic life, Merton was Father Louis.) I also had two visits with Merton at the monastery, one early in 1962, another late in 1964.

It was Merton who introduced me to icons. In the summer or fall of 1962 a postcard came, the image side of which I look back on as quite significant but at the time I regarded in vaguely negative terms: a photo of a medieval Russian icon — Mary with the child Jesus in her arms. Jesus, though infant-sized, looked more like a miniature man. It seemed to me formal, lifeless and somehow even flatter than the postcard that bore the image. Compared to the masterpieces of the Renaissance, this sort of painting seemed to me, at best, something left over from the kindergarten of art history. Years later, when I had reason to make a complete set of photocopies of all Merton’s notes and letters to me, I didn’t bother to photocopy the image side of this or any of the other icon postcards he had sent me. I assumed that Merton had no more taste for this kind of primitive Christian art than I did. I imagined some donor had given the monastery a box of icon postcards which Merton was using in the spirit of voluntary poverty.

It was only years after his death, in writing a biography of Merton, Living With Wisdom, that it finally dawned on me how crucial a role icons had played in Merton’s life and conversion and realized that no one could have been happier in sending an icon photo to friends than Merton.

In fact I should have been aware of this side of Merton even before I knew him personally. It’s something he writes about in The Seven Storey Mountain, when he describes one of the catastrophes of his unsettled childhood, his father’s death when Tom was a student at Oakham, a residential high school in rural England. Owen Merton, on the edge of significant recogniton as an artist, was suffering from a brain tumor that produced a large lump on his head that made him unable to speak. Tom, fifteen years old, would occasionally go down to London and sit in anguished silence next to his father’s bed in Middlesex Hospital. Gazing into his father’s eyes, he must have thought with bitterness of his mother’s death from cancer ten years earlier.

Merton could see no meaning in what was happening to his father, whose misshapen head seemed to him like “a raw wound for which there was no adequate relief.” Now on the verge of becoming an orphan, he responded with anger to the religious platitudes he heard from the chaplain of his public school, Oakham. Clearly there was no “loving God.” Clearly life had no meaning. His patents’ fate was proof of that. “You had to take it like an animal,” he wrote in his autobiography. The only lesson he could draw from his parents’ fate was to avoid as much pain as possible and take what pleasure you could out of life. At chapel services at his school, Merton would no longer join in reciting the Creed. “I believe in nothing” was his anti-creed at this point in his life.

Yet Owen Merton had another view of his own suffering which he managed to communicate to his son through drawings, the only “last word” he could manage in his silenced condition. Shortly before Owen’s death, Tom came to see his father in his hospital room and, to his bewilderment, found the bed littered with drawings of “Byzantine-looking saints with beards and great halos.” In a word, drawings of icons. The younger Merton didn’t know what to make of them. He had no eye for icons at the time. He then regarded Byzantine art, he confessed in an unpublished autobiographical novel, The Labyrinth, as “clumsy and ugly and brutally stupid.”

Owen Merton died early in January 1931, days before Tom’s sixteenth birthday. Two years passed. In 1933, having finished his studies at Oakham and with more than half a year to fill before entering Clare College in Cambridge in September, Merton set off for an extended European holiday, a one man Grand Tour with an extended visit to Italy the main event. He hiked along the Mediterranean coast of France, then took the train into Italy: first Genoa, then Florence, finally Rome.

Once in Rome, a Baedeker guidebook in hand, he spent days following the main tourist track, but the big attractions, from the Roman Forum to St. Peter’s Basilica, left him either yawning or annoyed. The architecture, statuary and painting of the Roman Empire, the Renaissance and the Counter-Reformation struck him as vapid and melodramatic. “It was so evident, merely from the masses of stone and brick that still represented the palaces and temples and baths, that imperial Rome must have been one of the most revolting and ugly and depressing cities the world has ever seen,” Merton wrote in The Seven Storey Mountain. It seemed to him that the best one could say of ancient Rome was that it would have been an ideal set for a Cecil B. DeMille film epic with a cast of thousands.

Perhaps we would never have heard of Thomas Merton had it not been for what happened when he made his way from the guidebook’s four-star attractions to those with three or two stars, or even one, and thus came to know some of Rome’s most ancient churches — Cosmas and Damian, San Clemente, Santa Sabina, Santa Maria Maggiore, the Lateran, Santa Costanza, Santa Maria in Trastevere, San Prassede and others. These moved him in an unexpected and extraordinary way. On the walls of many of these churches he was meeting his father’s deathbed drawings.

These were all churches of sober architecture whose main decorations were mosaic icons, images of profound stillness, bold lines, vibrant colors and quiet intensity that have little in common with the more theatrical art that was eventually to take over in Rome. They house some of the best surviving examples of the art of Christianity’s first millennium. In Santa Maria Maggiore, two lengthy tiers of mosaic icons date from the fifth century.

Merton’s first such encounter with ancient Christian art was with a fresco in a ruined chapel. Later he discovered a large mosaic over the altar at Cosmas and Damian of Christ coming in judgment with a fiery glow in the clouds beneath his feet against a vivid blue background. This was not at all the gravity-free, effete Jesus that he had so often encountered in art of the baroque period down to the Pre-Raphaelites.

“I was fascinated by these Byzantine mosaics,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I began to haunt the churches where they were to be found, and, as an indirect consequence, all the other churches that were more or less of the same period. And thus without knowing anything about it, I became a pilgrim.”

The excited memory of those days of eager discovery was still fresh when he was writing The Seven Storey Mountain fifteen years later:

What a thing it was to come upon the genius of an art full of spiritual vitality and earnestness and power — an art that was tremendously serious and alive and eloquent and urgent in all that it had to say …. [an art] without pretentiousness, without fakery, that had nothing theatrical about it. Its solemnity was made all the more astounding by its simplicity … and by its subservience to higher ends, architectural, liturgical and spiritual ends which I could not even begin to understand, but which I could not avoid guessing, since the nature of the mosaics themselves and their position and everything about them proclaimed it aloud.

Through these icons, he began to understand, not simply who Christ was but to experience who Christ is. In this crucial section of his autobiography, the crescendo come in two intense paragraphs that read more like a litany than ordinary prose:

And now for the first time in my whole life I began to find out something of whom this Person was that men call Christ. It was obscure but it was a true knowledge of Him, in some sense, truer than I know and truer than I would admit. But it was in Rome that my conception of Christ was formed. It was there I first saw Him, Whom I now serve as my King, and Who owns and rules my life.

It is the Christ of the Apocalypse, the Christ of the Martyrs, the Christ of the Fathers. It is the Christ of Saint John, and of Saint Paul, and of St. Augustine and St. Jerome and all the Fathers — and of the Desert Fathers. It is Christ God, Christ King.

The intensity of the experiences reflected in this powerful litany may be due in part to the fact that Merton was alone in Rome. There is something about solitary, unmediated, face-to-face contact that can increase one’s vulnerability to a work of art. There is no schedule to keep, no guide or professor to explain, no bus to board in fifteen minutes, no idle chatter with people more interested in menus than mosaics.

Eager to decipher the iconographic images that so arrested his eyes, Merton put aside the D.H. Lawrence novels that had weighed down his rucksack and bought a Bible. “I read more and more of the Gospels,” he recalled, “and my love for the old churches and their mosaics grew from day to day.”

The attraction of icons wasn’t simply due to Merton’s newly-gained appreciation of the aesthetics of iconography but to a profound sense of peace he experienced within the walls of churches graced with such imagery. He had, he said, “a deep and strong conviction that I belonged there.”

Merton desperately wanted to pray, to light a candle, to kneel down, to pray with his body as well as his mind, but found the prospect of publicly kneeling in a church alarming and, even worse, embarrassing. Finally one morning he climbed to the top of the Aventine Hill on the east side of the Tiber, crowned by the fifth century church of Santa Sabina, one of the oldest and least spoiled churches in Rome. Once inside, he found he could no longer play the guidebook-studying tourist. “Although the church was almost empty,” he later wrote, “I walked across the stone floor mortally afraid that a poor devout old Italian woman was following me with suspicious eyes.” He knelt down at the altar rail and, with tears, recited the Our Father over and over again.

At age eighteen, Merton had undergone, without realizing exactly what it was, a mystical experience: that is an encounter with the living Christ. From that moment he had something against which to measure everything, whether himself or religious art or the Church in history. He knew what was phony, not because of some theory but because of an experience of Christ that, in his case, had been mediated through iconography.

The pilgrimage that followed was nothing like an arrow’s direct flight to faith, baptism and the Church. The coming winter at Clare College was to prove a disastrous time in his life, the “nadir of winter darkness,” as he put it in Seven Storey Mountain. He did more drinking than studying and seems to have fathered an illegitimate child. His guardian in London wanted no further responsibility for Owen Merton’s wayward son and sent him packing to his grandparents in America.

Four years after arriving in New York, while a student at Columbia, Merton was received into the Catholic Church. Three years later, in December 1941, he arrived at the Trappist monastic community of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky. Yet his encounter with icons was far from finished.

Of the many books Merton wrote during his years at the Abbey of Gethsemani, it is striking to discover that only one of them got as far as being set in type and yet wasn’t published. The title was Art and Worship. It was to have gone to press in 1959. The galleys sheets survive at the Thomas Merton Center in Louisville. Unfortunately his publisher had second thoughts about the project, fearing the book would damage Merton’s reputation.

What Merton had hoped to do with his small book was to sensitize his readers to an appreciation of iconography, a tradition which in the West, at least, had been abandoned since the Renaissance and was all but forgotten. “It is the task of the iconographer,” he declared in Art and Worship, “to open our eyes to the actual presence of the Kingdom in the world, and to remind us that though we see nothing of its splendid liturgy, we are, if we believe in Christ the Redeemer, in fact living and worshipping as ‘fellow citizens of the angels and saints, built upon the chief cornerstone with Christ’.”

An art expert who had read galleys of the book convinced the publisher that such an opinion was disconcertingly dated. The iconoclastic Sixties were about to unfold, but even in the Fifties nothing could have been more out-of-fashion than icons.

Merton reluctantly gave up on the book, yet he was never weaned of his love of this art form. Occasionally he returned to the topic of icons in letters. Only months before his death, he was in correspondence about icons with a Quaker friend, June Yungblut, in Atlanta. He confessed to her that books which presented Jesus as simply one of history’s prophetic figures left him cold. He was, he wrote to her, “hung up in a very traditional Christology.” He had no interest in a Christ who was merely a great teacher who possessed “a little flash of the light.” His Christ, he told her, was “the Christ of the Byzantine icons.”

June was puzzled. In a letter sent to her in March 1968, Merton explained what he meant by the “Christ of the Byzantine icons.” The whole tradition of iconography, he said,

represents a traditional experience formulated in a theology of light, the icon being a kind of sacramental medium for the illumination and awareness of the glory of Christ within us. … What one ‘sees’ in prayer before an icon is not an external representation of a historical person, but an interior presence in light, which is the glory of the transfigured Christ, the experience of which is transmitted in faith from generation to generation by those who have “seen,” from the Apostles on down. … So when I say that my Christ is the Christ of the icons, I mean that he is reached not through any scientific study but through direct faith and the mediation of the liturgy, art, worship, prayer, theology of light, etc., that is all bound up with the Russian and Greek tradition.

We come upon a final clue to the place icons had in his inner life when we consider the short list of personal effects that were returned with his body when it was flown back to the monastery from Thailand. Among the items was “1 Small Icon on Wood of Virgin and Child.”

Now what about the place of icons in the life of Henri Nouwen?

First, an icon-related aside: A few days after his death, I learned from his brother Laurens that, while on his final trip, Henri had been reading page proofs of a book of mine, Praying With Icons. A friend teased me that my writing had done Henri in, but then kidly reassured me that it was Henri’s ultra-vulnerable heart that was to blame. “If anyone had a heart that wasn’t made of stainless steel,” she said, “it was Henri Nouwen.”

Henri managed not only to write but to publish a book on icons that Merton would have loved: Behold the Beauty of the Lord. This thin volume remains among the best introductions to icons — very accessible, not at all technical, with a directness and sobriety that one can only describe as icon-like. With his usual immediacy, Henri explains how one icon and then several others gained a place in his life. He shares with his readers what he had so far learned from long periods of living with four of them: St. Andrei Rublev’s “Holy Trinity” icon, an icon of Mary holding the Christ child in her arms, an icon of the face of Christ (also by Rublev), and finally an icon of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles at Pentecost.

Of course, Henri had seen icons in art history books, museums, churches and monasteries many times, but it wasn’t until his first visit to the L’Arche community in Trosly, France, in 1983 that he began to see icons with wide-open eyes. Barbara Swanekamp, assistant to L’Arche founder Jean Vanier, had put a reproduction of Rublev’s icon of the Holy Trinity on the table of the room where Henri would be staying. “After gazing for many weeks at the icon,” Henri noted in Behold the Beauty of the Lord, “I felt a deep urge to write down what I had gradually learned to see.”

Those of you who knew Henri or are familiar with him through his books know that he was profoundly sensitive to the visual arts. It was a family trait. In the introduction to his book on icons, he remembers a Chagall painting his parents had purchased in Paris early in their marriage when Chagall was little known — a watercolor of a vase filled with flowers placed on a sunlit window ledge, a simple yet radiant work that made one aware of God’s silent energy. I recall seeing it when Henri brought me with him to stay overnight at his father’s house. There were many other beautiful works of art in the house — the house was a small museum of fine art — but the Chagall watercolor stood out from the rest and still remains a fresh memory. “The flowers of Chagall,” Henri writes, “come to mind as I wondered why those four icons have become so important to me.”

The connection doesn’t surprise me. Chagall was deeply influenced by iconography. In some of his paintings the link is explicit, but it is always there in more subtle ways. Chagall was never a slave to the rules of perspective or to the physics of gravity in his work. People and animals fly. Fiddlers play on rooftops. Husbands and wives embrace while floating in the kitchen. There is no vanishing point. Like an iconographer, Chagall made his canvases windows opening onto the invisible world and the life of the soul. It may be that the Chagall painting Henri grew up with helped awaken in him a capacity to appreciate icons and understand their special language.

I remember Henri coming to visit us in Holland following his stay at Trosly, a year or two before publication of Behold the Beauty of the Lord. He was very excited about the gift he had brought with him, a reproduction of the Holy Trinity icon he had purchased that morning at a shop in Paris. Though he had not yet seen the actual icon — it is in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow — yet he was confidant that the print came as close to the real thing as print technology would allow.

Though I had seen icons from time to time, no icons or icon prints were hanging in our house. Until that day I had taken only a meager interest in them. I hadn’t yet written Living With Wisdom, still less Praying With Icons. Merton’s enthusiasm for icons was still a mystery to me. It wasn’t until Henri’s visit that finally I began to see them with a similar excitement.

I vividly recall sitting at Henri’s side as he explored, with childlike enthusiasm, every detail of the Holy Trinity icon. It was, he explained, inspired by Abraham and Sara’s hospitality to the mysterious guests they received under the oak of Mamre, a story told in Genesis. Throughout the Genesis account, the three angelic guests act in perfect unity and speak with one voice. They are both guests, plural, and also a guest, singular; they are both one and three. It’s the first biblical hint of the Holy Trinity. Henri remarked on the utterly submissive, sister-like faces of the three angelic figures, each inclined toward the other in a silent dialogue of self-giving love. He commented on their profound stillness, yet their warmth and vitality. Then we looked at the colours Andrei Rublev had chosen, though I later discovered that even the best reproduction can only hint at what Rublev had actually achieved, as I was to see for myself not long afterwards when I first visited the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. The colours are thinly layered — their transparency cannot be reproduced in photography. Henri traced the circle of perfect unity that subtly, invisibly contains the three angels. Then he traced a cross within the circle and then the trinitarian triangle it also contained. All this quiet geometry reveals key elements of the icon’s theology, yet none of it is heavy-handed. Then there is the table around which the three figures are placed — the eucharistic altar with a golden chalice. Above the three figures are three objects: a house with an open door, a tree, and a mountain. The open-doored building on the upper left is both the Church and a house of hospitality. For Henri, the Holy Trinity icon was an icon of “the house of love” — the Church as God intends it to be, the doors of which are never close and which need no locks. The tree in the centre is the Tree of Life and also the Life-giving Cross. The mountain is the both Mount Sinai and the Mount of the Beatitudes.

Henri also spoke about the history of the icon, how Rublev had painted it as the principal icon for the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity at a monastery north of Moscow where the body of one of Russia’s most beloved saints, St. Sergius of Radonezh, had been placed. St. Sergius was a monk, woodworker and toymaker who lived in the 14th Century. He left no writings. The only words that come down to us from St. Sergius are these: “The contemplation of the Holy Trinity destroys all enmity.” Through this icon, placed in a iconostasis adjacent to the resting place of St. Sergius, Rublev sought to provide the opportunity for the contemplation of the Holy Trinity.

It may have been from Henri that I first heard the comment of one of the martyrs of the Soviet era, the physicist, mathematician, theologian and priest, Pavel Florensky, who wrote: “Because of the absolute beauty of Rublev’s Holy Trinity icon, we know that God exists.” Henri understood this way of thinking — beauty bears witness to the existence of God. Again and again, he found works of art that were windows to heaven. One thinks of the place in Henri’s life of Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son and many paintings by Van Gogh.

Henri linked his response to icons with the question: “What do we really choose to see?” In Behold the Beauty of the Lord, Henri stresses that it is a matter of enormous importance what we look it and how we look at it. He writes:

It makes a great difference whether we see a flower or a snake, a gentle smile or menacing teeth, a dancing couple or a hostile crowd. We do have a choice. Just as we are responsible for what we eat, so we are responsible for what we see. It is easy to become a victim of the vast array of visual stimuli surrounding us. The “powers and principalities” control many of our daily images. Posters, billboards, television, videos, movies and store windows continuously assault our eyes and inscribe their images upon our memories. We do not have to be passive victims of a world that wants to entertain and distract us. We can make decisions and choices. A spiritual life in the midst of our energy-draining society requires us to take conscious steps to safeguard that inner space where we can keep our eyes fixed on the beauty of the Lord.

Henri proposed a theology of seeing, or gazing, the verb he preferred. To really see something beautiful, such as a well-painted icon, so that its beauty becomes a sacramental reality, one has to do much more than a glance.

For both Merton and Nouwen, the icon is the primary visual art of the Church. Nor could they see icons as meaningful apart from the Church. The icon becomes a rootless plant when it becomes simply a “work of art,” a “collector’s item,” an aesthetic object. For both Merton and Nouwen, icons were intimately connected with eucharistic life and daily prayer. They saw icons as aids to prayer.

In both their lives there was a realization that the icon, far from being merely an artistic image that directs our attention away from the world we live in with all its agonies, is a school of seeing. It is meant to help reshape the way we see and relate to other people. The icon — the Greek word for image — is a reminder that each person, no matter how damaged in his or her life, is a bearer of God’s image and, like those whom we regard as saints, has the potential to reclaim the lost likeness.

It is one thing to believe intellectually that each person is made in the image of God, no less than Adam and Eve, and yet another to actively seek that image and to relate to the other in ways that bear witness to that awareness. It’s the most basic and challenging task that’s given to us. Each of us is an icon — each of us bears the image, the icon, of God, even if we hide it well. Nothing is more basic than the connection between spiritual life and our response to our neighbor, even when that neighbor is an enemy. If the burning of icons and the vandalizing of mosaics distresses us, how much more should be horror-struck at the destruction of human beings, icons bearers made by God?

Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton: two contemplative men with a great deal in common. Both were explorers of eastern Christianity. Both were drawn to icons both on wood and in flesh. Both never ceased trying to open their eyes a little bit wider. May they encourage us to do the same.

A Call to Conference.

"Nouwen, Merton, and the discipline and language of spirituality."

by Fr Ron Rolheiser

Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen

Western Explorers of the Christian East

by Jim Forest

Pure and Fresh Seeing: Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton as Sacred Disrupters

by Michael Higgins

The Home Where I Have Never Been:

The Restless Journeys of Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen

by Robert Ellsberg

western theology looks east

* * *

↧

ROMAN CATHOLIC RADICALS AND ORTHODOXY by Deacon Steve Hayes from South Africa

December 13, 2017, 7:52 am

≫ Next: REFLECTIONS ON THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT byPope Benedict XVI during his Pontificate

≪ Previous: THOMAS MERTON AND HENRI NOUWEN: WESTERN EXPLORERS OF THE CHRISTIAN EAST by Jim Forest

Thanks, once more, to Jim Forest for sending me this article.

Dan Berrigan's poem 'Some'

Jim Forest has just written a biography of a Jesuit priest, Daniel Berrigan, who died last year.
Why would an Orthodox Christian write a biography of a radical Roman Catholic priest, and why would an Orthodox Christian want to read such a thing? Jim Forest himself gives an answer to that specific question here: FATHER DANIEL BERRIGAN, SJ: WHY SHOULD AN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN BE INTERESTED IN HIM? by Jim Forest |

ORTHODOXY IN DIALOGUE:

“And just what is it,” my friend asked, “that was so Christ-revealing about Berrigan’s life?”

When he died last year, age 94, obituaries focused on the anti-war aspects of Berrigan’s life: he was eighteen months in prison for burning draft records in a protest against conscription of the young into the Vietnam War; then there was a later event in which he was one of eight people who hammered on the nose cone of a nuclear-armed missile. No one has kept count of his numerous brief stays in jail for other acts of war protest. He was handcuffed more than a hundred times.

But it raises other wider questions too.

For the last few years the “mainstream” media have focused on the phenomenon of the “religious right”, but fifty years ago the focus was more on the “religious left”, exemplified by people like Daniel Berrigan, protesting against the Vietnam War.

I first learned of Daniel Berrigan in 1969, through a radical Christian magazine called The Catonsville Roadrunner. The magazine was inspired by the actions of Daniel Berrigan and his brother Philip, who with several others had broken into an office containing records of military conscription and publicly burnt them. It became a legendary act of Christian civil disobedience

Ikon magazine cover, designed by Hugh Pawsey,
my fellow student at St Chad’s College

Jim Forest himself was involved in a similar act of civil disobedience in Milwaukee, for which he was jailed.Those were interesting times, the late 1960s and early 1970s, the age of hippies and moon landings and radical Christian protests. Inspired by The Catonsville Roadrunner I and a group of friends launched our own radical Christian magazine in South Africa, called Ikon.

So I want to turn Jim Forest’s question around. Not “Why should Orthodox Christians be interested in the life of a Jesuit priest like Daniel Berrigan?” but why did so many people involved in the radical Christian scene of the late 1960s become interested in Orthodoxy?

One factor may have been that at that time Orthodoxy was peculiarly powerless.

In 1968 I visited St Sergius Orthodox Church in Paris, and there was a seminary in the crypt of the church where the students lived in humble and primitive conditions — sleeping cubicles separated by threadbare curtains, and an open drain running down the middle of the floor. That, to me, represented the poverty of him who came to be poor among the poor, rather than the power and prestige needed to maintain a religion.

Most of the traditionally Orthodox countries were under communist or Muslim rule, and in those places, Orthodox Christians were treated as second-class citizens, and deprived of civil rights. Many Orthodox Christians in the West were refugees and asylum seekers. or children of refugees and asylum seekers.

Another reason for the attraction of Orthodoxy for radical Christian activists was that Orthodoxy had a firm theological base. In the West, theological liberalism led to political conservatism and vice versa. Theological liberalism was embarked on a project to adapt the Christian faith to the modern world, and that meant adapting Christianity to support the status quo. Radical Christians wanted to change the status quo on earth, so that God’s kingdom would come and God’s will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

G.K Chesterton said that the modern young man would never change the world, for he would always change his mind. Christians who are always changing their theology will never change the world.

This can be seen in the media expectations of Roman Pope Francis. They are looking to him to bring about change in the Roman Catholic Church. Will he change the theology and bring it up to date? But most of the time they are disappointed, because he criticises the state of the world from the point of view of existing theology — the wars, civil repression and exploitation that continue pretty much as they did in the 1960s.

There is much talk about “progressive” theology and “progressive” politics, but what do we mean by “progress”? As G.K. Chesterton put it, more than a century ago now:

Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy: a wild page from any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it. Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does mean that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier.
Silly examples are always simpler; let us suppose a man wanted a particular kind of world; say, a blue world. He would have no cause to complain of the slightness or swiftness of his task; he might toil for a long time at the transformation; he could work away (in every sense) until all was blue. He could have heroic adventures; the putting of the last touches to a blue tiger. He could have fairy dreams; the dawn of a blue moon. But if he worked hard, that high-minded reformer would certainly (from his own point of view) leave the world better and bluer than he found it. If he altered a blade of grass to his favourite colour every day, he would get on slowly. But if he altered his favourite colour every day, he would not get on at all.

And that is why I think that some radical Christian activists have been attracted to Orthodoxy. And that complement’s Jim Forest’s point about why Orthodox Christians should be interested in people like Daniel Berrigan — because people several people who have shared the interests of Daniel Berrigan have also become interested in Orthodoxy. So by all means and read Jim Forest’s book about Daniel Berrigan.

Family and Friends Remember Father Daniel Berrigan,

Legendary Antiwar Priest & Poet

part 1

part 2

Bishop Angaelos on the Persecution

of Egyptian Christians and their

reaction to the murderous violence

From Retaliation to Resurrection

the witness of a ten year old Chaldean

Christian girl, typical of so many Eastern Christians

towards persecution

↧

REFLECTIONS ON THE THIRD SUNDAY OF ADVENT byPope Benedict XVI during his Pontificate

December 17, 2017, 1:41 pm

≫ Next: PREPARATION FOR CHRISTMAS: THE O ANTIPHONS

≪ Previous: ROMAN CATHOLIC RADICALS AND ORTHODOXY by Deacon Steve Hayes from South Africa

Pope Benedict XVI on Gaudete Sunday

Reflections on the Third Sunday of Advent

by Pope Benedict XVI during His Pontificate

Gaudete Sunday: the Introit

my source: Actus Essendi

On eight occasions during his Pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI delivered reflections on the Third Sunday of Advent, on 11 December 2005, 17 December 2006, 16 December 2007, 14 December 2008, 13 December 2009, 12 December 2010, 11 December 2011, and 16 December 2012. Here are the texts of eight brief reflections before the recitation of the Angelus and two homilies delivered on these occasions.

BENEDICT XVI

ANGELUS

St Peter’s Square, Third Sunday of Advent, 11 December 2005

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

After celebrating the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, we enter during these days into the evocative atmosphere of immediate preparation for Holy Christmas, and we already see the tree set up here. In today’s consumer society, this period has unfortunately suffered a sort of commercial “pollution” that risks changing its authentic spirit, marked by recollection, moderation and joy, which is not external but intimate.

It is thus providential that almost as a portal to Christmas there should be the feast of the one who is the Mother of Jesus and who, better than anyone else, can lead us to know, love and adore the Son of God made man.

