May1 2009

(May 6) Saints Marian and James (d. 259)
Often, it’s hard to find much detail from the lives of saints of the early Church. What we know about the third-century martyrs we honour today is likewise minimal. But we do know that they lived and died for the faith. Almost 2,000 years later, that is enough reason to honour them. Born in North Africa, Marian was a lector or reader; James was a deacon. For their devotion to the faith they suffered during the persecution of Valerian. Prior to their persecution Marian and James were visited by two bishops who encouraged them in the faith not long before they themselves were martyred. A short time later, Marian and James were arrested and interrogated. The two readily confessed their faith and, for that, were tortured. While in prison they are said to have experienced visions, including one of the two bishops who had visited them earlier. On the last day of their lives, Marian and James joined other Christians facing martyrdom. They were blindfolded and then put to death. Their bodies were thrown into the water. The year was 259. (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Acts 12:24-13:5a; Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 6 and 8; John 12:44-50

Then Jesus cried out, When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. When he beholds

me, he sees the one who sent me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no-one who believes in me should stay in darkness. As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day. For I did not speak of my own accord, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say. (John 12:44-50)

An especially notable feature of Christ as a figure of history is his claims about himself. No one of any consequence would accuse Christ of sin. But in view of his exalted claims about himself there would seem to be only two alternatives if one denies the truth of those claims. He was either deluded or morally at fault. He was personally mad or personally false. The world is reluctant to consider him personally and morally false. He was not a sinner: this would seem to be the consensus of history and even of non believers.

He was not a rogue. But who would say he was mad? So there is this conundrum: what are we to make of his claims? There are those who deny that he made them. Islam, who counts him as a prophet (though not of the greatness of Mahomet) denies that he claimed divinity. Such a claim is the creation of the Christians. There are others who do not propose to resolve the conundrum. In his great book (p.105), Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI considers the observations of the Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner in his book, A Rabbi talks with Jesus. Neusner highlights the central reason why he does not wish to follow Jesus. It is because Jesus himself is at the centre of his message. Perfection, the state of being holy as God is holy, as demanded by the Torah, now consists in following Jesus. It is at this point that the message of Christ diverges fundamentally from the faith of Israel. Neusner, highly respected Jewish scholar who taught in a Catholic tertiary institution, does not accept the exalted and unique claims of Jesus, but he does speak very respectfully of Jesus of Nazareth. That having been said, I do not see a discussion by Neusner of what then is ultimately to be made of Jesus. Is he a rogue or is he a mental case? If either of these alternatives could be demonstrated, it would, of course, blow all Christian dogma right out of the water, as we might say. In fact, the Christian has not the slightest doubt, from the witness of Christian tradition and the testimony of the New Testament, that Christ was a man of incomparable holiness and wisdom and power.

I make these remarks by way of introduction to the claims of our Lord in our Gospel passage today (John 12:44-50). Christ calmly and firmly states that if a person believes in him and in his message, he is believing in God who sent him. Now, who would claim that? He goes on to an even greater assertion, made in the full glare of publicity: “When a person beholds me, he sees the one who sent me.” He had told the leaders of the Jews in the Temple Colonnade that he and the Father are one. Here he tells all that when a person sees him he is seeing the Father. He repeated this to his disciples in private. As his final confrontation with the leaders of the Jews draws near, he is bearing clearer and clearer testimony to the truth of his own person. He speaks of himself as having come into the world, as if he had come from somewhere else. He implies his pre-existence. He had come from the Father who sent him, and he had come as a light for the world. He is not merely a light for his contemporaries, but a light for the world. No prophet before him had such pretensions. John the Baptist certainly did not — he, rather, pointed to Jesus. The person who believes in him, Jesus, who is the light of the world, will not remain in the darkness. This statement implies that whoever refuses to come to Jesus as the light will remain in darkness. So the characteristic situation of the world because of sin is one of darkness. But there is a light in the world, and that light is Jesus Christ. These are breathtaking claims and a person who is indifferent to Jesus ought reflect on his situation. He is either in the light or in the darkness, and the teaching of Jesus is that, to the extent that he is separated from him, he is in the darkness. So the person of Jesus must be taken seriously, one way or the other. Rabbi Neusner, to whom I have referred, took Jesus seriously. But there is more. Christ says that his word will be our judge on the last day. His teaching has cosmic implications reaching to the end of human history. At the end of mankind’s course, each of us will be judged by the word of Christ. That will be the criterion according to which our prospects in eternity will be measured.

Let us place ourselves in the presence of Jesus Christ as he utters his testimony as reported in today’s Gospel passage. Let us gaze on his person, so full of wisdom, grace and holiness. There is, has been, and ever will be no one to be compared with him. He is the incomparable man, and he tells us that he is God, God the son of the eternal Father. He assures us that if we believe in him we are believing in God. He is our light, and if we follow his word our eternity is assured. Let us take our stand with him then, and come what may, let us walk with him to the end.
(E.J.Tyler)

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Ask yourself many times during the day: Am I doing at this moment what I ought to be doing?
(The Way, no.772)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

Chapter 4:    WE MUST WALK BEFORE GOD IN HUMILITY AND TRUTH

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

MY CHILD, walk before Me in truth, and seek Me always in the simplicity of your heart. He who walks before Me in truth shall be defended from the attacks of evil, and the truth shall free him from seducers and from the slanders of wicked men. For if the truth has made you free, then you shall be free indeed, and you shall not care for the vain words of men.
                                                                             (Continuing)

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We Christians … are at once in the wilderness and in the promised land.

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

(May 7) Blessed Rose Venerini (1656-1728)
Rose was born at Viterbo in Italy, the daughter of a doctor. Following the death of her fiancé she entered a convent, but soon returned home to care for her newly widowed mother. Meanwhile, Rose invited the women of the neighbourhood to recite the rosary in her home, forming a sort of sodality with them. As she looked to her future, Rose, under the spiritual guidance of a Jesuit priest, became convinced that she was called to become a teacher in the world rather than a contemplative nun in a convent. Clearly, she made the right choice: She was a born teacher, and the free school for girls she opened in 1685 was well received. Soon the cardinal invited her to oversee the training of teachers and the administration of schools in his Diocese of Montefiascone. As Rose's reputation grew, she was called upon to organize schools in many parts of Italy, including Rome. Her disposition was right for the task as well, for Rose often met considerable opposition but was never deterred. She died in Rome in 1728, where a number of miracles were attributed to her. She was beatified in 1952. The sodality, or group of women she had invited to prayer, was ultimately given the rank of a religious congregation. Today, the so-called Venerini Sisters can be found in the United States and elsewhere, working among Italian immigrants. (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Acts 13:13-25; Psalm 89:2-3, 21-22, 25 and 27; John 13:16-20

Jesus said, I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. I am not referring to all of you; I know those I have chosen. But this is to fulfil the scripture: 'He who shares my bread has lifted up his heel against me.' I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe that I am He. I tell you the truth, whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me; and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me. (John 13:16-20)

The context of our passage today is the Last Supper and Christ has just washed the feet of the Twelve, directing them to do likewise. He who is their Master and their Lord has washed their feet as if he were their servant. So they in turn ought wash each other’s feet. He has set them an example which will teach them to do what he has done for them. Let us go back for a moment to the scene of Christ washing the feet of his disciples, before we consider our passage today. I recently saw a painting of Nicodemus

seated at table with Christ instructing him. It was a portrayal of John’s account of the meeting in chapter 3 of his Gospel. I never cease to be struck by the very fact of the Incarnation. There in the picture was Nicodemus directly talking to and listening to God himself. God the Son had become man, and was seated with one of his creatures who talked to him respectfully but as a fellow man. God deigned to be a companion to man, perfectly accessible. He had put aside the glory that was his and humbly assumed our human condition except for sin. But he was humbler still. In the chapter from which our Gospel today is drawn God made man bends down and goes from one disciple to the other, humbly washing their feet. Simon Peter could hardly bring himself to permit it, so filled was he with the thought of the grandeur of Jesus his Master. He was the Messiah, the Son of the living God and here he was acting as if he were his own servant. But Christ insisted. And this was characteristic of the life and ministry of Christ who had said that he had not come to be served but to serve. This, then, is what God is like. Jesus Christ, St Paul writes, is the image of the unseen God. As he is, so God is. God, then, is profoundly humble. God is servant-like in his dealings with his creatures, in the sense that his entire drive is to love and serve them in the truest sense of the word. This, then, is the context of our Gospel passage today.

