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The commemoration of the Faithful Departed (Nov. 2)

(November 2) The Faithful Departed
The Church has encouraged prayer for the dead from the earliest times as an act of Christian charity. "If we had no care for the dead," Augustine noted, "we would not be in the habit of praying for them." In the early Middle Ages monastic communities began to mark an annual day of prayer for the departed members. In the middle of the 11th century, St. Odilo, abbot of Cluny (France), decreed that all Cluniac monasteries offer special prayers and sing the Office for the Dead on November 2, the day after the feast of All Saints. The custom spread from Cluny and was finally adopted throughout the Roman Church. The theological underpinning of the feast is the acknowledgment of human frailty. Since few people achieve perfection in this life but, rather, go to the grave still scarred with traces of sinfulness, some period of purification is necessary before a soul comes face-to-face with God. The Council of Trent affirmed this purgatory state and insisted that the prayers of the living can speed the process of purification.  (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Wisdom 3:1-9; Psalm 23:1-6; Romans 5:5-11 or Rom 6:3-9; John 6:37-40

Jesus said, All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6: 37-40)

Sin and the Beyond     There are a whole range of starting points in human thought upon which different philosophies are built. For instance, one starting point is the perception of a lack of ultimate substance in the things of experience. That is to say, everything changes, comes and goes, and cannot be relied upon. Another starting point is the experience of communion and love. Another is the sense of one’s own self as the one immediate and certain reality. A philosophy arises from basic perceptions of reality that form the ground of a thinker’s entire perspective. In the nineteenth century, John Henry Newman understood the fact of sin as a primary facet of human life and therefore of reality. It was, he thought, a basic starting point of any true philosophy. This is a very interesting observation because it places the natural experience of an offended God at the root of human reflection. This is not the moment to digress into the development of a philosophy. But Newman’s observation reminds us of the basic fact of sin. It is a fact that stares man in the face and around which life revolves in his search for happiness. That having been said, it is also paradoxically the case that the fact of sin is widely missed in human thought. It is rare to find it occupying a pivotal place in philosophy. Ethics — and therefore unethical behaviour — occupies a central place, but not sin. Sin is that wrongdoing which involves offending a holy God, and Newman’s point is that this sense of an offended God is a primary datum of experience. Indeed, we might add, this natural sense of an offended God accompanies sinful man throughout the short span of his life. It opens him to the wondrous news of the Gospel that there is a Redeemer who has come to be his Brother, Friend and Sanctifier. The good news of Christ is that, due to the gift of grace, man’s obviously sinful state can be combated and gradually overcome. He, man, can become holy to his core, and a true image of his all-holy Redeemer. Mary, the utterly sinless mother of Christ, is the living icon of the power of grace to preserve man from sin.

This is the drama and issue of human life: the contest between sin and holiness in the heart of man. There is need for a philosophy which sets this basic issue at the foundation of experience and makes it the ground of thought and of religion. It is the issue that remains at the forefront of life right to the end. At the last, man goes out from this life with the contest resolved one way or the other. His course is set forever, depending on which has prevailed. However, it is also a fact of experience that while in ultimate terms the contest is resolved at his death, clearly for those whose hearts have been won to holiness, the work is not yet over. People die being good, or desiring to be good — but they are not yet completely good. They are in God’s camp and behind the Standard of Christ, but there is much to be done in their hearts before they can be admitted forever into the shining and lovely presence of the all-holy God. They are still soiled and scarred by the ravages of sin and require a deep cleansing, a purification of all the sinful grime so deeply ingrained in the structure of the soul. The good news is that after death the saving grace of Christ continues actively to sanctify the one who has died in Christ but who is not yet entirely holy. Those who die in Christ, those who die on the side of goodness, will receive the mercy of a complete cleansing — deeply painful but joyous — with the knowledge that God is their future. All this means that a complete sanctification is ahead for the one who dies in Christ, but who is not yet entirely holy. With this Purgatory over, eternal joy will be theirs. It is a dogma of the Church that, following death, the righteous are purified of the remnants and results of sin to the extent necessary. Whether this takes the equivalent of a period of time we are not certain. What is certain is that those in Christ here on earth and those already in heaven can intercede for those in Purgatory and hasten the purification they are undergoing. We can and should pray for the faithful departed. We can have Masses celebrated for their speedy entry into the presence of God. Those in Purgatory depend on our prayers, and on All Souls Day the entire Church prays for their rapid entry into eternal bliss.

St Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England and martyr of the Church under King Henry VIII, placed powerful emphasis on works of charity towards the dead. We should pray for them, have masses said for them, offer up our sacrifices and penances for them, looking on them as our needy brothers and sisters. They await our charity. More wrote powerfully of the gratitude they will feel towards us when, due to our prayers, they enter the presence of God forever. There they will be our heavenly intercessors while we make our way through life and, in our turn, come to depend on them for prayers during our own purification in Purgatory. Let us pray each day for the souls in Purgatory.
                                                                        (E.J.Tyler)

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To aspire to positions in any apostolic undertaking is a useless thing in this life, and a danger for the next.

If it's what God wants, you will be called. And then you ought to accept. But don't forget that wherever you are you can and you must become a saint, for that is why you are there.
                                                            (The Way, no.949)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Fifth Chapter    ALL MEN ARE NOT TO BE BELIEVED, FOR IT IS EASY TO ERR IN SPEECH

THE DISCIPLE

I have been taught to my own cost, and I hope it has given me greater caution, not greater folly. "Beware," they say, "beware and keep to yourself what I tell you!" Then while I keep silent, believing that the matter is secret, he who asks me to be silent cannot remain silent himself, but immediately betrays both me and himself, and goes his way. From tales of this kind and from such careless men protect me, O Lord, lest I fall into their hands and into their ways. Put in my mouth words that are true and steadfast and keep far from me the crafty tongue, because what I am not willing to suffer I ought by all means to shun.
                                                            (Continuing)

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O God of the Spirits of all flesh, O Jesu, Lover of souls, we recommend unto Thee the souls of all those Thy servants, who have departed with the sign of faith and sleep the sleep of peace. We beseech Thee, O Lord and Saviour, that, as in Thy mercy to them Thou becamest man, so now Thou wouldest hasten the time, and admit them to Thy presence above. Remember, O Lord, that they are Thy creatures, not made by strange gods, but by Thee, the only Living and True God; for there is no other God but Thou, and none that can equal Thy works. Let their souls rejoice in Thy light, and impute not to them their former iniquities, which they committed through the violence of passion, or the corrupt habits of their fallen nature. For, although they have sinned, yet they always firmly believed in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and before they died, they reconciled themselves to Thee by true contrition and the Sacraments of Thy Church. [...]

Come to their assistance, all ye Saints of God; gain for them deliverance from their place of punishment; meet them, all ye Angels; receive these holy souls, and present them before the Lord.

Eternal rest give to them, O Lord. And may perpetual light shine on them.

May they rest in peace. Amen.

                                               JHN, from Meditations and Devotions (1893)

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Monday of the thirty-first week in Ordinary Time B-2

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 38 (37): 22-23     Forsake me not, O Lord, my God; be not far from me! Make haste and come to my help, O Lord, my strong salvation!

Collect    Almighty and merciful God, by whose gift your faithful offer you right and praiseworthy service, grant, we pray, that we may hasten without stumbling to receive the things you have promised. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

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Scripture:   Philippians 2:1-4;    Psalm 131:1bcde, 2, 3;    Luke 14:12-14

On a Sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees. He said to the host who invited him, “When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbours, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:12-14)

