Monday of the ninth week in Ordinary Time

(June 1) Saint Justin, martyr, (d. 165)
Justin never ended his quest for religious truth even when he converted to Christianity after years of studying various pagan philosophies. As a young man, he was principally attracted to the school of Plato. However, he found that the Christian religion answered the great questions about life and existence better than the philosophers. Upon his conversion he continued to wear the philosopher's mantle, and became the first Christian philosopher. He combined the Christian religion with the best elements in Greek philosophy. In his view, philosophy was a pedagogue of Christ, an educator that was to lead one to Christ. Justin is known as an apologist, one who defends in writing the Christian religion against the attacks and misunderstandings of the pagans. Two of his so-called apologies have come down to us; they are addressed to the Roman emperor and to the Senate. For his staunch adherence to the Christian religion, Justin was beheaded in Rome in 165.
   "Philosophy is the knowledge of that which exists, and a clear understanding of the truth; and happiness is the reward of such knowledge and understanding" (Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, 3). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Tobit 1:3; 2:1a-8; Psalm 112:1b-6; Mark 12:1-12

Jesus then began to speak to them in parables: A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed. He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, 'They will respect my son.' But the tenants said to one another, 'This is the heir. Come, let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. Haven't you read this scripture: 'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvellous in our eyes'? Then they looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away. (Mark 12:1-12)

There are various personalities featuring in the parable which our Lord tells in today’s Gospel. To begin with, there is the owner of the vineyard. The owner is God who chose the people of Israel for his own. The vineyard, as is clear from many Old Testament texts, is the chosen people of Israel. The tenants of the vineyard are the leaders of the Jews — not all of them, but those who in Israel’s history were intent on doing away with the prophets, and in our Lord’s day those who rejected him and resolved to put him to death. There are the servants of the owner, and they are the prophets whom God sent to ask for the produce. Finally, there is the son and he is Jesus Christ. God loved his vineyard and expected fruit from it, the fruit of holiness. He entrusted his vineyard to the leaders of the people but all too often the pattern was the same. When God sent his prophets to require holiness of life, they were persecuted, rejected and put to death. This pattern was supremely the case in the ministry of God’s own son become man. It stands to reason that God would take the vineyard from the unworthy tenants and give it to others. Christ is pointing to a change in the dispensation between God and his people. Now, while our Lord is issuing a warning to the leaders who realized that his words were in reference to them, he was also pointing to a marvellous turn of events springing precisely from his rejection by the leaders. It will be “marvellous in our eyes,” something “the Lord has done”. As our Lord says, “Haven't you read this scripture: 'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvellous in our eyes'?” Our Lord is speaking of what we might call the cosmic surprise wrought by God for the restoration of the universe, so profoundly affected by the sin of man. By means of his rejection by the world, Christ would redeem the world. All too often we take for granted what we are familiar with. We can lose our wonder at the redemption.

There are many unique features of the Christian religion. One is its fundamental focus on the sin of the world. It recognizes that mankind is held in the thraldom of sin. It is one thing to recognize the fact of sin in the world — this is surely something open to reason and the conscience — it is another to say, as Christianity does, that sin is the fundamental cause of the evil of the world. It is the root cause of death and all that is associated with death. The Christian religion also teaches that the sin of man has its origins in the dawn of human history. It was perpetrated originally by the first man and woman, and that in them human nature was profoundly wounded as a result — not totally depraved, but profoundly wounded. The image of God in which man was made was not totally lost but it was greatly defaced by sin. It is this crippled human nature, now so prone to sin, which is inherited by every person born into this world because it is this which man’s first parents brought upon themselves and so handed on to their descendants. God has revealed all this to us in the inspired Scriptures and in the Church’s teaching and Tradition. These facts are beyond the discovery of human reason, and the rejection of the Christian doctrine of sin by, say, Islam shows this. But God has also revealed to us his plan of redemption, now effected in Christ. He came unto his own, but, wonder of wonders! his own did not receive him. But — and this is alluded to in our Gospel passage today — this very rejection by his own was the occasion of man’s redemption. “Haven't you read this scripture”, our Lord asks, “'The stone the builders rejected has become the keystone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvellous in our eyes'?” (Mark 12:1-12). By his rejection on the cross the Son of God redeemed the world. As St Paul writes, this was madness to the Greeks and a scandal to the Jews. Islam will not allow it as worthy of the great and only God. For Islam, Jesus could not be almighty because he was the subject of persecution. Islam also denies, despite the unanimous testimony of the Gospels, that Jesus Christ died on the cross. It also denies, of course, that this could be possible for one who is God.

In all of this, it is the power of God which is not known nor understood. The divine plan of redemption is indeed a marvel in our eyes, in the eyes of limited and sinful man. Let us never cease to wonder at two great facts of human history, the fact of the Incarnation and the fact of the Atonement. God became man and, in his humanity, he took upon himself the sin of the world. He did this supremely in his passion and death on the Cross when he expiated for all the offences of sinful man against the all-holy God. He, the living Jesus, invites us to his friendship. Let us be his friends, then, and let us be faithful to that friendship to the end, no matter what be the cost.
                                                                                    (E.J.Tyler)

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The harvest is great and the labourers few. Rogate ergo! Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.

Prayer is the most effective means of winning new apostles.
                                                                        (The Way, no.800)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Tenth Chapter    TO DESPISE THE WORLD AND SERVE GOD IS SWEET

 THE DISCIPLE

NOW again I will speak, Lord, and will not be silent. I will speak to the hearing of my God, my Lord, and my King Who is in heaven. How great, O Lord, is the multitude of Your mercies which You have stored up for those who love You. But what are You to those who love You? What are You to those who serve You with their whole heart?

Truly beyond the power of words is the sweetness of contemplation You give to those who love You. To me You have shown the sweetness of Your charity, especially in having made me when I did not exist, in having brought me back to serve You when I had gone far astray from You, in having commanded me to love You.
                                                                                     (Continuing)

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The glories of Mary are for the sake of Jesus; and … we praise and bless her as the first of creatures, that we may confess Him as our sole Creator.

         (JHN, from the sermon ‘The Glories of Mary for the Sake of Her Son’ 1849)

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Tuesday of the ninth week in Ordinary Time

(June 2) Saints Marcellinus and Peter (d. 304)
         Marcellinus and Peter were prominent enough in the memory of Church to be included among the saints of the Roman Canon. Mention of their names is optional in our present Eucharistic Prayer I. Marcellinus was a priest and Peter was an exorcist, that is, someone authorized by the Church to deal with cases of demonic possession. They were beheaded during the persecution of Diocletian. Pope Damasus wrote an epitaph apparently based on the report of their executioner, and Constantine erected a basilica over the crypt in which they were buried in Rome. Numerous legends sprang from an early account of their death. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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 Scripture today:   Tobit 2:9-14;   Psalm 112:1-2, 7-9;   Mark 12:13-17

Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. They came to him and said, Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn't we? But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. Why are you trying to trap me? he asked. Bring me a denarius and let me look at it. They brought the coin, and he asked them, Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription? Caesar's, they replied. Then Jesus said to them, Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. And they were amazed at him. (Mark 12:13-17)

One of the most serious of errors that has crept into discourse about Jesus of Nazareth in recent decades — or rather recent centuries — relates to his knowledge. It has been insinuated, and even openly asserted, that he was unaware that he was the Son of God and that this was a factor illustrating the genuineness of his Incarnation. It has also been stated that there were things about which he was in error in respect to his ministry and mission. It is true, of course, that in his human intellect he was not necessarily aware of many things — things which he did not choose to grasp. For instance, on one occasion in the crowd on his way to cure a person he suddenly stopped and asked who touched him. In his human intellect he was not conscious of who it was and he sought that information. But this was not a state of positive error. It was a lack of information which in his humanity he chose to allow. Interestingly, though, in this instance he was conscious that healing power had gone from him, suggesting a divine element in his consciousness. Nevertheless, humanly Christ could learn. The Gospel tells us that he grew in wisdom and age and grace. By the same token whenever, for the sake of his divine mission, he wished to know something beyond the capacity of his human intellect he effortlessly did so. For instance, when Nathanael approached him for the first time he told him that he saw him under the fig tree. For some reason this was so stupendous a knowledge that it immediately evoked a high faith in Nathanael: "Rabbi, you are the Son of God, the King of Israel" — in other words the Christ, the Son of God. When speaking to the woman at Jacob’s Well in Sichar, he told her that she had had five husbands. That led to her conversion: "Sir, I see that you are a prophet," she said. The upshot was that many in the Samaritan town were converted to faith in Jesus as the Saviour of the world. In anything required of his redemptive mission there was no mistake in the human intellect of Jesus Christ, and of course in his divine nature as the Son of God there was not the slightest lack of awareness in respect to anything.

I say this by way of introduction to our Gospel passage today. The leaders of the Jews, jealous and hostile towards Jesus because of his spiritual ascendancy over the people, were constantly trying to trap him in his teaching and practice. They strove to detect in him religious error or even error in political prudence so as to be able to arraign him before the Sanhedrin or before a Roman tribunal. So they sent their representatives to entrap him in his words. Let us notice their introduction because it reveals the entire impression created by our Lord in his teaching and ministry. We read that "They came to him and said, Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth." Jesus impressed all by his high moral integrity. He taught the way of God and did so according to the truth. Our Lord is not addressed as some philosopher — another Socrates or Plato, let us say — but as a teacher of the way of God. That was his mission as it unfolded during his public ministry. He was in the tradition not of philosophers but of the prophets. As a prophet he was swayed by no consideration other than the mind of God. The rank of those before him (such as the religious leaders or even the Romans) was of no weight before this. So, the scheming questioners intimated, they could expect from him a fearless and impartial reply to their perplexity. They wanted a clear answer, "Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn't we?" They wanted a yes or no response so as to be able to implicate our Lord in religious error or in political rebellion. Our Lord shows his sovereign possession of the truth both in perceiving their hypocrisy and in the practical question they were raising. "Why are you trying to trap me? he asked. Bring me a denarius and let me look at it. They brought the coin, and he asked them, Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription? Caesar's, they replied. Then Jesus said to them, Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." (Mark 12:13-17)

We read that his questioners were dumbfounded at his reply. Christ was supremely free from error and in full mastery of the truth. In all that relates to man’s salvation and moral life, Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Mankind has a teacher who possesses the fullness of truth, and as a result of his Passion and Death he gives to those who believe in him the Spirit of Truth. This is the Holy Spirit who is Christ’s gift to the Church and through the Church to each of us who are baptized. Let us live in the truth which Christ has revealed as it comes to us in and by the Church. It is the truth which will set us free, free from the darkness of sin and free from the darkness of error.
                                                                                              (E.J.Tyler)

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Through the world still echoes that divine cry: 'I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already!' And you see: it has nearly all died out...

Will you not help to spread the blaze?
                                                                                      (The Way, no.801)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE             INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Tenth Chapter    TO DESPISE THE WORLD AND SERVE GOD IS SWEET

THE DISCIPLE

O Fountain of unceasing love, what shall I say of You? How can I forget You, Who have been pleased to remember me even after I had wasted away and perished? You have shown mercy to Your servant beyond all hope, and have exhibited grace and friendship beyond his deserving.

What return shall I make to You for this grace? For it is not given every man to forsake all things, to renounce the world, and undertake the religious life. Is it anything great that I should serve You Whom every creature is bound to serve? It should not seem much to me; instead it should appear great and wonderful that You condescend to receive into Your service one who is so poor and unworthy. Behold, all things are Yours, even those which I have and by which I serve You. Behold, heaven and earth which You created for the service of man, stand ready, and each day they do whatever You command. But even this is little, for You have appointed angels also to minister to man -- yea more than all this -- You Yourself have condescended to serve man and have promised to give him Yourself.
                                                                              (Continuing)

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[Christ] came first in the flesh; He has come the second time in the Spirit.
                        (JHN, Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification (1838), ‘Lecture 9. , p. 205.

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Wednesday of the ninth week in Ordinary Time

(June 3) Charles Lwanga and Companions (d. 1886)
    One of 22 Ugandan martyrs, Charles Lwanga is the patron of youth and Catholic action in most of tropical Africa. He protected his fellow pages (aged 13 to 30) from the homosexual demands of the Bagandan ruler, Mwanga, and encouraged and instructed them in the Catholic faith during their imprisonment for refusing the ruler’s demands. For his own unwillingness to submit to the immoral acts and his efforts to safeguard the faith of his friends, Charles was burned to death at Namugongo on June 3, 1886, by Mwanga’s order. Charles first learned of Christ’s teachings from two retainers in the court of Chief Mawulugungu. While a catechumen, he entered the royal household as assistant to Joseph Mukaso, head of the court pages. On the night of Mukaso’s martyrdom for encouraging the African youths to resist Mwanga, Charles requested and received Baptism. Imprisoned with his friends, Charles’s courage and belief in God inspired them to remain chaste and faithful. When Pope Paul VI canonized these 22 martyrs on October 18, 1964, he referred to the Anglican pages martyred for the same reason.
   On his African tour in 1969, Pope Paul VI told 22 young Ugandan converts that "being a Christian is a fine thing but not always an easy one." (AmericanCatholic.org)
 

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Scripture today:   Tobit 3:1-11a, 16-17a;   Psalm 25:2-9;   Mark 12:18-27

Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. Teacher, they said, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her? Jesus replied, Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. Now about the dead rising — have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken! (Mark 12:18-27)

Many things could be commented on in respect to our Lord’s words in this Gospel passage. The most obvious is, of course, his clear teaching on the resurrection from the dead, and in particular on the resurrection of the body. In the Nicene Creed the Christian professes belief in the resurrection of the body. There have been all sorts of belief among the religions of man in survival after death. The Egyptians had such a belief as did other civilizations of ancient times and various traditional religions of primal societies also possess notions of the Afterlife. But a distinctive tenet of Christianity is belief in the resurrection of the body and this is derived not from a religious myth or a philosophical speculation but from the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He rose from the dead in glory and in his body. The Christian firmly believes that if he lives in union with Jesus Christ here on earth, apart from living on in his spirit in Jesus Christ after death, at the end he will rise in union with Jesus Christ in his body. This will be when Christ comes in glory to judge the living and the dead. This special and total resurrection the Sadducees denied. As our Lord said, they did not know the Scriptures, nor did they appreciate the power of God. But then our Lord makes his final observation which we ought take to heart. He tells the Sadducees that they are very much mistaken. Consider that. The Sadducees were convinced of the truth of their religious tenet that there was no resurrection, but the Incarnate Son of God tells them that they are very much mistaken. We are so used to conflicting religious opinions and absolutely opposite contentions being presented as true by this or that person or group that we can gradually lose our sense of truth and falsehood itself. By this I mean that, without quite realizing it, and because of the lack of consensus in matters of ultimate importance, we can easily settle for personal opinion and or preference rather than objective truth as the only final arbiter.

This viewpoint that settles for personal opinion rather than objective truth in effect means that there are no mistakes in matters of ultimate importance. Usually it is allowed that the case is different in issues that can be tested in some sense empirically. Such matters as these are hard facts that no one can deny and because no one can deny them a stand can be made for their truth, at least in pragmatic and practical terms. If you go through a red light while driving on the road and the camera catches you in the act, there is hard evidence at hand and the truth of the matter is resolved. But if you say that Mahomet is the greatest prophet, well, that is ultimately a matter of opinion and of course it is certainly not open to empirical testing. It is impossible, then, to assert that the devotee of Mahomet is objectively mistaken. It is his personal opinion or personal preference and that is all that can be said about it in ultimate terms. Such is the drift of the modern mind. It does not allow that Christ’s assertion at the end of our Gospel passage can be made in respect to ultimate issues. One cannot say, in religion, that “you are very much mistaken” because there is no such thing as a mistake of this kind. There is only personal opinion or personal preference. Modern secular man refuses the notion of objective and dogmatic religion. It dislikes and refuses a religion which insists on objective truth and on the declaration and rejection of its opposite, which is error. The notion of religious heresy is repugnant to the modern mind because religious truth is seen to be relative to the individual. That is to say, personal opinion and preference rather than truth is the ultimate arbiter of final issues. There are no mistakes in non-empirical matters provided you are sincere, and provided, as we might put it, the horses in the street are not disturbed. Relativism such as this is a far cry from the mind of Christ. In our Gospel scene today (Mark 12:18-27) the Sadducees come to our Lord, and our Lord tells them they are absolutely mistaken.

In our religion let us take our stand on the truth. In religion we ought strive to avoid being mistaken. We must not settle with mere personal opinion or preference. The truth revealed by God and Christ must be the object of our search, and the foundation of our entire practical life. God has revealed the truth about ultimate issues and this truth can be known and proclaimed. This means it is possible to be correct, and it is possible to be mistaken. We must make it our business to be correct and to live in the truth as it has been revealed by Christ and brought to us by his Church. It is the truth which will make us free.
                                                                               (E.J.Tyler)

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There is a brilliant man whom you long to attract to your apostolate; there is another, a man of great influence; and a third, full of prudence and virtues...

Pray, offer up sacrifices, and work on them with your word and example. — They don't want to come! — Don't lose your peace; it's because they are not needed.