Our Lord tells the Twelve that they must not be above doing to others what he has done for them. “I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” The way of man and the world is largely the way of personal domination. Blessings are seen to come from “being on top.” One will succeed if one gets one’s own way and has one’s personal plans fulfilled, and certainly not if one is subjected to a path of humble and obscure service of others that brings little apparent gain. What is to be said of, say, the promising young girl who marries and whose husband turns out to be the most difficult person of all? I have known such situations. I can think of a girl who married at about the age of 21, full of fun and religious faith, having been raised in a happy and good family. Her husband went off to the War and came back a most difficult man. Her marriage thenceforth became a tremendous source of difficulty for her. But she raised her several children, was faithful to the practice of her Catholic Faith, and patiently served her husband. She was faithful to him and gradually won him back to both the practice of his Faith and to living a normal life in his family. She lived a life of humble service and retained her cheerful religious spirit to the end. She died in her eighties and passed on into the obscurity of history, as had her husband before her. She had embodied the spirit of Christ washing the feet of his disciples. She had done what he had done, and in this sense her life had been blessed. Christ says in our passage today that “I tell you the truth, whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me; and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me” (John 13:16-20). Of course, we may take it that Christ was especially referring to those he sends with his formal authority to preach and instruct in his name, such as the pastors of the Church, the successors of the Twelve. But it has an application to every Christian. In the case of the lady I mentioned, Christ had sent her husband to her, and she accepted him till death. Thus she accepted the will of Christ, and in accepting Christ she accepted the Father who sent him.

Let us do unto others — with our emphasis not merely on the thinking but on the doing — as Christ has done for us. As our Lord says elsewhere, according to the measure of our actions shall it be measured out to us. I cannot help but think that the lady I mentioned, so ordinary and so much part of the stream of common man, would have been greatly rewarded by God for what she had measured out to her husband despite what he had measured out to her. Blessed shall we be if we do as our Master and Lord has done for us. He laid down his life for us and asked that we do likewise. Let us pray for the grace to do this, starting now. So then, now I begin!
(E.J.Tyler)

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Jesus, whatever you 'want', I love!
(The Way, no.773)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ     BOOK THREE        INTERNAL CONSOLATION

Chapter 4:         WE MUST WALK BEFORE GOD IN HUMILITY AND TRUTH

THE DISCIPLE

O Lord, it is true. I ask that it be with me as You say. Let your truth teach me. Let it guard me, and keep me safe to the end. Let it free me from all evil affection and badly ordered love, and I shall walk with You in great freedom of heart.
                                                                            (Continuing)

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Whether we consider processes of Faith or … of Reason, men advance forward on grounds which they do not, or cannot produce, or if they could, yet could not prove to be true.

(JHN, from the University sermon ‘The Nature of Faith in Relation to Reason’ 1839)

(May 8) St. Peter of Tarentaise (c. 1102-1174)
There are two men named St. Peter of Tarentaise who lived one century apart. The man we honor today is the younger Peter, born in France in the early part of the 12th century. (The other man with the same name became Pope Innocent the Fifth.) The Peter we’re focusing on became a Cistercian monk and eventually served as abbot. In 1142 he was named archbishop of Tarentaise, replacing a bishop who had been deposed because of corruption. Peter tackled his new assignment with vigor. He brought reform into his diocese, replaced lax clergy and reached out to the poor. He visited all parts of his mountainous diocese on a regular basis. After about a decade as bishop Peter “disappeared” for a year and lived quietly as a lay brother at an abbey in Switzerland. When he was “found out,” the reluctant bishop was persuaded to return to his post. He again focused many of his energies on the poor. Peter died in 1175 on his way home from an unsuccessful papal assignment to reconcile the kings of France and England. (AmericanCatholic.org)

Scripture today: Acts 13:26-33; Psalm 2:6-11ab; John 14:1-6

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going. Thomas said to him, Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way? Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:1-6)

On one occasion I heard the Dalai Lama say (it was during a kind of television interview) that Christ was an incarnation or particular presence in history of the Buddha. With due respect for the Dalai Lama — and he is a very good man and a true force for good in the world — the Christian would not give such a statement a moment's thought. But I suppose we could look that statement in a different way. Ultimately it presents the view that there are various routes to the Ultimate, to the Absolute. That is, Buddha found

his way of attaining enlightenment and so to happiness. Christ offered his way of reaching heaven. Confucius another, and so on. It is said that Buddhism is particularly accommodating in respect to various creeds, though on the other hand I know one well-published scholar of Buddhism who at one point was himself a Buddhist and who claims that Buddhism rejects the doctrine of a loving Creator. Be all this as it may, the Dalai Lama’s remark is illustrative of the general notion so prevalent in our age that one way to God (however he might be conceived or imagined) is as good as another. It is unreasonable and intolerant to claim for oneself the objective Truth and to assert that others are true to the extent that their position approximates or shares in one’s own. Of course, even the one who claims to possess the Truth (through no merit of his own) ought surely allow that he can learn from others who may possess many elements of the truth. The point here, though, is that the Christian bears witness to what might be an unpalatable position, that Christ is the only way to the Father. What this means when spelt out in detail can require a lot of sophistication, but that is indeed the Christian position and it comes directly from the lips of Christ himself. He presented himself to the chosen people of God, not just as one among a long line of prophets but as transcending them all and as giving the one and only true interpretation of the entire Old Testament religion. All of revealed religion is to be found in the person of Jesus. In this sense he and he only is the only way to God.

Let us consider the context of Lord’s words. It is the Last Supper and our Lord is bidding farewell to his disciples, telling them that he is going to the Father to prepare a place for them. He will be back and will take them to be with him that they also may be where he is. Where he is going, they are called to follow. Then Thomas spoke up. Where exactly are you going, Lord? How can we know the way there if we do not know where you are going? It was a good question, I suppose, if they could not divine where our Lord was going. Our Lord’s response was complete and pithy, and it gave mankind the answer to all his ultimate questions. “Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:1-6). Christ is the way to God, he is the truth of God and he is the life of God. He is everything that God is, and in the One who was speaking to them they had the object and purpose of all of life and religion. Were Christ to be speaking to Buddha, or to Confucius, or to Mahomet, would he say to them that your way is as good as mine, that we are all trying, in one way or another, to get to God and to bring as many to God as possible — so let each go happily along his respective route? No. Were Christ to be speaking to Buddha, he would have endeavoured to prepare Buddha for his message, which is that he and he alone is the way to the Father. He would have told Buddha, as he would have told Mahomet, that no one comes to the Father but by him. It is he alone, Jesus Christ alone, who has opened the gates of heaven to sinful man, and the way to there is by being a true disciple of his and being in union with him, accepting his revelation with which he entrusted his Church. So then, if indeed Buddha reached heaven as we sincerely hope and expect he did, it was, in ways we do not know, through the redemptive work of Christ. So too Mahomet and every other person. Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father. This may seem unpalatable and biased, but such is the teaching of Jesus Christ. The one who believes and strives to live according to this belief will be saved. The one who wilfully refuses will be lost.