Life to come    The world understands that the service of others is a noble value, and the service of the poor and those in special need is especially noble. Mother Teresa of Calcutta commanded the respect of the world precisely because of her unstinting and constant service of the poor, and her ability to draw others into that service. Her motive was manifestly love for God, and within a few years of her death she was beatified by Pope John Paul II, having satisfied all the Church’s tests of a heroic religious spirit. Fred Hollows (1929 – 1993) became known for his work in restoring eyesight to countless thousands of people. It has been said that more than one million people in the world can see today because of initiatives he instigated. I have read that while he briefly studied in a seminary, for a while in the 1950s and 1960s he was a member of the Communist Party. He was famous for his service of those in need, especially indigenous people. In 2006 he was named one of the "100 most influential Australians" by The Bulletin magazine. His beliefs were not religious ― in 1991 he was named Humanist of the Year, and on his death the Chief Minister of the ACT (Australia), Rosemary Follett, described Hollows as "an egalitarian ... who believed in no power higher than the best expressions of the human spirit found in personal and social relationships." If Follett’s summation was correct, the highest power for Hollows was not God but man at his best. But he did great good in life, serving those in need and drawing others into that service. An intriguing question is, why do what is good, and why serve others nobly? What is it that leads a person to do things which all regard as admirable? Clearly very different motives can lead to a similar set of actions that are adjudged to be good and which truly benefit others. At the same time, all recognize that while the benefits to others may be similar, the motives themselves may be less than worthy. A person who serves the poor simply because he “gets a kick out of it” is less admirable than one who does so out of genuine love for them. So, motives are important and they vary in moral worth. Man is called to do what is good and to serve others nobly, but also to do it for the best reasons.

For the religious person, especially the person who adheres to revealed religion, the highest and indeed the most necessary motive for everything in life is to please God. If there is a God ― as there most assuredly is ― then the most pressing thing of all is so to live as to please him. When Christ was being baptized in the river Jordan, a voice was heard from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3: 17). Jesus Christ did everything to please his heavenly Father, and he was perfectly pleasing to him. We are called to follow him. So it is love for God which inspires the religious person, and in particular the Christian, to do what is right and good ― and especially to serve others nobly. The greatest Christians have been persons who have loved their neighbour, most especially the one in need. Christ held up for imitation the Good Samaritan who stopped before the one in need, and at his own expense and time, took care of him. But of course, to do things for love of God means thinking beyond this world alone. If this passing world is all that one thinks there is, then of course one’s motives will be profoundly different from those of the person who is quite sure that there is another, eternal world. John Henry Newman wrote towards the end of his life that the first principle of religion is the thought of a judgment as contained in the feeling of the conscience. That is to say, God begins to be a living reality to us when we think of the account we shall have to render of our obligations. What are those obligations? Our best knowledge of our obligations comes from God himself. He has revealed what we must do, and in the 25th Chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel our Lord speaks of our duties to our neighbour in need. There will be a final, general Judgment, and it will turn on how we have helped our brother, especially the least. “I assure you, as often as you did it for one of the least of my brothers, you did it for me” (Matthew 25:40). The one who loves God and Christ his divine Son will always remember that there will come a judgment, and to the extent that he has been merciful, so will mercy be shown to him.

So it is that in our Gospel today our Lord invites his audience to have a mind primarily to the poor and the neglected. That no recompense is forthcoming for such a concern is a cause for rejoicing, for recompense will come at the resurrection of the righteous. He tells them that “when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:12-14). Let us think beyond this brief, temporal life to life eternal, life with God forever. If anything is likely to spur one on to a good, holy, noble and self-sacrificing life, it is surely this.
                                                              (E.J.Tyler)

 

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Tuesday of the thirty first week in Ordinary Time

