November
2007 (from the
30th week in Ordinary time) Morning Offering:
O Jesus, through the most pure heart of Mary, I offer you all the
prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day for all the intentions
of your divine heart, in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass. I
offer them especially for the Holy
Father's intentions:
Pope Benedict
XVI'sgeneral prayer intention
for November
2007: "That those dedicated to medical research and all those engaged
in legislative activity may always have deep respect for human life,
from its beginning to its natural conclusion." Pope Benedict XVI'smissionary intention for November 2007 is "that in the Korean
peninsula the spirit of reconciliation and peace may grow."
(November 1) All
Saints
The earliest
certain observance of a feast in honour of all the saints is an early
fourth-century commemoration of "all the martyrs." In the early seventh
century, after successive waves of
invaders
plundered the catacombs,
Pope Boniface IV gathered up some 28 wagonloads of bones and reinterred
them beneath the Pantheon, a Roman temple dedicated to all the gods.
The pope rededicated the shrine as a Christian church. According to
Venerable Bede, the pope intended "that the memory of all the saints
might in the future be honoured in the place which had formerly been
dedicated to the worship not of gods but of demons" (On the Calculation
of Time). But the rededication of the Pantheon, like the earlier
commemoration of all the martyrs, occurred in May. Many Eastern
Churches still honour all the saints in the spring, either during the
Easter season or immediately after Pentecost. How the Western Church
came to celebrate this feast in November is a puzzle to historians. The
Anglo-Saxon theologian Alcuin observed the feast on November 1 in 800,
as did his friend Arno, Bishop of Salzburg. Rome finally adopted that
date in the ninth century.
“After this I
had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every
nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before
the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands....
[One of the elders] said to me, ‘These are the ones who have survived the
time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in
the blood of the Lamb’” (Revelation 7:9,14).
(AmericanCatholic.org)
Click centre arrow to start
video
Scripture: Revelation 7:2-4,
9-14; Psalm 24:1bc-2, 3-4ab, 5-6; 1 John
3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12a
When Jesus saw
the
crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had
sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the
meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and
thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the
merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be
called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the
sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are
you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil
against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward
will be great in heaven.”(Matthew 5:1-12a)
Our Gospel
scene
today is famous and fundamental because in it we are
presented with Christ’s Beatitudes, which is to say his charter for
happiness and the blessedness guaranteed to those who follow him.
There is a great note of solemnity to the scene and the action. When
our Lord sees the crowds he solemnly goes up the mountain as if to a
height surveying the peoples who look to him from below. It is as if he
is near the heavens and there he takes
his seat as Teacher. His
disciples come to him and he gives to them his Law which they will take
to the world below. Matthew’s Gospel is distinguished by its allusions
to the Old Testament and its insinuation that what has gone
before is fulfilled in Christ. His scene in our Gospel today (Matthew 5:1-12a)
surely
reminds us of Moses and Nadab and Abihu and the seventy elders going up
the mountain to God (Exodus 24:9-11) where they receive his Law. Christ
is the new Moses, indeed the new and final Oracle of God and his
Beatitudes constitute the summary of the Law of Christian discipleship.
Christ addresses his disciples, and in Luke’s version too it is to the
disciples that our Lord addresses himself (Luke 6:20). Jesus tells them
what discipleship means and who are the ones who will be blessed with
the Kingdom of heaven. He tells them who are those who will reach the
promised land, who will be comforted, satisfied and rewarded, who will
be shown mercy and who will see God. Long before in the Old Testament
God had called Abraham with a great promise that all the nations would
be blessed in him and this promise of blessings was renewed in God’s
covenant with Moses. God promised good things to those who kept his
Law. Our Lord’s solemn yet simple words bespeak happiness and rewards
beyond imagining. They are the charter of the new covenant that the
prophets foretold would be made. We must therefore give to the
Beatitudes, these simple propositions in which our Lord tells us
wherein lies our happiness, our full and sustained consideration.
It is often
remarked that it is difficult to grasp the exact meaning of
the Beatitudes as set forth in Matthew’s account of today, and in
Luke’s account elsewhere. They appear, so some think, ambiguous and
vague. That impression can be gained if we think of them as being mere
prescriptions as to what we are to do — in the way the Ten Commandments
are clear statements of what man is to do and not to do. But our Lord
is speaking above all of the new heart that was foretold by the
prophets. God had promised that he would replace his people’s heart of
stone with a heart of flesh. He would pour out his Spirit on them and
they would become new. Our Lord is describing this new heart that is
utterly different from the heart of the world. This new heart is like
his own for it has been wrought and shaped by the action of his Holy
Spirit. So in order to understand the Beatitudes we must in the first
instance contemplate the heart of Christ and view them in his
light. He is the key to the Beatitudes and their profile is drawn from
him. That is to say, the disciples who listen to the Beatitudes and
endeavour through the ages to live according to them are listening to
Christ, contemplating him, and endeavouring to become like him. They
describe the heart of the Christian saint, the one who is like unto
Christ. Our Lord said on another occasion, come to me all you who
labour and are overburdened. Learn from me for I am meek and humble of
heart, and you will find rest for your souls. St Paul also speaks of
the imitation of Christ — imitate me, he tells his readers, just as I
imitate Christ. Christ is poor in spirit wanting only the will of his
Father. He mourns for the world’s sin and sufferings. He is meek. He
hungers and thirsts for righteousness. He is merciful and utterly pure
of heart. He brings the peace of God, though he is persecuted for the
sake of righteousness. Christ is the embodiment of the Beatitudes and
they constitute a key description of his heart and soul. The Beatitudes
are a call to put on the mind of Christ and a guarantee that if we do
this we shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.
Our Gospel today (Matthew 5:1-12a)
is
for the feast of All Saints. The saints imitated
Christ in mind, heart and soul. The more we come to know Jesus and his
Way the more we shall understand the Beatitudes and how they summarize
the direction in which his Holy Spirit leads us. Let us then resolve to
take our stand with Jesus, to receive his word with full assent, and to
live it out generously in our everyday life. In this way we shall join
the saints in heaven.
(E.J.Tyler)
Why is it called the “Lord’s Prayer”?
The Our Father is called the “Oratio Dominica”, that is, the
Lord’s
Prayer because it was taught to us by the Lord Jesus himself. (CCC
2765-2766, 2775)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.580)
(November
2) All
Souls Day The Church has encouraged prayer
for the dead from the earliest times as an act of Christian charity.
"If we had no care for the dead," Augustine noted, "we would not be in
the habit of praying for them." Yet pre-Christian rites for the
deceased kept such a strong hold on the superstitious imagination that
a liturgical commemoration was not observed until the early Middle
Ages, when monastic communities began to mark an annual day of prayer
for the departed members. In the middle of the 11th century, St. Odilo,
abbot of Cluny (France), decreed that all Cluniac monasteries offer
special prayers and sing the Office for the Dead on November 2, the day
after the feast of All Saints. The custom spread from Cluny and was
finally adopted throughout the Roman Church. The theological
underpinning of the feast is the acknowledgment of human frailty. Since
few people achieve perfection in this life but, rather, go to the grave
still scarred with traces of sinfulness, some period of purification
seems necessary before a soul comes face-to-face with God. The Council
of Trent affirmed this purgatory state and insisted that the prayers of
the living can speed the process of purification. Superstition still
clung to the observance. Medieval popular belief held that the souls in
purgatory could appear on this day in the form of witches, toads or
will-o’-the-wisps. Graveside food offerings supposedly eased the rest
of the dead. Observances of a more religious nature have survived.
These include public processions or private visits to cemeteries and
decorating graves with flowers and lights. This feast is observed with
great fervour in Mexico.
Whether or not one should pray for the dead is one
of the great arguments which divide Christians. Appalled by the abuse
of indulgences in the Church of his day, Martin Luther rejected the
concept of purgatory. Yet prayer for a loved one is, for the believer,
a way of erasing any distance, even death. In prayer we stand in God's
presence in the company of someone we love, even if that person has
gone before us into death. “We must not make purgatory into a
flaming concentration camp on the brink of hell—or even a ‘hell for a
short time.’ It is blasphemous to think of it as a place where a petty
God exacts the last pound—or ounce—of flesh.... St. Catherine of Genoa,
a mystic of the 15th century, wrote that the ‘fire’ of purgatory is
God’s love ‘burning’ the soul so that, at last, the soul is wholly
aflame. It is the pain of wanting to be made totally worthy of One who
is seen as infinitely lovable, the pain of desire for union that is now
absolutely assured, but not yet fully tasted” (Leonard Foley, O.F.M.,
Believing in
Jesus).
(AmericanCatholic.org)
Jesus said to the
crowds: “Everything that the Father gives me will
come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I
came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who
sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not
lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the
last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the
Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on
the last day.”(John 6:37-40)
There are many
things that are extraordinarily distinct about the God
of the Judaeo-Christian revelation, when compared with the character of
the higher powers of the other religions of man. One obvious difference
is that whatever is to be said of the God of Revelation is God and is
therefore infinite. God is powerful and his power is infinite. So too
he is revealed as good. God is simply and absolutely good. The God of
revelation reveals himself to be all-holy and
unaccepting of sin. “Be
holy, for I am holy” he says. This revelation of the holiness of the
God of Abraham and the prophets is confirmed and fulfilled in the
revelation of Jesus Christ. Christ suffered and died for our sins
because of the holiness of God who so loved the world and who so hated
sin that he did not hesitate to give up his own divine Son in order
that the sin of the world might be expiated. Christ is the Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world. If man but places his faith in
Christ as the Saviour and repents of his sins he will be saved. But
now, let us review some of the fundamental facts about life and death
as they have been revealed to us by God. The first great fact, of
course, is that following his death each person will be judged by the
infinite and all-holy God. No one will escape this judgment and anyone
with a sensitive conscience must be profoundly concerned at such a
prospect, naturally speaking. If one has a relative or friend who has
died, one ought think of the judgment that that relative or friend must
undergo, a judgment that will be searching beyond compare. What an
experience that the soul of the departed one enters into! In that
personal judgment on his life and deeds the departed stands alone. No
one can shield him from his responsibility for the thoughts, the words
and the actions of his life. They pass in review and God the all-holy
One gives his sentence. Were it not for the fact that God has revealed
himself to be not only just but also compassionate and merciful and
that his Son has died for us, the thought of the divine judgment would
be terrifying indeed.
Now, it is obvious
that the generality of men and women pass from this
life very far from being totally purified from their sins. It is
impossible that the God of infinite holiness admit into his eternal
presence, face to face, one who is still besmirched with the odour and
the disfigurement of sin. Christ has died for the sinner and the
benefit of divine grace has come to him in faith and baptism (and in
hidden ways to the good and conscientious person who is not baptized).
But for many the full holiness required for heaven has not yet been
attained by the time death arrives. So it is that God in his mercy
effects a purification after death of the soul that has been saved.
Following the divine judgment there is either salvation or damnation — this has been revealed. We only have to read Matthew 25 to be aware of
this, apart from the formal teaching of the Church on the point. But
for those who are saved, there is the further purification from all
trace and remnants of sin after death and prior to an eternity in
heaven. The Church has called this stage of purification Purgatory.
Dante describes it famously in his Il
Purgatorio,
the second part of
his great trilogy La
Divina Commedia which presents in epic
form
Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. The Purgatorio is a picturesque
canticle of
the redeemed soul’s purification following death as it struggles up the
terraces of Mount Purgatory on its arduous approach to God and Heaven.
Cardinal Newman in the nineteenth century wrote a more accessible
account of Purgatory in his poem, The
Dream of Gerontius. In it he
brought out perhaps more successfully than Dante the profound love with
which God purifies the soul that has been saved. I invite you to read
the Gerontius. The purification of
Purgatory is deeply painful for
through the mercy of God all the roots and remnants of sin are being
wrung from the most remote crevices of the soul. Purgatory is a divine
mercy but the departed soul is unable now to merit any further, for the
chance to do this in life is now over. The soul in Purgatory has the
joy of knowing it is saved, but it must endure the suffering of being
utterly purified by God of the remnants of sin.
The good news is
that we who are still on our way are able, by the
grace of God, to assist those in Purgatory by our prayers and
sacrifices offered in union with Christ. This is the reason why the
Church prays for the faithful departed. We can help those who have died
by our prayers, and there must be so many who need our help. Think of
all those who are completely forgotten or who have no one who actually
believes in the fact of Purgatory to pray for them. Today we think of
all the souls who are being purified in Purgatory. Let us foster the
habit of praying for them.
(E.J.Tyler)
What place does the Our Father have in the prayer of the Church?
The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer of the Church par excellence. It is
“handed on” in Baptism to signify the new birth of the children of God
into the divine life. The full meaning of the Our Father is revealed in
the eucharist since its petitions are based on the mystery of salvation
already accomplished, petitions that will be fully heard at the coming
of the Lord. The Our Father is an integral part of the Liturgy of the
Hours. (CCC 2767-2772, 2776)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.581)
(November
3) St
Martin de Porres (1579-1639) Born in Lima (Peru).
"Father unknown" is the cold
legal phrase sometimes used on baptismal records. "Half-breed" or "war
souvenir" is the cruel name inflicted by those of "pure" blood. Like
many others, Martin might have grown to be a bitter man, but he did
not. It was said that even as a child he gave his heart and his goods
to the poor and despised. He was the illegitimate son of a freed woman
of Panama, probably black but also possibly of Native American stock,
and a Spanish grandee of Lima, Peru. He inherited the features and dark
complexion of his mother. That irked his father, who finally
acknowledged his son after eight years. After the birth of a sister,
the father abandoned the family. Martin was reared in poverty, locked
into a low level of Lima’s society.
At 12 his mother
apprenticed him to a barber-surgeon. He learned how to
cut hair and also how to draw blood (a standard medical treatment
then), care for wounds and prepare and administer medicines. After a
few years in this medical apostolate, Martin applied to the Dominicans
to be a "lay helper," not feeling himself worthy to be a religious
brother. After nine years, the example of his prayer and penance,
charity and humility led the community to request him to make full
religious profession. Many of his nights were spent in prayer and
penitential practices; his days were filled with nursing the sick and
caring for the poor. It was particularly impressive that he treated all
people regardless of their colour, race or status. He was instrumental
in founding an orphanage, took care of slaves brought from Africa and
managed the daily alms of the priory with practicality as well as
generosity. He became the procurator for both priory and city, whether
it was a matter of "blankets, shirts, candles, candy, miracles or
prayers!" When his priory was in debt, he said, "I am only a poor
mulatto. Sell me. I am the property of the order. Sell me." Side by
side with his daily work in the kitchen, laundry and infirmary,
Martin’s life reflected God’s extraordinary gifts: ecstasies that
lifted him into the air, light filling the room where he prayed,
bilocation, miraculous knowledge, instantaneous cures and a remarkable
rapport with animals. His charity extended to beasts of the field and
even to the vermin of the kitchen. He would excuse the raids of mice
and rats on the grounds that they were underfed; he kept stray cats and
dogs at his sister’s house. He became a formidable fundraiser,
obtaining thousands of dollars for dowries for poor girls so that they
could marry or enter a convent. Many of his fellow religious took him
as their spiritual director, but he continued to call himself a "poor
slave." He was a good friend of another Dominican saint of Peru, Rose
of Lima.
Pope John XXIII remarked at the canonization of
Martin (May 6, 1962), "He excused the faults of others. He forgave the
bitterest injuries, convinced that he deserved much severer punishments
on account of his own sins. He tried with all his might to redeem the
guilty; lovingly he comforted the sick; he provided food, clothing and
medicine for the poor; he helped, as best he could, farm laborers and
Negroes, as well as mulattoes, who were looked upon at that time as
akin to slaves: thus he deserved to be called by the name the people
gave him: 'Martin of
Charity.'"
(AmericanCatholic.org)
On a Sabbath Jesus
went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and the
people there were observing him carefully. He told a parable to those
who had been invited, noticing how they were choosing the places of
honour at the table. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding
banquet, do not recline at table in the place of honour. A more
distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him, and the host
who invited both of you may approach you and say, ‘Give your place to
this man,’ and then you would proceed with embarrassment to take the
lowest place. Rather, when you are invited, go and take the lowest
place so that when the host comes to you he may say, ‘My friend, move
up to a higher position.’ Then you will enjoy the esteem of your
companions at the table. For everyone who exalts himself will be
humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”(Luke 14:1, 7-11)
There have been
numerous people who have been very opposed to what they call
priestcraft. That is to say, they are against any religion that brings
into prominence a caste of priests or religious leaders who are endowed
with authority over others in
the religion. They maintain that as professionals of the religion they
are in it largely for the power it offers over others. Now, there is no
doubt that this is indeed a problem. The reading I have done of indigenous religions
suggests to me that much of the sorcery, the magic, the prohibitions
and the secrecy characteristic of many tribal religions is fuelled at
least to a degree by the desire of certain individuals or groups to
control others and to be regarded as of a higher status. Reading
between the lines of the Gospels one gets the impression that the
scribes and the Pharisees who were most opposed to our Lord felt
threatened by his spiritual ascendancy. By implication — as they felt
it — their position of honour was being undermined. It was their own
honour that, without perhaps fully realizing it, they were seeking and
many of the institutions of religion which they insisted on supported
their religious status. Today’s Gospel reminds us of this. In the
remarks our Lord made to one of the leading Pharisees to whose home he
had been invited he showed not the slightest fear of the loss of the
regard of leading people as he delivered his gentle rebukes. We read
that “on a Sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading
Pharisees, and the people there were observing him carefully. He told a
parable to those who had been invited, noticing how they were choosing
the places of honour at the table. ‘When you are invited by someone to
a wedding banquet, do not recline at table in the place of honour’.” (Luke
14:1, 7-11)
They were proud and sought status, and it led to their profound
hostility towards our Lord.
This lack of
humility in much of religion and its practitioners ought remind us of
Christ’s insistence on humility as the true hallmark of revealed
religion. God favours the humble and singles them out for special
favours and missions. At the beginning of the Gospel we are told how
the Angel Gabriel came to Mary and with profound respect addressed her
as full of grace, and that the Lord was with her. Mary was humble and
lowly and in her prayer (the Magnificat in Luke) Mary extols the
Almighty who had looked upon his lowly handmaid. The Lord had done
great things for her. Christ himself was meek and humble of heart, and
St Paul tells us that though he was in “the form of God” he did not
cling to this exalted status but emptied himself and became as men are
and lowlier still even to death on a cross. The Son of God abased
himself and so God raised him on high. In our Gospel passage today our
Lord refers to how in ordinary life by choosing the lower place one may
well be exalted. His point is that if one prefers the lower place in
life and takes the path of humility as did Christ himself, then God
will raise one up. Our Lord stressed with the Twelve that the Son of
Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his very life as
a ransom for the many. So too must they serve. At the Last Supper he
rose from table, placed a towel around his waist and proceeded to wash
the feet of his closest disciples, of those who called him (rightly)
Master and Lord. They were to do likewise. Indeed, not only were the
Twelve to do this and all those who succeed them in the Christian
priesthood, but all of Christ’s disciples are to do this. The
distinguishing mark of the disciple of Christ is a humble love and
service of others. Humility is to be the true characteristic of the
Christian religion.
There is a further
secret which must be learnt. It is that if the disciple of Christ
wishes (as he should) to follow Christ in his humility, the only way he
will learn this is through the acceptance of humiliations. Humiliations — and they come in a plethora of forms whether hidden or open
— are the
means of growing in humility. This is the great message of the
Christian masters of the spiritual life. Let us then accept them when
they come and do so in union with Christ who trod the path of
humiliation, showing forth the humility of God.
(E.J.Tyler)
If you realize that your body is your enemy, and an enemy of God's
glory, since it is an enemy of your sanctification, why do you treat it
so softly?
(The Way,
no.227)
Why can we dare to draw near to God in
full confidence?
Because Jesus, our Redeemer, brings us into the Father’s presence and
his Spirit makes us his children. We are thus able to pray the Our
Father with simple and filial trust, with joyful assurance and humble
boldness, with the certainty of being loved and heard. (CCC 2777-2778,
2797)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.562)
Prayers this week:
Do not abandon me,
Lord. My God, do not go away from me. Hurry
to help me, Lord, my Saviour. God of power and mercy,
only with your help can we offer you fitting service and praise. May we live
the faith we profess and trust your promise of eternal life. We
ask this through our
Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(November 4) Saint
Charles Boromeo, bishop (1538-1584)
Saint Charles Borromeo was born in 1538 in the castle of Arona on the
borders of Lake Major, fourteen miles from Milan. He was the son of
Count Gilbert Borromeo, a descendant of one of the most ancient
families of Lombardy, very famous for its great men. The Count was
known for his almsgiving and his rigorous fasts; it was his custom
never to eat a meal without first giving alms. The Countess, Charles’
mother, was also exceptionally
virtuous. Their family was composed of two sons and four daughters, all
of whom manifested in their lives the splendor of their Christian
heritage. Their maternal uncle, John Angelus of Medici, became Pope
Pius IV. Charles was clearly destined for the ecclesiastical vocation;
all his preferences in study made it clear. When he was twelve years
old, a paternal uncle willed to him an abbey in commendam; and the
child constantly reminded his father that this revenue was the
patrimony of the poor. His father wept for joy, seeing his son’s
solicitude for the just application of his trust. Count Gilbert died
when Charles was twenty years old, and he was obliged to come home from
Pavia where he had been studying law; he returned there, however, to
complete his doctorate at the university after settling his affairs.
One year later, when his maternal uncle became Pope Pius IV, he created
Charles cardinal, and after another year nominated him Archbishop of
Milan. The Pontiff detained him in Rome, however, seeing his extensive
capacities and adding to these offices other administrative duties
which ordinarily require the prudence of mature years. No one was
disappointed in his services, despite the fact he was maintaining
delicate papal relations with other nations, as protector of Portugal
and the Low Countries, and was at the head of the Knights of Malta, the
Orders of Carmel and Saint Francis, among other duties.
When the Council of Trent (1545-1563) was nearing
its conclusion, Saint Charles, who had participated with authority in
many of its twenty-five sessions, desired to leave Rome to attend to
his diocese of Milan, a duty which his vicar general had carried out
until that time. The urgency of the situation there persuaded the Pope
to consent regretfully to his departure. Saint Charles intended to put
into execution the reforming decrees of the Council, create seminaries
and schools and in general restore discipline in the Church of Milan.
As Archbishop of Milan he enforced the observance of the decrees, and
thoroughly restored the discipline of his see. Criticism hounded him
there, but left him unmoved; he kept with him in his episcopal
household of about one hundred persons, a certain priest who delighted
in finding fault with whatever he did; he treated him with great
consideration, and in his will left him a pension for life. He was very
severe with himself, eating only once a day, and limiting himself often
to bread and water. When someone suggested he should have a garden at
Milan to get some fresh air, he replied that the Holy Scriptures should
be the garden of a bishop.
The sermons of Saint Charles produced great fruits
among all ranks of the people. When young he had manifested a speech
defect with a tendency to speak too fast, but he overcame these
handicaps with many efforts. A man who admired him said that he always
forgot the orator himself when he preached, so transported was he by
the great truths he heard explained, and the longest sermons of Saint
Charles seemed short to him. Everywhere the holy Archbishop established
schools of Christian doctrine, numbering in all seven hundred and
forty, in which over three thousand catechists were employed, presiding
over forty thousand students.
Once Saint Charles heard a cardinal who was a bishop
of a small diocese say that his diocese was too small to require his
constant residence there, as canon law required; Saint Charles said to
him with force that the price of one soul is such as to merit the
residence and entire time of the greatest of men. He himself visited
the most remote corners of his diocese, traveling in mountainous regions amid
the greatest dangers, which he regarded as nothing unusual, and unworthy of
mention. Inflexible in maintaining discipline, to his flock he was a most tender
father. He would sit by the roadside to teach a poor man the Pater and Ave.
During the great plague which broke out in Milan, which he had foretold as a
chastisement for the disorders of the Carnival, he refused to leave, asking
those who remonstrated with him if it were not more perfect to remain with one’s
flock than to abandon them in need, and adding that a bishop is obliged to
choose what is most perfect. He was ever at the side of the sick and dying. He
stripped his palace of literally everything to aid those who had lost their
support in their fathers and spouses, even giving away his straw mattress. As he
lived, so he died, having governed his church for twenty-four years and eight
months. To the heroic sanctity of this faithful copy of the Good Shepherd, many
miracles came to testify, through his relics and his intercession. In 1610 he
was canonized by Pope Paul V. (magnificat.ca)
At that time, Jesus
came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there
named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man,
was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of
the crowd, for he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a
sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way.
When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and said, "Zacchaeus, come
down quickly, for today I must stay at your house." And he came down
quickly and received him with joy. When they all saw this, they began
to grumble, saying, "He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner." But
Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Behold, half of my
possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted
anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over." And Jesus said
to him, "Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is
a descendant of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to
save what was lost."(Luke 19:1-10)
One of the notable
phenomena of world culture during the last few centuries is the
emergence in literature of the novel. The play has had a long history
as has poetry, but the novel is a relatively recent literary form.
There are a great variety of basic themes in the novel, but one which I
do not think is sufficiently represented or explored by novelists is
that of repentance. Wrongdoing and its effects are a recurrent theme
even in the most popular literature, but not, it seems to me,
repentance. I wonder if it has even had enough place in the much
longer traditions of epic poetry and the play — let us say, in tragedy.
Taking the novel, consider Joseph Conrad’s Under
Western Eyes
and in particular the tragic figure of Razumov. It is a pity, I think,
that Conrad does not develop more the possibility of repentance in
Razumov’s fateful course. Many other novels could be mentioned as
examples of my point. Well, whatever of literature, repentance could be
regarded as one of the most significant achievements in a human life. I
am not referring just to apologies, and public apologies at that, which
can be mere strategic or political footwork to avoid impossible
confrontations. But even apologies such as these, useful as they are in
human relations, suggest the power and the benefit of repentance
provided it is sincere. The fact is, though, that a person can go right
through life never sincerely and from the heart repenting of the wrong
things he has done. It is this difficulty and perhaps rarity of
repentance that, I would observe in passing, may account for what I
perceive to be its relative absence in literature. Sincere repentance
is a fundamental act of the heart, one that has a profound and
wholesome effect on a person’s life, and one that brings the likelihood
of future blessings. But it is difficult to attain and it is very easy
continually to put it off. The capacity to repent is a virtue to be
prayed for and one that should be practised repeatedly throughout life.
It is a marvellous habit to acquire. We ought recognize our lack of a
spirit of repentance and, praying for the grace to grow in it, resolve
to repent often.
The greatest
benefit that will come to a person who is able to repent not only of
his wrongdoings in society but of his sins before God is that of
forgiveness. God forgives the person who repents of his sins. There are
so many sins, sins of thought, sins of word and sins of deed that over
the years have accumulated in each person’s life. The Book of
Revelation in the New Testament speaks of the books being opened at our
Judgment before God, and of the record of all our deeds having being
set down in those books. It is all recorded, which is to say that God
remembers all. Now, what a benefit to
have those sins wiped away! This can happen but there is a necessary
condition and it is that we sincerely repent of those sins. The only
time given to us for this repentance is during this life. We should aim
to repent of each and all of our sins so as to be eligible for the
blessing of God’s forgiveness of each and all of them. Now is the time,
and if our life passes without our having sincerely repented and gone
to Christ for his forgiveness then it will all be over for us. This
sincere repentance is not easy and the general human experience of its
difficulty shows that we need the grace of God to achieve it. The
Gospels present us with repeated calls to repent and the prophets
culminating in our Lord himself made it a central theme of their
preaching. Very importantly we have there plenty of examples of persons
who refused to repent and, by contrast, those who readily did so. Our
Gospel passage
today (Luke 19:1-10) places us in a beautiful
and inspiring scene of repentance. Zacchaeus was a wealthy tax
collector, indeed a chief tax collector and a wealthy man. The
implication is that his position and wealth had involved extortion and
injustice and his life was obviously burdened with his many sins and
wrongdoing. But there was another story to his troubled heart and it
was shown in his running ahead to climb the tree to see Jesus who was
to pass that way. He obviously wanted God but he needed the grace to
repent and to break free of his sinful attachments. That breakthrough
came with his meeting with Jesus who stopped, looked up and with a
smile greeted Zacchaeus and invited himself to Zacchaeus’s home. His
meeting with Jesus was the moment of grace.