There is a story of people in a crowded bus who were on a long trip. An announcement was made giving a kind of brief progress report. The announcer said to everyone that the bus was making extremely good time, but that the driver was not sure where he was heading. Christ has revealed the destination. It is God. He has also revealed the way to God. He is the Way. More, he is also the Life and the Truth. That is to say, Christ is God and is therefore the way to God and the term of our journey. In him we have every heavenly blessing, as St Paul writes. Let us then live this great and precious message, and bring it to those around us.
(E.J.Tyler)

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Stages: to be resigned to the will of God; to conform to the will of God, to want the will of God; to love the will of God.
(The Way, no.774)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ BOOK THREE INTERNAL CONSOLATION

Chapter 4: WE MUST WALK BEFORE GOD IN HUMILITY AND TRUTH

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

I shall teach you those things which are right and pleasing to Me. Consider your sins with great displeasure and sorrow, and never think yourself to be someone because of your good works. You are truly a sinner. You are subject to many passions and entangled in them. Of yourself you always tend to nothing. You fall quickly, are quickly overcome, quickly troubled, and quickly undone. You have nothing in which you can glory, but you have many things for which you should think yourself vile, for you are much weaker than you can comprehend. Hence, let none of the things you do seem great to you. Let nothing seem important or precious or desirable except that which is everlasting. Let the eternal truth please you above all things, and let your extreme unworthiness always displease you. Fear nothing, abhor nothing, and fly nothing as you do your own vices and sins; these should be more unpleasant for you than any material losses.
(Continuing)

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Of the two, I would rather have to maintain that we ought to begin with believing everything that is offered to our acceptance, than that it is our duty to doubt of everything. This, indeed, seems the true way of learning. In that case, we soon discover and discard what is contradictory; and error having always some portion of truth in it, and the truth having a reality which error has not, we may expect [that] we shall somehow make our way forward, the error falling off from the mind, and the truth developing and occupying it.

(JHN, from An Essay in aid of a Grammar of Assent, 1870)

Fifth Sunday of Eastertide B

Prayers this week: Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvellous deeds; he has revealed to the nations his saving power, alleluia. (Psalm 32: 5-6)

God our Father, look upon us with love. You redeem us and make us your children in Christ. Give us true freedom and bring us to the inheritance you promised. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

(May 10) Blessed Damien of Molokai (1840-1889)
     When Joseph de Veuster was born in Tremelo, Belgium, in 1840, few people in Europe had any firsthand knowledge of leprosy (Hansen's disease). By the time he died at the age of 49, people all over the world knew about this disease because of him. They knew that human compassion could soften the ravages of this disease. Forced to quit school at age 13 to work on the family farm, six years later Joseph entered the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, taking the name of a fourth-century physician and martyr. When his brother Pamphile, a priest in the same congregation, fell ill and was unable to go to the Hawaiian Islands as assigned, Damien quickly volunteered in his place. In May 1864, two months after arriving in his new mission, Damien was ordained a priest in Honolulu and assigned to the island of Hawaii. In 1873, he went to the Hawaiian government's leper colony on the island of Molokai, set up seven years earlier. Part of a team of four chaplains taking that assignment for three months each year, Damien soon volunteered to remain permanently, caring for the people's physical, medical and spiritual needs. In time, he became their most effective advocate to obtain promised government support. Soon the settlement had new houses and a new church, school and orphanage. Morale improved considerably. A few years later he succeeded in getting the Franciscan Sisters of Syracuse, led by Mother Marianne Kope, to help staff this colony in Kalaupapa. Damien contracted Hansen's disease and died of its complications. As requested, he was buried in Kalaupapa, but in 1936 the Belgian government succeeded in having his body moved to Belgium. Part of Damien's body was returned to his beloved Hawaiian brothers and sisters after his beatification in 1995. When Hawaii became a state in 1959, it selected Damien as one of its two representatives in the Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.
    Some people thought Damien was a hero for going to Molokai and others thought he was crazy. When a Protestant clergyman wrote that Damien was guilty of immoral behaviour, Robert Louis Stevenson vigorously defended him in an "Open Letter to Dr. Hyde." During the beatification homily, Pope John Paul II said: "Holiness is not perfection according to human criteria; it is not reserved for a small number of exceptional persons. It is for everyone; it is the Lord who brings us to holiness, when we are willing to collaborate in the salvation of the world for the glory of God, despite our sin and our sometimes rebellious temperament." (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Acts 9:26-31; Psalm 22:26-28, 30-32; 1 John 3:18-24; John 15:1-8

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. (John 15:1-8)

In our Lord’s time, he himself was the object of controversy and dispute. Who do people say the Son of Man is? — our Lord asked his disciples — and he was given various answers. The true answer came from Simon Peter, speaking at the head of the Twelve. So it has been ever since: the person of Jesus Christ has been constantly contested. But there has also been contested something intimately connected with his person and work, and that has been the Church. Christ spoke directly of his building the Church. He formed the Twelve, and on one occasion he said to them that he who hears you hears me. On the occasion when Simon Peter gave to Christ the answer he was looking for — that he was the Messiah, the Son of the living God — Christ announced his intention to build his Church. You are Peter, the Rock, he said to Simon, and on this Rock I will build my Church. Just before he ascended into heaven he gave to his disciples a great charge. They were to go to the whole world and make disciples of all the nations, and, our Lord promised, I will be with you till the end of the age, meaning till the end of human history when he comes again. So Christ is with his Church till the end. But from the earliest centuries there have been departures from and divisions within his Church. As a result of this, not only has the person of Christ been the object of controversy and dispute, but so has the nature of the Church. In the time of Augustine, there were the Donatists who had separated from the Church. At the end of the first millennium the Orthodox separated from the See of Rome. At the time of the Reformation, various Christian bodies also separated from the See of Rome. The explicit issue was not Christ so much as the Church. Different understandings of the Church have proliferated ever since, and many have come to think that the Church is ephemeral to the Christian message. Many think that all that is important is the person of Jesus (which in one sense is true) and that the Church is a purely practical device which can be rejected, restructured or replaced according to its perceived effectiveness in facilitating union with Christ and in proclaiming his message. It is commonly thought among Christians that if you dislike one Church, you can join another.

But no. The Church which Christ founded is his body and he is its Head. In the plan of God the Church is essential for our life in Christ. In our Gospel today (John 15:1-8) our Lord explains to his disciples his relationship with them in terms of a parable. He is the vine and his disciples are the branches. The vineyard of the Lord in the Old Testament was the people of God. Here our Lord expresses it in terms of a vine. We are all members of him as branches are members of a vine. So we are united to one another as the branches of a vine are united one to the other, the source of their unity being the single vine of which they are part. Nor are there many different vines but one only. In God’s plan there are not many Churches but one only. Because of the vine the branches are united to one another and part of a single and identifiable entity. The vine is Christ, and as the vine Christ is the foremost reality in the Church and we are all members of him. The communion which this constitutes is the Church. As already mentioned, Christ deliberately founded this Church. You are Peter the Rock, he said to Simon, and on this Rock I will build my Church. The gates of Hell will not prevail against it. In the visible reality of the Church there is present and active the invisible divine reality of the person of Jesus, and because of this the Church is said to be a mystery. Because of this presence of Christ within her, the Church is the sign and instrument of the communion of all humanity with God. God’s plan is to sanctify and save men not in isolation but by making them into one people gathered together in the unity of the Holy Trinity. One becomes a member of this people by faith in Christ and Baptism, and by this means one has access to the grace of Christ, which is like the life of the vine flowing to each of its branches. The Church’s members in this way are enabled to live in Christ and share in his messianic mission as priest, prophet and king. In this way Christ lives in each of the Church’s members and acts through them in bringing salvation to the world. As St Paul wrote, now not I but Christ lives in me. This we do, not separately one from another, but as members of a body which is the body of Christ, the Church.

We must not endeavour to live in Christ while disregarding the Church. The Church is his mystical body here on earth and he is her Head. The Church is the Spouse of Christ the Bridegroom, and he unites us to himself in an intimate way through the action of the Holy Spirit. Because of this action of the Holy Spirit, the Church is the Temple of the Holy Spirit. In all these ways we are branches of the Vine and that Vine is Christ. The Father is the vinedresser and his purpose is to produce fruit that will last. That fruit is holiness, a fruit which is to be brought to others.
(E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.771-801 (The church as visible and spiritual; the universal sacrament of salvation; charisms)

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Don't fall into a vicious circle. You are thinking: when this is settled one way or another, I'll be very generous with my God.