Let us therefore allow her to accompany us; may her sentiments prompt us to prepare ourselves with heartfelt sincerity and openness of spirit to recognize in the Child of Bethlehem the Son of God who came into the world for our redemption. Let us walk together with her in prayer and accept the repeated invitation that the Advent liturgy addresses to us to remain in expectation - watchful and joyful expectation -, for the Lord will not delay: he comes to set his people free from sin.

Following a beautiful and firmly-rooted tradition, many families set up their Crib immediately after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, as if to relive with Mary those days full of trepidation that preceded the birth of Jesus. Putting up the Crib at home can be a simple but effective way of presenting faith, to pass it on to one’s children.

The Crib helps us contemplate the mystery of God’s love that was revealed in the poverty and simplicity of the Bethlehem Grotto. St Francis of Assisi was so taken by the mystery of the Incarnation that he wanted to present it anew at Greccio in the living Nativity scene, thus beginning an old, popular tradition that still retains its value for evangelization today.

Indeed, the Crib can help us understand the secret of the true Christmas because it speaks of the humility and merciful goodness of Christ, who “though he was rich he made himself poor” for us (II Cor 8: 9).

His poverty enriches those who embrace it and Christmas brings joy and peace to those who, like the shepherds in Bethlehem, accept the Angel’s words: “Let this be a sign to you: in a manger you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes” (Lk 2: 12). This is still the sign for us too, men and women of the third millennium. There is no other Christmas.

Soon, as did beloved John Paul II, I too will bless the figurines of the Baby Jesus that the children of Rome will place in the Crib in their homes. With this act of Blessing, I would like to invoke the help of the Lord so that all Christian families will prepare to celebrate the coming Christmas celebrations with faith. May Mary help us enter into the true spirit of Christmas.

BENEDICT XVI

ANGELUS

Saint Peter’s Square, Third Sunday of Advent, 17 December 2006

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

On this Third Sunday of Advent, the liturgy invites us to the joy of the spirit. It does so with the famous antiphon as part of an exhortation of the Apostle Paul: “Gaudete in Domino”, “Rejoice in the Lord always... the Lord is at hand” (see Phil 4: 4, 5).

The first Reading of Mass is also an invitation to joy. The Prophet Zephaniah at the end of the seventh century B.C. spoke to the city of Jerusalem and its people with these words: ”Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem...! [T]he Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory” (Zep 3: 14, 17).

God himself is portrayed with similar sentiments, as the prophet says: ”The Lord... will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love... as on a day of festival” (Zep 3: 17-18). This promise was fully brought about in the mystery of Christmas, which we shall be celebrating in a week and which asks to be renewed in the “today” of our lives and of history.

The joy that the liturgy reawakens in the hearts of Christians is not reserved for us alone: it is a prophetic proclamation destined for all humanity and for the poorest of the poor in particular, in this case, those poorest in joy!

Let us think of our brothers and sisters who, especially in the Middle East, in several regions of Africa and other parts of the world, are experiencing the drama of war: what joy can they live? What will their Christmas be like?

Let us think of all the sick and lonely people who, in addition to being tried in their body, are also sorely tried in their soul because they often feel abandoned: how can we share joy with them without disrespecting their suffering?

But let us also think of those people, especially the young, who have lost their sense of true joy and seek it in vain where it is impossible to find it: in the exasperated race to self-affirmation and success, in false amusements, in consumerism, in moments of drunkenness, in the artificial paradise of drugs and every form of alienation. We must obviously face the liturgy today and its “Rejoice” with these tragic realities.

As in the times of the Prophet Zephaniah, it is particularly to those being tested and to “life’s wounded and orphans of joy” that God’s Word is being addressed in a special way.

The invitation to rejoice is not an alienating message nor a sterile palliative, but on the contrary, it is a salvific prophecy, an appeal for rescue that starts with inner renewal.

To transform the world, God chose a humble young girl from a village in Galilee, Mary of Nazareth, and challenged her with this greeting: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you”. In these words lies the secret of an authentic Christmas. God repeats them to the Church, to each one of us: Rejoice, the Lord is close! With Mary’s help, let us offer ourselves with humility and courage so that the world may accept Christ, who is the source of true joy.

BENEDICT XVI

ANGELUS

St Peter’s Square, Third Sunday of Advent, 16 December 2007

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“Gaudete in Domino semper - Rejoice in the Lord always (Phil 4: 4). Holy Mass of the Third Sunday of Advent opens with these words of St Paul and is therefore called “gaudete” Sunday. The Apostle urges Christians to rejoice because the Lord’s coming, that is, his glorious return, is certain and will not be delayed. The Church makes this invitation her own while she prepares to celebrate Christmas and her gaze is focused ever more intently on Bethlehem. Indeed, we wait with hope, certain of Christ’s second coming because we have experienced his first. The mystery of Bethlehem reveals to us God-with-us, the God close to us and not merely in the spatial and temporal sense; he is close to us because he has, as it were, “espoused” our humanity; he has taken our condition upon himself, choosing to be like us in all things save sin in order to make us become like him. Christian joy thus springs from this certainty: God is close, he is with me, he is with us, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, as a friend and faithful spouse. And this joy endures, even in trials, in suffering itself. It does not remain only on the surface; it dwells in the depths of the person who entrusts himself to God and trusts in him.

Some people ask: but is this joy still possible today? Men and women of every age and social condition, happy to dedicate their existence to others, give us the answer with their lives! Was not Bl. Mother Teresa of Calcutta an unforgettable witness of true Gospel joy in our time? She lived in touch daily with wretchedness, human degradation and death. Her soul knew the trials of the dark night of faith, yet she gave everyone God’s smile. In one of her writings, we read: “We wait impatiently for paradise, where God is, but it is in our power to be in paradise even here on earth and from this moment. Being happy with God means loving like him, helping like him, giving like him, serving like him” (The Joy of Giving to Others, 1987, p. 143). Yes, joy enters the hearts of those who put themselves at the service of the lowly and poor. God abides in those who love like this and their souls rejoice. If, instead, people make an idol of happiness, they lose their way and it is truly hard for them to find the joy of which Jesus speaks. Unfortunately, this is what is proposed by cultures that replace God by individual happiness, mindsets that find their emblematic effect in seeking pleasure at all costs, in spreading drug use as an escape, a refuge in artificial paradises that later prove to be entirely deceptive.

Dear brothers and sisters, one can lose the way even at Christmas, one can exchange the true celebration for one that does not open the heart to Christ’s joy. May the Virgin Mary help all Christians and people in search of God to reach Bethlehem, to encounter the Child who was born for us, for salvation and for the happiness of all humanity.

BENEDICT XVI

ANGELUS

St Peter’s Square, Third Sunday of Advent, 14 December 2008

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This Sunday, the Third Sunday in the Season of Advent, is called “Gaudete Sunday”: “rejoice”, because the Entrance Antiphon of Holy Mass takes up St Paul’s words in the Letter to the Philippians where it says: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice”. And immediately after he explains the reason, because “The Lord is at hand” (Phil 4: 4-5). This is the reason for joy. But what does “the Lord is at hand” mean? In what sense must we understand this “closeness” of God? The Apostle Paul, writing to the Christians of Philippi, is evidently thinking of Christ’s return and invites them to rejoice because it is certain. Yet, St Paul in his Letter to the Thessalonians, warns that no one can know the moment of the Lord’s coming (see 1 Thes 5: 1-2) and puts people on guard against any kind of alarmism, as if Christ’s return were imminent (see 2 Thes 2: 1-2). Thus the Church, illumined by the Holy Spirit, already at that time understood increasingly better that God’s “closeness” is not a question of space and time but rather of love: love brings people together! This coming Christmas will remind us of this fundamental truth of our faith and in front of the manger we shall be able to savour Christian joy contemplating in the newborn Jesus the Face of God who made himself close to us out of love.

In this light, it gives me real pleasure to renew the beautiful tradition of the Blessing of the Christ Child figurines, the miniature statues of the Baby Jesus to be placed in the manger. I address you in particular, dear boys and girls of Rome, who have come this morning with your Baby Jesus figurines that I now bless. I invite you to join me, following attentively this prayer:

God, our Father

you so loved humankind

that you sent us your only Son Jesus,

born of the Virgin Mary,

to save us and lead us back to you.

We pray that with your Blessing

these images of Jesus,

who is about to come among us,

may be a sign of your presence and

love in our homes.

Good Father,

give your Blessing to us too,

to our parents, to our families and

to our friends.

Open our hearts,

so that we may be able to

receive Jesus in joy,

always do what he asks

and see him in all those

who are in need of our love.

We ask you this in the name of Jesus,

your beloved Son

who comes to give the world peace.

He lives and reigns forever and ever.

Amen.

And now let us recite together the prayer of the Angelus Domini, invoking Mary’s intercession so that Jesus, whose birth brings God’s Blessing to mankind, may be lovingly welcomed in all homes, in Rome and throughout the world.

BENEDICT XVI

ANGELUS

St Peter’s Square, Third Sunday of Advent, 13 December 2009

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We have now reached the Third Sunday of Advent. Today in the liturgy the Apostle Paul’s invitation rings out: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.... The Lord is at hand!” (Phil 4: 4-5). While Mother Church accompanies us towards Holy Christmas she helps us rediscover the meaning and taste of Christian joy, so different from that of the world. On this Sunday, according to a beautiful tradition, the children of Rome come to have the Pope bless the Baby Jesus figurines that they will put in their cribs. And in fact, I see here in St Peter’s Square a great number of children and young people, together with their parents, teachers and catechists. Dear friends, I greet you all with deep affection and thank you for coming. It gives me great joy to know that the custom of creating a crib scene has been preserved in your families. Yet it is not enough to repeat a traditional gesture, however important it may be. It is necessary to seek to live in the reality of daily life that the crib represents, namely, the love of Christ, his humility, his poverty. This is what St Francis did at Greccio: he recreated a live presentation of the nativity scene in order to contemplate and worship it, but above all to be better able to put into practice the message of the Son of God who for love of us emptied himself completely and made himself a tiny child.

The blessing of the “Bambinelli” [Baby Jesus figurines] as they are called in Rome, reminds us that the crib is a school of life where we can learn the secret of true joy. This does not consist in having many things but in feeling loved by the Lord, in giving oneself as a gift for others and in loving one another. Let us look at the crib. Our Lady and St Joseph do not seem to be a very fortunate family; their first child was born in the midst of great hardship; yet they are full of deep joy, because they love each other, they help each other and, especially, they are certain that God, who made himself present in the little Jesus, is at work in their story. And the shepherds? What did they have to rejoice about? That Newborn Infant was not to change their condition of poverty and marginalization. But faith helped them recognize the “babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” as a “sign” of the fulfilment of God’s promises for all human beings, “with whom he is pleased” (Lk 2: 12, 14).

This, dear friends, is what true joy consists in: it is feeling that our personal and community existence has been visited and filled by a great mystery, the mystery of God’s love. In order to rejoice we do not need things alone, but love and truth: we need a close God who warms our hearts and responds to our deepest expectations. This God is manifested in Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary. Therefore that “Bambinello” which we place in a stable or a grotto is the centre of all things, the heart of the world. Let us pray that every person, like the Virgin Mary, may accept as the centre of his or her life the God who made himself a Child, the source of true joy.

BENEDICT XVI

ANGELUS

St Peter’s Square, Third Sunday of Advent, 12 December 2010

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

On this Third Sunday of Advent, the Liturgy presents to us a passage from the Letter of St James, which opens with this exhortation: “Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord” (Jas 5:7). It seems to me especially important, in our day, to underline the value of constancy and persistence, virtues which belonged to the normal baggage of our ancestors but today are less popular, in a world which exalts, rather, the change and capacity to adapt oneself to ever new and diverse situations.

Taking nothing from these features, which are also human qualities, Advent calls us to develop inner tenacity, resistance of the spirit, which enables us not to despair while waiting for a good that is slow in coming, but on the contrary to prepare for its coming with active trust.

“Behold,” James writes, “the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it until it receives the early and the late rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand” (Jas 5:7-8).

The comparison drawn with the farmer is very expressive, he has sown the field and has before him several months of patient and constant waiting, but he knows that in the meantime the seed completes its cycle, thanks to the autumn and spring rains. The farmer is not a fatalist but the model of a mentality which unites faith and reason in a balanced way. For on the one hand he knows the laws of nature and does his work well, and on the other, he trusts in Providence, because certain fundamental things are not in his hands but in the hands of God. Patience and constancy are truly a synthesis between human commitment and confidence in God.

“Establish your hearts”, Scripture says. How can we do this? How can we strengthen our hearts, already somewhat frail in themselves and rendered even more unstable by the culture in which we are immersed. Help is not lacking; it is the Word of God. In fact, while everything else passes and changes, the Word of the Lord is not transient. If the events of life make us feel bewildered and every certainty seems to crumble, we have a compass to guide us, we have an anchor to prevent us from drifting away.

Here the model offered to us is that of the prophets, namely those people whom God called so that they might speak in his name. The prophet finds his joy and strength in the word of God and while humans often search for happiness in ways that prove erroneous, he announces true hope, which does not disappoint because it is founded on the fidelity of God.

Every Christian, by virtue of Baptism, has received prophetic dignity. May each one rediscover and nourish it, by listening assiduously to the divine Word. May the Virgin Mary, whom the Gospel calls blessed because she believed in the fulfilment of the words of the Lord, obtain this for us (Lk 1:45).

PASTORAL VISIT TO THE PARISH

OF SAINT MAXIMILIAN KOLBE IN ROME

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Third Sunday of Advent, 12 December 2010

Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Parish of San Massimiliano Kolbe,

You are deeply living your personal and community commitment to follow the Lord. Advent is a strong invitation to everyone to let God come increasingly into our lives, our houses, our neighbourhoods and our communities in order to have light in the midst of the many shadows, in the numerous daily efforts.

Dear friends, I am very glad to be with you today to celebrate the Lord’s Day, the Third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of joy.

I cordially greet the Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishop of the Sector, your Parish Priest, whom I thank for his words on behalf of you all, and the Parochial Vicar.

I greet all those who are active in the parish context: the catechists and the members of various groups including the Neocatechumenal Way. I deeply appreciate your decision to make room for Eucharistic adoration and I thank you for the prayers you say for me before the Most Blessed Sacrament.

I would like to extend my thoughts to all the inhabitants of the district, especially the elderly, the sick and those who are alone or in difficulty. I remember each and every one at this Mass.

I join you in admiring your new church and the parish buildings, and I wish to encourage you by my presence to bring ever better into being that Church of living stones which you yourselves are.

I know of the many important evangelization projects that you are carrying out. I urge all the faithful to make their own contribution to the edification of the community, in particular in the field of catechesis, the liturgy and charity — pillars of Christian life — in communion with the whole Diocese of Rome. No community can live as a cell isolated from the diocesan context; instead the community must be a living expression of the beauty of the Church which, under the guidance of the Bishop — and in the parish, under the guidance of the Parish Priest who acts in his place — journeys on in communion towards the Kingdom of God.

I address a special thought to families, accompanying them with the wish that they may totally fulfil their vocation to love, and with generosity and perseverance. Even when difficulties arise in conjugal life and in the relationship with their children, married couples must never cease to stay faithful to that fundamental “yes” which they said before God and to each other on their wedding day, remembering that faithfulness to one’s vocation demands courage, generosity and sacrifice.

Your community includes many families from Central and Southern Italy who have come in search of work and better standards of living. As time has passed the community has grown and has changed, to a certain extent, with the arrival of many people from the Eastern European countries and from many other countries.

On the basis of this practical situation in the parish, make an effort to grow constantly in communion with all: it is important to create opportunities for dialogue and to foster understanding among people from different cultures, backgrounds and social conditions.

Yet, above all, it is necessary to try to involve them in Christian life, through a pastoral care attentive to the true needs of each person. Here, as in every parish, it is necessary to start with those who are “close” in order to reach out to those who are “distant” so as to bring an evangelical presence to the milieus of life and work.

All must be able to find in the parish an adequate means of formation and must be able to experience that community dimension which is a fundamental characteristic of Christian life. In this way they will be encouraged to rediscover the beauty of following Christ and of belonging to his Church.

May you therefore be able to make a community with them all, united in listening to the Word of God and in the celebration of the sacraments and of the Eucharist in particular. In this regard the pastoral verification of the diocese that is under way, on the theme: “Sunday Eucharist and the witness of charity”, is a propitious opportunity to examine deeply and live better these two fundamental components of the life and mission of the Church and of every individual believer, that is, the Sunday Eucharist and the practice of charity.

Gathered round the Eucharist, it is easier to feel that the mission of every Christian community is to take the message of God’s love to all human beings. This is why it is important that the Eucharist always be at the heart of the faithful’s life.

I would also like to address a special word of affection and friendship to you, dear children and young people who are listening to me, and to your peers who live in this Parish. The Church expects much of you, of your enthusiasm, of your capacity for looking ahead and of your desire for radicalism in life’s decisions. May you feel you are real protagonists in the parish, putting your fresh energies and your whole life at the service of God and of the brethren.

Dear brothers and sisters, next to the invitation to rejoice, today’s Liturgy, with the words of St James that we have heard, also asks us to be constant and patient in waiting for the Lord who comes and to be so together, as a community, avoiding complaints and criticism (see Jas 5:7-10).

In the Gospel we heard the question asked by John the Baptist who was in prison: John, who had proclaimed the coming of the Judge who would change the world, and now felt had that the world has remained the same. Thus he sends word to Jesus asking: “Are you ‘He who is to come’, or shall we look for another?”. Is it you or should we expect another?

In the past two or three centuries many have asked: “But is it really you? Or must the world be changed in a more radical manner? Will you not do it?”.

And a great tide of prophets, ideologists and dictators have come and said: “It is not him! He did not change the world! It is we!”. And they created their empires, their dictatorships, their totalitarianism which was supposed to change the world. And they changed it, but in a destructive manner. Today we know that of these great promises nothing remained but a great void and great destruction. It was not they.

And thus we must see Christ again and ask Christ: “Is it you?” The Lord, in his own silent way, answers: “You see what I did, I did not start a bloody revolution, I did not change the world with force; but lit many I, which in the meantime form a pathway of light through the millenniums”.

Let us start here in our Parish with St Maximilian Kolbe, who offered to die of hunger himself in order to save the father of a family. What a great light he became! How much light shone from this figure and encouraged others to give themselves, to be close to the suffering and the oppressed!

Let us think of Damien de Veuster who was a father to lepers, and who lived and died with and for lepers, and has thus brought light to this community.

Let us think of Mother Teresa, who gave so much light to people that, after a life without light, they died with a smile because they were touched by the light of God’s love.

And thus we shall be able to continue and we shall see, as the Lord said in his answer to John, that it is not the violent revolution of the world, but rather the silent light of the truth, of the goodness of God that is the sign of his presence and gives us the certainty that we are loved to the end and are not forgotten, that we are not a product of chance but of a will to love.

Thus we may live, we may feel God’s nearness. “God is close”, says today’s First Reading, he is near us but we are often distant. Let us draw near, let us move into the presence of his light, let us pray the Lord that through contact with him in prayer we ourselves will become light for others.

And this is precisely also the meaning of the parish church: to enter here, to enter into conversation, into contact with Jesus, with the Son of God, so that we ourselves may become one of the smallest lights that he has lit to carry his light into the world which feels it must be redeemed.

Our spirit must be open to this invitation and let us thus walk joyfully towards Christmas, like the Virgin Mary who awaited the Redeemer’s birth in prayer, with intimate and joyful trepidation. Amen!

BENEDICT XVI

ANGELUS

Saint Peter’s Square, Third Sunday of Advent, 11 December 2011

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The liturgical texts for this Season of Advent renew the invitation to us to live in expectation of Jesus and not to stop looking forward to his coming so as to keep ourselves open and ready to encounter him. Heartfelt watchfulness, which Christians are always called to practise in their daily life, characterizes in particular this season in which we prepare joyfully for the mystery of Christmas (see Preface of Advent II).

The external environment proposes the usual commercial messages, although perhaps to a lesser degree because of the economic crisis. Christians are asked to live Advent without allowing themselves be distracted by the bright lights but knowing how to give things their proper value and how to fix their inner gaze on Christ. Indeed if we persevere in “watching in prayer, our hearts filled with wonder and praise” (ibid.), our eyes will be able to recognize in him the true light of the world that comes to dispel our gloom.

The liturgy of this Sunday, known as “Gaudete” Sunday, is a special invitation to us to joyfulness, to a vigilance that is not sad but happy. “Gaudete in Domino semper”, St Paul wrote: “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil 4:4). True joy is not a fruit of “divertirsi” [having a good time] understood in the etymological sense of the word di-vertere (di-version), that is, shirking the commitments of life and one’s responsibilities.

True joy is linked to something deeper. Of course, in the all too often frenetic pace of daily life it is important to find time for rest and relaxation, but true joy is linked to our relationship with God. Those who have encountered Christ in their own lives feel a serenity and joy in their hearts that no one and no situation can take from them. St Augustine understood this very well; in his quest for truth, peace and joy, after seeking them in vain in many things he concluded with his famous words: “and our heart is restless until it rests in God” (see Confessions, I, 1, 1).

True joy is not merely a passing state of mind or something that can be achieved with the person’s own effort; rather it is a gift, born from the encounter with the living Person of Jesus and, making room within ourselves, from welcoming the Holy Spirit who guides our lives. It is the invitation of the Apostle Paul who says: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess 5:23).

In this Season of Advent let us reinforce our conviction that the Lord has come among us and ceaselessly renews his comforting, loving and joyful presence. We should trust in him; as St Augustine says further, in the light of his own experience: the Lord is closer to us than we are to ourselves: “interior intimo meo et superior summo meo” (“higher than my highest and more inward than my innermost self”) (Confessions III, 6, 11).

Let us entrust our journey to the Immaculate Virgin whose spirit is exulted in God our Saviour. May she guide our hearts in joyful expectation of the coming of Jesus, an expectation full of prayer and good works.

PASTORAL VISIT TO THE ROMAN PARISH

OF “SANTA MARIA DELLE GRAZIE” IN CASAL BOCCONE

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

Third Sunday of Advent, 11 December 2011

Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Parish of Santa Maria della Grazie,

We have heard Isaiah’s prophesy, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted... to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour” (Is 61:1-2). These words spoken so many centuries ago, ring out, in a very up-to-date way for us too, today, while we are halfway through Advent and already look forward to the great Solemnity of Christmas. These are words that revive hope, that prepare us to welcome the Lord’s salvation and announce the inauguration of a season of grace and liberation.

Advent is precisely a time of waiting, of hope and of preparation for the Lord’s coming. The figure and preaching of John the Baptist invite us to make this commitment, as we heard in the Gospel that has just been proclaimed (see Jn 1:6-8, 19-28). John had withdrawn into the wilderness to live a very austere life and to invite people to conversion, also by the example of his life. He conferred on them a baptism of water, a single rite of penance which distinguished it from the many rites of external purification of the sects of that time.

So who was this man? Who was John the Baptist? The response he himself gave is surprisingly humble. He was not the Messiah, he was not the light. He was neither Elijah come back to the earth nor the great prophet awaited. He was the Forerunner, a simple witness, totally subordinate to the One he proclaimed; a voice in the wilderness, as in our day too, in the wilderness of the great cities of this world, of the great absence of God, we need voices that simply announce to us “God exists. He is always near, even if he seems absent”.

John the Baptist was a voice in the wilderness and a witness to the light; and this moves our hearts, for in this world where there are so many shadows, so much darkness, we are all called to be witnesses of light. This is the mission of the Season of Advent itself: to be witnesses of light, and we can only be this if we carry the light within us, if we are not only certain that the light exists, but also that we have seen a ray of light.

In the Church, in God’s word, in the celebration of the sacraments, in the Sacrament of Confession with the forgiveness that we receive, in the celebration of the Blessed Eucharist where the Lord gives himself into our hands and hearts, we touch the light and receive this mission: to bear witness today that there is light, and to carry the light in our time.

Dear brothers and sisters, I am very glad to be with you on this beautiful, “Gaudete” Sunday, the Sunday of joy that tells us that “even in the midst of so many doubts and difficulties, joy exists because God exists and is with us!”.

I cordially greet the Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishop of the sector, your parish priest, Fr Domenico Monteforte, whom I thank not only for his kind words to me on behalf of you all, but also for the beautiful gift of the parish history. And I greet the parochial vicar. I also greet the religious communities, the Sisters, Apostles of the Consolata, the Religious Teachers Venerini and the Guanellians; they are a precious presence in your parish and an important spiritual and pastoral resource for the life of the community as witnesses of light!

I also greet all those who are involved in the parish context. I am referring to the catechists — I thank them for their work — the members of the prayer group inspired by the Renewal in the Holy Spirit and the young people of the Gioventù Ardente Mariana Movement.

Next I would like to extend my thoughts to all the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, especially the elderly, the sick, those who are lonely or in difficulty, without forgetting the large Filipino community which is well integrated and plays an active part in the fundamental moments of community life.

Your parish came into being in one of the typical suburbs of the Agro Romano. It was canonically established in 1985 with this beautiful title: Santa Maria delle Grazie [St Mary of Grace], it took its first steps in the 1960s when, at the initiative of a group of Dominican Fathers led by the memorable Fr Gerard Reed, a small chapel was set up in a family home that was later moved to larger premises and served as the parish church until 2010, last year. In that year, in fact, as you know the building in which we are celebrating the Eucharist was dedicated precisely on 1 May. This new church is a privileged space for growing in the knowledge and love of the One whom we shall welcome in a few days’ time in the joy of his Birth.

As I look at this church and at the parish buildings, I see them as the result of your patience, dedication and love and I would like to encourage you with my presence to bring into being, better and better, the Church of living stones which you yourselves are.

Each one of you must feel you are an element of this living building. The community is built with the contribution that each one makes, with the commitment of all; and I am thinking in a special way of the field of catechesis, that of the liturgy and that of charity: pillars that support Christian life.

Yours is a young community, I saw it in greeting your children. It is young because it is made up of young families — especially with regard to the new settlements — and because so many children and boys and girls live in it, thanks be to God! I warmly hope that through the contribution of competent and generous people, your educational commitment may develop ever better and that your parish, also with the help of the Vicariate of Rome, may set up as soon as possible a well-structured after-school recreation and prayer centre with sufficient space for games and meeting-rooms, so as to meet the need of the young generations to develop in faith and in a healthy sociability.

I congratulate you on your work in preparing the boys and girls and young people to receive the sacraments. The challenge we are facing consists in planning and proposing a true and proper itinerary of formation in faith which involves all those who are receiving Christian initiation, helping them not only to receive the sacraments but to live them out, in order to be true Christians. This aim, to receive, must be to live, as we heard in the First Reading: justice must sprout, just as the seed sprouts from the ground. Live the sacraments so that justice, law and love will sprout likewise.