(November 3) St. Martin de Porres (1579-1639)
"Father unknown" is the cold legal phrase sometimes used on baptismal records. "Half-breed" or "war souvenir" is the cruel name inflicted by those of "pure" blood. Like many others, Martin might have grown to be a bitter man, but he did not. It was said that even as a child he gave his heart and his goods to the poor and despised. He was the illegitimate son of a freed woman of Panama, probably black but also possibly of Native American stock, and a Spanish grandee of Lima, Peru. Martin inherited the features and dark complexion of his mother. That irked his father, who finally acknowledged his son after eight years. After the birth of a sister, the father abandoned the family. Martin was reared in poverty, locked into a low level of Lima’s society. When he was 12, his mother apprenticed him to a barber-surgeon. He learned how to cut hair and also how to draw blood (a standard medical treatment then), care for wounds and prepare and administer medicines. After a few years in this medical apostolate, Martin applied to the Dominicans to be a "lay helper," not feeling himself worthy to be a religious brother. After nine years, the example of his prayer and penance, charity and humility led the community to request him to make full religious profession. Many of his nights were spent in prayer and penitential practices; his days were filled with nursing the sick and caring for the poor. It was particularly impressive that he treated all people regardless of their colour, race or status. He was instrumental in founding an orphanage, took care of slaves brought from Africa and managed the daily alms of the priory with practicality as well as generosity. He became the procurator for both priory and city, whether it was a matter of "blankets, shirts, candles, candy, miracles or prayers!" When his priory was in debt, he said, "I am only a poor mulatto. Sell me. I am the property of the order. Sell me." Side by side with his daily work in the kitchen, laundry and infirmary, Martin’s life reflected God’s extraordinary gifts: ecstasies that lifted him into the air, light filling the room where he prayed, bilocation, miraculous knowledge, instantaneous cures and a remarkable rapport with animals. His charity extended to beasts of the field and even to the vermin of the kitchen. He would excuse the raids of mice and rats on the grounds that they were underfed; he kept stray cats and dogs at his sister’s house. He became a formidable fundraiser, obtaining thousands of dollars for dowries for poor girls so that they could marry or enter a convent. Many of his fellow religious took him as their spiritual director, but he continued to call himself a "poor slave." He was a good friend of another Dominican saint of Peru, Rose of Lima (August 23).
   In 1962, Pope John XXIII remarked at the canonization of Martin: "He excused the faults of others. He forgave the bitterest injuries, convinced that he deserved much severer punishments on account of his own sins. He tried with all his might to redeem the guilty; lovingly he comforted the sick; he provided food, clothing and medicine for the poor; he helped, as best he could, farm labourers and Negroes, as well as mulattoes, who were looked upon at that time as akin to slaves: thus he deserved to be called by the name the people gave him: 'Martin of Charity.'" (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Romans 12:5-16ab; Psalm 131:1bcde, 2, 3; Luke 14:15-24

When one of those at the table with Jesus heard this, he said to Jesus, Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God. Jesus replied: A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, 'Come, for everything is now ready.' But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, 'I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.' Another said, 'I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I'm on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.' Still another said, 'I have just got married, so I can't come.' The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.' 'Sir,' the servant said, 'what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.' Then the master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.' (Luke 14: 15-24)

The grand invitation    The scene of our Gospel passage today is still that of our Lord dining in the home of one of the leading Pharisees. Before his hosts Jesus has calmly flouted the strictures of the Pharisees in respect to healing on the Sabbath. Before the eyes of his silent critics he has summarily healed a man with dropsy, and they are unable to answer his challenge about his action. He then proceeds to comment on their seeking the important places at the table, and on their having invited to the meal only their friends and the rich and well-regarded. When you are invited seek rather the lower places, our Lord comments — perhaps with a smile — and in any case invite the poor and the sick to your feasts. In this way your reward will be great when the just rise again. At the mention of the resurrection of the just, one of the guests sighs before our Lord at the thought of heaven: “ Blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.” Our Lord takes up the point but turns it to his theme that those who have been invited — and it is a warning to those before him — must not feel cocksure of a place there. The resurrection of the just will indeed be a banquet to which “many guests” have been invited. “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, 'Come, for everything is now ready.'” The servants carrying news of the invitation, of course, had been the prophets right up to John. The supreme messenger of the invitation was the one before them, Jesus of Nazareth. But time and again the invitation had been ignored. “They all alike began to make excuses. The first said, 'I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.' Another said, 'I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I'm on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.' Still another said, 'I have just got married, so I can't come.' The servant came back and reported this to his master.” The point is simple, that God had invited his people to a wondrous future, but many had failed to respond.