We on our part meet
the living Jesus especially in the ministry and the
Sacraments of the Church of which Christ is the Head. Let us understand
that the door to the forgiveness of sins is repentance. Let us ask
Christ all through our life for the grace to repent not once but daily,
and with this repentance to receive the grace of the forgiveness of our
sins. The
meeting of Christ and Zacchaeus in our Gospel today has much to teach
us.
(E.J.Tyler)
Further reading: The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.976-983
'Have a good time to-night', they said, as usual. And the comment
of a soul very close to God was, 'What a limited wish!'
(The Way,
no.228) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How does the Church pray to Mary?
Above all with the Hail Mary, the prayer with which the Church asks the
intercession of the Virgin. Other Marian prayers are the Rosary, the
Akathistos hymn, the Paraclesis, and the hymns and canticles of diverse
Christian traditions. (CCC 2676-2678, 2682)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.563)
(November
5) St.
Sylvia, mother
of St. Gregory the Great The Church venerates the sanctity
of Sylvia and Gordian, the parents of St. Gregory the Great, as well as
his two aunts, Tarsilla and Emiliana. St. Sylvia was a native of the
region of Sicily while St. Gordian, her husband, came from the vicinity
of Rome. They had two sons: Gregory and another whose name has not
survived the ages. Gordian died about 573 and Gregory converted his
paternal home into a monastery. Sylvia therefore retired to a solitary
and quasi-monastic life in a little abode near the Church of St. Sava
on the Aventine. It became her custom frequently to send fresh
vegetables to her son on a silver platter. One day, when Gregory found
himself with nothing to give a poor beggar, he presented him with the
platter. St. Sylvia is thought to have gone on to her heavenly reward
between 592 and 594. After her death, the holy Pontiff had a picture of
both his parents depicted in the Church of St. Andrew. In the sixteenth
century, Pope Clement VIII had St. Sylvia inscribed in the Roman
Martyrology. (Catholic Online)
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video
Scripture today:
Romans
11:29-36; Psalm 69:30-31, 33-34,
36; Luke 14:12-14
And he said to the
one who had invited him: When prepare a dinner or a
supper, do not call your friends, brothers, relations or rich
neighbours in case they return your invitation and so reward you for
having invited them. Rather, when you prepare a banquet, invite the
poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind. You will be blessed because
they have no means to repay you. Your recompense will come at the
resurrection of the just. (Luke
14:12-14)
In a general kind
of way we could describe hope as the longing for
something in the future, a longing that inspires action now. We see
vague reflections of hope even in the animal kingdom. A bird of prey
sets out on its flight in order to gain sustenance and expends great
energy in its search. We might say that what inspires its action is the
hope of gaining food. By a more remote analogy we could say that
something of hope is at work in other forms of life. A seed that has
fallen in a deep ravine sprouts into a young sapling. The sapling grows
and because it is deep in the valley it searches for the sun and this
drives its growth to a great height. We might say that what is fuelling
the powerful growth of the tree is its hope of gaining access to the
rays of the sun. In whatever sense we may speak of hope as a motor of
action and development in animal and non-sentient life, it is very
properly the case with human beings. We are born into the world
imperfect and as we grow hope is born in our hearts, depending on what
we have discovered or have been taught to be possible. We are aware of
our limitations and needs and we look to the future for the fulfilment
of them. Thus is hope born in our hearts and inspired by that hope we
begin to act. A person with no hope is hopelessly inactive. The greater
our hope the more lively our action and this is why when it comes to
the things of God the Holy Spirit implants in our souls at Baptism the
virtue of hope — together with that of faith and love. The danger is
that because of our fallen and sinful condition we can so easily become
attached to the things of this world, and all our hopes could be
concentrated on gaining the goods of this life. Those goods could be
material possessions, the esteem of our friends, status and power. The
worst people can pin their hopes on the goods of this life alone (as
they conceive them to be) and the best persons can also pin their hopes
on the things of this life alone. It is the trap that perennially
ensnares mankind.
In our Gospel
passage today our Lord reminds his host, a leading
Pharisee, that there is a much better life to come, and that our hopes
ought not be pinned on this life alone. “When you hold a lunch or
a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or
your relatives or your wealthy neighbours, in case they may invite you
back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite
the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be
because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the
resurrection of the righteous.”
(Luke 14:12-14) This life ends with
death and then there begins a life that is everlasting. Its
rewards are granted to the righteous, our Lord informs his guest. How
foolish it is to be hoping for benefits and rewards that must be left
behind when our short span comes to its end! A person who seeks and
gains the rewards of this life alone and neglects righteousness in
Christ has already received his reward by the time he passes on to the
judgment of God. Our Lord encourages us to hope for the reward to come
because it will be great beyond our dreams, and God became man
precisely in order to offer us this hope. A military general gains the
reward of victory because he astutely takes the means to fulfil his
hopes. The one who hopes to gain the reward of everlasting life must
astutely take the means to gain righteousness in the sight of God. Our
Lord in his parables speaks of the shrewdness of the children of light.
They are to be as cunning as serpents and as innocent as doves. This
heavenly cunning is of the kind that drives their quest for holiness in
Christ and equips them to share in Christ’s redemptive mission.
Personal holiness in Christ must be the hope of Christ’s disciple. He
is filled with a supernatural hope for holiness and heaven, and that
involves union in friendship with the living Jesus and walking in his
footsteps. It is lived out in the midst of our daily duties and
responsibilities.
Our Lord’s words to
the leading Pharisee constituted a rebuke for
hoping for the rewards of this life rather than those of the next. Thus
he neglected the poor in his feasting. Let us think of inspiring
examples of Christlike love for the poor as present in Mother Teresa of
Calcutta, Saint Vincent de Paul, and so many other Christians who have
placed their whole hope in heaven reserved for the righteous. They are
the sensible ones. The foolish ones think of this life alone.
(E.J.Tyler)
How are the saints guides for prayer?
The saints are our models of prayer. We also ask them to intercede
before the Holy Trinity for us and for the whole world. Their
intercession is their most exalted service to God’s plan. In the
communion of saints, throughout the history of the Church, there have
developed different types of spiritualities that teach us how to live
and to practice the way of prayer.
(CCC 2683-2684, 2692-2693)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.564)
(November
6) St Leonard and St Bertile St. Leonard
According to unreliable sources, he was a Frank courtier who was
converted by St. Remigius, refused the offer of a See from his
godfather, King Clovis I, and became a monk at Micy. He lived as a
hermit at Limoges and was rewarded by the king with all the land he
could ride around on a donkey in a day for his prayers, which were
believed to have brought the Queen through a difficult delivery safely.
He founded Noblac monastery on the land so granted him, and it grew
into the town of Saint-Leonard. He remained there evangelizing the
surrounding area until his death. He is invoked by women in labour and
by prisoners of war because of the legend that Clovis promised to
release every captive Leonard visited. His feast day is November 6.
(Catholic Online) St. Bertille was
born of one of the most illustrious families in the territory of
Soissons, in the reign of Dagobert I. As she grew up she learned
perfectly to despise the world, and earnestly desired to renounce it.
Not daring to tell this to her parents, she first consulted St. Ouen,
by whom she was encouraged in her resolution. The Saint's parents were
then made acquainted with her desire, which God inclined them not to
oppose. They conducted her to Jouarre, a great monastery in Brie, four
leagues from Meaux, where she was received with great joy and trained
up in the strictest practice of monastic perfection. By her perfect
submission to all her sisters she seemed every one's servant, and
acquitted herself with such great charity land edification that she was
chosen prioress to assist the abbess in her administration. About the
year 646 she was appointed first abbess of the abbey of Chelles, which
she governed for forty-six years with equal vigour and discretion,
until she closed her penitential life in 692.
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Scripture today:
Romans
12:5-16ab; Psalm 131:1bcde, 2, 3; Luke 14:15-24
When one of those
who sat at table with him heard these things, he said to him: Blessed
is he who will feast in the kingdom of God. But he said to him: A
certain man put on a great supper, and invited many. And he sent his
servant at the hour of supper to say to those who were invited, that
they should come for all things was ready. And they began all at once
to make excuses. The first said to him: I have bought a farm, and I
must go out and see it: please, hold me excused. And another said: I
have bought five yoke of oxen, and I must try them: please, hold me
excused. And another said: I have married a wife, and therefore I
cannot come. And the servant returning, told these things to his lord.
Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant: Go out
quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the
poor, and the feeble, and the blind, and the lame. And the servant
said: Lord, it is done as you have commanded, and yet there is room.
And the Lord said to the servant: Go out into the highways and hedges,
and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. But I say unto
you, that none of those who were invited, shall taste of my supper.(Luke
14:15-24)
One of the truly
catastrophic phenomena of modern history was the ascendancy of Marxism.
It is amazing how Marxism caught the imagination of so many
intellectuals and leaders for close to a century, as well as the
allegiance of various populaces. Marxism purported to be the answer to
the
oppression of the masses and quite important in its system was that the
notion of God and his care was delusory. Marx (and Engels)
interpreted religion as an opiate that gave
unfounded consolation to the ignorant masses labouring under unceasing
burdens. It distracted the peoples from managing the world and society
in a way that would bring blessings to life. One
of the results of this was that the thought of a divine judgment was
suppressed from the religious imagination of great numbers in the
modern age. By contrast, the image of the divine judgment has been a
distinctive legacy of the Christian religion, and in particular of
Catholicism. The religions of man have not necessarily included the
thought of a divine judgment on the individual in the Afterlife. Many
indigenous religions do not include it, at least not explicitly. There
is no such thought — explicitly at least — in the traditional religion
of the Australian
Aborigines. While forms of it seem to have been present in Egyptian
religion, as far as I am aware it was only dimly operative in Greek and
Roman religion. Even the revealed religion of the Old Testament had
hazy notions of a future judgment — it was certainly part of the
ancient Revelation but clarity came with Jesus Christ. The doctrine of
the divine judgment on each individual and on the whole human race that
the world is so familiar with — a judgment with profound consequences — comes, we could say, from Christ. This thought of the judgment has in
the past profoundly affected the culture of the West and, through the
West, much of the world. This revelation from Christ of a judgment,
transmitted and expressed in the doctrine of the Catholic Church, is a
hallmark of revealed religion.
Part of the
recovery of a vital religion in one’s life will be the recovery of a
conviction of the future judgment of God. Any familiarity with the
Gospels makes it abundantly clear that Christ often spoke about the
judgment of God and how awesome it will be. Great happiness will follow
it and great misery, depending on how worthy a person is judged to be.
Our Lord speaks of “those judged worthy” of a place in the Kingdom of
Heaven. In our Gospel today he responds to the person who extolled the
good fortune of those who would feast in the Kingdom of God. “A man
gave a great dinner to which he invited many. When the time for the
dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, ‘Come,
everything is now ready.’ But one by one, they all began to excuse
themselves.” God intends us to dine with him in his Kingdom,
but very many turn down the invitation. Then in the parable
the master sends out everywhere to invite everyone. The story concludes
with the solemn warning: “I tell you, none of those men who were
invited will taste my dinner.” (Luke 14:15-24)
If our Lord chose to speak so often of the judgment of God and of the
reward or punishment facing every person who has been granted the gift
of life, it is incumbent on each of us to think of this judgment. In
the literature of the world there are many accounts of great religious
conversions. A good proportion of them have resulted from the thought
of the future judgment of God. At the end of life comes death, and what
will happen then? That is a powerful thought that can change lives. It
is not just a useful thought. It is a most certain and bedrock fact
that cannot be shifted or avoided in the long run. If it is never taken
account of then life will have been tragic, and the tragedy will be
eternal.
God sent his divine
Son to save the world from sin and its diresome consequences. The wage
of sin, St Paul tells us, is death. The death that comes from
unrepented serious sin is eternal. The reward for a life of love and
obedience to God is also eternal. It all hinges on the judgment of God.
It is this judgment that our Lord speaks of in today’s parable. Let us
so live as to be found worthy of a place with God when we pass from
here to our judgment hereafter.
(E.J.Tyler)
Who can educate us in prayer?
The Christian family is the first place of education in prayer. Daily
family prayer is particularly recommended because it is the first
witness to the life of prayer in the Church. Catechesis, prayer groups,
and “spiritual direction” constitute a school of and a help to prayer.
(CCC 2685-2690, 2694-2695)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.565)
(November
7) St.
Didacus
(1400-1463)
Didacus is living proof that God
"chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what
is weak in the world to shame the strong" (1 Corinthians 1:27). As a
young man in Spain, Didacus joined the Secular Franciscan Order and
lived for some time as a hermit. After Didacus became a Franciscan
brother, he developed a reputation for great insight into God’s ways.
His penances were heroic. He was so generous with the poor that the
friars sometimes grew uneasy about his charity. Didacus volunteered for
the missions in the Canary Islands and laboured there energetically and
profitably. He was also the superior of a friary there. In 1450 he was
sent to Rome to attend the canonization of St. Bernardine of Siena.
When many friars gathered for that celebration fell sick, Didacus
stayed in Rome for three months to nurse them. After he returned to
Spain, he pursued a life of contemplation full-time. He showed the
friars the wisdom of God’s ways. As he was dying, Didacus looked at a
crucifix and said: "O faithful wood, O precious nails! You have borne
an exceedingly sweet burden, for you have been judged worthy to bear
the Lord and King of heaven" (Marion A. Habig, O.F.M., The Franciscan Book of
Saints, p. 834). San Diego, California, is named for this
Franciscan, who was canonized in 1588.
We cannot
be neutral about genuinely holy people. We either admire them or we
consider them foolish. Didacus is a saint because he used his life to
serve God and God’s people. Can we say the same for ourselves? "He was
born in Spain with no outstanding reputation for learning, but like our
first teachers and leaders unlettered as men count wisdom, an
unschooled person, a humble lay brother in religious life. [God chose
Didacus] to show in him the abundant riches of his grace to lead many
on the way of salvation by the holiness of his life and by his example
and to prove over and over to a weary old world almost decrepit with
age that God's folly is wiser than men, and his weakness is more
powerful than men" (Bull of
Canonization).
(AmericanCatholic.org)
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video
Scripture today: Romans
13:8-10; Psalm 112:1b-2, 4-5, 9;
Luke 14:25-33
Great crowds were
travelling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed them, “If anyone
comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children,
brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my
disciple. Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit
down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its
completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself
unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say,
‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’ Or
what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide
whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another
king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, while
he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.
In the same way, everyone of you who does not renounce all his
possessions cannot be my disciple.”(Luke 14:25-33)
I remember a few
decades ago a prominent Australian politician was asked during an
interview on television whether he counted himself as a Christian. He
said that inasmuch as he did not accept the truth of the resurrection
of Christ he would have to regard himself as a fellow traveller of
Christianity. He was honest about himself and accurate in his grasp of
Christianity. Many consider “being a Christian” simply a matter of
having what might be called the Christian virtue of
benevolence towards those in need. Christianity involves belief in the
person of Christ and this necessarily includes a genuine acceptance of
his resurrection. That having been said, there is more to being an
authentic and serious follower of Christ than this. The context of our
Lord’s important words in our Gospel today is given at the beginning of
the passage. Great crowds were travelling with Jesus. Taking our
politician’s words as our cue, there were great crowds who were “fellow
travellers” with Jesus and our Lord turned to them to tell them what
following him — being a Christian, we might say — really means. It
means regarding all that is naturally dear and of the first importance
as being secondary to the love of him. “If anyone comes to me without
hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” The image of “hating”
what is most dear and what naturally claims our love and care sets
forth the idea of active and positive renunciation for the sake of
Christ. Reinforcing his point our Lord employs a stark image of what
this means. It means carrying the Cross after him. “Whoever does not
carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” The
following of Christ means an active spirit of renunciation. “In the
same way, everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.”(Luke 14:25-33)
And so we are
brought to the Cross. Accepting and indeed embracing the Cross is the
distinctive note of an authentic and developed Christian life. It is
possible for a Christian to be “travelling” among the crowds with Jesus
all through life, listening to him often (but often distracted from him
too), never straying far from him (but never being in his immediate
company), never being out of view of him (but never gazing on him
intently and lovingly either), and all the while never taking to heart
our Lord’s words of today. The great mystery about our Lord’s
redemptive mission is the centrality of the Cross. According to the
plan of the Father he had to suffer so as to accomplish his saving
mission and enter into his glory. It was precisely on the cross that he
said, “it is accomplished!” Philosophers have often spoken and written
of the problem of evil. They mean by this that the fact of evil is a
problem for the notion of an almighty and good God. Philosophically
this is a problem indeed, but there is a different “problem of evil”
and it is the problem of why the unmeasurable suffering of Christ and
his Cross were the grand instrument of such incalculable good. But such
is the fact. The evil and suffering Christ underwent in a spirit of
perfect and loving obedience to the will of the Father were the
instrument of the redemption of mankind. The Christian who is not a
mere “fellow traveller” with Christ and Christianity not only accepts
that he rose from the dead and lives now, but that his Cross was
essential to his mission. Furthermore, he knows that being a disciple
of Christ entails carrying one’s own cross in the spirit of Christ and
as such following after him. The example and choice that Christ made of
obedient suffering is the pointer to the way of the true Christian.
Therefore every disciple of Christ ought pray for the grace to carry
the cross every day. This he will do out of love for Christ and a
desire to share in his redemptive mission.
We are speaking
here of spiritual gifts. It is a gift of God to take heed of our Lord’s
words and for love of him to be prepared to renounce all in order to
have Christ as our first and true love. It is a gift, a grace of God to
be prepared to carry one’s cross and to follow in the footsteps of
Christ as he proceeds along the way of Calvary. These are fundamental
gifts necessary for the person who wishes to follow Christ closely. Let
us pray that God will give us the grace to do as he says in today’s
Gospel and thus arrive at authentic Christian discipleship.
(E.J.Tyler)
A strict fast is a penance most pleasing to God. But, what with
one thing and another, we have become a bit too easy-going. There is no
objection — on the contrary — if you, with the approval of your
Director, fast frequently.
(The Way,
no.231)
What places are conducive to prayer?
One can pray anywhere but the choice of an appropriate place is not a
matter of indifference when it comes to prayer. The church is the
proper place for liturgical prayer and Eucharistic adoration. Other
places also help one to pray, such as a “prayer corner” at home, a
monastery or a shrine. (CCC 2691, 2696)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.566)
(November
8)
Blessed John Duns
Scotus (c. 1266-1308)
A humble man, John Duns Scotus has been one of the
most influential Franciscans through the centuries. Born at Duns in the
county of Berwick, Scotland, John was descended from a wealthy farming
family. In later years he was identified as John Duns Scotus to
indicate the land of his birth; Scotia is the Latin name for Scotland.
John received the habit of the Friars Minor at Dumfries, where his
uncle Elias Duns was superior. After novitiate John studied at Oxford
and Paris and was ordained in 1291. More studies in Paris followed
until 1297, when he returned to lecture at Oxford and Cambridge. Four
years later he returned to Paris to teach and complete the requirements
for the doctorate. In an age when many people adopted whole systems of
thought without qualification, John pointed out the richness of the
Augustinian-Franciscan tradition, appreciated the wisdom of Aquinas,
Aristotle and the Muslim philosophers—and still managed to be an
independent thinker. That quality was proven in 1303 when King Philip
the Fair tried to enlist the University of Paris on his side in a
dispute with Pope Boniface VIII. John Duns Scotus dissented and was
given three days to leave France. In Scotus’s time, some philosophers
held that people are basically determined by forces outside themselves.
Free will is an illusion, they argued. An ever practical man, Scotus
said that if he started beating someone who denied free will, the
person would immediately tell him to stop. But if Scotus didn’t really
have a free will, how could he stop? John had a knack for finding
illustrations his students could remember! After a short stay in Oxford
he returned to Paris, where he received the doctorate in 1305. He
continued teaching there and in 1307 so ably defended the Immaculate
Conception of Mary that the university officially adopted his position.
That same year the minister general assigned him to the Franciscan
school in Cologne where John died in 1308. He is buried in the
Franciscan church near the famous Cologne cathedral. Drawing on the
work of John Duns Scotus, Pope Pius IX solemnly defined the Immaculate
Conception of Mary in 1854. John Duns Scotus, the "Subtle Doctor," was
beatified in 1993. Father Charles Balic, O.F.M., the foremost
20th-century authority on Scotus, has written: "The whole of Scotus's
theology is dominated by the notion of love. The characteristic note of
this love is its absolute freedom. As love becomes more perfect and
intense, freedom becomes more noble and integral both in God and in
man" (New Catholic
Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, p. 1105).
Intelligence hardly guarantees holiness. But John Duns Scotus was not
only brilliant, he was also humble and prayerful—the exact combination
St. Francis wanted in any friar who studied. In a day when French
nationalism threatened the rights of the pope, Scotus sided with the
papacy and paid the price. He also defended human freedom against those
who would compromise it by determinism. Ideas are important. John Duns
Scotus placed his best thinking at the service of the human family and of the
Church.(AmericanCatholic.org)
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video
Scripture today: Romans
14:7-12; Psalm 27:1bcde, 4, 13-14; Luke
15:1-10
The tax collectors
and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees
and scribes began to complain, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and
eats with them.” So Jesus addressed this parable to them. “What man
among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave
the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds
it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great
joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and
neighbours and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my
lost sheep.’ I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in
heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous
people who have no need of repentance. “Or what woman having ten coins
and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching
carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls
together her friends and neighbours and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me
because I have found the coin that I lost.’ In just the same way, I
tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one
sinner who repents.”(Luke 15:1-10)
It is not at all
uncommon to find in the history of religions the recognition of a high
god or being, one who while limited is the highest among many. This
highest being can well be the creator in some sense but usually once
the work of creation is over (however this is imagined in the myths)
that being recedes. His work is largely done and the tribe or society
or nation tends to forget him or to imagine him as no longer interested
in the goings-on of the world. In place of the
high god (as we might call him) lesser gods or spirits populate the
religious imagination and cult of the society in question. But even
here, usually the lesser spirits do not positively love man or actively
pursue him with benevolent actions. Rather, man pursues these spirits
(or even the high god) with placatory rites and petitions and were he
not to do this, the gods would neglect him or be hostile towards him.
Of course much of this is an attribution to the powers above of man’s
own experience of human beings, but it is important to be aware of it
so as to appreciate the wonder of divine revelation. When it comes to
philosophical thought, the classical philosophical notions of the
supreme Agent do not much reduce this sense of the remoteness of the
divine from man. Aristotle’s valuable and valid notion of the First
Cause and Unmoved Mover is remote indeed. All this abundance of
human and religious thought expresses both the undying quest of man for
the Absolute and at the same time his feeling of an impossible distance
from this same Absolute. Well now, into this great stream of human
frustration has entered the true and living God. He has made himself
known as one who pursues man with love and care. Indeed he is Father to
man, a loving Father compassionate and merciful, a Father who like a
Shepherd tends and protects his flock. The distinctive thing that God
has revealed to man about himself is that he is active Love.
In our Gospel
passage today the Pharisees and scribes complain about our Lord. “This
man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Whether their complaint was
prompted by mere spite or whether it was a genuine puzzlement, it
certainly represents the surprise of man about the God of historical
revelation. The sinner, he expects, is ignored by God and is usually
spurned. But here we have Christ welcoming sinners and dining with
them. What can possibly be made of this? Our Lord answers by showing
that what is lacking is the true image of God, that image which he
himself is. Christ Jesus is the image of the unseen God, St Paul states
in one of his Letters. “He who sees me, sees the Father”, Christ told
his disciples. “No one can come to the Father except through me,” he
teaches elsewhere. As ever, our Lord gives an image drawn from everyday
life. “What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them
would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one
until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his
shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together
his friends and neighbours and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I
have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you, in just the same way there will
be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine
righteous people who have no need of repentance.”
(Luke 15:1-10).
God does not just await our supplications and protestations of
contrition for sin, rather he actively pursues the sinner constantly
offering him his love. God is the loving Pursuer of fallen and sinful
man. He is like the Shepherd seeking out and finding the stray, or like
the woman who seeks out and finds the coin that is precious to her. He
pursues man not to punish him — though finally his judgment will indeed
fall — but to shower him with love and blessings. He pursues him in
order to win his repentance.
This is the reason
why Christ welcomes sinners and dines with them. He does so because God
is not withdrawn, remote and disinterested but is a loving Pursuer of
straying and sinful man. He wants man to be totally happy and this
happiness will only be found in the friendship of Jesus now and forever
hereafter. Let us then cast in our lot for Jesus, risen from the dead
and living now in his Church as her head and bridegroom. He is the
bridegroom of the soul of the Christian.
(E.J.Tyler)
Motives for penance? — Atonement, reparation, petition,
thanksgiving: means to progress: for you, for me, for others, for your
family, for your country, for the Church... And a thousand motives more.
(The Way,
no.232)
What times are more suitable for prayer?
Any time is suitable for prayer but the Church proposes to the faithful
certain rhythms of praying intended to nourish continual prayer:
morning and evening prayer, prayer before and after meals, the Liturgy
of the Hours, Sunday Eucharist, the Rosary, and feasts of the
liturgical year.
(CCC 2697-2698, 2720)
“We must remember God more often than we draw
breath.” (Saint Gregory of Nazianzus)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.567)
(November
9) Dedication
of St.
John Lateran
Most Catholics think of St. Peter’s as the pope’s
main church, but they are wrong. St. John Lateran is the pope’s church,
the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome where the Bishop of Rome presides.
The first basilica on the site was built in the
fourth century when Constantine donated land he had received from the
wealthy Lateran family. That structure and its successors suffered
fire, earthquake and the ravages of war, but the Lateran remained the
church where popes were consecrated until the popes returned from
Avignon in the 14th century to find the church and the adjoining palace
in ruins. Pope Innocent X commissioned the present structure in 1646.
One of Rome’s most imposing churches, the Lateran’s towering facade is
crowned with 15 colossal statues of Christ, John the Baptist, John the
Evangelist and 12 doctors of the Church. Beneath its high altar rest
the remains of the small wooden table on which tradition holds St.
Peter himself celebrated Mass.
Unlike the commemorations of other Roman churches (St. Mary
Major, Sts. Peter and Paul), this anniversary is a feast. The dedication of
a church is a feast for all its parishioners. St. John Lateran is, in a
sense, the parish church of all Catholics, for it is the pope's parish, the
cathedral church of the Bishop of Rome. This church is the spiritual home of
the people who are the Church. "What was done here, as these walls were
rising, is reproduced when we bring together those who believe in Christ.
For, by believing they are hewn out, as it were, from mountains and forests,
like stones and timber; but by catechizing, baptism and instruction they
are, as it were, shaped, squared and planed by the hands of the workers and
artisans. Nevertheless, they do not make a house for the Lord until they are
fitted together through love" (St. Augustine, Sermon 36).(AmericanCatholic.org)
Since the Passover
of the Jews was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the
temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the
money-changers seated there. He made a whip out of cords and drove them
all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the
coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables, and to those
who sold doves he said, “Take these out of here, and stop making my
Father’s house a marketplace.” His disciples recalled the words of
Scripture, Zeal for your house will consume me. At this the Jews
answered and said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?”
Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple and in three days
I will raise it up.” The Jews said, “This temple has been under
construction for forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three
days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his Body. Therefore,
when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had
said this, and they came to believe the Scripture and the word Jesus
had spoken.(John 2:13-22)
Time and again
across the pages of the Gospels our Lord’s words give expression to
unique and transcendent claims that upset and overturned the
thinking of his contemporaries. Our Gospel scene today with its
physical commotion and novelty was itself a pointer to this. Our Lord
and his disciples arrive in Jerusalem and the Temple is abuzz with
business and the buying and selling of the materials of animal and bird
sacrifice. How the lack of reverence must have
pained our Lord all those years of his visits and frequenting of the
House of his heavenly Father! This time a great message was to be
given, and he moved into vigorous and supremely authoritative action,
once again showing that in all that touched the glory of God his Father
he was the Master and Lord. He drove all those offending the sanctity
of the Temple out of its precincts, and as he did so he uttered words
that were profoundly revealing. “Take these out of here, and stop
making my Father’s house a marketplace.” The Temple was the house of
his own Father, and accordingly a profound reverence ought be
maintained within it. The house of his own Father! His Father! On
another occasion also in St John’s Gospel our Lord was challenged by
the leaders of the Jews for curing on the Sabbath, and he said in reply
that because his Father worked, so therefore did he. At this, John
tells us in his Gospel, they took up stones to stone him with because
not only did he violate the Sabbath (as they understood him to be
doing) but he spoke of God as his own Father, thus making himself equal
to God. The way our Lord uttered the words, “my Father”, indicated an
altogether unique relationship with God shared by no other. It was a
relationship that involved a full possession of his Father’s very
nature while being, as the Son, distinct from his Father as a person.