In this regard, the diocesan pastoral work that is currently being reviewed and that concerns, precisely, Christian initiation, is a favourable opportunity to deepen and live the Sacraments we have already received — such as Baptism and Confirmation — and those we continue to receive for nourishment on our journey of faith, Penance and the Eucharist. For this reason, necessary in the first place is attention to the relationship with God through listening to his word, through your response to the word in prayer and through the gift of the Eucharist.

I know that in your parish prayer meetings take place and lectio divina and that Eucharistic adoration is organized. These are precious initiatives for spiritual growth at the personal and community levels. I warmly urge more and more of you to take part in them. In a special way I would like to recall the importance and centrality of the Eucharist. May the centre of your Sunday be Holy Mass which should be rediscovered and lived as a day of God and of the community, a day on which to praise and celebrate the One who was born for us, who died and rose for our salvation and asks us to live together joyfully and to be a community open and ready to receive every person who is lonely or in difficulty.

Do not lose your sense of Sunday and be faithful to the Eucharistic gathering. The early Christians were prepared to give their lives for this. They realized that this is life and gives life.

In coming to see you I cannot but know that a great challenge is posed to your territory by religious groups who claim to be the depositaries of the Gospel truth. In this regard it is my duty to recommend you to be alert and to deepen your knowledge of the reasons for faith and for the Christian message; so that you may transmit it in a way that guarantees the authentic millenary tradition of the Church. May you — as St Peter says — always be prepared “to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15); put into practice the language of love and brotherhood that is comprehensible to all, but without forgetting the commitment to purifying and strengthening your own faith in the face of the dangers and snares that may threaten it in these times.

Overcome the limitations of individualism, withdrawal into self and the fascination of relativism that views any kind of behaviour as licit, and of the attraction exercised by forms of religious sentiment that exploit the deepest needs and aspirations of the human soul, offering prospects of easy but deceptive gratification. Faith is a gift of God but demands of us a response, a decision to follow Christ, not only when he heals and alleviates but also when he speaks of love even to the point of self-gift.

Another point on which I want to insist is the witnessing to charity that must characterize your community life. In recent years you have seen it increase rapidly, in the number of its members too, but you have also seen it help many people in difficulty and in situations of hardship who need you, who need your material aid, but also and above all need your faith and your testimony as believers. Make sure that the face of your community is always able to express in practice the love of God, who is rich in mercy, and invite people to approach him with trust.

I would like to address a special word of affection and friendship to you, dear boys and girls and young people who are listening to me, as well as to your peers who live in this parish. History’s today and tomorrow and the future of faith are entrusted especially to you who are the new generations. The Church expects much of your enthusiasm, your ability to look ahead, to be inspired by ideals and your desire for radicalism in the decisions of life. The parish is accompanying you and I would like you also to feel my encouragement.

“Brethren.... Rejoice always” (1 Thes 5:16). This invitation to joy which St Paul addressed to the Christians of Thessalonica in that time, also characterizes this Sunday, commonly known as “Gaudete” Sunday. It resonates from the very first words of the Entrance Antiphon: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice! The Lord is at hand”; St Paul, in prison, wrote these words to the Christians of Philippi (see Phil 4:4-5) and also addresses them to us.

Yes, we are glad because the Lord is near us and in a few days, on Christmas night, we shall be celebrating the mystery of his birth. Mary, who was the first to hear the Angel’s invitation: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” (Lk 1:28), points out to us the way to reach true joy, which comes from God. St Mary of Grace, Mother of Divine Love, pray for us all. Amen!

BENEDICT XVI

ANGELUS

Saint Peter’s Square, Third Sunday of Advent, 16 December 2012

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Gospel for this Sunday of Advent presents once again the figure of John the Baptist, and it depicts him while he is speaking to the people who come to him at the River Jordan to be baptized. Since John, with incisive words, urges them all to prepare themselves for the Messiah’s coming, some ask him, “What then shall we do?” (Lk 3:10, 12, 14). These exchanges are very interesting and prove to be of great timeliness.

The first answer is addressed to the crowd in general. The Baptist says, “He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise” (v. 11). Here we can see a criterion of justice, motivated by charity. Justice requires that the imbalance between the one who has more than enough and the one who lacks the necessary be overcome; charity prompts us to be attentive to others and to meet their needs, instead of seeking justification to defend one’s own interests. Justice and charity are not in opposition, but are both necessary and complete each other. “Love — caritas — will always prove necessary, even in the most just society”, because “There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbour is indispensable” (Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, no. 28).

Then we see the second answer, which is directed at some “publicans”, that is, tax-collectors on behalf of the Romans. The publicans were already despised for this, and also because they often made the most of their position to steal. The Baptist does not ask them to change their profession, but to exact no more than what has been established (see v. 13). The prophet, in the name of God, does not demand exceptional acts, but first and foremost the just fulfilment of one’s duty. The first step towards eternal life is always the observance of the Commandments; in this case, the seventh one: You shall not steal (cf Ex. 20:15).

The third reply concerns the soldiers, another class that enjoyed a certain authority, and was thus tempted to abuse it. John says to the soldiers: “Rob no one by violence, and be content with your wages” (v. 14). Here too the conversation begins with honesty and with respect for others: an instruction that applies to everyone, especially for those with greater responsibility.

On considering this dialogue as a whole, we are struck by the great concreteness of John’s words: since God will judge us according to our works, it is there, in our behaviour, that we must show that we are doing his will. For this very reason, the Baptist’s instructions are ever timely: even in our very complex world, things would go much better if each person observed these rules of conduct. Therefore let us pray to the Lord, through the intercession of Mary Most Holy, that he may help us to prepare ourselves for Christmas, bearing the good fruits of repentance (see Lk 3:8).

VISIT TO THE ROMAN PARISH OF

“SAN PATRIZIO AL COLLE PRENESTINO”

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS POPE BENEDICT XVI

Third Sunday of Advent, 16 December 2012

Dear Brothers and Sisters of San Patrizio,

I am very happy to visit you and to celebrate the Blessed Eucharist with you and for you. I would first like to offer you a few thoughts in the light of the word of God that we have heard. On this Third Sunday of Advent, known as “Gaudete” Sunday, the Liturgy invites us to rejoice. Advent is a season of commitment and conversion in preparation for the Lord’s coming, but today the Church gives us a foretaste of the joy of Christmas that is now at hand. In fact Advent is also a time of joy, because in this season expectation of the Lord’s coming is awakened in the hearts of believers; looking forward to a person’s arrival is always a cause of joy. This joyful dimension is present in the First of the Bible Readings of this Sunday. The Gospel on the other hand, corresponds to the other dimension that is characteristic of Advent: that of conversion with a view to the epiphany of the Lord proclaimed by John the Baptist.

The First Reading we have heard is an insistent invitation to rejoice. The passage begins with the words “Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion... Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem” (Zeph 3:14); which is similar to that of the Angel’s annunciation to Mary: “Hail, full of grace” (Lk 1:28). The essential reason why the daughter of Zion can be joyful is expressed in the affirmation we have just heard: “the Lord is in your midst” (Zeph 3:15, 17); this means literally “is in your womb”, with a clear reference to the dwelling place of God in the Ark of the Covenant, always set in the midst of the People of Israel. The prophet wishes to tell us that there is no longer any reason for distrust, discouragement, sorrow, whatever the situation that must be faced, because we are certain of the Lord’s presence which alone suffices to calm and cheer hearts.

The Prophet Zephaniah, in addition, lets us know that this joy is reciprocal: we are invited to rejoice, but the Lord also rejoices in his relationship with us; indeed, the prophet writes: “he will exult over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing” (v. 17). The joy that is promised in this prophetic text, will find its fulfilment in Jesus, who is in the womb of Mary, the “Daughter of Zion”, and in this way dwelt among us (cf Jn 1: 14). Indeed, in coming into the world he gives us his joy, just as he himself confides to his disciples: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full (Jn 15:11). Jesus brings people salvation, a new relationship with God that overcomes evil and death, and brings true joy in this presence of the Lord who comes to lighten our paths that are all too often engulfed in shadows and in selfishness.

We can reflect on whether we are really aware of this fact that the Lord is present among us, that he is not a distant God but a God-with-us, a God in our midst who is with us here, who is in the Blessed Eucharist, he is with us in the living Church and we must be heralds of this presence of God. Thus God rejoices in us and we can attain joy: God exists, God is good and God is close.

In the Second Reading we have heard, St Paul invites the Christians of Philippi to rejoice in the Lord. Can we rejoice? And why should we rejoice? St Paul answers: because “the Lord is at hand” (Phil 4:5). In a few days we shall be celebrating Christmas, the Feast of the coming of God who made himself a child and our brother so as to be with us and to share in our human condition. We must rejoice in his closeness, in his presence, and must seek ever better to understand that he really is close, and thus be penetrated by the reality of God’s goodness, joy at Christ being with us.

Paul says forcefully in another of his Letters that nothing can separate us from the love of God which was expressed in Christ. Sin alone can distance us from him, but this is a factor of separation that we ourselves introduce into our relationship with the Lord. Yet, even when we cut ourselves adrift, he does not cease to love us and continues to be close with his mercy, with his readiness to forgive and to embrace us in his love. Therefore, St Paul continues, we must never be anxious, we can always set our requests, our needs, our worries before the Lord “by prayer and supplication” (4:6). This is a great cause for joy: knowing that it is always possible to pray to the Lord and that the Lord hears us, that God is not distant, but really listens, he knows us; and knowing that he never rejects our prayers even if he does not always answer as we would like, but that he does answer. And the Apostle adds: pray “with thanksgiving” (ibid.).

The joy the Lord communicates to us must encounter grateful love in us. Indeed, our joy is complete when we recognize his mercy, when we become attentive to the signs of his goodness, if we truly perceive that this goodness of God is with us and thank him for all that we receive from him every day. Those who selfishly welcome God’s gifts fail to find true joy; but the hearts of those who make God’s gifts an opportunity to love him with sincere gratitude and to communicate his love to others, are truly filled with joy. Let us remember that!

After the two Readings, let us come to the Gospel. Today’s Gospel tells us that to receive the Lord who comes we must prepare ourselves by looking clearly at our behaviour in life. John the Baptist replies to the different people who ask him what they should do to be ready for the Messiah’s coming (see Lk 3:10, 12, 14) that God asks for nothing extraordinary but that each one live in accordance with the criteria of solidarity and justice; without them we cannot prepare properly for the encounter with the Lord. Therefore let us too ask the Lord what he expects of us and what he wants us to do, and begin to understand that he does not demand anything extraordinary but rather that we live our normal life with rectitude and goodness.

Finally John the Baptist points out that we must follow with faithfulness and courage. First of all he denies that he himself is the Messiah and firmly proclaims: “I baptize you with water; but he who is mightier than I is coming, the thong of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie (v. 16). Here we note John’s deep humility in recognizing that his mission is to prepare the way for Jesus. Saying “I baptize you with water” cannot but make it clear that his action is symbolic. In fact he cannot eliminate and forgive sins: baptizing with water can only indicate that it is necessary to change one’s life. At the same time, John proclaims the coming of the one who is “mightier than he” who “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire” (ibid.). And, as we have heard, this great prophet uses strong images to invite people to conversion; however this is not in order to instil fear but rather to encourage them to receive God’s love in the best possible way, as it alone can truly purify life. God makes himself a man like us to give us a hope that is sure: if we follow him, if we are consistent in living our Christian life, he will draw us to him, he will lead us to communion with him; and there will be in our hearts true joy and true peace, even in difficulty, even in moments of weakness.

Dear friends, I am glad to pray with you to the Lord who makes himself present in the Eucharist to be with us always. I cordially greet the Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishop of the Sector, Fr Fabio Fasciani, your parish priest, whom I thank for his kind words to me on behalf of the community in which he explained to me the situation of the parish and the spiritual wealth of parish life. I greet all the priests present. I greet all those who promote the work of the parish: the catechists, the choir members and the members of the various groups, and likewise those who adhere to the Neocatechumenal Way, committed to the mission here. I see with joy so many children who are following God’s word at various levels, preparing for First Communion, for Confirmation and, after Confirmation, for life. Welcome! I am happy to see a living Church here! I extend my thoughts to the Oblates of Our Lady of the Rosary who live in the parish territory, and to all the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, especially the elderly, the sick and those in difficulty. I pray for each and every one in this Holy Mass.

Your parish that developed on the Prenestino Hill between the end of the 1960s and the mid-1980s, after the initial difficulties due to the lack of structures and services, equipped itself with a beautiful new church, inaugurated in 2007 after a long wait. May this sacred building therefore be a privileged space for growing in knowledge and love of the One whom in a few days we shall welcome in the joy of Christmas as Redeemer of the world and our Saviour. Do not fail to come to see him often, to feel more forcefully his presence that gives strength.

I rejoice in the sense of belonging to your parish community which in the course of these years has become ever more mature and consolidated. I encourage you to continue to develop your pastoral co-responsibility in a perspective of authentic communion among all those present, who are called to live complementarity in diversity. In a special way I would like to remind you all of the importance and the centrality of the Eucharist in personal and community life. May Holy Mass be the centre of your Sunday. It should be rediscovered and lived as a day of God and of the community, a day in which to praise and celebrate the One who died and rose for our salvation and asks us to live together in the joy of a community open and ready to accept every person who is lonely or in a difficult situation. Likewise, I urge you to receive the sacrament of Reconciliation regularly, especially in this season of Advent.

I know all that you do to prepare children and young people for the sacraments of Christian life. The Year of Faith, which we are living, must become an opportunity to increase and consolidate the experience of catechesis, in such a way as to permit the whole district to know and to deepen its knowledge of the Creed of the Church and to meet the Lord as a living Person. I address a special thought to families, in the hope that they may fulfil their vocation to love with generosity and perseverance.

The Pope also wishes to address a special word of affection and friendship to you, dear boys and girls and young people who are listening to me, and to your peers who live in this parish. May you feel you have lead roles to play in the new evangelization, putting your young energy, your enthusiasm and your talents at the service of God and of others in the community.

Dear brothers and sisters, as we said at the beginning of this celebration, today’s liturgy calls us to joy and conversion. Let us open our spirit to this invitation; and let us hurry to meet the Lord who comes, invoking and imitating St Patrick, a great evangelizer, and the Virgin Mary who awaited and prepared silently and prayerfully for the Redeemer’s birth. Amen!

Sorry for being late. There was no electricity, and hence no wi-fi, all morning. Some minutes after the electricity returned, a group of people came for confessions. Such is life!!

THE "O" ANTIPHONS:

O SAPIENTIA (O WISDOM)
SUNDAY 17th Guadete Sunday, 2017.

Tonight, we began a more discernible and final stretch in our preparations, our keeping watch, for the Nativity of the Lord with the singing of the “O” Antiphons at Vespers. There are seven special texts –antiphons– sung at the time we sing the Magnificat. The monks of Pachacamac sing the O antiphons and Magnificat in Latin but here it the first antiphon in English:

O Wisdom,You came forth from the mouth of the Most High, You reach from beginning to end, ordering all things mightily and sweetly: COME, and teach us the way of prudence!

For your time in Lectio I would recommend praying with the O Antiphons. Even sing them as a way of praying with the text. If you need the music go to the Advent hymn “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” Please keep in mind, that each antiphon contains one or more Old Testament type or figure; and that each allusion has a message for those of us in the New Covenant. The OT shapes, it forms and informs our understanding of the person of Jesus we come to know in the NT. Biblical typology is crucial for Christians when reading, praying and studying the sacred Scriptures.

The following commentary adapted from The Church’s Year of Grace, Fr Pius Parsch (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1959) with the assistance of JM Thompson:

In today’s O, we are pointed to the many praises of “Wisdom” in the Old Testament. One of the various senses in which the word is used refers to the divine attribute of wisdom, which is at times personified. Accordingly, we read of wisdom as proceeding from God, as being begotten of Him, as the breath of His power, the effusion of His glory. Wisdom is the beloved daughter who at the beginning of creation stood before God, assisting in the creation of the visible universe. From this concept of Wisdom, there later developed the doctrine of the LOGOS (the Word) in St. John’s Gospel.

But wisdom is also represented as a human attribute, as the foundation of all virtue. It is not so much knowledge and human prudence as knowing how to live—that is, true holiness. Its ultimate root is the fear of God (“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom”), its final goal is divine knowledge and love. The first part of today’s antiphon is from the book of Sirach (24:3); the second part is from the Book of Wisdom (8:1). In highly poetic phraseology, the origin and co-creative activity of wisdom are portrayed.

The text continues with the creative activity of the Son of God. St. John says in the Prologue to his Gospel: “All things were made by Him (the LOGOS) and without Him was made nothing that was made.” And St. Paul wrote to the Colossians: “In Him (i.e., Christ) were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.” (Col. 1:16) Hence, according to the NT, Christ (as the pre-mundane LOGOS) is the Creator and archetype of the material universe. How beautifully our antiphon describes the LOGOS as wisdom, encompassing and ordering all things!

It is the object of this antiphon to portray the NT Creator of the invisible spiritual world, rather than the Maker of the visible universe around us. In His Church and in the soul, “He reaches from beginning to end!” “Come, teach us the way of prudence!” What an all-embracing petition! Make us perfect Christians—Christians who are wholly penetrated with the leaven of Christ…who combine strength with gentleness, strong in battle against the world and ourselves.

We will continue to publish a commentary on the O antiphons tomorrow from the same source. My source is the blog Communio

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PREPARATION FOR CHRISTMAS: THE O ANTIPHONS

December 18, 2017, 7:35 am

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Monday, 18th December, 2017

The second O Antiphon sung in keeping watch for the Lord’s Nativity:

O ADONAI [God of the covenant] and Ruler of the house of Israel, You appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush, and on Mt. Sinai gave him Your Law: COME, and redeem us with an outstretched arm!

The following commentary adapted from The Church’s Year of Grace, Fr Pius Parsch (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1959)

The Second Person of the Holy Trinity had an active part in creation, as was noted in yesterday’s “O.” Now the liturgy, seeing Christ in the perspective of divinity, finds Him active in the Old Testament. Christ was the “Covenant of God” of the Chosen People. He made a covenant with Noah, with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and with Moses; He was the ruler of the Jewish people through history; two of His many appearances are mentioned in tonight’s antiphon (the burning bush and the giving of the Law midst lightning and thunder). The petition associates the deliverance from Egypt with the world-wide redemption from the bondage of sin.

The “Exodus event” is one of the most important of all of salvation history. It began when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, commissioning him to lead the Chosen People. This climaxed in the giving of the Law on Sinai. God showed Himself to His people as Defender and Redeemer, going before them “with an outstretched arm.”

This same “Exodus event” has always been regarded as a primary “type” of Christ’s work of redemption. Year after year we are brought back to these images and their fulfillment in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And today Jesus wants to enter my soul, to be its Ruler and Lawgiver. Christian life means following Christ. Christ wants to be my Law; without Him, there is no Kingdom of God. He wants to redeem me “with an outstretched arm,” but can do so only on condition that I unite my will to His. Listen, O my soul, to His direction!

Tuesday, 19th December, 2017

O Radix Jesse

O Root of Jesse, You stand as for an ensign of mankind; before You kings shall keep silence, and to You all nations shall have recourse. Come, save us, and do not delay!

The following commentary adapted from The Church’s Year of Grace, Fr Pius Parsch (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1959):

The bulk of this text is taken from various sections of the book of the prophet Isaiah (cf 11:1; 11:10; 52:15). In spirit, the prophet say how Judah and the kingdom of David would be destroyed. But there would remain a holy root. From the stump of Jesse (the name of the father of King David) springs forth a twig (root), a twig that becomes a banner unto all the nations. In its presence, kings will become reverently silent, and the nations will bow down and worship. It is clear that the prophet is speaking of the Messiah. David’s royal line was dethroned with the exile, and thereafter remained shrouded in oblivion—Jesse’s stump. But with Christ, a new branch buds out of the old root; the throne of David is once more occupied. “And the angel said to Mary: The Lord God will give unto Him the throne of David His Father; and He will reign in the house of Jacob forever.” Christ is of the root of Jesse, both as a descendant of David and as occupant of the royal throne.

The antiphon sums up two aspects of the Messiah and His work. His origins may be humble and unimpressive; but His Kingdom will embrace the whole earth, drawing all nations into it, and placing high and low alike under its rule.

Now the petition: “Come, save us and do not delay!” Millions do not yet recognize the Savior’s saving insignia of the Cross; leaders, dictators, presidents, mayors do not stand in silent awe before Christ’s presence; indeed, it is till true what the psalmist sang: “the Gentiles rage, and kings rise up while princes unite against God and against His Christ.” Even in my own soul—-is Christ perfect Sovereign of every quarter of my being? “Come, Lord, save us and please do not delay!”

Wednesday, 20th December, 2017

O Clavis David

O KEY OF DAVID and Scepter of the house of Israel: You open, and no man closes; You close, and no man opens. COME,and deliver him from the chains of prison who sits in darkness and in the shadow of death!

The following commentary adapted from The Church’s Year of Grace, Fr Pius Parsch (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1959):

Substantially, this passage is from Revelation 3:7, where Christ speaks of Himself as the “Key of David who opens and no one shuts; who shuts and no one opens.” But there is also a passage in Isaiah (22:22) which corresponds almost word-for-word with our antiphon. There the text is directed to the faithful civil ruler whom God supports: “I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder. He will open and no one will shut; he will shut, and no one will open.” The symbol of handing over the keys denotes the conferral of supreme authority. Evidently St. John borrowed the passage from Isaiah and applied it to Christ, a precedent followed by the liturgy.

Being the son of David, Christ is heir and possessor of David’s keys (i.e., his kingdom). After His resurrection, He told His apostles, “All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth.” Lastly, the petition of this antiphon is somewhat more extended than on previous days. Christ holds the keys to the prison where humanity is enchained. Redemption is described graphically in this antiphon—captive mankind sits in darkness and in the black shadows of death. May Christ the Redeemer, we plead, come and unlock this prison.

Thursday, 21st December, 2017

O Oriens

O DAYSPRING, Radiance of the Light eternal and Sun of Justice: COME,and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

The following commentary adapted from The Church’s Year of Grace, Fr Pius Parsch (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1959):

Not sacred history but nature inspires today’s “O.” The sun as a symbol of Christ is one of the finest figures in Sacred Scripture and in the liturgy. And never is the metaphor more beautifully worded or more expressive of an entire season’s liturgy than in our present antiphon.

Three metaphors link the Redeemer to the sun:

(1) He is the Rising Dawn;

(2) He is the Radiance of the Light Eternal;

(3) He is the Sun of Justice.

The expression “rising dawn” (aka “dayspring”) occurs in Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12. Perhaps more familiar to Christians from its daily use in the Benedictus at Morning Prayer is the expression “Oriens ex alto,” the “dayspring from on high.” In spirit, the aged priest Zechariah beheld Christ rising as the sun “to enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” The verse is incorporated in today’s “O.” Christ is the Rising Sun that disperses spiritual darkness and death. From the sun in the sky comes light and life; from Christ the divine Sun likewise comes light and life. Remember how Jesus called Himself the light and the life of the world.

The title “Radiance of the Light eternal” is found in Hebrews 1:3. It is a reference to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. “Light eternal” is a reference to God the Father; “Radiance of the Light eternal” describes the eternal and consubstantial origin of the Son from the Father. In the Creed, we say, “Lumen de Lumine,” light from light. Thus the antiphon’s first phrase brought out Christ’s relation to the world and to men, while this second one tells of the inner divine relationship of Christ to the Father.

“Sun of Justice!” These words depict the Messiah in Malachi 4:2. Christ is the Sun, emitting the rays of justice (i.e., holiness and grace). What the sun does for the realm of nature, that Christ as the Sun of Grace does for the kingdom of God.

In the closing petition, we ask Christ to enlighten us by His birth. Even in us, the faithful, there is still much darkness, much of death’s shadow. Open your soul and let the divine light shine in!

Friday, 22nd December, 2017

O Rex Gentium

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limoformasti.
O King of the Gentiles and their desired One, the Cornerstone that makes both one: Come, and deliver man, whom You formed out of the dust of the earth (Is 9:7; 2;4; Ps 2:7-8, Eph 2:14-20).

Considering Pius Parsch’s reflections, “The antiphon should provoke enthusiasm for the conversion of pagans. Try to realize how ardently Christ desires that we carry the gospel to non-Catholics [and today even to Catholics poorly catechized]; to all of us, directly or indirectly, His apostolic commission is addressed. Each one of us can at least pray for the conversion of those still ignorant of Christ.”

In Jesus, the unity of believers, Jew and Gentile, is known. He’s spoken of as the cornerstone: the peacemaker where as Saint Paul said “There is neither Jew nor Greek; neither slave nor free person, there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:29).

Friday, 23rd December, 2017

O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, exspectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.

O Emmanuel, God with us, our King and Lawgiver, the expected of the nations and their Savior: Come to save us, O Lord our God (Is 7:14; 33:22).

All is fulfilled now in Jesus. In the previous days you would have noticed the Messiah as he was expected in the Scriptures. Today, we address Jesus with the title given by God, Emmanuel –“God with us.”

The promise of God the Father pitching His among us is known so clearly in the Incarnation of the Word. This antiphon is the climax of all expectations for a Savior who ushers in a new time in history where everything, everything is reversed (see the Prophet Isaiah). “The very term Emmanuel, God with us, reveals the kindly, human heart of Jesus –He wants to be one of us, a Child of man, with all our human weakness and suffering; He wants to experience how hard it is to be man. He wants to remain with us to the end, He wants to dwell within us, He wants to make us share His nature” (Pius Parsch). Come, Lord, Jesus.

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AWAITING CHRISTMAS: THE O ANTIPHONS

December 18, 2017, 9:44 pm

≫ Next: ADVENT THOUGHTS: TO WATCH WITH CHRIST by JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, CARDINAL SCHONBORN & OTHERS

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Monday, 18th December 2017

The second O Antiphon sung in keeping watch for the Lord’s Nativity:

O ADONAI [God of the covenant] and Ruler of the house of Israel, You appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush, and on Mt. Sinai gave him Your Law: COME, and redeem us with an outstretched arm!

The following commentary adapted from The Church’s Year of Grace, Fr Pius Parsch (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1959)

Tuesday, 19th December 2017

O Radix Jesse

O Root of Jesse, You stand as for an ensign of mankind; before You kings shall keep silence, and to You all nations shall have recourse. Come, save us, and do not delay!

The following commentary adapted from The Church’s Year of Grace, Fr Pius Parsch (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1959):

Now the petition: “Come, save us and do not delay!” Millions do not yet recognize the Savior’s saving insignia of the Cross; leaders, dictators, presidents, mayors do not stand in silent awe before Christ’s presence; indeed, it is still true what the psalmist sang: “the Gentiles rage and kings rise up while princes unite against God and against His Christ.” Even in my own soul—-is Christ perfect Sovereign of every quarter of my being? “Come, Lord, save us and please do not delay!”

Wednesday, 20th December 2017

O Clavis David

O KEY OF DAVID and Scepter of the house of Israel: You open, and no man closes; You close, and no man opens. COME,and deliver him from the chains of prison who sits in darkness and in the shadow of death!