Can't you see that Jesus is waiting for you to be generous without reserve, so that he can settle things far better than you imagine?

A firm resolution, as logical consequence: in each moment of each day I will try generously to carry out the will of God.
(The Way, no.776)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

Chapter 4:   WE MUST WALK BEFORE GOD IN HUMILITY AND TRUTH

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

Some carry their devotion only in books, some in pictures, some in outward signs and figures. Some have Me on their lips when there is little of Me in their hearts. Others, indeed, with enlightened understanding and purified affections, constantly long for everlasting things; they are unwilling to hear of earthly affairs and only with reluctance do they serve the necessities of nature. These sense what the Spirit of truth speaks within them: for He teaches them to despise earthly things and to love those of heaven, to neglect the world, and each day and night to desire heaven.
                                                                       (Concluded)

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In this passage from his 1838 sermon ‘The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church’ John Henry Newman reflects on the meaning of Christ’s promise that he would be with his disciples "to the end of the world" [Matthew 28: 20]. Christ is present to each baptised person through faith: this is a gift of the Holy Spirit. The fact that the Christian can often be unaware of this personal presence of Christ doesn’t diminish its importance or its reality:

Christ has promised He will be with us to the end,—with us, not only as He is in the unity of the Father and the Son, not in the Omnipresence of the Divine Nature, but personally, as the Christ, as God and man; not present with us locally and sensibly, but still really, in our hearts and to our faith. And it is by the Holy Ghost that this gracious communion is effected. How He effects it we know not; in what precisely it consists we know not. We see Him not; but we are to believe that we possess Him,—that we have been brought under the virtue of His healing hand, of His life-giving breath, of the manna flowing from His lips, and of the blood issuing from His side.

And hereafter, on looking back, we shall be conscious that we have been thus favoured. Such is the Day of the Lord in which we find ourselves, as if in fulfilment of the words of the prophet, "The Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with Thee. And it shall come to pass in that Day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark: but it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light." [Zech. 14: 5-7] Nay, even before the end comes, Christians, on looking back on years past, will feel, at least in a degree, that Christ has been with them, though they knew it not, only believed it, at the time. They will even recollect then the burning of their hearts. Nay, though they seemed not even to believe any thing at the time, yet afterwards, if they have come to Him in sincerity, they will experience a sort of heavenly fragrance and savour of immortality, when they least expect it, rising upon their minds, as if in token that God has been with them, and investing all that has taken place, which before seemed to them but earthly, with beams of glory.

And this is true, in one sense, of all the rites and ordinances of the Church, of all providences that happen to us; that, on looking back on them, though they seemed without meaning at the time, elicited no strong feeling, or were even painful and distasteful, yet if we come to them and submit to them in faith, they are afterwards transfigured, and we feel that it has been good for us to be there; and we have a testimony, as a reward of our obedience, that Christ has fulfilled His promise, and, as He said, is here through the Spirit, though He be with the Father.

(John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons Volume 6 (1842) Sermon no. 10, p. 133-35

While Mary defends the Church, neither height nor depth, neither men nor evil spirits, neither great monarchs, nor craft of man, nor popular violence, can avail to harm us.

(JHN, From Meditations and Devotions published 1893)

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Monday of the fifth week in Eastertide

(May 11) St. Ignatius of Laconi (1701-1781)
Ignatius is another sainted begging brother. He was the second of seven children of peasant parents in Sardinia. His path to the Franciscans was unusual. During a serious illness, Ignatius vowed to become a Capuchin if he recovered. He regained his health but ignored the promise. A riding accident prompted him to renew the pledge, which he acted on the second time; he was 20 then. Ignatius’s reputation for self-denial and charity led to his appointment as the official beggar for the friars in Cagliari. He fulfilled that task for 40 years; he was blind the last two years. While on his rounds, Ignatius would instruct the children, visit the sick and urge sinners to repent. The people of Cagliari were inspired by his kindness and his faithfulness to his work. He was canonized in 1951. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Acts 14:5-18; Psalm 115:1-4, 15-16; John 14:21-26

Jesus said to his disciples, Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him. Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus replied, If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. All this I have spoken while still with you. But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. (John 14:21-26)

The first notable thing in our Gospel passage today is our Lord’s emphasis on our personal love for him. Take any of the prophets from Abraham to John the Baptist and ask this question: Did any of them place any stress on or have a formal expectation of a personal love for him? Did Moses ask of his people that they love him in an especially distinctive sense? Was this seen by any of them as an essential part of religion? Obviously not. I am not sure it can be said of any of the founders of the religions of man. They preached and taught a doctrine, but did not make the focus of the religion they instituted a love for them. Being their disciple meant accepting their doctrine, a doctrine not about themselves, but about God or the Ultimate. God or the Absolute (however imagined or conceived) was seen to be the object of the devotee’s love. But not so Christ. He expected that his disciples love him and he taught this as being at the heart of the religion he revealed. The heart and soul of the Christian religion is the love and following of the person of Jesus. We see this as very evident in our Gospel passage today. Our Lord takes love for him as the foundation and he goes on to explain what will flow from this personal love for him. He who loves me, he says to his disciples, will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him. Christ's doctrine is about himself, and being about himself it is about the Father and the Holy Spirit. It is also about the divine plan for our salvation. Salvation consists in friendship for and obedience to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Christian religion is a religion of love and obedience. Our Lord said, If you love me you will keep my commands. Just before he ascended into Heaven, the risen Jesus commanded his disciples to go to the whole world and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to observe all the commands I have given you. Being a disciple of Christ, one who loves the person of Jesus, means accepting and obeying his doctrine.

What this means, therefore, is that the knowledge and observance of the commands of Christ is all-important in the Christian life. A person cannot be said to be living a Christian life if he flouts and disobeys the law of Christ. The first duty of the Christian is not simply to be pious as this is popularly understood. It is to be obedient to God’s law (John 14:21-26). For instance, there is the widespread situation now in which many present themselves as being Christian, even devoutly Christians, while openly promoting the most profoundly immoral practices. A case in point is abortion. One can even see the leader of a great Christian country decisively acting to facilitate direct abortion not only in his own country but in the world at large by making funds readily available for it. Further, even while doing this he can be proclaiming himself to be acting in a religious and moral way. Yet what is a direct abortion? It is the direct killing of an unborn human life. This is particularly odious when a politician promoting or cooperating with legislation facilitating this is a Catholic Christian, whose Church formally and in the name of Christ teaches the absolute immorality of direct abortion. These are dramatic examples played out on the national and international stage, but the issue of obedience to God’s law being an essential element in the Christian life applies to the most obscure individual. The one who aspires to be a Christian in truth must aspire to obey the law of God in all its detail in ordinary everyday life. Religion is intimately connected with right morality, and right morality is known by faith and by reason. For this we have the assistance of the Church’s guidance and teaching, and the Church herself is guided by the Holy Spirit. Thus it is that certainty and clarity is possible in the great issues of morality, which is to say in what God in Christ has commanded. If we refuse to walk by the light of what he has commanded us to do, we have departed from the company of Christ.

Let us resolve to take to heart our Lord’s solemn warning that we are to keep his commands. On one occasion our Lord looked on those who were listening to him and said, Here are my mother and my sister and my brother. Any one who does the will of my father is my brother and my sister and my mother. In our Gospel today he says, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching.” Let us then make the great aim of our life obedience to his commands.
(E.J.Tyler)

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Your own will, your own judgment: that is what worries you.
(The Way, no.777)

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Continuing    The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fifth Chapter    THE WONDERFUL EFFECT OF DIVINE LOVE

THE DISCIPLE

I BLESS You, O heavenly Father, Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, for having condescended to remember me, a poor creature. Thanks to You, O Father of mercies, God of all consolation, Who with Your comfort sometimes refresh me, who am not worthy of it. I bless You always and glorify You with Your only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, forever and ever.