As the Son, our Lord loved the Father as no other could and his life
was poured out in giving glory to him.
The claims of Jesus
Christ are absolutely unique in the annals of man. Our Lord goes on in
our passage to state that “Destroy this temple and in three days I will
raise it up.” What did he mean? “The Jews said, ‘This temple has been
under construction for forty-six years, and you will raise it up in
three days?’ But he was speaking about the temple of his Body.
Therefore, when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered
that he had said this, and they came to believe the Scripture and the
word Jesus had spoken” (John
2:13-22).
Who else in the history of the world has made claims so extraordinary
as these and who was subsequently taken seriously from age to age
thereafter? Our Lord’s very own risen person would be the Temple of the
future, his own person raised from the dead in all its bodily, human
and divine reality. He would be the Temple of God, the Church in which
the nations would gather, he, risen from the dead. His action in our
Gospel of today points not only to the grandeur of his own person as
divine Son of the Father, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity
become man for our sakes. It also points also to his body the Church
which would bring his person to the nations and in which all would
worship the Father. We remember how on another occasion our Lord asked
his disciples who men thought him to be — and then he asked them who
they thought him to be. Simon answered, saying that he was the Messiah,
the Son of the Living God. Christ then stated that Simon was now Peter
(the Rock) on which he would build his Church, and that the gates of
hell would not prevail against it. Christ is the Temple of God, the
Church of the nations, the one in whom we are called to live and give
glory to God by our lives of fidelity to Christ and his revealed
teaching. Our Gospel passage today is yet another that shows forth the
uniqueness of Jesus Christ.
Let us appreciate
this divine and human uniqueness of Jesus Christ. St Paul writes that
before the world began God chose us in Christ to be holy and full of
love in his sight. Christ is the centre and heart of the world and of
each person. One cannot speak sufficiently superlatively of him. We
were made to know, love and serve him here on earth so as to see and
enjoy him forever in heaven. And why do we say this of Christ? Because
he is our Redeemer and our God.
(E.J.Tyler)
What are the expressions of the life of
prayer?
Christian tradition has preserved three forms for expressing and living
prayer: vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplative prayer. The feature
common to all of them is the recollection of the heart. (CCC 2697-2699)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.568)
(November
10) Saint
Leo the Great, pope and doctor of the Church (398-461) Saint Leo was
born in Rome. He embraced the sacred ministry, was made Archdeacon of
the Roman Church by Pope Saint Celestine, and under the same Vicar of
Christ and Saint Sixtus III, had a large share in governing the Church. On the death of Sixtus, Leo was chosen Pope,
and consecrated on Saint Michael’s day, 440, amid great joy.
It was the time of terrible trial
which preceded by thirty years the definitive fall of the Roman Empire.
Vandals and Huns were wasting the provinces of the empire, and
Nestorians, Pelagians, and other heretics wrought still more grievous
havoc in souls. While Leo’s zeal was making headway against these
perils, there arose the new heresy of Eutyches, who confounded the two
natures of Christ. At once the vigilant pastor proclaimed the true
doctrine of the Incarnation in his famous “tome”; but fostered by the
Byzantine court, the heresy gained a strong hold upon the Eastern monks
and bishops. After three years of unceasing toil, Saint Leo brought
about its solemn condemnation by the Council of Chalcedon, the Fathers
all signing his tome, and exclaiming, “Peter has spoken by Leo.”
Soon after, Attila with his Huns
broke into Italy, and marched through its razed cities upon Rome. Leo
went out boldly to meet him, and prevailed on him to turn back. His
chieftains were astonished to see the terrible Attila, the “Scourge of
God,” fresh from the sack of Aquileia, Milan and Pavia and with the rich
prize of Rome within his grasp, turn his great host back to the Danube at
the Saint’s word. They asked him why he had acted so strangely. He told them
he had seen two venerable personages — who are generally supposed to be
Saints Peter and Paul — standing behind Saint Leo; and impressed by this
vision, he withdrew. Two years later the city fell a prey to the Vandals,
but Leo saved it again from total destruction. He died in 461 after having
ruled the Church for a little over twenty years.(magnificat.ca)
Jesus said to his
disciples: “I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest
wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal
dwellings. The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also
trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very
small matters is also dishonest in great ones. If, therefore, you are
not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true
wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who
will give you what is yours? No servant can serve two masters. He will
either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise
the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” The Pharisees, who loved
money, heard all these things and sneered at him. And he said to them,
“You justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your
hearts; for what is of human esteem is an abomination in the sight of
God.”(Luke 16:9-15)
There is a saying
that was coined, I think, by Lord Acton in the nineteenth century to
the effect that absolute power corrupts absolutely. We would add that
in its essence absolute power need not corrupt because there are examples
of persons who occupied positions of great power and who were good and
holy people. For example, kings have been saints (say, Edward the
Confessor, Louis IX of France, Henry II of Germany 972-1024, Charles I of Austria 1887-1922)
and while none of them possessed absolute power, who ever has? Their
goodness shows that power need not corrupt. However, the history of the
world shows that power may well corrupt and in fact all too often it
does. The same can be said of material possessions. There are examples
beyond number of persons who have gradually gained an abundance of
material possessions and in the process have come to be ruled by them.
They have become totally attached to the things of this world and their
lives could be described as being in the service of material
possessions. Money has become their god. Now, while the great majority
of persons who have and gain material possessions do not reach such a
state of subjection to material goods, the danger of attachment to the
things of this world is very much present. This is what our Lord
addresses in his words in today’s Gospel passage and he does so in the
vivid language of “hate” and “love”. “No servant can serve two masters.
He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and
despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” The Pharisees, who
loved money, heard all these things and sneered at him. And he said to
them, “You justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows
your hearts; for what is of human esteem is an abomination in the sight
of God.”(Luke 16:9-15).
At the beginning of
his classic Spiritual
Exercises St
Ignatius of Loyola sets forth the foundation of the religious life. It
is that man is made to serve and praise God alone and by this means to
save his soul. The implication of this fundamental and ruling principle
of life is that the heart of man ought be detached from all else in the
sense that nothing else can be allowed to distract his heart away from
God. He must work constantly at detachment from the things of this
world. That is to say, he must find God in all things and his love for
and commitment to the persons and things that make up his life must be
as in God. This is the work of life then, and it is an immense
spiritual challenge. What is at stake is the choice between two
masters: either God or the creatures of God. It is to be either God or
some other (false) god. The fundamental guide in this challenge that
faces every man is the first of the Ten Commandments, which is that the
Lord is our God, and that there is to be no other god in our life than
he. So as we think of our Lord’s words, let us consider the state of
our heart in respect to material goods. It is a great help to dwell on
the lives of those saints who because of their vocation and
circumstances actually had many possessions. St Thomas More — a
wonderful layman, married with several children and the leading officer
of the English realm — had many possessions. But his heart did not rest
in them as its love. God was his master and this was put to the test
when King Henry insisted not only on the recognition of his putting
away of his first wife and his second marriage (despite papal decree)
but also his claim to be head of the Church in England. Thomas More by
his martyrdom gave up everything for Christ and his truth about the
Church, and this would have been impossible had his heart been attached
to the many good things — his possessions, his family, his profession — that came his way in life.
It is very
difficult to achieve this attachment that our Lord refers to in our
Gospel text today. We must pray for the grace to be servants of God and
attached to all else only in God. He is to be the love of our hearts
and this has to be lived out in the midst of everyday life in a very
material world.
(E.J.Tyler)
How can vocal prayer be described?
Vocal prayer associates the body with the interior prayer of the heart.
Even the most interior prayer, however, cannot dispense with vocal
prayer. In any case it must always spring from a personal faith. With
the Our Father Jesus has taught us a perfect form of vocal
prayer. (CCC 2700-2704, 2722)
(Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.569)
Prayers this week:
Let my prayer come
before you, Lord; Listen, and answer me. God
of power and mercy, protect us from all harm. Give us freedom of spirit and
health of mind and body to do your work on earth. We ask
this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy
Spirit, one God.
(November 11) St. Martin of Tours (316?-397)
A conscientious objector who wanted to be a monk; a monk who was
manoeuvred into being a bishop; a bishop who fought paganism as well as
pleaded for mercy to heretics — such was Martin of Tours, one of the most
popular of saints and one of the first not to be a martyr. He was born
of pagan parents in what is now Hungary and was raised in Italy. The
son of a veteran, he was forced to serve in the army against his will
at the age of 15. He became a Christian catechumen and was baptized at
18. It was said that he lived more like a monk than a soldier. At 23 he
refused a war bounty from the emperor with the words, "I have served
you as a soldier; now let me serve Christ. Give the bounty to those who
are going to fight. But I am a soldier of Christ and it is not lawful
for me to fight." After great difficulties, he was discharged and went
to be a disciple of Hilary of Poitiers. He was ordained an exorcist and
worked with great zeal against the Arians. He became a monk, living
first at Milan and later on a small island. When Hilary was restored to
his see after exile, Martin returned to France and established what may
have been the first French monastery near Poitiers. He lived there for
10 years, forming his disciples and preaching throughout the
countryside. The people of Tours demanded that he become their bishop.
He was drawn to that city by a ruse—the need of a sick person—and was
brought to the church, where he reluctantly allowed himself to be
consecrated bishop. Some of the consecrating bishops thought his
rumpled appearance and unkempt hair indicated that he was not dignified
enough for the office. Along with St. Ambrose, Martin rejected Bishop
Ithacius’s principle of putting heretics to death—as well as the
intrusion of the emperor into such matters. He prevailed upon the
emperor to spare the life of the heretic Priscillian. For his efforts,
Martin was accused of the same heresy, and Priscillian was executed
after all. Martin then pleaded for a cessation of the persecution of
Priscillian’s followers in Spain. He still felt he could cooperate with
Ithacius in other areas, but afterwards his conscience troubled him
about this decision. As death approached, his followers begged him not
to leave them. He prayed, "Lord, if your people still need me, I do not
refuse the work. Your will be
done."
(AmericanCatholic.org)
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a
resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying,
"Teacher, Moses wrote for us, If someone's brother dies leaving a wife
but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants
for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a
woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her,
and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died.
Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven
had been married to her." Jesus said to them, "The children of this age
marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the
coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are
given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels;
and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will
rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage
about the bush, when he called out 'Lord, ' the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of
the living, for to him all are alive."(Luke
20:27-38)
There are a few
religious doctrines which have pervaded the consciousness of much of
the world. Apart from the doctrine of one only God, there is also the
doctrine of a divine judgment on man issuing in an eternity of either
heaven or hell. Now, while it is true that various religious traditions
have contributed to the widespread familiarity with and even acceptance
of what we might call these Last Things that face man, it is surely
clear that the single most important source of these religious
doctrines is Jesus Christ and the influence through two millennia of
the Catholic Church which he founded. Throughout the Gospels our Lord
refers to the divine judgment on each man and on the whole human race.
All should live in such a way as to be ready for that judgment. The
thought of the judgment of God is perhaps the most important prompt for
religion in a person’s life. He looks to the end of life whenever that might be and he asks, what then? Christ has told him that — using the imagery of Scripture
— the books will then be opened and
there will be a judgment on his thoughts, words and deeds. Now, one of
the most wonderful revelations of Christ is that of the resurrection
from the dead. As we state in the Creed, we believe in the forgiveness
of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. While the
doctrine of the resurrection from the dead can be shown to have been
revealed in the Old Testament, it was not sufficiently clear to silence
dissent. In our Gospel today we are told that some Sadducees, those who
“deny that there is a resurrection”, came forward and put a puzzle to
Jesus which, they thought, would vindicate their denial that there is a
resurrection. They misread the Scriptures and thought little of the
power of God. Our Lord answered immediately and sovereignly their
difficulty by affirming that there is indeed a resurrection from the
dead, and that it is for those judged worthy. So there is a judgment,
and for those who pass that test, there is a rising to eternal life.
All through human
life and society there is the incentive of reward for work well done. A
person receives a bonus for a year’s good work. A person’s curriculum
vitae records his good work and that is his passbook to better
prospects in the future. A student works hard to do well in his exams
and so have the reward of better career prospects. God offers immense
rewards too. He means his revelation of the fact of the resurrection in
the body to eternal life to be a grand incentive to live a good and
holy life filled with persevering and loving service of God and
neighbour. Life is short and eternity is long. Our Lord has revealed
and the Church has taught in her formal teaching that for those judged
worthy “to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the
dead” there will be an eternity of life in the company of God himself,
face to face in the direct vision of him. The very thought of eternity
is difficult to imagine, except by constantly denying a limit to
ongoing time. Those who are “judged worthy” will be engulfed in a
limitless sea of beauty and joy which is the living God. This vast
universe with its unknown and unattained limits is but a pale
reflection of the limitless being of the loving and holy God. Heaven
will be God’s eternal embrace of each of us, holding us to himself in
an unimaginable smile of fatherly love that will never cease to fill us
with overflowing joy, and in him we shall live with all those who are
likewise in him. Every tear will forever be wiped away. How brief will
life appear to have been for those enjoying the bliss of heaven, how
paltry its pleasures and sorrows and what a waste to have ignored one’s
God-given duties. Take any point of time in the future — say, a million
years to come — and that point will be still but the beginning of an
eternity to come. Every single human being will be part of this
eternity planned by God for those who have risen to eternal life.
The all-important
project of life is so to live as to be judged worthy of the
resurrection of the dead in the body, and not to be cast out into the
eternal darkness of hell. Christ has revealed this to be the great and
grand future of man and the world. Each of us stands at the crossroads
and we know the direction to take. Let us not ignore Christ’s
revelation. Rather, let us take our stand with him and every day live
with him so as to be able to die with him and then rise with him.
(E.J.Tyler)
What is meditation?
Meditation is a prayerful reflection that begins above all in the Word
of God in the Bible. Meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion
and desire in order to deepen our faith, convert our heart and fortify
our will to follow Christ. It is a first step toward the union of love
with our Lord. (CCC 2705-2708, 2723) (Compendium of the Catechism of the
Catholic Church, no.570)
(November 12) Saint Josaphat, (1580?-1623)
In
1967, newspaper photos of Pope Paul VI embracing Athenagoras I, the
Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, marked a significant step toward
the healing of a division in Christendom that has spanned nine
centuries. In 1595, when today’s saint was a boy, the Orthodox bishop
of Brest-Litovsk (famous in World War I) in Belarus and five other
bishops representing millions of Ruthenians, sought reunion with Rome.
John Kunsevich (Josaphat became his name in religious life) was to
dedicate his life and suffer his death in the same cause. Born in what
was then Poland, he went to work in Wilno and was influenced by clergy
adhering to the Union of Brest (1596). He became a Basilian monk, then
a priest, and soon was well known as a preacher and as an ascetic. He
became bishop of Vitebsk (now in Russia) at a relatively young age, and
faced a difficult situation. Most monks, fearing interference in
liturgy and customs, did not want union with Rome. By synods,
catechetical instruction, reform of the clergy and personal example,
however, Josaphat was successful in winning the greater part of the
Orthodox in that area to the union. But the next year a dissident
hierarchy was set up, and his opposite number spread the accusation
that Josaphat had "gone Latin" and that all his people would have to do
the same. He was not enthusiastically supported by the Latin bishops of
Poland. Despite warnings, he went to Vitebsk, still a hotbed of
trouble. Attempts were made to foment trouble and drive him from the
diocese: A priest was sent to shout insults to him from his own
courtyard. When Josaphat had him removed and shut up in his house, the
opposition rang the town hall bell, and a mob assembled. The priest was
released, but members of the mob broke into the bishop’s home. He was
struck with a halberd, then shot and his body thrown into the river. It
was later recovered and is now buried at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
He was the first saint of the Eastern Church to be canonized by Rome.
His death brought a movement toward Catholicism and unity, but the
controversy continued, and the dissidents, too, had their martyr. After
the partition of Poland, the Russians forced most Ruthenians to join
the Russian Orthodox Church.
The seeds of separation were sown in the fourth century when the Roman
Empire was divided into East and West. The actual split came over relatively
unimportant customs (unleavened bread, Saturday fasting, celibacy). No doubt
the political involvement of religious leaders on both sides was a large
factor, and doctrinal disagreement was present. But no reason was enough to
justify the present tragic division in Christendom, which is 64 percent
Roman Catholic, 13 percent Eastern Churches (mostly Orthodox) and 23 percent
Protestant, and this when the 71 percent of the world that is not Christian
should be getting the witness of unity and Christlike charity from
Christians!
(AmericanCatholic.org)
Jesus said to his disciples, “Things that cause sin will
inevitably occur, but woe to the one through whom they occur. It would
be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be
thrown into the sea than for him to cause one of these little ones to
sin. Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he
repents, forgive him. And if he wrongs you seven times in one day and
returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry,’ you should forgive
him.” And the Apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” The Lord
replied, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say
to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it
would obey you.”(Luke 17:1-6)
I
remember how at
the beginning of my studies for the priesthood the priest who had
charge of the formation of those in their first year of studies
repeatedly insisted on the power and influence of human respect. By
this he meant that the approval or disapproval of those
around us has a powerful effect on our behaviour, unless we place
ourselves on guard. In a properly functioning society or community this
approval or disapproval is a major support for good order and proper
standards of behaviour. But it is also a major influence for evil. If
an individual means to aim high in his personal standards the
disapproval of those around him can break down his resolve and lead him
astray — unless he is on guard. What we are speaking of here is bad
example and good example, bad influence and good influence. A parent
can be a good influence on his or her child, and alternatively that
parent can be a bad influence. The spiritual masters call this factor
“the world” as opposed to the influence coming from one’s own
inclinations and preferences. The “world”, consisting of the other
person or other people in our life, has an influence on us for good or
ill. The example and behaviour of others as well as their words and
arguments are a powerful pressure on us for good or for bad. At the
dawn of human history we see this factor at play in the drama of human
decision. God made it clear to our first parents that they were not to
partake of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” That was God’s
command. Then there entered Satan as a principal influence in the
direction of sin. Eve sinned. She then went to Adam and influenced him.
Satan did not approach Adam, Eve did. We could look on Eve as the
equivalent of the “world”. The bad influence and example of others that
play such a major role in the history of sin from age to age was at
work in the very beginning.
Our Lord refers to
the influence of bad example and the immense responsibility of each
person who leads others to sin through it. Jesus said to his disciples,
“Things that cause sin will inevitably occur, but woe to the one
through whom they occur. It would be better for him if a millstone were
put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea than for him to cause
one of these little ones to sin. Be on your guard!”
(Luke 17:1-6). Apart from bad
example, many actually lead and encourage others to sin and to crime.
Consider the collusion involved in various forms of fraud. Consider the
rampant pornography in many of the media, the print media, movies, the
Internet. When Pope Paul VI visited Australia at the end of 1970 he
addressed a large body of journalists. He told them that they
constituted world power number one. He was referring to the influence
on others of what is said and written. So as our Lord says, we must be
on guard. We must be on guard lest we lead others directly or
indirectly into sin, and we must be very much on guard lest the example
and actions of others lead us into sin. Our bad or good example is of
the first importance for others and the example of others is of the
first importance for us. All this is to say that none of us goes to
heaven or to hell alone. We take others with us and part of our
judgment will revolve around the harm or the good we have done to
others by our bad or good example and the influence it constituted.
When in the twenty fifth chapter of the Gospel of St Matthew our Lord
portrays himself as saying to those on his right and left that whatever
they did to the least they did to him, he is surely speaking also of
the influence on others that our good or bad example constituted. Let
us then be very much alive to our responsibility to lead others to
goodness and holiness of life by the example of our actions.
The Church needs
saints and the world needs them. They are the beacons for mankind of
goodness and they lead by their example and their good works. There is
an old saying that evil flourishes when good people are lacking or when
good people do nothing. Let us resolve to overcome evil with good and
never to do anything that will lead another into sin.
(E.J.Tyler)
What is contemplative prayer?
Contemplative prayer is a simple gaze upon God in silence and love. It
is a gift of God, a moment of pure faith during which the one praying
seeks Christ, surrenders himself to the loving will of the Father, and
places his being under the action of the Holy Spirit. Saint Teresa of
Avila defines contemplative prayer as the intimate sharing of
friendship, “in which time is frequently taken to be alone with God who
we know loves us.” (CCC 2709-2719, 2724, 2739-2741)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
no.571)
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(November 13) Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini,
virgin (1850-1917) (Pictured)
Frances Xavier Cabrini was the first United States citizen to be
canonized. Her deep trust in the loving care of her God gave her the
strength to be a valiant woman doing the work of Christ. Refused
admission to the religious order which had educated her to be a
teacher, she began charitable work
at the House of Providence Orphanage in Cadogno, Italy. In September
1877, she made her vows there and took the religious habit. When the
bishop closed the orphanage in 1880, he named Frances prioress of the
Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Seven young women from the
orphanage joined with her. Since her early childhood in Italy, Frances
had wanted to be a missionary in China but, at the urging of Pope Leo
XIII, Frances went west instead of east. She travelled with six sisters
to New York City to work with the thousands of Italian immigrants
living there. She found disappointment and difficulties with every
step. When she arrived in New York City, the house intended to be her
first orphanage in the United States was not available. The archbishop
advised her to return to Italy. But Frances, truly a valiant woman,
departed from the archbishop’s residence all the more determined to
establish that orphanage. And she succeeded. In 35 years Frances Xavier
Cabrini founded 67 institutions dedicated to caring for the poor, the
abandoned, the uneducated and the sick. Seeing great need among Italian
immigrants who were losing their faith, she organized schools and adult
education classes. As a child, she was always frightened of water,
unable to overcome her fear of drowning. Yet, despite this fear, she
travelled across the Atlantic Ocean more than 30 times. She died of
malaria in her own Columbus Hospital in Chicago. At her canonization on
July 7, 1946, Pius XII said, "Although her constitution was very frail,
her spirit was endowed with such singular strength that, knowing the
will of God in her regard, she permitted nothing to impede her from
accomplishing what seemed beyond the strength of a
woman." (AmericanCatholic.org)
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Scripture today: Wisdom 2:23–3:9;
Psalm 34:2-3, 16-17, 18-19; Luke 17:7-10
Jesus said to the Apostles: “Who among you would say to your servant
who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come
here immediately and take your place at table’? Would he not rather say
to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on
me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished’? Is
he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So
should it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded,
say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged
to do.’”(Luke 17:7-10)
There are various keys or starting points to the understanding of man
and of oneself, and of a truly human life. One can start with the sheer
fact of one’s existence and develop one’s thought from there. Why isn’t
there simply nothing, or rather, why is it that I now exist and live
and what are the implications of this for me? I exist and I continue to
exist when there is no intrinsic need for me to do so. I am obviously
radically transient in my very being and there is no reason why at any
particular instant I need continue to enjoy being at all. The same can
be said of the world as a whole. Yes, one thing in the universe motors
the other, but not in the sense of providing their very being. It
points to a Sustainer who is beyond but ever so near. Another starting
point might be the fact of order. Things are not radically chaotic and
at the whim of chance. There is not just a vast sea of flux that is
somehow just there. Rather order and rationality pervade even to the
minutest elements, even though there is enough disorder and consequent
suffering to pose the problem of what must have happened to spoil an
otherwise exceedingly grand and beautiful world. Another key or
starting point, I would suggest, is the fact of duty. We sense that
there is continually before us a great phenomenon of moral obligation
that just will never go away. It summons us to respond in a spirit of
loving obedience and if we do not fulfil our duty our conscience will
continually reprove us and never leave us in peace. The whole of
mankind is profoundly aware of duty and the fact of it is passed on
from one generation to the next as its most important heritage. If a
society or family or group fails to insist on the fulfilment of duty
then it stands self-condemned. A nation’s life pivots around duty and
whether one believes in God or not all will accept the great reality of
duty even if it is everywhere contested what those duties are.
Not only is the centrality of duty accessible to any man or woman but
its importance is a feature of most religions. In the case of revealed
religion the place of duty is central. So important is duty in a
religious life that Cardinal Newman once wrote that authority and
obedience (to God) is of the very essence of religion. There are some
who would respond to such a statement by saying that revealed religion
is all about love, not authority and obedience. But we are speaking
here of the recognition of the authority of God and of obedience to his
commands. That is to say, true religion involves the fulfilment of our
duties to God, but in a spirit of love as would a child obey his
father. Our Lord once said that, if you love me you will keep my
commandments. This is to say that the test of love is the fulfilment of
our duty. Our Lord was once asked what is the greatest commandment of
the Law and he replied that it is to love God with all our strength and
our neighbour as ourself. But this is to be manifested and nourished by
obedience to the commands of God. For this reason he gave us the Ten
Commandments and Christ gave us the Beatitudes. Our Lord came with the
mission to do the will of the one who sent him, and he fulfilled this
duty. In our Gospel today our Lord refers to duty. The entire passage
is worth repeating: “Who among you would say to your servant who has
just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here
immediately and take your place at table’? Would he not rather say to
him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me
while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished’? Is he
grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So should
it be with you. When you have done all you have been commanded, say,
‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to
do.’”(Luke 17:7-10)
The Church teaches that the perfection of man consists in the perfect
and heroic fulfilment of his duties of state out of love for God. Man
has been given his life to fulfil with love the duties given to him by
God his Father. Christ came to break the power of sin in us and by the
gift of his grace to make a life of obedience to our God-given duty
possible. Let us, following daily in the footsteps of Christ, place the
recognition and fulfilment of our duty at the centre of all our days.
(E.J.Tyler)
Examine yourself: slowly, courageously. Is it not true that your bad
humour and your gloominess, both without cause — without apparent cause
— are due to your lack of determination in breaking the subtle but real
snares laid for you — cunningly and attractively — by your
concupiscence?
(The Way, no.237)
Why is prayer a “battle”?
Prayer is a gift of grace but it always presupposes a determined
response on our part because those who pray “battle” against
themselves, their surroundings, and especially the Tempter who does all
he can to turn them away from prayer. The battle of prayer is
inseparable from progress in the spiritual life. We pray as we live
because we live as we pray. (CCC 2725)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.572)
(November 14) SAINT GERTRUDE Abbess of Eisleben (1264-1334)
Saint
Gertrude of Eisleben is the most celebrated of several Saints of the same name,
and for this reason the ancient authors named her Gertrude the Great. She was
born in the year 1264 of a noble Saxon family, and placed at the age of five for
education with the Benedictines of Helfta. She dwelt there
as a simple
religious, very mistrustful of herself, under the direction of an Abbess having
the same name as herself. The Abbess’ sister was Saint Mechtilde of Hackeborn;
and she was the mistress and friend of the young Saint Gertrude, who consulted
her excellent teacher whenever she was tempted by vain and useless thoughts, or
troubled by doubts suggested by the ancient enemy.
Saint Gertrude learned Latin in her youth, as in those days was customary for
persons of her sex who consecrated themselves to God, and she wrote Latin with
unusual elegance and force. She also had an uncommon knowledge of Holy Scripture
and of all the branches of learning having religion as their object; but one day
Our Lord reproached her with having too great a taste for her studies.
Afterwards she could find in them nothing but bitterness; but soon Our Lord came
to instruct her Himself. For many years she never lost His amiable Presence,
save for eleven days when He decided to test her fidelity. Prayer and
contemplation were her principal exercise, and to those she consecrated the
greater part of her time.
Zeal for the salvation of souls was ardent in the heart of Gertrude. Thinking of
the souls of sinners, she would shed torrents of tears at the foot of the cross
and before the Blessed Sacrament. She especially loved to meditate on the
Passion and the Eucharist, and at those times, too, could not restrain the tears
that flowed in abundance from her eyes. When she spoke of Jesus Christ and His
mysteries, she ravished those who heard her. One day while in church the Sisters
were singing, I have seen the Lord face to face, Saint Gertrude beheld what
appeared to be the divine Face, brilliant in beauty; His eyes pierced her heart
and filled her soul and flesh with inexpressible delights. Divine love, ever the
unique principle of her affections and her actions, was the principle by which
she was crucified to the world and all its vanities.