The following commentary adapted from The Church’s Year of Grace, Fr Pius Parsch (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1959):

Substantially, this passage is from Revelation 3:7, where Christ speaks of Himself as the “Key of David who opens and no one shuts; who shuts and no one opens.” But there is also a passage in Isaiah (22:22) which corresponds almost word-for-word with our antiphon. There the text is directed to the faithful civil ruler whom God supports: “I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder. He will open and no one will shut; he will shut, and no one will open.” The symbol of handing over the keys denotes the conferral of supreme authority. Evidently St. John borrowed the passage from Isaiah and applied it to Christ, a precedent followed by the liturgy.

Being the son of David, Christ is heir and possessor of David’s keys (i.e., his kingdom). After His resurrection, He told His apostles, “All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth.” Lastly, the petition of this antiphon is somewhat more extended than on previous days. Christ holds the keys to the prison where humanity is enchained. Redemption is described graphically in this antiphon—captive mankind sits in darkness and in the black shadows of death. May Christ the Redeemer, we plead, come and unlock this prison.

Thursday, 21st December 2017

O Oriens

O DAYSPRING, Radiance of the Light eternal and Sun of Justice: COME,and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

The following commentary adapted from The Church’s Year of Grace, Fr Pius Parsch (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 1959):

Three metaphors link the Redeemer to the sun:

(1) He is the Rising Dawn;

(2) He is the Radiance of the Light Eternal;

(3) He is the Sun of Justice.

Friday, 22nd December 2017

O Rex Gentium

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limoformasti.O King of the Gentiles and their desired One, the Cornerstone that makes both one: Come, and deliver man, whom You formed out of the dust of the earth (Is 9:7; 2;4; Ps 2:7-8, Eph 2:14-20).

Saturday, 23rd December 2017

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, exspectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.
O Emmanuel, God with us, our King and Lawgiver, the expected of the nations and their Savior: Come to save us, O Lord our God (Is 7:14; 33:22).

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ADVENT THOUGHTS: TO WATCH WITH CHRIST by JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, CARDINAL SCHONBORN & OTHERS

December 19, 2017, 2:26 pm

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my source: Living Bulwark
Praising the Names of Jesus:

The Antiphons of Advent

by Jeanne Kun

It is especially in the final week of Advent that our attention is fixed on the messianic promises proclaimed by the ancient prophets of Israel. A distinctive feature of the Liturgy of the Hours in this week preceding the Christmas vigil is the antiphon sung at Vespers (evening prayer) before and after the recitation of the Magnificat. Originally incorporated into the monastic office in the Middle Ages, these antiphons, often called the "Greater Antiphons" or the "O Antiphons", are also echoed in the daily lectionary as the verse for the gospel acclamation during this week. They add a mood of eager expectation to the liturgy that builds throughout these seven days and climaxes at Christmas.

The O Antiphons have been described as "a unique work of art and a special ornament of the pre-Christmas liturgy, filled with the Spirit of the Word of God". They "create a poetry that fills the liturgy with its splendour", and their composer shows "a magnificent command of the Bible's wealth of motifs". The antiphons are, in fact, a collage of Old Testament types of Christ. Their predominant theme is messianic, stressing the hope of the Savior's coming. Jesus is invoked by various titles, mainly taken from the prophet Isaiah. The sequence progresses historically, from the beginning, before creation, to the very gates of Bethlehem.

In their structure, each of the seven antiphons follows the same pattern, resembling a traditional liturgical prayer. Each O Antiphon begins with an invocation of the expected Messiah, followed by praise of him under one of his particular titles. Each ends with a petition for God's people, relevant to the title by which he is addressed, and the cry for him to "Come".

The seven titles attributed to Jesus in the antiphons are Wisdom (Sapientia in Latin), Ruler of the House of Israel (Adonai), Root of Jesse (Radix), Key of David (Clavis), Rising Dawn (Oriens), King of the Gentiles (Rex). and Emmanuel. In Latin, the initials of the titles make an acrostic which, when reading backwards. means: "Tomorrow I will be there" ("Ero Cras"). To the medieval mind, this was clearly a reference to the approaching Christmas vigil.

Today the O Antiphons are most familiar to us in the hymn "O come, O come Emmanuel". Each verse of the hymn parallels one of the antiphons. In addition to their use in the Liturgy of the Hours and the gospel acclamation, they have been popularly incorporated into church devotions and family prayer. An Advent prayer service for use at home, in school, or in the events of parish life can be built around the singing or recitation of the antiphons, accompanied by the related Scripture readings and prayers. They can be prayed at family dinner times or with the lighting of the Advent wreath, with a short explanation of their biblical background. The titles can also be depicted by simple symbols - for example, on banners and posters or in bulletin illustrations - to help us to reflect on these Advent themes.

Advent Carol Service: St John’s College Cambridge 1983

(George Guest)

To watch with Christ.

. by Blessed John Henry Newman

Rorate Caeli - Catholic Gregorian Chant Hymns

[Note: The following is excerpted from Newman's sermon "Watching," first published in 1838 (in Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 4). Minor changes, including capitalization style, were made to allow the text to be more accessible to modern readers. Sub-headings were also added. Editor]

Let us consider this most serious question – What is it to watch with Christ? I consider this word watching a remarkable word; remarkable because the idea is not so obvious as might appear at first sight, and next because our Lord and his disciples inculcate it. We are not simply to believe, but to watch; not simply to love, but to watch; not simply to obey, but to watch; to watch for what? For that great event, Christ's coming...

Now, what is watching?

Do you know the feeling in matters of this life, of expecting a friend, expecting him to come, and he delays? Do you know what it is to be in unpleasant company, and to wish for the time to pass away, and the hour strike when you may be at liberty? Do you know what it is to be in anxiety lest something should happen which may happen or may not, or to be in suspense about some important event, which makes your heart beat when you are reminded of it, and of which you think the first thing in the morning?

Do you know what it is to have a friend in a distant country, to expect news of him, and to wonder from day to day what he is now doing, and whether he is well? Do you know what it is so to live upon a person who is present with you, that your eyes follow his, that you read his soul, that you see all its changes in his countenance, that you anticipate his wishes, that you smile in his smile, and are sad in his sadness, and are downcast when he is vexed, and rejoice in his successes? To watch for Christ is a feeling such as all these; as far as feelings of this world are fit to shadow out those of another.

He watches for Christ who has a sensitive, eager, apprehensive mind; who is awake, alive, quick-sighted, zealous in seeking and honoring him; who looks out for him in all that happens, and who would not be surprised, who would not be over-agitated or overwhelmed, if he found that he was coming at once.

And he watches with Christ, who, while he looks on to the future, looks back on the past, and does not so contemplate what his Savior has purchased for him, as to forget what he has suffered for him. He watches with Christ, whoever commemorates and renews in his own person Christ's cross and agony, and gladly takes up that mantle of affliction which Christ wore here, and left behind him when he ascended. And hence in the Epistles, often as the inspired writers show their desire for his second coming, as often do they show their memory of His first, and never lose sight of his crucifixion in his resurrection.

Thus if St. Paul reminds the Romans that they "wait for the redemption of the body" at the Last Day, he also says, "If so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together." If he speaks to the Corinthians of "waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ," he also speaks of "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body."

If he writes to the Philippians of "the power of [Christ's] resurrection," he adds at once "and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death." If he consoles the Colossians with the hope "when Christ shall appear," of their "appearing with him in glory," he has already declared that he [Paul] "fills up that which remains of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh for his body's sake, which is the church." [Rom. 8:17-28; 1 Cor.1:7; 2 Cor. 4:10; Phil. 3:10; Col.3:4, and 1:24.]

Thus the thought of what Christ is, must not obliterate from the mind the thought of what he was; and faith is always sorrowing with him while it rejoices. And the same union of opposite thoughts is impressed on us in holy communion, in which we see Christ's death and resurrection together, at one and the same time; we commemorate the one, we rejoice in the other; we make an offering, and we gain a blessing.

This then is to watch:

To be detached from what is present, and to live in what is unseen. To live in the thought of Christ as he came once, and as he will come again. To desire his second coming, from our affectionate and grateful remembrance of his first. And this it is, in which we shall find that men, in general, are wanting. They are indeed without faith and love also, but at least they profess to have these graces, nor is it easy to convince them that they have not. For they consider they have faith, if they do but own that the Bible came from God, or that they trust wholly in Christ for salvation; and they consider they have love if they obey some of the most obvious of God's commandments. Love and faith they think they have; but surely they do not even fancy that they watch. What is meant by watching, and how it is a duty, they have no definite idea; and thus it accidentally happens that watching is a suitable test of a Christian, in that it is that particular property of faith and love, which, essential as it is, men of this world do not even profess; that particular property, which is the life or energy of faith and love, the way in which faith and love, if genuine, show themselves...

...Year passes after year silently; Christ's coming is ever nearer than it was. O that, as he comes nearer earth, we may approach nearer heaven! O, my brethren, pray him to give you the heart to seek him in sincerity. Pray him to make you in earnest. You have one work only, to bear your cross after him. Resolve in his strength to do so. Resolve to be no longer beguiled by "shadows of religion," by words, or by disputings, or by notions, or by high professions, or by excuses, or by the world's promises or threats.

Obey with the best heart you have

Pray him to give you what Scripture calls "an honest and good heart," or "a perfect heart," and, without waiting, begin at once to obey him with the best heart you have. Any obedience is better than none. Any profession which is disjoined from obedience, is a mere pretence and deceit. Any religion which does not bring you nearer to God is of the world. You have to seek his face; obedience is the only way of seeking him. All your duties are obediences.

If you are to believe the truths he has revealed, to regulate yourselves by his precepts, to be frequent in his ordinances, to adhere to his church and people, why is it, except because he has bid you? And to do what he bids is to obey him, and to obey him is to approach him. Every act of obedience is an approach – an approach to him who is not far off, though he seems so, but close behind this visible screen of things which hides him from us. He is behind this material framework. Earth and sky are but a veil going between him and us. The day will come when he will rend that veil, and show himself to us. And then, according as we have waited for him, will he recompense us.

If we have forgotten him, he will not know us. But "blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when he comes, shall find watching... He shall gird himself, and make them sit down to eat, and will come forth and serve them. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants" (Luke 12:37, 38). May this be the portion of every one of us! It is hard to attain it, but it is woeful to fail. Life is short; death is certain, and the world to come is everlasting.

Christians Have Lost Touch With Heaven!

By Christoph Cardinal Schonborn

Something very strange has taken place in the last few years: Christians have lost touch with heaven! Of the desire for heaven, our heavenly home, we hear hardly a word. It is as if Christians have lost the orientation that for centuries defined the direction of their journey. We have forgotten that we are pilgrims and that the goal of our pilgrimage is heaven. Connected with this is another loss: we largely lack the awareness that we are on a dangerous pilgrim path and that it is possible for us to miss our goal, to fail to reach the goal of our life. To put it bluntly: we do not long for heaven; we take it for granted that we shall get there. This diagnosis may be exaggerated, over-stated. The trouble is, I am afraid it is essentially true.

Against this loss and neglect, the Church's Easter message proclaims: “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1). “My desire is to depart and be with Christ” (Philippians 1:23). This profound and pressing yearning does not strive for just any kind of “life after death” but is the desire “to be with Christ,” to live with him, to be “at home with the Lord”: “So we are always of good courage; we know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:6-8).

“At home!” For so many people, who have lost their homes or their homeland, the word home is a word of longing. The English word home (home town or homeland), like the German Heimat, has a strongly emotional, almost devotional resonance, which we do not find in the Latin patria or the French patrie. Home is not just a particular landscape, not just its language, its familiar landmarks, but above all the people who live there. When the people we were familiar with (friends, neighbors, acquaintances) no longer live there, then home has died, even if the landscape has remained. How often have the great artists and writers of our century expressed their pain at the loss of their homelands. So many people have eaten the bitter bread of exile.

The Church is the promise of home. The man who has found the Church has found his way home. Paul speaks of this new home: “Our home [politeuma] is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20). Our home is in heaven, because it is in heaven that we find our true family. That is why Paul tells the faithful in Ephesus: “You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19). And we have found a Mother: “The Jerusalem above . . . is our mother” (Galatians 4:26). Home also means having a house to live in: “In my Father's house are many rooms . . . I go to prepare a place for you. And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:2-3).

The Church is first of all, then, a heavenly reality. She has her origin in the life of God himself, in the unity of the Blessed Trinity, and so, in the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar, she is “first and foremost a reality established in time from heaven”. The foundations of the Church are above, which is why Saint Augustine says:

“Since our foundation [Christ] is in heaven, let us be built up toward heaven . . for we are built spiritually, and our foundation lies above. Let us hasten, therefore, whither we are built.”

This look of longing toward the heavenly homeland is not an escape from our earthly responsibilities. On the contrary, hope for heaven, for full communion with Christ and all the angels and saints, is the very motor, the driving force, of Christian engagement in this world. Christian hope for the coming of God's Kingdom asks for both things from God: that his Kingdom may come in glory (or, as the Didache prays, “that grace may come and the world pass away”); and that his Kingdom may begin already here on earth.

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ADVENT FOR MONKS: A SHORT CONFERENCE BY ABBOT PAUL and DANIELOU ON ADVENT BY CARL OLSEN

December 20, 2017, 7:27 am

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We can see that this Word who seeks us and find us, that we may make response to him by seeking him in our turn, is the whole essence of the Gospel and the whole of Christianity. And in its turn monastic life is nothing else, no more and no less, than a Christian life whose Christianity has penetrated every part of it. It is a Christian life which is completely open, without refusal or delay, to the Word, which opens itself and abandons itself to it. This is the response that the Word expects--expects and elicits, for it is the creating and re-creating word. (Louis Bouyer)

Bouyer also iterates St. Augustine's image of the movement of the monastic life, as it is not a "state."

He comments that the monk is one who seeks God. 'To seek God,' to seek him as a person, as the Person par excellence, and not only as the 'Thou' to whom all our love should be addressed, but as the 'I' who has first approached us, whose word of love, addressed to the primeval chaos, drew us forth from it in the first place, and, spoken to us in our sin, draws us forth from it again: to be a monk is nothing else than this. To be a monk, then, is simply to be an integral Christian.

my source for the above quotations: The Complete Hermit

St Benedict ends Chapter 73, which is really an Epilogue to the other 72 chapters that make up the Rule, by saying, “Are you hastening toward your heavenly home? Then with Christ’s help, keep this little rule that we have written for beginners. After that, you can set out for the loftier summits of the teaching and virtues we have mentioned above,” i.e. the works of St John Cassian and the Rule of St Basil, “and under God’s protection, you will reach them. Amen.” This question and the answer, which St Benedict proposes, lie at the very heart of our understanding and observance of Advent. As we know, there is no mention of Advent or Christmas in the Holy Rule, only of Lent and Easter. The fact is, it was early days in the development of the Liturgical Year in the West. Nevertheless, the quintessential spirit or character of the Rule, as of the monastic life as a whole, is that of Advent. Even though Chapter 49 tells us that “the life of a monk ought to be a continuous Lent,” we could say that our lives are, in fact, a continuous Advent, so important to us is the search for God, the constant longing, yearning, desire and expectancy that make our monastic journey a life-long vigil, for in truth we live “in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ”.

Yesterday morning at Vigils, we read from Cardinal Jean Daniélou’s wonderful book The Mystery of Advent, first published in French in 1950. In it he writes, “The mystery which we are now living in the world is the mystery of Christ’s gradual coming to every soul and every nation. Christ has indeed come, but he remains always the one who is yet to come. We are forever in the season of Advent, awaiting the coming of the Messiah. Just as Jesus was born according to the flesh in Bethlehem of Judea, so he must be born according to the spirit in the soul of each one of us.” He then goes on to say, “The whole mystery of the spiritual life is the continual birth of Jesus within us. To be a Christian means to be gradually changed into Christ so as to be truly children of the Father.” This idea of the continual birth of Jesus within us gives meaning and sense to all we do as Benedictine monks, our prayer, our work, our living together as a community, our various ministries, our relationships, our sufferings and, ultimately, our diminishment and death, our lying in the grave. The search for God includes our patient waiting and loving desire for him and the confident knowledge that Christ is continually being born in us, that we are gradually changing into Christ and becoming ever more “sons of the Father.”

Of course, it’s not all plain sailing and there are many obstacles and upsets on the road. We give in easily to temptation and we can acquiesce into sinful ways in thought, word and deed. We can become self-centred and so focus not on God but on ourselves, and this can lead to selfishness, thinking only of ourselves and of our own needs. We become irritable with others, complaining and criticising our brethren and those God has placed in authority in his Church. We put ourselves on a pedestal, considering ourselves to be wiser and more knowledgeable than others, even more virtuous, and so take liberties in judging and condemning those we should love and respect. You know what I’m talking about. I needn’t labour the point. St Benedict, on the contrary, invites us to aim for humility and moderation, for obedience and charity. If we are growing closer to God, gradually changing into Christ, then we should acquire the mind and heart of Christ. We should offer ourselves daily to the Father as a sacrifice for others, especially our brethren, whom we should love with a chaste love, indeed with the “love of God that surpasses all understanding,” that “love which casts out all fear.”

Advent has been particularly short this year and Christmas is almost upon us. Let us never forget that Advent is what the Christian life, and so the monastic life, is all about. As we kneel in vigil before the crib and give thanks that “God became Man that we might become God,” in the words of St Irenaeus, let us pray that Christ may find a home in every human heart, even if we might not recognise that to be the case, and that the grace of his Holy Spirit might gradually change those souls into Christ. In praying for others, we will be praying for ourselves as well. Amen

Advent with Jean Daniélou

by Carl E. Olson

my source: Ignatius Insight

Father Jean Daniélou's The Advent of Salvation, originally published simply as Advent in 1950, may be the best $3.00 purchase I've ever made. The out-of-print book is a classic work on the meaning of Advent. Here are a few of Daniélou's thoughts about this wonderful but often overlooked season.

Salvation and History: The Old Testament is the story of God's education of mankind, preparing man for the reception of supernatural gifts. God's covenant with Abraham marked the "opening of sacred history," just as creation had marked God's action upon the cosmos and the Incarnation marked the beginning of the world to come. The Abrahamic covenant promised salvation to the nations, to be realized in and through the God-man, Jesus Christ.

The first Advent was an outpouring of God's grace upon an unsuspecting world. Grace is "that bond between mankind and God which can never be broken, because it is founded on the manhood of Christ, in whom Godhead and manhood are henceforth joined together forever. . . . Christ has brought our humanity into the inmost life of God to stay." We enter that life through baptism, are nourished with the Eucharist, and become partakers of the divine nature: "The mystery of history is summed up in God's design of giving His spiritual creatures a share in the life of the Trinity."

John the Baptist: He prepared a way for his cousin, the Messiah, by proclaiming that the Kingdom was at hand. John, who brings grace by preparing the way for conversion, compliments Mary, who brings grace by being the Mother of God, "Since the coming of Christ goes on forever–He is always He who is to come in the world and in the Church–there is always an Advent going on, and this Advent is filled by John the Baptist. It is John the Baptist's peculiar grace that he prepares the way for what is about to happen." We can emulate John by calling for conversion, beginning with our own, and preparing the way for the world to meet the Messiah.

The Blessed Virgin: The Mother of God "did not imitate Solomon by asking for wisdom," he reflects, "She asked for grace because grace is the one thing we need." How simple and how amazing! Mary's example of faith should inform our thoughts and shape our actions during Advent. "She is the faithful virgin, who is never anything but faithful, whose fidelity was the perfect answer to the fidelity of God; she was always entirely consecrated to the one true God." Mary anticipated the birth of her Son for nine months and she now anticipates the birth of the New Creation when He returns in glory.

The Cross: It's unpopular, of course, but it is the way of Christ–and of His disciples. "The Christian, following Christ, must resemble Him wholly; and the only way to do this is by the Cross." We can only long for the coming of Christ and eternal life if we die to ourselves. We must know our place–in both this world and the world to come. God desires a unity of all men, in communion with the Father through the Son. The Cross leads to unity; pride leads to death: "The greatest obstacle anyone can put to unity is to want to make himself the centre of things."

The Return of the King: "We live always during Advent," writes Daniélou, "we are always waiting for the Messiah to come." Jesus came once and He will come again, but He is not yet fully made known. "He is not fully manifest in mankind as a whole: that is to say, that just as Christ was born according to the flesh in Bethlehem of Judah so much he be born according to the spirit in each of our souls." Advent is anticipation, preparation, and contemplation of the King.

To think I got all that–and much more–out of a $3 purchase. This is a well-focused Advent the pre-Christmas gift that keeps on giving all life long.

[NOTE: Although The Advent of Salvation is no longer in print, you might enjoy what is my all-time favourite Daniélou book, God and the Ways of Knowing.]

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I HOPE YOU FIND THIS MULTI-MEDIA POST HELPFUL IN YOUR APPRECIATION OF CHRISTMAS. A HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!!

December 22, 2017, 3:35 pm

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CHRISTMAS EVE

Latin Introit for the 4th Sunday of Advent

"Rorate caeli"

Fourth Sunday of Advent Year B: Luke 1.26–38

A reading from a Homily by St Bede the Venerable

Today’s reading of the gospel calls to mind the beginning of our redemption,

for the passage tells us how God sent an angel from heaven to a virgin. He was to proclaim the new birth, the incarnation of God’s Son, who would take away our age-old guilt; through him, it would be possible to be made new and numbered among the children of God. And so, if we are to deserve the gifts of the promised salvation, we must listen attentively to the account of its beginning.

The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. What is said of the house of David applies not only to Joseph but also to Mary. It was a precept of the law that each man should marry a wife from his own tribe and kindred. St Paul also bears testimony to this when he writes to Timothy: Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descended from David, as preached in my Gospel. Our Lord is truly descended from David since his spotless mother took her ancestry from David’s line.

The angel came to her and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David.’ The angel refers to the kingdom of the Israelite nation as the throne of David because in his time, by the Lord’s command and assistance, David governed it with a spirit of faithful service. The Lord God gave to our Redeemer the throne of his father David when he decreed that he should take flesh from the lineage of David. As David had once ruled the people with temporal authority, so Christ would now

lead them to the eternal kingdom by his spiritual grace. Of this kingdom the Apostle said: He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. The house of Jacob here refers to the universal Church which, through its faith in and witness to Christ shares the heritage of the patriarchs. This may apply either to those who are physical descendants of the patriarchal families or to those who

come from gentile nations and are reborn in Christ by the waters of baptism. In this house, Christ shall reign forever, and of his kingdom, there will be no end. During this present life, Christ rules in the Church. By faith and

love, he dwells in the hearts of his elect and guides them by his unceasing care toward their heavenly reward. In the life to come, when their period of exile on earth is ended, he will exercise his kingship by leading the faithful to their heavenly country. There, forever inspired by the vision of his presence, their one delight will be to praise and glorify him.

Ven. Bede, Homily 2 on Advent: CCSL 122, 14–17

"Nine Lessons and Carols"

Kings College Chapel Cambridge

"Christmas" read by the poet

Sir John Betjeman

FEAST OF CHRISTMAS

The Mystery of Christmas

Dom Prosper Gueranger

Everything is mystery in this holy season. The Word of God, whose generation is before the day-star, is born in time: A Child is God. A Virgin becomes a Mother and remains a Virgin. Things divine are commingled with those that are human. And the sublime, the ineffable antithesis, expressed by the Beloved Disciple in those words of his Gospel, The Word was made flesh, is repeated in a thousand different ways in all the prayers of the Church.

And rightly so, for it admirably embodies the whole of the great portent that unites in one Person the nature of Man and the nature of God.

The splendour of this mystery dazzles the understanding, but it inundates the heart with joy. It is the consummation of the designs of God in time. It is the endless subject of admiration and wonder to the Angels and Saints. Nay, it is the source and cause of their beatitude. Let us see how the Church offers this mystery to her children, veiled under the symbolism of the Liturgy.

Why the 25th of December?

The four weeks of our preparation are over. They were the image of the 4,000 years that preceded the great coming, and we have reached the 25th day of the month of December as a long desired place of sweetest rest. But, why is it that the celebration of our Savior's Birth should be the perpetual privilege of this one fixed day, while the whole liturgical cycle has to be changed and remodelled every year in order to yield to that ever-varying day which is to be the feast of His Resurrection, Easter Sunday?

nativity

Adoring Christ on December 25

The question is a very natural one, and we find it proposed and answered as far back as the fourth century by St. Augustine in his celebrated Epistle to Januarius. The holy Doctor offers this explanation: We solemnize the day of our Savior's Birth so that we may honour that Birth, which was for our salvation. But, the precise day of the week on which He was born is void of any mystical signification. … We should not suppose, however, that because the Feast of Jesus' Birth is not fixed to any particular day of the week, there is no mystery expressed by its always being on the 25th of December.

First, we may observe, with the old liturgists, that the Feast of Christmas is kept by turns on each of the days of the week, that thus its holiness may cleanse and rid them of the curse that Adam's sin had put upon them.

Second, the great mystery of the 25th of December being the Feast of our Savior's Birth refers not to the division of time marked out by God himself, but to the course of that great luminary that gives life to the world, because it gives light and warmth. Jesus, our Savior, the Light of the World, was born when the night of idolatry and crime was at its darkest. The day of His Birth, the 25th of December is the time when the material sun begins to gain its ascendancy over the reign of the gloomy night and show to the world its triumph of brightness.

In our Advent, we showed, following the Holy Fathers, that the diminution of physical light may be considered as emblematic of those dismal times which preceded the Incarnation. We joined our prayers with those of the people of the Old Testament, and with our Holy Mother the Church we cried out to the Divine Orient, the Sun of Justice, that He would deign to come and deliver us from the twofold death of body and soul.

God has heard our prayers, and it is on the day of the Winter Solstice - which the pagans of old made so much of by their fears and rejoicings - that He gives us both the increase of the natural light and the One Who is the Light of our souls.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Ambrose, St. Maximus of Turin, St. Leo, St. Bernard and the principal liturgists, dwell with complacency on this profound mystery, which the Creator of the universe has willed should mark both the natural and the supernatural world. We shall find the Church also making continual allusion to it during this season of Christmas, as she did in that of Advent.

‘Darkness decreases, light increases’

“On this the Day which the Lord hath made,” says St. Gregory of Nyssa, “darkness decreases, light increases and night is driven back again. No, brethren, it is not by chance, nor by any created will, that this natural change begins on the day when He shows himself in the brightness of His coming, which is the spiritual life of the world. It is nature revealing, under this symbol, a secret to those whose eye is quick enough to see it, that is, to those who are able to appreciate this circumstance of our Savior's coming.

light in darkness winter

A light appears in the darkness of winter

“Nature seems to me to say: ‘Know, O man! that under the things that I show thee, mysteries lie concealed. Hast thou not seen the night that had grown so long suddenly checked? Learn hence, that the black night of sin, which had reached its height by the accumulation of every guilty device, is this day stopped in its course. Yes, from this day forward its duration shall be shortened until at length there shall be nought but light. Look, I pray thee, on the sun; and see how his rays are stronger, and his position higher in the heavens: Learn from that how the other light, the light of the Gospel, is now shedding itself over the whole earth.”