Do you think there were no brilliant and influential and prudent and virtuous contemporaries of Peter outside the apostolate of the first twelve?
                                                                        (The Way, no.802)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE       INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Tenth Chapter     TO DESPISE THE WORLD AND SERVE GOD IS SWEET

THE DISCIPLE

What return shall I make for all these thousands of benefits? Would that I could serve You all the days of my life! Would that for but one day I could serve You worthily! Truly You are worthy of all service, all honour, and everlasting praise. Truly You are my Lord, and I am Your poor servant, bound to serve You with all my powers, praising You without ever becoming weary. I wish to do this -- this is my desire. Do You supply whatever is wanting in me.
                                                           (Continuing)

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The heart of every Christian ought to represent in miniature the Catholic Church, since one Spirit makes both the whole Church and every member of it to be His Temple. As He makes the Church one, which, left to itself, would separate into many parts; so He makes the soul one, in spite of its various affections and faculties, and its contradictory aims.
                             (JHN, from the sermon ‘Connexion between Personal and Public Improvement’ 1843)

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Thursday of the ninth week in Ordinary Time

Blessed John XXIII (1881-1963)
   (June 4)       Although few people had as great an impact on the 20th century as Pope John XXIII, he avoided the limelight as much as possible. Indeed, one writer has noted that his “ordinariness” seems one of his most remarkable qualities. The firstborn son of a farming family in Sotto il Monte, near Bergamo in northern Italy, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was always proud of his down-to-earth roots. In Bergamo’s diocesan seminary, he joined the Secular Franciscan Order. After his ordination in 1904, Angelo returned to Rome for canon law studies. He soon worked as his bishop’s secretary, Church history teacher in the seminary and as publisher of the diocesan paper. His service as a stretcher-bearer for the Italian army during World War I gave him a firsthand knowledge of war. In 1921 he was made national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith; he found time to teach patristics at a seminary in the Eternal City. In 1925 he became a papal diplomat, serving first in Bulgaria, then in Turkey and finally in France (1944-53). During World War II, he became well acquainted with Orthodox Church leaders and with the help of Germany’s ambassador to Turkey, Archbishop Roncalli helped save an estimated 24,000 Jewish people. Named a cardinal and appointed patriarch of Venice in 1953, he was finally a residential bishop. A month short of entering his 78th year, he was elected pope, taking the name John, his father’s name and the two patrons of Rome’s cathedral, St. John Lateran. He took his work very seriously but not himself. His wit soon became proverbial and he began meeting with political and religious leaders from around the world. In 1962 he was deeply involved in efforts to resolve the Cuban missile crisis. His most famous encyclicals were Mother and Teacher (1961) and Peace on Earth (1963). Pope John XXIII enlarged the membership in the College of Cardinals and made it more international. At his address at the opening of the Second Vatican Council, he said that the Council wishes "to transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without any attenuation or distortion". And he continued: "Our duty is not only to guard this precious treasure, as if we were concerned only with antiquity, but to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work which our era demands of us. It is necessary that adherence to all the teaching of the Church in its entirety and preciseness be presented in faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which, however, should be studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought. The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another". In the mind of John XXIII reform was set within the context of continuity. At the same time he said elsewhere that “The Church has always opposed... errors. Nowadays, however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity.” On his deathbed he said: “It is not that the gospel has changed; it is that we have begun to understand it better. Those who have lived as long as I have…were enabled to compare different cultures and traditions, and know that the moment has come to discern the signs of the times, to seize the opportunity and to look far ahead.” Pope John Paul II beatified him on September 3, 2000, and assigned as his feast day October 11, the day that Vatican II’s first session opened.
         In 1903, young Angelo wrote in his spiritual journal: “From the saints I must take the substance, not the accidents of their virtues. I am not St. Aloysius, nor must I seek holiness in his particular way, but according to the requirements of my own nature, my own character and the different conditions of my life. I must not be the dry, bloodless reproduction of a model, however perfect. God desires us to follow the examples of the saints by absorbing the vital sap of their virtues and turning it into our own life-blood, adapting it to our own individual capacities and particular circumstances. If St. Aloysius had been as I am, he would have become holy in a different way” (Journal of a Soul). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today:  Tobit 6:10-11; 7:1bcde, 9-17; 8:4-9a;  Psalm 128:1-5;  Mark 12:28-34

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had answered them well, he asked him, Of all the commandments, which is the most important? The most important one, answered Jesus, is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbour as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these. Well said, teacher, the man replied. You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, You are not far from the kingdom of God. And from then on no-one dared ask him any more questions. (Mark 12:28-34)

One of the obvious things in the Gospel accounts is the harassment and opposition our Lord faced from the leaders in his public ministry. The people increasingly held him to be a prophet, but the case was different with the leaders. They pursued him and sought to bring him down in his teaching. Their best brains were marshalled to trick and expose him as a deceiver and impostor. The result was that our Lord found himself in a maelstrom of debates with them. But we also observe that in all such conflicts he emerged victorious at every point. They never could get the better of him. We also see that a point was reached at which our Lord’s enemies, routed and in defeat, gave up on debating him. It seems that in the clash of intellect and doctrine our Lord left them intimidated because we read in our Gospel passage today that “from then on no-one dared ask him any more questions.” They “dared” not ask him anything more — because, obviously, they feared defeat and being themselves put to shame before all. Further, we are able to identify when this point was reached. It was when he was asked by an admiring teacher of the law a particular question. By way of aside, let us remember that when we speak of the scribes, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law being our Lord’s enemies, this did not include all of them. Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a hidden disciple of our Lord. He would visit him by night to learn his doctrine. Moreover, in his conversation with our Lord he stated that “we” know that you are a teacher from God — implying that there were others besides himself who accepted his prophetic authority. Joseph of Arimathea was a leading Jew and was also a disciple. Here in our Gospel today a teacher of the Law recognizes the greatness of our Lord’s replies to his enemies and asks him a question in his turn. He praised and confirmed our Lord’s reply and this in turn evoked Christ’s encouragement for him, the questioner. From that point all debates ended. This circumstance alone suggests to us the grandeur of our Lord’s reply. Let us attend to it, then.

In fact, the occasion of the hostility of the leaders towards our Lord was his disregard for much of their exposition and application of the Law. He did not accept the authority of their teaching in various critical points. For instance, that most pivotal institution of Judaic religion, the Sabbath Day, was observed by our Lord in ways that unhesitatingly set aside their notoriously fussy prescriptions. Our Lord at a word cured persons of their terrible diseases on the Sabbath Day, and even in the very synagogue, no less. The debate that ensued left them silenced. Who would not free his animal that had fallen into some difficulty on the Sabbath, our Lord asked, and yet you leave a descendant of Abraham in his difficulty? Our Lord set himself before the people as the arbiter of God’s Law. You have heard that it was said that you are to do this and that. But I tell you that you are to do the following. Our Lord’s relation to the Law of God raised the deeper and more critical question of his very identity. But it originated in matters about the Law. Now in our Gospel passage he is asked by a well-meaning teacher of the Law which is the greatest of the commandments, and our Lord replies with no hesitation and with absolute clarity. The first and most important command is that we love: we are to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbour as ourself. It has often been observed that the Old Testament, as the Christian terms it, is a body of writings that is difficult to make clear sense of. What is its unifying drift? In his teaching on the Scriptures Christ specified two of its fundamental features. Firstly, as he explains elsewhere in the Gospels, the Scripture tell about him. They are, then, to be read with him in mind. Secondly, as he explains in today’s Gospel passage (Mark 12:28-34), they tell of what God commands of us. He wants us to love him with all our heart and our neighbour as ourself. So incisive and impressive a summary of the Law was this that it evoked the praise of this teacher of the Law. Christ pinpoints in masterly fashion the synthesis of the commandments in a way that can be apprehended by the simplest of minds.

Of all the personalities in Jewish history and in the Sacred Scriptures, none attain the height and moral power of Jesus Christ. He is the teacher of God’s chosen people, the teacher of his own countless disciples, and the teacher of the world. He has revealed in a sharp light God’s revealed Law for man. It is a law commanding us to love. We are to strive to reach a full and total love for God and as much love for neighbour as we have for ourself. Indeed, our Lord would specify this further and teach his disciples that they must love one another as he loves them. Let us then every day set out on the path of love and strive to make Christ our model as we travel along.
                                                     (E.J.Tyler)

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I've been told that you have the 'knack' of drawing souls to your way.

It's a gift to thank God for; to be an instrument for seeking instruments!
                                                      (The Way, no.803)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Tenth Chapter     TO DESPISE THE WORLD AND SERVE GOD IS SWEET

THE DISCIPLE

It is a great honour, a great glory to serve You and to despise all things for Your sake. They who give themselves gladly to Your most holy service will possess great grace. They who cast aside all carnal delights for Your love will find the most sweet consolation of the Holy Ghost. They who enter upon the narrow way for Your name and cast aside all worldly care will attain great freedom of mind.
                                                          (Continuing)

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Some of the ancient Fathers consider that the Greeks were under a special dispensation of Providence, preparatory to the Gospel, though not directly from heaven as the Jewish was. Now St. Paul seems, if I may say it, to partake of this feeling; distinctly as he teaches that the [pagan] heathen are in darkness, and in sin, and under the power of the Evil One, he will not allow that they are beyond the eye of Divine Mercy.
           (JHN, from the sermon ‘St. Paul’s Characteristic Gift’ 1857)

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Friday of the ninth week in Ordinary Time

(June 5) Saint Boniface, bishop and martyr (672?-754)
       Boniface, known as the apostle of the Germans, was an English Benedictine monk who gave up being elected abbot to devote his life to the conversion of the Germanic tribes. Two characteristics stand out: his Christian orthodoxy and his fidelity to the Pope. How absolutely necessary this orthodoxy and fidelity were is borne out by the conditions he found on his first missionary journey in 719 at the request of Pope Gregory II. Paganism was a way of life. What Christianity he did find had either lapsed into paganism or was mixed with error. The clergy were mainly responsible for these latter conditions since they were in many instances uneducated, lax and questionably obedient to their bishops. In particular instances their very ordination was questionable. These are the conditions that Boniface was to report in 722 on his first return visit to Rome. The Holy Father instructed him to reform the German Church. The pope sent letters of recommendation to religious and civil leaders. Boniface later admitted that his work would have been unsuccessful, from a human viewpoint, without a letter of safe-conduct from Charles Martel, the powerful Frankish ruler, grandfather of Charlemagne. Boniface was finally made a regional bishop and authorized to organize the whole German Church. He was eminently successful. In the Frankish kingdom, he met great problems because of lay interference in bishops’ elections, the worldliness of the clergy and lack of papal control.
     During a final mission to the Frisians, he and 53 companions were massacred while he was preparing converts for Confirmation. In order to restore the Germanic Church to its fidelity to Rome and to convert the pagans, he had been guided by two principles. The first was to restore the obedience of the clergy to their bishops in union with the pope of Rome. The second was the establishment of many houses of prayer which took the form of Benedictine monasteries. A great number of Anglo-Saxon monks and nuns followed him to the continent. He introduced Benedictine nuns to the active apostolate of education. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Tobit 11:5-17; Psalm 146:1b-2, 6c-10; Mark12:35-37

While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, he asked, How is it that the teachers of the law say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared: 'The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.' David himself calls him 'Lord'. How then can he be his son? The large crowd listened to him with delight. (Mark12:35-37)

It is interesting and instructive to notice how deeply imbued in the Scriptures our Lord's words are and how frequently he referred to them. This is intimated even in the major incident of his youth when at the age of twelve he was taken perhaps for the first time to Jerusalem for the great feast. He then stayed behind in the Temple while Mary and Joseph proceeded back with the caravan on their journey to Nazareth. We can imagine the boy Jesus filled with love and delight in the House of his heavenly Father and absorbed in profound communion with him. At some point he was noticed by the doctors at the Temple and they entered into conversation with him. He attracted their amazed attention and we can imagine them gathering around him as he, a child of twelve, entered into discussion with them presumably on the meaning of the Scriptures. He astonished them with “his understanding and answers” (Luke 2:47). Here, these doctors must have thought, was a religious prodigy of the first rank in his mastery of the inspired writings. He then returned with his parents and disappeared from their view. Our scene passes across the years of his obscurity at Nazareth and we come to the threshold of his public ministry. He is in the desert being approached by the Demon from Hell to be tested. Each time Christ repulsed Satan’s temptations he referred to the Scriptures. In his conflicts with the religious leaders he appealed to the Scriptures and left them routed in debate. Christ showed himself to be the supreme authority on the Scriptures. In respect to his own mission he repeatedly told his disciples that according to the Scriptures the Messiah must suffer and in this way enter his glory. At his transfiguration on the mount Moses and Elijah appeared to him in glory, representing the entire message and tradition of the Scriptures. When he rose from the dead he explained to his disciples repeatedly that he had fulfilled the Scriptures. One of the very original things about Christianity is that the Scriptures have been given a great unifying meaning, and he, Christ, is that meaning.

In his teaching our Lord showed a striking freshness in his use of Scripture and in uncovering its hidden doctrinal meaning. For instance, when accosted by the Sadducees with their puzzle designed to show the absurdity of the resurrection our Lord drew on a text of Scripture that probably had never been understood as revealing this doctrine. He asked them, had they not read God’s words to Moses from the Burning Bush, that he was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Well then, after all, God is not a God of dead people but of living persons! By his very words, God was implying that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were alive. So there is a resurrection. In our Gospel passage today our Lord again displays his profound perception of the endless richness of the Scriptures. This time he refers to a psalm and intimates that it teaches that the Messiah is much more than merely the son of David. “How is it that the teachers of the law say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared: 'The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.' David himself calls him 'Lord'. How then can he be his son? The large crowd listened to him with delight” (Mark12:35-37). Incidentally, in this remark our Lord formally teaches that the psalms are inspired by the Holy Spirit: “David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared...” This action by the Holy Spirit tells us why our Lord loved the Scriptures so much. They were inspired by the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Blessed Trinity. We remember our Lord’s enormous veneration for the Holy Spirit. He said that anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit is guilty of an eternal sin. Here, our Lord points to a psalm that teaches that the Messiah who is David’s son is David’s Lord. We are reminded that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus, risen from the dead and now seated at the right hand of the Father. The son of David is the Lord. Jesus is Lord in the sense that he is Yahweh God himself, though not the Father. He is God the Son.

Let us, like Christ himself, love the Scriptures and understand very clearly that the Scriptures speak of Christ. He is the heart and soul of the Scriptures and we ought read them with the person of Christ in mind and in order to know and love him and his revelation better. Of course, we must read the Scriptures with the mind of Christ. We do this by reading the Scriptures with the mind of the Church his body and in full union with the Church which Christ founded on Peter and the Apostles. Let us then ask Christ to help us to love the Scriptures as he loved them.
                                                                          (E.J.Tyler)

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Help me to cry: Jesus, souls! Apostolic souls! They are for you, for your glory.

You'll see how in the end he will hear us.
                                                                      (The Way, no.804)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ       BOOK THREE            INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Tenth Chapter   TO DESPISE THE WORLD AND SERVE GOD IS SWEET

THE DISCIPLE

O sweet and joyful service of God, which makes man truly free and holy! O sacred state of religious bondage which makes man equal to the angels, pleasing to God, terrible to the demons, and worthy of the commendation of all the faithful! O service to be embraced and always desired, in which the highest good is offered and joy is won which shall remain forever!
                                                            (Concluded)

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I consider that, gradually and in the course of ages, Catholic inquiry has taken certain definite shapes, and has thrown itself into the form of a science, with a method and a phraseology of its own, under the intellectual handling of great minds, such as St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas; and I feel no temptation at all to break in pieces the great legacy of thought thus committed to us for these latter days.
                                      (JHN, from Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864)

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Saturday of the ninth week in Ordinary Time

(June 6) St. Norbert (1080?-1134)
    Friends sometimes jokingly mangle the name of the Premonstratensians into “Monstrous Pretensions,” just as the Franciscan O.F.M. is said to mean “Out For Money.” The name actually derives from Premontre, the region of France where Norbert established this Order in the 12th century. Recalling the nickname, Norbert’s founding of the Order was in truth a monstrous task: combating rampant heresies (particularly regarding the Blessed Sacrament), revitalizing many of the faithful who had grown indifferent and dissolute, plus effecting peace and reconciliation among enemies. Norbert entertained no pretensions about his own ability to accomplish this multiple task. Even with the aid of a goodly number of men who joined his Order, he realized that nothing could be effectively done without God’s power. Finding this help especially in devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, he and his Norbertines praised God for success in converting heretics, reconciling numerous enemies and rebuilding faith in indifferent believers. Reluctantly, Norbert became archbishop of Magdeburg in central Germany, a territory half pagan and half Christian. In this position he zealously and courageously continued his work for the Church until his death on June 6, 1134.
   On the occasion of his ordination to the priesthood, Norbert said, "O Priest! You are not yourself because you are God. You are not of yourself because you are the servant and minister of Christ. You are not your own because you are the spouse of the Church. You are not yourself because you are the mediator between God and man. You are not from yourself because you are nothing. What then are you? Nothing and everything. O Priest! Take care lest what was said to Christ on the cross be said to you: 'He saved others, himself he cannot save!'" (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today:   Tobit 12:1, 5-15, 20;    Psalm Tobit 13:2, 6efgh, 7, 8;   Mark 12:38-44 

As he taught, Jesus said, Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the market-places, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honour at banquets. They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely. Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything — all she had to live on. (Mark 12:38-44)

One person I knew had a fine dog of which he was very fond. The dog accompanied him everywhere and the dog clearly felt it was the centre of its master’s attention. Once, though, a friend brought with him his own dog and that dog, more placid and friendly than the first, was petted and patted and for a brief period was the centre of the party. The first dog could not bear it and attacked the visiting dog. Realizing then that it had incurred the annoyance of the humans in the room, it then ran off and watched in frustration from a distance. It had grown used to being the top dog and was envious of the other dog receiving special attention. It was amusing to see and one of the reasons why it seemed funny was that it was so like human beings. Human beings want to be on top and they feel jealous if they are not. On examining Christ during his trial Pilate could see that the reason why the leaders of the Jews had handed him over was because of their jealousy. They wanted to be on top, and our Lord had been held in the highest regard by so many people. This was compounded in their eyes by our Lord’s exalted claims as to his own person. So, full of hate, they determined to bring him down. It is a pattern that constantly recurs in human history. People want to be on top, and they are profoundly jealous if they are not. In our Gospel passage today our Lord warns against the teachers of the law who sought to be honoured. “They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the market-places, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honour at banquets.” The scene of the Gospel then shifts. Our Lord observes many rich people in the Temple throwing in a great deal for the Treasury. The implication is that they were doing this in order, as we might say, to be on top. By their good action they sought to be honoured by those observing them, and our Lord was watching it all.

Then he notices something to which he directs the attention of his disciples. “A poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything— all she had to live on” (Mark 12:38-44). The poor widow had not the slightest hope of being on top. It would never have entered her mind because of the absurdity of such an aspiration. She was very poor. She was unnoticed because unable to do anything regarded as significant. Her position was not at the top but at the bottom. Was she envious? Obviously not. Very simply and humbly she accepted her position and without attracting any attention tried to serve God as best she could. She silently came forward and, with no one noticing her, dropped her tiny amount in the Treasury. It was a contribution that would have been despised by so many others. It was all she had and she gave it all. Then she humbly moved on in her service of God. Our Lord, though, observed her with the utmost attention and appreciation. In fact, he told his disciples, she was on top. She was at the top of those who had contributed to the Treasury. The reason was that she had given everything to God, while they had given what they did not need. It all means that there is no need to be envious of others for their talents, attainments and good qualities. All that God wants of us is to do our best for him and to give our all in the doing of our daily duty. That is the way to ultimate success and it was the poor widow, commented on by our Lord, who offered the greatest light for proud and envious mankind. We are reminded of Peter asking the risen Jesus about the future path of John. What about him, Lord? The Lord replied, don’t worry about him, you just follow me. Each of us has his own gift. Let us be content with that and use it to the full for the glory of God. If we fail, let us repent and just say, now I begin!

The greatest example of persons whose course in life was ordinary and without special honours is Mary the mother of Jesus, together with Joseph her husband, the foster-father of Jesus Christ. They both lived in obscurity and yet gave of their best to God. They heard the word of God and put it into practice in their daily lives, living all the while in a wonderful intimacy with Jesus. They exemplified the grandeur of the ordinary life, as did, in her own way, the widow of our Gospel today. Let us never waste time comparing our lot in life with others who are more successful. Let us rather always begin again in giving of our best to God and his will, as did the widow who put in all she had to live on.
                                                                                 (E.J.Tyler)

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Tell me: there, where you are... mightn't there be one... or two, who could understand us well?
                                                                           (The Way, no.805)

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The Imitation of Christ    Book 3     Internal Consolation

The Eleventh Chapter   THE LONGINGS OF OUR HEARTS MUST BE EXAMINED AND MODERATED

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

MY CHILD, it is necessary for you to learn many things which you have not yet learned well.

THE DISCIPLE

What are they, Lord?