Ah, Lord God, my holy Lover, when You come into my heart, all that is within me will rejoice. You are my glory and the exultation of my heart. You are my hope and refuge in the day of my tribulation. But because my love is as yet weak and my virtue imperfect, I must be strengthened and comforted by You. Visit me often, therefore, and teach me Your holy discipline. Free me from evil passions and cleanse my heart of all disorderly affection so that, healed and purified within, I may be fit to love, strong to suffer, and firm to persevere.
                                                                                      (Continuing)

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Is it not undeniable, that the very life of personal religion among Catholics lies in a knowledge of the Gospels?

(JHN, from ‘An Internal Argument for Christianity’ 1866)

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Tuesday of the fifth week in Eastertide

(May 12) Saints Nereus and Achilleus (1st century)
Devotion to these two saints goes back to the fourth century, though almost nothing is known of their lives. They were praetorian soldiers of the Roman army, became Christians and were removed to the island of Terracina, where they were martyred. Their bodies were buried in a family vault, later known as the cemetery of Domitilla. Excavations by De Rossi in 1896 resulted in the discovery of their empty tomb in the underground church built by Pope Siricius in 390. Two hundred years after their death, Pope Gregory the Great delivered his 28th homily on the occasion of their feast. "These saints, before whom we are assembled, despised the world and trampled it under their feet when peace, riches and health gave it charms." Pope Damasus wrote an epitaph for Nereus and Achilleus in the fourth century. The text is known from travelers who read it while the slab was still entire, but the broken fragments found by De Rossi are sufficient to identify it: "The martyrs Nereus and Achilleus had enrolled themselves in the army and exercised the cruel office of carrying out the orders of the tyrant, being ever ready, through the constraint of fear, to obey his will. O miracle of faith! Suddenly they cease from their fury, they become converted, they fly from the camp of their wicked leader; they throw away their shields, their armor and their blood-stained javelins. Confessing the faith of Christ, they rejoice to bear testimony to its triumph. Learn now from the words of Damasus what great things the glory of Christ can accomplish." (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Acts 14:19-28; Psalm 145:10-13ab, 21; John 14:27-31a

Jesus said to his disciples, Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. You heard me say, 'I am going away and I am coming back to you.' If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me. (John 14: 27-31a)

One of the intriguing phenomena of the modern age is its characteristic rejection of the supernatural. That is not to say, of course, that all who live in the modern age reject the supernatural, but it is to say that the tendency of our culture, our media, our literature is to think that this material world is all there is. The one and only great Fact is the material universe. Now, fundamentally this is an assumption. A term we could use to describe this assumption is Naturalism. What we commonly take to be nature, the nature of our direct experience, is deemed to encompass all of reality. I say it is intriguing because apart from our modern period — which embraces the past few centuries — man characteristically has accepted the supernatural and indeed has tended to regard it as more powerful and significant than the natural. Let us not linger to critique Naturalism here except to point out that this viewpoint can contribute towards a lack of readiness in the mind of modern man for the message of Christ. Modern man tends to find it difficult to accept as real any talk of what is not material and within the reach of the physical senses and physical examination. However, the teaching of Christ and the entire body of divine revelation which preceded him and prepared for his coming was about the supernatural, the realm beyond the material. The first great supernatural Fact is God. God who is beyond this world, is master of the world. He made it. He sustains it in being. He is its Lord and Ruler and by means of his overmastering Providence he attains his ends. He is the first Fact of all and the origin of all other facts. The fact of God is the first thing that Revelation bears witness to. It also bears witness to his Providence. Just think of the wonder of divine providence in bringing about through and in the course of history the life of each human being. Each of us is known by God from all eternity. Somehow through the countless twists and turns of human history and the incalculable number of seeming coincidences which make up the story of the world, God brings it about that we, all of us who have been chosen from all eternity, receive life and being. Such is divine Providence. God is the Creator and Ruler of all.

So the fact of God as the unseen Ruler of the world is the first shock to the mindset of modern man with all his naturalism. There is a second point and our Lord makes it in our Gospel reading today. It is a startling consideration to the one who thinks that this world is all that there is. It is that this world has what our Lord calls a prince. The "prince" our Lord is referring to here is not God. He is referring to another spirit, the spirit of evil and he is a person. He is the angel of darkness and is the prince of this world. In speaking of the world in this sense our Lord is speaking of the world in its multi-layered and multi-faceted tendency to resist the being and the authority of God. The world yearns for God and finds its happiness and fulfilment in him, while at the same time wanting to find its happiness and fulfilment in itself. In this second tendency it has a prince who seeks to make this tendency the dominant one in the world and in the life of every man. This prince appeared on the stage of human history at its very dawn. God made man and woman and placed them in a happy and blessed situation of goodness, harmony and life. They lived in communion with God and had only an abundant life to look forward to. Being persons, they had the dignity of free will, and with that they had to make a choice. At this the angel of darkness — himself God’s creation — appeared on the scene and won a spectacular victory. He led man and woman astray and darkness fell across the land as it had across much of the angelic land long before. So the angel of darkness became the prince of this world and the scene was set for a great struggle. God announced that he was entering the lists to reclaim his world and our Gospel today (John 14: 27-31a) refers to this struggle and to the victory which would be God’s. As our Lord says, "I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me" (John 14: 27-31a). Christ obeys the Father, while the prince of this world refuses to obey him.

There are two great Standards held aloft in the universe. Both are unseen, but mankind in general knows they are there. They constitute a choice for every man. Which standard am I going to walk behind? In whose army am I going to fight. There is the King of kings and Lord of lords on one hand, and there is the prince of this world on the other. The former will take me to the cross and through the cross to glory. The latter will eschew the cross and will take me to pride and sensuality and thence to death. What is it to be? Life or Death? Let us take our stand with Christ and follow him to the end. It will take us to glory.
(E.J.Tyler)

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It only takes a second. Before setting about anything, ask yourself: What does God want of me in this?

Then, with divine grace,... do it!
(The Way, no.778)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ BOOK THREE INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fifth Chapter THE WONDERFUL EFFECT OF DIVINE LOVE

THE DISCIPLE

Love is an excellent thing, a very great blessing, indeed. It makes every difficulty easy, and bears all wrongs with equanimity. For it bears a burden without being weighted and renders sweet all that is bitter. The noble love of Jesus spurs to great deeds and excites longing for that which is more perfect. Love tends upward; it will not be held down by anything low. Love wishes to be free and estranged from all worldly affections, lest its inward sight be obstructed, lest it be entangled in any temporal interest and overcome by adversity.

Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger or higher or wider; nothing is more pleasant, nothing fuller, and nothing better in heaven or on earth, for love is born of God and cannot rest except in God, Who is above all created things.
(Continuing)

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Let us be far more bent on preaching our own doctrine than on refuting another’s.