She was the object of a great number of extraordinary graces; Jesus Christ
engraved His wounds in the heart of His holy spouse, placed rings on her
fingers, presented Himself to her in the company of His Mother, and in her
spirit acted as though He had exchanged hearts with her. All these astonishing
graces only developed her love for suffering. It was impossible for her to live
without some kind of pain; the time she spent without suffering seemed to her to
be wasted.
During the long illness of five months from which she would die, she gave not
the slightest sign of impatience or sadness; her joy, on the contrary, increased
with her pains. When the day of her death arrived in 1334, she saw the Most
Blessed Virgin descend from heaven to assist her, and one of her Sisters
perceived her soul going straight to the Heart of Jesus, which opened to receive
it. Saint Gertrude is one of the great mystics of the Church; the book of her
Revelations, recorded out of obedience, remains celebrated. In it she traces in
words of indescribable beauty the intimate converse of her soul with Jesus and
Mary. She was gentle to all, most gentle to sinners; filled with devotion to the
Saints of God, to the souls in purgatory, and above all to the Passion of Our
Lord and to His Sacred Heart. (magnificat.ca)
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Scripture today: Wisdom 6:1-11; Psalm 82:3-4, 6-7; Luke 17:11-19
As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he travelled through Samaria and
Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a
distance from him and raised their voice, saying, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on
us!” And when he saw them, he said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” As they
were going they were cleansed. And one of them, realizing he had been healed,
returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and
thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, “Ten were cleansed, were
they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give
thanks to God?” Then he said to him, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved
you.”(Luke 17:11-19)
In his great account of the history of his religious convictions (his
Apologia
pro Vita Sua, 1864) Cardinal Newman speaks with deep pathos of the fact of evil
and suffering in the world. He is profoundly impressed with its scale and were
it not for other reasons that convince him beyond doubt of the being of God, the
evil in the world would take him, he writes, into agnosticism. For this reason
it is not difficult to put one’s finger on at least one fundamental source and
prompt for the religious sense in mankind. It is his need for help and salvation
in one sense or another. There are so many threatening forces in the life of man
that he instinctively cries out for the assistance of the higher powers that he
is sure are at hand, and which he has been taught are indeed powerful. He asks
that the powers above have pity on him. This prayer is instinctive, heartfelt
and ever recurrent: “Have pity on us!” is the cry of man as he gazes on the
heavens from the midst of his hunger, his sickness, his loneliness and his
plight caused by so many hostile factors. It is a further question as to whether
his unaided conception and image of that to which he is appealing has reality
and substance, but there can be no doubt as to man’s need of God and his aid.
Man knows he needs to be saved, however he might visualize this salvation and
however he might imagine the Source of this salvation. Our Gospel today presents
us with ten lepers whom we might take as a symbol of man afflicted with the
various sufferings that prompt him to appeal to the Above for mercy. If we were
to search for a key to the understanding of human history, this image of the ten
lepers crying out, “Have pity on us!” surely expresses at least one of the keys.
We all need the mercy of God. Now, all too often we are blind as to sin. While
it is true that man can know quite well that he is a sinner to the core of his
fallen nature, nevertheless he is prone to be blind to his sinfulness and alive
only to his material, emotional and intellectual misery.
The same Cardinal Newman to whom I referred stated in many of his sermons that
we do not need the revelation of God to appreciate that we are sinners in need
of his salvation. This is true because our sinfulness is an evident fact of
experience. However, in practice it is a little like the knowledge of the one
true God. Theoretically we have the wherewithal to arrive at a knowledge of the
one Creator of the world, but due to the fallen condition of man the vast
majority of us would scarcely come to know him by our unaided efforts. We would
drift into or be led into polytheism or some other deformed religious system or
agnosticism or practical atheism. So too with the knowledge of our sinfulness
and our need for salvation from sin. We tend to lack the sense of sin. It is one
of the distinctive features of revealed religion that it is revealed to man that
he is a sinner and that the forgiveness of sin is brought to him by and in
Christ. The lepers of our Gospel passage today appealed to Christ for mercy — and they were, of course, thinking of their terrible leprosy. God encourages man
to appeal to him for mercy on any number of fronts — mercy in respect to his
sicknesses, his hunger, his state of political or social or economic oppression,
whatever it might be. That is, we need God for our daily material bread. But
Christ’s miracles of healing the sick such as our ten lepers, raising the dead
and feeding the hungry crowds, were, as St John expresses it in his Gospel,
“signs”. They were signs of a much more important liberation, that from sin. God
sent his Son to save the world from sin and to reconcile all to himself through
the gift of the Holy Spirit and his grace. Christ is the redeemer of the world
especially in respect to sin, of which the leprosy in our passage today is an
image. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The prayer of
the lepers ought be our daily prayer especially in respect to the leprosy of
sin. Sin is our fundamental plight, our basic illness, the root cause of
corruption.
The Church has long taken the prayer of the ten lepers “Eleeson hemas!” (Have
pity on us!) and used that prayer at the beginning of the Mass to express our
consciousness of sin and need for God’s pardon. Three times all together we
state, Lord, have mercy! We together, like the ten crying out together, ask for
pardon and restoration to grace. We appeal to Christ for the gift of being
redeemed and sanctified. Let us make the prayer of the lepers our life-long
prayer.
(E.J.Tyler)
Are there objections to prayer?
Along with erroneous notions of prayer, many think they do not have the time to
pray or that praying is useless. Those who pray can be discouraged in the face
of difficulties and apparent lack of success. Humility, trust and perseverance
are necessary to overcome these obstacles.
(CCC 2726-2728, 2752-2753)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.573)
(November 15) St. Albert the Great (1206-1280)
Albert the Great was a 13th-century German Dominican who influenced
decisively the stance of the Church toward Aristotelian philosophy brought
to Europe by the spread of Islam. Students of philosophy know him as the
master of Thomas Aquinas. Albert’s attempt to understand Aristotle’s
writings established the climate in which Thomas Aquinas developed his
synthesis of Greek wisdom and Christian theology. But Albert deserves
recognition on his own merits as a curious, honest and diligent scholar. He
was the eldest son of a powerful and wealthy German lord of military rank.
He was educated in the liberal arts. Despite fierce family opposition, he
entered the Dominican novitiate. His boundless interests prompted him to
write a compendium of all knowledge: natural science, logic, rhetoric,
mathematics, astronomy, ethics, economics, politics and metaphysics. His
explanation of learning took 20 years to complete. "Our intention," he said,
"is to make all the aforesaid parts of knowledge intelligible to the Latins."
He achieved his goal while serving as an educator at Paris and Cologne, as
Dominican provincial and even as bishop of Regensburg for a time. He
defended the mendicant orders and preached the Crusade in Germany and
Bohemia. Albert, a Doctor of the Church, is the patron of scientists and
philosophers.
An information glut faces us Christians today in all branches of learning.
One needs only to read current Catholic periodicals to experience the varied
reactions to the findings of the social sciences, for example, in regard to
Christian institutions, Christian life-styles and Christian theology.
Ultimately, in canonizing Albert, the Church seems to point to his openness
to truth, wherever it may be found, as his claim to holiness. His
characteristic curiosity prompted Albert to mine deeply for wisdom within a
philosophy his Church warmed to with great difficulty. "There are some who
desire knowledge merely for its own sake; and that is shameful curiosity.
And there are others who desire to know, in order that they may themselves
be known; and that is vanity, disgraceful too. Others again desire knowledge
in order to acquire money or preferment by it; that too is a discreditable
quest. But there are also some who desire knowledge, that they may build up
the souls of others with it; and that is charity. Others, again, desire it
that they may themselves be built up thereby; and that is prudence. Of all
these types, only the last two put knowledge to the right use" (St. Bernard,
"Sermon on the Canticle of Canticles").(AmericanCatholic.org)
Being asked by the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God would come, he said
in answer: "The kingdom of God is not observed in its coming. They shall not
say, 'Look here' or 'look there,' For lo, the kingdom of God is within you."
And he said to his disciples: The days will come, when you will want to see
one day of the Son of man; and you will not see it. And they will say to
you: Look here, and look there. Do not go, nor follow them. For as the
lightening that lights up the sky shines all across the heavens, so will the
Son of man be in his day. But first he must suffer many things, and be
rejected by this generation.(Luke 17:20-25)
I once attended an academic talk by a specialist in Zoroastrianism
— and I
think the lecturer was himself a Zoroastrian. His talk was on the nature of
religion and he finally came down to defining the practice of religion in
terms of technology. Religion was a technology, that is to say a way of
achieving tangible results. Furthermore, the results that are sought are
usually material. He reviewed many indigenous and world religions and
showed, as he thought, that what was at work in their practice was the use
of certain techniques to gain various benefits from the powers above. Now,
of course this is what any religion can in effect become but it is another
matter to define religion in these terms. His notion was a caricature of the
nature of religion. But it leads on to a further point already mentioned.
That point is that more often than not what the practitioners of a religion
hope to gain is a material benefit. It is usually in order to be better off
in this world that man has recourse to religion, and when he is materially
content or when he does not think that his lot in this world will be better
as a result of religious practice, he does not bother with the gods or a
higher power. This is understandable, and in any case there is no doubt that
the practice of religion brings with it blessings here and now and not
merely in the Hereafter. But those blessings of the here and now are not
merely material. The Gospels are clear that our Lord had to deal with the
expectation that God’s Kingdom would be a grand temporal regime filled with
material blessings. In our Gospel passage today our Lord is asked by the
Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come and they must have been
thinking in material and temporal terms because our Lord replied, “The
coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce,
‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is
among you.”
That great and eternal Kingdom promised in the Scriptures has come in the
person of Jesus Christ. He is the blessing of religion. When the Angel
Gabriel appeared before the Virgin Mary to obtain her consent to be the
mother of the Messiah, he said of him that his Kingdom would have no end.
When he was born, the angels in the heavens announced to the shepherds that
the Messiah had been born for them, Christ the Lord. The wise men came from
the East seeking the infant King whose star had appeared and which they were
following. At the beginning of his public ministry our Lord announced that
the Kingdom of God was near, and in our Gospel passage he tells the
Pharisees that the Kingdom of God was already among them. “Behold, the
Kingdom of God is among you,” he told them. This Kingdom is the lordship and
dominion of God and it is present in all its fullness in the person of Jesus
Christ. It is extended every time a person approaches Christ and places his
faith in him and gives to him the allegiance of his hope and his love. It is
confirmed by the gift of his Holy Spirit to that person, a gift which unites
that person to the living Jesus and gives to him a share in the life of God.
Where Christ is there is the Kingdom of God. Where is Christ now? Christ is
present in his fullness at the right hand of the Father interceding for us,
and he is present in his fullness also in his body the Church, of which he is
the living Head and Spouse. While speaking to the Pharisees in our Gospel
passage today (Luke 17:20-25) our Lord had about the Twelve who were the foundation stones
of his Church. On the day he rose from the dead he gave to the Eleven his
gift of the Holy Spirit, sending them out just as he had been sent by the
Father. Then at Pentecost the Holy Spirit was sent to the Church gathered in
the Upper Room, and with that the Church was publicly born. The Church was
entrusted with the person of Christ, and in him the promised Kingdom. The
Kingdom of God is among you because the Church is among you.
“The Kingdom of God is among you.” This is so because Christ is among us,
and he is among us because of the presence and ministry of the Church which
he founded on the Apostles and on Peter the visible Rock. What is the
“benefit” of revealed religion both here and now and hereafter? The benefit
is to possess the person of Christ. As St Paul writes, in him we have every
heavenly blessing. For me, St Paul writes again, life is Christ. Let us
understand well that Christ and his grace is the motive and life of our
religion.
(E.J.Tyler)
What are the difficulties in prayer?
Distraction is a habitual difficulty in our prayer. It takes our attention
away from God and can also reveal what we are attached to. Our heart
therefore must humbly turn to the Lord. Prayer is often affected by dryness.
Overcoming this difficulty allows us to cling to the Lord in faith, even
without any feeling of consolation. Acedia is a form of spiritual laziness
due to relaxed vigilance and a lack of custody of the heart. (CCC 2729-2733,
2754-2755)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.574)
(November 16) St. Margaret of Scotland (1050?-1093)
Margaret of Scotland was a truly liberated woman in the sense that she was
free to be herself. For her, that meant freedom to love God and serve
others. Margaret was not Scottish by birth. She was the daughter of Princess
Agatha of Hungary and the Anglo-Saxon Prince Edward Atheling. She spent much
of her youth in the court of her great-uncle, the English king, Edward the
Confessor. Her family fled from William the Conqueror and was shipwrecked
off the coast of Scotland. King Malcolm befriended them and was captivated
by the beautiful, gracious Margaret. They were married at the castle of
Dunfermline in 1070. Malcolm was good-hearted, but rough and uncultured, as
was his country. Because of Malcolm’s love for Margaret, she was able to
soften his temper, polish his manners and help him become a virtuous king.
He left all domestic affairs to her and often consulted her in state
matters. Margaret tried to improve her adopted country by promoting the arts
and education. For religious reform, she instigated synods and was present
for the discussions which tried to correct religious abuses common among
priests and others, such as simony, usury and incestuous marriages. With her
husband, she founded several churches. Margaret was not only a queen, but a
mother. She and Malcolm had six sons and two daughters. Margaret personally
supervised their religious instruction and their other studies. Although she
was very much caught up in the affairs of the household and country, she
remained detached from the world. Her private life was austere. She had
certain times for prayer and reading Scripture. She ate sparingly and slept
little in order to have time for devotions. She and Malcolm kept two Lents,
one before Easter and one before Christmas. During these times she always
rose at midnight for Mass. On the way home she would wash the feet of six
poor persons and give them alms. She was always surrounded by beggars in
public and never refused them. It is recorded that she never sat down to eat
without first feeding nine orphans and 24 adults. In 1093, King William
Rufus made a surprise attack on Alnwick castle. King Malcolm and his oldest
son, Edward, were killed. Margaret, already on her deathbed, died four days
after her husband.
There are two ways to be charitable: the "clean way" and the "messy
way." The "clean way" is to give money or clothing to organizations
that serve the poor. The "messy way" is dirtying your own hands in
personal service to the poor. Margaret's outstanding virtue was her
love of the poor. Although very generous with material gifts, Margaret
also visited the sick and nursed them with her own hands. She and her
husband served orphans and the poor on their knees during Advent and
Lent. Like Christ, she was charitable the "messy way." "When [Margaret]
spoke, her conversation was with the salt of wisdom. When she was
silent, her silence was filled with good thoughts. So thoroughly did
her outward bearing correspond with the staidness of her character that
it seemed as if she has been born the pattern of a virtuous life"
(Turgot, St. Margaret's
confessor).(AmericanCatholic.org)
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video
Scripture today: Wisdom 13:1-9; Psalm
19:2-3, 4-5ab; Luke 17:26-37
And as it came to pass in the days
of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They ate and
drank, they married wives, and were given in marriage, until the day that
Noe entered into the ark: and the flood came and destroyed them all.
Likewise in the days of Lot: they ate and drank, they bought and sold, they
planted and built. And in the day that Lot left Sodom it rained fire and
brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the
day when the Son of man shall be revealed. In that hour, he that is on the
housetop with his goods in the house, let him not go down to take them away,
and he that is in the field in like manner, let him not return back.
Remember Lot's wife. Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it:
and whosoever shall lose it shall preserve it. I say to you: on that night
there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other
shall be left. Two women shall be grinding together: the one shall be taken,
and the other shall be left. Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be
taken, and the other shall be left. In reply they said to him, where, Lord?
Ho said to them: Wherever the body is, there will the eagles also gather.(Luke 17:26-37)
When it comes to the reading of
Sacred Scripture, I would recommend that two practices be in place. These
two practices could be linked, or conducted separately. Firstly there ought
be a simple daily reading of the Scriptures, especially of the Gospels for
they are the high point of the word of God. This daily spiritual
reading ought be continuous, perhaps the best part of a chapter each day
with Christ as the figure constantly before the reader. If one is reading
the Old Testament the living figure of Christ still ought be constantly
before the reader because the Christian knows that Christ is the key to the
Old Testament. Of course, even more so is he the key in any reading of the
New Testament. But then apart from what we might call this daily spiritual
reading, I would suggest that there be some brief time during which one
simply prays over a short passage of the Gospel in the presence of the
unseen Jesus. This should be considered straight prayer time. For this I
would especially recommend the Gospel passage of the Mass of the day, and
spending the time in the presence of the living unseen Jesus with that
passage of the day to assist. Accordingly I would suggest that a person
consider purchasing a daily Missal so as to have these readings of the day
constantly at hand. One of the advantages of drawing constantly in this way
on the Church’s liturgy to nourish one’s spiritual life is that the
Scriptures gradually enter into the life-blood of one’s daily prayer. Yes,
my suggestion to each serious Christian is that he or she every day spend
several minutes in the spiritual reading of Scripture, especially the
Gospels, and that he also spend several minutes in explicitly prayerful
contemplation of Christ as he is presented in a particular Gospel passage — and my suggestion is that it be the Gospel passage of the Mass for that
weekday. One result — among many — of all this is that hitherto unsuspected
emphases in Christ’s teachings will be noticed and will come alive.
In respect to noticing emphases in
Christ’s teachings, our Gospel passage today is a case in point. Over the
years I have often heard it said that the God of the Old Testament is a God
of judgment and punishment while the God of the New is a God of kindness and
forgiveness. But read the Gospels through and try to count the number of
times that our Lord refers explicitly to the doom of eternal punishment. It
is clearly on our Lord’s mind constantly and it is for this that he has died
on the Cross — to save mankind from the fires of hell. In our Gospel passage
today our Lord refers back to the Old Testament and to the punishment
visited by God on sin. So it will be, he says, when the Son of Man comes.
“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man;
they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day
that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
Similarly, as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating, drinking, buying,
selling, planting, building; on the day when Lot left Sodom, fire and
brimstone rained from the sky to destroy them all. So it will be on the day
the Son of Man is revealed.” (Luke 17:26-37).
One of the results of an age of scepticism as to religious dogma is that
there can be little religious fear, and this has to be said to be one of the
marks of modern man. Characteristically he has little religious fear. There
are many things he fears, but generally they are the menacing things of this
world such as war, sickness, disease, climate change, economic insecurity.
He does not greatly fear God and the Judgment of God on sin. Whereas
throughout the Gospels our Lord exhorts his listeners to fear God and his
judgment. Indeed, he says elsewhere that we are not to fear those who kill
the body but can do little more. The one we are to fear is him who has the
power to cast into hell. The good news is that Christ has died for our sins
and if we live and die in him we shall rise with him.
St Jerome once wrote that ignorance
of the Scriptures involves ignorance of Christ. Of course this has to be
interpreted broadly because there are various ways of growing in a knowledge
of the Christ of the Gospels — such as by an assiduous praying of the
Rosary. Nevertheless the Scriptures are a precious gift of the Holy Spirit
to all of Christ’s faithful. They come to the faithful through the medium of
the Church who guides her children in interpreting its true sense. By a
daily reading of and praying over the Gospel our knowledge of Christ and his
teaching will take us to heaven.
(E.J.Tyler)
How may we strengthen our filial trust?
Filial trust is tested when we think we are not heard. We must therefore ask
ourselves if we think God is truly a Father whose will we seek to fulfill,
or simply a means to obtain what we want. If our prayer is united to that of
Jesus, we know that he gives us much more than this or that gift. We receive
the Holy Spirit who transforms our heart. (CCC 2734-2741, 2756)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.575)
(November 17) Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, religious, widow (1207-1231)
Elizabeth was the daughter of the just and pious Andrew II, king of Hungary,
the niece of Saint Hedwig, and the sister of the virtuous Bela IV, king of
Hungary, who became the father of Saint Cunegundes and
of Saint Margaret of
Hungary, a Dominican nun. Another of her brothers was Coloman, King of
Galicia and prince of Russia, who led an angelic life amid the multiple
affairs of the world and the troubles of war.
She was betrothed in infancy to Louis, Landgrave of Thuringia, and brought
up from the age of four in his father’s court. Never could she bear to adopt
the ornaments of the court for her own usage, and she took pleasure only in
prayer. She would remove her royal crown when she entered the church, saying
she was in the presence of the Saviour who wore a crown of thorns. As she
grew older, she employed the jewels offered her for the benefit of the poor.
Not content with receiving numbers of them daily in her palace, and
relieving all in distress, she built several hospitals, where she herself
served the sick, bathing them, feeding them, dressing their wounds and
ulcers. The relatives of her fiancé tried to prevent the marriage, saying
she was fit only for a cloister; but the young prince said he would not
accept gold in the quantity of a nearby mountain, if it were offered him to
abandon his resolution to marry Elizabeth.
Once as she was carrying in the folds of her mantle some provisions for the
poor, she met her husband returning from the hunt. Astonished to see her
bending under the weight of her burden, he opened the mantle and found in it
nothing but beautiful red and white roses, though it was not the season for
flowers. He told her to continue on her way, and took one of the marvellous
roses, which he conserved all his life. She never ceased to edify him in all
of her works. One of her twelve excellent Christian maxims, by which she
regulated all her conduct was, “Often recall that you are the work of the
hands of God and act accordingly, in such a way as to be eternally with
Him.”
When her pious young husband died in Sicily on his way to a Crusade with the
Emperor Frederick, she was cruelly driven from her palace by her
brother-in-law. Those whom she had aided showed nothing but coldness for
her; God was to purify His Saint by harsh tribulations. She was forced to
wander through the streets with her little children, a prey to hunger and
cold. The bishop of Bamberg, her maternal uncle, finally forced the cruel
prince to ask pardon for his ill treatment of her, but she voluntarily
renounced the grandeurs of the world, and went to live in a small house she
had prepared in the city of Marburgh. There she practised the greatest
austerities. She welcomed all her sufferings, and continued to be the mother
of the poor, distributing all of the heritage eventually conceded to her,
and converting many by her holy life. She died in 1231, at the age of
twenty-four. (magnificat.ca)
And he told a parable to them that we ought always to pray, and not to lose
heart, saying: There was a judge in a certain city, who feared not God, nor
regarded man. There was a certain widow in that city, and she came to him,
saying: Give justice to me against my adversary. And for a long time he
refused. But afterwards he said to himself: Although I fear not God, nor
regard man, yet because this widow is troublesome to me, I will accord her
her rights, lest keep coming and wearing me with all this. And the Lord
said: Hear what the unjust judge said. And will not God support his chosen
ones who cry to him day and night: and will he be slow in their regard? I
say to you, that he will quickly vindicate them. But yet when the Son of man
comes will he find faith on earth?(Luke 18:1-8)
When we speak of a religion as “a faith” we are implying that it is just
that: namely, a faith in something or Someone and not the direct sight of
that object or Person. If it is a faith that is profound and enduring, this
by implication means that it endures despite what is actually seen. When due
to his religious faith the good man lives according to the commandments of
God his obedience to those commandments proves the authenticity of his
faith. The test of his faith has been his obedience to the commands of God.
His faith is tested the more when the circumstances of his life go
absolutely against his comfort and convenience. These adverse circumstances
from which he suffers offer even less evidence of the fact and presence of
the unseen God in whom he believes. If his faith endures in the midst of
these circumstances, that faith is proved the more. The same is to be said
of prayer. If there is no prayer in one’s life, what is the evidence of
one’s faith? There is none. Religious faith will manifest itself in prayer,
and a life of faith will show itself in a life of prayer. So too,
circumstances that seem contrary to the object of one’s prayers will prove
the reality of prayer in one’s life. By this I mean that if a truly
religious person prays that his adverse circumstances will change, the
apparent lack of this change will test both his faith and his prayer. A
religious person who in a harshly repressive regime (say, communist or
radical Islamist) is imprisoned and subjected to painful circumstances prays
to God for help and relief. Nothing seems to change. He gives up on prayer
or, alternatively, he prays the more that God’s will be done. It is evident
from the nature of the case and from general experience that the recurrent
problem with prayer is that often prayer does not seem to be answered. At
least so it seems to many who pray and to many who observe. What is to be
said of this obvious difficulty?
Our Lord insists on the necessity of praying always and never losing heart
at the appearances. As usual he draws on analogies from real life to drive
home his point. “There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God
nor respected any human being. And a widow in that town used to come to him
and say, ‘Render a just decision for me against my adversary.’ For a long
time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, ‘While it is true
that I neither fear God nor respect any human being, because this widow
keeps bothering me I shall deliver a just decision for her lest she finally
come and strike me.’” The widow would not accept the immoral judge’s
inaction and lack of concern. She kept insisting and wearied him to the
point of desperation. He granted her the request just to get rid of her, but
as our Lord states, in prayer we are dealing with the good and holy God. He
will most surely hear our prayer, but at the proper time. Our Lord is
implying that the reason why our prayers are generally not answered is that
we give up on God and cease praying for what we need. “Will not God then
secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will
he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is
done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on
earth?” (Luke 18:1-8). The test of faith is perseverance in prayer, and
specifically the prayer of petition. The Pope has recently stated that we
must pray constantly for world peace. How many do this and do it
persistently? I venture to suggest that a great number would instinctively
think that such prayer is largely a waste of time, that peace if it comes
will come anyway and if it does not then our prayers would be of no use in
the process. But no, the larger the task the more important is the
persistent prayer of those with faith. Let us place ourselves daily in the
presence of God and ask ourselves what it is that we ought be praying for — what does God want to see in my life and in the world, and what, therefore
does he wish me to pray for. That is what I ought pray for persistently.
Let us take our Lord’s words as immensely important and consoling. He
assures us that God will answer our prayers if we pray with faith and
persistence. We must not give up on prayer and on God simply because he
seems to delay. His delay may in fact be the opposite, speed. When we look
back in the future we may be surprised how quickly and completely our
prayers were heard. Let us seek to know what God wants us to pray for, and
then let us pray persistently for it.
(E.J.Tyler)
Your particular examination should be directed towards the acquisition of a
definite virtue or the rooting out of your predominant defect.
(The Way, no.241)
Is it possible to pray always?
Praying is always possible because the time of the Christian is the time of
the risen Christ who remains “with us always” (Matthew 28:20). Prayer and
Christian life are therefore inseparable:
(CCC 2742-2745, 2757)
“It is possible to offer frequent and fervent prayer even at the market
place or strolling alone. It is possible also in your place of business,
while buying or selling, or even while cooking.” (Saint John Chrysostom)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.576)
Prayers this week:
The Lord says, my plans
for you are peace and not disaster; when
you call to me, I will listen to you, and I will bring you back to the
place from which I exiled you. Father of
all that is good, keep us faithful in serving you, for to serve you is our
lasting joy.
We ask this through
our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(November 18) Dedication of St. Peter and Paul St. Peter’s
is probably the most famous church in Christendom. Massive in
scale and a veritable museum of art and architecture, it began on a much
humbler scale. Vatican Hill was a simple cemetery where believers gathered
at St. Peter’s tomb to pray. In 319 Constantine built on the site a basilica
that stood for more than a thousand years until, despite numerous
restorations, it threatened to collapse. In 1506 Pope Julius II ordered it
razed and reconstructed, but the new basilica was not completed and
dedicated for more than two centuries. St. Paul’s Outside the Walls stands near the Abaazia delle Tre Fontane,
where St. Paul is believed to have been beheaded. The largest church in Rome
until St. Peter’s was rebuilt, the basilica also rises over the traditional
site of its namesake’s grave. The most recent edifice was constructed after
a fire in 1823. The first basilica was also Constantine’s doing.
Constantine’s building projects enticed the first of a centuries-long parade
of pilgrims to Rome. From the time the basilicas were first built until the
empire crumbled under “barbarian” invasions, the two churches, although
miles apart, were linked by a roofed colonnade of marble columns.
Peter, the rough fisherman whom Jesus named the rock on which the Church is
built, and the educated Paul, reformed persecutor of Christians, Roman
citizen and missionary to the Gentiles, are the original odd couple. The
major similarity in their faith-journeys is the journey’s end: Both,
according to tradition, died a martyr’s death in Rome—Peter on a cross and
Paul beneath the sword. Their combined gifts shaped the early Church and
believers have prayed at their tombs from the earliest days. “It is
extraordinarily interesting that Roman pilgrimage began at an…early time.
Pilgrims did not wait for the Peace of the Church [Constantine’s edict of
toleration] before they visited the tombs of the Apostles. They went to Rome
a century before there were any public churches and when the Church was
confined to the tituli [private homes] and the catacombs. The two great
pilgrimage sites were exactly as today—the tombs, or memorials, of St. Peter
upon the Vatican Hill and the tomb of St. Paul off the Ostian Way” (H.V.