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

That you conform your desires entirely according to My good pleasure, and be not a lover of self but an earnest doer of My will. Desires very often inflame you and drive you madly on, but consider whether you act for My honour, or for your own advantage. If I am the cause, you will be well content with whatever I ordain. If, on the other hand, any self-seeking lurk in you, it troubles you and weighs you down. Take care, then, that you do not rely too much on preconceived desire that has no reference to Me, lest you repent later on and be displeased with what at first pleased you and which you desired as being for the best. Not every desire which seems good should be followed immediately, nor, on the other hand, should every contrary affection be at once rejected.
                                                                       (Continuing)

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Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one: style is a thinking out into language.

     (JHN, from The Idea of a University Part II 1858)

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Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity B

Prayers this week: Blessed be God the Father and his only-begotten son and the Holy Spirit: for he has shown that he loves us.
                                                                                                                   
Father, you sent your Word to bring us truth and your Spirit to make  us holy. Through them we come to know the  mystery of your life. Help us to worship you, one God in three Persons, by proclaiming and living our faith in  you. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

(June 7) Servant of God Joseph Perez (1890-1928)
   "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church," said Tertullian in the third century. Joseph Perez carried on that tradition. Joseph was born in Coroneo, Mexico, and joined the Franciscans when he was 17. Because of Mexico’s civil unrest at that time (the forces of Pancho Villa had crossed into New Mexico on a raid the previous year), he was forced to take his philosophy and theology studies in California. After ordination at Mission Santa Barbara, he returned to Mexico and served at Jerecuaro from 1922 on. The persecution under the presidency of Plutarco Calles (1924-28) forced Joseph to wear various disguises as he travelled around to visit the Catholics. In 1927 Church property was nationalized, Catholic schools were closed, and foreign priests and nuns were deported. One day Joseph and several others were captured while returning from a secretly held Mass. Father Perez was stabbed to death by soldiers a few miles from Celaya on June 2, 1928. When Joseph’s body was later brought in procession to Salvatierra, it was buried there amid cries of "Viva, Cristo Rey!" (Long live Christ the King!).
    Father Joseph’s memorial card includes these words: "May almighty God grant that our prayer, which is supported by the bloody sacrifice of this martyr, may graciously appear in his sight and bring salvation to us and redemption to our country" (Marion A. Habig, O.F.M., The Franciscan Book of Saints, p. 412). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture: Deut 4:32-34, 39-40; Ps 33:4-6, 9, 18-20, 22; Rom 8:14-17; Matt 28:16-20

Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. (Matthew 28:16-20)

I once heard (and viewed on the Internet) a debate between a Catholic theologian and a couple of Protestant theologians. I thought both sides would have felt they did well against the other. The discussion was largely on the doctrine of the Scriptures and one thing that was said at one point was that the New Testament did not formulate the doctrine of the Trinity with the same unambiguous clarity as did later Ecumenical Councils, particularly the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, from which has come the Nicene Creed. Of course this is true. But no one in the debate meant to imply that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was not a teaching of the New Testament. It was merely being pointed out that the inspired writers did not intend to give to the doctrine the crystal clear expression that has later doctrinal errors in mind. Our Gospel today is taken from the end of the Gospel of St Matthew, and we shall soon consider it. But the Gospel of St John has many references to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. When our Lord rose from the dead he appeared to his disciples and gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit, saying that as the Father had sent him so he was sending them. In that simple sentence our Lord is referring to the three divine persons — the Father, himself and the Holy Spirit. A week later, in the same chapter, he appears again and this time evokes the magnificent profession of faith from Thomas: “My Lord and my God!”. In other words, the risen Jesus, as he had done during his public ministry, reveals the mystery of one God in three distinct divine persons. So too the same revelation is evident in our passage today from the Gospel of St Matthew. The scene is our Lord’s final parting from this earth. He has risen from the dead and he is entrusting to his disciples a world mission. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. In saying this he implicitly refers to the equality he enjoys with his heavenly Father, at whose right hand he is soon to be seated. Let us then consider the terms of the mission. They are expressed very clearly and they tell us of God and the way to salvation.

The Eleven are to go to the whole world and make disciples of all the nations. This means that the whole world is called to follow Jesus Christ. Every man and woman has this calling, but the call must reach them and that is the divinely-given task of the Church. They become disciples of Jesus Christ by accepting in faith the message of the Church of the Apostles, being baptized and then following the commandments that Christ has taught. It involves, incidentally, not just faith, nor just baptism, but active obedience to Christ’s teaching in deed. But the first thing in discipleship is faith and baptism. Baptism is baptism in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The believer is baptised into the life of God and God is three persons, each of whom is spoken of by our Lord as on a par one with the other. Our Lord does not say that the Eleven are to baptize simply in the name of God, rather they are to baptise in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:16-20). The one and only God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons who are each separately the one and only God. The central mystery of the Christian faith and life is the mystery of the most blessed Trinity. While God has left some traces of his Trinitarian being imprinted on creation and in the Old Testament, his inmost being as the Holy Trinity is inaccessible to reason alone and to Israel’s faith prior to the coming of Christ. Christ alone revealed this great fact about God. God is Father because he generated from all eternity his only begotten Son who is his image and word. The Son is equal to the Father in that he is the same one only God, but he is distinct as a person from the Father in that the Father alone is the origin without origin in the life of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit, the third divine person, proceeds from the Father and the Son and is equal to both, being the same one only God. The Father is Father of all. His only-begotten Son is our Redeemer and our divine Lord. The Holy Spirit is the gift of the Father and the Son and he is our Guide and Sanctifier.

There is a wonderful yet very simple prayer that I would recommend to all as they begin and end every prayer. It is, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. There is another prayer I would recommend that every Christian often pray. It is, Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and every shall be, world without end. Our whole life ought be Trinitarian in the sense of being based explicitly on faith in the most holy Trinity, one God in three divine persons.
                                                                                                          (E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.232-248

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Tell him — yes, him — that I need fifty men who love Jesus Christ above all things.
                                                                        (The Way, no.806)

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The Imitation of Christ    Book 3     Internal Consolation

The Eleventh Chapter     THE LONGINGS OF OUR HEARTS MUST BE EXAMINED AND MODERATED

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

MY CHILD, it is necessary for you to learn many things which you have not yet learned well.

THE DISCIPLE

What are they, Lord?

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

It is sometimes well to use a little restraint even in good desires and inclinations, lest through too much eagerness you bring upon yourself distraction of mind; lest through your lack of discipline you create scandal for others; or lest you be suddenly upset and fall because of resistance from others. Sometimes, however, you must use violence and resist your sensual appetite bravely. You must pay no attention to what the flesh does or does not desire, taking pains that it be subjected, even by force, to the spirit. And it should be chastised and forced to remain in subjection until it is prepared for anything and is taught to be satisfied with little, to take pleasure in simple things, and not to murmur against inconveniences.
                                                             (Concluded)

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"We are now celebrating the last great Festival in the course of Holy services which began in Advent; the Feast of the Ever-blessed Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, whose mercy has planned, accomplished, and wrought in us "life and immortality." And the present Festival has this peculiarity in it,—that it is the commemoration of a mystery. Other Festivals celebrate mysteries also, but not because they are mysteries. The Annunciation, the birth of Christ, His death on the Cross, His Resurrection, the descent of the Holy Ghost, are all mysteries; but we celebrate them, not on this account, but for the blessings which we gain from them. But today we celebrate, not an act of God’s mercy towards us, but, forgetting ourselves, and looking only upon Him, we reverently and awfully, yet joyfully, extol the wonders, not of His works, but of His own Nature. We lift up heart and eyes towards Him, and speak of what He is in Himself. We dare to speak of His everlasting and infinite Essence; we directly contemplate a mystery, the deep unfathomable mystery of the Trinity in Unity.

Doubtless, from that deep mystery proceeds all that is to benefit and bless us. Without an Almighty Son we are not redeemed,—without an Ever-present Spirit we are not justified and sanctified. Yet, on this day, we celebrate the mystery for its own sake, not for our sake. On this day, then, we should forget ourselves, and fix our thoughts upon God.

(John Henry Newman, from the sermon ‘Faith without Demonstration’ 1837)

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Monday of the tenth week in Ordinary Time

(June 8) St. William of York (d. 1154)
A disputed election as archbishop of York and a mysterious death. Those are the headlines from the tragic life of today's saint. Born into a powerful family in 12th-century England, William seemed destined for great things. His uncle was next in line for the English throne—though a nasty dynastic struggle complicated things. William himself faced an internal Church feud. Despite these roadblocks, he was nominated as archbishop of York in 1140. Local clergymen were less enthusiastic, however, and the archbishop of Canterbury refused to consecrate William. Three years later a neighbouring bishop performed the consecration, but it lacked the approval of Pope Innocent II, whose successors likewise withheld approval. William was deposed and a new election was ordered. It was not until 1154—14 years after he was first nominated—that William became archbishop of York. When he entered the city that spring after years of exile, he received an enthusiastic welcome. Within two months he was dead, probably from poisoning. His administrative assistant was a suspect, though no formal ruling was ever made. Despite all that happened to him, William did not show resentment toward his opponents. Following his death, many miracles were attributed to him. He was canonized 73 years later.  (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: 2 Corinthians 1:1-7;   Psalm 34:2-9;   Matthew 5:1-12

Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:1-12)

There have been countless commentaries on the Sermon on the Mount, which begins with the passage of our Gospel today. In this passage our Lord sets forth what have been called the beatitudes, so called because of the first word (in the Latin) of each sentence. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness. Blessed are the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted and insulted. Our Lord says they are blessed who suffer in these ways for being his disciples and children of their Father in heaven. Now, what strikes the reader and hearer of these words is how utterly opposed they are to what the world ordinarily and naturally thinks. Blessed are the meek. On his flight to Africa the Successor of St Peter is questioned by reporters as to the Church’s attitude to the promotion of condoms as the answer to the AIDS scourge. He replies that it is not the answer and that it can actually worsen the situation. Then he explains what is the answer: the promotion of chastity outside marriage and fidelity within it. But the Western media erupts, closely followed by angry secular European governments. The Pope is showered with abuse. What is the Pope’s response? His response is one of Christ-like gentleness. He does not respond in kind but suffers the insults silently and shows mercy towards those who are merciless. Now, what does Christ say of this? He says that such a person is blessed. “Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth...Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” The world respects only those who win in such a conflict. It admires those who fight and prevail. It will pass by the person who is meek after the manner of Christ, and look with admiration on the one who dominates in some sense by force. When looking on Christ crowned with thorns and beaten with whips it shouts back, we have no king but Caesar! But Christ was the blessed one.

The saints are the ones who show the truth of Christ’s teaching on those who are blessed. The young Francis of the Italian town of Assisi discovers Christ and leaves everything to follow him in a radical poverty. Others love riches. He loves poverty. So many hate their limited material means. He seeks to have as little as possible. He does so out of love for Christ who possessing the glory and richness of the divine nature divested himself of it all and became as we are and humbler still even to death on a cross, as St Paul writes. This was the course of Francis. In pursuing that course, he was blessed. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:1-12). Essentially his blessedness consisted in possessing the greatest wealth possible, the person of Christ. He was entirely united to him in heart and soul. Our Lord likened it to a merchant who discovers a treasure hidden in a field. He goes and sells all he has to buy that field. The result is that he has foregone his possessions and gained a much greater one. He is blessed for having the field with its treasure. So too the one who follows Christ totally. He is blessed. The tragedy with too many Christians is that they follow Christ but only from afar. They do not want the great blessing of a full possession of him. In large measure the blessings they seek are those of the world and a life which the world and not Christ would regard as blessed. Or again, Thomas More the Lord Chancellor of England for King Henry VIII. He has a glittering career ahead of him but he foregoes it all because of his duty to Christ and the Church. He will not accept Henry’s setting aside of his sacramental marriage, nor will he accept Henry’s arrogation to himself of the divinely-appointed headship of the Church. So he goes to his death as one “persecuted because of righteousness.” His “is the kingdom of heaven.” In the sight of God he is blessed, though not in the eyes of the England of his day nor for a few centuries to come.

Christ’s teaching on who are the truly blessed ones springs from the fact that he himself is the blessing of all blessings. As St Paul writes, in Christ is to be found every heavenly blessing. In possessing him a person possesses all true blessings and all of life must be lived in a way consistent with the way of Christ. This varies according to the vocation of each, for St Francis of Assisi’s path to holiness in Christ was very different from that of St Thomas More. But each made Christ the master of his heart and life and thereby attained the greatest of blessings. Let us resolve to take our stand with Jesus. If we do we shall be truly blessed.
                                                            (E.J.Tyler)

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You say of that friend of yours that he frequents the sacraments, that he is clean-living and a good student. But that he won't 'respond'; if you speak to him of sacrifice and apostolate, be becomes sad and goes away.

Don't worry. It's not a failure of your zeal. It is, to the letter, the scene related by the Evangelist: 'If you wish to be perfect, go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor' (sacrifice), 'and then come, follow me' (apostolate).

The young man also abiit tristis, went away sad; he was not willing to respond to grace.
                                                                               (The Way, no.807)

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The Imitation of Christ    Book 3     Internal Consolation

The Twelfth Chapter    ACQUIRING PATIENCE IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CONCUPISCENCE

 THE DISCIPLE

PATIENCE, O Lord God, is very necessary for me, I see, because there are many adversities in this life. No matter what plans I make for my own peace, my life cannot be free from struggle and sorrow.

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

My child, you are right, yet My wish is not that you seek that peace which is free from temptations or meets with no opposition, but rather that you consider yourself as having found peace when you have been tormented with many tribulations and tried with many adversities.
                                                                (Continuing)

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It is one great advantage of an age in which unbelief speaks out, that Faith can speak out too; that, if falsehood assails Truth, Truth can assail falsehood. In such an age it is possible to found a University more emphatically Catholic than could be set up in the middle age, because Truth can entrench itself carefully, and define its own profession severely, and display its colours unequivocally, by occasion of that very unbelief which so shamelessly vaunts itself.

                                  (JHN, from The Idea of a University Part II,  1858)

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Tuesday of the tenth week in Ordinary Time

(June 9) St. Ephrem (306?-373)
      Poet, teacher, orator and defender of the faith, Ephrem is the only Syrian recognized as a doctor of the Church. He took upon himself the special task of opposing the many false doctrines rampant at his time, always remaining a true and forceful defender of the Catholic Church. Born in Nisibis, Mesopotamia, he was baptized as a young man and became famous as a teacher in his native city. When the Christian emperor had to cede Nisibis to the Persians, Ephrem, along with many Christians, fled as a refugee to Edessa. He is credited with attracting great glory to the biblical school there. He was ordained a deacon but declined becoming a priest (and was said to have avoided episcopal consecration by feigning madness!). He had a prolific pen and his writings best illumine his holiness. Although he was not a man of great scholarship, his works reflect deep insight and knowledge of the Scriptures. In writing about the mysteries of humanity’s redemption, Ephrem reveals a realistic and humanly sympathetic spirit and a great devotion to the humanity of Jesus. It is said that his poetic account of the Last Judgment inspired Dante. It is surprising to read that he wrote hymns against the heretics of his day. He would take the popular songs of the heretical groups and, using their melodies, compose beautiful hymns embodying orthodox doctrine. Ephrem became one of the first to introduce song into the Church’s public worship as a means of instruction for the faithful. His many hymns have earned him the title "Harp of the Holy Spirit." He preferred a simple, austere life, living in a small cave overlooking the city of Edessa. It was here he died around 373.
Lay me not with sweet spices,
For this honour avails me not,
Nor yet use incense and perfumes,
For the honour befits me not.
Burn yet the incense in the holy place;
As for me, escort me only with your prayers,
Give ye your incense to God,
And over me send up hymns.
Instead of perfumes and spices,
Be mindful of me in your intercessions.
             (From The Testament of St. Ephrem)      (AmericanCatholic.org)

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 Scripture today:  2 Corinthians 1:18-22;   Psalm 119:129-133, 135;  Matthew 5:13-16

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:13-16)

The context of our Gospel passage here is what has been traditionally called our Lord’s sermon to his disciples on the Mount. At the beginning we read that our Lord, "seeing the multitudes, went up the mountain: and when he was seated, his disciples came to him. He then began speaking to them, teaching them as follows." Reading this one’s mind recalls God speaking from the Mountain of Sinai giving to Moses and his chosen people the Law. Christ is here giving to his disciples his new Law. The following of this new Law will bring blessedness and he begins by telling them in what this true blessedness consists, and who it is who is truly blessed. It is the person who follows his way of poverty of spirit, of mourning because of the sin of the world and the acceptance of a difficult lot, of meekness, of hungering for righteousness, of mercy, purity of heart, building peace and suffering for righteousness and for Christ. It is, in other words, the person who takes up his cross every day and follows in the footsteps of Christ, who leads us in the way to Calvary. The following of Christ is the blessed life. In our Gospel today our Lord speaks of fidelity in discipleship and falling away. The disciple of Christ is like the salt of the earth. As most know, salt in previous eras served two functions in respect to food. It not only gave to it savour — which is generally its present function — but it also preserved the food. People travelling on long journeys would salt their meat so as to preserve it and this was particularly important for long journeys at sea. Salt preserved the food from a hasty corruption. The fervent disciple of Christ is the one who not only makes the world pleasing to God, but he preserves the world from corruption and spiritual decay. In this he shares in the mission of Jesus his Master who came to take away the sin of the world. Christ warns against the loss of this saltiness.

As we think of this warning we may think of Christ’s own disciples. We read in the Gospel of St John that when our Lord announced the doctrine of the Eucharist — that if they were to have life they must eat his flesh and drink his blood — many of his disciples walked no more with him. They abandoned their faith in Jesus and no longer trod the path of discipleship. How sad for their own lives and sad for the world in what they could have done for their fellow men! We also think especially of one of the Twelve, Judas Iscariot. He began by following Christ enthusiastically, and Christ actually privileged him by calling him to be one of the Twelve. He was a pre-eminent example of one called to be the salt of the earth and being prepared by Christ himself to fulfil that great mission. But he fell away. He entirely, entirely, lost his saltiness. We read in the account of the Last Supper that just before he left, Satan entered him. Then he went out into the night. Let us who have been baptised into Christ learn the awful lesson from the choices of these failed disciples. Christ tells his disciples that they are the light of the world. Elsewhere in the Gospel we read the evangelist comment on Christ beginning his public ministry. The land that lay in darkness, the inspired author writes, now saw a great light. Our Lord described himself as the Light of the world, and that the one who does not walk by his light is in the darkness. No other prophet referred to himself in this fashion. Nor am I aware of any other thinker or philosopher or religious founder or leader of repute who had such pretensions. Only Christ claimed such a unique role. He claimed it and justified it. He is the Light of the world and the one who walks in his light is walking in the light indeed, whereas the one who chooses not to is in the darkness. Our Lord says that the one who is his disciple will himself be a light to the world (Matthew 5:13-16) and that is because he is bringing the light of Christ to the darkness of sin.