“Let us rejoice, my Brethren,” cries out St. Augustine. “This day is sacred not because of the visible sun, but because of the Birth of He who is the invisible Creator of the sun... He chose this day whereon to be born, as He chose the Mother of whom to be born, and He bade both the day and the Mother. The day He chose was that on which the light begins to increase, and it typifies the work of Christ, Who renews our interior man day by day. For the eternal Creator, having willed to be born in time, His Birthday would necessarily be in harmony with the rest of His creation.”

The same St. Augustine, in another sermon for the same Feast, gives us the interpretation of a mysterious expression of St. John the Baptist, which admirably confirms the tradition of the Church. The great Precursor said on one occasion when speaking of Christ: “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

christ child

Christ, who is the Light of the world

These prophetic words signify, in their literal sense that the Baptist's mission was at its close because Jesus was entering upon His. But they convey, as St. Augustine assures us, a second meaning: “John came into this world at the season of the year when the length of the day decreases; Jesus was born in the season when the length of the day increases. Thus there is mystery both in the rising of that glorious star, the Baptist, at the summer solstice, and in the rising of our Divine Sun in the dark season of winter.”

There have been men who dared to scoff at Christianity as superstition because they discovered that the ancient pagans used to keep a feast of the sun on the winter solstice. In their shallow erudition, they concluded that a Religion could not be divinely instituted that had certain rites or customs originating in an analogy to certain phenomena of this world.

In other words, these writers denied what Revelation asserts, namely, that God only created this world for the sake of His Christ and His Church. The very facts which these enemies to the true Faith are, to us Catholics, additional proof of its being worthy of our most devoted love.

Thus, then, have we explained the fundamental mystery of these Forty Days of Christmas by having shown the grand secret hidden in the choice made by God's eternal decree, that the 25th day of December should be the Birthday of God upon this earth.

Midnight Mass: Introit

Proclamation of the Christmas feast and Mass at midnight

St Athanasius on the Incarnation

my source: Sermon Index

For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far from it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are.. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us. He saw the reasonable race, the race of men that, like Himself, expressed the Father's Mind, wasting out of existence, and death reigning over all in corruption. He saw that corruption held us all the closer, because it was the penalty for the Transgression; He saw, too, how unthinkable it would be for the law to be repealed before it was fulfilled. He saw how unseemly it was that the very things of which He Himself was the Artificer should be disappearing. He saw how the surpassing wickedness of men was mounting up against them ; He saw also their universal liability to death. All this He saw and, pitying our race, moved with compassion for our limitation, unable to endure that death should have the mastery, rather than that His creatures should perish and the work of His Father for us men come to nought, He took to Himself a body, a human body even as our own. Nor did He will merely to become embodied or merely to appear; had that been so, He could have revealed His. divine majesty in some other and better way. No, He took our body, and not only so, but He took it directly from a spotless, stainless virgin, without the agency of human father-a pure body, untainted by intercourse with man. He, the Mighty One, the Artificer of all, Himself prepared this body in the virgin as a temple for Himself, and took it for His very own, as the instrument through which He was known and in which He dwelt. Thus, taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to the corruption of death, He surrendered His body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father. This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished because, having fulfilled in His body that for which it was appointed, it was thereafter voided of its power for men. This He did that He might turn again to incorruption men who had turned back to corruption, and make them alive through death by the appropriation of His body and by .the grace of His resurrection. Thus He would make death to disappear from them as utterly as straw from fire.

Introit for the Mass of Christmas Day

early Roman chant

Introit for Christmas Day

"Puer natus"

FOR THE FEAST OF THE NATIVITY

Sermon 184

my source: Dec 25th info

St. Augustine

THE BIRTHDAY OF our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, on which Truth sprang forth from the earth[1] and the procession of day from day extending even unto our time began, has, with the return of its anniversary, dawned upon us today as deserving of special celebration. 'Let us be glad and rejoice therein,'[2] for the faith of Christians holds fast to the joy which the lowliness of such sublimity has offered to us, a joy far removed from the hearts of the wicked, since God has hidden these things from the wise and prudent and has revealed them to the little ones.[3] Therefore, let the lowly hold fast to the lowliness of God so that, by means of this great help as by a beast of burden supporting their infirmity, they may come to the mountain of God. The wise and prudent, however, while they aim at the heights of God, do not put their trust in lowly things, but pass them by, and hence they fail to reach the heights. Vain and worthless, puffed up and elated, they have halted, as it were, on the wind-swept middle plain between heaven and earth. Wise and prudent in the rating of this world, they fall short of the standards set by Him who made this world. For, if they possessed the true wisdom which is of God and which is God, they would understand that flesh could have been assumed by God without the possibility of His having been changed into flesh; that He took upon Himself what He was not and remained what He was; that He came to us in the form of man and yet did not depart from His Father; that He preserved His divine nature while He appeared to us in our human nature; and, finally, that power derived from no earthly source was bestowed upon an infant's body. The whole world is His work as He remains in the bosom of His Father; the miraculous child-bearing of a virgin is His work when He comes to us. In fact, His Virgin Mother has given testimony to His majesty in that she, a virgin before His conception, remained a virgin after childbirth; found with child, she was not made so by man; pregnant with man without man's co-operation, she was more blessed and marvelous in that her fecundity was granted without loss of integrity. People prefer to consider so tremendous a miracle as fictional rather than factual. Hence, in regard to Christ, the God-Man, since they cannot believe His human attributes, they despise them; since they cannot despise His divine attributes, they do not believe them. However, in proportion as the body of the God-Man in His humiliation is the more abject in their estimation, to that same degree it becomes more pleasing to us; and in proportion as the fruitfulness of a virgin in the birth of a child is more impossible in their eyes, in ours it becomes the more divine.

(2) Hence, let us celebrate the birthday of the Lord with a joyous gathering and appropriate festivity. Let men and women alike rejoice, for Christ, the Man, was born and He was born of a woman; thus, each sex was honoured. Now let the honour accorded to the first man before his condemnation passes over to this second Man. A woman brought death upon us; a woman has now brought forth life. The likeness of our sinful flesh[4] was born so that this sinful flesh might be cleansed. Let not the flesh be blamed, but let it die to sin so that it may live by its real nature; let him who was in sin be born again in Him who was born without sin. Exult, you holy youths, who, having chosen Christ as a model eminently worthy of imitation, have not sought marriage. He whom you have thus esteemed did not come to you through marriage, so that He might bestow upon you the grace to despise the means through which you came into the world. For you came into existence through carnal union, without which He came to spiritual nuptials; and to you, whom He has called in a special way to spiritual nuptials, He has granted the grace to scorn earthly ones. Therefore, you have not sought joys from the source whence you derived existence because you, more than others, have loved Him who did not come into the world in that manner. Exult, you holy virgins. A Virgin has brought forth for you One whom you may wed without defilement, and you can lose the One whom you love neither by conceiving nor by bringing forth children. Exult, you who are just; it is the birthday of the Justifier. Exult, you who are weak and ill; it is the birthday of the Saviour. Exult, you who are captives; it is the birthday of the Redeemer. Exult, you who are slaves; it is the birthday of the Ruler. Exult, you who are free; it is the birthday of the Liberator. Exult, all Christians; it is the birthday of Christ.

(3) This child, born of the Father, created all ages; now, born of a mother, He has commended this day. That first nativity could not possibly have had a mother, nor did the second one call for any man as a father. In a word, Christ was born of both a father and a mother, and He was born without a father and without a mother; for as God He was born of the Father and as Man He was born of a mother; as God He was born without a mother and as Man He was born without a father. Therefore, 'Who shall declare his generation?'[5] whether we consider His generation without the limits of time or that without seed; the one without a beginning or that without precedent; the; the one which has no end or that which has its beginning there where it has its end.

Rightly, then, did the Prophets announce that He would be born; truly did the heavens and angels announce that He had been born. He who sustains the world lay in a manger, a wordless Child, yet the Word of God. Him whom the heavens do not contain the bosom of one woman bore. She ruled our King; she carried Him in whom we exist; she fed our Bread. O manifest weakness and marvellous humility in which all divinity lay hid! By His power, He ruled the mother to whom His infancy was subject, and He nourished with truth her whose breasts suckled Him. May He who did not despise our lowly beginnings perfect His work in us, and may He who wished on account of us to become the Son of Man make us the sons of God.

Pope St Leo the Great on the Christmas Feast

my source: New Advent

I. All share in the joy of Christmas

Our Saviour, dearly-beloved, was born today: let us be glad. For there is no proper place for sadness when we keep the birthday of the Life, which destroys the fear of mortality and brings to us the joy of promised eternity. No one is kept from sharing in this happiness. There is for all one common measure of joy, because as our Lord the destroyer of sin and death finds none free of charge, so is He come to free us all. Let the saint exult in that he draws near to victory. Let the sinner be glad in that he is invited to pardon. Let the gentile take courage in that he is called to life. For the Son of God in the fullness of time which the inscrutable depth of the Divine counsel has determined, has taken on him the nature of man, thereby to reconcile it to its Author: in order that the inventor of death, the devil, might be conquered through that (nature) which he had conquered. And in this conflict undertaken for us, the fight was fought on great and wondrous principles of fairness; for the Almighty Lord enters the lists with His savage foe not in His own majesty but in our humility, opposing him with the same form and the same nature, which shares indeed our mortality, though it is free from all sin. Truly foreign to this nativity is that which we read of all others, no one is clean from stain, not even the infant who has lived but one day upon earth Job 19: 4. Nothing therefore of the lust of the flesh has passed into that peerless nativity, nothing of the law of sin has entered. A royal Virgin of the stem of David is chosen, to be impregnated with the sacred seed and to conceive the Divinely-human offspring in mind first and then in body. And lest in ignorance of the heavenly counsel she should tremble at so strange a result, she learns from converse with the angel that what is to be wrought in her is of the Holy Ghost. Nor does she believe it a loss of honour that she is soon to be the Mother of God. For why should she be in despair over the novelty of such conception, to whom the power of the most High has promised to effect it. Her implicit faith is confirmed also by the attestation of a precursory miracle, and Elizabeth receives unexpected fertility: in order that there might be no doubt that He who had given conception to the barren, would give it even to a virgin.

II. The mystery of the Incarnation is a fitting theme for joy both to angels and to men

Therefore the Word of God, Himself God, the Son of God who in the beginning was with God, through whom all things were made and without whom was nothing made John 1:1-3, with the purpose of delivering man from eternal death, became man: so bending Himself to take on Him our humility without decrease in His own majesty, that remaining what He was and assuming what He was not, He might unite the true form of a slave to that form in which He is equal to God the Father, and join both natures together by such a compact that the lower should not be swallowed up in its exaltation nor the higher impaired by its new associate. Without detriment therefore to the properties of either substance which then came together in one person, majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality: and for the paying off of the debt, belonging to our condition, inviolable nature was united with passible nature, and true God and true man were combined to form one Lord, so that, as suited the needs of our case, one and the same Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and rise again with the other.

Rightly therefore did the birth of our Salvation impart no corruption to the Virgin's purity, because the bearing of the Truth was the keeping of honour. Such then beloved was the nativity which became the Power of God and the Wisdom of God even Christ, whereby He might be one with us in manhood and surpass us in Godhead. For unless He were true God, He would not bring us a remedy, unless He were true Man, He would not give us an example. Therefore the exulting angel's song when the Lord was born is this, Glory to God in the Highest, and their message, peace on earth to men of good will Luke 2:14 . For they see that the heavenly Jerusalem is being built up out of all the nations of the world: and over that indescribable work of the Divine love, how ought the humbleness of men to rejoice, when the joy of the lofty angels is so great?

III. Christians then must live worthily of Christ their Head

Let us then, dearly beloved, give thanks to God the Father, through His Son, in the Holy Spirit , Who for His great mercy, wherewith He has loved us, has had pity on us: and when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together in Christ Ephesians 2:4-5, that we might be in Him a new creation and a new production. Let us put off then the old man with his deeds: and having obtained a share in the birth of Christ let us renounce the works of the flesh. Christian, acknowledge your dignity, and becoming a partner in the Divine nature, refuse to return to the old baseness by degenerate conduct. Remember the Head and the Body of which you are a member. Recollect that you were rescued from the power of darkness and brought out into God's light and kingdom. By the mystery of Baptism you were made the temple of the Holy Ghost: do not put such a denizen to flight from you by base acts, and subject yourself once more to the devil's thraldom: because your purchase money is the blood of Christ, because He shall judge you in truth Who ransomed you in mercy, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

"The Journey of the Magi" by T.S. Eliot

read by Sir Alec Guinness

I think God must have said to Himself: Man does not love Me because he does not see Me; I will show Myself to him and thus make him love Me. God’s love for man was very great and had been great from all eternity, but this love had not yet become visible…Then, it really appeared; the Son of God let Himself be seen as a tiny Babe in a stable, lying on a little straw.
— St. Alphonsus Liguori, quoted by Fr. Gabriel in Divine Intimacy, p. 83.

May these poignant words of St. Alphonsus help us to grasp more fully the meaning of Christmas. Jesus’ birth isn’t simply a historical event from long ago, which we may feel is too distant and remote from us.

It does involve us, in a deeply personal way, for the Eternal Son of God became a man with each one of us in mind. The Lord thought of every human being that has ever existed and ever will exist. Loving us with a personal love, He acted to save us from our sins and restore us to His friendship.

This same Jesus, Who humbled Himself to come as a vulnerable infant, continues to come to us – preeminently in the Eucharist.

When fashioning the entire arc of salvation history, God carved out our own special place within His design. We belong to this divine love story, if we would only accept Our Lord’s invitation.

One of the great figures of the 20th century Liturgical Movement, Pius Parsch, expressed it thus:

In the night of eternity, you were chosen by the Father; in the holy night of our Savior’s birth, you were remembered in the heart of God’s newborn Son and made His brother and sister; and now the Father draws you to His loving heart: With My Son, born in the stable, you have become My dearest child. With Jesus, you are celebrating a birthday, reborn unto God in the holiest of nights.

This post will grow over Christmas. Meanwhile, I wish you all a happy and, even more important, a holy Christmas.

Feliz Navidad

Happy Christmas

Bishop R. Barron on Christmas

Christmas according to St Luke

Christmas according to St John

↧

ERASMUS: PROPHET OF WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, OF CONTINUITY AND NOT RUPTURE BY RON DART (and thanks to Jim Forest).

December 26, 2017, 9:00 pm

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FIRSTLY, WATCH THIS:

Ron Dart's book: https://www.amazon.com/Erasmus-Wild-Bird-Ron-Dart-ebook/dp/B078FNLZDX/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1513862620&sr=8-1&keywords=%22Erasmus%3A+Wild+Bird%22

Erasmus was the dominant figure of the early humanist movement. Neither a radical nor an apologist, he remains one of early Renaissance controversial figures.

Synopsis

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam was one of Europe's most famous and influential scholars. A man of great intellect who rose from meager beginnings to become one of Europe's greatest thinkers, he defined the humanist movement in Northern Europe. His translation to Greek of the New Testament brought on a theological revolution, and his views on the Reformation tempered its more radical elements.

Early Life

Erasmus rose from obscure beginnings to become one of the leading intellectual figures of the early Northern Renaissance. Most historians believe that he was born Gerard Gerardson in 1466 (with many noting his probable birthdate as October 27) in Rotterdam, Holland. His father, believed to be Roger Gerard, was a priest, and his mother was named Margaret, the daughter of a physician. He was christened with the name "Erasmus," meaning "beloved."

Erasmus began his education at the age of 4, attending a school in Gouda, a town near Rotterdam. When he was 9 years old, his father sent him to a prestigious Latin grammar school, where his natural academic ability blossomed. After his parents died in 1483 from the plague, Erasmus was put into the care of guardians, who were adamant about him becoming a monk. While he gained a personal relationship with God, he rejected the harsh rules and strict methods of the religious teachers of the time.

A Brief Stint in the Priesthood

In 1492, poverty forced Erasmus into monastery life and he was ordained a Catholic priest, but it seems that he never actively worked as a cleric. There is some evidence, during this time, of a relationship with a fellow male student, but scholars are not in agreement as to its extent. Erasmus's life changed dramatically when he became secretary for Henry de Bergen, bishop of Chambray, who was impressed with his skill in Latin. The bishop enabled Erasmus to travel to Paris, France, to study classical literature and Latin, and it was there that he was introduced to Renaissance humanism.

Life as a Professional Scholar

While in Paris, Erasmus became known as an excellent scholar and lecturer. One of his pupils, William Blunt, Lord Montjoy, established a pension for Erasmus, allowing him to adopt a life of an independent scholar moving from city to city tutoring, lecturing and corresponding with some of the most brilliant thinkers of Europe. In 1499, he traveled to England and met Thomas More and John Colet, both of whom would have a great influence on him. Over the next 10 years, Erasmus divided his time between France, the Netherlands and England, writing some of his best works.

In the early 1500s, Erasmus was persuaded to teach at Cambridge and lecture in theology. It was during this time that he wrote The Praise of Folly, a satirical examination of society in general and the various abuses of the Church. Another influential publication was his translation of the New Testament into Greek in 1516. This was a turning point in theology and the interpretation of scripture, and posed a serious challenge to theological thinking that had dominated universities since the 13th century. In these writings, Erasmus promoted the spread of Classical knowledge to encourage a better morality and greater understanding between people.

Later Life

The Protestant Reformation erupted with the publication of Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses in 1517. For the next 10 years, Erasmus would be embroiled in an intellectual debate over human nature, free will and religion. Though Erasmus supported Protestant ideals, he was against the radicalism of some of its leaders, and, in 1523, he condemned Luther's methods in his work De libero arbitrio.

On July 12, 1536, during preparations for a move to the Netherlands, Erasmus fell ill and died from an attack of dysentery. Though he remained loyal to the Church of Rome, he did not receive last rites, and there is no evidence that he asked for a priest. This seems to reflect his view that what mattered most was a believer's direct relationship with God.

Then, listen to this:

REFORMATION 500: ERASMUS, THE FILIOQUE CLAUSE, AND THE FATHERS: THE IRENIC QUEST FOR PATRISTIC UNITY by Ron Dart

my source: Orthodoxy in Dialogue

The Wisdom of the Fathers Western and Eastern.

The name of Erasmus will never perish.

John Colet

Erasmus has published volumes more full of wisdom than any which Europe has seen for ages.

Thomas More

It is significant and symbolic that Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the door in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. There is a sense in which such a date is a portal into what follows in the Christian liturgical year: All Saints and All Souls. Luther, by choosing such a date and seeing himself as a reformer, raised the question of who are the real saints of the historic Church—certainly not the establishment Roman Catholics who had led the Church to Babylon. There is a type of Protestant hubris, though, in thinking that Luther was the real reformer of the Church, and 1517 should be lauded and celebrated. Erasmus and many others had been toiling for reform from within the Church from the late 15th century.

Erasmus had, decades before Luther, been at the forefront of challenging the misdeeds and misbehaviour within the Western Church.

Colet, More, and Erasmus (Oxford-London Reformers), prophet-like, clarified in poignant depth and detail the immense gap and chasm between the ideals of the Church and its toxic and questionable behaviour at the highest levels. Erasmus was also acutely aware, with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, that many from the Eastern Church were migrating westward. The tragedy of such a situation for the Orthodox cannot be missed, but the positive ripple effect was that many in the West (including Erasmus), increasingly so, had greater access to the Orthodox Fathers, their commentaries, and their language.

The issue of church unity and concord became more and more central to Erasmus in the latter decades of his life. The split between the Orthodox East and Roman Catholic West, and the schism between various types of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, deeply troubled Erasmus. He became in many ways the herald of a sort of classical and patristic church unity vision in the mid to late 1520s-1530s. How did he do this? Let me lightly touch on three essential ways this was done.

First, Erasmus was concerned that, as the Church developed, all sorts of additions were added to the essence of the faith. He was convinced that the Apostles’ Creed summed up, in the most succinct and compact manner, what the universal Church shared in common. There could be a variety of debates about all sorts of layered and nuanced theological and exegetical issues, but the Apostles’ Creed was foundational. This is why, in some ways, Erasmus’ fictional dialogue with Luther in March 1524, “An Examination Concerning Faith,” focused on the Apostles’ Creed. Did Luther truly need to split the Church over his reading of Romans and Galatians, and his questionable opposition between Grace-Law and Divine Sovereignty-Human Freedom? If Luther was willing to split the church over an adiaphoric issue, Erasmus had to part paths with him.

Second, did the historic Church universally agree with the filioque clause in the Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan Creed? If not, why was it added to the Creed? The Orthodox and Roman Catholics parted paths over such an addition. Erasmus took the position, yet again, that the classical and patristic phase of church history was void of a strict definition of the economy of Father-Son-Spirit. In short, there was a mystery within the dynamic life of the eternal Trinity that could not be reduced to a formula. The addition of the filioque clause was yet another adiaphoric move and manoeuver—this time it was the Roman Catholic Church that had inappropriately added to the esse of the faith. Again, it was Erasmus’ commitment to church unity, grounded in the classical credal and theological era of the Fathers, that opposed the position of the Roman Catholic Church on the need to add the filioque clause to the Creed.

Third, just as Erasmus was, without much doubt, one of the finest linguists in both Latin and Greek in the early decades of the 16th century, and one of the best exegetes and annotators of the New Testament, he was also front and centre in the recovery of the Fathers, Western and Eastern. The more Erasmus worked with the Orthodox Fathers and the Western Fathers, the greater the sense of unity he had for the Church West and East. The commonality the Fathers shared made it clear that post-patristic additions to historic Creeds (that fragmented the church) needed to be questioned—such additions were the very thing that led to greater fragmentation, as did the many Protestant confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries. The Apostles’ Creed, yet once again, became the alpha and the omega of church unity for Erasmus. It is significant that one of Erasmus’ final books, An Explanation of the Apostles’ Creed (1533), delves much deeper into the Creed and ponders its significance from a variety of angles (Collected Works of Erasmus: Volume 70). This was Erasmus, yet again, turning to the esse of the Church rather than being derailed into a commitment to a multiplicity of adiaphora. It was the Apostles’ Creed that, in many ways, was the bene esse that illuminated and clarified the esse of the historic Church East and West.

Both Luther’s additions to the faith and the Roman Catholic filioque were the very things that divided the Church. Erasmus questioned such additions by heeding and hearing the wisdom of the Fathers Western and Eastern.

There has been, in the 20th century, an ecumenical desire and longing to reunite the divided Church. The underlying problem with such an approach is that the deeper unity and concord that many so desire is thwarted by the fact that it is not grounded in a classical vision as embodied in the historic Church. Erasmus, more than most then and now, knew that if real unity was ever to occur, a sustained immersion in the life and thought of the Fathers East and West was foundational. Those who add to the esse of the Fathers inevitably divide the Church.

Those who heed and hear what the historic and classical Church shared in common are in a place and position to reclaim and rebuild, with one mind and soul, the vision and reality of one Church, the true body of Christ in this world. The wisdom of Erasmus, if mined, can still offer us a mother lode. This is why his name will never perish, and his wisdom will never fail.

Ron Dart holds a PhD from McMaster University and teaches as an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, Philosophy & Religious Studies at University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford BC. In the past he worked with Amnesty International. He has published more than 35 books, of which the most recent, Erasmus: Wild Bird, appeared earlier this month. A member of the Anglican Church, he has an abiding interest in the Eastern and Western Fathers, the layered turn to the Fathers in the 16th century, and the relationship between the Fathers and the modern and postmodern ethos. He has extensive experience collaborating with Orthodox representatives in various ecumenical endeavours.

Then watch this version of Robert Bolt's play

Thomas More, "Man for All Seasons"

St Thomas More who, together with St John Fisher,
John Colet and Erasmus, showed another way forward.

↧

JANUARY 1st, 2018 THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD

December 31, 2017, 8:55 am

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≪ Previous: ERASMUS: PROPHET OF WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN, OF CONTINUITY AND NOT RUPTURE BY RON DART (and thanks to Jim Forest).

CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE. Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ.

I'm afraid I am a bit unwell and have been ordered to bed with my feet higher than my head. This makes writing my blog impossible; so I looked through the internet to find a blog post for the feast of the Mother of God that will say all I want to say in one short copy and paste operation. This article says it all, everything worth saying about the Blessed Virgin in our common tradition. May God bless those who wrote and produced it. Dom David Bird

THE HOLY THEOTOKOS AND THE CHURCH

[Source: "The Life of the Virgin Mary the Theotokos," published by the Holy Apostles Convent and Dormition Skete, Buena Vista, CO.]

my source: St Andrew Greek Orthodox Church

The Holy Virgin Mary is more than an example of piety. She is more than a Saint. She is All-Holy, Ever-Virgin and Mother of God. She is the Church's Greatest Theologian. She is the one human--body and soul resurrected, united and complete--and now deified person who is "more honourable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim. In her, the whole mystery of the Divine economy is personified, writes Saint John of Damascus (c. 676-750).

As we have seen, the Scriptures say more about the Theotokos than most people perceive, albeit, in a hidden manner, revealed only to the faithful through Holy Tradition and the writings of the Holy Fathers. If there was general silence about her in the early Church it was intentional to avoid comparisons with the pagan religions which provide anti-typical divine, mother and child similarities, such as the Egyptian Isis and Serapis or the Oriental Cybele and Attis. Only later, during the 4th and 5th centuries, did circumstances demand an elucidation of the Virgin Mary's role in the plan of salvation.

Since Mary Theotokos is one flesh with her Divine Son, she is, therefore, necessarily the Mother of those baptized, into His body, the Church. Not without purpose does Saint Epiphanios of Cyprus (c. 315-493) write that she is "the holy Jerusalem, Virgin of Christ, His Bride," for what is granted spiritually to the Church. Let us see how, in the writings of the Holy Fathers, the Theotokos is, among other things, portrayed as the Church; for as Saint Andrew of Crete (c. 660-740) chants, she is the "living city of the King and God, in which Christ hast dwelt, and worked our salvation."

Saint Cyril of Alexandria (+444), in his famous litany of praise spoken after the Council at Ephesus, where he was dominant figure, ends with these words: "Let us give glory to Mary, Ever-Virgin, that is to the holy Church, and her Son and Immaculate Spouse; to Him be glory forever and ever."

Saint Clement of Alexandria (d. before 215) points to the Mary-Church parallel, saying, "O mysterious wonder! There is only one Father of all, only one Logos/Word of all, and the Holy Spirit is also one and He is everywhere. There is but one Virgin Mother. I like to call her the Church...she is both Virgin and Mother--immaculate as a Virgin and loving as a Mother. She calls her children and feeds them with holy milk; the Logos/Word, a child."