(JHN, from the sermon ‘The Fellowship of the Apostles’ 1839)

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Wednesday of the fifth week in Eastertide

(May 13) Our Lady of Fatima
     Between May 13 and October 13, 1917, three Portuguese children received apparitions of Our Lady at Cova da Iria, near Fatima, a city 110 miles north of Lisbon. (See February 20 entry for Blessed Jacinta and Francisco Marto). Mary asked the children to pray the rosary for world peace, for the end of World War I, for sinners and for the conversion of Russia. Mary gave the children three secrets. Since Francisco died in 1919 and Jacinta the following year, Lucia, who later became a Carmelite nun, revealed the first secret in 1927, concerning devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The second secret was a vision of hell. Pope John Paul II directed the Holy See's Secretary of State to reveal the third secret in 2000; it spoke of a 'bishop in white' who was shot by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows into him. Many people linked this to the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981. The feast of Our Lady of Fatima was approved by the local bishop in 1930; it was added to the Church's worldwide calendar in 2002. Sister Lucia died in 2005 at the age of 97.
    The message of Fatima is simple: Pray. Unfortunately, some people—not Sister Lucia—have distorted these revelations, making them into an apocalyptic event for which they are now the only reliable interpreters. They have, for example, claimed that Mary's request that the world be consecrated to her has been ignored. Sister Lucia has agreed that Pope John Paul II's public consecration in St. Peter's Square on March 25, 1984, fulfilled Mary's request. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prepared a June 26, 2000, document explaining the “third secret” (available at www.vatican.va).
    “Throughout history there have been supernatural apparitions and signs which go to the heart of human events and which, to the surprise of believers and non-believers alike, play their part in the unfolding of history. These manifestations can never contradict the content of faith, and must therefore have their focus in the core of Christ's proclamation: the Father's love which leads men and women to conversion and bestows the grace required to abandon oneself to him with filial devotion. This too is the message of Fatima which, with its urgent call to conversion and penance, draws us to the heart of the Gospel” (The Message of Fatima, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 26, 2000). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Acts 15:1-6; Psalm 122:1-5; John 15:1-8

I am the true vine, and my Father is the Vinedresser. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. (John 15: 1-8)

One of the gravest problems with the proposition that God exists — and we are talking of a God who is all-powerful, all-good and all-loving — is the fact of evil and suffering. Suffering is not necessarily an absolute evil, for we can suffer for an obviously good end. For instance, I can suffer in the dentist chair, but the result of what the dentist does is a great good. The one who undergoes the suffering involved in dental surgery would not think of calling his suffering an evil in itself. Nevertheless certain questions occur about suffering. If there is a God, why is it that there is suffering at all (when things could surely have been designed without suffering) and why is there evil at all (such as the unjust destruction of life and reputation)? This is not just a theoretical problem, but a very personal one especially for those who suffer and who are not disposed or brought up to believe in God. Vast numbers of people have attempted to address this problem and this is not the time to attempt an adequate answer. But our Gospel passage today (John 15: 1-8) does throw a little light on the matter. Our Lord describes God’s action on man in terms of a parable about the Vine, the Branches and the one tending the vine, the Gardener. The Gardener is continually cutting at the Vine and removing what had been part of it. So much of life involves the loss of what we have and enjoy. A young couple marries and begin to have their family. There is a miscarriage and loss of their first child. Children come. There is a further tragedy. One of their children, aged twelve, is killed in a road accident. Another begins to get involved in drugs. A little later due to the world credit crisis and a recession, the husband loses his job and they lose their home because they default on their mortgage payments. What is going on? What is God doing? We cannot say. But in his parable our Lord refers to the gardener pruning the branch to enable it to bear even more. If that couple is remaining part of the Vine which is Christ, then the losses God is permitting them to undergo are part of an unseen pruning which will mysteriously result in their bearing greater fruit.

But how can this be, we ask? How can the misfortunes I have just described possibly be viewed as part of a process in which a greater good emerges? Again, we cannot say. But if we reject this possibility then we are taking as our measure what mere man can and cannot do. We are forgetting the power of God and that his providence is great beyond imagining. God has the power to bring great good out of what seem to be mere ruins. What may help is to consider this. St Paul writes that before the world began God chose us, chose us in Christ to be holy and full of love in his sight. So before the world began each of us was known and deliberately chosen by God. He intended us to come into being at a particular point in history. Now, consider the story of my own parents and how easily they themselves might never have even met — in which case I would never have come into being. My entire and eternal existence depended on what was perhaps a chance meeting, a chance that so easily might never have occurred. But God in his providence brought my life about in and through what we might call a chance event. By the same token the lives of my own parents were themselves due to the chance meeting of their parents. Indeed, the life history of every person is filled with and due to so much that would seem to be chance. There is so much that appears to be just accident and coincidence, and yet those accidents and coincidences result in courses of events that have profound implications for others. The singular good that is my individual life and my unique self is the fruit of countless chance events stretching back in human history for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, indeed back to the origin of the universe itself. Slight changes in events at any point in this long and mind-boggling history may have led to my never having existed. But I know that God my creator intended me from all eternity and actively brought it about. So my life and existence is the work of his providence attaining his divine goals not despite but amid and by means of the incalculably vast interplay of circumstances that make up the history of the world. How grateful I ought be for the gift of my life! It ought remind me of the might of God’s providence. God is almighty. The very thought of human history ought give us a sense of the might of God in bringing about the good which from eternity he intends. God can bring good out of ruins.

Amid the trauma and suffering that may come his way, let not a person think that God is absent, let alone non-existent. No one could match the trauma and suffering of Jesus Christ who bore on his shoulders the sin of the world. Our Lord says that the Father is the Vinedresser, the Gardener, and he prunes every branch that is part of the Vine in order to make it bear even more. Let us never be separated from the person of Jesus and the life that flows to us from him. If we remain in him, the Father will prune us to enable us to bear great fruit. The pruning goes on in the course of history and human life. God permits losses and sufferings but plans to bring great good out of what may seem to be ruins. He is continually pruning in order that the branch may bear fruit. Let us remain in Jesus then, for if we do not we shall be cut off and cast into the fire.
(E.J.Tyler)

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It is good to give glory to God, without seeking foretastes (wife children, honours...) of that glory, which we will enjoy fully with him in the next Life.

Besides, he is generous. He returns a hundredfold; and he does so even in children. Many give them up for the sake of his glory, and they have thousands of children of their spirit. Children, as we are children of our Father who is in heaven.
(The Way, no.779)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fifth Chapter    THE WONDERFUL EFFECT OF DIVINE LOVE

THE DISCIPLE

One who is in love flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free, not bound. He gives all for all and possesses all in all, because he rests in the one sovereign Good, Who is above all things, and from Whom every good flows and proceeds. He does not look to the gift but turns himself above all gifts to the Giver.

Love often knows no limits but overflows all bounds. Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of troubles, attempts more than it is able, and does not plead impossibility, because it believes that it may and can do all things. For this reason, it is able to do all, performing and effecting much where he who does not love fails and falls.
                                                                                             (Continuing)

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Down to the present days Newman remains for many a point of reference in a troubled world. They look to him as a man of great natural talent who put every ounce of it at the service of God and the Church. His remarkable life, void of sham and ambition, but steeped in a prayerful communion with the Unseen, while it remained alive to the problems of his age in Church and society, continues to inspire, to uplift and to enlighten.

(Letter of Pope John Paul II for the Centenary of Cardinal Newman’s Death 1990)

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Thursday of the fifth week of Eastertide

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Scripture today: Acts of the Apostles 15: 7-21; Psalm 95; John 15: 9-11

Jesus said to his disciples: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. (John 15:9-11)

Joy Have you ever noticed how when political elections are upon us, all the billboards show the candidates to be smiling broadly? If a person gets his photo taken, he makes a point of smiling. Movie stars show themselves as contented or even as laughing. They would like it to be thought that they are always happy — but of course their private lives show this not to be so. Celebrities know that a single picture can give the impression that they are usually sad. It is indicative of the fact, however, that happiness is attractive. People are drawn to those who seem to be happy, and are instinctively repelled by those who seem to be sad. This itself indicates that we all have the conviction that we are meant to be happy, and that, whatever might be our circumstances, life is successful if we are truly happy. Happiness is a fundamental goal of human life, yet we all know that a person can be very mistaken as to what kinds of goals will bring this happiness. Wealth alone cannot bring it, nor can popularity alone, nor can position, nor can power because we see people with all these attainments who do not appear to be especially happy. Of themselves these good things do not bestow happiness. A humble wife and mother can be very happy, while a billionaire or prime minister can easily be unhappy. In fact, one wonders how many people ever attain happiness in life. I suspect that most people never attain enduring joy, but get along in life with a limited degree of it, compensating for this by the enjoyment of various pleasures. It is easier to obtain pleasure than it is to acquire joy. It all points to the fact that man is meant for joy, and yet for a great number of persons, joy and happiness remain elusive. It is also clear that a person can be joyful in the midst of difficulties and sorrows. A husband and wife who are deeply in love with one another have a corresponding joy, while experiencing difficulties and sorrows. How many parents set out to show their children the path to happiness and joy? The problem is that so many are unable to do this because they do not know in what it is that joy consists, and how to attain it.