Let us take to heart Christ’s warning and his invitation. If we follow the path of Christ we shall be salt to the earth and a light to the world around us. Our good works will shine before men and will give glory to our Father in heaven. The great psychiatrist Victor Frankl wrote that the key to happiness especially when under duress is to have a sense of meaning and to live by it. The true meaning of life and reality is to be found in Christ and in the full acceptance of him and his revelation. Let us choose Christ then, and live accordingly.
                                                        (E.J.Tyler)

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'Good news: another "crazy" fellow for the asylum'!... And all is excitement in the fisherman's letter.

May God make your nets effective.
                                                     (The Way, no.808)

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The Imitation of Christ    Book 3     Internal Consolation

The Twelfth Chapter    ACQUIRING PATIENCE IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CONCUPISCENCE

PATIENCE, O Lord God, is very necessary for me, I see, because there are many adversities in this life. No matter what plans I make for my own peace, my life cannot be free from struggle and sorrow.

If you say that you cannot suffer much, how will you endure the fire of purgatory? Of two evils, the lesser is always to be chosen. Therefore, in order that you may escape the everlasting punishments to come, try to bear present evils patiently for the sake of God.
                                                       (Continuing)

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O Mary, teach us ever to worship thy Son as the One Creator, and to be devout to thee as the most highly favoured of creatures.

(JHN, from Meditations and Devotions 1893)

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Wednesday of the tenth week in Ordinary Time

(June 10) Blessed Joachima (1783-1854)
       Born into an aristocratic family in Barcelona, Spain, Joachima was 12 when she expressed a desire to become a Carmelite nun. But her life took an altogether different turn at 16 with her marriage to a young lawyer, Theodore de Mas. Both deeply devout, they became secular Franciscans. During their 17 years of married life they raised eight children. The normalcy of their family life was interrupted when Napoleon invaded Spain. Joachima had to flee with the children; Theodore, remaining behind, died. Though Joachima re-experienced a desire to enter a religious community, she attended to her duties as a mother. At the same time, the young widow led a life of austerity and chose to wear the habit of the Third Order of St. Francis as her ordinary dress. She spent much time in prayer and visiting the sick. Four years later, with some of her children now married and younger ones under their care, Joachima confessed her desire to a priest to join a religious order. With his encouragement she established the Carmelite Sisters of Charity. In the midst of the fratricidal wars occurring at the time, Joachima was briefly imprisoned and, later, exiled to France for several years. Sickness ultimately compelled her to resign as superior of her order. Over the next four years she slowly succumbed to paralysis, which caused her to die by inches. At her death in 1854 at the age of 71, Joachima was known and admired for her high degree of prayer, deep trust in God and selfless charity.
    Joachima understands loss. She lost the home where her children grew up, her husband and, finally, her health. As the power to move and care for her own needs slowly ebbed away, this woman who had all her life cared for others became wholly dependent; she required help with life’s simplest tasks. When our own lives go spinning out of control, when illness and bereavement and financial hardship strike, all we can do is cling to the belief that sustained Joachima: God watches over us always. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today:  2 Corinthians 3:4-11;    Psalm 99:5, 6, 7, 8, 9;   Matthew 5:17-19

Jesus said, Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practises and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17-19)

It is very obvious in the Gospels that a major point of dispute between our Lord and many of the leaders of the Jews was the way the Law and the Prophets was to be interpreted and put into practice. For example, one of the most distinctive features of the religion of the Hebrews was the Sabbath Day. It is one of the Ten Commandments and a comparison of the religion of the chosen people with that of the nations of the time (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome) shows the distinctiveness of the Sabbath even more. For instance, the Commandments were given to Moses following the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt, but while there were many festival days and religious processions in Egypt, there was no weekly obligatory “Sabbath.” The Sabbath was a cardinal observance for the chosen people of God but the issue was, how was it to be observed in its detail? For instance, our Lord was attacked for healing on the Sabbath. He did so even in the Synagogue itself, no less. In debate on the point he routed his opponents, but the opposition became even more implacable as the jealousy at his manifest authority increased. In their accusations about him he was being set against the Law of Moses. And so our Lord, in his master discourse on the new Law which Matthew chapter 5 shows him promulgating on the Mount, addresses the relationship between his teaching and that of the Law and the Prophets. He has not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. On the contrary, they occupy the highest place in his Revelation and to this point they had not been fulfilled. As our Lord makes clear elsewhere, the scribes and the Pharisees fussed over the washing of cups and plates while they neglected the weightier matter of the Law such as mercy and justice. The Law and the Prophets awaited fulfilment in all their detail and it is he who has come to fulfil them. Just as there is a Letter to the Hebrews showing, for instance, that Jesus is the true High Priest, so the Gospel of St Matthew shows to the Hebrews that Jesus is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets.

The question of the interpretation of the Law and the Prophets is a fundamental question. We read in the second book of Esdras (chapters 8 and 9) how the book of the Law was read to the people and interpreted to them. They then understood the Law and acted according to it. Many of the details of the Mosaic Law were a divinely guided interpretation of God’s Revelation intended, of course, to relate only to a certain stage in the history of God’s people. The question of interpretation and discrimination continued on and with it the question of how the Law and the Prophets were to be interpreted, understood and fulfilled. Jan Assmann in his important work, Of God and Gods (UWP, 2008) points out that the biblical texts depicting a God of violence towards the abominations of paganism faded in the cultural memory of Judaism (p.126) because, undoubtedly, they were more wisely interpreted. How is God’s Revelation to be understood once it has been received? Jesus Christ reveals himself to be the fullest, the truest and the definitive interpretation of the Law and the Prophets. Not only is he its true and definitive interpretation, the light according to which the Law and the Prophets are to be read. Even more importantly, he is also its fulfilment. The Law and the Prophets remained and would have remained unfulfilled were it not for Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ extended far beyond expectation the divine revelation granted to man to that point and he far exceeded in his person all that the Law and the Prophets had demanded of sinful man. Their fulfilment in every respect lay in him and for this reason both at the beginning of his public ministry and at its end during the Transfiguration God the Father declared that here was his beloved Son in whom he was well pleased. To understand the Revelation God has given of himself one must go to Jesus Christ and view both the entirety of the Scriptures and the Tradition in which they are situated in his unique and incomparable light. They point to him. He manifests their true meaning. Above all, he is their definitive fulfilment (Matthew 5:17-19).

Mankind now has the divinely given key to all that God has revealed of himself, a revelation which is expressed in Scriptures and Tradition. That key is the person of Jesus Christ. Let us go to him, then, and learn from him. Let us not only learn from him but accept the invitation coming from him to be his friends, friends who follow his way in their everyday life. For this he gives us his grace. Where is he — our Master, our Friend, our Torah, our Saviour and our God — to be found? He is found in his body the Church built by him on the Rock of Peter and the Twelve. Let us go to him then and let us never drift from him.
                                                                         (E.J.Tyler)

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Winning new apostles. Who does not hunger to perpetuate his apostolate?
                                                                     (The Way, no.809)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ       BOOK THREE           INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Twelfth Chapter     ACQUIRING PATIENCE IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CONCUPISCENCE

THE DISCIPLE

PATIENCE, O Lord God, is very necessary for me, I see, because there are many adversities in this life. No matter what plans I make for my own peace, my life cannot be free from struggle and sorrow.

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

Do you think that men of the world have no suffering, or perhaps but little? Ask even those who enjoy the most delights and you will learn otherwise. "But," you will say, "they enjoy many pleasures and follow their own wishes; therefore they do not feel their troubles very much." Granted that they do have whatever they wish, how long do you think it will last? Behold, they who prosper in the world shall perish as smoke, and there shall be no memory of their past joys. Even in this life they do not find rest in these pleasures without bitterness, weariness, and fear. For they often receive the penalty of sorrow from the very thing whence they believe their happiness comes. And it is just. Since they seek and follow after pleasures without reason, they should not enjoy them without shame and bitterness.
                                                     (Continuing)

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There are not two ways of pleasing God; what conscience suggests, Christ has sanctioned and explained; to love God and our neighbour are the great duties of the Gospel as well as of the Law; he who endeavours to fulfil them by the light of nature is in the way towards, is, as our Lord said, “not far from Christ’s kingdom;” for to him that hath more shall be given.

                       (JHN, from the sermon ‘Obedience to God the Way to Faith in Christ’ 1830)

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Thursday of the tenth week in Ordinary Time

(June 11) Saint Barnabas, Apostle
Barnabas, a Jew of Cyprus, comes as close as anyone outside the Twelve to being a full-fledged apostle. He was closely associated with St. Paul (he introduced Paul to Peter and the other apostles) and served as a kind of mediator between the former persecutor and the still suspicious Jewish Christians. When a Christian community developed at Antioch, Barnabas was sent as the official representative of the Church of Jerusalem to incorporate them into the fold. He and Paul instructed in Antioch for a year, after which they took relief contributions to Jerusalem. Later, Paul and Barnabas, now clearly seen as charismatic leaders, were sent by Antioch officials to preach to the Gentiles. Enormous success crowned their efforts. After a miracle at Lystra, the people wanted to offer sacrifice to them as gods—Barnabas being Zeus, and Paul, Hermes—but the two said, “We are of the same nature as you, human beings. We proclaim to you good news that you should turn from these idols to the living God” (see Acts 14:8-18). But all was not peaceful. They were expelled from one town, they had to go to Jerusalem to clear up the ever-recurring controversy about circumcision and even the best of friends can have differences. When Paul wanted to revisit the places they had evangelized, Barnabas wanted to take along John Mark, his cousin, author of the Gospel, but Paul insisted that, since Mark had deserted them once, he was not fit to take along now. The disagreement that followed was so sharp that Barnabas and Paul separated, Barnabas taking Mark to Cyprus, Paul taking Silas to Syria. Later, they were reconciled—Paul, Barnabas and Mark. When Paul stood up to Peter for not eating with Gentiles for fear of his Jewish friends, we learn that “even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy” (see Galatians 2:1-13). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today:   Acts 11:21b-26; 13:1-3;   Psalm 98:1-6;   Matthew 5:20-26

Jesus said to his disciples, I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell. Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift. Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny. (Matthew 5:20-26)

Our Lord has said — in the passage of the Sermon on the Mount prior to this passage for today — that he had come not to do away with the Law and the Prophets but to fulfil them. His purpose here is to spell out what this fulfilment means. The Pharisees and teachers of the Law were popularly regarded and presented themselves as embodiments of its proper and dutiful practice. Their practice of the Law was very obvious. St Matthew gives us some instances of the rules they observed. Before eating they would ceremoniously wash their hands and arms even to the elbow as a sign of their intent on purity of life. But as our Lord said of them their righteousness was external and therefore hollow. It did not fulfil the Law at all — what they observed were human regulations while they neglected the serious things of God. They relied on their own works rather than on faith in God and true obedience to him. Of course, we must not imagine that all the Pharisees and teachers of the Law were like this, or at least not equally so. Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a leading Jew, genuinely sought the kingdom of God and was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly. So was Joseph of Arimathea. The impression we get of Gamaliel, a Pharisee and doctor of the Law (Acts 5: 34) is favourable though he was not a disciple. Apart from the Pharisees and teachers of the Law there were many persons of great holiness in Judaism. We merely have to think of Elizabeth and Zechariah, Simeon and Anna. Our Lord’s three friends, Martha and Mary and Lazarus, were undoubtedly on the way to holiness. The point, though, is that the Law of Moses and the teaching of the Prophets cried out for fulfilment still, and Christ had come to fulfil it in himself and to provide the grace for others to fulfil it also. Well then, what did the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets entail?

Above all, it involved a religion of the heart. For instance, the Law prohibited murder, of course. One of the Ten Commandments prohibits it. But the mere abstaining from murder did not constitute a fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets and the Law and the Prophets make that clear. But our Lord goes much deeper. He speaks of what is going on in the heart of man. It is this which is involved in fulfilling the Law and the Prophets. “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.” We must resist anger, and anger is liable to fill the heart of a person as he thinks of the injuries done to him in the past. Our Lord teaches that we must not consent to this, but rather must resist it. Apart from thoughts of anger, our Lord also prohibits words of anger, making clear that words of anger can reach the point of being the gravest of offences. “Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.” (Matthew 5:20-26) One can go through life observing the external laws of morality and faith and yet all the while, year after year, be deliberately angry with one’s fellows. “First go and be reconciled to your brother,” our Lord insists. Right to the end of life we can be unforgiving, and yet no one may know. If this happens we have failed in our observance of the Law of God, and we have certainly failed in our imitation of Christ. So the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets entails holiness of the heart and of all of life. It is above all the interior of a man that is the arena of religious life. Christ himself is the example that mankind has been given of the perfect fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets. Moreover, he has given to man access to the grace of God enabling him to live a holy life according to the pattern explained by Christ in his Sermon on the Mount and exemplified in his own person.

All this is to say that, for the Christian, the model is Christ himself. As St Paul wrote in one of his Letters, imitate me as I imitate Christ. Every day we ought set out to follow Christ above all in our hearts. If we succeed in being truly charitable in our thoughts, followed up by trying to be charitable in our words, it will be so much easier to be charitable in our deeds. Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to the person and the Law of Christ. Let us do this then!
                                                                               (E.J.Tyler)

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That burning desire to win fellow-apostles is a sure sign that you have really 'given yourself' to God.
                                                                              (The Way, no.810)

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Continuing  The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Twelfth Chapter       ACQUIRING PATIENCE IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CONCUPISCENCE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

How brief, how false, how unreasonable and shameful all these pleasures are! Yet in their drunken blindness men do not understand this, but like brute beasts incur death of soul for the miserly enjoyment of a corruptible life.

Therefore, My child, do not pursue your lusts, but turn away from your own will. "Seek thy pleasure in the Lord and He will give thee thy heart's desires." If you wish to be truly delighted and more abundantly comforted by Me, behold, in contempt of all worldly things and in the cutting off of all base pleasures shall your blessing be, and great consolation shall be given you. Further, the more you withdraw yourself from any solace of creatures, the sweeter and stronger comfort will you find in Me.
                                                                  (Continuing)

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My God, it was Thy supreme blessedness in the eternity past, as it is Thy blessedness in all eternities, to know Thyself, as Thou alone canst know Thee. It was by seeing Thyself in Thy Co-equal Son and Thy Co-eternal Spirit, and in Their seeing Thee, that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Three Persons, One God, was infinitely blessed. O my God, what am I that Thou shouldst make my blessedness to consist in that which is Thy own! That Thou shouldst grant me to have not only the sight of Thee, but to share in Thy very own joy! O prepare me for it, teach me to thirst for it.

                      (JHN, from Meditations and Devotions, 1893)

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Friday of the tenth week in Ordinary Time

(June 12) Blessed Jolenta (Yolanda) of Poland (d. 1298)
Jolenta was the daughter of Bela IV, King of Hungary. Her sister, St. Kunigunde, was married to the Duke of Poland. Jolenta was sent to Poland where her sister was to supervise her education. Eventually married to Boleslaus, the Duke of Greater Poland, Jolenta was able to use her material means to assist the poor, the sick, widows and orphans. Her husband joined her in building hospitals, convents and churches so that he was surnamed "the Pious." Upon the death of her husband and the marriage of two of her daughters, Jolenta and her third daughter entered the convent of the Poor Clares. War forced Jolenta to move to another convent where, despite her reluctance, she was made abbess. So well did she serve her Franciscan sisters by word and example that her fame and good works continued to spread beyond the walls of the cloister. Her favourite devotion was the Passion of Christ. Indeed, Jesus appeared to her, telling her of her coming death. Many miracles, down to our own day, are said to have occurred at her grave. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: 2 Corinthians 4: 7-15; Psalm 116:10-11, 15-18; Matthew 5:27-32

You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.' But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery. (Matthew 5:27-32)

Our passage here is part of the great sermon which St Matthew presents as an overview of our Lord’s teaching. It is given on the mountain and is in effect a proclamation of the New Law which fulfils and surpasses the Old. This Sermon on the Mount occupies three chapters of his Gospel, which is just as much space as that given to his passion, death and resurrection. His public ministry launched (chapter 4) with the opening call to repent and believe, our Lord summons his disciples and embarks on his public and itinerant mission. Then, with the multitudes and his disciples with him, our Lord ascends the Mountain to proclaim his word. God revealed his Law to Moses on the Mountain, and here our Lord is revealing the New Law on a new Mountain. In the Old Testament God had revealed himself progressively to the patriarchs, and then in a new way to Moses on the Mountain, followed by his ongoing revelation to the Prophets. This divine process reached its apogee in Jesus and his teaching. The point to notice is the authority our Lord assumes and manifests as he proclaims his New Law. “You have heard that it was said” he repeatedly begins. He would appear to be referring to the entire ensemble of what had been handed down to the children of Israel — the Ten Commandments together with what preceded it and what followed it. The Law and the Prophets together with the tradition in which this was conveyed and explained constituted what had been “said” and what his audience had “heard.” But now he was laying down a new law. The prophets did not speak like this, nor would Moses have dared to speak like this. Christ unhesitatingly spoke in this fashion, thus manifesting the unique authority he had. He was placing himself on the same level as the divine Source of the Old Law. With little wonder the people marvelled at the authority he displayed. In this respect he was perceived as not like the scribes — he spoke with authority! It was this that so aroused the jealousy of the leaders. Christ is conscious that he is the supreme teacher of mankind.

That having been said, what in today’s Gospel does our Lord teach? To begin with, he teaches absolute chastity of thought and desire. This inner chastity must be guarded rigorously and ruthlessly, allowing no quarter in the work of its protection. Consider our Lord’s dramatic words: “You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:27-32). It is not sufficient to avoid adultery, which is one of the Ten Commandments. The proper fulfilment of that fundamental law is, in the sight of God, interior chastity. To consent to lustful thoughts is, in the sight of God, a most serious sin. It is adultery within the heart. It is possible, then, to fold one’s arms, as it were, close one’s eyes, and proceed by deliberate intention to commit a most serious mortal sin, which if not repented of, will lead to damnation. It is a sin of thought, committed within the secret recesses of one’s heart. Of course, many other sins of the mind and heart can be committed without anyone else ever knowing. A person who secretly turns away from God and Christ, knowingly choosing to reject the very existence of God and the claims of Christ, is committing a very serious sin of infidelity. That person has passed from belief to unbelief in the secret core of one’s heart and has done so by intent. One can consent to hatred in one’s heart towards another and refuse to forgive. These are serious secret sins. In our passage today our Lord commands inner chastity. Each person must guard his or her mind and heart against all impurity, rejecting such thoughts as they occur and guarding the senses against occasions that constitute temptation. Christ’s figurative imagery — not, of course, meant to be taken literally, is stark: “And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.” There must be no consent to sin.

Let us especially take to heart Christ's divine and incomparable authority in all that relates to man’s moral and religious life. Christ is the teacher of man in respect to salvation. It is he who tells us what we must and must not do if we are to be saved. In our Gospel passage today he speaks of chastity and marriage. Let every person ponder on his teaching on chastity and resolve to live a life of inner chastity, chastity of mind and heart, understanding well that God sees and judges all, including and especially the most secret thoughts of man’s heart.
                                                               (E.J.Tyler)

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Do you remember? Night was falling as you and I began our prayer. From close by came the murmur of water. And, through the stillness of the city, we also seemed to hear voices from many lands crying to us in anguish that they do not yet know Christ.