Therefore, in giving birth to the body of Christ, Mary gave birth to the Church, the unity of all that are incorporated into Christ. She is the progenitress of the Christian race, that is, the historical Church that is forever united to divinity.

Saint Ildefonsus (+667), Archbishop of Toledo, affirms that "the form of our Mother the Church is according to the form of the Lord's Mother". The mysteries of the Virgin's life are daily renewed in the Church; for, as one wedded, she is at the same time immaculate. As a Virgin, she conceives us by the Spirit, yet brings us forth without pain, so the Venerable Bede (c. 673-735) was to write. The influence of Saint Ambrose (339-397) is also evident here. "Mary is truly espoused but a Virgin, because she is a type of the Church which is immaculate but wedded." And, "What was prophesied of Mary was as a type of the Church." In another place, he writes: "How beautiful are those things which have been prophesied of Mary under the figure of the Church." In other words, she is the Church because she is the Mother of Christ, even as she is Mother to all Orthodox Christians, His "brethren."

Since Mary Theotokos is the Church, the "perpetual virginity" of Mary also signifies the "perpetual virginity" of the Church, that is, her inviolate fidelity to Christ. Deny the one, and one must deny the other: the Church and the Theotokos (Mother of God) stand together; ecclesiology and Mariology safeguard each other. Thus, too, the Orthodox Church insists upon the "All-Holiness" of the Virgin Mary, for the same reason that she speaks of the Church as "Holy". She is Panagia or All-Holy, because she is the Church.

The types of the Virgin are everywhere associated with the types of the Church. It may seem strange that she, the Virgin, is sometimes cast in the role of the Mother, Sister, Daughter, Bride and Child of Christ, but those are the relationships found in old Israel between God and His people. This explains why the Church (the Virgin), the New Israel, is depicted as the "Bride of Christ" while, at the same time, His body.

Saint Paulinus (353-431), Bishop of Nola (near Naples) writes: "What a great martyr was this, by which the Church became wedded to Christ and became at once the Lord's Bride and His Sister! The Bride with the status of Souse is a Sister...So she continues as Mother through the seed of the Eternal Logos/Word, alike conceiving and bringing forth nations. She is Sister and Spouse because Her intercourse is not physical but mental, and her Husband is not man but God. The children of this Mother comprise equally old and infants; this offspring has no age or sex. For this is the blessed progeny of God which springs from no human seed but from a heavenly race."

He continues: "This is why the teacher Paul says that 'there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28) and 'there is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called on one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism" (Ephesians 4-5). 'For all of us who acknowledge Christ as Head of our body' (Col. 1:18) are one body and are all Christ's limbs' (1 Cor. 12:27). Because we have now all put on Christ and stripped off Adam, we are at once advancing towards the shape of Angels. Hence for all born in baptism, there is the one task; both sexes must incorporate the perfect man, and Christ as all in all' (Eph. 4:13) must be our common Head, our King Who hands over His limbs to the Father in the Kingdom. Once all are endowed with immortal bodies, the frail condition of human lives forgoes marriage between men and women" (St. Matthew 22:30). (Orthodox Heritage)

Mary is the Mother of God

Mary, Mother of God in Scripture

Dr Scott Hahn

Mary, Mother of God (Orthodox documentary)

↧

GOD OFFERS MERCY TO ALL SO THAT ALL CAN BECOME SAINTS: POPE FRANCIS AND HIS CRITICS

January 2, 2018, 11:28 am

≫ Next: JANUARY 7TH: WESTERN EPIPHANY AND EASTERN CHRISTMAS

≪ Previous: JANUARY 1st, 2018 THE SOLEMNITY OF MARY, MOTHER OF GOD

The article below is typical of what is coming out of the camp of those opposed to Pope Francis. They are so convinced that he is wrong that they cannot take seriously any expressions of orthodox Catholicism that he may make which would challenge their own interpretation of his views. The result is that they render themselves incapable of understanding his teaching however clearly he may express it.

This article is from Sandro Magister, an Italian journalist of L'Expresso and a typical anti-Francis commentator.

my source: L'Espresso

No One Listens To Him When He Defends Life and Family. And There's a Reason

One time, when he was visiting Turin, he said to a crowd of young people: “Be chaste, be chaste.” And he almost apologized: “Pardon me if I am telling you something you did not expect.”
Pope Francis is also this. A pope who occasionally goes back in time and reiterates the precepts of the perennial Church. Such as not aborting. Or to use his words to the young people in Turin: not “to kill children before they are born.”
The mainstream media minimize it or are silent when Francis departs from his dominant image, as a pontiff who is permissive on subjects that until a few years ago the Church defined as “non-negotiable.”
And yet there have been so many times, at least a hundred, in which he has departed from it, even in solemn circumstances as in Strasbourg, in front of the European parliament, when he condemned the logic of the “discardable,” of the elimination of all human lives that are no longer functional, “as in the case of the sick, of the terminally ill, the elderly who are abandoned and uncared for.” It is what he customarily calls “hidden euthanasia.”
But it was as if he had not even said it. His speech in Strasbourg was greeted with thunderous applause from all the seats of the assembly, and calmly shelved.
This is also what happened in mid-November, when Francis dug up no less than a warning from Pius XII to reiterate the condemnation of euthanasia, here too with the media instead interpreting his words as an “opening.”
A week later, in two consecutive homilies at Santa Marta, the pope also took aim at the “ideological colonization” that presumes to wipe out the difference between the sexes. One year ago, while he was in Georgia, he even branded it as “a world war to destroy marriage.”
Even these repeated outbursts of his trickled away like water on marble. Ignored.
The press may have its share of the blame, but it is truly paradoxical that this should happen to a pope like Jorge Mario Bergoglio, whose mastery in the use of the media is seen as unbeatable. Unless one were to hypothesize that he in the first place is the one who wants these statements of his to have no impact, and above all to do no damage to his reputation as a pontiff with the passing of time.
One thing is certain: the epic head-on confrontation between a John Paul II and modernity, or between a Benedict XVI and the “dictatorship of relativism,” is something that Pope Francis does not want to revive in the least. He is perfectly content to have his pontificate interpreted in the reassuring light of “who am I to judge?” and as a consequence never to have any of his spoken or written words on these divisive issues taken as definitive and definitional, but to be offered as harmless, pliable, up to the judgment of each individual.
This result has also been produced by Bergoglio’s ability to perform gestures with an impact in the media that is incomparably more powerful than that of words.
When two years ago, at the end of his visit to the United States, he gave a very warm audience (see photo) to one of his Argentine friends, Yayo Grassi, accompanied by his Indonesian “partner,” Iwan Bagus, this was enough to consecrate the image of Francis as open to homosexual marriage, in spite of all his words to the contrary.
And vice-versa, when imposing crowds, Catholic and not, take to the streets in defense of marriage between man and woman and against “gender” theories, as happened in Paris with the “Manif pour tous” or in Rome with the “Family Day,” the pope is cautious not to say a single word in their defense. Nor much less to protest against the victories of the opposing side. When in May of 2015 in Ireland the “yes” on homosexual marriage won, Francis left to Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the secretary of state, the duty of calling that result “a defeat for humanity,” and thus of taking upon himself the inevitable accusations of obscurantism.
In short, where and when the political and cultural battle is raging for or against the affirmation of new rights, Pope Francis remains silent. And he speaks instead far away from the contest, in the places and moments most sheltered from attack.
He preserves the Church’s traditional doctrine this way, as in an air raid shelter.
(English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.)

I believe that this article proves that Sandro Magister does not understand Pope Francis, like so many of Pope Francis' critics as well as like so many of his secularist fans among the press. In fact, Sandro Magister commits the same error as the secular media, consigning to oblivion those parts of Pope Francis' teaching that are inconsistent with his pre-conceived picture of Pope Francis.

Listen to Bishop Barron on Pope Francis:

Hence, both the secular media and his critics within the Church tend to distort what he has to say. In Bishop Barron's video, there is a totally different explanation, one for which there is ample evidence in Pope Francis' own words. To understand him you must understand the task of "New Evangelization" set by Vatican II and proclaimed by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. It is a task aimed at lapsed Christians, people who know at least something of the Christian message but for whom it means nothing, just like the disciples on the way to Emmaus before they met Christ

Bishop Barron says that the heart of what Pope Francis wishes to say is found in his famous interview when he says that he, like all of us, is a sinner who has been looked upon by Christ.

"Long before we deal with other issues like abortion, gay marriage, divorce - all the issues we usually talk about, we have to start with this moment of encounter between a sinner and amazing grace. We must keep our priorities clear. We must focus on that moment of encounter: that is the heart of the Catholic thing. If we forget this, then we have forgotten everything."

You don't get people to enjoy a sport like baseball if you try to introduce it to people by getting them to learn the rule book. You let the people watch and take part in the game; and then, when their enthusiasm has been roused, then is the time to introduce them to the rules.

The Church does not have a mission: it is a mission to introduce the world to Christ, and we are all participants in that mission simply by belonging to the Church. Firstly, we must remember that this mission is addressed to everyone, and especially to those on the periphery, to those who feel cut off from the Church. This includes divorced and re-married, gays etc. No one is excluded. All are addressed by Christ through the Church. There is no section of the community too unworthy or too weak or too perverted to hear the Gospel. The Gospel is the unconditional love of God for each person revealed in Christ. Only when this love is accepted and responded to does the rulebook make any sense; and, even then, it must be applied with sensitivity, and must not be allowed to blind people to the central message or replace the Gospel as the centre of the Church's preaching. Thus, Pope Francis is not being permissive when he says, "Who am I to judge?" He is trying to redress the balance, to meet gays with the Gospel, not the rulebook, in his hand, to offer them a personal relationship with Christ. What happens next is between them and their confessor, guided by the teaching of the Church interpreted within their own concrete circumstances.

If the main thrust of our pastoral energy is going to be among the lapsed, then we are going to meet many spiritually wounded people, in almost impossible situations from a canonical point of view. In the now-defunct Christendom where most people are lapsed Christians, the world is full of spiritually wounded people. And the spiritual disease even infects people within the Church. Do we meet them with the Gospel or the rulebook? Pope Francis has a different answer from his critics. That is the real difference!!

Do we go on preaching and teaching in the traditional way when the majority who listened were, at least in theory, practising Christians who accepted the basic Christian message and who lived in a society for whom the Church wrote the rulebook, or do we wake up to the fact that we live in a secular, multi-cultural society that does not take the basic Christian message for granted. Therefore, our first task is to preach and teach the basic Christian message which is the Gospel, not the rulebook. That has been the teaching of Vatican II and of all the popes since, especially John Paul II. Pope Francis is in full continuity with them.

Let us now turn to another critic of Pope Francis. Here is a video of Cardinal Burke (7 minutes).

Before we discuss this video, a few introductory remarks are necessary. It was said at the time of the election of Cardinal Bergoglio that his task was to continue with the work of Vatican II. There were three very important characteristics of that council. The first was that it was completely uncensored, both in its subject matter and in the discussions and papers of those who took part. The second was the influence of the Eastern Churches, in the person of Patriarch Maximos IV and the impact of his synodal Melkite government, and long years of dialogue of the ressourcement theologians with Russian Orthodox theologians who fled to France after the Revolution. All subsequent dialogue has been a continuation of that which took place secretly before Vatican II. Out of that dialogue came the eucharistic ecclesiology that was enthusiastically accepted by Pope Benedict XVI and is now normal currency in the Catholic Church. The third was the emphasis on episcopal collegiality and the desire to transfer responsibility from Rome to local, regional, and universal synods. All three characteristics are alive and well in Pope Francis' pontificate and have had a strong influence on the synods on the family.

Pope Francis refused to permit the normal Vatican curial practice of guiding the synods through censorship so that no "scandalous" disagreements could erupt to challenge the Vatican line on the family. This move paralleled the move in the opening session which lasted only fifteen minutes of Cardinals Lienart and Frings of Cologne with help from his secretary Father Joseph Ratzinger to snatch Vatican II from the clutches of the Curia. Vatican censorship gave a false appearance of unity, and when it was neutralised at the very beginning of the council, the consequent freedom allowed the council to make the changes that it did. Pope Francis considers the type of censorship the Curia wishes to impose to be a worldly substitute for the action of the Holy Spirit and as an out-of-date way of misusing power.

The adoption of eucharistic ecclesiology obliged the recognition by the Church of the traditions of the apostolic churches not in communion with Rome as true manifestations of Catholic Tradition because the root of the "Carisma Veritatis" is the guidance into truth by the Holy Spirit as a response to the Spirit's invocation in the epiclesis at Mass. Recognition of "valid orders" in these churches implies more than a recognition of their sacraments. In the light of this, Patriarch Maximos IV of Antioch suggested to the assembled bishops in Vatican II that the Orthodox distinction be adopted when interpreting church laws between acribia, or a strict interpretation and implementation of the law, and economia in which the strict implementation of the law is laid aside in certain circumstances for the good of souls because, by its very nature, the Christian economy of salvation puts mercy above law when the observance of a law becomes an obstacle to salvation. Moreover, if, in the first thousand years, permitting divorce in the East and its prohibition in the West it in the West was never a reason for schism, it cannot become so later, nor can it be called "basic to the Catholic faith" as Cardinal Burke calls it. Hence there is nothing new in the Church in Africa holding a strict interpretation of the law on divorce and remarriage while the Church in Germany, which is in a completely different pastoral situation, tends to invoke economia more often. There ought to be enough love and respect for one another and enough humility to realise that our understanding of the same doctrine will be partly shaped by our own pastoral environment. The Orthodox say that whether to use acribia or economia is a decision for regional hierarchies, not just for individuals to decide because the law is important and laying it aside in certain circumstances is not to be done lightly.

In fact, neither Pope Francis nor the synods invented the differences. They merely brought them out into the open. I was ordained a priest in 1961, and there have been these same differences all the time I have been a priest.

We arrived in Tambogrande, Frs Luke, Paul and myself, in 1981 and found the whole marriage scene to be a complete mess. Most were not married in a church, and many of those who were were not living with the woman they were married to. Yet, at communion, they would crowd around the altar "like hungry dogs", as Graham Greene put it, exclaiming, "A mi, Padre! A mi!!" and their sexual irregularity in no way diminished their enthusiasm for the faith. Nor did it take away from the real heroism of the women who held their family together through thick and thin, whether they were sacramentally married or not. We gave out communion to all and sundry; but, as the situation became clearer, Father Paul, who was the parish priest, went to consult the archbishop in Piura.

The archbishop said that the Spanish converted the people before the Council of Trent made it compulsory to get married in a church and it has never caught on. Perhaps this had something to do with the social necessity of giving a fiesta to the whole village or street, with food and music etc, and few have the money to do this. Also, most people seem to form a really permanent family on their second try; and there are often good grounds for calling into question the validity of the first marriage, but that involves inhabiting a legal world of papers and processes completely foreign to them and, at least before Pope Francis, the canonist charged $500. How could someone who earns less than $100 a month to feed his family spend that much? Only a priest living in his own little clerical world could even suggest it. The archbishop said that, if they are living a good Catholic life, then we should give them communion when they ask for it. This is what we did and, gradually, the number of people marrying in the church began to rise. When people begin to live as regular members of a eucharistic assembly, then the rulebook begins to make sense.

We shall now take a closer look at Cardinal Burke's views. Firstly, let us look at the text he uses when talking about marriage and divorce. This is St Matthew's version - St Mark's is without the escape clause.

3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

This discussion takes place within the context of Jewish Law and, therefore, does not explicitly involve the effects of Baptism, but no one believes that he was about to inaugurate a new edition of the Law of Moses. In East and West, Tradition accepts that Jesus has jumped from teaching about the old dispensation to how his disciples were to behave in the new. However, their theology of marriage is a bit different, probably based on the fact that in the Christian East the Roman Empire was intact and adequately administered by the State, while the the Christian West was made up of semi-barbaric tribes and the formation of law was done by the Church.

Thus, in the East, the marriage contract was a state matter. The whole emphasis of the sacramental celebration was on a blessing by the Church which transforms the merely natural marital relationship into a participation in the divine relationship between the Persons of the Blessed Trinity and which involves the couple dying and rising with Christ: it is all about theosis. Therefore, there is no contract expressed in a Byzantine marriage service.

In the West, the Church had introduced to pagan society the whole idea of marriage as an exclusive, life-long contract. This became the very matter of the sacrament, the legal contract itself. Indeed, the whole Gospel became legalised so that Christ's death came to be seen as his fulfilling a legal debt that the human race owed to God but which only Christ could repay: a metaphor was turned into an actual description of the event.

When the appointed time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born subject of the Law, to redeem the subjects of the Law and to enable us to be adopted as sons. (Gal. 4, 4).

We must see Christ's prohibition of divorce in the light of his other statements and of his own example. Christ came to set captives free, to forgive all our failures, to unbind us of all that restricts us; and he reached out to the most marginalised and sought to show mercy. To use modern political jargon, to sinners he appeared to be a liberal, eating and drinking with publicans and sinners and refusing to condemn those that the political and religious establishment condemned.

However, we must ask, he freed the captives, invited the marginalised to the marriage feast, and embraced the lepers, to what end? So that they may become sons and daughters of the Father; so that they may become so united with him that they will share in his sonship, and will live and love and die as he lived, and loved and died, and thus share his resurrected life for all eternity. There is nothing liberal about that!

As Christians, they will aim to love God with their whole being and their neighbour as themselves: two criteria for interpreting the Law that defy any form of legal formulation because they are without limit and break through any mould or restriction. The Beatitudes, in contrast to the 10 Commandments, are all concentrating on the very best we can do rather than laws that restrict and thus can be legally formulated.

The two laws of loving God and neighbour, the obligation to unrestricted forgiving and the Beatitudes all require a complete change of attitudes, a change brought about by a close encounter and union with Christ, which is why the original proclamation of the kingdom was, "Repent, for the kingdom of God has come!" where "repent" means a complete change of direction.

The teaching of Christ on the indissolubility of marriage belongs to the behaviour of those who are not living under the Law but as sons, which is why Jesus makes it subject to a change of heart. Moses allowed divorce because of a hardness of heart; but now, for those who live under the law of love as sons and daughters, the permitting of divorce no longer applies.

Of course, when the western Church included this prohibition of divorce in the Law, it could no longer be based on the two-fold law of love which escapes legal definition, but on whether people are baptised or not, which is legally verifiable.

For this to work, it is necessary to believe that the sacrament of baptism will give links with Christ, even when the baptised person is not brought up in the faith or has a completely secular mindset, that are strong enough to make a conversion of heart unnecessary when imposing this prohibition of divorce. It must also hold that marriage of two baptised people, whether they have a living faith or not, has an ontological resistance to divorce.

Cardinal Burke holds both assumptions, neither of which is in the Gospel; and he opens himself to the charge that the ressourcement theologians made against the neo-scholastics in the years before the Council, that the supernatural life of grace in their theology had lost its connection with natural, human experience.

It is my contention that there is a continuity between especially the last four popes, that the four, including Pope Francis, are traditional but, to a growing extent, appeal to Eastern as well as Western traditions to find solutions to modern problems. All four are sons of Vatican II and follow the theology taught by Vatican II, but each has interpreted it through his own experience, Paul, John Paul and Benedict as participants, Francis as a young observer from the outside. Perhaps, as an observer, Francis was more conscious of those projects of Vatican II that had fallen by the wayside; and, whether he was elected to do this or not, he has made it his business to revive them and to put them into practice. Of course, this has aroused opposition as it did during the Council.

Pope Francis is intent on following Christ. Like a convinced liberal, he is open to everyone, condemning no one, "Who am I to judge?" has almost become a distinguishing motto. However, unlike a liberal but like Jesus, he invites all sinners, and he includes himself in that category, to a complete change of mentality and to a life dedicated to loving God and our neighbour in Jesus Christ. He does not thrust this down people's throat, content to show people God's love and leaving Christ to do the rest.

Pope Francis is still a Jesuit

↧

JANUARY 7TH: WESTERN EPIPHANY AND EASTERN CHRISTMAS

January 5, 2018, 11:59 am

≫ Next: CHRISTMAS GREETINGS TO THE ROMAN CURIA:

≪ Previous: GOD OFFERS MERCY TO ALL SO THAT ALL CAN BECOME SAINTS: POPE FRANCIS AND HIS CRITICS

The Christmas season is a wonderful example of unity in diversity. One year I had the joy of celebrating Christmas twice, once at Belmont on December 25th, and then with the Ukrainians in Gloucester on January 7th which is December 25th in the Julian Calendar. This year, we celebrate the Epiphany on January 6th or 7th, while most Eastern churches are celebrating Christmas. Yet it is the same mystery of the Incarnation'

Although the Baptism of Our Lord is a major theme of the Epiphany, I shall postpone any detailed treatment of it until the Orthodox Epiphany where it is the dominant theme.

"Epiphany" means "manifestation", and the feast celebrates the manifestation of God in the flesh. It is also called in the East "Theophany" and it included, all in one, the Birth of Christ, the Adoration by the Magi which symbolised Incarnation as God's supreme revelation to all humankind, the Baptism of Christ in which the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity were made manifest, and, last of all, there was the Marriage Feast of Cana which showed Christ's divine power over nature. Originally, there was only one feast that encompassed all these themes, as it is practised up to the present day by the Armenian Orthodox Church (Oriental Orthodox) in which an all-inclusive Christmas Day is celebrated on January 6th.

(Շնորհավոր Ամանոր և Սուրբ Ծնունդ)

The Armenian Christmas

Feast of the Theophany

Armenians with others at Christmas

THE FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY

YEAR B

Introit and Gradual

sung by the monks of Solesmes

my source: Christ in the Desert

GOSPEL Matthew 2:1-12

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it has been written through the prophet: And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; since from you shall come a ruler, who is to shepherd my people Israel.” Then Herod called the magi secretly and ascertained from them the time of the star’s appearance. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search diligently for the child. When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage.” After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way.

My sisters and brothers in Christ Jesus,

God has sent us His Son, Jesus Christ. The Son is given for all of us, not just for a chosen group—for all of us. So we chant in the Christmas Season: Christ is born for us! At the time of Epiphany: Christ has appeared to us. Christ is for all even as Christ is also for me personally. The challenge is to see God in the many ways in which God appears and to reflect God in all that I do.

The first reading today is taken from the Prophet Isaiah. This Prophet tells us: “Upon you, the Lord shines, and over you appears his glory. Nations shall walk by your light…” These words are written about Israel but apply to every nation and group of people because the Lord loves us all. Even this great Prophet Isaiah could not convince everyone that God would act and that God would be present. The challenge for us is personal belief and also belief as a Church and a community. If we believe, that our lives begin to reflect that light of His glory and gives witness to the loving presence of our God.

The second reading is from the Letter to the Ephesians. Saint Paul, a devout Jew, tells us how he became aware that God’s love was for even the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people. God’s love is for everyone. The challenge for us today is to recognize that God’s love is for all peoples, and especially for those peoples and nations and persons who seem most impossible to accept. God wants us all and God is working in all, even when we cannot see it. Once we begin to accept that God is present in all, we will find that speaking of the Lord is not so difficult after all. Instead, we might find that we naturally speak of God to others and that our own love and faithfulness could draw others to God and to our Lord Jesus.

The Gospel today is the story of the Magi from the East, the story of the Three Kings of the Orient, the story of the star drawing and guiding wise men to the Lord. We don’t have a lot of details about how this happened, but our Gospels tell us that God Himself chooses to reveal Himself to all peoples and that God Himself uses various ways to do that. Yes, our witness is important, but so also are the unexplained ways in which God makes Himself known.

For many, the challenge is to believe that God is calling all of us to the Catholic Church. We live in a time when many think that all religion is the same. Yet revelation keeps telling us that not everything is the same, that there are roads that lead to destruction, that there are ways that do not lead to light.

What is implied is that in each of us is a drawing to God, an attraction to the Lord, which will eventually bring us to Him. If we are to see Him, our hearts must be open to Him. If we are to live in Him, our hearts must be able to embrace Him.

God is revealing Himself to you and to me right now. Let us open our eyes to His light and open our hearts to His love.

Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip

Reges Tharsis: Offertory

monks of Monserrat

The Mystery of God

Who is God

Bishop R. Barron

The Epiphany feast explained by Dom Gueranger

The great liturgist, Dom Prosper Gueranger, gives some thoughts about the significance of the Feast of the Epiphany for the Christian soul.

The Feast of the Epiphany is the continuation of the mystery of Christmas, but it appears on the Calendar of the Church with its own special character. Its very name, which signifies Manifestation, implies that it celebrates the apparition of God to His creatures.

For several centuries the Nativity of Our Lord was kept on this day; and when, in the year 376 the decree of the Holy See obliged all Christians to keep the Nativity on the 25th of December, as Rome did, the 6th of January was not robbed of all its ancient glory. It was still to be called the Epiphany, and the Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ was also commemorated on this same Feast, which Tradition had marked as the day on which that Baptism took place.

The Greek Church gives this Feast the venerable and mysterious name of Theophania, which is of such frequent reference in the early Fathers, as signifying a divine Apparition. We find this name applied to this Feast by Eusebius, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. Isidore of Pelusium. In the liturgical books of the Melchite Church the Feast goes under no other name.

The Orientals call this solemnity also the Holy Lights, on account of its being the day on which Baptism was administered; for, as we have just mentioned, Our Lord was baptized on this same day. Baptism is called by the holy Fathers "Illumination", and they who received it Illuminated.

Lastly, this Feast is called in many countries the King's Feast; it is, of course, an allusion to the Magi, whose journey to Bethlehem is so continually mentioned in the Divine Office.

The Epiphany shares with the Feasts of Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost the honour of being called, in the Canon of the Mass, a Day most holy. It is also one of the cardinal feasts, that is, one of those on which the arrangement of the Liturgical Year is based; for, as we have Sundays after Easter, and Sundays after Pentecost, so also we count as many as six Sundays after Epiphany.

The Epiphany is indeed a great Feast, and the joy caused us by the Birth of Our Lord Jesus must be renewed on it, for as though it were a second Christmas Day, it shows us our Incarnate God in a new light. It leaves us all the sweetness of the dear Babe of Bethlehem, who hath appeared to us already in love; but to this, it adds its own grand manifestation of the divinity of our Jesus. At Christmas it was a few Shepherds that were invited by the Angels to go and recognize the Word Made Flesh; but now, at the Epiphany, the voice of God Himself calls the whole world to adore this Jesus, and hear Him.

The mystery of the Epiphany brings upon us three magnificent rays of the Sun of Justice, our Savior. In the calendar of pagan Rome, this 6th day of January was devoted to the celebration of a triple triumph of Augustus, the founder of the Roman Empire; but when Jesus, our Prince of Peace, Whose empire knows no limits, had secured victory to His Church by the blood of the Martyrs, then did this His Church decree that a triple triumph of the Immortal King should be substituted, in the Christian Calendar, for those other three triumphs which had been won by the adopted son of Caesar.