The warning develops in the parable. Those who had been invited but who had not responded would be passed over. The master of the banquet is determined to fill his house with guests. The banquet will proceed and it will be filled. Some of those, who from the first had been invited, will not be there and the fault will be entirely theirs. The parable, then, tells us of the tremendous responsibility of each person to hear the invitation to come to God and participate in his plan. That plan is centred on the person and teaching of Jesus Christ. A vast prospect hangs in the balance of each invitee’s response. On the one hand there is joy and happiness inside the house, while on the other there is darkness and grief outside. Which is it to be? In any case the mighty plan of God to save the world will proceed. God is resolved to fill his house, even if many refuse the invitation to come. Christ points to the coming Church with its universal mission to all the nations. “Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.' 'Sir,' the servant said, 'what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.' Then the master told his servant, 'Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full.'” (Luke 14: 15-24) Just before he ascended into heaven our Lord said to his disciples, “Go to the whole world and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” The banquet of heaven will be the joy of being with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit for ever. It is the universal call of every man and woman to goodness. All have this destiny, but it depends on each person’s response to the invitation when it comes. Those who hear Christ’s word and his teaching have before them the explicit invitation. Those who do not, will hear this call of God and Christ in other ways — muffled by comparison, perhaps, but nevertheless there. Cardinal Newman once described the conscience as “the aboriginal vicar of Christ.” God means all men to be saved, and Christ is the one and only way to the Father.

Every day passes rapidly, as does every hour, every minute and every second. Life is short. But that is not the end of the story, for eternity is very long. Each man and woman will live forever. In ten million years, the eternity of each of us will still be only beginning. No matter at what point in the future we care to place ourselves, our eternity will only be starting. How terrible the thought of being cast outside because we failed to respond to the invitation during this brief span! So then, now I begin! Yes, this very minute, now I begin! No time is to be wasted.
                                                                                  (E.J.Tyler)

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If you are working for Christ and imagine that a position of responsibility is anything but a burden, what disillusionment awaits you!
                                                                           (The Way, no.950)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Fifth Chapter     ALL MEN ARE NOT TO BE BELIEVED, FOR IT IS EASY TO ERR IN SPEECH

THE DISCIPLE

Oh, how good and how peaceful it is to be silent about others, not to believe without discrimination all that is said, not easily to report it further, to reveal oneself to few, always to seek You as the discerner of hearts, and not to be blown away by every wind of words, but to wish that all things, within and beyond us, be done according to the pleasure of Thy will.
                                                                 (Continuing)

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It is surely not true that benevolence is the only, or the chief, principle of our moral nature. To say nothing of the notion of duty to an Unseen Governor, implied in the very authoritativeness with which conscience dictates to us – a notion which suggests to the mind that there is, in truth, some object more “desirable in its own nature” than “the general happiness” of mankind.

                            JHN, from the University sermon ‘On Justice, as a Principle of Divine Governance’ (1832)

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Wednesday of the thirty first week in Ordinary Time

(November 4) St. Charles Borromeo (1538-1584)
The name of St. Charles Borromeo is associated with reform. He lived during the time of the Protestant Reformation, and had a hand in the reform of the whole Church during the final years of the Council of Trent. Although he belonged to Milanese nobility and was related to the powerful Medici family, he desired to devote himself to the Church. When his uncle, Cardinal de Medici, was elected pope in 1559 as Pius IV, he made Charles cardinal-deacon and administrator of the Archdiocese of Milan while he was still a layman and a young student. Because of his intellectual qualities he was entrusted with several important offices connected with the Vatican and later appointed secretary of state with responsibility for the papal states. The untimely death of his elder brother brought Charles to a definite decision to be ordained a priest, despite relatives’ insistence that he marry. Soon after he was ordained a priest at the age of 25, he was consecrated bishop of Milan. Because of his work at the Council of Trent, he was not allowed to take up residence in Milan until the Council was over. Charles had encouraged the pope to renew the Council in 1562 after it had been suspended for 10 years. Working behind the scenes, St. Charles deserves the credit for keeping the Council in session when at several points it was on the verge of breaking up. He took upon himself the task of the entire correspondence during the final phase. Eventually Charles was allowed to devote his time to the Archdiocese of Milan, where the religious and moral picture was far from bright. The reform needed in every phase of Catholic life among both clergy and laity was initiated at a provincial council of all the bishops under him. Specific regulations were drawn up for bishops and other clergy: If the people were to be converted to a better life, the had to be the first to give a good example and renew their apostolic spirit. Charles took the initiative in giving good example. He allotted most of his income to charity, forbade himself all luxury and imposed severe penances upon himself. He sacrificed wealth, high honours, esteem and influence to become poor. During the plague and famine of 1576, he tried to feed 60,000 to 70,000 people daily. To do this he borrowed large sums of money that required years to repay. Whereas the civil authorities fled at the height of the plague, he stayed in the city, where he ministered to the sick and the dying, helping those in want. Work and the heavy burdens of his high office began to affect his health. He died at the age of 46. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Romans 13:8-10; Psalm 112:1b-2, 4-5, 9; Luke 14:25-33 