Unashamedly you kissed your Crucifix and asked him to make you an apostle of apostles.
                                                       (The Way, no.811)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ      BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Twelfth Chapter      ACQUIRING PATIENCE IN THE FIGHT AGAINST CONCUPISCENCE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

At first you will not gain these blessings without sadness and toil and conflict. Habit already formed will resist you, but it shall be overcome by a better habit. The flesh will murmur against you, but it will be bridled by fervour of spirit. The old serpent will sting and trouble you, but prayer will put him to flight and by steadfast, useful toil the way will be closed to him.
                                                                             (Concluded)

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How much we can do for God, and how much He will enable us to do, if we put our simple trust in Him.

                (JHN, from the Sayings of Cardinal Newman)
                (http://www.newmanreader.org/works/sayings/index.html)

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Saturday of the tenth week in Ordinary Time

(June 13) St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231)
  The gospel call to leave everything and follow Christ was the rule of Anthony’s life. Over and over again God called him to something new in his plan. Every time Anthony responded with renewed zeal and self-sacrificing to serve his Lord Jesus more completely. His journey as the servant of God began as a very young man when he decided to join the Augustinians, giving up a future of wealth and power to be a servant of God. Later, when the bodies of the first Franciscan martyrs went through the Portuguese city where he was stationed, he was again filled with an intense longing to be one of those closest to Jesus himself: those who die for the Good News. So Anthony entered the Franciscan Order and set out to preach to the Moors. But an illness prevented him from achieving that goal. He went to Italy and was stationed in a small hermitage where he spent most of his time praying, reading the Scriptures and doing menial tasks. The call of God came again at an ordination where no one was prepared to speak. The humble and obedient Anthony hesitantly accepted the task. The years of searching for Jesus in prayer, of reading sacred Scripture and of serving him in poverty, chastity and obedience had prepared Anthony to allow the Spirit to use his talents. Anthony’s sermon was astounding to those who expected an unprepared speech and knew not the Spirit’s power to give people words. Recognized as a great man of prayer and a great Scripture and theology scholar, Anthony became the first friar to teach theology to the other friars. Soon he was called from that post to preach to the heretics, to use his profound knowledge of Scripture and theology to convert and reassure those who had been misled. In his Sermons, Anthony says: "The saints are like the stars. In his providence Christ conceals them in a hidden place that they may not shine before others when they might wish to do so. Yet they are always ready to exchange the quiet of contemplation for the works of mercy as soon as they perceive in their heart the invitation of Christ." (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today:   2 Corinthians 5:14-21;   Psalm 103:1-4, 9-12;   Matthew 5:33-37

Jesus said to his disciples, Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes', and your 'No', 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. (Matthew 5:33-37)

In his Sermon on the Mount our Lord refers to the prohibitions stemming from the second of the Ten Commandments. That second commandment as expressed in Exodus 20:7 forbids all misuse of the name of Yahweh God. Our Lord expresses that commandment in his own terms. He says “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord'.” That is to say, the second of the Ten Commandments forbids false oaths, an oath being swearing to take God as witness to what one affirms. As The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, it is to invoke the truthfulness of God as a pledge of one’s own truthfulness. It engages the Lord’s name. The Old Testament allowed that for a worthy reason and done in a way that honoured God, an oath could be taken in the name of God. As we read in Deuteronomy (6:32) “You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve him, and swear by his name.” God the Creator and Lord is the norm of all truth and human utterances are either in accord with or in opposition to God who is Truth itself. An oath worthy of the witness of God is truthful and legitimate, whereas a false oath calls on God to support by his witness a lie. A false oath is revealed to be a serious offence against the honour of God. A person commits perjury when he makes a promise under oath with no intention of keeping it, or having made it he refuses to keep it. This is manifestly to flout the honour of God to whom such a false and meaningless promise was made. The divine prohibition against all false oaths and perjury is a prohibition against all disrespect for the being of God. His name is to be honoured by men in their speech and nothing is to be said that impugns his utter truthfulness and moral goodness. This was the commandment of the Old Law and our Lord now proceeds to indicate that its true fulfilment involved surpassing its customary practice to that point.

As with other commandments of the Old Law, our Lord begins by reminding his audience what they knew had been told to the people long ago. False oaths were prohibited by divine command. But now our Lord lays down his Law, not one that sets aside what they had been told already, but rather one that reveals its true meaning and intent. “I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes', and your 'No', 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5:33-37). The tradition of the Church has understood Christ’s words as not excluding oaths made for grave and right reasons (as, for example, in court). In St Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians (1:23) he himself takes an oath. “By my life, I call God to witness that he reason why I did not come to Corinth after all was to spare your feelings.” This is one example among many that could be given of the necessity of interpreting particular sayings in the Gospels and in the New Testament in the light of the Tradition of the Church. God’s revelation comes to us in two interrelated channels, inspired Scripture and the Church’s Tradition. In light of the Church's Tradition, the meaning of this dictum by Christ is that an oath can be taken, but only in truth and for right and grave reasons. What our Lord teaches in our Gospel passage today is that in all we say we ought be profoundly truthful. Our mere yes or no ought be such that it is just as true and reliable as if it were said under oath because God is indeed our constant witness. All that we say is said in his presence and so, as our Lord commands, “Simply let your Yes be Yes and your No be No.” If our speech does not have this truthfulness then the sin which the Evil One so wishes to ferment is at work. This is the practical bearing of our Lord’s words today. Speak with utter simplicity and unwavering integrity.

In all of this Christ himself is our model as he is in everything. Consider the speech of Christ and the luminous and constant truthfulness that always marked it. There was one occasion when our Lord was commanded to take an oath. When standing before the high priest during his trial he refused to address the conflicting charges being brought against him. Finally the high priest abjured him to answer the following question. Was he the Messiah, the Son of the Living God? At this Christ spoke. He was indeed. It was the solemn moment and our Lord bore the highest possible witness to the truth about himself. He went to his death — to which he freely submitted — bearing witness to this truth. Let Christ be our model in unwavering truthfulness.
                                                                                    (E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.2150-2155

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I can understand how you love your country and your people so much, and that, in spite of these ties, you long for the moment when you will cross lands and seas — far away — for your heart is consumed by the thought of the harvest.
                                                                           (The Way, no.812)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Thirteenth Chapter    THE OBEDIENCE OF ONE HUMBLY SUBJECT TO THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS CHRIST

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

MY CHILD, he who attempts to escape obeying withdraws himself from grace. Likewise he who seeks private benefits for himself loses those which are common to all. He who does not submit himself freely and willingly to his superior, shows that his flesh is not yet perfectly obedient but that it often rebels and murmurs against him.

Learn quickly, then, to submit yourself to your superior if you wish to conquer your own flesh. For the exterior enemy is more quickly overcome if the inner man is not laid waste. There is no more troublesome, no worse enemy of the soul than you yourself, if you are not in harmony with the spirit. It is absolutely necessary that you conceive a true contempt for yourself if you wish to be victorious over flesh and blood.
                                                                    (Continuing)

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In various ways does the thought of the next world lead men to neglect their duty in this; and whenever it does so we may be sure that there is something wrong and unchristian, not in their thinking of the next world, but in their manner of thinking of it.

            (JHN, from the sermon ‘Doing Glory to God in Pursuits of the World’ 1836)

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Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ B
 

Prayers this week: The Lord fed his people with the finest wheat and honey; their hunger was satisfied. (Psalm 80:17)
                                                                                                                   
Lord Jesus Christ, you gave us the Eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood help us to experience the salvation you won for us and the peace of the kingdom where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

(June 14) St. Albert Chmielowski (1845-1916) (At right: Adam Chmilelwski;    below left: "Ecce Homo" by Adam Chmilelwski)
Born in Igolomia near Kraków as the eldest of four children in a wealthy family, he was christened Adam. During the 1864 revolt against Czar Alexander III, Adam’s wounds forced the amputation of his left leg. His great talent for painting (Ecce Homo below) led to studies in Warsaw, Munich and Paris. Adam returned to Kraków and became a Secular Franciscan. In 1888 he took the name Albert when he founded the Brothers of the Third Order of Saint Francis, Servants to the Poor. They worked primarily with the homeless, depending completely on alms while serving the needy, regardless of age, religion or politics. A community of Albertine sisters was established later. Pope John Paul II beatified him in 1983 and canonized him six years later. Reflecting on his own priestly vocation, Pope John Paul II wrote in 1996 that Brother Albert had played a role in its formation "because I found in him a real spiritual support and example in leaving behind the world of art, literature and the theatre, and in making the radical choice of a vocation to the priesthood" (Gift and Mystery: On the Fiftieth Anniversay of My Priestly Ordination, p. 33). As a young priest, Karol Wojtyla repaid his debt of gratitude by writing The Brother of Our God, a play about Brother Albert’s life.
         The first reading at the canonization included Isaiah 58:6 (“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?”). The pope referred to this passage and said: “This is the theology of messianic liberation, which contains what we are accustomed to calling today the ‘option for the poor’.... In this tireless, heroic service on behalf of the marginalized and the poor, he [Albert] ultimately found his path. He found Christ. He took upon himself Christ’s yoke and burden; he did not become merely ‘one of those who give alms,’ but became the brother to those he served....” (L'Osservatore Romano 1989, Vol. 49, No. 9). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture: Exodus 24:3-8; Psalm 116:12-13, 15-18; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16, 22-26

On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus' disciples asked him, Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover? So he sent two of his disciples, telling them, Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him. Say to the owner of the house he enters, 'The Teacher asks: Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' He will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there. The disciples left, went into the city and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover. While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take it; this is my body. Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, and they all drank from it. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many, he said to them. I tell you the truth, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God. When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. (Mark 14:12-16, 22-26)

Certain crisis moments in our Lord’s public ministry can be identified. For instance, there is the crisis relating to the leaders of the Jews. We notice their hostile reaction to our Lord’s observance of the Sabbath, to his forgiveness of sins, and to his claims. They understood clearly that for all his manifest veneration for his heavenly Father, our Lord was making himself equal to God. There is a different and yet particularly significant crisis moment in our Lord’s ministry, and St John tells us that it occurred when he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum. The other Gospels suggest that having left Nazareth — being driven out because of his claims — he went and made Capernaum the centre of his operations in Galilee. When there he may have resided in the house of one or other of his disciples, perhaps that of Simon, or Levi, or whoever. He did many miracles there and we can assume that Capernaum occupied a special place in his heart. Now, St John tells us in his sixth chapter that it was in the synagogue at Capernaum that our Lord announced the most striking of his teachings and he did so very explicitly. It was the doctrine of the Eucharist. Nothing like it had ever been preached to the House of Israel. Moreover, despite its extraordinary and totally mysterious nature, he announced it publicly. The result was that many of his disciples left him. One even gets the impression that while there were certainly disciples who remained and who became the infant Church, because of what our Lord said a considerable proportion left him. This is surely indicated by the fact that our Lord turns to the Twelve and asks if they plan to go too. It was a notable walk-out, we might say. They left him because they could not accept his teaching. The teaching was that in order to live forever they must eat his flesh and drink his blood. Christ insisted. His flesh was real food and his blood was real drink, and this food must be truly eaten and drunk. The one who did this would live forever in him just as he lived in the Father.

The doctrine of the Eucharist was a real test of faith and Simon Peter, speaking for the Apostles, rose magnificently to meet the test. Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we believe. There was one exception. Our Lord responded to Simon’s profession of faith by saying that one of the Twelve was a devil. He was referring to Judas, and it looks as if the doctrine of the Eucharist was the prompt for his turning away from our Lord in his heart. We read in the Gospels that after many of our Lord’s public discourses his disciples would ask him later what he meant by, say, a particular parable. But in St John’s account of this explicit and public instruction on the Eucharist our Lord does not indicate either publicly or to his disciples privately how he is going to enable his flesh to be eaten and his blood to be drunk and by everyone. He states the doctrine and asks for faith in himself. He had done all that was possible to show his almighty power. Nothing was impossible for him. Now he was giving a critical test and on it he staked discipleship. He was prepared to see the sheep separated from the goats, as it were, and for those who were his own now to follow him in earnest. Our Lord left all explanation to later, indeed to the very end just before his passion and death. It was at the Last Supper that our Lord revealed his great gift, the gift of the Eucharist. He would give his body to be eaten and his blood to be drunk sacramentally. It would be the great Sacrament of the new covenant, the Sacrament par excellence, the very summit of Christian discipleship and its constant source. So it is that ever since the beginning the Church has treasured this Sacrament above all other gifts of Christ. It is the test of faith in our initial moment of hearing it as at Capernaum. It is also and especially the test of faith in our ongoing and lively reverence in the presence of the Eucharist and when receiving it at Mass. When we think of Jesus we ought in the first instance think of the Eucharist.

At Mass by the power of Christ acting in and through the ordained priest the reality of the bread and wine is changed into the reality of the risen Jesus in all his divinity and humanity. Let us resolve to grow in a lively faith in this sublime mystery that is so very available to Christ’s Faithful. Our faith will be protected and nourished by an active and prayerful reverence. Whenever we are in the church where the Blessed Sacrament is present, let us then distinguish ourselves by our constant reverence in all our thoughts, all our speech and all our actions.
                                                                   (E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1333-1336

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Do everything for Love. Thus there will be no little things: everything will be big. Perseverance in little things for Love is heroism.
                                       (The Way, no.813)

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Continuing   The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Thirteenth Chapter   THE OBEDIENCE OF ONE HUMBLY SUBJECT TO THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS CHRIST

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

Because you still love yourself too inordinately, you are afraid to resign yourself wholly to the will of others. Is it such a great matter if you, who are but dust and nothingness, subject yourself to man for the sake of God, when I, the All-Powerful, the Most High, Who created all things out of nothing, humbly subjected Myself to man for your sake? I became the most humble and the lowest of all men that you might overcome your pride with My humility.
                                                      (Continuing)

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Part of a prayer from John Henry Newman’s ‘Meditations on Christian Doctrine’:

“In Thee, O Lord [God], all things live, and Thou dost give them their food. Oculi omnium in Te sperant—”the eyes of all hope in Thee.” [Psalm 145: 15] To the beasts of the field Thou givest meat and drink. They live on day by day, because Thou dost give them day by day to live. And, if Thou givest not, they feel their misery at once. Nature witnesses to this great truth, for they are visited at once with great agony, and they cry out and wildly wander about, seeking what they need.

But, as to us Thy children, Thou feedest us with another food. Thou knowest, O my God, who madest us, that nothing can satisfy us but Thyself, and therefore Thou hast caused Thy own self to be meat and drink to us. O most adorable mystery! O most stupendous of mercies! Thou most Glorious, and Beautiful, and Strong, and Sweet, Thou didst know well that nothing else would support our immortal natures, our frail hearts, but Thyself; and so Thou didst take a human flesh and blood, that they, as being the flesh and blood of God, might be our life.

(JHN, from Meditations and Devotions 1893)

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Monday of the eleventh week in Ordinary Time

(June 15) Servant of God Orlando Catanii
An unexpected encounter with St. Francis of Assisi in 1213 was to forever change—and enrich—the life of Count Orlando of Chiusi. On the day a festival was being organized for a huge throng, St. Francis, already well known for his sanctity, delivered a dramatic address on the dangers of worldly pleasures. One of the guests, Orlando (also known as Roland) was so taken by Francis' words that he sought out the saint for advice on how best to lead a life pleasing to God. A short time later, Francis visited Count Orlando in his own palace, located at the foot of Mount La Verna. Francis spoke again of the dangers of a life of wealth and comfort. The words prompted Orlando to rearrange his life entirely according to the principles outlined by Francis. Furthermore, he resolved to share his wealth by placing at Francis' disposal all of Mount La Verna, which belonged to Orlando. Francis, who found the mountain's wooded recesses and many caves and ravines especially suitable for quiet prayer, gratefully accepted the offer. Orlando immediately had a convent as well as a church built there; later, many chapels were added. In 1224, two years before the death of Francis, Mount La Verna was the location where Francis received the holy wounds of Christ. In return for his generous gift, Orlando desired only to be received into the Third Order and to have St. Francis as his spiritual director. Under Francis' guidance, Orlando completely detached himself from worldly goods. He zealously performed acts of charity as a Christian nobleman. After his happy death Orlando was laid to rest in the convent church on Mount La Verna. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10; Psalm 98:1, 2b, 3-4; Matthew 5:38-42

Jesus said, You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5:38-42)

There is an old dictum expressing a law of physics: all things being equal, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you hit a ball with a bat, the action of the ball will be equal and opposite to that of the bat. The harder you hit it, the further it will go. This law of physical reaction is often applied to human reactions. If you offend a person with abusive talk, you will get back abusive talk in return. The reaction will be equal and opposite. The fact is that very often — even more often than not — this is a true dictum when applied even to whole societies. If a society is attacked in anger, the response by that society will likewise be one of anger. Thus violence grows with war solving nothing. I once saw a movie of an inter-family feud. The disagreement began small but grew to great proportions. One injury led to an injury being inflicted by the other. The final scene involved a shocking bare-handed duel to the death with it being agreed that the upshot would resolve the feud. This violent ending solved nothing. Its only legacy was enduring suffering. Our Lord refers to the law of Hebrew society sanctioned by Scripture: Eye for eye and Tooth for tooth. It expresses the normal law of punishment fitting the crime and in this way ensuring that crime has a proper deterrent. But our Lord here in the Sermon on the Mount is giving the details of a new law for each man and woman. It is a law of love, a love that God wishes to see grow in us shaping our hearts in the likeness of the heart of Christ. And so our Lord tells us that our response to violence ought be one of love and not hate. This is, as we might put it, a tall order but that is the practical ideal that our Lord is requiring of his disciples. We are to love with all our hearts and this love is to be extended even to our enemies. As with others of our Lord’s commands we are not to take some of his words literally. He himself resisted those who were evil. He drove out the money changers from the Temple and he routed the leaders in debate, resisting their pretensions. Our Lord is speaking, rather, of the spirit which ought fill our hearts.