The 6th of January, therefore, restored the celebration of Our Lord's Birth to the 25th of December; but in return, there were united in the one same Epiphany three manifestations of Jesus' glory: the mystery of the Magi coming from the East, under the guidance of a star, and adoring the Infant of Bethlehem as the Divine King; the mystery of the Baptism of Christ, Who, whilst standing in the waters of the Jordan, was proclaimed by the Eternal Father as Son of God; and thirdly, the mystery of the divine power of this same Jesus, when He changed the water into wine at the marriage-feast of Cana.

But did these three Mysteries really take place on this day? Is the 6th of January the real anniversary of these events? We think it enough to state that Baronius, Suarez, Raynaldus, Pope Benedict XIV, and an almost endless list of other writers, assert that the Adoration of the Magi happened on this very day. That the Baptism of Our Lord also happened on the 6th of January is admitted by the severest critics. The precise day of the miracle at the marriage-feast of Cana is far from being as certain as the other two mysteries, though it is impossible to prove that the 6th of January was not the day. For us the children of the Church, it is sufficient that our Holy Mother has assigned the commemoration of these three manifestations for this Feast; we need nothing more to make us rejoice in the triple triumph of the Son of Mary.

If we now come to consider these three mysteries of our Feast separately, we shall find that the Church of Rome, in Her Office and Mass of today, is more intent on the Adoration of the Magi than on the other two. That the mystery of the Vocation of the Gentiles should be made thus prominent by the Church of Rome is not to be wondered at; for, by that heavenly vocation which, in the Magi, called all nations to the admirable light of Faith, Rome, which till then had been the head of the Gentile world, was made the head of the Christian Church and of the whole human race.

The Greek Church makes no special mention, in her Office of today, of the Adoration of the Magi, for she unites it with the mystery of our Savior's Birth in her celebration of Christmas Day. The Baptism of Christ absorbs all her thoughts and praises on the solemnity of the Epiphany.

In the Latin Church, this second mystery of our Feast is celebrated, together with the other two, on the 6th of January, and mention is made of it several times in the Office. But as the coming of the Magi to the crib of our new-born King absorbs the attention of the Roman Church this day, the mystery of the sanctification of the waters was to be commemorated on a day apart – the Octave Day, January 13th.

The third mystery of the Epiphany is also somewhat kept in the shade by the prominence given to the first (though allusion is several times made to it in the Office of the Feast), a special day has been appointed for its due celebration, and that day is the Second Sunday after the Epiphany.

The great Day, which now brings us to the crib of our Prince of Peace in company with the Three Kings, has been marked by two great events of the first ages of the Church. It was on the 6th of January in the year 361, that Julian, who in heart was already an apostate, happened to be at Vienne in Gaul. He was soon to ascend the imperial throne, which would be left vacant by the death of Constantius, and he felt the need he had of the support of the Christian Church, in which it is said he had received the order of Lector, and which, nevertheless, he was preparing to attack with all the cunning and cruelty of a tiger. Like Herod, he too would fain go on this Feast of the Epiphany and adore the new-born King. His panegyrist Ammianus tells us that this crowned philosopher, who had been seen just before coming out of the pagan temple, where he had been consulting the soothsayers, made his way through the porticoes of the church, and standing in the midst of the faithful people, offered to the God of the Christians his sacrilegious homage.

Eleven years later, in the year 372, another Emperor found his way into the church, on the same Feast of the Epiphany. It was Valens; a Christian, like Julian, by baptism; but a persecutor, in the name of Arianism, of that same Church which Julian persecuted in the name of his vain philosophy and still vainer false gods. As Julian felt necessitated by motives of worldly policy to bow down, on this day, before the divinity of the Galilean; so on this same day, the holy courage of a saintly Bishop made Valens prostrate himself at the feet of Jesus.

St. Basil had just then had his famous interview with the Prefect Modestus, in which his episcopal intrepidity had defeated all the might of earthly power. Valens had come to Caesarea, and with his soul defiled with the Arian heresy, he entered the Basilica, when the Bishop was celebrating, with his people, the glorious Theophany. Let us listen to St. Gregory Nazianzen, thus describing the scene with his usual eloquence: "The Emperor entered the church. The chanting of the psalms echoed through the holy place like the rumbling of thunder. The people, like a waving sea, filled the house of God. Such was the order and pomp in and about the sanctuary, that it looked more like Heaven than earth. Basil himself stood erect before the people, as the Scripture describes Samuel – his body and eyes and soul motionless, as though nothing strange had taken place, and, if I may say so, his whole being was fastened to his God and the Holy Altar.

"The sacred ministers, who surrounded the Pontiff, were in deep recollection and reverence. The Emperor heard and saw all this. He had never before witnessed a spectacle so imposing. He was overpowered. His head grew dizzy, and darkness veiled his eyes."

Jesus, the King of ages, the Son of God and the Son of Mary, had conquered. Valens was disarmed; his resolution of using violence against the holy Bishop was gone; and if heresy kept him from at once adoring the Word consubstantial with the Father, he at least united his exterior worship with that which Basil's flock was paying to the Incarnate God. When the Offertory came, he advanced towards the Sanctuary and presented his gifts to Christ in the person of his holy priest. The fear lest Basil might refuse to accept them took such possession of the Emperor, that had not the sacred ministers supported him, he would have fallen at the foot of the Altar.

Thus has the Kingship of our new-born Savior been acknowledged by the great ones of this world. The Royal Psalmist had sung this prophecy – the kings of the earth shall serve Him, and His enemies shall lick the ground under His feet (Ps. 71: 9, 11).

The race of the Emperors like Julian and Valens was to be followed by Monarchs who would bend their knee before this Babe of Bethlehem, and offer Him the homage of true faith and devoted hearts. Theodosius, St. Karl the Great, Alfred the Great, St. Edward the Confessor, St. Stephen of Hungary, the Emperor St. Heinrich II, St. Ferdinand of Castille, St. Louis IX of France are examples of kings who had a special devotion to the Feast of the Epiphany. Their ambition was to go in company with the Magi to the feet of the Divine Infant and offer Him their gifts. At the English Court, the custom was long retained that the reigning sovereign offered an ingot of gold as a tribute of homage to Jesus the King of kings.

But this custom of imitating the Three Kings in their mystic gifts was not confined to Courts. In the Middle Ages, the faithful used to present on the Epiphany gold, frankincense and myrrh to be blessed by the priest. These tokens of their devotedness to Jesus were kept as pledges of God's blessing upon their houses and families. The practice is still observed in Germany and other parts of the Christian world.

There was another custom which originated in the Ages of Faith, which is still observed in some countries. In honour of the Three Kings, who came from the East to adore the Babe of Bethlehem, each family chose one of its members to be king. The choice was thus made: the family kept a feast, which was an allusion to the third of the Epiphany Mysteries – the Feast of Cana in Galilee – a cake was served, and he who took the piece which had a certain secret mark (inside or underneath) was proclaimed the king of the day. Two portions of the cake were reserved for the poor, in whom honour was thus paid to the Infant Jesus and His Blessed Mother; for on this Day of the triumph of Him, Who though King, was humble and poor, it was fitting that the poor should have a share in the general joy. The happiness of home was there, as in so many other instances, blended with the sacredness of Religion. This custom of the King's Feast brought relations and friends together, and encouraged feelings of kindness and charity. Human weakness would sometimes, perhaps, show itself during these hours of holiday-making; but the idea and sentiment and spirit of the whole feast was profoundly Catholic, and that was sufficient to guarantee its innocence.

For the last several centuries, a puritanical zeal has decried these simple customs, wherein the seriousness of Religion and the home enjoyments of certain Festivals were blended together. The traditions of Christian family rejoicing have been blamed under pretexts of abuse; as though a recreation, in which Religion had no share and no influence, were less open to intemperance and sin! Others have pretended (though with little or no foundation) that such Epiphany customs are mere imitations of the ancient pagan Saturnalia. Even if this were true (which it is not), we would answer that many of the old pagan customs have undergone a Christian transformation, and no reasonable person thinks of refusing to accept them thus purified. All this mistaken zeal has produced the sad effect of divorcing the Church from family life and customs, or excluding every religious manifestation from our traditions, and of bringing about what is so pompously called (though the word is expressive enough) the secularization of society.

But let us return to the triumph of our sweet Savior and King. His magnificence is manifested to us so brightly on this Feast! Our Mother, the Church, is going to initiate us into the mysteries we are to celebrate. Let us imitate the faith and obedience of the Magi; let us adore, with the Holy Baptist, the Divine Lamb, over Whom the Heavens are open; let us take our place at the mystic feast of Cana, where our dear King is present, thrice manifested, thrice glorified. In the last two mysteries, let us not lose sight of the Babe of Bethlehem; and in the Babe of Bethlehem let us cease not to recognize the Great God, in Whom the Father was well pleased, and the Supreme Ruler and Creator of all things.

EASTERN CHRISTMAS

The Significance of Christmas
By Fr. Michael Baroudy

my source: Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese

The Christian world is about to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ, our Lord, a celebration in which we all indulge every year. People celebrate this memorable day in various ways, depending upon their own concept of the significance of the day. We have to admit that even here in Christian America, many celebrate the day in a manner that is foreign and even contradictory to the spirit of Christmas. It is becoming increasingly horrifying to any person who does any thinking at all that we are commercializing and paganizing the great Holy Day and have changed it to a holiday. Read, if you will, the paper the “day after Christmas and discover the number of drunkards and those who were hailed to court because the occasion was to them a period for dissipation and indulgence.

I want us to meditate upon the Christmas spirit and the significance of the day. Were we to reflect seriously upon the underlying purpose of Christmas, we would be awed to know that it involves some tremendous facts of world shaking significance. Let us concern ourselves with the facts surrounding the birth of the Savior so that we might become more appreciative and reverent.

Reverting to the Bible to discover the basis for the proper approach to a right understanding of the day’s significance, we find this statement in St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians 4: 4-6 with which the Epistle for this day begins, “When the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons.”

When we analyze this statement, we discover that it sets forth three basic truths dealing with this most significant subject. Incarnation, Redemption, Adoption. Taking them in their respective order, we have first of all the birth of the Savior from the blessed Virgin Mary, which is called the “Incarnation”, that is, Jesus taking upon Him our form. This is one of the most staggering mysteries of all time—Jesus, the Son of God, assuming our form and our nature. “When the fullness of time was come, God sent His Son, make of a woman.” Is not that a pauser for all of us to reflect upon? Have you ever actually tried to think how great, deep, and immeasurable God’s love must have been, to consent to dwell in human flesh?

God, in time past, before the coming of Christ, revealed Himself to holy men by inspiring their thoughts to record something of this greatness. Righteousness, mercy, justice and redemption were some of the beautiful attributes of God. Some of the prophets had a foregleam of the birth of the Savior. Micah, the Prophet, predicted the place — Bethlehem. Isaiah predicted that a Virgin would be the recipient of the high honor, bearing this wonderful Child. Inspired men throughout history had foregleams of some great revelations of God relative to His advent to humanity in a way we would understand, a way which we could not misunderstand. So “when the fullness of time was come,” when God’s clock struck the hour, He reached down to man, by being born as the rest of us, having human nature and flesh. As St. John the Divine aptly put it, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we saw His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Looking back upon what transpired at Christ’s birth, how many of the people living then knew the great significance of the Babe’s birth? How many knew that history will be divided in two, changed from before Christ to after Christ? How many knew that millions of people around the world would chant music and sing joyous hymns to commemorate the great event?

Usually people don’t take stock in realizing the potentialities invested in a child. Whoever thought that the events transpiring on that “Holy Night” would be enshrined in music and art, and that millions of cards would be used by people as a means to wish one another a “Merry Christmas” on His birth and that ministers, the world over, would preach and reach the story of the Holy birth, and choirs would sing his praises?

What is the purpose of His coming into the world? Well, the purpose is two-fold: Redemption and Adoption. Christ’s coming into the world was not accidental but rather purposeful. To the Blessed Virgin Mary, the angel said. “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” He Himself said of His own mission upon one occasion, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.” God’s redeeming love was at the very heart, and the main reason for His coming. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son for its redemption.” This is the reason we call the story of Christ’s life the gospel, that is, good news. God’s tenderest love revealed itself in such a marvelous way to save humanity. Before Christ’s coming to human life, the world of human beings knew God as a terrible Judge, One on the receiving end to be appeased with gifts, a just God, who would exact from men the very last debit owed Him. They had then some foregleams of Him as a Redeemer, one who would show pity on men, but never as a God whose love knew no limitations to redeem fallen humanity.

Then, there was another reason—Adoption, to adopt believers into the family of God, making them sons and daughters of His. All human beings who would be willing to appropriate and appreciate the gift of God, and by faith receive Him into their lives, would become, by virtue of that fact, members of God’s family, having special attachments and privileges, inducted into the society of the Blessed, belonging to one Eternal Father, becoming one with the Elder Brother, and one with all believers of all colors, races and nationalities the world over.

“To as many as received Him, to them gave He the power to become the sons of God,” was the way the Evangelist put it. As redeemed sons and daughters of God, who are empowered to live as becomes God’s children, may we seriously reflect upon God’s matchless gift to us, and be concerned to declare by our lives, no less than by our lips, the redeeming love of God to all men, of all colors and creeds. May this hour be one of new vision and dedication to a life of service and newness, of hope, faith and love.

Christmas is unique among all the holidays, holy days, and birthdays that we observe. The story of the first Christmas is so simple that a little three-year-old caught its spirit when she said, “I know what Baby Jesus wants for his birthday—a cradle.” In love, she wanted to give him what he did not have when he was born. Yet the Christmas story is so profound that it can be fully expressed only in the deep thoughts of the prologue of John’s Gospel.

The unique truth of Christmas is that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. The unique outcome was that this marked the beginning of a new creation, a possible rebirth of humanity. God, through His Son, entered into our human life that we, believing in Him, might receive power to become “sons of God.” The Baby who had no cradle but a manger became the one Lord and Savior of mankind! Christianity is not a creed to be recited but a new life to be lived in Christ.

"Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, hath given rise to the light of knowledge in the world: for they that worshipped the stars did learn therefrom to worship thee, O Sun of justice, and to know that from the east of the Highest thou didst come O Lord, glory to thee.”

Patriarch Kirill serves the Celebration of Christmas,

the night of January 6th

Счастливого рождества

Orthodox Christmas Mass in Lebanon

عيد ميلاد مجيد

Syrian Orthodox Christmas Mass

Coptic Christmas Mass in Cairo

To Father Panteleimon and Father Manuil and to all my friends in Ukraine

Христос Рождається' Khrystos Rozhdayetsia

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CHRISTMAS GREETINGS TO THE ROMAN CURIA:

January 9, 2018, 3:12 am

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Pope Francis speaks during his annual pre-Christmas meeting with top officials of the Roman Curia and Vatican City State and with cardinals living in Rome in the Clementine Hall Dec. 21 at the Vatican. (CNS photo/Claudio Peri pool via Reuters)

Clementine Hall

Thursday, 21 December 2017

my source: Vatican

Christmas is the feast of faith in the Son of God who became man in order to restore us to our filial dignity, lost through sin and disobedience. Christmas is the feast of faith in hearts that become a manger to receive him and souls that allow God to make a shoot of hope, charity and faith sprout from the stump of their poverty.

Today is once again a moment for exchanging Christmas greetings and for wishing a holy and joyful Christmas and a happy New Year to you and your co-workers, to the Papal Representatives, to all those persons who serve in the Curia, and to all your dear ones. May this Christmas open our eyes so that we can abandon what is superfluous, false, malicious and sham, and to see what is essential, true, good and authentic. My best wishes indeed!

Dear brothers and sisters,

I have already spoken of the Roman Curia ad intra. This year I would like to share with you some reflections on the Curia ad extra, that is, on its relationship with the nations, with the Particular Churches, with the Oriental Churches, with ecumenical dialogue, with Judaism, with Islam and other religions – in other words, with the outside world.

My reflections are based of course on the fundamental canonical principles of the Curia and on its own history, but also on the personal vision that I have sought to share with you in my addresses of recent years, within the context of the reform currently under way.

Speaking of reform, I think of the amusing yet pointed remark of Archbishop Frédéric-François-Xavier de Mérode: “Making reforms in Rome is like cleaning the Sphinx with a toothbrush”.[1] His mot points to the patience, tenacity and sensitivity needed to attain that goal. For the Curia is an ancient, complex and venerable institution made up of people of different cultures, languages and mindsets, and bound, intrinsically and from the outset, to the primatial office of the Bishop of Rome in the Church, that is, to the “sacred” office willed by Christ the Lord for the good of the entire Church (ad bonum totius corporis).[2]

The universal nature of the Curia’s service thus wells up and flows out from the catholicity of the Petrine ministry. A Curia closed in on itself would betray its own raison d’être and plunge into self-referentiality and ultimately destroy itself. The Church, is by her very nature projected ad extra, and only to the extent that she remains linked to the Petrine ministry, the service of God’s word and the preaching of the Gospel. That Good News is that God is Emmanuel, who is born among us and becomes one of us in order to show to all his visceral closeness, his limitless love and his divine desire that all men and women be saved and come to enjoy the blessings of heaven (cf. 1 Tim 2:4). He is the God who makes his sun rise on the good and evil alike (cf. Mt 5:45); the God who came not to be served but to serve (cf. Mt 20:28); the God who establishes the Church to be in the world but not of the world, and to be an instrument of salvation and service.

Recently, in greeting the Fathers and Heads of the Oriental Catholic Churches,[3] and reflecting on this ministerial, petrine and curial finality of service, I used the expression “diaconal primacy”, which immediately calls to mind the image of the Servus servorum Dei, so beloved of Saint Gregory the Great. This definition, in its Christological dimension, is above all the expression of a firm desire to imitate Christ, who took on the form of a servant (cf. Phil 2:7). Benedict XVI, in this regard, has said that on the lips of Gregory this phrase was “no mere pious formula, but a true manifestation of his way of living and acting. Gregory was deeply moved by the humility of God, who in Christ made himself our servant, who washed and continues to wash our dirty feet”.[4]

A similar diaconal attitude should characterize all those who in various ways work in the context of the Roman Curia. For the Curia, as the Code of Canon Law also states, “performs its function”, in the name and with the authority of the Supreme Pontiff, “for the good and service of the Churches” (can. 360; cf. CCEO, can. 46).

A diaconal primacy “with regard to the Pope”,[5] and consequently diaconal as well, is the work which is carried out within the Roman Curia ad intra and outside of it, ad extra. This theme of a ministerial and curial diaconia reminds me of a phrase in the ancient Didascalia Apostolorum, which states that “the deacon must be the ear and the mouth of the Bishop, his heart and his soul”.[6] For this agreement between the two is linked to communion, harmony and peace in the Church, inasmuch as “the deacon is the guardian of service in the Church”.[7] I do not believe that it is by chance that the ear is the organ of hearing but also of balance; and that the mouth is the organ of both taste and speech.

Another ancient text adds that deacons are called to be, as it were, the eyes of the Bishop.[8] The eye sees in order to transmit images to the mind, helping it to take decisions and to give direction for the good of the whole body.

The relationship that these images suggest is that of communion in filial obedience for the service of God’s holy people. There can be no doubt, then, that such must be also the relationship that exists between all those who work in the Roman Curia. From the Dicastery heads and superiors to the officials and all others. Communion with Peter reinforces and reinvigorates communion between all the members.

Seen in this light, my appeal to the senses of the human body helps us have a sense of extroversion, of attention to what is outside. In the human body, the senses are our first connection to the world ad extra; they are like a bridge towards that world; they enable us to relate to it. The senses help us to grasp reality and at the same time to situate ourselves in reality. Not by chance did Saint Ignatius appeal to the senses for the contemplation of the mysteries of Christ and truth.[9]

This is very important for rising above that unbalanced and debased mindset of plots and small cliques that in fact represent – for all their self-justification and good intentions – a cancer leading to a self-centredness that also seeps into ecclesiastical bodies, and in particular those working in them. When this happens, we lose the joy of the Gospel, the joy of sharing Christ and of fellowship with him; we lose the generous spirit of our consecration (cf. Acts 20:35 and 2 Cor 9:7).

Here let me allude to another danger: those who betray the trust put in them and profiteer from the Church’s motherhood. I am speaking of persons carefully selected to give a greater vigour to the body and to the reform, but – failing to understand the lofty nature of their responsibility – let themselves be corrupted by ambition or vainglory. Then, when they are quietly sidelined, they wrongly declare themselves martyrs of the system, of a “Pope kept in the dark”, of the “old guard”…, rather than reciting a mea culpa. Alongside these, there are others who are still working there, to whom all the time in the world is given to get back on the right track, in the hope that they find in the Church’s patience an opportunity for conversion and not for personal advantage. Of course, this is in no way to overlook the vast majority of faithful persons working there with praiseworthy commitment, fidelity, competence, dedication and great sanctity.

To return to the image of the body, it is fitting to note that these “institutional senses”, to which we can in some way compare the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, must operate in a way befitting their nature and purpose: in the name and with the authority of the Supreme Pontiff, and always for the good and the service of the Churches.[10] Within the Church, they are called to be like faithful, sensitive antennae: sending and receiving.

Antennae that “send”, inasmuch as they are capable of faithfully transmitting the will of the Pope and the Superiors. For those working in the Holy See, the word “fidelity”[11] is particularly important, “since they spend so much of their energy, their time and their daily ministry in the service of the Successor of Peter. This entails a serious responsibility but also a special gift, which as time goes by should lead to a relationship of closeness to the Pope, a closeness marked by interior trust, a natural idem sentire, which is expressed precisely by the word ‘faithfulness’”.[12]

Antennae too that “receive”. This involves grasping the aspirations, the questions, the pleas, the joys and the sorrows of the Churches and the world, and transmitting them to the Bishop of Rome in order to enable him to carry out more effectively his task and his mission as “the lasting and visible source and foundation of unity both of faith and of communion”.[13] By this receptivity, which is more important than their preceptive role, the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia enter generously into that process of hearing and synodality of which I have previously spoken.[14]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I have used the expression “diaconal primacy” and the images of the body, the senses and antennae to make clear that, in order to reach the places where the Spirit speaks to the Churches (history, that is) and to achieve the aim of our work (salus animarum), it is necessary, indeed indispensable, to practice discernment of the signs of the times,[15] communion in service, charity in truth, docility to the Holy Spirit and trusting obedience to Superiors.

Here perhaps it is helpful to mention that the names of the different Dicasteries and Offices of the Roman Curia indicate the very realities that they are called to promote. Their work, if we think about it, is of fundamental importance for the entire Church and, I would say, for the whole world.

Since the work of the Curia is quite extensive, I would limit myself this time to speaking in general of the Curia ad extra, that is, of certain basic, select aspects from which it will not be difficult, in the near future, to set forth and examine more deeply the Curia’s other areas of activity.

The Curia and its relations with the nations:

In this area, a fundamental role is played by Vatican diplomacy, as the sincere and constant effort to make the Holy See a builder of bridges, peace and dialogue between nations. As it is a diplomacy at the service of humanity and the human person, of outstretched hand and open door, it seeks to listen, to understand, to help, to support and to intervene quickly and respectfully in any situation, for the sake of narrowing distances and building trust. Its only interest is to remain free of all worldly or material self-interest.

The Holy See is thus present on the world scene to cooperate with all peoples and nations of good will. It strives to reaffirm the importance of protecting “our common home” from all destructive forms of selfishness, to state that wars lead only to death and destruction, to draw from the past the lessons needed to help us live better in the present, and to build a solid and secure future for future generations.

Meetings with Heads of State and with various Delegations, together with the Apostolic Journeys, are its means and its goal.

For this reason, the Third Section of the Secretariat of State has been established. It is meant to show the concern and closeness of the Pope and of the Superiors of the Secretariat of State for diplomatic personnel and for the men and women religious and lay people serving in the Nunciatures. The Third Section will deal with issues involving persons working in the diplomatic service of the Holy See or preparing for this service, in close cooperation with the Section for General Affairs and the Section for Relations with States.[16]

This particular concern is based on the two-fold dimension of the service carried out by diplomatic personnel: as pastors and diplomats, in the service of the particular Churches and of the nations where they work.

The Curia and the particular Churches:

The relationship between the Curia and Dioceses and Eparchies is of paramount importance. In the Roman Curia these find whatever help and support they may need. This relationship is grounded in cooperation and trust, and never on superiority or conflict. The basis of this relationship is set forth in the conciliar Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops, which explains at length that the work of the Curia is carried out “for the good of the Churches and in service of the sacred pastors”.[17]

The Roman Curia thus has as its point of reference not only the Bishop of Rome, from whom it receives its authority, but also the particular Churches and their Pastors throughout the world, for whose good it functions and acts.

In the first of these yearly encounters, I spoke of this characteristic of “service to the Pope and to the Bishops, to the universal Church, to the particular Churches and to the entire world”. I pointed out that: “in the Roman Curia, one learns – in a special way, “one breathes in” – this twofold aspect of the Church, this interplay of the universal and the particular”. And I went on to say: “I think that this is one of the finest experiences of those who live and work in Rome”.[18]

The Visits ad Limina Apostolorum, in this sense, represent a great opportunity for encounter, dialogue and mutual enrichment. I have preferred, when meeting with Bishops, to have an open and sincere conversation that remains private and goes beyond the formalities of protocol and the customary exchange of speeches and recommendations. Dialogue between the bishops and the various Dicasteries is also important. In the course of the Visits ad Limina that resumed this year after the Jubilee year, the Bishops told me that they were received well and listened to by all the Dicasteries. This makes me very happy., and I thank the Dicastery heads present.