On one occasion (Mark 10: 17-27) our Lord was setting out on a journey when a man ran up, knelt before him and asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He was seeking the happiness and joy of heaven. Our Lord looked steadily at him and loved him, we read. How wonderful — to be the object of the loving gaze of Jesus Christ! Christ loved him, and accorded him his admiration. He then told him the path to happiness and joy. Yes, continue to keep God’s commandments, he said, but there is one thing you lack. If you wish to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give to the poor. Then come back and follow me. The path to that joy and happiness then, consists in obeying God’s commandments and following Jesus Christ in love. Now, there is no other prophet in the Old Testament who presumed to assure others that perfection would come from leaving all and following him. In fact, I cannot think of any other religious leader of significance, any other founder of a respectable religion, nor indeed of any philosopher of note, who pretended to such a thing. It is an astonishing assurance, that the perfection of moral goodness and joy would come by loving and following a particular Person. But so it is. Following the incident just discussed, Peter asked our Lord what those would receive who had left all to follow him (Luke 10: 28-31). He replied that they would receive a hundredfold in this life — not without persecution — and eternal life in the next. So we have it on the word of Christ that it is possible to attain joy and happiness in this life — but not without the presence of difficulties. The way to it lies in a personal friendship with Jesus Christ that is manifested in the following of him. All of this brings us to our Gospel today (John 15: 9-11), which speaks of the love of Jesus Christ for each of us. Our friendship with Christ is founded on his love for us. Had that young man accepted Christ’s invitation, it would have been based on Christ’s loving gaze. On this is founded the joy of man. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”

The good news is that man can be happy. He can attain to joy. But he must look sharp lest he never find it, because it is not found merely by chance, nor is it found in the ways most people imagine. Joy is not mere pleasure. Ordinary experience indicates that man’s truest joy comes from being loved and loving in return. It has been revealed who it is who loves each and all of us, and wherein lies the greatest joy for every man. It lies in the love of Christ for us, and in our response to this love — the response of following him in love and obedience. Let us seek the joy of Christ, then!
(E.J.Tyler)

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Feast of Saint Matthias, Apostle

(2009- Thursday of the fifth week in Eastertide)

(May 14) Saint Matthias, Apostle
According to Acts 1:15-26, during the days after the Ascension, Peter stood up in the midst of the brothers (about 120 of Jesus’ followers). Now that Judas had betrayed his ministry, it was necessary, Peter said, to fulfil the scriptural recommendation: “May another take his office.” “Therefore, it is necessary that one of the men who accompanied us the whole time the Lord Jesus came and went among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day on which he was taken up from us, become with us a witness to his resurrection” (Acts 1:21-22). They nominated two men: Joseph Barsabbas and Matthias. They prayed and drew lots. The choice fell upon Matthias, who was added to the Eleven. Matthias is not mentioned by name anywhere else in the New Testament.
What was the holiness of Matthias? Obviously he was suited for apostleship by the experience of being with Jesus from his baptism to his ascension. He must also have been suited personally, or he would not have been nominated for so great a responsibility. Must we not remind ourselves that the fundamental holiness of Matthias was his receiving gladly the relationship with the Father offered him by Jesus and completed by the Holy Spirit? If the apostles are the foundations of our faith by their witness, they must also be reminders, if only implicitly, that holiness is entirely a matter of God’s giving, and it is offered to all, in the everyday circumstances of life. We receive, and even for this God supplies the power of freedom. Jesus speaks of the apostles’ function of being judges, that is, rulers. He said, “Amen, I say to you that you who have followed me, in the new age, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Acts 1:15-17, 20-26; Psalm 113:1-8; John 15:9-17

Jesus said to his disciples, As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit— fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other. (John 15: 9-17)

What do we know about St Matthias? Practically nothing. There are many saints celebrated during the course of the Church’s Liturgical Year not as feasts or solemnities (as with today's saint) but as memorials and about whom we know far more than St Matthias. We know far more about St Ignatius of Loyola, St Teresa of Avila and many more than about St Matthias and indeed many of the other Apostles. Yet their days are feast days in the Liturgical Year. Matthias had been one of those disciples who had been in our Lord’s train from very early in our Lord’s ministry but he was not chosen by our Lord to be one of the Twelve. He was chosen by the Holy Spirit and the vote of the Church in default of Judas who had fallen away so badly. That is the first and the last we hear of him, except for what is mentioned in doubtful sources. In a sense he is a mere statistic thereafter. He is one of the Twelve and so he was endowed with both a great responsibility as one of the foundations of the Church, and with the special gifts of the Holy Spirit to live and act accordingly. But all this we know not because of information relating to him in particular but simply because he was one of the Twelve. He was one the Twelve, an Apostle, possessing the fullness of the ministerial priesthood as given to the Church, and most importantly, he was and is a saint. On this day as we think of him we could think of the Apostolic foundation of the Church. We could think of the Apostolic succession of the ministerial priesthood within the Church, whereby the ordained priesthood has its foundation in the Apostles. We could think of the oneness of the Church which Christ founded on his Apostles. I would prefer to think of the obscurity of St Matthias. Exalted as was his office, we hardly know a thing about him. But then, consider the greatest Christian of all, Mary the mother of Jesus. Scripture gives us more details about her than about Matthias, but still, not a lot. One thing which is clear about Mary is her obscurity. She was not a public mover and shaker — as was, say, St Paul. Let us then take Matthias the Apostle as a symbol of the obscure and ordinary life.

So many lives are buried in obscurity, and yet there is a grandeur therein! A young woman marries and moves with her husband on to a modest farm. She raises her large family. There are several painful yet scarcely noted tragedies. Her eldest son suddenly dies in his early twenties. She lives her Catholic Faith generously and strives to pass it on to her children, hoping they will pass it on to their children. She lives a long, good and deeply spiritual life, seeing her husband and some of her children pass on from this life before her, and she herself dies in her mid to late eighties full of piety. Her grave is perhaps unmarked and two of her children are buried with her. A generation passes and then another, and she is forgotten. Some seventy years after her death few know where she is buried, and certainly no one thinks of her. She like so many has passed into the oblivion of history, and yet her life was grand. She did what she could and fulfilled her duties as mother and wife, ending her days in constant prayer with the rosary ever in her hand. We know nothing about Saint Matthias except his election as one of the Twelve. In his obscurity he was the object of Christ's choice, and being chosen by Christ he bore fruit that would last (John 15: 9-17). He is a type of the obscurity that marks the overwhelming proportion of the human race. But obscurity does not mean insignificance or a lack of grandeur. Mary the mother of Jesus Christ lived a humble and lowly life, and her greatness in the sight of God is unmatched by any other in the stream of mankind. Joseph her husband had a similarly obscure path, but he was, in his obscurity, the guardian and the intimate of the Son of God made man. His heavenly guardianship now extends over the whole Church. The people I have in mind in this reflection lived obscure lives, ordinary lives, humdrum lives, lives filled with ordinary duties that never won the attention of many people. But they were signally faithful in obedience to the will of God as it was expressed in their calling, however ordinary it may have seemed at the time and to subsequent generations. They were the ordinary lilies in the field, unnoticed but contributing to the beauty of the whole. Let us remember that it was the ordinary lily that our Lord praised so highly. It outclassed Solomon in all his glory.