In his Sermon on the Mount our Lord is promulgating his law of love. He is commanding that we work at filling our hearts with love, a love that is after the manner of his love. He is asking that we become his disciples not just in external behaviour but in what is going on in our minds and hearts. St Paul wrote that we are “to let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” The challenge of life is that of love. The great task ahead of everyone is to love all, despite the lack of love shown by very many in return. We are to love even our enemies and those who injure us. That is the meaning of what our Lord says in our Gospel passage today: “But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you” (Matthew 5:38-42). Our Lord is not meaning to lay down specific details of concrete behaviour for every conceivable situation. He is, rather, laying down a spirit which he expects to inform all concrete behaviour, especially by his disciples. The aggressor is to be resisted but in that spirit of love which filled the heart of Christ. Our Lord is asking that a new civilization be built, a civilization of love. This is the expression Pope Paul VI used so often in speaking of the kind of society God wants man to build. It is not to be a civilization of self-interest and of revenge but of love. Each individual has a hand in building this. Love is to be the highest value and its exemplar is Jesus Christ. So let us think through this sublime programme in practical terms, and become more aware of how limited is the love in our hearts. Becoming thus aware of this, let us take steps to replace it with the love of Christ. This is a truly possible ideal but only with the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Let us aim to have forgiven absolutely everyone by the time our passing from this life arrives. Let us aim to love all those who do not love us and who have injured us in any way. Let us answer evil with good. This is the strong man, the man of true strength! It does not require any great strength to be angry with the one who has caused us some injury. It does require great strength to love him. For this we need the example and the grace of Christ. Let us aim for this every day, then, knowing that in heaven we shall love the one who has injured us and be filled with joy to be with him forever in heaven. We shall not be admitted there till we do just this.
                                                                                 (E.J.Tyler)

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A little act, done for Love, is worth so much!
                                                                             (The Way, no.814)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Thirteenth Chapter   THE OBEDIENCE OF ONE HUMBLY SUBJECT TO THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS CHRIST

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

Learn to obey, you who are but dust! Learn to humble yourself, you who are but earth and clay, and bow down under the foot of every man! Learn to break your own will, to submit to all subjection! Be zealous against yourself! Allow no pride to dwell in you, but prove yourself so humble and lowly that all may walk over you and trample upon you as dust in the streets!
                                                                                                (Continuing)

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Our Christian life is a state of faith and trial; it is also a state of enjoyment.

(JHN, from the sermon ‘The Gospel Feast’ 1838)

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Tuesday of the eleventh week in Ordinary Time

(June 16) St. John Francis Regis (1597-1640)
Born into a family of some wealth, John Francis was so impressed by his Jesuit educators that he himself wished to enter the Society of Jesus. He did so at age 18. Despite his rigorous academic schedule he spent many hours in chapel, often to the dismay of fellow seminarians who were concerned about his health. Following his ordination to the priesthood, he undertook missionary work in various French towns. While the formal sermons of the day tended toward the poetic, his discourses were plain. But they revealed the fervour within him and attracted people of all classes. Father Regis especially made himself available to the poor. Many mornings were spent in the confessional or at the altar celebrating Mass; afternoons were reserved for visits to prisons and hospitals. The Bishop of Viviers, observing the success of Father Regis in communicating with people, sought to draw on his many gifts, especially needed during the prolonged civil and religious strife then rampant throughout France. With many prelates absent and priests negligent, the people had been deprived of the sacraments for 20 years or more. Various forms of Protestantism were thriving in some cases while a general indifference toward religion was evident in other instances. For three years Father Regis travelled throughout the diocese, conducting missions in advance of a visit by the bishop. He succeeded in converting many people and in bringing many others back to religious observances. Though Father Regis longed to work as a missionary among the North American Indians in Canada, he was to live out his days working for the Lord in the wildest and most desolate part of his native France. There he encountered rigorous winters, snowdrifts and other deprivations. Meanwhile, he continued preaching missions and earned a reputation as a saint. One man, entering the town of Saint-Andé, came upon a large crowd in front of a church and was told that people were waiting for "the saint" who was coming to preach a mission. The last four years of his life were spent preaching and in organizing social services, especially for prisoners, the sick and the poor. In the autumn of 1640, Father Regis sensed that his days were coming to a conclusion. He settled some of his affairs and prepared for the end by continuing to do what he did so well: speaking to the people about the God who loved them. On December 31, he spent most of the day with his eyes on the crucifix. That evening, he died. His final words were: "Into thy hands I commend my spirit." He was canonized in 1737. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: 2 Corinthians 8:1-9; Psalm 146:2, 5-9a; Matthew 5:43-48

Jesus said, You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48)

I once read of a young English youth, Julian Watts-Russell, who in 1863 volunteered to serve with the Papal Zouaves, a military force dedicated to defending the person of the Pope during the revolutionary turbulance led by Garribaldi in Italy. As a soldier he was outstanding for his prayer and piety. In battle against the Piedmontese forces at Mentana on 2 November 1867 just outside Rome Julian displayed great courage and a silent charity. Every time he loaded his gun he said a silent and sincere prayer — a Hail Mary — for the one who would be brought down by his bullet. He himself died in the battle. He strove to love those who were acting in the capacity of an enemy. I once attended a talk given by an Anglican girl. She told us how when she came to see that Christ demanded of his disciples that they love everyone, she recognized that she would need the grace of God to do this so she resolved to partake of the Eucharist very regularly in order to gain this grace. She understood that Christian discipleship revolved around a life of love, including love for those who did not love her. I remember watching a television programme of a couple who had a most seriously handicapped child. The child was deformed almost beyond recognition and was utterly helpless. The notable thing was how much the parents loved that child. They dedicated their lives to the child’s care and manifested a heroic love for him. It was an unforgettable film clip and offered an outstanding example of love and of the fulfilment of duty to all those who think that the sensible thing to do is to abort the physically handicapped before they are born. Christ says that whatever we do to the least he regards as having been done to him. However, there is this to say. Christ does not only say we are bound to help and to reverence those in need — such as the physically handicapped child. We must actually love our enemies. This is one of the signal proofs of a truly Christian spirit.

Read between the lines of the Gospel. Our Lord is consumed with desire to do good to the house of Israel. He goes about everywhere, city, town, village and farm, healing, preaching, instructing, bringing the good news of the Kingdom to all. He wishes to save all by bringing them to trust in his person and teaching. Yet there is constant and mounting hostility on the part of the influential section of the leaders. They are on the hunt for him and are determined to do away with him. There is danger and opposition. A remarkable feature of the Gospel account is the calmness with which our Lord lives with this. We do not see a mounting anger against his enemies, any species of hate. There is distress in him but not hate. There is only love and on the cross one of his dying prayers was that his heavenly Father forgive what they had done because they did not know what they were doing. That is to say, Christ appealed to his heavenly Father that he forgive his enemies for they had been blind — culpably so, yes, blinded by their own sin, yes, but blind nevertheless. We may presume that Christ’s prayer on behalf of his enemies was powerful and fruitful. The point here, though, is that in Christ not only do we have the great teacher of mankind lighting up for us by his teaching the way of love, but one who shows us what it means in practice. We are to love our enemies, do them good and forgive their offences against us (Matthew 5:43-48). The perfection of love lies in that direction. We must strive to be like our Lord in doing good to those who hurt us and in forgiving them from the heart. On one occasion our Lord told the parable of the king who forgave his servant an astronomical sum of money. That servant went out and dealt harshly with a debtor of his. Thereupon the king threw his servant into prison till he paid his debt. That, our Lord concluded, is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive your brother from your heart. We must forgive those who act as our enemies, and forgive from the heart.

Let us resolve to work at the growth of love in our hearts, not any kind of love after any kind of model. It is the love of Christ which we must strive to cultivate, and our goal ought be the perfection of this love. It includes the love of enemies. Be perfect, our Lord tells us in our Gospel today, just as your heavenly Father is perfect. Let us make this the grand project of our lives, knowing that all that will matter when we come to part this life will be the degree of Christ-like love that fills our hearts and which we take with us to meet our Judge.
                                                                                 (E.J.Tyler)

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Do you really want to be a saint? Carry out the little duty of each moment: do what you ought and concentrate on what you are doing.
                                                            (The Way, no.815)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Thirteenth Chapter   THE OBEDIENCE OF ONE HUMBLY SUBJECT TO THE EXAMPLE OF JESUS CHRIST

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

What have you, vain man, to complain of? What answer can you make, vile sinner, to those who accuse you, you who have so often offended God and so many times deserved hell? But My eye has spared you because your soul was precious in My sight, so that you might know My love and always be thankful for My benefits, so that you might give yourself continually to true subjection and humility, and might patiently endure contempt.
                                                             (Concluded)

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Those who in the Cross of Christ see the Atonement for sin, cannot choose but glory in it; and its mysteriousness does but make them glory in it the more.

(JHN, from the sermon ‘The Humiliation of the Eternal Son’ 1835)

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Wednesday of the eleventh week in Ordinary Time

(June 17) St. Joseph Cafasso (1811-1860)
Even as a young man, Joseph loved to attend Mass and was known for his humility and fervour in prayer. After his ordination he was assigned to a seminary in Turin. There he worked especially against the spirit of Jansenism, an excessive preoccupation with sin and damnation. Joseph used the works of St. Francis de Sales and St. Alphonsus Liguori to moderate the rigorism popular at the seminary. Joseph recommended membership in the Secular Franciscan Order to priests. He urged devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and encouraged daily Communion. In addition to his teaching duties, Joseph was an excellent preacher, confessor and retreat master. Noted for his work with condemned prisoners, Joseph helped many of them die at peace with God. St. John Bosco was one of Joseph’s pupils. Joseph urged John Bosco to establish the Salesians to work with the youth of Turin. Joseph was canonized in 1947.(AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: 2 Corinthians 9:6-11; Psalm 112:1bc-4, 9; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

Jesus said, Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. When you fast, do not look sombre as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (Matthew 6: 1-6.16-18)

The meaning of our Lord’s words in this Gospel passage (Matthew 6: 1-6.16-18) is plain. All that we do in our religious life we ought do for the honour and glory of God and not just to gain the praise of men. Let us consider, though, a detail in the passage that relates to a different issue — the issue being how we are to read, interpret and understand the Scriptures. Take our Lord’s turn of phrase, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing. When we give to the needy with one hand we ought not let the other hand know what the hand that is giving the alms is doing. It is obvious that this is just an expression, a metaphor that conveys the point that what we do for the poor ought be done with intention of pleasing God alone. It would be absurd to think that, because the Scriptures are inspired, our Lord means us to take literally what he says of the right hand and the left. Again, our Lord says that we ought perform our practices of piety away from the gaze and knowledge of men so as not to court their praise for our piety. When you pray, our Lord says, do so behind a closed door and then your Father will reward you. As with the image of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing, the image of the closed door is essentially a metaphor. We may indeed pray in our closed room and this may in fact be our preferred place of personal prayer, but that is not our Lord’s real point. What he is insisting on and which he drives home by using the image of praying behind the closed door is that we ought pray with the intention of pleasing God and not in order to gain the admiration of men. We may also observe that we shall be less tempted to seek the praise of men if we do so out of their sight — meaning, in a way that is not singular and likely to attract their attention. For instance, every Sunday the Catholic is obliged to attend holy Mass. It is part of his fulfilment of the third commandment. He prays not in his private room behind closed doors but in the presence of others and with them. But even here he ought not be singular, rather he ought submerge himself in the Church’s liturgical prayer and action. Singularity opens the door to vainglory.

In referring to our Lord’s modes of expression here, I am raising the issue of our interpretation of the meaning of the Scriptures. All of Scripture is inspired and hence the Scriptures are the most prized book in the Church’s possession. The Church constantly appeals to the Scriptures in teaching her members. We notice in the Gospels how highly our Lord himself regarded the Scriptures and appealed to them both in instructing his disciples and in his combats with the leaders of the Jews and even with Satan. For instance, during his temptations in the desert prior to commencing his public ministry our Lord appealed to the Scriptures. It is written, he said to Satan, you shall not tempt the Lord your God. Again, man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. However — and this is the point I make here — we must know how to interpret the Scriptures. For instance, there have been those who, reading the Scriptures, interpret them to support their contention that Jesus is not divine. They take something our Lord says — such as that no one but the Father knows when the Last Day will come, or that places at his right and left are not his to grant, or that the Father is greater than he — and interpret it according to their chosen position. In authoring the Scriptures God made use of human instruments and the inspired text that resulted must be interpreted with this very human dimension borne in mind. Our Lord himself used metaphors and modes of speech. The immediate and broader context too must be borne in mind. That context includes the meaning of, say, the entire passage or the whole chapter; indeed it includes the general teaching of the entire corpus of the Scriptures. Most importantly it includes the authoritative Tradition of the Church and her formal teaching. All of these contexts are the arena of the action of the Holy Spirit, who is the Author of the Scriptures.

In a word, we must read the Scriptures with the mind of Christ. It is his teaching, including his teaching on the Scriptures, which must shape our minds as his disciples. Furthermore, if we are to have the mind of Christ in reading and interpreting the Scriptures we must think with the Church, his body. If we are to think with the Church we must accept and enter into the Church’s teaching on Christ and the Scriptures generally. This is the context in which the Scriptures are to be read and understood. On this basis will they convey to us the light of God.
                                                                                   (E.J.Tyler)

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You have mistaken the way if you despise the little things.
                                                                                            (The Way, no.816)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE        INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fourteenth Chapter   CONSIDER THE HIDDEN JUDGMENTS OF GOD LEST YOU BECOME PROUD OF YOUR OWN GOOD DEEDS

THE DISCIPLE

YOU thunder forth Your judgments over me, Lord. You shake all my bones with fear and trembling, and my soul is very much afraid. I stand in awe as I consider that the heavens are not pure in Your sight. If You found wickedness in the angels and did not spare them, what will become of me? Stars have fallen from heaven, and I -- I who am but dust -- how can I be presumptuous? They whose deeds seemed worthy of praise have fallen into the depths, and I have seen those who ate the bread of angels delighting themselves with the husks of swine.
                                                                                (Continuing)

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Miracles are the simple and direct work of God; the worker of them is but an instrument or organ.

(JHN, from the discourse ‘On the Fitness of the Glories of Mary’ 1849)

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Thursday of the eleventh week in Ordinary Time

(June 18) Venerable Matt Talbot (1856-1925)
Matt can be considered the patron of men and women struggling with alcoholism. Matt was born in Dublin, where his father worked on the docks and had a difficult time supporting his family. After a few years of schooling, Matt obtained work as a messenger for some liquor merchants; there he began to drink excessively. For 15 years—until he was 30—Matt was an active alcoholic. One day he decided to take "the pledge" for three months, make a general confession and begin to attend daily Mass. There is evidence that Matt’s first seven years after taking the pledge were especially difficult. Avoiding his former drinking places was hard. He began to pray as intensely as he used to drink. He also tried to pay back people from whom he had borrowed or stolen money while he was drinking. Most of his life Matt worked as a builder’s labourer. He joined the Secular Franciscan Order and began a life of strict penance; he abstained from meat nine months a year. Matt spent hours every night avidly reading Scripture and the lives of the saints. He prayed the rosary conscientiously. Though his job did not make him rich, Matt contributed generously to the missions. After 1923 his health failed and Matt was forced to quit work. He died on his way to church on Trinity Sunday. Fifty years later Pope Paul VI gave him the title venerable. On an otherwise blank page in one of Matt’s books, the following is written: "God console thee and make thee a saint. To arrive at the perfection of humility four things are necessary: to despise the world, to despise no one, to despise self, to despise being despised by others." (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: 2 Corinthians 1:1-11;   Psalm 111:1b-4, 7-8;    Matthew 6:7-15

Jesus said to his disciples, And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This, then, is how you should pray: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:7-15)

Christ on Prayer: In his Sermon on the Mount, from which our Gospel passage today is drawn, our Lord speaks on the fundamental matter of prayer. To this point in his Sermon our Lord has contrasted his new Law with the Old and has warned against distortions of the practice of God’s Law — as do the hypocrites. But here he warns them against being like the pagans. When you pray, do not babble on in empty fashion after the manner of the pagans, he warns. This passing observation made by Christ, incidentally, may be of interest to the student of comparative religion. Our Lord says that at least much of pagan prayer was vainly repetitious. What was behind this babble? “They think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” They imagined God to be far off, knowing little of their concerns and perhaps caring less. The distance of God from man is indeed a feature of much of human thought and religion. In many primal religions the creator withdraws and leaves the scene to lesser spirits. Islam is dependent in many respects on Judaic revelation, but it has a most marked emphasis on the transcendence of God. Man tends to think of God as very distant and I suppose this is natural because we do not see him nor do we usually see divine activity outside of the ordinary course of creation. The pagan prays, just as the Christian will. But the pagan tends to regard God as very distant, unaware of his needs, and somewhat unconcerned. We too can find ourselves praying in this fashion if we do not imbue ourselves with the spirit of God’s revelation of himself in history. God has revealed himself to be very near. He is God-with-us. Of course, even on philosophical grounds the nearness of God can be perceived. Only God can create and sustain being and hence where there is created being, God is immediately present creatively sustaining his creature. This immanent creative act of the transcendent God, though, can easily be missed. It is easy to look on God as very distant.

So when we pray, let us not pray as those pray who do not have the blessing of revelation. God is indeed distant in the sense of transcendent but he is not distant in the sense that he does not really know us. He knows us because everything about us (except for sin) he is continually sustaining with his almighty hand. This creative action places him nearer to us than we are, in terms of awareness, to ourselves. Moreover, Christ dwells within us if we are in the state of grace, and where Christ is the Father and the Holy Spirit also are. God the most holy Trinity dwells in the soul that is in the state of grace. So he knows what we need before we ask him. In all our prayer we ought be filled with this faith. Many words will not be necessary. Let us notice, though, that our Lord does not say that no words are ever necessary — he says that many words are not necessary. In fact, he gives us some words to use. In our Lord’s own practice of prayer to his heavenly Father he used some words. Some of his prayers are given to us in the Gospels. I thank you, Father, for having hidden these things from the wise and clever and revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Again — Father I thank you for hearing my prayer. I know that you always hear my prayer. Again — Father, let this cup be taken away from me, but not as I will but as you will. Or again, Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. Our Lord used words when he prayed — not necessarily always, but certainly at times. He actually gave us a prayer to use. It is the Lord’s Prayer and so the words he gives us to pray we ought treasure all our lives. It is the principal thing in our Gospel today (Matthew 6:7-15). The Lord’s Prayer is strikingly simple and brief. Were it not for the fact that the Lord himself gave it to us I suspect history would have ignored it. Having come from the Lord it is the outstanding model of all prayer and the Church has enshrined it in her liturgy, in her teaching, in her practice and in her catechisms. It summarises the scope of prayer and let us hope we die with it on our lips.

Let us resolve to work at growing in a life of genuine prayer. It is like a life of love — it has to be worked at. It does not deepen just automatically. It may remain on something of a plateau, but if there is no advance it will begin to recede. We must work on the practice of living in the presence of God, especially in times we give to prayer. Being in his presence we must believe what he has revealed. He is our Father and he dwells within us in the fullness of his triune life. He knows what we need before we ask him, but he wants us to ask him nevertheless. Let us do so, then, and make prayer including the prayer of petition the heart and soul of our daily life.
                                                                                  (E.J.Tyler)

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'Great' holiness consists in carrying out the 'little duties' of each moment.
                                                                             (The Way, no.817)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE       INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fourteenth Chapter      CONSIDER THE HIDDEN JUDGMENTS OF GOD LEST YOU BECOME PROUD OF YOUR OWN GOOD DEEDS

THE DISCIPLE

There is no holiness, then, if You withdraw Your hand, Lord. There is no wisdom if You cease to guide, no courage if You cease to defend. No chastity is secure if You do not guard it. Our vigilance avails nothing if Your holy watchfulness does not protect us. Left to ourselves we sink and perish, but visited by You we are lifted up and live. We are truly unstable, but You make us strong. We grow lukewarm, but You inflame us. Oh, how humbly and lowly should I consider myself! How very little should I esteem anything that seems good in me! How profoundly should I submit to Your unfathomable judgments, Lord, where I find myself to be but nothing!
                                                                                   (Continuing)

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Yet a little while and the end will come, and all will be made manifest, and error will fail, and truth will prevail.