Morton, This Is Rome). (AmericanCatholic.org)
Some were saying of the temple that it was adorned with goodly stones
and gifts, and he said:
"These things which you see, the days will come in which there shall not be
left a stone upon a stone that shall not be thrown down." And they asked him:
"Master, when shall these things be, and what will be the sign when
they will begin to happen?" He said, "Take heed you be not seduced;
for many will come in my name, saying, I am he; and the time is at hand. Do
not go after them. And when you hear of wars and seditions,
be not terrified. These things must first come to pass; but the end is not
yet now." Then he said to them, "Nation will rise against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom. And there will be great earthquakes in various
places, and pestilences, and famines, and terrors from heaven; and there
will be great signs. But before all these things, they will lay their hands
upon you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and into
prisons, dragging you before kings and governors, for my name's sake. And
this will happen to you for the purposes of testimony. Lay it up therefore into your hearts,
not to meditate before how to answer. For I will give you a mouth and
wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to resist and gainsay.
And you will be betrayed by your parents and brethren, and kinsmen and
friends; and some of you they will put to death. And you will be hated by
all men for my name's sake. But not a hair of your head will perish. In
your endurance you will possess your souls.(Luke 21:5-19)
I remember attending a talk given many years ago by the chief editor of a
leading Sydney newspaper, and he made the remark that the commodity that
newspapers sell is the news. News is interesting, it excites and fills
people’s minds, and so is worthy of purchase. As we think of the news of
nations warring or in difficulties (and most of the news is about
difficulties and causes of anxiety) we are led to think of the course of
history. Nations rise and have their span of influence and then gradually or
suddenly decline. There are achievements and failures, joys and sorrows,
wars and times of relative peace. A person who takes an interest in the
course of history may well ask himself what is the meaning of it. What is
basically happening in history and is there a pattern? Is the course of
history pointing to anything that can be prepared for? What is happening in
our world now, and where is it heading? These are some of the questions that
can occur to a person who is observing the affairs of men. I would suggest
that it is very difficult to answer these questions just from ordinary
rational reflection. The best way to view the course of history is to
determine first the fundamental vantage point to be adopted. If you want to
gain a good view of things you select a very good vantage point. You go up a
particular hill or mountain and take your stand from there and from that
perspective you look at the terrain. So too in human affairs. Now, our best
vantage point is that of God and his revelation, which is to say that of
Christ. How did Christ view human history? Our Gospel passage today
(Luke 21:5-19)suggests
to us something of his divine vantage point. Many of the great and beautiful
things made by human hands, worthy as they are, will not last. The Temple
may be taken as an instance of this. “While some people were speaking about
how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings, Jesus
said, ‘All that you see here– the days will come when there will not be left
a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down’."
What then is the enduring thing in human history? It is Jesus Christ, the
same yesterday, today and forever. He is the one on whom each of us can base
our lives with utter security and he is the hope of the world — not this or
that power, country or theory. It is he to whom we ought bear witness and to
whom we ought dedicate our energies with full love and loyalty. “Then they
asked him, ‘Teacher, when will this happen? And what sign will there be when
all these things are about to happen?’ He answered, ‘See that you not be
deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, 'I am he,’ and 'The time
has come.’ Do not follow them!” He is worth living for, suffering for and
dying for. It is to him that we ought bear witness and the effects of that
witness will be truly enduring. If we want to spend our lives in ways that
have enduring value, then it is for Christ that we ought spend them. No
matter what it may cost, it will be worth it. In respect to this our Lord
goes on to say, “I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your
adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute. You will even be handed
over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and they will put some of
you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name, but not a hair on
your head will be destroyed. By your perseverance you will secure your
lives." (Luke 21:5-19). The centrepiece of human history is the person of
Jesus Christ, and the purpose of human history is that he be accepted as the
Lord. This is the meaning of human history, and the more the nations ignore
or refuse the lordship of Jesus Christ then the more does history sink into
futility and meaninglessness. The more Jesus Christ is acclaimed as Lord,
the more does human history and the concourse of mankind attain its true
end. It is to this that Christ’s faithful must every day bear witness by
word and deed, by holy lives lived out in loving acknowledgement that Christ
is Lord, and that his teaching is the guide of all of human life.
There is one great future event that is coming. That is one thing we do know
amid all the uncertainties of human history. It is that Christ will come
again. He will come again to us individually at our death and he will come
again at the very end of human history to judge the living and the dead. We
each of us and all of us together are called so to live as to be ready for
his coming. Let us make sure that every day counts in this waiting. We must
make sure that when the master comes he finds us waiting and fully ready.
(E.J.Tyler)
What I owe to God as a Christian! My failure to respond to God's grace, in
the face of that debt, has made me weep with sorrow; with Love-sorrow. Mea
culpa!
It is good that you acknowledge your debts; but don't forget how they are
paid: with tears... and with deeds.
(The Way, no.242)
What is the prayer of the Hour of Jesus?
It is called the priestly prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper. Jesus, the
High Priest of the New Covenant, addresses it to his Father when the hour of
his sacrifice, the hour of his “passing over” to him is approaching. (CCC
2604, 2746-2751, 2758)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.577)
(November 19) St. Agnes of Assisi 1197-1253
Agnes was the sister of St. Clare and her first follower. When Agnes left
home two weeks after Clare’s departure, their family attempted to bring
Agnes back by force. They tried to drag her out of the monastery, but all of
a sudden her body became so heavy that several knights could not budge it.
Her uncle Monaldo tried to strike her but was temporarily paralyzed. The
knights then left Agnes and Clare in peace. Agnes matched her sister in
devotion to prayer and in willingness to endure the strict penances which
characterized their lives at San Damiano. In 1221 a group of Benedictine
nuns in Monticelli (near Florence) asked to become Poor Clares. St. Francis
sent Agnes to become abbess of that monastery. Agnes soon wrote a rather sad
letter about how much she missed Clare and the other nuns at San Damiano.
After establishing other Poor Clare monasteries in northern Italy, Agnes was
recalled to San Damiano in 1253 when Clare was dying. Agnes followed Clare
in death three months later. Agnes was canonized in 1753.
God must love irony; the world is so full of it. In 1212, many in Assisi
surely felt that Clare and Agnes were wasting their lives and were turning
their backs on the world. In reality, their lives were tremendously
life-giving, and the world has been enriched by the example of these poor
contemplatives. Charles de Foucald, founder of the Little Brothers and
Sisters of Jesus, said: "One must pass through solitude and dwell in it to
receive God’s grace. It is there that one empties oneself, that one drives
before oneself all that is not God, and that one completely empties this
little house of our soul to leave room for God alone. In doing this, do not
fear being unfaithful toward creatures. On the contrary, that is the only
way for you to serve them effectively." (Raphael Brown, Franciscan Mystic,
p.
126)(AmericanCatholic.org)
Now
it came to pass, when he drew nigh to Jericho, that a certain blind man sat
by the way side, begging. And when he heard the multitude passing by, he
asked what this meant. And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth was passing
by. And he cried out, saying: "Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me." And
they that went before, rebuked him, that he should hold his peace: but he
cried out much more: "Son of David, have mercy on me." And Jesus standing,
commanded him to be brought to him. And when he was near, he asked him,
saying: "What do you want me to do for you?" He said: "Lord, that I may
see." And Jesus said to him: "Receive your sight: your faith hath made you
whole." And immediately he saw, and followed him glorifying God. And all the
people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.(Luke 18:35-43)
A favourite expression that we
repeatedly find in the Gospel of St John (and our Gospel passage of today is
from St Luke) is the term “sign”. Our Lord’s miracles are signs of something
far greater and deeper. Let us take that point and bear it in mind in
reflecting on our Gospel scene today. We are told that “as Jesus
approached Jericho a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging”. Is not
this scene a sign or symbol of God approaching man who is helpless in his
blindness and misery? The beggar is a sign of wounded man, fallen as a
result of sin. He is a sign of the world in need of redemption and God is
coming to him. In an age of scepticism as to religion and revealed doctrine
man does not consider himself to be spiritually blind and that itself is his
fundamental blindness. The great Pope Pius XII many decades ago put his
finger on the sin of the modern age when he said that it is the loss of the
sense of sin. He was saying that not only is the sense of sin lacking, not
only is modern man characteristically blind as to his sinfulness, but that
this lack is itself sinful. It is a diagnosis that had been seen by various
religious minds before him. It occurs repeatedly in the sermons of John
Henry Newman the century before. In our Gospel scene today
(Luke 18:35-43) the blind man is all too
aware of his blindness and in this he is a model for modern man. He knows he
is blind, and he is filled with hope at the approach of Jesus of Nazareth
and his hope is entirely well placed for as St Paul writes, in Jesus is the
fullness of the godhead bodily. He is the image of the unseen God, and as
our Lord said to his disciples at the last Supper, he who sees me sees the
Father. This is the one who in approaching Jericho was approaching the blind
man. The blind man hears the news and he cries out to Christ that he help
him. The scene is a sign for modern man of the response he is called to make
when hearing the proclamation of the Church that in her, in her life and
Sacraments and preaching, Christ is present and approaching.
If someone had not told the blind
man that Jesus was passing by, possibly he would have remained in his
blindness because he would not have appealed to Christ for pity and mercy.
All of Christ’s faithful, every member of the Church, has a responsibility
to the world around him to bear witness to the presence and person of Jesus
to the best of his ability. Who knows what might come of this word about
Christ! Who knows what might be the response of those who hear this word!
Look what happened as a result of the people telling the blind man that
“Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” We read that he shouted, “Jesus, Son of
David, have pity on me!” The people walking in front rebuked him, telling
him to be silent, but he kept calling out all the more, “Son of David, have
pity on me!” He knew his plight and he sensed with certainty that Jesus
could and would do for him all he needed done, if only he could make his
prayer heard. He had the faith to be persistent in his importunate prayer
despite the obstacles and discouragement presented by those around him and
his faith was abundantly rewarded. We read that “Jesus stopped and ordered
that he be brought to him; and when he came near, Jesus asked him, “What do
you want me to do for you?” He replied, “Lord, please let me see.” Jesus
told him, “Have sight; your faith has saved you.” If Jesus did that once,
could he not do it again but at a much deeper and more important level, the
level of sin and personal sanctification? What we lack, though, is faith. At
our baptism our parents present us to the Church with faith, and the touch
of Christ in the waters of the Sacrament brings the new birth which dispels
the darkness of sin. That new life must then be nourished lest darkness and
the blindness of sin gradually engulf us once again. We must do what the
blind man did and do it daily, asking Christ for mercy which is his grace,
all the while following him along the road among his disciples in the life
of the Church, glorifying God by our lives of obedience to his will.
Let us be like the blind man in his
recognition that Christ is our saviour and the hope not only of our life but
of the life of the world. Let us make our lives a constant witness to others
of the fact that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by, and that if people appeal
to him for compassion and follow him along the road of their lives, their
faith and their hope will be amply rewarded. As St Paul writes, this is the
mystery now revealed, Christ in you, your hope of glory.
(E.J.Tyler)
'He who is faithful in little things is faithful also in big things.' Words
from Saint Luke that show you — examine yourself — why you have so often
gone astray.
(The Way, no.243)
What is the origin of the Our Father?
Jesus taught us this Christian prayer for which there is no substitute, the
Our Father, on the day on which one of his disciples saw him praying and
asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). The Church’s liturgical
tradition has always used the text of Saint Matthew (6:9-13). (CCC
2759-2760, 2773)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.578)
(November 20) St. Rose Philippine Duchesne (1769-1852)
Born in Grenoble, France, of a family that was among the new rich,
Philippine learned political skills from her father and a love of the poor
from her mother. The dominant feature of her temperament was a strong and
dauntless will, which became the material—and the battlefield—of her
holiness. She entered the convent at 19 without telling her parents and
remained despite their opposition. As the French Revolution broke, the
convent was closed, and she began taking care of the poor and sick, opened a
school for street urchins and risked her life helping priests in the
underground.
When the situation cooled, she personally rented her old convent, now a
shambles, and tried to revive its religious life. The spirit was gone, and
soon there were only four nuns left. They joined the infant Society of the
Sacred Heart, whose young superior, St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, would be her
lifelong friend. In a short time Philippine was a superior and supervisor of
the novitiate and a school. But her ambition, since hearing tales of
missionary work in Louisiana as a little girl, was to go to America and work
among the Indians. At 49, she thought this would be her work. With four
nuns, she spent 11 weeks at sea en route to New Orleans, and seven weeks
more on the Mississippi to St. Louis. She then met one of the many
disappointments of her life. The bishop had no place for them to live and
work among Native Americans. Instead, he sent her to what she sadly called
"the remotest village in the U.S.," St. Charles, Missouri. With
characteristic drive and courage, she founded the first free school for
girls west of the Mississippi.
It was a mistake. Though she was as hardy as any of the pioneer women in the
wagons rolling west, cold and hunger drove them out—to Florissant, Missouri,
where she founded the first Catholic Indian school, adding others in the
territory. "In her first decade in America Mother Duchesne suffered
practically every hardship the frontier had to offer, except the threat of
Indian massacre—poor lodging, shortages of food, drinking water, fuel and
money, forest fires and blazing chimneys, the vagaries of the Missouri
climate, cramped living quarters and the privation of all privacy, and the
crude manners of children reared in rough surroundings and with only the
slightest training in courtesy" (Louise Callan, R.S.C.J., Philippine Duchesne).
Finally, at 72, in poor health and retired, she got her lifelong wish. A
mission was founded at Sugar Creek, Kansas, among the Potawatomi. She was
taken along. Though she could not learn their language, they soon named her
"Woman-Who-Prays-Always." While others taught, she prayed. Legend has it
that Native American children sneaked behind her as she knelt and sprinkled
bits of paper on her habit, and came back hours later to find them
undisturbed. She died in 1852 at the age of 83.
Divine grace channelled her iron will and determination into humility and
selflessness, and to a desire not to be made superior. Still, even saints
can get involved in silly situations. In an argument with her over a minor
change in the sanctuary, a priest threatened to remove her tabernacle. She
patiently let herself be criticized by younger nuns for not being
progressive enough. Through it all, 31 years, she hewed to the line of a
dauntless love and an unshakable observance of her religious vows. “We
cultivate a very small field for Christ, but we love it, knowing that God
does not require great achievements but a heart that holds back nothing for
self.... The truest crosses are those we do not choose ourselves.... He who
has Jesus has everything.” (AmericanCatholic.org)
And entering, Jesus walked through
Jericho. And behold, there was a man named Zacheus, who was the chief of the
publicans, and he was rich. And he sought to see who Jesus was but he could
not for the crowd because he was low of stature. And running ahead, he
climbed up into a sycamore tree that he might see him; for he was to pass
that way. And when Jesus arrived there, he looked up and saw him, and said
to him: Zacheus, make haste and come down; for this day I must stay in your
house. And he made haste and came down; and received him with joy. And when
all saw it, they murmured, saying, that he was going as a guest with a man
that was a sinner. But Zacheus standing said to the Lord: Behold, Lord, the
half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wronged any man of any
thing, I restore him fourfold. Jesus said to him: This day salvation has
come to this house, because he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man
has come to seek and to save that which was lost.(Luke 19:1-10)
There are many ways of viewing human history. It can be understood as
primarily the story of man’s search for economic security, or of his
constant attempt to gain physical (and therefore political and military)
dominance over others, or of his attempts to understand and master his
environment. So it is that we have histories written principally from an
economic, political, military or scientific perspective. Alternatively, it
can be understood as primarily the story of his search for the divine, a
search that has taken countless forms. Many anthropologists and historians
of culture would maintain that religion has been the foundation and the
fabric of very many societies in the course of history, and most would say
that religion has been at least an important feature of social and cultural
life for most peoples over the ages. The grand exception to this has been
the modern West and those many societies that have been influenced by the
advance of Western culture. Turning to our Gospel passage today
(Luke 19:1-10), we can surely see in the
simple facts narrated much that points to larger facts involving the whole
of humanity. Our scene portrays Zacchaeus, the chief (and wealthy) tax
collector who had spent his years gaining his possessions possibly through
dubious means. He might be said to represent economic man, the man seeking
economic security and even dominance. But there is another yearning
struggling to be satisfied and that is the yearning for the divine. He wants
to see Jesus. For one reason or another — we are told that Zacchaeus’ was
too short of stature — he could not see Jesus and so he takes steps to do
so. He “ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was
about to pass that way.” In Zacchaeus we can see symbolized the fallen,
distracted and struggling children of Israel and indeed fallen man in
general who, while immersed in sin and in neglect of God nevertheless seeks
God, for the things of this world leave him unhappy. This very concrete
Zacchaeus is a symbol representing fallen man who seeks God as he
understands and imagines him.
But the story of what Zacchaeus is attempting to do is not the whole
picture. All the while Jesus had been approaching and in him God is shown to
be coming to man. God is not just a distant figure that began the story of
the world by his creative act and then withdrew — as the typical deist
philosophy would have it, a philosophy which I suspect constitutes the
unspoken assumptions of very many people. Nor is God simply the One who
constantly sustains the world and man in his strivings. God is more than the
Creator, the Sustainer and the Lord of the world. He is the One who is
coming to man to assist him in his need. Our Lord is coming to Jericho and
in his coming and arrival we have a picture of the action of God in respect
to the world. In Zacchaeus we see man at work, and in Christ we see God at
work. While on the one hand Zacchaeus runs ahead to see Jesus, on the other
hand Jesus, in approaching where Zacchaeus is, looks up and greets Zacchaeus
cheerily and with a warm smile. God takes the initiative and enters the life
of fallen man who in his heart yearns for communion with the living God. The
God of revelation seeks out man who explicitly or implicitly, directly or
indirectly, yearns for him. The image of God as it is presented in the
inspired pages of the Old Testament supports and fills out the action of
Jesus in his gift of friendship for Zacchaeus. God is the Good Shepherd
seeking out his sheep. He is the Husband and the Bridegroom of his chosen
people. He establishes a covenant with his people in which he offers to be
with them and to be their God. He is, in a word, a God of love and
compassion and is one who is rich in mercy. Our Lord sees at a glance the
heart of Zacchaeus and finds in him the desire to renounce his sins and to
live in loving communion with God his Father. Christ’s response is to offer
him immediately his holy and saving friendship. This new and undeserved
friendship with Jesus is the salvation of Zacchaeus, and his life takes its
new and holy turn. These simple facts of our Gospel scene constitute a
powerful message for fallen mankind.
Let us all recognize that however much we might want economic security and
abundance, however much we might seek political and other forms of temporal
success, our basic yearning is for God and communion with him. Let us then
seek God. He is found in the person of Jesus Christ and in him God has come
seeking our friendship. Let us then resolve to cast off the sin that holds
us back and accept the gift of divine friendship that in his own person
Christ offers us.
(E.J.Tyler)
React. Listen to what the holy Spirit tells you: 'If it were an enemy who
insulted me, I could put up with that. But you... tu vero homo unanimis, dux
meus, et notus meus, — you, my friend, my apostle, who sit at my table and
take sweet food with me!
(The Way, no.244)
What is the place of the Our Father in the Scriptures?
The Our Father is the “summary of the whole Gospel” (Tertullian), “the
perfect prayer” (Saint Thomas Aquinas). Found in the middle of the Sermon on
the Mount (Matthew 5-7), it presents in the form of prayer the essential
content of the Gospel. (CCC 2761-2764, 2774)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.579)
(November 21) Memorial of the Presentation of the
Blessed Virgin Mary
Mary’s presentation was celebrated in Jerusalem in the sixth century. A
church was built there in honor of this mystery. The Eastern Church was
more interested in the feast, but it does appear in the West in the
11th century. Although the feast at times disappeared from the
calendar, in the 16th century it became a feast of the universal
Church. As with Mary’s birth, we read of Mary’s presentation in the
temple only in apocryphal literature. In what is recognized as an
unhistorical account, the Protoevangelium of James tells us that Anna
and Joachim offered Mary to God in the Temple when she was three years
old. This was to carry out a promise made to God when Anna was still
childless. Though it cannot be proven historically, Mary’s presentation
has an important theological purpose. It continues the impact of the
feasts of the Immaculate Conception and of the birth of Mary. It
emphasizes that the holiness conferred on Mary from the beginning of
her life on earth continued through her early childhood and beyond.
It is sometimes difficult for modern Westerners to appreciate a feast
like this. The Eastern Church, however, was quite open to this feast
and even somewhat insistent about celebrating it. Even though the feast
has no basis in history, it stresses an important truth about Mary:
From the beginning of her life, she was dedicated to God. She herself
became a greater temple than any made by hands. God came to dwell in
her in a marvellous manner and sanctified her for her unique role in
God's saving work. At the same time, the magnificence of Mary redounds
upon her children. They, too, are temples of God and sanctified in
order that they might enjoy and share in God's saving work. "Hail, holy
throne of God, divine sanctuary, house of glory, jewel most fair,
chosen treasure house, and mercy seat for the whole world, heaven
showing forth the glory of God. Purest Virgin, worthy of all praise,
sanctuary dedicated to God and raised above all human condition, virgin
soil, unplowed field, flourishing vine, fountain pouring out waters,
virgin bearing a child, mother without knowing man, hidden treasure of
innocence, ornament of sanctity, by your most acceptable prayers,
strong with the authority of motherhood, to our Lord and God, Creator
of all, your Son who was born of you without a father, steer the ship
of the Church and bring it to a quiet harbour" (adapted from a homily
by St. Germanus on the Presentation of the Mother of
God).
(AmericanCatholic.org)
Click centre arrow to start
video
Scripture today: 2 Maccabees 7:1, 20-31; Psalm 17:1bcd, 5-6, 8b and 15; Luke
19:11-28
As they were hearing these things, Jesus continued with a parable
because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom
of God would immediately
be manifested. So he said, “A certain nobleman went
into a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And
calling his ten servants, he gave them ten pounds, and said to them: Trade
till I come. But his citizens hated him and they sent an embassy after him
saying, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” And it came to pass
that he returned, having received the kingdom. He commanded his servants to
whom he had given the money to be summoned in order that he might know how
much each had gained by trading. And the first came, saying: “Lord, your
pounds have gained ten pounds more.” And he said to him: “Well done, good
servant, because you have been faithful in a little, you will have power
over ten cities.” And the second came saying, “Lord, your pound has gained
five pounds.” And he said to him, “you have charge also over five cities.”
And another came, saying “Lord, here is thy pound which I have kept laid up
in a napkin, because I feared your being an austere man. You take up what
thou did not lay down, and thou reap what you did not sow.” He said to him,
“Out of your own mouth I judge you, you wicked servant. You knew that I was
an austere man, taking up what I laid not down, and reaping that which I did
not sow: And why then did you not put my money into the bank, that at my
coming, I might have withdrawn it with interest?” And he said to them that
stood by, “Take the pound away from him, and give it to him who has ten
pounds.” And they said to him, “Lord, he has ten pounds.” “ I say to you,
that to every one who has will be given, and he will have more than enough.
From him that has not, even that which he has, will be taken from him. But
as for those my enemies who would not have me reign over them, bring them
here, and execute them in my presence. And having said these things he went
on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.(Luke 19:11-28)
Once again our Gospel passages places at the centre of the scene the Kingdom
of God and Christ’s journey to Jerusalem as being critical to the advent of
this Kingdom. We read that “while people were listening to Jesus speak, he
proceeded to tell a parable because he was near Jerusalem and they thought
that the Kingdom of God would appear there immediately.” He was near
Jerusalem and they had sensed that his arrival at Jerusalem would be a
decisive step in the coming of the Kingdom. Indeed, they thought that “the
Kingdom of God would appear there immediately.” Our Lord’s words that follow
indicate that the “nobleman” who was going “off to a distant country”
— to
his heavenly Father — would indeed return with the kingship. But our Lord
prefers to warn his listeners of the reckoning that he would then conduct as
King. It is one that affects two groups of people in the parable. There are
the nobleman’s “fellow citizens” — those who are brothers of our Lord in his
humanity and in his membership of God’s chosen people — and there are also
his “servants”, to ten of whom he gives certain responsibilities. When he
returned with the kingship the wider group of people who hated him and who
did not want him to be their king were condemned. This feature of the
parable reminds us that in the last analysis the pivotal issue for all
humanity will be their response, implicit or explicit, direct or indirect,
to the person of Jesus. We have in this parable as in so many others the key
to salvation. It lies in the acceptance in faith of the person of Jesus,
even if this acceptance is operative only implicitly. Those who
deliberately, knowingly, and with full awareness “do not want this man to be
our king” will receive the sentence described at the end of the parable: “as
for those enemies of mine who did not want me as their king, bring them here
and slay them before me.”(Luke 19:11-28)
But most of the details of the parable describe not those “fellow citizens”
who did not want the “nobleman” to be king, but his “ten servants” who were
entrusted with special responsibilities and powers before his departure.
This is the first of the two groups introduced and the first of the groups
to be judged. He “gave them ten gold coins and told them, ‘Engage in trade
with these until I return’.” So each received a gold coin — a different
detail from a very similar parable elsewhere in the Gospel, where one
servant received ten talents, another five and another one. But the point is
the same. Those servants who used the resources, the powers and the
opportunities they had been given to serve the interests of the master were
abundantly rewarded. What might be called the climax comes when the third
servant steps forward. ‘Sir, here is your gold coin; I kept it stored away
in a handkerchief, for I was afraid of you, because you are a demanding man;
you take up what you did not lay down and you harvest what you did not
plant.’ He said to him, ‘With your own words I shall condemn you, you wicked
servant. You knew I was a demanding man, taking up what I did not lay down
and harvesting what I did not plant; why did you not put my money in a bank?
Then on my return I would have collected it with interest.’ And to those
standing by he said, ‘Take the gold coin from him and give it to the servant
who has ten.’ It is to be noted that in this parable the wicked servant was
not slain as were those who rejected the nobleman as king, but he was left
entirely bereft. He was deprived of everything for failing to serve his
master assiduously, actively and enterprisingly. His sin was a great sin of
omission. He omitted to do what was expected of him because he had been
explicitly commanded to “Engage in trade with these until I return.” It
reminds us that the life of the Christian is to be a life of active service
of Jesus Christ and the daily advancement of his interests.
Let us bear in mind day after day that our response to the person of Jesus
Christ will determine our eternal prospects. Our Gospel parable today
reminds us that this applies to those who are to be counted among his
“servants” too. A servant of Jesus Christ who omits to use his talents, his
time and his resources to bear witness to Jesus and to gain for him the
hearts of others will be judged severely for this omission. Let us then fill
up our lives with generating true riches in the sight of God, for as our
Lord warns, “to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who
has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
(E.J.Tyler)
On days of recollection your examination of conscience should be more
searching than the usual nightly moment. Otherwise you miss a great chance
to put things right.
(The Way, no.245)
Why is it called the “Lord’s Prayer”?
The Our Father is called the “Oratio Dominica”, that is, the Lord’s Prayer
because it was taught to us by the Lord Jesus himself. (CCC 2765-2766, 2775)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.580)
(November 22) Saint Cecelia, virgin and martyr (died 177) It is
under the emperor Alexander Severus that this young Saint, one of the most
fragrant flowers of Christian virginity and martyrdom, suffered for the
Faith she had chosen; to choose it was at that moment as certain an end to
earthly felicity
as it is a guarantee, at every epoch, of the eternal
felicity of those who remain faithful to it. Cecilia was the daughter of an
illustrious patrician, and was the only Christian of her family; she was
permitted to attend the reunions held in the catacombs by the Christians,
either through her parents’ condescension or out of indifference. She
continually kept a copy of the holy Gospel hidden under her clothing over
her heart. Her parents obliged her, however, despite her vow of virginity,
which most probably they knew nothing of, to marry the young Valerian, whom
she esteemed as noble and good, but who was still pagan.
During the evening of the wedding day, with the music of the nuptial feast
still in the air, Cecilia, this intelligent, beautiful, and noble Roman
maiden, renewed her vow. When the new spouses found themselves alone, she
gently said to Valerian, “Dear friend, I have a secret to confide to you,
but will you promise me to keep it?” He promised her solemnly that nothing
would ever make him reveal it, and she continued, “Listen: an Angel of God
watches over me, for I belong to God. If he sees that you would approach me
under the influence of a sensual love, his anger will be inflamed, and you
will succumb to the blows of his vengeance. But if you love me with a
perfect love and conserve my virginity inviolable, he will love you as he
loves me, and will lavish on you, too, his favors.” Valerian replied that if
he might see this Angel, he would certainly correspond to her wishes, and
Cecilia answered, “Valerian, if you consent to be purified in the fountain
which wells up eternally; if you will believe in the unique, living and true
God who reigns in heaven, you will be able to see the Angel.” And to his
questions concerning this water and who might bestow it, she directed him to
a certain holy old man named Urban.