If obscurity is our lot in life, let us embrace it and understand clearly that it constitutes a path of grandeur, provided we strive to know the will of God and put it into practice in our ordinary life. In our obscurity Christ means us to bear fruit that will last (John 15: 9-17). If, in this life of humble obedience to God and his holy will, suffering and even the loss of precious things such as reputation and the esteem of others come our way, grandeur can still be ours. The key to it is to follow closely in the footsteps of Christ. Christ has shown that the Cross is a path of grandeur, provided it is the Cross of obedience. Let us make that our path, then.
(E.J.Tyler)

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Deo omnis gloria. All glory to God. It is an emphatic confession of our nothingness. He, Jesus, is everything. We, without him, are worth nothing: nothing. Our vainglory would be just that: vain glory; it would be sacrilegious robbery. There should be no room for that 'I' anywhere. (The Way, no.780)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fifth Chapter    THE WONDERFUL EFFECT OF DIVINE LOVE

THE DISCIPLE

Love is watchful. Sleeping, it does not slumber. Wearied, it is not tired. Pressed, it is not straitened. Alarmed, it is not confused, but like a living flame, a burning torch, it forces its way upward and passes unharmed through every obstacle.

If a man loves, he will know the sound of this voice. For this warm affection of soul is a loud voice crying in the ears of God, and it says: "My God, my love, You are all mine and I am all Yours. Give me an increase of love, that I may learn to taste with the inward lips of my heart how sweet it is to love, how sweet to be dissolved in love and bathe in it. Let me be rapt in love. Let me rise above self in great fervour and wonder. Let me sing the hymn of love, and let me follow You, my Love, to the heights. Let my soul exhaust itself in praising You, rejoicing out of love. Let me love You more than myself, and let me not love myself except for Your sake. In You let me love all those who truly love You, as the law of love, which shines forth from You, commands."
                                                                           (Continuing)

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It is Mary’s prerogative to be the Morning Star, which heralds in the sun. She does not shine for herself, or from herself, but she is the reflection of her and our Redeemer, and she glorifies Him.

(JHN, from Meditations and Devotions, 1893)

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Friday of the fifth week in Eastertide

(May 15) St. Isidore the Farmer (1070-1130)
Isidore has become the patron of farmers and rural communities. In particular he is the patron of Madrid, Spain, and of the United States National Rural Life Conference. When he was barely old enough to wield a hoe, Isidore entered the service of John de Vergas, a wealthy landowner from Madrid, and worked faithfully on his estate outside the city for the rest of his life. He married a young woman as simple and upright as himself who also became a saint—Maria de la Cabeza. They had one son, who died as a child. Isidore had deep religious instincts. He rose early in the morning to go to church and spent many a holiday devoutly visiting the churches of Madrid and surrounding areas. All day long, as he walked behind the plow, he communed with God. His devotion, one might say, became a problem, for his fellow workers sometimes complained that he often showed up late because of lingering in church too long. He was known for his love of the poor, and there are accounts of Isidore’s supplying them miraculously with food. He had a great concern for the proper treatment of animals. He died May 15, 1130, and was declared a saint in 1622 with Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila and Philip Neri. Together, the group is known in Spain as “the five saints.” (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Acts 15:22-31; Psalm:8-9, 10 and 12; John 15:12-17

Jesus said to his disciples, My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit— fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other. (John 15:12-17)

One of the features of human thought and investigation is the quest for a unifying principle. It is said that Einstein spent much of his life trying to determine the fundamental law of the universe in terms of a single mathematical principle. In the nineteenth century John Henry Newman in his Philosophical Notebook criticized the German philosophers of the time for trying to reduce reality to a single principle. A little before Newman’s time William Paley wrote his work on Moral Philosophy (1786). Paley decided that the foundation of moral obligation is what most contributes to the happiness of man. That is to say, the good is what is useful for man’s happiness. In this utilitarianism he may be said to have anticipated Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Well, we might ask, what in fact drives mankind and the universe? We might well allow that it is the search for happiness that drives the world, but that is a different thing from saying that it is its conduciveness to man’s happiness that makes a thing morally good and obligatory. To make this the foundation of morality is to say that my life ought be governed by what I judge will make me happy. Stated baldly, this could lead to manifestly immoral behaviour. I mention these examples simply to introduce the question of what law or pattern ought guide the behaviour of man. In our Gospel passage today (John 15:12-17) Christ gives us such a law or pattern. It is the law of love. That it is a law is clear, because our Lord refers to it not as his suggestion or advice but as his command: “This is my command, that you love one another as I have loved you.” However, a law of love could be very ambiguous and open to blatantly immoral or imprudent behaviour. Not all forms of love are love. It might look like love to give a child whatever he asks for, but in fact it will probably be the opposite of love. So our Lord in his command includes an all-important criterion of love: we are to love one another as he has loved us. He is our example.

What was the example of love that Christ gave? It was a love that placed the highest possible importance on the law of God. The will of God is the guide of love. Can any of you convict me of sin? I always do what pleases my heavenly Father, he said. There is a strange paradox in the opinions of men about Jesus Christ. Many will not accept his claim to be divine, but they would not dare to call him a sinner — and yet if he is not divine despite claiming to be so, then what are we to make of him? Is he mad, or is he a liar? In the common estimation of the world he is neither mad nor is he a sinner. Rather he is a shining example to mankind — and yet they do not accept his attestations about himself. That anomaly aside, all are agreed that Jesus Christ is a man of the highest virtue, and the point here is that virtue was essential to the love he insisted be the guide of man. We are to love virtuously. We are to love as he has loved us. Man is to govern his life and his behaviour by the law of love, and this love is to be an absolutely virtuous love. It is to be moral, Christlike. Christ’s religion has him, Christ, for its object and its guide. This means that it is a religion of love, and this love is to be a virtuous love. But this is not all, for Christ came from the Father and looks to him. Indeed, as he said, he who sees me sees the Father. So in loving one another as Christ has loved us we are loving one another as the Father has loved us. In taking Christ for our model in all of human behaviour we are modelling ourselves on the Father. And so it is that our Lord speaks of our striving to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, for he shines his sun on the good and the bad alike and sends rain for those who are his friends and those who are not. The point is that we have a great single principle to guide all our actions and it is the law of love. It is not a law of any kind of love — say, a love that is very utilitarian and in the line of Paley, Bentham and Mill — but that love which fills our heavenly Father and which is manifest in the person and life of Christ. It is the love of the Holy Spirit, no less, who is given to each of us at our Baptism.

Every day we have a challenge ahead of us. It is to do good. Let us build a life of daily prayer to Christ and that will be the foundation of a life of doing good. Let us resolve to avoid sin at all costs, and that will help ensure that the good we do truly is good, and not evil being called good. Let us above all aim to love. This is the greatest good we can do and the surest source of good in the world. But, very importantly, let us make Christ the guide and object of our love. He has commanded us to love one another as he has loved us.
(E.J.Tyler)

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Without me, you can do nothing, our Lord has told us. And he has said it so that you and I won't credit ourselves with successes that are his. Sine me, nihil!...
(The Way, no.781)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Fifth Chapter     THE WONDERFUL EFFECT OF DIVINE LOVE

THE DISCIPLE

Love is swift, sincere, kind, pleasant, and delightful. Love is strong, patient and faithful, prudent, long-suffering, and manly. Love is never self-seeking, for in whatever a person seeks himself there he falls from love. Love is circumspect, humble, and upright. It is neither soft nor light, nor intent upon vain things. It is sober and chaste, firm and quiet, guarded in all the senses. Love is subject and obedient to superiors. It is mean and contemptible in its own eyes, devoted and thankful to God; always trusting and hoping in Him even when He is distasteful to it, for there is no living in love without sorrow. He who is not ready to suffer all things and to stand resigned to the will of the Beloved is not worthy to be called a lover. A lover must embrace willingly all that is difficult and bitter for the sake of the Beloved, and he should not turn away from Him because of adversities.
                                                                                    (Concluded)

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If you feel … the whisper of a law of moral truth within you, and the impulse to believe, be sure there is nothing whatever on earth which can be the sufficient champion of these sovereign authorities of your soul, which can vindicate and preserve them …, and make you loyal to them, but the Catholic Church.
(JHN, from ‘Christianity and Medical Science’, 1858)

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Liturgical Season	Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
Third week of Eastertide						1	2
Fourth week of Eastertide	3 or Sts Philip & James	4	5	6	7	8	9
Fifth week of Eastertide	10	11	12	13	14 or St Matthias	15