(JHN, from Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching 1850)

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Solemnity of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus B
(2009 — Friday of the eleventh week in Ordinary Time)

(June 19) St. Romuald (950?-1027)
After a wasted youth, Romuald saw his father kill a relative in a duel over property. In horror he fled to a monastery near Ravenna in Italy. After three years some of the monks found him to be uncomfortably holy and eased him out. He spent the next 30 years going about Italy, founding monasteries and hermitages. He longed to give his life to Christ in martyrdom, and got the pope’s permission to preach the gospel in Hungary. But he was struck with illness as soon as he arrived, and the illness recurred as often as he tried to proceed. During another period of his life, he suffered great spiritual dryness. One day as he was praying Psalm 31 (“I will give you understanding and I will instruct you”), he was given an extraordinary light and spirit which never left him. At the next monastery where he stayed, he was accused of a scandalous crime by a young nobleman he had rebuked for a dissolute life. Amazingly, his fellow monks believed the accusation. He was given a severe penance, forbidden to offer Mass and excommunicated, an unjust sentence he endured in silence for six months. The most famous of the monasteries he founded was that of the Camaldoli (Campus Maldoli, name of the owner) in Tuscany. Here he founded the Order of the Camaldolese Benedictines, uniting a monastic and hermit life. His father later became a monk, wavered and was kept faithful by the encouragement of his son. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9; Isaiah 12:2-6; Ephesians 3:8-12, 14-19; John 19:31-37

Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other. But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water. The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe. These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: Not one of his bones will be broken, and, as another scripture says, They will look on the one they have pierced. (John 19: 31-37)

Devotion to the Heart of Christ It is interesting to notice how certain parts of the body have become symbols and metaphors. We speak of the “eye” of the storm, or the Evil Eye. We speak of a person having “an eye” for some particular matter. Again, we speak of a person taking something “in hand.” In the Gospel it is said of the young John the Baptist that as he grew “the hand” of the Lord was with him. We speak of giving a person a “helping hand.” Again, we speak of someone being “the head” of a corporation, and the husband being “the head” of the family. Christ is “the head” of the Church which is his “body”. We speak of some item being at “the foot” of a list of things. Our Lord spoke of “the finger” of God. We speak of life “smiling” on someone. We say that we do not like “the smell” of something, as if the nose is involved. In the same vein, the “heart” of man has long been an image of the inner core of his spirit. We speak of a great person having a great “heart”, and we refer to “the heart of the matter.” So natural are these expressions that we can even fail to notice that they are metaphors. When we refer to “the heart of the matter” the issue under consideration will not normally have a biological heart. We are referring to the core of the matter. When I say that I know “in my heart” that something is true even if I cannot explain it, I am not saying that I know this in my biological heart. It is a metaphor and a very good metaphor because the heart is an absolutely key component of the living anatomy. If the heart fails all will fail. This cannot be said of the hand or the foot or the ear or the nose or the eye or the mouth. Our Lord himself referred to his “heart.” Take my yoke upon you, he said, and learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart. He was referring to the core of his spirit, his inmost self. In his case that inmost Self was divine, and yet it had assumed a human nature. That is to say, his divine Self was also human. Thus Christ’s human heart was sacred, as God is sacred. When we refer to the sacred heart of Jesus we are referring to his divine Self at its core having become flesh.

For this reason a very good expression for the person of Christ considered under the aspect of his inner self and deepest thoughts and feelings — what St Paul calls his “mind” — is what we may call “the heart of Christ.” We can consider Christ under the aspect of his intense activity, his public ministry, his teaching and his miracles. The Christian is captivated by this and by his teaching. But the Christian also draws near to the living Jesus to be his friend. I have not called you servants but friends, our Lord said. We think of John the evangelist referring to himself always as the disciple Jesus loved. The Gospels tell us that Jesus “loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (John 11: 5). As we might say, our Lord had a great “heart.” Drawing near to him in prayer and assisted by the prayerful reading of the Scriptures the Christian comes to know Christ more deeply. He is coming to know his heart, his sacred heart. This is exactly what our Lord himself invites us to do: Come to me and learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart. In fact, it is this personal knowledge and love for Jesus which is the distinctive mark of the Christian religion. By coming to know and love Jesus in his very Self beyond his works and his teaching, we are drawing near the heart of God. In Jesus God has become present and invites us to be truly his friends. It is a call to a religion of the heart, a religion involving a heart-to-heart relationship with Jesus — which is to say with the living God. Christ said that whoever sees him sees the Father who sent him (John 12:45). The Christian, then, is one who is devoted to the heart of Christ. He is devoted to the inner person of Jesus, human and divine, as to One who is filled with a love that is both human and divine. These are the things we mean when we refer to the sacred heart of Jesus. Thus it is that the Christian is devoted to the sacred heart of Jesus, and his calling in life is to become more and more devoted to the sacred heart of Jesus. As is portrayed in today's Gospel, it was this heart of Christ that was pierced on the cross (John 19: 31-37).

St John in the first of his letters tells us that “this is the love I mean: not our love for God but God’s love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away.” This divine love was incarnate in Jesus Christ. The heart of Christ is the heart of God, and all of this we encapsulate in the expression, the sacred heart of Jesus. Let us then grow in a personal love for the sacred heart of Jesus, understanding well that it is this which is the essence of the Christian life. It is a love which identifies with him and makes his intentions the ruling intention of our life.
                                                                                                 (E.J.Tyler)

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Great souls pay much attention to little things.
                                                                       (The Way, no.818)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fourteenth Chapter  CONSIDER THE HIDDEN JUDGMENTS OF GOD LEST YOU BECOME PROUD OF YOUR OWN GOOD DEEDS

THE DISCIPLE

O immeasurable weight! O impassable sea, where I find myself to be nothing but bare nothingness! Where, then, is glory's hiding place? Where can there be any trust in my own virtue? All vainglory is swallowed up in the depths of Your judgments upon me.

What is all flesh in Your sight? Shall the clay glory against Him that formed it? How can he whose heart is truly subject to God be lifted up by vainglory? The whole world will not make him proud whom truth has subjected to itself. Nor shall he who has placed all his hope in God be moved by the tongues of flatterers. For behold, even they who speak are nothing; they will pass away with the sound of their words, but the truth of the Lord remains forever.
                                                                          (Concluded)

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Christ died once, long since: by communicating in His Sacrament [of the Eucharist], you renew the Lord’s death; you bring into the midst of you that Sacrifice which took away the sins of the world.

(JHN, from the sermon ‘Sins of Ignorance and Weakness’ 1832)

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The Immaculate Heart of Mary
(Saturday after the feast of Corpus Christi)

(June 20) St. Paulinus of Nola (354?-431)
Anyone who is praised in the letters of six or seven saints undoubtedly must be of extraordinary character. Such a person was Paulinus of Nola, correspondent and friend of Augustine, Jerome, Melania, Martin, Gregory and Ambrose. Born near Bordeaux, he was the son of the Roman prefect of Gaul, who had extensive property in both Gaul and Italy. Paulinus became a distinguished lawyer, holding several public offices in the Empire. With his Spanish wife, Therasia, he retired at an early age to a life of cultured leisure. The two were baptized by the saintly bishop of Bordeaux and moved to Therasia’s estate in Spain. After many childless years, they had a son who died a week after birth. This occasioned their beginning a life of great austerity and charity, giving away most of their Spanish property. Possibly as a result of this great example, Paulinus was rather unexpectedly ordained a priest at Christmas by the bishop of Barcelona. He and his wife then moved to Nola, near Naples. He had a great love for St. Felix of Nola, and spent much effort in promoting devotion to this saint. Paulinus gave away most of his remaining property (to the consternation of his relatives) and continued his work for the poor. Supporting a host of debtors, tramps and other needy people, he lived a monastic life in another part of his home. By popular demand he was made bishop of Nola and guided that diocese for 21 years. His last years were saddened by the invasion of the Huns. Among his few writings is the earliest extant Christian wedding song. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: 2 Corinthians 12:1-10; Psalm 34:8-13; Luke 2:41-51

Every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the Feast, according to the custom. After the Feast was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they travelled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you. Why were you searching for me? he asked. Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house? But they did not understand what he was saying to them. Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. (Luke 2: 41-51)

Mary in the Christian life There are many historians who have maintained that in its popular forms the Catholicism of the pre-Reformation period had become distracted away from the person of Christ into excessive devotion to the saints and other elements of the Christian life. To an extent this may have been so — and to determine this is a matter for historical research. It has never been anything but the teaching of the Church that Christ is the only redeemer and is the object of the Christian religion. But of course this or that member of the Church can fail to appreciate this cardinal truth. At the same time, there came out of the Protestant Reformation a denial of any practical place in the Christian life for the Virgin Mary and the saints. The invocation of the mother of God the Son made man was disallowed by the great Protest, which is a further and altogether more serious step. I remember hearing years ago that during one of his public preaching sessions Billy Graham said of Mary, the mother of Christ, that we must all remember that she is the mother of the Saviour. He was saying that she ought not be ignored, which is precisely what has happened in the life of vast communities of Christians. The one whom the Angel addressed as being full of grace and as one with whom the Lord abode, the one who was blessed among women as Elizabeth proclaimed, the one whose child is the light of the world, is ignored by many. It ought not be so and our Lord clearly meant his most holy mother not to be forgotten. During his last moments on the cross his mother and the disciple he loved were standing not far from him — near enough for him to be heard by them. He looked at his mother and said, there is your son! Then he looked at the beloved disciple and said, there is your mother! The beloved disciple then took her to his own home, and the Church has always seen this as symbolic of what all Christ’s disciples ought do. We ought all take Mary into the home of our heart. She intercedes for us and shows us what it means to be a Christian.

When John took Mary to his home it must have resulted in an altogether special love for Mary growing in his heart. This was according to Christ’s plan. Christ wants us to draw near his mother and to share with him her motherly affection. This taking Mary into the home of our hearts means drawing near her in love. It means becoming part of the circle of love between Christ and his dearest friends — and this is the reality at the heart of the Church’s life. Consider the many years of our Lord’s hidden life at Nazareth alluded to in our Gospel today (Luke 2: 41-51). Consider the wondrous love, the exquisite friendship that must have existed between Jesus, Mary and Joseph. This communion within the holy family of Nazareth shows that love for Mary is part of the Christian life. Christ himself loved Mary and the other holy persons who were part of his life. The Christian life includes being part of this circle of love. Today the Church celebrates what it calls the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We think of the inner life of Mary, which is to say that love for Jesus which reigned in the depths of her soul. Just as the heart of Jesus was filled with love, so too was the heart of Mary. Her heart is filled with love for Jesus and for those whom Jesus loves. In the twenty fifth chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel our Lord describes the divine judgment. He will say that whatever we do to the least he will regard as having been done to him. So he himself identifies with all, especially the least. All are his brothers and sisters. How then must Mary his mother regard us! She looks on us as beloved of her divine Son who died for each of us. She shares in his love for us and loves us as he loves us. Her soul, full of grace as the Angel Gabriel declared, was entirely free of sin and this showed in her pure and powerful love for all. Christ loved Mary his mother and so should we. We ought be devoted, as Christ himself was, to the sinless heart of Mary. It is not the divine plan that Mary and the saints be ignored in our devotion to Christ. Rather our devotion to Christ ought include them.

I would recommend to every Christian that he or she cultivate every day a personal devotion to the mother of Christ, asking her that she assist us by her prayers. Let us ask her to assist us now and at the hour of our death to love Christ her son with all our hearts. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb Jesus. Holy Mary mother of God pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen. A very Scriptural prayer. Why not pray it every day!
                                                                      (E.J.Tyler)

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Because you have been In pauca fidelis, faithful in small things, come and join in your master's happiness. The words are Christ's. In pauca fidelis!... Now will you neglect little things, if heaven itself is promised to those who mind them?
                                                              (The Way, no.819)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fifteenth Chapter   HOW ONE SHOULD FEEL AND SPEAK ON EVERY DESIRABLE THING

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

MY CHILD, this is the way you must speak on every occasion: "Lord, if it be pleasing to You, so be it. If it be to Your honour, Lord, be it done in Your name. Lord, if You see that it is expedient and profitable for me, then grant that I may use it to Your honour. But if You know that it will be harmful to me, and of no good benefit to the welfare of my soul, then take this desire away from me."
                                                                      (Continuing)

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Consider the Bible tells us to be meek, humble, single-hearted, and teachable. Now, it is plain that humility and teachableness are qualities of mind necessary for arriving at the truth in any subject, and in religious matters as well as others. By obeying Scripture, then, in practising humility and teachableness, it is evident we are at least in the way to arrive at the knowledge of God. On the other hand, impatient, proud, self-confident, obstinate men, are generally wrong in the opinions they form of persons and things.

(JHN, from the sermon ‘Inward Witness to the Truth of the Gospel’ 1825)

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Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Prayers this week: God is the strength of his people. In him, we his c hosen live in safety. Save us, Lord, who share in your life, and give us your blessing; be our shepherd for ever. (Psalm 27:8-9)
                                                                                                                   
Father, guide and protector of your people, grant us an unfailing respect for your name, and keep us always in  your love. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

(June 21) St. Aloysius Gonzaga (1568-1591)
The Lord can make saints anywhere, even amid the brutality and license of Renaissance life. Florence was the “mother of piety” for Aloysius Gonzaga despite his exposure to a “society of fraud, dagger, poison and lust.” As a son of a princely family, he grew up in royal courts and army camps. His father wanted Aloysius to be a military hero. At age seven he experienced a profound spiritual quickening. His prayers included the Office of Mary, the psalms and other devotions. At age nine he came from his hometown of Castiglione to Florence to be educated; by age 11 he was teaching catechism to poor children, fasting three days a week and practising great austerities. When he was 13 years old he travelled with his parents and the Empress of Austria to Spain and acted as a page in the court of Philip II. The more Aloysius saw of court life, the more disillusioned he became, seeking relief in learning about the lives of saints. A book about the experience of Jesuit missionaries in India suggested to him the idea of entering the Society of Jesus, and in Spain his decision became final. Now began a four-year contest with his father. Eminent churchmen and lay people were pressed into service to persuade him to remain in his “normal” vocation. Finally he prevailed, was allowed to renounce his right to succession and was received into the Jesuit novitiate. Like other seminarians, Aloysius was faced with a new kind of penance—that of accepting different ideas about the exact nature of penance. He was obliged to eat more, to take recreation with the other students. He was forbidden to pray except at stated times. He spent four years in the study of philosophy and had St. Robert Bellarmine as his spiritual adviser. In 1591, a plague struck Rome. The Jesuits opened a hospital of their own. The general himself and many other Jesuits rendered personal service. Because he nursed patients, washing them and making their beds, Aloysius caught the disease himself. A fever persisted after his recovery and he was so weak he could scarcely rise from bed. Yet, he maintained his great discipline of prayer, knowing that he would die within the octave of Corpus Christi, three months later. He was 23. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Job 38:1, 8-11;  Psalm 107:23-26, 28-31;  2 Cor 5:14-17;  Mark 4:35-41

That day when evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, Let us go over to the other side. Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, Teacher, don't you care if we drown? He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, Quiet! Be still! Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to his disciples, Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith? They were terrified and asked each other, Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him! (Mark 4:35-41)

In April 1887 the Catholic historian, Lord John Acton, wrote in a letter to the Anglican historian and bishop of London, Mandell Creighton, that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Presumably he was aware of the obvious exceptions to this — saints who were great popes and great rulers. But that was his generalization as a Catholic historian writing to an Anglican historian. Very often in history great power has resided without checks in the hands of individuals and the result has been catastrophic for many people. Consider Adolf Hitler who gained great power in Germany during the 1930s. Consider the power over Russia wielded by Joseph Stalin. But consider again what it was that caused the evil that resulted. It was not the mere possession of great power. It was the fact that this great power was used in a way subject not to moral principles but to unprincipled passions. One of the constant springs of religion in the life of man is his own powerlessness in the face of threats. He lacks the power to protect himself and to assure his own flourishing in the face of menacing evils. So he turns to the powers above and asks them to come to his aid. He needs the aid of heavenly power to help him live and flourish in the face of evil, harm and death. He understands that God is good and, that being the case, he is glad that God is all-powerful. So power as such is a good thing. So is absolute power. This is shown in divine power. Power corrupts to the degree that the one who possesses it is corrupt, and he will be corrupt if his natural passions and appetites are not subject to objective moral principle. I make this general point in order to illustrate the fundamental issue in what we might call our passions or natural appetites. The fundamental imperative in respect to our natural passions is that objective moral principle, which is to say virtue and goodness, must reign in man’s life. If man’s natural passions are subject to and incorporated into a life of virtue, all will be well. If his natural appetites dominate his life, all that comes his way, including his use of power, will be corrupted. We need to be very aware of our natural passions and of the duty to integrate them into a life of objective virtue and moral principle. Our natural tendencies must become virtuous.

Our Gospel today (Mark 4:35-41) describes the fury of the storm pounding on the boat in which the disciples were struggling for their lives. Let that be an image of the passions in man when they are unprincipled. They cause havoc and harm. Christ rises and commands the storm and all is quiet. The great power of the sea is subject to his command. Let that be an image of the subjection of man’s natural appetites to what is objectively right and good. Man’s passions are his instinctive and natural desires that incline him to act or not to act in view of an apparent good. These instinctive desires are love and hatred, desire and fear, joy, sadness and anger. Its chief is love which is man’s attraction to what he perceives as good even if this is only an apparent good. It may actually be a great evil. A crime appears to him as good under a certain distorted aspect, and he forms a passionate desire for that apparent good. This passion for it that now rules him becomes the source of his doing what is objectively a great evil. Alternatively, a person contemplates the person of Christ and forms a passionate love for him. He becomes passionate in his dedication to Christ and his teaching and this ruling passion becomes the source of his doing great good. Our passions, insofar as they are movements of our instinctive appetites, are neither good nor bad in themselves. They are good when they contribute to good actions and they are evil in the opposite case. They can be taken up into the virtues and as a result they will give power and strength to those virtues. Alternatively, they can become part of vices and give power and strength to those vices. We ought recognize the passions we have and the particular way in which they tend to act in our personal life. The particular bent or direction the passions tend to take will vary from person to person, and each person must cultivate the self knowledge to be able to know and control his instinctive passions. He must subject his passions to his sense of what is right and good and integrate them into his abiding and daily goal of personal sanctity — which is to say the daily following of Christ. We must aim to be passionately in love with God, and passionately against all deliberate sin. That is the purpose of our passions.