That holy Pontiff rejoiced exceedingly when Valerian came to him the same
night, to be instructed and baptized; his long prayer touched the young man
greatly, and he too rejoiced with an entirely new joy in his new-found and
veritable faith, so far above the religion of the pagans. He returned to his
house, and on entering the room where Cecilia had continued to pray for the
remainder of the night, he saw the Angel waiting, with two crowns of roses
and lilies, which he would place on the head of each of them. Cecilia
understood at once that if the lilies symbolized their virginity, the roses
foretold for them both the grace of martyrdom. Valerian was told he might
ask any grace at all of God, who was very pleased with him; and he requested
that his brother Tiburtius might also receive the grace he had obtained; and
the conversion of Tiburtius soon afterwards became a reality.
The two brothers, who were very wealthy, began to aid the families which had
lost their support through the martyrdom of the fathers, spouses, and sons;
they saw to the burial of the Christians, and continually braved the same
fate as these victims. In effect they were soon captured, and their
testimony was such as to convert a young officer chosen to conduct them to
the site of their martyrdom. He succeeded in delaying it for a day, and took
them to his house, where before the day was ended he had decided to receive
Baptism with his entire family and household. The two brothers offered their
heads to the sword; and soon afterward the officer they had won for Christ
followed them to the eternal divine kingdom. It was Cecilia who saw to the
burial of all three martyrs. She then distributed to the poor all the
valuable objects of her house, in order that the property of Valerian might
not be confiscated according to current Roman law, and knowing that her own
time was close at hand.
She was soon arrested and arraigned, but having asked a delay after her
interrogation, she assembled those who had heard her with admiration
and instructed them in the faith; the Pontiff Urban baptized a large
number of them. The death appointed for her was suffocation by steam.
Saint Cecilia remained unharmed and calm, for a day and a night, in the
calderium, or place of hot baths, in her own palace, despite a fire
heated to seven times its ordinary violence. Finally, an executioner
was sent to dispatch her by the sword; he struck with trembling hand
the three blows which the law allowed, and left her still alive. For
two days and nights Cecilia would lie with her head half severed, on
the pavement of her bath, fully sensible and joyfully awaiting her
crown. When her neophytes came to bury her after the departure of the
executioner, they found her alive and smiling. They surrounded her
there, not daring to touch her, for three days, having collected the
precious blood from her wounds. On the third day, after the holy
Pontiff Urban had come to bless her, the agony ended, and in the year
177 the virgin Saint gave back her glorious soul to Christ. It was the
Supreme Pontiff who presided at her funeral; she was placed in a coffin
in the position in which she had lain, as we often see her pictured,
and interred in the vault prepared by Saint Callixtus for the Church’s
pontiffs. The authentic acts of her life and martyrdom were prepared by
Pope Anteros in the year 235. When the tomb was opened in 1599 her body
was entirely intact
still.(magnificat.ca)
And when he drew near, seeing the city, he wept over it, saying: If on this
your day you had only known the things that make for your peace. But now
they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, and your
enemies will cast a trench about you and compass you round, and press in on
you from every side. They will beat you flat to the ground, and your
children who are inside you. They will not leave within you a stone upon a
stone because you have not known the time of your visitation.(Luke
19:41-44)
One of the distinctive features of revealed religion is its image of the one
only God being very much involved in human history. By contrast, one notices
very different images of God, or the gods, or the Absolute — whatever be the
term or image of the divine — featuring in human culture and thought. Very
commonly, the chief or high god withdraws from sight and further contact
after the initial process of creation. Other cultures have a heavenly world
peopled by active gods but their involvement in the world is not great. But
the one God of revelation while being utterly transcendent is very
historical. In the Old Testament God intervenes to call special persons and
entrust them with a mission. He gathers a select people and enters into a
covenant with them. He promises protection and salvation if they accept him
as their God and are faithful to his covenant. He withdraws his support if
they fail to recognize his sovereignty. He allows disaster to come if they
deliberately persist in their sins. Indeed, the pattern is present at the
very dawn of human history with God warning Adam and Eve of the death that
will come from disobedience and yet holding out hope in the midst of the
tragedy which sin brings with it. Nathan prophesied disasters to David
because of his sin. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezechiel, Amos and the other prophets
did the same, while pointing to a hope-filled future beyond the coming
chastisement. God is present and active in the course of human history. So
too in our Gospel passage today. Our Lord, in the tradition of the prophets,
solemnly and sadly predicts disaster on the holy city for refusing God at
the time of his visitation. He weeps for the coming disasters. As Jesus drew
near Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If this day you
only knew what makes for peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes. For
the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against
you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you
to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one
stone upon another within you because you did not recognize the time of your
visitation.”(Luke 19:41-44)
Christ weeps over the coming disaster for the city. Our Lord said to his
disciples that he who sees him sees the Father, so the Father weeps too over
the coming disaster. It is something that wrenches his heart at its very
depths. But man is free and can refuse him and bring down on his own head
the disaster that this involves, and to which all of human history from its
very beginning bears testimony. Sin is the disaster constantly recurring in
the history of the world, and this sin is the refusal by man of God’s will
and invitations. It makes God weep for love of his children who choose to go
that way. “What more could I have done for you that I have not done?” the
prophet asks on God’s behalf. This beautiful world with man — beautiful man!
— appointed by God to be its lord is inveterately marred and repeatedly
ruined by human choice refusing the good. So man in his hopelessness and
frustration weeps at the sight all the while failing to see the root cause.
That cause is sin, deliberately chosen sin, and sin is the deliberate
refusal to accept and choose the good as expressed in the will and plan of
God. All of this is shown in our Gospel scene of today in which our Lord
gazes at the holy city and weeps because of its failure to accept and
recognize him as the One who has been sent. It is a warning to us, just as
the past catastrophes that had visited the children of Israel should have
been a warning to them. Christ is the salvation of man and if we accept him
in our hearts and follow his way, all will be well. So then, each Christian
must start with him or her self and become by means of this choice, lived
out in everyday life in the world, a beacon to others. Let not Christ have
to weep over me, each of us ought say. He is gazing on me with love. He died
for me. He rose for me and he lives now interceding for me at the right hand
of the Father. He is present and active in his Church, the Church he founded
on Peter, and from within that boat he teaches the crowds still and pours
out on those who seek it the grace of the Holy Spirit. Let us then not make
him weep, nor, as St Paul writes in one of his Letters, let us not make the
Holy Spirit sad by our unrepented sins.
During Christ’s public ministry the Father said, this is my beloved Son in
whom I am well pleased. Let us so live as to earn a similar judgment. We
ought aim every day to please our heavenly Father. This we shall do if we
live in his Son by grace, by faith and by our good works. So then, now I
begin!
(E.J.Tyler)
Always end your examination with an act of Love — of Love-sorrow: for
yourself, for all the sins of men. And consider the fatherly care of God in
removing the obstacles in your way lest you stumble.
(The Way, no.246)
What place does the Our Father have in the prayer of the Church?
The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer of the Church par excellence. It is “handed
on” in Baptism to signify the new birth of the children of God into the
divine life. The full meaning of the Our Father is revealed in the eucharist
since its petitions are based on the mystery of salvation already
accomplished, petitions that will be fully heard at the coming of the Lord.
The Our Father is an integral part of the Liturgy of the Hours. (CCC
2767-2772, 2776)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.581)
(November 23) Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro (1891-1927)
(Two pictures of Pro)
¡Viva Cristo Rey! (Long live Christ the King!) were the last words Father Pro
uttered before he was
executed
for being a Catholic priest and serving his flock. Born into a prosperous,
devout family in Guadalupe de Zacatecas, he entered the Jesuits in 1911 but
three years later fled to Granada, Spain, because of religious persecution in
Mexico. He was ordained in Belgium in 1925. He immediately returned to Mexico,
where he served a Church forced to go “underground.” He celebrated the Eucharist
clandestinely and ministered the other sacraments to small groups of Catholics.
He and his brother Roberto were arrested on
trumped-up charges of attempting to assassinate Mexico’s president. Roberto was
spared but Miguel was sentenced to face a firing squad on November 23, 1927. His
funeral became a public demonstration of faith. He was beatified in 1988.
In 1927 when Father Miguel Pro was executed, no one could have
predicted that 52 years later the bishop
of Rome would visit Mexico, be
welcomed by its president and celebrate open-air Masses before
thousands of people. Pope John Paul II made additional trips to Mexico
in 1990, 1993 and 1999. Those who outlawed the Catholic Church in
Mexico did not count on the deeply rooted faith of its people and the
willingness of many of them, like Miguel Pro, to die as martyrs. During
his homily at the beatification Mass, Pope John Paul II said that
Father Pro “is a new glory for the beloved Mexican nation, as well as
for the Society of Jesus. His life of sacrificing and intrepid
apostolate was always inspired by a tireless evangelizing effort.
Neither suffering nor serious illness, neither the exhausting
ministerial activity, frequently carried out in difficult and dangerous
circumstances, could stifle the radiating and contagious joy which he
brought to his life for Christ and which nothing could take away (see
John 16:22). Indeed, the deepest root of self-sacrificing surrender for
the lowly was his passionate love for Jesus Christ and his ardent
desire to be conformed to him, even unto death.” (AmericanCatholic.org)
Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out those
who were selling things, saying to them, “It is written, My house shall be a
house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.” And every day he was
teaching in the temple area. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of
the people, meanwhile, were seeking to put him to death, but they could find no
way to accomplish their purpose because all the people were hanging on his
words.(Luke 19:45-48)
As our Lord often pointed out, the prophets were, we might say, routinely
persecuted. This opposition they encountered was due to their proclaiming the
word of God and the repentance that this required. Elijah stood inflexibly for
Yahweh against the widespread worship of Baal, and the upshot of his famous
confrontation with the prophets of Baal was his execution of them. This stand
for the God of Israel brought swift persecution and the threat of imminent
death. Jeremiah encountered tremendous opposition because he predicted that
disaster was coming to Jerusalem unless the king and city surrendered. This
military subjection was being visited upon the chosen people because of their
sins, and Jeremiah proclaimed that they must submit to what God had determined
and surrender to the enemy. This message brought great persecution on Jeremiah.
A similar pattern is to be seen in the prophetic career of Micah. John the
Baptist reproved Herod for his marriage and ultimately it meant death for him.
The case is somewhat different with our Lord in an important respect. Our Lord
condemned the practices of the scribes and the Pharisees, but the principal
source of opposition to him lay in his claims about himself and his own
authority. The truth that our Lord was increasingly proclaiming was the truth
about himself and the saving blessings he would grant to those who believed in him. He himself
was the way to the Father, and the only way. Our Gospel today gives us a
specimen of this pattern. We read that “Jesus entered the temple area and
proceeded to drive out those who were selling things, saying to them, “It is
written, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of
thieves.” And every day he was teaching in the temple area.”
(Luke 19:45-48). He was assuming lordship of
the Temple and in John’s account of this event he claimed that the one God of
the Temple was his own Father. The leaders could see that acceptance of his
teaching meant acceptance of the supremacy of his person and of his authority
and this they would not tolerate.
At our Lord’s trial before the Sanhedrin, our Lord was asked if he was the
Christ the Son of God. He replied that indeed he was and that they would see him
coming seated at the right hand of God. He was sentenced to death for this claim
as to his person. When the leaders brought our Lord before Pilate, the charge
was that he was claiming to be a king. It concerned his claims about his own
person. When pressed by Pilate, they stated that he claimed to be the Son of
God. At the heart of their rejection of Christ’s teaching was their rejection of
his claims as to his very person. All of this means that the person of Jesus is
the centre of the Christian religion. He is the one whom we look to in the way
no one would look to Moses or any of the prophets. They bore splendid and holy
witness to God and his word, but Jesus bore witness to the truth about himself,
and in and through himself to the truth about the Father. Indeed, the Father bore witness to him
too, both at his Baptism by John in the river Jordan, and at his Transfiguration
on the mount towards the end of his public ministry. Christ spoke of the coming
of the Holy Spirit, and said that he too would bear witness to him and remind
his disciples of all that he had told them. He would lead them to the complete
truth. The Christian approaches the person of Christ not simply as one would
approach a great, indeed the greatest prophet. Islam makes this claim about
Mahomet (which, of course, the Christian in no way accepts) that he, Mahomet, is
the greatest of the prophets. No. In respect to Jesus Christ, the Christian
accepts totally his claim to be not only man as we are, but the very Son of God,
the same in nature as the Father and therefore equal to him in his person. His
person is divine, and this divine person has taken to himself a human nature so
that the man Jesus is incomparably the supreme Fact of the visible universe. To
know and be in union with him is the greatest of heavenly and earthly blessings.
Eternal life consists in it.
As we think of Jesus cleansing the Temple and teaching the word to the people
hanging on his words, let us think of the grandeur of his very person. He is
man, of course, but in the first instance he is God. His person is divine, and
this divine person took to himself a human nature while retaining his own divine
nature. He is our Lord, our God and our
redeemer. Let us therefore entrust ourselves to him and live according to his word.
(E.J.Tyler)
Be definite. Don't let your resolutions be like fireworks that sparkle for a
moment, to leave behind as hard reality a blackened, useless stub that one
throws disgustedly away.
(The Way, no.247)
Why can we dare to draw near to God in full confidence?
Because Jesus, our Redeemer, brings us into the Father’s presence and his Spirit
makes us his children. We are thus able to pray the Our Father with simple and
filial trust, with joyful assurance and humble boldness, with the certainty of
being loved and heard. (CCC 2777-2778, 2797)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.582)
(November 24) Saint Andrew Dung-Lac, priest and martyr,
and his companions, martyrs
St. Andrew was one of 117 martyrs who met death in Vietnam between 1820 and
1862. Members of this group were beatified on four different occasions between
1900 and 1951. Now all have been canonized by Pope John Paul II. Christianity
came to Vietnam (then three separate kingdoms) through the Portuguese. Jesuits
opened the first permanent mission at Da Nang in 1615. They ministered to
Japanese Catholics who had been driven from Japan. The king of one of the
kingdoms banned all foreign missionaries and tried to make all Vietnamese
apostatize by trampling on a crucifix. Like the priest-holes in Ireland during
English persecution, many hiding places were offered in homes of the faithful.
Severe persecutions were again launched three times in the 19th century. During
the six decades after 1820, between 100,000 and 300,000 Catholics were killed or
subjected to great hardship. Foreign missionaries martyred in the first wave
included priests of the Paris Mission Society, and Spanish Dominican priests and
tertiaries. Persecution broke out again in 1847 when the emperor suspected
foreign missionaries and Vietnamese Christians of sympathizing with the
rebellion of one of his sons. The last of the martyrs were 17 laypersons, one of
them a 9-year-old, executed in 1862. That year a treaty with France guaranteed
religious freedom to Catholics, but it did not stop all persecution. By 1954
there were over a million and a half Catholics—about seven percent of the
population—in the north. Buddhists represented about 60 percent. Persistent
persecution forced some 670,000 Catholics to abandon lands, homes and
possessions and flee to the south. In 1964, there were still 833,000 Catholics
in the north, but many were in prison. In the south, Catholics were enjoying the
first decade of religious freedom in centuries, their numbers swelled by
refugees. During the Vietnamese war, Catholics again suffered in the north, and
again moved to the south in great numbers. Now the whole country is under
Communist rule.
It may help a people who associate Vietnam only with a recent war to
realize that the cross has long been a part of the lives of the people
of that country. Even as we ask again the unanswered questions about
United States involvement and disengagement, the faith rooted in
Vietnam's soil proves hardier than the forces which would destroy it.
“The Church in Vietnam is alive and vigorous, blessed with strong and
faithful bishops, dedicated religious, and courageous and committed
laypeople.... The Church in Vietnam is living out the gospel in a
difficult and complex situation with remarkable persistence and
strength” (statement of three U.S. archbishops returning from Vietnam
in January
1989). (AmercianCatholic.org)
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Scripture today: 1 Maccabees 6:1-13; Psalm 9:2-3, 4 and 6, 16 and 19; Luke
20:27-40
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and
put this question to Jesus, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, If someone’s
brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and
raise up descendants for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first
married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her,
and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. Now at
the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married
to her.” Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry; but
those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection
of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for
they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones
who will rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage
about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him
all are alive.” Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered
well.” And they no longer dared to ask him anything.(Luke 20:27-40)
Recently I was helping someone to walk who had fractured her hip and a person
who was a nurse joined us. She told the person I was assisting that the
technique in walking with that injury is to lift the good leg first when going
up stairs and to move the bad leg first when going down stairs. That is to say,
she said, “the good leg first when going up to heaven and the bad leg first when
going down to hell”. It was an amusing gimmick to aid the sufferer to remember
which leg to use first in going up or down
stairs. Then when visiting a Rehabilitation Centre elsewhere in Sydney
for those who had fractured hips and other parts of the body, I
happened to be accompanying a person who was recovering there and the
physiotherapists explained the same thing (with a genial smile!). “When
going up (to heaven) use the good leg first. When going down (to hell)
use the bad leg first.” I then realized that this little phrase in
which going “up to heaven” and “down to hell” are used to aid the
memory of people who are rehabilitating was widely used among
physiotherapists. That in turn reminded me of how elements of Christian
doctrine are embedded in much of popular culture. Everyone knows of
heaven ("up" there) and hell ("down" there), even if they do not
organize their lives in accord with these awesome doctrines. The
therapists use it in this instance as a memory aid for those walking
with a fractured hip. I mention this in passing to illustrate how
accustomed we have become to these elements of Christian teaching,
which is to say to Christ’s teaching. At least at a notional level
(even if we do not have much realization of the matter) we accept the
fact of an Afterlife and the fact of heaven and hell, and therefore of
a resurrection. Now, the surprising thing is that there are many
religions in which this is a very shadowy issue and far from clear. I
would say that the greatest source for whatever popular acceptance
there is in the world of the doctrines of heaven and hell, and in
particular of the resurrection of the dead is the person of Jesus
Christ as expressed in Catholic teaching.
Christ revealed to man with the greatest clarity the doctrine of the
resurrection of the dead. In our Gospel passage today (Luke 20:27-40)
our Lord is approached by
a party within the Judaism of the time, the Sadducees, with an objection. We are
told by St Luke that they denied that there is a resurrection. Such a doctrine
is, they would have thought, merely mythical and a product of imaginary hopes
that take the religious person away from facing the realities of life. So they
approach our Lord with a practical puzzle that illustrated the absurdity of
expecting a future resurrection. It was the supposedly absurd and embarrassing
situation in heaven where a wife is confronted with her seven earthly husbands.
Who will she count as her husband there? Who will she live with as her spouse?
Our Lord dismissed the objection by pointing out that in heaven people do not
live as husband and wife. “They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and
they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.” In
passing, such a statement by Christ implies certain things not only about heaven
of course, but also about marriage. But more than anything it is a resounding
affirmation about the reality of life with God after death. The Christian
believes in the resurrection from the dead. Our Lord adds ominously to the
Sadducees that the resurrection is only for those those who are deemed worthy to
attain to the coming age. That is to say, after death comes the judgment and our
Lord does not let his listeners forget this. All will depend on the judgment of
God. Following this judgment, those deemed worthy to attain the coming age and
the resurrection of the dead will pass to life everlasting. For those not judged
worthy to attain it, there will be everlasting death. The Sadducees were very
much mistaken in their denial of the resurrection. They did not appreciate the
unlimited power of God nor did they know the Scriptures — and our Lord proceeds
to quote the words of Yahweh God implying the fact of the resurrection.
Let us think often and much of the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead.
More than anything let us so live as to be judged worthy of it. We shall be
worthy of it if we take our stand with Christ and live according to his way and
in a manner pleasing to him. He is the way, the truth and the life, and he will
come again to judge the living and the dead. Of his kingdom there will be no
end. Let our whole life be lived in the light of these great facts.
E.J.Tyler)
You are so young! To me you are like a ship setting out on its voyage. If that
slight deviation of to-day is left uncorrected, you will never reach port in the
end.
(The Way, no.248)
How is it possible to address God as “Father”?
We can invoke the “Father” because the Son of God made man has revealed him to
us and because his Spirit makes him known to us. The invocation, Father, lets us
enter into his mystery with an ever new sense of wonder and awakens in us the
desire to act as his children. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are therefore
aware of our being sons of the Father in the Son.
(CCC 2779-2785, 2789, 2798-2800)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.583)
Prayers this week:
The Lamb who was slain
is worthy to receive strength and divinity, wisdom and power and honour: to him
be glory and power for ever. Almighty and
merciful God, you break the power of evil and make all things new in your Son
Jesus Christ, the King of the universe. May all in heaven and on earth acclaim
your glory and never cease to praise you.
We ask this through
our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God.
(November 25) St. Columban (543?-615)
Columban was the greatest of the Irish missionaries who worked on the European
continent. As a young man he was greatly tormented by temptations of the flesh,
and sought the advice of a religious woman who had lived a hermit’s life for
years. He saw in her answer a call to leave the world. He went first to a monk
on an island in Lough Erne, then to the great monastic seat of learning at
Bangor. After many years of seclusion and prayer, he travelled to Gaul with 12
companion missionaries. They won wide respect for the rigour of their
discipline, their preaching, and their commitment to charity and religious life
in a time characterized by clerical slackness and civil strife. Columban
established several monasteries in Europe which became centers of religion and
culture. Like all saints, he met opposition. Ultimately he had to appeal to the
pope against complaints of Frankish bishops, for vindication of his orthodoxy
and approval of Irish customs. He reproved the king for his licentious life,
insisting that he marry. Since this threatened the power of the queen mother,
Columban was ordered deported back to Ireland. His ship ran aground in a storm,
and he continued his work in Europe, ultimately arriving in Italy, where he
found favour with the king of the Lombards. In his last years he established the
famous monastery of Bobbio, where he died. His writings include a treatise on
penance and against Arianism, sermons, poetry and his monastic rule.
Now that public sexual license is approaching the extreme, we need the Church's
jolting memory of a young man as concerned about chastity as Columban. And now
that the comfort-captured Western world stands in tragic contrast to starving
millions, we need the challenge to austerity and discipline of a group of Irish
monks. They were too strict, we say; they went too far. How far shall we go?
Writing to the pope about a doctrinal controversy in Lombardy, Columban said:
“We Irish, living in the farthest parts of the earth, are followers of St. Peter
and St. Paul and of the disciples who wrote down the sacred canon under the Holy
Spirit. We accept nothing outside this evangelical and apostolic teaching.... I
confess I am grieved by the bad repute of the chair of St. Peter in this
country.... Though Rome is great and known afar, she is great and honoured with
us only because of this chair.... Look after the peace of the Church, stand
between your sheep and the wolves.” (AmericanCatholic.org)
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Scripture today: 2 Samuel 5:1-3; Psalm 122:1-5; Colossians 1:12-20; Luke
23:35-43
And the people stood watching and the rulers with them derided him,
saying: He saved others; let him save himself, if he is Christ, the chosen one
of God. And the soldiers also mocked him and approached him offering him
vinegar, saying: If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. There was also
an inscription above him written in Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew: THIS IS THE
KING OF THE JEWS. And one of those robbers who were hanging there as well
insulted him, saying: If you are the Christ, save yourself and us. But the other
rebuked him, saying: Do you not God, seeing you are under the same condemnation?
And we are justly sentenced, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but
this man has done no evil. And he said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when you come
into your kingdom. And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to you, this day you will
be with me in paradise. (Luke 23:35-43)
If one had to classify the various founders of the great religions, I suppose
most would place them in the class of teachers. They taught a great doctrine and
this doctrine gained adherents. Zoroaster taught his doctrine, as did Buddha,
Confucius and Mahomet. Most would probably say the same of Jesus Christ. He was
a great religious teacher. Those who accept the historicity of the Gospels would
add that he was a great miracle worker which in their minds would mark him off
from the other great founders of religions. Mahomet did not work miracles, nor
did Buddha, but Christ worked spectacular miracles. In view of his exalted
religious teaching and the accompanying miracles, and speaking more within the
context of the Old Testament, one would speak of him as a prophet rather than
simply as a teacher. He was a great prophet, indeed he was the greatest and the
one who brought the fullness of divine revelation to man. He was described as a
prophet by very many of his contemporaries, although this title was denied him
by his enemies because of the newness of his doctrine. Although a Christian
would deny the legitimacy of their doing so, some followers of other religions
have used the same term prophet to designate the founders of their religions. A
Muslim refers to Mahomet as the Prophet, and I could imagine a Zoroastrian
perhaps referring to the founder of his religion as a prophet. The Christian
firmly restricts the term prophet and allows it to be used only of those
prophets authenticated as such in the revealed religion recorded in the Old and
New Testaments. Christ is the greatest Prophet of God. But Christ is more than
the Prophet who taught man God’s full and final revelation. He is not only
mankind’s supreme religious teacher. He is also a lord with authority to rule.
He is, indeed, the Lord of lords and the King of kings to whom all authority in
heaven and on earth has been given. Islam chooses to apply the term prophet to
Mahomet, but it does not designate him as their king and lord. But the Christian
religion proclaims Christ to be the Lord and King, the ruler of heaven and
earth, the one seated at the right hand of the Father. He is, as we commonly
express it, our Lord, our risen and living Lord, the Lord of the ages both now
and forever.
That is to say, one of the distinctive features of the Christian religion is
that Christ is not regarded simply as the supreme Teacher or Prophet, but as the
object of one’s love, adoration and service. Buddha is not served as a living,
unseen king. Nor is Mahomet. The Christian, however, serves and acknowledges
Christ as King. He is the king and the lord of our heart and our life, and the
object of our service all our days and in all situations. The Emperor is not
God, but Christ is indeed God and therefore he is the unseen ruler of the kings
of the earth. Of course, the Christian does not think of the lordship of Christ
in secular and temporal terms. Christ is not a king as this world understands
the term: a military, political or economic king. When Pilate asked Christ if he
were a king, Jesus said, it is you who call me that. He then continued, yes, I
am a king, but my kingship is not of this world. If it were, temporal and
military means would be employed by my followers to prevent me from falling into
the hands of my enemies and to enforce my rule. Christ’s power and influence
come from bearing witness to the truth of God. “For this was I born,” he told
Pilate, “to bear witness to the truth, and those who are of the truth listen to
my voice.” He is the king and the lord of the world, but his dominion is
extended by the recognition by all that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Furthermore, his reign was inaugurated not by force and a victory as this world
understands it, but by the Cross. The Son of Man had to suffer, he repeatedly
told his disciples, in order to enter into his glory. It was by his obedient
death on behalf of sinful man that he entered into and took possession of his
kingdom. As we heard in the Gospel (Luke 23:35-43),
while Christ hung upon the cross the criminal who had defended him against the
abuse of the other criminal said to him, "Jesus, remember me when you come into
your kingdom." Jesus turned to him and said, "I tell you, this day you will be
with me in Paradise." On the cross he was entering his kingdom. Of this kingdom
there is no end. Its entry is by way of the Cross. On one occasion the mother of
the sons of Zebedee came to him with her two sons and asked him a favour. It was
that her two sons be at his right and his left in his kingdom. He said, can you
drink the cup I am to drink?
Christ is our prophet, our high priest and victim, and he is also our Lord. We
serve him daily as our King. He is the King of kings and Lord of lords and the
Christian serves him daily and every moment of every day in everything he does.
His ambition is to serve him and give to him all glory. The living Jesus is the
centre and object of all human activity and in this lies the salvation of man
and the world.
(E.J.Tyler)
Make few resolutions. Make them definite. — And fulfil them with the help of
God.
(The Way, no.249)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why do we say “our” Father?