Here allow me, at this particular moment of the Church’s life, to draw our attention to the forthcoming Fifteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which has as its theme Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment. To call upon the Curia, the bishops and the entire Church to give particular attention to young people does not mean considering them alone. It also means focusing on a critical theme for a combination of relationships and pressing issues, such as intergenerational relationships, the family, pastoral work, social life, and so forth. The Preparatory Document makes this clear in its Introduction: “The Church has decided to examine herself on how she can lead young people to recognize and accept the call to the fullness of life and love, and to ask young people to help her in identifying the most effective ways to announce the Good News today. By listening to young people, the Church will once again hear the Lord speaking in today’s world. As in the days of Samuel (cf. 1 Sam 3:1-21) and Jeremiah (cf. Jer 1:4-10), young people know how to discern the signs of our times, indicated by the Spirit. Listening to their aspirations, the Church can glimpse the world which lies ahead and the paths the Church is called to follow”.[19]

The Curia and the Oriental Churches:

The unity and the communion that prevail in the relationship of the Church of Rome and the Oriental Churches present a concrete example of richness in diversity for the whole Church. In fidelity to their own bi-millennial traditions and in ecclesiastica communio, they experience and realize the priestly prayer of Jesus (cf. Jn 17).[20]

In this regard, at my last meeting with the Patriarchs and Heads of the Oriental Churches, I spoke of the “diaconal primacy” and likewise stressed the importance of further study and review of the sensitive question of the election of new Bishops and Eparchs. This must correspond, on the one hand, to the autonomy of the Oriental Churches and, at the same time, to their spirit of evangelical responsibility and desire to strengthen constantly their unity with the Catholic Church. “Everything should be done with the thorough application of that authentic synodal praxis which distinguishes the Oriental Churches”.[21] The election of each bishop must reflect and strengthen unity and communion between the Successor of Peter and the entire College of Bishops.[22]

The relationship between Rome and the East is one of mutual spiritual and liturgical enrichment. Indeed, the Church of Rome would not be truly catholic without the priceless riches of the Oriental Churches and lacking the heroic testimony of so many of our Oriental brothers and sisters who purify the Church by accepting martyrdom and offering their lives so as not to deny Christ.[23]

The Curia and ecumenical dialogue

There are also areas to which the Catholic Church, especially after the Second Vatican Council, is particularly committed. Among these is Christian unity, which is “an essential requirement of our faith, a requirement that flows from the depth of our being believers in Jesus Christ”.[24] It involves a “journey”, yet, as was also stated by my predecessors, it is an irreversible journey and not a going back. “Unity is made by walking, in order to recall that when we walk together, that is, when we meet as brothers, we pray together, we collaborate together in the proclamation of the Gospel, and in the service to the least, we are already united. All the theological and ecclesiological differences that still divide Christians will only be surmounted along this path, although today we do not know how and when [it will happen], but that it will happen according to what the Holy Spirit will suggest for the good of the Church”.[25]

The work of the Curia in this area is aimed at fostering encounter with our brothers and sisters, untying the knots of misunderstanding and hostility, and counteracting prejudices and the fear of the other, all of which have prevented us from seeing the richness in diversity and the depth of the Mystery of Christ and of the Church. For that mystery is always greater than any human words can express.

The meetings between Popes, Patriarchs and Heads of the different Churches and Communities have always filled me with joy and gratitude.

The Curia, Judaism, Islam and other religions:

The relationship of the Roman Curia to other religions is based on the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and the need for dialogue. “For the only alternative to the civility of encounter is the incivility of conflict”.[26] Dialogue is grounded in three fundamental lines of approach: “The duty to respect one’s own identity and that of others, the courage to accept differences, and sincerity of intentions. The duty to respect one’s own identity and that of others, because true dialogue cannot be built on ambiguity or a willingness to sacrifice some good for the sake of pleasing others. The courage to accept differences, because those who are different, either culturally or religiously, should not be seen or treated as enemies, but rather welcomed as fellow-travellers, in the genuine conviction that the good of each resides in the good of all. Sincerity of intentions, because dialogue, as an authentic expression of our humanity, is not a strategy for achieving specific goals, but rather a path to truth, one that deserves to be undertaken patiently, in order to transform competition into cooperation”.[27]

My meetings with religious leaders during the various Apostolic Visits and here in the Vatican, are a concrete proof of this.

These are only some aspects, important but not comprehensive, of the work of the Curia ad extra. Today I chose these aspects, linked to the theme of “diaconal primacy”, “institutional senses”, and of “faithful antennae that transmit and receive”.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I began our meeting by speaking of Christmas as the Feast of Faith. I would like to conclude, though, by pointing out that Christmas reminds us that a faith that does not trouble us is a troubled faith. A faith that does not make us grow is a faith that needs to grow. A faith that does not raise questions is a faith that has to be questioned. A faith that does not rouse us is a faith that needs to be roused. A faith that does not shake us is a faith that needs to be shaken. Indeed, a faith which is only intellectual or lukewarm is only a notion of faith. It can become real once it touches our heart, our soul, our spirit and our whole being. Once it allows God to be born and reborn in the manger of our heart. Once we let the star of Bethlehem guide us to the place where the Son of God lies, not among Kings and riches, but among the poor and humble.

As Angelus Silesius wrote in The Cherubinic Wanderer: “It depends solely on you. Ah, if only your heart could become a manger, then God would once again become a child on this earth”.[28]

With these reflections, I renew my personal best wishes for Christmas for you and your dear ones. Thank you!

As a Christmas gift, I would like to leave you this Italian version of the work of Blessed Father Marie-Eugène de l’Enfant Jésus, Je veux voir Dieu (“I want to see God”). It is a work of spiritual theology, and it will do us all some good. Maybe not by reading it completely, but by looking in the index for the thing that most interests us, or we think we most need. I hope it will benefit all of us.

Then too, Cardinal Piacenza has been very generous; with the work of the Apostolic Penitentiary, and also Monsignor Nykiel, he has given us this book: La festa del perdono (“The Feast of Forgiveness”) as a fruit of the Jubilee of Mercy. He even wanted to give it to us for free. Thank you, Cardinal Piacenza and the Apostolic Penitentiary. This book will be given to you as you leave. Thank you!

[Blessing]

And, please, pray for me

[1]Cf. GIUSEPPE DALLA TORRE, Sopra una storia della Gendarmeria Pontificia, 19 October 2017.

[2] “In order to ensure that the people of God would have pastors and would enjoy continual growth, Christ the Lord set up in his Church a variety of offices whose aim is the good of the whole body” (SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 18).

[3] Cf. Greeting to the Patriarchs and Major Archbishops, 9 October 2017.

[4] Catechesis, General Audience of 4 June 2008.

[5] Cf. JOHN PAUL II, Address to the Plenary Meeting of the Sacred College of Cardinals, 21 November 1985, 4.

[6] 2, 44: Funk, 138-166. Cf. W. RORDORF, Liturgie et eschatologie, in Augustinianum 18 (1978), 153-161; ID., Que savons-nous des lieux de culte chrétiens de l’époque pré-constantinienne?, in L’Orient Syrien 9 (1964), 39-60.

[7] Cf. Meeting with Priests and Consecrated Men and Women, Milan Cathedral, 25 March 2017.

[8] “As for the Church’s deacons, let them serve as the eyes of the bishop, looking all around and investigating the actions of each in the Church, in case anyone is about to sin. In this way, admonished beforehand by the presider, perhaps that person will not commit [his or her sin]” (Letter of Clement to James, 12: Rehm 14-15, in I Ministeri nella Chiesa Antica. Testi patristici dei primi tre secoli a cura di Enrico Cattaneo, Edizione Paolina, 1997, 696).

[9] Cf. IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, Spiritual Exercises, No. 121: “The fifth contemplation will be to apply the five senses the first and the second contemplation”.

[10] In his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Saint Jerome makes a curious comparison between the five bodily senses and the virgins of the Gospel parable, who become foolish when they no longer act in accordance with their assigned purpose (Comm. in Mt XXV: PL 26, 184).

[11] The concept of fidelity is quite demanding and eloquent, since it also brings out time involved in living out the commitment assumed; it refers to a virtue which, as Benedict XVI noted, “expresses the unique bond existing between the Pope and his direct collaborators, both in the Roman Curia and in the Papal Representations”. Address to the Community of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, 11 June 2012.

[12] Ibid.

[13] SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 18.

[14] “A synodal Church is a Church which listens, which realizes that ‘listening is more than simply hearing’. It is a mutual listening in which everyone has something to learn. The faithful people, the College of Bishops, the Bishop of Rome: all listening to each other and listening to the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of truth” (Jn 14:17), in order to know what “he says to the Churches” (Rev 2:7). Address for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Synod of Bishops, 17 October 2015.

[15] Cf. Lk 12:54-59; Mt 16:1-4; SECOND VATICAN ECUCMENICAL COUNCIL, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 11: “The people of God believes that it is led by the Spirit of the Lord who fills the whole world. Impelled by that faith, they try to discern the true signs of God’s presence and purpose in the events, the needs and the desires that it shares with the rest of humanity today. For faith casts a new light on everything and makes known the full ideal which God has set for humanity, thus guiding the mind towards solutions that are fully human”.

[16] Cf. Papal Letter, 18 October 2017; Communiqué of the Secretariat of State, 21 November 2017.

[17] Christus Dominus, 9.

[18] Address to the Roman Curia, 21 December 2013; cf. PAUL VI, Homily for his Eightieth Birthday, 16 October 1977: “I have loved Rome, and have constantly sought to reflect on and understand its transcendent mystery, certainly without being able to penetrate it and experience it fully. Yet I have always been, and still am, passionately concerned to understand how and why ‘Christ is Roman’ (DANTE ALIGHIERI, Divine Comedy, Purg. XXXII, 201)… Whether the “sense of being Roman” comes from being a native citizen of this fateful City, or from long residence here, or an experience of its hospitality, that sense, that “Roman consciousness”, has the power to grant those capable of imbibing it a sense of universal humanism” (Insegnamenti di Paolo VI, XV [1977], 1957).

[19] SYNOD OF BISHOPS, FIFTEENTH ORDINARY GENERAL ASSEMBLY: Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment, Introduction.

[20] On the one hand, the unity that responds to the gift of the Spirit finds natural and full expression in “indefectible union with the Bishop of Rome” (BENEDICT XVI, Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, 40). On the other hand, being inserted in the communion of the entire Body of Christ makes us conscious of the duty to strengthen union and solidarity within the various Patriarchal Synods themselves, and to “recognize the need to consult one another in matters of great importance for the Church prior to taking a unified collegial action” (ibid.).

[21] Meeting with the Patriarchs and Major Archbishops of the Oriental Catholic Churches, 21 November 2013.

[22] Together with the Heads and Fathers, and the Oriental Archbishops and Bishops, in communion with the Pope, with the Curia and among themselves, all of us are called “always to seek righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness and gentleness (cf. 1 Tim 6:11), and to adopt a modest manner of life in imitation of Christ, who became poor, so that by his poverty we might become rich (cf. 2 Cor 8:9)… [to] transparency in the administration of temporal goods, and [to] understanding in every weakness and need”. Meeting with the Patriarchs and Major Archbishops of the Oriental Catholic Churches, 21 November 2013.

[23] “We see great numbers of our Christian brothers and sisters of the Oriental Churches experiencing dramatic persecutions and an ever more troubling diaspora” (Homily for the Centenary of the Congregation for Oriental Churches and of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, Basilica of Saint Mary Major, 12 October 2017. “No one can turn a blind eye to this situation” (Message for the Centenary of the Foundation of the Pontifical Oriental Institute, 12 October 2017).

[24] Address to the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, 10 November 2016

[25] Ibid.

[26] Address to Participants at the International Peace Conference, Al-Azhar Conference Centre, Cairo, 28 April 2017.

[27] Ibid.

A COMMENTARY FROM VATICAN RADIO

n his address to the Roman Curia, the Holy Father returned, as during the previous two year’s addresses, to the theme of Curial reform, laying out the framework, guiding principles, and what is yet to come.

He said, “Since the Curia is not an immobile bureaucratic apparatus, reform is first and foremost a sign of life, of a Church that advances on her pilgrim way, of a Church that is living and for this reason semper reformanda, in need of reform because she is alive.”

The Pope said reform must “conform to the Good News which must be proclaimed joyously and courageously to all, especially to the poor, the least and the outcast” and that it “must be guided by ecclesiology and directed in bonum et in servitium, as is the service of the Bishop of Rome”.

He said the aim of reform is not aesthetic, like a facelift, for “it isn’t wrinkles we need to worry about in the Church, but blemishes!”

Pope Francis said curial reform will only work if the men and women who work in the Curia are renewed and not simply replaced.

“Permanent formation is not enough; what we need also and above all is permanent conversion and purification. Without a change of mentality, efforts at practical improvement will be in vain.”

He said resistance to the process of reform is healthy, provided it does not come from ill intentions.

Describing three types of resistance, the Pope said open resistance is “born of goodwill and sincere dialogue” and hidden resistance comes from “hardened hearts content with the empty rhetoric of a complacent spiritual reform”, while malicious resistance springs up “in misguided minds and comes to the fore when the devil inspires ill intentions… [which] hides behind words of self-justification and often accusation”.

Pope Francis then laid out the guiding principles of the reform, which are:

- Individual responsibility (personal conversion)

- Pastoral concern (pastoral conversion)

- Missionary spirit (Christocentrism)

- Clear organization

- Improved functioning

- Modernization (updating)

- Sobriety

- Subsidiarity

- Synodality

- Catholicity

- Professionalism

- Gradualism (discernment)

In conclusion, the Holy Father reiterated that Christmas is the feast of God’s loving humility and repeated a prayer of Fr. Matta el Meskin, addressing the Lord Jesus born in Bethlehem.

“Grant us to become small like you so that we can draw near to you and receive from you abundant humility and meekness. Do not deprive us of your revelation, the epiphany of your infancy in our hearts, so that with it we can heal all our pride and all our arrogance. We greatly need… for you to reveal to us your simplicity, by drawing us, and indeed the Church and the whole world, to yourself.”

Holy Mass for the Epiphany

with English commentary

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WOMEN FOR THE CHURCH CHANTERS, READERS, AND THEIR SANCTIONED ROLES by Donna Rizk Asdourian

January 11, 2018, 6:41 am

≫ Next: MEDJUGORJE TO BE RECOGNISED?

≪ Previous: CHRISTMAS GREETINGS TO THE ROMAN CURIA:

my source: Public Orthodoxy

see: The Revival of the Office of Deaconess by the Patriarchate of Alexandria

Many Orthodox Christians across the globe welcomed the news that the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria and all Africa, Theodore, ordained five young women to the female diaconate in February of 2017. Although overly due, this historic event gives many hope that the Church at large is heeding the pastoral needs of its people. Female deacons existed in the Orthodox Church, and has been kept in some of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, as Dr. Petros Vassiliadis’ mentions regarding the revival of the female diaconate this past November.

The role of women in the Church is, of course, broader than an ordained female diaconate. Indeed, men and women across the Christian world have thought more seriously about the role of women in the church in recent decades. They understand the pastoral benefit conferred to the entire community when women are more integral in the life of the Church.

Contrary to what many may assume, active roles for women is the Church’s Tradition. Historically, women had a clear place in the life of the Church and had integral functions in its divine services; many were preachers, teachers, chanters, prophets, missionaries, assistants and even administers of the sacraments when needed according to the economy of the Church.[1]

Some of these roles have been maintained in some Eastern Churches, whereas others have dissipated. In the Syriac Church, for example, women chanters date back to the fourth-century, where they were first employed in divine liturgy by St. Ephraim the Syrian.[2] The Armenian Orthodox Church also has a long history of women chanters, and several instances of female choir directors. Today, Greek, Russian, Ethiopic, Antiochian and ROCOR Churches use women chanters, even if there is not a unanimous set of standards for them, and some local parishes of these jurisdictions are averse for such positions.[3] The Coptic Orthodox Church does not have any women choirs (with exception to one official group in the Western hemisphere),[4] and typically does not endorse them.

In addition to chanters and choirs, some Orthodox Churches employ women readers. But like female singers, these roles too are not standardized across the Churches. In some Churches, this practice is adamantly prohibited. Women readers (mostly in the USA and other parts of the West) are today practiced in some Armenian,[5] Syriac, Greek, ROCOR, and Antiochian Churches.

Today, opposition to women’s sanctioned ecclesial roles is often expressed through a misused and abused interpretation of St. Paul’s instruction that women should ‘being silent in the churches’ (1 Corinthians 14:34). The mere fact women were not silent is evinced throughout Scriptures – most notably in the same letter by St. Paul where he speaks of female prophets (1 Corinthians 11:5), but also in Acts (21:9); others preached and converted entire towns (John 4) and were commanded by the Lord to witness His Resurrection (which was inherently unconventional for a woman to witness to a man at that time – John 20:17-18); others still corrected false teachings (Acts 18:24-26), were deaconesses (διακονία) of St. Paul (Romans 16), and administered the gospel with him (Philippians 4:3 — αἵτινες ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ συνήθλησάν μοι μετὰ). Thus, it is impossible to interpret St. Paul’s directive as an unambiguous condemnation of women’s voices in church if we know that Scripture repeatedly affirms such voices.

As Fr John Behr notes, Orthodox Christians should read the Scriptures with a ‘synchronic view’, that is, reading them as a whole. Thus, an Orthodox approach to Scriptures would not extract passages selectively to proof-text one’s argument as they seem fit, nor would it construct a dogmatic principle from any single biblical passage. But this is precisely what happens when opponents of female ministry construct a clichéd and untenable argument to prohibit women’s designated roles in the Church in light of 1 Corinthians 14:34.

Indeed, although many Orthodox Christians sharply criticize the Protestant notion of Sola Scriptura, some ironically employ this same methodology in their repudiation of women’s roles in the church.

In other words, using 1 Corinthians 14:34 to prohibit women’s active role in Church (whether a choir or reader) is not only an error of biblical interpretation, which fails to interpret the verse alongside the totality of scripture but also an error of tradition because it negates the living Tradition of the Church, which affirms that women were not silent throughout the history of the Church. In effect, this effort to silence women not only de-humanizes half of the Body of the Church, but it also debilitates the entire Church (when one member suffers, all suffer – 1 Corinthians 12:26) and diminishes the opportunity to administer in the Church of God.

For many who are unfamiliar with the Church’s actual history, the revival of women’s roles for the Church are sometimes perceived as ‘progressive’, ‘liberal’, ‘feministic’, or ‘open-minded’. But these roles are ultimately Traditional – part of our history, ecclesial practices, and living Tradition of the Church.

We must remember that in sanctioning (or re-sanctioning rather) women’s integral role in the liturgical life of the Church, we not only revive an ancient Tradition and practice, but we also embrace and acknowledge the pastoral needs of the laity. The Church is living and dynamic; it is not stagnant and a mere point of reference to the past. It must be relevant – while being Traditional, and this reality is achievable when we recognize women as essential to the liturgical and participatory functions of the Church at large.

[1] As in the life of St. Sarah (also known as Martyria) for example as witnessed in the Coptic Synexarium on May 3rd (Baramouda 25) and December 9 (Hator 29). See here and here. Also see my article ‘Oikonomia and Salvation: the Life of the Brave Mother Saint Sarah, Martyria’, in Encountering Women of Faith: Volume 3, Kyriaki Fitzgerald (ed.), (Holy Cross Press, forthcoming 2018).

[2] See S.A. Harvey, ‘Revisiting the Daughters of the Covenant: Women’s Choirs and Sacred Song in Ancient Syriac Christianity’, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 8.2 (July 2005).

[3] My experience in a Greek Orthodox Seminary witnesses that many women in Eastern Orthodox parishes voiced their concerns that their local parishes rejected them to participate in chant at the bema.

[4] This choir has existed in recent years, yet during its inception, it was resisted by many and interpreted this group as ‘anti-Orthodox.’

[5] In the Armenian Tradition, the deaconess can be sanctioned to read the gospel during the divine liturgy. Her liturgical vestment traditionally contains the orarian and full-length stole like in the male deaconate. She also is permitted to hold the liturgical fan during the service.

Donna Rizk Asdourian, PhD in Theology, is a Research Fellow at the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University and is currently working on ‘Women’s Liturgical Role Today in the Oriental Orthodox Churches.’ She comes from both Coptic and Armenian Traditions.

Public Orthodoxy seeks to promote conversation by providing a forum for diverse perspectives on contemporary issues related to Orthodox Christianity. The positions expressed in this essay are solely the author’s and do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Orthodox Christian Studies Center.

As I am a little unwell and needed to borrow an article that is worth borrowing, that is relevant to both Catholics and Orthodox, and Public Orthodoxy is a good place to look. - Fr David

↧

MEDJUGORJE TO BE RECOGNISED?

January 11, 2018, 6:23 pm

≫ Next: ATHENAGORAS, ORTHODOXY'S BERGOGLIO by Sandro Magister, plus DAVID BENTLEY HART and ME.

≪ Previous: WOMEN FOR THE CHURCH CHANTERS, READERS, AND THEIR SANCTIONED ROLES by Donna Rizk Asdourian

Vatican Investigation Declares First Days of the Medjugorje Apparitions Real and Authentic

RELEASE OF 'NORMS' ON APPARITIONS MAY HINT AT UPCOMING STATEMENT ON FAMOUS HERCEGOVINA APPARITION

my source: Spirit Daily

early days

It may be a coincidence that the Vatican finally has released the text of norms it designed for use in evaluating apparitions way back in 1978 at the same time that it's evaluating the most famous apparition since Fatima and one of the most visited religious places on earth: Medjugorje, in Bosnia-Hercegovina, which has been experiencing building boom after building boom, such that anyone who visited in the late 1980s or 1990s or even as recently as five years ago would hardly recognize it.

What was once a hamlet surrounded by vineyards is now a city -- one that, to our eyes, may be approaching the size of Fatima and Lourdes (if it has not already).

Though Americans no longer flock there as they did before the Yugoslavian civil war as well as terrorism threats and high airline prices, Poles, Irish, and particularly Italians have been flooding the site -- maxing out even the great expansion in bed-and-breakfast-hotel space.

Yet, this is not an approved apparition -- and no one, outside of perhaps the Pope, knows if it will ever be.

The norms released by Rome are "new" to the vast majority and fascinating because they are not only comprehensive but unambiguously dispel a notion -- widely and tirelessly circulated by opponents to the apparitions during the past dozen or so years -- that only a local bishop -- no one else -- can rule on such private revelations. (Although he may be softening a bit -- some think recent statements from him indicate a more positive Vatican view -- the local bishop has long and vehemently opposed the alleged miracles.)

The norms clearly spell out that "the Apostolic See can intervene if asked either by the Ordinary himself, by a qualified group of the faithful, or even directly by reason of the universal jurisdiction of the Supreme Pontiff (cf. infra, no. IV)," adding that it's up to the Sacred Congregation "to intervene motu proprio in graver cases, especially if the matter affects the larger part of the Church" -- which Medjugorje -- drawing pilgrims from around the globe (including dozens of cardinals, hundreds of bishops, and tens of thousands of priests) has for decades.

It is now spelt out clearly for this situation which since 1987 has been out of the local bishop's hands and since 2010 has been taken from a committee of several Bosnia-Hercegovinian prelates for handling directly by a special Vatican commission that has been assiduously researching the apparitions and interviewing seers.

What this commission will recommend -- and whether it will even be made public -- is anyone's guess. For months now the rumor has been that it will make recommendations by the end of the year. The Pope will then do whatever the Pope wants to do with the recommendations.

Credible reports indicate that Benedict visited Medjugorje when he was Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (he was seen there by eyewitnesses, and photographed another time in Linz, Austria, with a famous Medjugorje priest, right), and it makes sense in that his superior at the time, John Paul II, who beyond doubt favored the apparitions, encouraged his cardinals to visit there. As his right hand man -- in charge of the Congregation that oversee private revelations -- it only makes sense that Cardinal Ratzinger visited (incognito, as observers from Rome still visit).

Image result for medjugorje the pilgrims

Jacov speaks to pilgrims

While indications are that in the early days Cardinal Ratzinger was in the camp of believers, no one knows his current thinking; where John Paul II spoke to any number about Medjugorje, Benedict XVI has been tight-lipped with visiting bishops (or, bishops have been tight-lipped with anything that has been said). There was a rumor several years ago that when he was still cardinal the Pope had concerns about the way at least one seer was conducting life as a visionary and the norms include monetary gain as a negative though not sole determinant to consider when evaluating private revelations.

A key and perhaps the key norm in apparitions (one mentioned prominently in the norms) is whether there have been fruits, and at Medjugorje these have been legion -- countless healings, conversions by the hundreds of thousands (if not millions), deliverance, and priestly vocations. It can be argued that no apparition has had more fruits at the same point and perhaps none has had more in the same time span.

Still, the likeliest outcome from the commission is a statement to the effect that final proof of supernatural authenticity has not yet been definitively established but the faithful are allowed to continue attendance and devotions. Recently, as mentioned, Bishop Ratko Peric seemed to soften a trifle -- saying in a homily during Confirmation at Saint James Church that Medjugorje could be a "new Jerusalem" (or, if commercially consumed, a "Babylon"). That implied he saw what has occurred there as something that will remain and hinted that the commission will be less than condemnatory.

But that doesn't mean formal acceptance (it is rare for an ongoing apparition to be officially recognized, before alleged prophecies are at least partially fulfilled).

And there remains a significant chance that the apparitions will be rejected (in which case we, as a Catholic news site, will closely adhere to the ruling, as we will whatever is determined by the Pope).

While it is difficult to envision outright condemnation of an apparition that has been visited by tens of millions, has affected more people than anyone can count, and has greatly bolstered the Church in places where it is in severe crisis (particularly Ireland, Italy, and also many parts of North America), not to mention the economic and diplomatic repercussions (it has become highly important to Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, the pilgrims breaking records at the Mostar airport, one of several they use), anything is possible and the commission is at least somewhat weighted (and perhaps very substantially so) in the direction of psychology. It also may be privy to information that we are not.

Reverberations of a rejection would be seismic -- but must be obeyed.

There are rumours in every direction.

Will the seers (who currently travel widely, and appear before tens of thousands, as in the case recently in Italy and Lebanon) be reined in? Will the Vatican allow them to maintain pilgrim homes (as does virtually everyone else in this former farming community)?

Stay tuned.

The release of the norms in various regular languages (beyond Latin) was expected years ago and thus has been long overdue and is now newsworthy; it will be interesting to see if there are similar delays in a statement on the apparitions.

The current status of Medjugorje is what they call non constat de supernaturalitate, more or less a preliminary statement saying that so far there has been no objective final proof. That view (which, despite the way some try to spin it, is not a negative verdict, nor even an actual judgment) was issued on April 10, 1991 and followed by two Vatican statements saying that Catholics (including priests) were allowed to go to Medjugorje as long as it is not an official parish pilgrimage. Detractors circulated this to be a prohibition, in the same way that they insisted that the local bishop's judgment was final in this matter. This status of non constat de supernaturalitate may be reiterated, with continued permission to visit the shrine.

"It is up to the Sacred Congregation to judge and approve the Ordinary’s way of proceeding or, in so far as it be possible and fitting, to initiate a new examination of the matter, distinct from that undertaken by the Ordinary and carried out either by the Sacred Congregation itself or by a special Commission," say the norms released this week, which were formulated under Cardinal Francis Šeper and in restrospect seemed to set the stage for the removal, in the 1980s, of the Mostar bishop's authority (and establishment of the current commission).

Whatever the final Church view of Medjugorje -- and at this point, it seems like a toss up -- the misunderstandings about the bishop having total and ultimate jurisdiction have now been definitively shown to be just that: an error, or misrepresentation.

BBC Documentary on Medjugorje

Archbishop reveals a surpise about Medjugorje

December 12th, 2017 - Vatican envoy nuances point of view on official pilgrimages to Medjugorje

(www.ilgiornale.it)

Vatican envoy mgr. Hoser (emeritus when reaching 75 years of age on December 8): "The decree that forbade bishops to organize pilgrimages is no longer active ... If a bishop wants to organize a prayer pilgrimage to Medjugorje to pray to Our Lady, he can do it without problem. But if it is about organized pilgrimages to go there for the apparitions, we can not, there is no authorization to do it"

BBC DOCUMENTARY 1986

500,000 see the Blessed Virgin in Zetun, Cairo, Egypt

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