Let us pray to the Holy Spirit that he will give us a true self-knowledge and at the same time a great desire to love God with all our hearts and to show this love by our obedience to his will. Our God-given passions will help or hinder this great ideal, depending on how successfully we subject them to a rightly formed conscience. A rightly formed conscience is one that is itself subject to the objective law of God as it is expressed in God’s Revelation and in the natural law. Let us then set out every day to make God the ruling factor of our life and all that is within us subject to Him.
                                                                                (E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1762-1770 (The passions)

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Because you have been In pauca fidelis, faithful in small things, come and join in your master's happiness. The words are Christ's. In pauca fidelis!... Now will you neglect little things, if heaven itself is promised to those who mind them?
                                                                     (The Way, no.819)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ     BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fifteenth Chapter     HOW ONE SHOULD FEEL AND SPEAK ON EVERY DESIRABLE THING

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

Not every desire is from the Holy Spirit, even though it may seem right and good. It is difficult to be certain whether it is a good spirit or a bad one that prompts one to this or that, and even to know whether you are being moved by your own spirit. Many who seemed at first to be led by a good spirit have been deceived in the end.
                                                                              (Continuing)

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From John Henry Newman's sermon, "The New Works of the Gospel" 1840.

Religions before Christ came ever had holy days and festivals, both among heathen and Jews. The Gospel has not done away with holy days, only it has changed them, and made them more truly holy. For instance, it has not destroyed the Feast of one day in seven, or the Lord’s day; not to mention other instances. This is the more remarkable, because St. Paul’s words are at first sight very strong against the observance, under the Gospel, of any days above others, as a matter of religion. He finds fault with the Galatians, because they observe “days, and months, and times, and years.” [Gal. 4: 10] And he bids the Colossians not to let any man “judge them in meat or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.” [Col. 2: 16-17]

Who would not, at first sight, suppose from these words, that all holy days, all holy seasons, were to be done away, under the Gospel, as mere shadows,—Sunday, Christmas-day, Easter-tide, Lent, and all the rest? Yet it is not so. The Apostles in the Acts, and St. John in the Revelation, observe and recognise the Lord’s day as a Gospel festival. Jewish days are shadows, but Christian are not … works of the Law, avail not, but Christian works avail. The weekly festival is not one of the “old things” which have “passed away” in Christ, neither have righteous works. The Sabbath has “become new” by becoming the Lord’s day; works become new, by becoming spiritual.

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Monday of the twelfth week in Ordinary Time

(June 22) St. Thomas More (1478-1535)
His belief that no lay ruler has jurisdiction over the Church of Christ cost Thomas More his life. Beheaded on Tower Hill, London, July 6, 1535, he steadfastly refused to approve Henry VIII’s divorce and remarriage and establishment of the Church of England. Described as “a man for all seasons,” More was a literary scholar, eminent lawyer, gentleman, father of four children and chancellor of England. An intensely spiritual man, he would not support the king’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Nor would he acknowledge Henry as supreme head of the Church in England, breaking with Rome and denying the pope as head. More was committed to the Tower of London to await trial for treason: not swearing to the Act of Succession and the Oath of Supremacy. Upon conviction, More declared he had all the councils of Christendom and not just the council of one realm to support him in the decision of his conscience. Four hundred years later, in 1935, Thomas More was canonized a saint of God. Few saints are more relevant to the 20th century. The supreme diplomat and counsellor, he did not compromise his own moral values in order to please the king, knowing that true allegiance to authority is not blind acceptance of everything that authority wants. King Henry himself realized this and tried desperately to win his chancellor to his side because he knew More was a man whose approval counted, a man whose personal integrity no one questioned. But when Thomas resigned as chancellor, unable to approve the two matters that meant most to Henry, the king had to get rid of Thomas More. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Genesis 12:1-9; Psalm 33:12-13, 18-20 and 22; Matthew 7:1-5

Jesus said, Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way as you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)

Do not judge! On one occasion during our Lord’s public ministry, a ministry that involved numerous healings, exorcisms and miracles of various kinds, one of his disciples came to him saying that they had come across someone casting out demons in his name and they tried to stop him (Mark 9:38-40). That person had acted independently of our Lord’s supervision and independently of his band of disciples, the seed of the future Church. Our Lord’s response? ‘You must not stop him; no one who works a miracle in my name could soon afterwards speak evil of me.’ It indicates our Lord’s kindly response to those who act imperfectly. He was very slow to judge in the sense of condemning. On another occasion the leaders suddenly presented him with a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. Moses commanded that such people should be stoned. What did he say? Our Lord simply bent down and began writing on the ground. Since they persisted at his silence, he rose and said to them that the one without sin may cast the first stone. The way he said this, the penetrating look he must have given, perhaps even what he may have then begun to write on the ground, all combined to unmask their consciences to themselves. He was teaching a powerful lesson that they were not to judge in the sense of condemn. They sensed that if they did judge, they would themselves be judged and in the same measure. One by one they left, beginning from the eldest. He then asked the woman, Has no one condemned you? Nor do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. On another occasion Jesus and his disciples were passing through Samaria on their way to Jerusalem and they were refused hospitality in a Samaritan village. His disciples James and John asked our Lord if he wanted them to call down fire from heaven to consume them. Our Lord rebuked him and went on another way. Our Lord set them an example of not judging in the sense of condemning. We must be merciful.

Of course, as with all of our Lord’s teaching, one aspect of his teaching must be held in tension with other aspects. Our Lord also taught that we are to correct our brother as a work of charity to him and to the community. Evil cannot go unresisted. If we see our brother taking a path that leads to Hell and taking others with him, does Christ in these circumstances forbid us to judge of his course? Obviously not, and it would be a profound failure in charity to see our brother destroying himself and to take no steps for his benefit, either spiritually or materially. Nevertheless our Lord’s teaching is clear. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way as you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:1-5) What our Lord is obviously saying is that we ought preserve love in our hearts, the love that filled the heart of Christ. Our sentiments must be those of Christ. Our attitude to others must be that of Christ. Let this mind be in you, St Paul writes, that was in Christ Jesus. Moreover, we ourselves are in no position to be prone to judge and condemn. As our Lord says, we have a log in our own eye. What are we doing condemning our brother when unbeknown to him or to others we have so much in ourselves that is worthy of condemnation? We are reminded of the story our Lord told of the steward who owed the king ten thousand talents — an astronomical sum of money, as far as the ordinary person was concerned. The king cancelled his debt, and yet that servant went out and was unforgiving to another servant who owed him a fair sum of money, but nothing like what he had owed his master. That “wicked” servant, as the master called him, was judged as he had judged his fellow servant. Our Lord was showing in his lesson of forgiveness that we are not to judge in the sense of condemn or we will be judged. We must be merciful..

On the cross during his dying moments Christ prayed to his heavenly Father asking that he forgive them for they did not realize what they were doing. Our Lord, who had no speck in his eye, knew quite well the logs that were in the eyes of his enemies. But on the cross he did not condemn them and he prayed to the Father that he too would have mercy on them. God is rich in mercy towards us. We ought strive every day to be rich in mercy towards all others.
                                                                                                                                               (E.J.Tyler)

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Don't judge by the smallness of the beginnings. My attention was once drawn to the fact that there is no difference in size between seeds that give annual plants and those that will grow into ageless trees.
                                                                  (The Way, no.820)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ            BOOK THREE          INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fifteenth Chapter         HOW ONE SHOULD FEEL AND SPEAK ON EVERY DESIRABLE THING

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

Whatever the mind sees as good, ask and desire in fear of God and humility of heart. Above all, commit the whole matter to Me with true resignation, and say: "Lord, You know what is better for me; let this be done or that be done as You please. Grant what You will, as much as You will, when You will. Do with me as You know best, as will most please You, and will be for Your greater honour. Place me where You will and deal with me freely in all things. I am in Your hand; turn me about whichever way You will. Behold, I am Your servant, ready to obey in all things. Not for myself do I desire to live, but for You -- would that I could do this worthily and perfectly!"
                                                                                           (Continuing)

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God’s opportunities do not wait; they come and they go.

(JHN, from the sermon ‘The Calls of Grace’ 1848)

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Tuesday of the twelfth week in Ordinary Time

(June 23) St. John Fisher (1469-1535)
    John Fisher is usually associated with Erasmus, Thomas More and other Renaissance humanists. His life, therefore, did not have the external simplicity found in the lives of some saints. Rather, he was a man of learning, associated with the intellectuals and political leaders of his day. He was interested in the contemporary culture and eventually became chancellor at Cambridge. He had been made a bishop at 35, and one of his interests was raising the standard of preaching in England. Fisher himself was an accomplished preacher and writer. His sermons on the penitential psalms were reprinted seven times before his death. With the coming of Lutheranism, he was drawn into controversy. His eight books against heresy gave him a leading position among European theologians. In 1521 he was asked to study the problem of Henry VIII’s marriage. He incurred Henry’s anger by defending the validity of the king’s marriage with Catherine and later by rejecting Henry’s claim to be the supreme head of the Church of England. In an attempt to be rid of him, Henry first had him accused of not reporting all the "revelations" of the nun of Kent, Elizabeth Barton. John was summoned, in feeble health, to take the oath to the new Act of Succession. He and Thomas More refused because the Act presumed the legality of Henry’s divorce and his claim to be head of the English Church. They were sent to the Tower of London, where Fisher remained 14 months without trial. They were finally sentenced to life imprisonment and loss of goods. When the two were called to further interrogations, they remained silent. Fisher was tricked, on the supposition he was speaking privately as a priest, and declared again that the king was not supreme head. The king, further angered that the pope had made John Fisher a cardinal, had him brought to trial on the charge of high treason. He was condemned and executed, his body left to lie all day on the scaffold and his head hung on London Bridge. More was executed two weeks later.
   John Fisher remained faithful to his calling as a bishop. He strongly upheld the teachings of the Church; the very cause of his martyrdom was his loyalty to Rome. He was involved in the cultural enrichment circles as well as in the political struggles of his time. This involvement caused him to question the moral conduct of the leadership of his country. "The Church has the right, indeed the duty, to proclaim justice on the social, national and international level, and to denounce instances of injustice, when the fundamental rights of man and his very salvation demand it" (Justice in the World, 1971 Synod of Bishops). Erasmus said of John Fisher: "He is the one man at this time who is incomparable for uprightness of life, for learning and for greatness of soul." (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Genesis 13:2,5-18; Psalm 15:2-5; Matthew 7:12-14

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7: 12-14)

On Eternity     There are very many differences between the Old and New Testaments, which is to say that there are very many differences between the person and teaching of Christ and what God had revealed to his chosen people prior to that point. Putting it more accurately, in the New Testament there are very many developments of the revelation God had granted to his people in the period represented by the Old Testament. As the author of the Letter to the Hebrews expresses it (1:1-2), God who at different times and in different ways spoke in the past by his prophets has now spoken by his Son. One of the many notable developments in divine revelation that came in the teaching of Christ is the greater clarity as to the last things facing man. What faces man at the end of his mortal life? It was widely accepted that there would be a resurrection at the very end. For instance, when our Lord told Martha that her brother Lazarus would rise again, she said that she knew he would rise again in the resurrection at the last day. The Sadducees, though, denied the resurrection. The testimony of the Scriptures had not been altogether clear about the Afterlife. When Saul approached the witch at Endor to summon up the ghost of Samuel, Samuel is portrayed in the text as coming up from Hades and telling Saul he would be with him on the morrow. There is no discrimination between Saul and Samuel in their place of abode in the Afterlife. However in the Book of Wisdom (ch.3) we see a clear affirmation of reward and punishment in the Afterlife. Still, the future situation of man is not clear. All this changes with Christ. Our Lord makes it abundantly clear that following the end of life each person faces the judgment of God. Following the end of history all mankind will face the judgment of God together. This is to say that following God’s judgment there is ultimately only one of two alternatives. For each person it will be either an eternity of heaven or an eternity of hell. It gives to the gift of life a tremendous and awesome significance.

In our Gospel today (Matthew 7: 12-14) our Lord refers, as he does on far more occasions than did any prophet before him, to the Afterlife. Ultimately only two possibilities face every man and woman. It will be either destruction or life. The pattern that we see in life is a pointer to what we shall see in the Afterlife. There is, we might say, an analogy or likeness between the two. In ultimate terms we see around us either life or death. Things are living or they are dead. They live or they die. In a battle these are the only two prospects facing every soldier. He will live or he will die. When a person rises from his bed in the morning and looks ahead, there are two ultimate possibilities. He will live through the day, or he will not. If he lives through it he should make the very best of it in view of that day when he will not live through it. In the off-chance that he does not live through it he ought be prepared for what will then follow. This stark situation has its parallel in the Afterlife. Following the judgment of God each person will be either saved or he will be lost. If he is saved he probably will need to be purified of the remnants of sin before admission into the all-holy presence of God. This state and stage of purification the Church calls Purgatory. If he is lost because of his unrepented mortal sins then it will mean a living death for all eternity. It will be a living destruction, an eternal fire that is never extinct. So there are two paths in life and we must take one of them. As our Lord says, there is a path that leads to destruction and there is a path that leads to life. Our Lord says that we must enter by the narrow gate, because it is that narrow gate and that narrow road that leads to life. This is the road of the commandments of God and the person of Christ. The broad road and the wide gate, which is to say the easy path of self-seeking, leads to destruction. The choice is clear and is unavoidable.

At the time of the Reformation there was a famous dispute between Luther and Erasmus. Erasmus stressed free will and in his presentation he did not really represent well the Catholic teaching on grace. But there is no denying the fundamental importance of free will. Let us appreciate the gift God has given us of our freedom to choose. We need the grace of Christ, but still we must truly choose. We must cooperate with grace freely and deliberately. This choice is made every day. It is a choice for Christ that takes us along through the narrow gate and along the narrow road on to life everlasting. Let us choose for Christ, then. So then, now I begin!
                                                                                                 (E.J.Tyler)

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Don't forget that, on earth, every big thing has had a small beginning. What is born big is monstrous and dies.
                                                                                      (The Way, no.821)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ BOOK THREE INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fifteenth Chapter HOW ONE SHOULD FEEL AND SPEAK ON EVERY DESIRABLE THING

Grant me Your grace, O most merciful Jesus, that it may be with me, and work with me, and remain with me to the very end. Grant that I may always desire and will that which is most acceptable and pleasing to You. Let Your will be mine. Let my will always follow Yours and agree perfectly with it. Let my will be one with Yours in willing and in not willing, and let me be unable to will or not will anything but what You will or do not will. Grant that I may die to all things in this world, and for Your sake love to be despised and unknown in this life. Give me above all desires the desire to rest in You, and in You let my heart have peace. You are true peace of heart. You alone are its rest. Without You all things are difficult and troubled. In this peace, the selfsame that is in You, the Most High, the everlasting Good, I will sleep and take my rest. Amen.
                                                                                                      (Concluded)

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No one doctrine can be named which starts complete at first, and gains nothing afterwards from the investigations of faith and the attacks of heresy.

(JHN, from An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine 1845)

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Scripture today:    2 Kings 22: 8-13; 23: 1-3;    Psalm 118;    Matthew 7:15-20

Jesus said to his disciples: Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognise them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognise them. (Matthew 7:15-20)

Wolves       It has been said that the greatest development in the history of Anglicanism in England was the rise of the Evangelical movement that was spearheaded by Wesley and Whitefield in the eighteenth century. While the Calvinist Whitefield held to the Anglican communion, Wesley’s people eventually went on to form Methodism. However, the revival they effected was an extraordinary phenomenon, and within this movement of conversion was to be found notable religious personalities. One such was the Evangelical Anglican pastor, John Newton (1725-1807), the author of many hymns and popular works of a spiritual and semi-theological character. Newton’s most well-known hymn was “Amazing Grace.” His most famous book was the story of his conversion, entitled An Authentic Narrative (1764), and in that book he describes one phase in his moral and spiritual descent into godlessness. He had drifted into reading one of the books of the well-known rationalist and deist, Lord Shaftsbury, and on one of his voyages he fell in with a man who, as Newton describes him, was a master of “the freethinking scheme.” That is to say, his new friend rejected Christian teaching and doctrine in favour of whatever commended itself to his agnostic reason. Sadly, this same man subsequently perished in a violent storm at sea. But Newton was fond of his company, and was eager to show off to his new companion his reading―especially his reading of the book, Characteristics, by Shaftsbury. His companion, in turn, was zealous and shrewd in the propagation of his rejection of dogmatic religion, and once he had gained the confidence of Newton took advantage of Newton’s attachment to Shaftsbury’s agnostic writing. He began to ply him with objections and arguments―as they were present in Shaftsbury’s writing―with the result that Newton sank further into disbelief. His heart had been gained against Christian teaching, and, Newton writes, “like an unwary sailor who quits his port just before a rising storm, I renounced the hopes and comforts of the Gospel...”. That is to say, Newton’s new companion was a wolf in sheep’s clothing―as was Shaftsbury’s book also. Newton entered into reading the book, and into relations with his freethinking friend, unaware of the spiritual damage each would do.

Newton succumbed freely to several occasions of sinning against the faith of his childhood, and as a result rejected his faith. By a powerful act of God’s amazing grace―as Newton came to see it―he was saved from this, was converted, and became a famous Olney and London preacher and pastor. The purpose of Newton’s classic account of his conversion was to celebrate the powerful grace of God. This was also a principal purpose of St Augustine’s autobiography, his Confessions. But as has just been shown, in Newton’s case it also illustrates what our Lord warns against in our Gospel passage today. We must be on guard against wolves in sheep’s clothing. What appears attractive and winning may be very bad for our faith in Jesus Christ. “Jesus said to his disciples: Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognise them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit” (Matthew 7:15-20). Our Lord wants us to be on guard. One can be corrupted by communion with bad influences, without realizing at first that they are bad. The first fruit of a bad tree―which is to say, of a bad soul―is bad and corrupt thought. One’s religious position, one’s doctrine, becomes profoundly erroneous. This is because one does not like what is right and good, because of the evil state of one’s heart. At root, one’s spiritual stand is wrong, false, erroneous and this is a powerful if subtle influence in the positions one chooses to adopt. Thus the first and most serious fruit of the bad tree is the rejection of the teaching of Christ in this or that respect. That teaching comes to us in the witness, the life and the teaching of the Church he founded. The wolf in sheep’s clothing is the influence that leads us away from a full and hearty acceptance of the revelation given to us by the Son of God made man, our Redeemer and our Lord. In the history of the Church there have been many such wolves, at times repelled, but at times admitted with tragic results. Christ warns us to be on guard. The greatest wolves are Satan and his minions.

Let us take all the normal means to ensure that we constantly hear the voice of our good Shepherd. We must preserve in ourselves that mind which ensures that we hear and see aright. St Paul tells us to put on the mind of Christ: let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. Let us be faithful to daily prayer, to a daily spiritual reading of good and sound nourishment, ever listening to the voice of the teaching Church. Let us never enter into thoughts of rejection of those whom Christ has placed over us as the pastors of his Church, especially the successor of Peter. If we follow our Good Shepherd, he will lead us to the green pastures of our true homeland.
                                                                                     (E.J.Tyler)


 

Vigil of the birth of St John the Baptist B-2 (Vigil Mass) (June 24)

Entrance Antiphon Lk 1: 15, 14      He will be great in the sight of the Lord and will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb; and many will rejoice at his birth.

Collect    Grant, we pray, almighty God, that your family may walk in the way of salvation and, attentive to what Saint John the Precursor urged, may come safely to the One he foretold, our Lord Jesus Christ. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.