“Our” expresses a totally new relationship with God. When we pray to the Father,
we adore and glorify him with the Son and the Holy Spirit. In Christ we are
“his” people and he is “our” God now and for eternity. In fact, we also say
“our” Father because the Church of Christ is the communion of a multitude of
brothers and sisters who have but “one heart and mind” (Acts 4:32). (CCC
2786-2790, 2801)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.584)
(November 26)
SAINT CATHERINE of ALEXANDRIA Virgin and Martyr
(† Fourth Century)
Catherine was a noble virgin of Alexandria, born in the fourth century. Before
her Baptism, she saw in a dream the Blessed Virgin asking Her Son to receive her
among His servants, but the Divine Infant turned away, saying she was not yet
regenerated by the waters of Baptism. She made haste to receive that sacrament,
and afterwards, when
the dream was repeated, Catherine saw that the Saviour
received her with great affection, and espoused her before the court of heaven,
with a fine ring. She woke with it on her finger.
She had a very active intelligence, fit for all matters, and she undertook the
study of philosophy and theology. At that time there were schools in Alexandria
for the instruction of Christians, where excellent Christian scholars taught.
She made great progress and became able to sustain the truths of our religion
against even very subtle sophists. At that time Maximinus II was sharing the
empire with Constantine the Great and Licinius, and had as his district Egypt;
and this cruel Christian-hater ordinarily resided in Alexandria, capital of the
province. He announced a gigantic pagan sacrifice, such that the very air would
be darkened with the smoke of the bulls and sheep immolated on the altars of the
gods. Catherine before this event strove to strengthen the Christians against
the fatal lures, repeating that the oracles vaunted by the infidels were pure
illusion, originating in the depths of the lower regions.
She foresaw that soon it would be the Christians’ turn to be immolated, when
they refused to participate in the ceremonies. She therefore went to the emperor
himself, asking to speak with him, and her singular beauty and majestic air won
an audience for her. She said to him that it was a strange thing that he should
by his example attract so many peoples to such an abominable cult. By his high
office he was obliged to turn them away from it, since reason itself shows us
that there can be only one sovereign Being, the first principle of all else. She
begged him to cease so great a disorder by giving the true God the honour due
Him, lest he reap the wages of his indifference in this life already, as well as
in the next. The consequences of her hardy act extended over a certain time; he
decided to call in fifty sophists of his suite, to bring back this virgin from
her errors. A large audience assembled to hear the debate; the emperor sat on
his throne with his entire court, dissimulating his rage.
Catherine began by saying she was surprised that he obliged her to face, alone,
fifty individuals, but she asked the grace of him, that if the true God she
adored rendered her victorious, he would adopt her religion and renounce the
cult of the demons. He was not pleased and replied that it was not for her to
lay down conditions for the discussion. The head of the sophists began the
orations and reprimanded her for opposing the authority of poets, orators and
philosophers, who unanimously had revered Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Minerva and
others. He cited their writings, and said she should consider that these persons
were far anterior to this new religion she was following. She listened carefully
before answering, then spoke, showing that the ridiculous fables which Homer,
Orpheus and other poets had invented concerning their divinities, and the fact
that many offered a cult to them, as well as the abominable crimes attributed to
them, proved them to be gods only in the opinion of the untutored and credulous.
And then she proved that the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures had clearly
announced the time and the circumstances of the life of the future Saviour, and
that these were now fulfilled. Prodigy; the head of the sophists avowed that she
was entirely correct and renounced his errors; the others said they could not
oppose their chief. Maximinus had them put to death by fire, but the fire did
not consume their remains. Thus they died as Christians, receiving the Baptism
of blood.
The story of Saint Catherine continues during the time of the emperor’s
efforts to persuade her to marry him; he put to death his converted
wife and the captain of his guards who had received Baptism with two
hundred of his soldiers. He delivered Catherine up to prison and then
to tortures as a result of her firmness in refusing his overtures. The
famous wheel of Saint Catherine — in reality several interacting wheels
— which he invented to torment her, was furnished with sharp razor
blades and sharp points of iron; all who saw it trembled. But as soon
as it was set in movement it was miraculously disjointed and broken
into pieces, and these pieces flew in all directions and wounded the
spectators. The barbaric emperor finally commanded that she be
decapitated; and she offered her neck to the executioner, after praying
that her mortal remains would be respected.
The story of Saint Catherine continues with the discovery of the intact
body of a young and beautiful girl on Mount Sinai in the ninth century,
that is, four centuries later. The Church, in the Collect of her feast
day, bears witness to the transport of her body. A number of proofs
testified to the identity of her mortal remains found in the region of
the famous monastery existing on that mountain since the fifth century.
Her head is today conserved in
Rome. (magnificat.ca)
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Scripture today: Daniel 1:1-6, 8-20; Daniel 3:52, 53, 54, 55, 56; Luke 21:1-4
Looking on, Jesus saw the rich people putting their gifts into
the treasury. And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in two brass mites.
And he said: "Truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than them all,
for they all put into the treasury from what they did not need. But she put in
all she had to live on."(Luke 21:1-4)
One of the great criticisms (among many)
of Marxist communism is that for all its purported effort to provide for the
masses (by engineering a classless society of the proletariate) the individual
proletarian is forgotten, and indeed is regarded as expendable for the sake of
the Great Goal. So we had millions of unknown nobodies put away in one form or
another in Stalinist Russia. One biography of Mao Tse Tung observed that he
considered that there were so many in China that individuals were, as we say,
neither
here nor there. We see an instance of this in the Chinese communist treatment of
Tibet. Whatever about all that, it is a hallmark of the Christian religion that
the least individual in need is of immense importance in the sight of God. Time
and again in the Gospels we see our Lord referring to the Judgment of God. This
Judgment at the end of time is described in Matthew chapter 25, and there we see
how important will the individual be in the sight of God. All the nations will
be assembled for this final Judgment, and those on the right and on the left
will hear Christ say that whatever they did to the least of his brothers they
did to him. That is to say, God identifies with the least individual, and Christ
regards him as his dear brother. So the individual is of singular importance in
the sight of God. Another side to this is the importance God attaches to the
work of the individual. Our Gospel scene today brings this out in the beautiful
scene of the widow in the Temple. We read that “when Jesus looked up he saw some
wealthy people putting their offerings into the treasury and he noticed a poor
widow putting in two small coins. He said, ‘I tell you truly, this poor widow
put in more than all the rest; for those others have all made offerings from
their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole
livelihood’.”(Luke 21:1-4)
The temptation facing the so-called
nobody in society is that he or she might think that his puny and seemingly
insignificant work in life is of no value. But the teaching of our Gospel today
is that it can be of great value, more value than that of persons in much more
prominent positions and having at their command many more resources and talents.
It all hinges on what we are doing, why we are doing it, and how we are doing
it. Every human being is called to be good. This call is heard in the depths of
his conscience and that call of the conscience is an echo of the call of the
Creator. He is called to be very good. Every member of Christ’s faithful is
called to be holy. St Paul writes in one of his Letters that from before the
world began, God chose is in Christ to be holy and full of love in his sight.
How is this vocation to goodness and holiness of life to be lived out and
attained? It is lived out and attained very much through our daily work and
duties. The Church teaches that holiness consists in the loving fulfilment of
our duties of state. That is to say, it is achieved very much through the
sanctification of our work in life, whatever it is that God has entrusted us to
do. If our duties and work are those of a father and husband, or wife and
mother, or whatever else it may be, then sanctity and goodness will be achieved
through the dedicated and loving fulfilment of that daily work. If our work of
service in life is modest in scope and limited in apparent influence and if our
talents and resources are also limited, that does not matter. What matters is
that we do as well as we can and for God that work of service that God has
placed before us in his providence. We are called to give to him in our daily
work that which the widow gave, all we have to live on. God wants us to love him
with all our heart, and this love is to be expressed in fulfilling his will.
That will is largely made clear to us in the work of service we are called each
day to do. We ought do it in such a way that God will be honoured, glorified and
pleased.
In our Gospel today our Lord holds up
for our emulation the example of the poor widow. She was a nobody in the Temple.
We might feel to be nobodies too. But just as she was most pleasing to God, far
more pleasing than those rich persons who put in much more than she, so too we
can be most pleasing to God by giving to him our all, especially in the loving
and obedient fulfilment of our daily work in life, and all for him. We must
sanctify our work, and in doing this we ourselves shall be sanctified, as will
others.
(E.J.Tyler)
I listened in silence as you said, 'Yes, I want to be a saint.' Though usually
such a vague and general statement seems nonsense to me.
(The Way, no.250)
With what spirit of communion and mission do we pray to God as “our” Father?
Since praying to “our” Father is a common blessing for the baptized, we feel an
urgent summons to join in Jesus’ prayer for the unity of his disciples. To pray
the “Our Father” is to pray with all people and for all people that they may
know the one true God and be gathered into unity. (CCC 2791-2793, 2801)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.585)
(November 27) St. Francesco Antonio Fasani
(1681-1742)
Born in Lucera (southeast Italy), Francesco entered the Conventual
Franciscans in 1695. After his ordination 10 years later, he taught
philosophy to younger friars, served as guardian of his friary and
later became provincial. When his term of office ended, Francesco
became master of novices and finally pastor in his hometown. In his
various ministries, he was loving, devout and penitential. He was a
sought-after confessor and preacher. One witness at the canonical
hearings regarding Francesco’s holiness testified, "In his preaching he
spoke in a familiar way, filled as he was with the love of God and
neighbour; fired by the Spirit, he made use of the words and deed of
Holy Scripture, stirring his listeners and moving them to do penance."
Francesco showed himself a loyal friend of the poor, never hesitating
to seek from benefactors what was needed. At his death in Lucera,
children ran through the streets and cried out, "The saint is dead! The
saint is dead!" Francesco was canonized in 1986.
Eventually we become what we choose. If we choose stinginess, we become
stingy. If we choose compassion, we become compassionate. The holiness
of Francesco Antonio Fasani resulted from his many small decisions to
cooperate with God’s grace. During his homily at the canonization of
Francesco, Pope John Paul II reflected on John 21:15 in which Jesus
asks Peter if he loves Jesus more than the other apostles and then
tells Peter, "Feed my lambs." The pope observed that in the final
analysis human holiness is decided by love. "He [Francesco] made the
love taught us by Christ the fundamental characteristic of his
existence, the basic criterion of his thought and activity, the supreme
summit of his aspirations" (L'Osservatore Romano, vol. 16, number 3,
1986). (AmericanCatholic.org)
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Scripture today: Daniel
2:31-45; Daniel 3:57, 58, 59, 60, 61; Luke 21:5-11
With some
people saying of the temple that it was adorned with valuable stones
and gifts, Jesus said “These things which you see, the days will come
in which there will not be left a stone upon a stone that will not be
thrown down.” They asked him, “Master, when will these things happen,
and what will be the sign when they will begin to take place?” He
replied, “Take heed lest you be seduced; for many will come in my name,
saying, I am he; and the time is at hand. Do not go after them. And
when you hear of wars and seditions, do not be terrified. These things
must first come to pass but the end is not so soon.” Then he said to
them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
And there will be great earthquakes in divers places, and plagues and
famines and terrors from the heavens, and there will be great signs.” (Luke 21:5-11)
We must be
enthusiastic about our work — provided it is work that we should be
doing. We ought have goals in life and projects that we dedicate
ourselves to. Society is a sea of human activity in which work of all
kinds is being done and goals are being sought. Everywhere we see the
results of this human work, in businesses, government, the arts and
enterprises of all kinds. One danger is that, being creatures of sense
(i.e., who gain their knowledge in the first instance from the senses)
we can think that our hopes and achievements
are to be found in this life alone. What matters, we can unconsciously
think, is what we see, hear, touch, taste and smell, concrete and
tangible things all. The true realities, the things that matter — so we
can assume — are those things we see, touch and hear. In our Gospel
passage today we are reminded that the things of this world are very
vulnerable and transient. They will eventually pass away, and can do so
very easily and suddenly. Hence our hopes have to be larger than what
this world and this life can offer. We read that “while some people
were speaking about how the temple was adorned with costly stones and
votive offerings, Jesus said, ‘All that you see here – the days will
come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will
not be thrown down’.” Our Lord is, of course, speaking of the Temple
and its eventual destruction which several decades later occurred. But
his words remind us of the transience of this life and all it contains.
We have no lasting city here, and so in our work we ought have in mind
that which will last forever which is God and his holy will. Our work — be it our daily work in business, in government, in teaching, in
whatever profession, as well as our work within the family circle or
wherever — ought be done for God and his glory. In that way the good
but necessarily vulnerable projects we must dedicate ourselves to will
have an eternal significance because they are done in and for God.
The same point
about the transience of things temporal applies to those many things
that arise in the course of an individual’s life or in the life of a
nation that are profoundly threatening. Indeed, they may be already
causing great harm. It could be the rise of a very bad government that
is inimical to religion and moral life, a government that may hold the
reins of power for year after year with little that the more perceptive
citizens of the country can do to throw that government out. A ruthless
persecution may be launched against considerable portions of the
citizenry. Alternatively, it may be war that visits the people or some
other catastrophe. There is an old saying that the sun will rise
tomorrow. That is to say, it is not (necessarily) the end of the world
because a real tragedy has struck. Our Lord’s words remind us that
these sad features of our world are also transient. He says, “When you
hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for such things
must happen first, but it will not immediately be the end.” Then he
said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against
kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from
place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the
sky.” (Luke 21:5-11)
There is something far greater that we can place our hopes in and that
will give us serenity in the midst of the many misfortunes and threats
which a very transient and unstable world may bring, and that is the
person of Christ. Jesus is our hope. As St Paul writes in one of his
Letters, this is the mystery now revealed, Christ in you, your hope of
glory. Christ is within us, he is among us, he is Emmanuel, God with
us. He is our hope of glory despite what may come and perhaps has come.
As St Paul writes, neither life nor death, nothing at all, can come
between us and the love of God that has been made visible in Christ
Jesus.
In this world we
are radically exposed to both the good and the bad things that come our
way, which includes the good and the bad that are within our very
persons. Good and bad is found within us and around us. But we must
remember that whether it is good or bad, there is a far greater and
enduring Reality that is wholly loving, kind and holy. That marvellous
Reality is the person of Christ. On him do we pin our ultimate hopes.
Him do we love in all the things we have a duty to love in this world.
Let us then cast our lot with him and look on his glory as our greatest
project and as our truest stay.
(E.J.Tyler)
What does the phrase “Who art in heaven” mean?
This biblical expression does not indicate a place but a way of being:
God transcends everything. The expression refers to the majesty, the
holiness of God, and also to his presence in the hearts of the just.
Heaven, or the Father’s house, constitutes our true homeland toward
which we are moving in hope while we are still on earth. “Hidden with
Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3), we live already in this homeland. (CCC
2794-2796, 28020
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
no.586)
(November 28) St. James of the Marche (1394-1476)
James was born in the Marche of Ancona, in central Italy along the Adriatic Sea.
After earning doctorates in canon and civil law at the University of Perugia, he
joined the Friars Minor and began a very austere life. He fasted nine months of
the year; he slept three hours a night. St. Bernardine of Siena told him to
moderate his penances. James studied theology with St. John of Capistrano.
Ordained in 1420, James began a preaching career that took him all over Italy
and through 13 Central and Eastern European countries. This extremely popular
preacher converted many people (250,000 at one estimate) and helped spread
devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus. His sermons prompted numerous Catholics to
reform their lives and many men joined the Franciscans under his influence. With
John of Capistrano, Albert of Sarteano and Bernardine of Siena, James is
considered one of the "four pillars" of the Observant movement among the
Franciscans. These friars became known especially for their preaching. To combat
extremely high interest rates, James established montes pietatis (literally,
mountains of charity) — non-profit credit organizations that lent money at very
low rates on pawned objects. Not everyone was happy with the work James did.
Twice assassins lost their nerve when they came face to face with him. James was
canonized in 1726.
James wanted the word of God to take root in the
hearts of his listeners. His preaching was directed to preparing the
soil, so to speak, by removing any rocks and softening up lives
hardened by sin. God’s intention is that his word take root in our
lives, but for that we need both prayerful preachers and cooperative
listeners. "Beloved and most holy word of God! You enlighten the hearts
of the faithful, you satisfy the hungry, console the afflicted; you
make the souls of all productive of good and cause all virtues to
blossom; you snatch souls from the devil’s jaw; you make the wretched
holy, and men of earth citizens of heaven" (Sermon of St.
James).
(AmericanCatholic.org)
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Scripture today: Daniel 5:1-6, 13-14, 16-17, 23-28; Daniel 3:62-67; Luke
21:12-19
Jesus said to the crowd: “They will seize and persecute you, they will hand you
over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led before kings
and governors because of my name. It will lead to your giving testimony.
Remember, you are not to prepare your defence beforehand, for I myself shall
give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to
resist or refute. You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives,
and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all
because of my name, but not a hair on your head will be destroyed. By your
perseverance you will secure your lives.”(Luke 21:12-19)
One of the very interesting currents of thought in modern philosophy and
literature is that which asserts the ultimate meaninglessness of life and the
world. Such a proposition is viewed by some as courageous and very real: which
is to say that it faces reality as it is, and does so with courage. This general
understanding of things
— that life in general is without ultimate meaning — can
be the cumulative effect of viewing various individual issues as lacking in
meaning. For instance, a great number of people would see no meaning in the
final years of helpless suffering of the elderly, nor in the life of a
helplessly retarded child as he or she faces years of dependency on hard-pressed
parents. What is the meaning of it all, its value and purpose? What can be made
of such a life? Well, without embarking on a critique of a philosophy of general
meaninglessness, let us take a different case of seeming futility. A Christian
of great promise, with many natural gifts and a promising social position in the
country of his birth, is jailed precisely for being a Christian and for living
according to the tenets of his faith. There are at this moment many Catholic
priests and some Catholic bishops in China languishing in jail for living their
Catholic faith. Over the past century countless numbers have been in the same
situation. They spend an enormous slice of their lives incarcerated and perhaps
eventually released sick and debilitated in order that others will not regard
them as martyrs.
Their best years have gone and their lives could be regarded by some as wasted.
What has been the meaning of it? Our Lord throws light on this in our Gospel
passage today. Jesus said to the crowd: “They will seize and persecute you, they
will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led
before kings and governors because of my name. It will lead to your giving
testimony.” (Luke 21:12-19). So then, the meaning of such
experiences and such a life lies in its testimony.
No situation we may find ourselves in is bereft of meaning because in every
situation we are able to give testimony to Christ and his truth. This we do by
our words and our deeds, and if words are impossible, then our deeds — the way
we live — offers this opportunity. When we reflect on the Gospels, we can see
how exalted is the meaning of things when they testify to the truth of Christ.
Our Lord in the midst of his Passion said to Pontius Pilate that for this was he
born to bear witness to the truth and those who are of the truth listen to his
voice. Our Lord entered and embraced his Passion in order to give testimony to
the truth about his own person and God’s saving plan to be fulfilled in him. He
gathered his disciples and in particular the Apostles about him in order that
they might bear witness and testimony to him. When he had risen from the dead he
told them to await in Jerusalem the Promise, and that they would be his
witnesses to the end of the earth. The life of the Christian is to bear witness
to Christ and his truth and in this way to give glory to God. What is the
meaning of life? The meaning of life can be expressed in terms of attaining the
truth of Christ, living it, and in one’s life giving testimony to it. When
persecutions come — and they come in countless forms depending on the
circumstances the Providence of God places one in — then that situation will
provide the opportunity to bear witness to Christ and his truth. When sickness
comes or very adverse circumstances that seem to be so pointless and unnecessary
and unfair, those situations will provide the occasion to bear witness to
Christ. It is surprising the number of saints who have been afflicted with very
bad health. Their bad health and at times excruciating final moments have been
their opportunity to bear witness to Christ and his saving work. Their
confidence and joy in the midst of suffering have borne witness before men that
Jesus is Lord and that nothing can separate us from the love of God made present
in Christ.
No matter what might befall us, no matter how seemingly futile our efforts
because of unjust or luckless circumstances, all is in the hands of our loving
and all-powerful God. He sees all and he knows what he is doing and allowing.
Why does he allow this or that to occur and to continue, perhaps for a very long
time — even centuries? We do not know, but as our Lord says in today’s Gospel,
these very circumstances offer us the chance to give testimony, to bear witness
to him.
Very importantly, our perseverance will win us life forever. We must persevere
in faith in a life of bearing witness. Such a life will in the fullness of time
be revealed as brimful of lasting meaning.
(E.J.Tyler)
Make this firm and determined resolution: to recall, when you receive honours
and praise, all that brings a blush of shame to your cheek.
(The Way, no.252)
What is the structure of the Lord’s Prayer?
It contains seven petitions made to God the Father. The first three, more God-centered,
draw us toward him for his glory; it is characteristic of love to think first of
the beloved. These petitions suggest in particular what we ought to ask of him:
the sanctification of his Name, the coming of his Kingdom, and the fulfilment of
his will. The last four petitions present to the Father of mercies our
wretchedness and our expectations. They ask him to feed us, to forgive us, to
sustain us in temptations, and to free us from the Evil One. (CCC 2803-2806,
2857)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.587)
(November 29) Servant of God John of Monte Corvino (1247-1328)
At a time when the Church was heavily embroiled in nationalistic
rivalries within Europe, it was also reaching across Asia to spread the
gospel of Jesus Christ to the Mongols. John of Monte Corvino went to
China about the same time Marco Polo was returning. John was a soldier,
judge and doctor before he became a friar. Prior to going to Tabriz,
Persia (present-day Iran), in 1278, he was well known for his preaching
and teaching. In 1291 he left Tabriz as a legate of Pope Nicholas IV to
the court of Kublai Khan. An Italian merchant, a Dominican friar and
John traveled to western India where the Dominican died. When John and
the Italian merchant arrived in China in 1294, Kublai Khan had recently
died. Nestorian Christians, successors to the dissidents of the
fifth-century Council of Ephesus’ teaching on Jesus Christ, had been in
China since the seventh century. John converted some of them and also
some of the Chinese, including Prince George from Tenduk, northwest of
Beijing. Prince George named his son after this holy friar. John
established his headquarters in Khanbalik (now Beijing), where he built
two churches; his was the first resident Catholic mission in the
country. By 1304 he had translated the Psalms and the New Testament
into the Tatar language. Responding to two letters from John, Pope
Clement V named John Archbishop of Khanbalik in 1307 and consecrated
seven friars as bishops of neighboring dioceses. One of the seven never
left Europe. Three others died along the way to China; the remaining
three bishops and the friars who accompanied them arrived there in
1308. When John died in 1328, he was mourned by Christians and
non-Christians. His tomb quickly became a place of pilgrimage. In 1368,
Christianity was banished from China when the Mongols were expelled and
the Ming dynasty began. John’s cause has been introduced in Rome. When
John of Monte Corvino went to China, he represented the Church’s desire
to preach the gospel to a new culture and to be enriched by it. The
travels of Pope John Paul II have demonstrated the universality of the
Good News and the urgent need to continue the challenging work of
helping the Good News take root in a variety of cultural situations. In
1975, Pope Paul VI wrote, "The Church evangelizes when she seeks to
convert, solely through the divine power of the Message she proclaims,
both the personal and collective consciences of people, the activities
in which they engage, and the lives and concrete milieus which are
theirs" (Evangelization in the Modern World,
#18). (AmericanCatholic.org)
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Scripture today: Daniel 6:12-28; Daniel 3:68-74; Luke
21:20-28
Jesus said to his disciples: “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, know
that its desolation is at hand. Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains.
Let those within the city escape from it, and let those in the countryside not
enter the city, for these days are the time of punishment when all the
Scriptures are fulfilled. Woe to pregnant women and nursing mothers in those
days, for a terrible calamity will come upon the earth and a wrathful judgment
upon this people. They will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken as
captives to all the Gentiles; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the
Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on earth nations
will be in dismay, perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People
will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the
powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man
coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these signs begin to
happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”(Luke 21:20-28)
Several decades after the death and resurrection of Christ the Roman armies
delivered a terrible visitation upon Jerusalem, one that was greater than the
sack of the City several centuries before. The Gospels make it very clear that
Christ foretold that this would come, much as certain prophets had foretold the
destruction of the City on the previous occasion. Our Gospel passage of today is
one such passage in which our Lord speaks of the solemn events that were coming.
Of course in veiled manner his words speak also of the final judgment on the world. It is clear
from our Lord’s words too that these horrifying events for the City were not
just an unfortunate result of military or political mistakes and lack of
prudence. They constituted a divine judgment upon the City, just as certain
previous events had represented a divine judgment. We know this because
Scripture states it, and our Lord’s words are clear. He says that what is coming
will be “the time of punishment when all the Scriptures are fulfilled. Woe to
pregnant women and nursing mothers in those days, for a terrible calamity will
come upon the earth and a wrathful judgment upon this people.” Now, apart from
the
specific prophecies of Scripture any interpretations of calamities as divine
judgments can be legitimate but they are at most private interpretations. In one
of his writings Cardinal Newman describes the invasion and hammering of the
Roman Empire by the barbarian peoples such as the Huns as a divine judgment on
Rome for its persecution of the Christian religion prior to Constantine. That is
a legitimate view and to be respected because of the eminence of Newman,
nevertheless it is just a personal opinion. Certainly our Lord is not saying in
our passage today that all sufferings and reversals are punishments for the sins
of those so suffering, nor does he teach that a person’s sufferings are in
proportion to his sins. On the contrary. On one occasion our Lord when he cured
a woman who had been bent over for a long time replied to the criticisms of the
Pharisees by saying that Satan had held the woman bound. So it was not because
of her own sins that she had been suffering in this way. On another occasion he
stated that the ones who were killed by the falling tower were not more sinful
than others, nor were the ones Pilate had killed during the sacrifices.
Indeed, we gain the impression from Scripture that while certain sufferings that
come to a person constitute a judgment on that person’s sins, generally
sufferings that God allows constitute a loving correction with a view to the
sufferer’s amendment, and a trial that tests and is meant to prove his or her
fidelity. In the case of the good and just man the suffering he undergoes is
allowed as a test and a
proof of patient fidelity which God will reward, and the paradigm of this is our
Lord himself. Christ's suffering and death at the hands of sinners tested (we might
say) and certainly manifested his obedient love and the upshot was his own exaltation
and the redemption of the world. Our Gospel passage today that relates to the
chastisement of the City specifically implies this in respect to those who are
faithful to God and who are caught up in the suffering. Our Lord says that
“People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for
the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man
coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these signs begin to
happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.”
(Luke 21:20-28). Raise your heads high because your redemption is near. That is
a point we could take for our everyday life. The stock market fails or a
commercial company crashes and an investor who is trying to live well loses
great sums of money through no fault of his own. A bridge crashes and many
people are lost. The Twin Towers are destroyed by terrorists and three thousand
innocent victims die. A great fire engulfs part of a state and city and people’s
livelihoods are destroyed. The fault, perhaps, lay with an arsonist. Yet many
others suffer. Why has God allowed it to occur? We cannot be sure but what is
manifest is that it is the opportunity to manifest patient fidelity to God in
the teeth of suffering. It is notable how often the lives of saints are marked
by very great suffering. In this their difficult circumstances parallel — in a
generic sense — those of Christ. Their sufferings were the opportunity to
manifest their patience and fidelity to God and his will. The meaning of their
suffering is that it tests and proves their love.
No matter what happens in life, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.
Let us resolve to turn every occasion into an opportunity to show our love for
and obedience to God our heavenly Father, and let us do it in union with Christ
by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit.
(E.J.Tyler)
Do your duty 'now', without looking back on 'yesterday', which has already
passed, or worrying over 'to-morrow', which may never come for you.
(The Way, no.253)
What does “Hallowed be thy Name” mean?
To hallow or make holy the Name of God is above all a prayer of praise that
acknowledges God as holy. In fact, God revealed his holy Name to Moses and
wanted his people to be consecrated for him as a holy nation in which he would
dwell. (CCC 2807-2812, 2858)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.588)
(November 30) Saint Andrew, Apostle
Saint Andrew, Apostle. Born at Bethsaida, Andrew was a disciple of John the
Baptist before he became a follower of Christ, to whom he also brought his
brother, Peter. With Philip he presented the Greeks to Christ before his
Passion. Before the miracle in the desert, he pointed out to Christ the boy
carrying the loaves and fishes. After Pentecost he preached the Gospel in many
lands and is said to have been put to death by crucifixion at Achaia (Greece).
Today let us also think of Saint Maura
As Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is
called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were
fishermen. He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
At once they left their nets and followed him. He walked along from there and
saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They
were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. He called them,
and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him.(Matthew 4:18-22)
Socrates had a considerable personal following of students and disciples. Plato
too had his students and disciples. So did Aristotle. Undoubtedly these
disciples emulated
the person of their master in various respects, but the principal thing by far
in their looking to their master was their interest in his philosophy. Now, of
course our Lord’s disciples looked to him for his teaching and accordingly they
called him Rabbi, or Master. Even the scribes and the Pharisees addressed him as
Rabbi, even if they refused to acknowledge him as a prophet. Indeed, our Lord
was a prophet in the great tradition of the prophets and his immediate
predecessor in the prophetical tradition was John the Baptist. Like the prophets
before him, John the Baptist had his disciples and they learnt from him the word
of God and how to live and pray in accord with the revealed will of God. But
there was a notable difference in our Lord’s call to his disciples and it is
suggested in our Gospel today, the feast of St Andrew the Apostle. We read that
“as Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is
called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were
fishermen. He said to them, 'Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.'
(Matthew 4:18-22)
At once they left their nets and followed him.” Firstly, while the prophets
before him seem to have simply attracted their disciples Our Lord
sought out disciples much more actively, while attracting great numbers of
others as well. He sought them out and invited them to come after him and live
in his friendship. But we also notice that his call involved a distinctive
mission. “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” He would equip
them to capture souls. He would send them out, empowered, to conquer souls for
him, the Master. Christ was inviting them to share in establishing his kingdom.
They appear to have intuited that this apostolic mission was part and parcel of
their discipleship, and they responded immediately.
Christian discipleship involves something more than being a disciple of a
prophet in the traditional sense. It involves more than being in the company and
enjoying the friendship of the prophetic teacher. It involves more than learning
how to live in accord with the revealed plan and will of God. It involves more
than being simply a disciple in this sense. It involves as an essential
component being a fisher of men, and relying on Christ to give one the
wherewithal to do this: he will make the disciple a fisher of men through the
power of his grace. All this is to say that Christian discipleship involves
being apostolic, which is to say having the readiness and constant disposition
as well as the enabling grace from Christ to share in the mission of the
apostles, which is to bring others into the knowledge and friendship of Jesus.
All of this is suggested in our Gospel text today in which our Lord actively
calls Andrew and Simon as well as James and John. Firstly, their following of
him is the response to his active call to “come after” him, and secondly it is a
call to share in his mission of capturing souls and drawing them into his
Kingdom. This they would do by sharing in his proclamation of the Good News of
the Kingdom. The prophets did not send out their disciples to the whole world,
and we read nothing of this in John the Baptist’s dealings with his disciples
nor in the prophets who proceeded him. But it is at the heart of Christ’s
dealings with his disciples. His Kingdom was to expand. On the very first day of
rising from the dead he appeared to the Eleven and breathed the Holy Spirit on
them, giving them a share in his mission: “As the Father sent me, so am I
sending you.” Just before he ascended into heaven, he gave his disciples a
world-wide mission. “Go therefore to all the world and make disciples of all the
nations.. And I am with you till the end of the world.” At Pentecost the effect
was precisely in this direction. By sending the Holy Spirit, our Lord was
“making” his disciples “fishers of men.”
Let us every day hear the call of Christ to come after him. Let us also hear the
other half of this same wonderful calling, that he would “make” us “fishers of
men.” The Christian has a mission in the world of his daily life to bring that
world to the person of Christ, and he is able to do this by the gift to him of
Christ’s grace. Let us take up the baton for Christ and run with it every day.
(E.J.Tyler)
How is the Name of God made holy in us and in the world?
To make holy the Name of God, who calls us “to holiness” (1 Thessalonians 4:7)
is to desire that our baptismal consecration animate our whole life. In
addition, it is to ask –with our lives and our prayers – that the Name of God be
known and blessed by every man. (CCC 2813-2815)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.589)
(December 1) Blessed John of Vercelli (c. 1205-1283)
John was born near Vercelli in northwest Italy in the early 13th
century. Little is known of his early life. He entered the Dominican
Order in the 1240s and served in various leadership capacities over the
years. Elected sixth master general of the Dominicans in 1264, he
served for almost two decades. Known for his tireless energy and his
commitment to simplicity, John made personal visits—typically on
foot—to almost all the Dominican houses, urging his fellow friars to
strictly observe the rules and constitutions of the Order. He was
tapped by two popes for special tasks. Pope Gregory X enlisted the help
of John and his fellow Dominicans in helping to pacify the States of
Italy that were quarreling with one another. John was also called upon
to draw up a framework for the Second Council of Lyons in 1274. It was
at that council that he met Jerome of Ascoli (the man who would later
become Pope Nicholas IV), then serving as minister general of the
Franciscans. Some time later the two men were sent by Rome to mediate a
dispute involving King Philip III of France. Once again, John was able
to draw on his negotiating and peacemaking skills. Following the Second
Council of Lyons, Pope Gregory selected John to spread devotion to the
name of Jesus. John took the task to heart, requiring that every
Dominican church contain an altar of the Holy Name; groups were also
formed to combat blasphemy and profanity. Toward the end of his life
John was offered the role of patriarch of Jerusalem, but declined. He
remained Dominican master general until his
death. (AmericanCatholic.org)
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Scripture today: Daniel 7:15-27;
Daniel 3:82-87; Luke 21:34-36
Jesus said to his disciples: “Take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts
be overcharged with carousing and drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and
that day come upon you suddenly. For as a snare shall it come upon all that live
upon the face of the earth. Watch, therefore, praying at all times, that you may
be accounted worthy to escape all these things that are to come, and to stand
before the Son of man.(Luke 21:34-36)
In our Gospel passage today our Lord solemnly warns all of us not to be caught
napping. “Take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be overcharged with
carousing and drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and that day come upon
you suddenly.” (Luke 21:34-36) The most
important moment of life is the moment of death when God comes to take us from
this our earthly scene. None of us knows how or when that will be and our Lord
tells us that we must live in such a way that whatever be the circumstances of
our death we shall be ready for God’s judgment. This can only happen if at all
times we are doing with joyful heart the will of God. What does this entail?
Well, to begin with, we must remember that at no point does God expect us to be
doing unusual things for him. He expects us to be doing the ordinary things that
make up our ordinary life, which is to say the duties of our state in life. The
distinctive thing about this is to be the manner or spirit with which we do
these ordinary duties. God wants us to do them very well and out of love for
him. It is in this sense that we are to be found at our employment when he comes
to take us. It is the teaching and the tradition of the Church that Mary the
mother of Jesus was the holiest and purest creature and therefore the greatest
of God’s creatures. But her life was filled with the ordinary things and she
lived her life largely in humble obscurity. This is a great lesson to every
Christian and to every human being. Success in life in the sight of God does not
necessarily mean prominence and general recognition. It means doing the will of
God as expressed in our ordinary daily duties as perfectly as possible and out
of love for him. If death comes and finds us at this then we shall not be caught
napping.
The danger of life is that due to dissipation and self-indulgence in one or
other of its myriad forms, or alternatively due to the pressures and anxieties
of life, we can forget God and his holy will. Our love for God and his will
alone will be the issue in our judgment. So our Lord in our Gospel passage today
tells us to “beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and
drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life”. We are to guard the condition and
attitude of our hearts. We are to “watch, therefore, praying at all times, that
you may be accounted worthy”. We are to be watchful as to what occupies our
hearts and praying at all times. This has to involve a clear plan of life with
daily prayer, some spiritual reading, participation in the life and sacraments
of the Church, regular prayerful meditation on the word of God, and, I would
suggest having what we might call a spiritual advisor to accompany us on our
journey of friendship with Christ. If anyone in the world sets himself a goal or
a project in life — it could be a sporting, or business or career goal, he works
out an appropriate regimen which will orient his life to the attainment of that
goal. Otherwise various other passing goals will distract him from the true goal
he hopes to attain. Our goal is to be the love of God, and indeed the perfect
love of God. This is what we ought be aiming at daily, which is to say we ought
be aiming at loving God as perfectly as possible each passing day. This love for
God will be expressed in the generous fulfilment of our ordinary daily tasks,
and done so for God. If this is the direction of our life, then as I have said,
we shall not be caught napping. When the Lord comes, however sudden his arrival
is, we shall be found ready to appear before the judgment seat of God. We shall
pass from this life to the next truly loving God and desiring to obey him.
Let us then be ever on the job, God’s job, the job God has given us to do at any
one point. That is all God asks of us, and he asks it of us constantly. That job
could be to recreate, to rest, to work, to help, to pray, to read, whatever it
is. We must strive to sanctify our ordinary life and make it the means of
attaining true holiness and contributing to the holiness of others. In this way,
whenever death comes, we shall be found ready.
(E.J.Tyler)
You want to hear all that I think of 'your way'? Very well, then..., listen: if
you respond to the call, you will do your utmost in your work for Christ: if you
become a man of prayer, you will be granted the grace necessary to respond and,
hungry for sacrifice, you will seek out the hardest tasks...
And you will be happy here, and unspeakably happy hereafter.
(The Way, no.255)
What does the Church ask for when she prays “Thy Kingdom come”?
The Church prays for the final coming of the Kingdom of God through Christ’s
return in glory. The Church prays also that the Kingdom of God increase from now
on through people’s sanctification in the Spirit and through their commitment to
the service of justice and peace in keeping with the Beatitudes. This petition
is the cry of the Spirit and the Bride: “Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).
(CCC 2816-2821, 2859)
(Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.590)
Morning Offering:
O Jesus, through the most pure heart of Mary, I offer you all the
prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day for all the intentions
of your divine heart, in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass. I
offer them especially for the Holy
Father's intentions:
Pope Benedict XVI's missionary intention for November 2007 is "that in the Korean
peninsula the spirit of reconciliation and peace may grow."
plundered the catacombs,
Pope Boniface IV gathered up some 28 wagonloads of bones and reinterred
them beneath the Pantheon, a Roman temple dedicated to all the gods.
The pope rededicated the shrine as a Christian church. According to
Venerable Bede, the pope intended "that the memory of all the saints
might in the future be honoured in the place which had formerly been
dedicated to the worship not of gods but of demons" (On the Calculation
of Time). But the rededication of the Pantheon, like the earlier
commemoration of all the martyrs, occurred in May. Many Eastern
Churches still honour all the saints in the spring, either during the
Easter season or immediately after Pentecost. How the Western Church
came to celebrate this feast in November is a puzzle to historians. The
Anglo-Saxon theologian Alcuin observed the feast on November 1 in 800,
as did his friend Arno, Bishop of Salzburg. Rome finally adopted that
date in the ninth century.
When Jesus saw
the
crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had
sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the
meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and
thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the
merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be
called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the
sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are
you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil
against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward
will be great in heaven.” (Matthew 5:1-12a)
his seat as Teacher. His
disciples come to him and he gives to them his Law which they will take
to the world below. Matthew’s Gospel is distinguished by its allusions
to the Old Testament and its insinuation that what has gone
before is fulfilled in Christ. His scene in our Gospel today (Matthew 5:1-12a)
surely
reminds us of Moses and Nadab and Abihu and the seventy elders going up
the mountain to God (Exodus 24:9-11) where they receive his Law. Christ
is the new Moses, indeed the new and final Oracle of God and his
Beatitudes constitute the summary of the Law of Christian discipleship.
Christ addresses his disciples, and in Luke’s version too it is to the
disciples that our Lord addresses himself (Luke 6:20). Jesus tells them
what discipleship means and who are the ones who will be blessed with
the Kingdom of heaven. He tells them who are those who will reach the
promised land, who will be comforted, satisfied and rewarded, who will
be shown mercy and who will see God. Long before in the Old Testament
God had called Abraham with a great promise that all the nations would
be blessed in him and this promise of blessings was renewed in God’s
covenant with Moses. God promised good things to those who kept his
Law. Our Lord’s solemn yet simple words bespeak happiness and rewards
beyond imagining. They are the charter of the new covenant that the
prophets foretold would be made. We must therefore give to the
Beatitudes, these simple propositions in which our Lord tells us
wherein lies our happiness, our full and sustained consideration.
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be all-holy and
unaccepting of sin. “Be
holy, for I am holy” he says. This revelation of the holiness of the
God of Abraham and the prophets is confirmed and fulfilled in the
revelation of Jesus Christ. Christ suffered and died for our sins
because of the holiness of God who so loved the world and who so hated
sin that he did not hesitate to give up his own divine Son in order
that the sin of the world might be expiated. Christ is the Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world. If man but places his faith in
Christ as the Saviour and repents of his sins he will be saved. But
now, let us review some of the fundamental facts about life and death
as they have been revealed to us by God. The first great fact, of
course, is that following his death each person will be judged by the
infinite and all-holy God. No one will escape this judgment and anyone
with a sensitive conscience must be profoundly concerned at such a
prospect, naturally speaking. If one has a relative or friend who has
died, one ought think of the judgment that that relative or friend must
undergo, a judgment that will be searching beyond compare. What an
experience that the soul of the departed one enters into! In that
personal judgment on his life and deeds the departed stands alone. No
one can shield him from his responsibility for the thoughts, the words
and the actions of his life. They pass in review and God the all-holy
One gives his sentence. Were it not for the fact that God has revealed
himself to be not only just but also compassionate and merciful and
that his Son has died for us, the thought of the divine judgment would
be terrifying indeed.
exceptionally
virtuous. Their family was composed of two sons and four daughters, all
of whom manifested in their lives the splendor of their Christian
heritage. Their maternal uncle, John Angelus of Medici, became Pope
Pius IV. Charles was clearly destined for the ecclesiastical vocation;
all his preferences in study made it clear. When he was twelve years
old, a paternal uncle willed to him an abbey in commendam; and the
child constantly reminded his father that this revenue was the
patrimony of the poor. His father wept for joy, seeing his son’s
solicitude for the just application of his trust. Count Gilbert died
when Charles was twenty years old, and he was obliged to come home from
Pavia where he had been studying law; he returned there, however, to
complete his doctorate at the university after settling his affairs.
One year later, when his maternal uncle became Pope Pius IV, he created
Charles cardinal, and after another year nominated him Archbishop of
Milan. The Pontiff detained him in Rome, however, seeing his extensive
capacities and adding to these offices other administrative duties
which ordinarily require the prudence of mature years. No one was
disappointed in his services, despite the fact he was maintaining
delicate papal relations with other nations, as protector of Portugal
and the Low Countries, and was at the head of the Knights of Malta, the
Orders of Carmel and Saint Francis, among other duties.
studied at Oxford
and Paris and was ordained in 1291. More studies in Paris followed
until 1297, when he returned to lecture at Oxford and Cambridge. Four
years later he returned to Paris to teach and complete the requirements
for the doctorate. In an age when many people adopted whole systems of
thought without qualification, John pointed out the richness of the
Augustinian-Franciscan tradition, appreciated the wisdom of Aquinas,
Aristotle and the Muslim philosophers—and still managed to be an
independent thinker. That quality was proven in 1303 when King Philip
the Fair tried to enlist the University of Paris on his side in a
dispute with Pope Boniface VIII. John Duns Scotus dissented and was
given three days to leave France. In Scotus’s time, some philosophers
held that people are basically determined by forces outside themselves.
Free will is an illusion, they argued. An ever practical man, Scotus
said that if he started beating someone who denied free will, the
person would immediately tell him to stop. But if Scotus didn’t really
have a free will, how could he stop? John had a knack for finding
illustrations his students could remember! After a short stay in Oxford
he returned to Paris, where he received the doctorate in 1305. He
continued teaching there and in 1307 so ably defended the Immaculate
Conception of Mary that the university officially adopted his position.
That same year the minister general assigned him to the Franciscan
school in Cologne where John died in 1308. He is buried in the
Franciscan church near the famous Cologne cathedral. Drawing on the
work of John Duns Scotus, Pope Pius IX solemnly defined the Immaculate
Conception of Mary in 1854. John Duns Scotus, the "Subtle Doctor," was
beatified in 1993. Father Charles Balic, O.F.M., the foremost
20th-century authority on Scotus, has written: "The whole of Scotus's
theology is dominated by the notion of love. The characteristic note of
this love is its absolute freedom. As love becomes more perfect and
intense, freedom becomes more noble and integral both in God and in
man" (New Catholic
Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, p. 1105).
was built in the
fourth century when Constantine donated land he had received from the
wealthy Lateran family. That structure and its successors suffered
fire, earthquake and the ravages of war, but the Lateran remained the
church where popes were consecrated until the popes returned from
Avignon in the 14th century to find the church and the adjoining palace
in ruins. Pope Innocent X commissioned the present structure in 1646.
One of Rome’s most imposing churches, the Lateran’s towering facade is
crowned with 15 colossal statues of Christ, John the Baptist, John the
Evangelist and 12 doctors of the Church. Beneath its high altar rest
the remains of the small wooden table on which tradition holds St.
Peter himself celebrated Mass.
the Church. On the death of Sixtus, Leo was chosen Pope,
and consecrated on Saint Michael’s day, 440, amid great joy.
Prayers this week:
Let my prayer come
before you, Lord; Listen, and answer me.
teacher, she began charitable work
at the House of Providence Orphanage in Cadogno, Italy. In September
1877, she made her vows there and took the religious habit. When the
bishop closed the orphanage in 1880, he named Frances prioress of the
Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Seven young women from the
orphanage joined with her. Since her early childhood in Italy, Frances
had wanted to be a missionary in China but, at the urging of Pope Leo
XIII, Frances went west instead of east. She travelled with six sisters
to New York City to work with the thousands of Italian immigrants
living there. She found disappointment and difficulties with every
step. When she arrived in New York City, the house intended to be her
first orphanage in the United States was not available. The archbishop
advised her to return to Italy. But Frances, truly a valiant woman,
departed from the archbishop’s residence all the more determined to
establish that orphanage. And she succeeded. In 35 years Frances Xavier
Cabrini founded 67 institutions dedicated to caring for the poor, the
abandoned, the uneducated and the sick. Seeing great need among Italian
immigrants who were losing their faith, she organized schools and adult
education classes. As a child, she was always frightened of water,
unable to overcome her fear of drowning. Yet, despite this fear, she
travelled across the Atlantic Ocean more than 30 times. She died of
malaria in her own Columbus Hospital in Chicago. At her canonization on
July 7, 1946, Pius XII said, "Although her constitution was very frail,
her spirit was endowed with such singular strength that, knowing the
will of God in her regard, she permitted nothing to impede her from
accomplishing what seemed beyond the strength of a
woman." (AmericanCatholic.org)
as a simple
religious, very mistrustful of herself, under the direction of an Abbess having
the same name as herself. The Abbess’ sister was Saint Mechtilde of Hackeborn;
and she was the mistress and friend of the young Saint Gertrude, who consulted
her excellent teacher whenever she was tempted by vain and useless thoughts, or
troubled by doubts suggested by the ancient enemy.
Saint Gertrude learned Latin in her youth, as in those days was customary for
persons of her sex who consecrated themselves to God, and she wrote Latin with
unusual elegance and force. She also had an uncommon knowledge of Holy Scripture
and of all the branches of learning having religion as their object; but one day
Our Lord reproached her with having too great a taste for her studies.
Afterwards she could find in them nothing but bitterness; but soon Our Lord came
to instruct her Himself. For many years she never lost His amiable Presence,
save for eleven days when He decided to test her fidelity. Prayer and
contemplation were her principal exercise, and to those she consecrated the
greater part of her time.
Zeal for the salvation of souls was ardent in the heart of Gertrude. Thinking of
the souls of sinners, she would shed torrents of tears at the foot of the cross
and before the Blessed Sacrament. She especially loved to meditate on the
Passion and the Eucharist, and at those times, too, could not restrain the tears
that flowed in abundance from her eyes. When she spoke of Jesus Christ and His
mysteries, she ravished those who heard her. One day while in church the Sisters
were singing, I have seen the Lord face to face, Saint Gertrude beheld what
appeared to be the divine Face, brilliant in beauty; His eyes pierced her heart
and filled her soul and flesh with inexpressible delights. Divine love, ever the
unique principle of her affections and her actions, was the principle by which
she was crucified to the world and all its vanities.
She was the object of a great number of extraordinary graces; Jesus Christ
engraved His wounds in the heart of His holy spouse, placed rings on her
fingers, presented Himself to her in the company of His Mother, and in her
spirit acted as though He had exchanged hearts with her. All these astonishing
graces only developed her love for suffering. It was impossible for her to live
without some kind of pain; the time she spent without suffering seemed to her to
be wasted.
of Saint Margaret of
Hungary, a Dominican nun. Another of her brothers was Coloman, King of
Galicia and prince of Russia, who led an angelic life amid the multiple
affairs of the world and the troubles of war.
She was betrothed in infancy to Louis, Landgrave of Thuringia, and brought
up from the age of four in his father’s court. Never could she bear to adopt
the ornaments of the court for her own usage, and she took pleasure only in
prayer. She would remove her royal crown when she entered the church, saying
she was in the presence of the Saviour who wore a crown of thorns. As she
grew older, she employed the jewels offered her for the benefit of the poor.
Not content with receiving numbers of them daily in her palace, and
relieving all in distress, she built several hospitals, where she herself
served the sick, bathing them, feeding them, dressing their wounds and
ulcers. The relatives of her fiancé tried to prevent the marriage, saying
she was fit only for a cloister; but the young prince said he would not
accept gold in the quantity of a nearby mountain, if it were offered him to
abandon his resolution to marry Elizabeth.
Once as she was carrying in the folds of her mantle some provisions for the
poor, she met her husband returning from the hunt. Astonished to see her
bending under the weight of her burden, he opened the mantle and found in it
nothing but beautiful red and white roses, though it was not the season for
flowers. He told her to continue on her way, and took one of the marvellous
roses, which he conserved all his life. She never ceased to edify him in all
of her works. One of her twelve excellent Christian maxims, by which she
regulated all her conduct was, “Often recall that you are the work of the
hands of God and act accordingly, in such a way as to be eternally with
Him.”
When her pious young husband died in Sicily on his way to a Crusade with the
Emperor Frederick, she was cruelly driven from her palace by her
brother-in-law. Those whom she had aided showed nothing but coldness for
her; God was to purify His Saint by harsh tribulations. She was forced to
wander through the streets with her little children, a prey to hunger and
cold. The bishop of Bamberg, her maternal uncle, finally forced the cruel
prince to ask pardon for his ill treatment of her, but she voluntarily
renounced the grandeurs of the world, and went to live in a small house she
had prepared in the city of Marburgh. There she practised the greatest
austerities. She welcomed all her sufferings, and continued to be the mother
of the poor, distributing all of the heritage eventually conceded to her,
and converting many by her holy life. She died in 1231, at the age of
twenty-four. (magnificat.ca)
as it is a guarantee, at every epoch, of the eternal
felicity of those who remain faithful to it. Cecilia was the daughter of an
illustrious patrician, and was the only Christian of her family; she was
permitted to attend the reunions held in the catacombs by the Christians,
either through her parents’ condescension or out of indifference. She
continually kept a copy of the holy Gospel hidden under her clothing over
her heart. Her parents obliged her, however, despite her vow of virginity,
which most probably they knew nothing of, to marry the young Valerian, whom
she esteemed as noble and good, but who was still pagan.
During the evening of the wedding day, with the music of the nuptial feast
still in the air, Cecilia, this intelligent, beautiful, and noble Roman
maiden, renewed her vow. When the new spouses found themselves alone, she
gently said to Valerian, “Dear friend, I have a secret to confide to you,
but will you promise me to keep it?” He promised her solemnly that nothing
would ever make him reveal it, and she continued, “Listen: an Angel of God
watches over me, for I belong to God. If he sees that you would approach me
under the influence of a sensual love, his anger will be inflamed, and you
will succumb to the blows of his vengeance. But if you love me with a
perfect love and conserve my virginity inviolable, he will love you as he
loves me, and will lavish on you, too, his favors.” Valerian replied that if
he might see this Angel, he would certainly correspond to her wishes, and
Cecilia answered, “Valerian, if you consent to be purified in the fountain
which wells up eternally; if you will believe in the unique, living and true
God who reigns in heaven, you will be able to see the Angel.” And to his
questions concerning this water and who might bestow it, she directed him to
a certain holy old man named Urban.
executed
for being a Catholic priest and serving his flock. Born into a prosperous,
devout family in Guadalupe de Zacatecas, he entered the Jesuits in 1911 but
three years later fled to Granada, Spain, because of religious persecution in
Mexico. He was ordained in Belgium in 1925. He immediately returned to Mexico,
where he served a Church forced to go “underground.” He celebrated the Eucharist
clandestinely and ministered the other sacraments to small groups of Catholics.
He and his brother Roberto were arrested on
trumped-up charges of attempting to assassinate Mexico’s president. Roberto was
spared but Miguel was sentenced to face a firing squad on November 23, 1927. His
funeral became a public demonstration of faith. He was beatified in 1988.
of Rome would visit Mexico, be
welcomed by its president and celebrate open-air Masses before
thousands of people. Pope John Paul II made additional trips to Mexico
in 1990, 1993 and 1999. Those who outlawed the Catholic Church in
Mexico did not count on the deeply rooted faith of its people and the
willingness of many of them, like Miguel Pro, to die as martyrs. During
his homily at the beatification Mass, Pope John Paul II said that
Father Pro “is a new glory for the beloved Mexican nation, as well as
for the Society of Jesus. His life of sacrificing and intrepid
apostolate was always inspired by a tireless evangelizing effort.
Neither suffering nor serious illness, neither the exhausting
ministerial activity, frequently carried out in difficult and dangerous
circumstances, could stifle the radiating and contagious joy which he
brought to his life for Christ and which nothing could take away (see
John 16:22). Indeed, the deepest root of self-sacrificing surrender for
the lowly was his passionate love for Jesus Christ and his ardent
desire to be conformed to him, even unto death.” (AmericanCatholic.org)
the dream was repeated, Catherine saw that the Saviour
received her with great affection, and espoused her before the court of heaven,
with a fine ring. She woke with it on her finger.
She had a very active intelligence, fit for all matters, and she undertook the
study of philosophy and theology. At that time there were schools in Alexandria
for the instruction of Christians, where excellent Christian scholars taught.
She made great progress and became able to sustain the truths of our religion
against even very subtle sophists. At that time Maximinus II was sharing the
empire with Constantine the Great and Licinius, and had as his district Egypt;
and this cruel Christian-hater ordinarily resided in Alexandria, capital of the
province. He announced a gigantic pagan sacrifice, such that the very air would
be darkened with the smoke of the bulls and sheep immolated on the altars of the
gods. Catherine before this event strove to strengthen the Christians against
the fatal lures, repeating that the oracles vaunted by the infidels were pure
illusion, originating in the depths of the lower regions.
She foresaw that soon it would be the Christians’ turn to be immolated, when
they refused to participate in the ceremonies. She therefore went to the emperor
himself, asking to speak with him, and her singular beauty and majestic air won
an audience for her. She said to him that it was a strange thing that he should
by his example attract so many peoples to such an abominable cult. By his high
office he was obliged to turn them away from it, since reason itself shows us
that there can be only one sovereign Being, the first principle of all else. She
begged him to cease so great a disorder by giving the true God the honour due
Him, lest he reap the wages of his indifference in this life already, as well as
in the next. The consequences of her hardy act extended over a certain time; he
decided to call in fifty sophists of his suite, to bring back this virgin from
her errors. A large audience assembled to hear the debate; the emperor sat on
his throne with his entire court, dissimulating his rage.
Catherine began by saying she was surprised that he obliged her to face, alone,
fifty individuals, but she asked the grace of him, that if the true God she
adored rendered her victorious, he would adopt her religion and renounce the
cult of the demons. He was not pleased and replied that it was not for her to
lay down conditions for the discussion. The head of the sophists began the
orations and reprimanded her for opposing the authority of poets, orators and
philosophers, who unanimously had revered Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Minerva and
others. He cited their writings, and said she should consider that these persons
were far anterior to this new religion she was following. She listened carefully
before answering, then spoke, showing that the ridiculous fables which Homer,
Orpheus and other poets had invented concerning their divinities, and the fact
that many offered a cult to them, as well as the abominable crimes attributed to
them, proved them to be gods only in the opinion of the untutored and credulous.
And then she proved that the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures had clearly
announced the time and the circumstances of the life of the future Saviour, and
that these were now fulfilled. Prodigy; the head of the sophists avowed that she
was entirely correct and renounced his errors; the others said they could not
oppose their chief. Maximinus had them put to death by fire, but the fire did
not consume their remains. Thus they died as Christians, receiving the Baptism
of blood.