Large crowds were travelling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters— yes, even his own life— he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14: 25-33)

Discipleship     Eudemus of Rhodes was one of Aristotle’s pupils. He edited his famous teacher’s work and made it more easily accessible. Living from 370 BC until about 300 BC, he was a philosopher and historian of science. He collaborated so closely with his master that he was regularly called Aristotle's "companion" rather than his "disciple." Discipleship is part of human history, for there have always been masters with their disciples. During the second decade of the nineteenth century in England, John Henry Newman was changing from Evangelicalism to High Church Anglicanism. But a new stage in his life was reached when Hurrell Froude drew him to John Keble. In a sense Newman then became a disciple of Keble’s, while in time outclassing his one-time master in the power and depth of his thought. Newman himself became a master with many ardent disciples, and the driving force of the Oxford Movement. As I say, it is a feature of the history of mankind that there have been numerous masters with their disciples and we see it also in the history of God’s chosen people. The prophet Isaiah (spanning the late eighth and early seventh century B.C) had disciples. We read in Isaiah 8:16-18 the prophet directing: “Bind up the testimony and seal up the law among my disciples. I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob.” Some scholars propose that the disciples of Isaiah formed an Isaian school. Presumably most of the prophets had their disciples and those disciples had influence on those around them. John the Baptist had many disciples. Our Lord’s first and most important disciples were drawn from some of John’s, and others of John’s disciples were encountered by the infant Church in its missionary work far and wide. Our Lord had very many disciples. Some were Apostles, many followed him to the end, and some fell away. There is, however, at least one feature of what Christ expected of his disciples that absolutely distinguishes him from other masters. What is this feature to which am I referring?

Aristotle had been a disciple of Plato — though he moved away from his master in his thought. But Plato would never have expected unqualified devotion to his own person from his disciples. Nor did Aristotle expect this of his disciples. Nor, of course, did Keble expect this of Newman — such an expectation would have been preposterous. Isaiah would have expected from his disciples a heart open to the word of God and a readiness to follow his — Isaiah’s — guidance. So would have John the Baptist of his disciples. But neither would have expected an ardent devotion to his own person. This was understood to be reserved for God. The prophet merely pointed to God and announced his word. John described himself as being merely a voice crying in the wilderness. The case is altogether different with Jesus Christ. He expected of his disciples a total devotion both to his word and to his person. In this he claimed a status altogether unique, transcending all other masters before and after him. We read that “Large crowds were travelling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters— yes, even his own life— he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14: 25-33). Our Lord puts his point graphically — his disciple must act as if he were “hating” his closest relatives, which is to say placing devotion to himself far ahead of devotion to any other. His interests are to dwarf in importance the interests of all others, were they to be in conflict. If this is not the case, a person cannot be counted as his disciple. Moreover, “anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” This is a remarkable statement, for it alludes to crucifixion. Our Lord did refer to his crucifixion with his close disciples during his public ministry and his allusions were often not understood. In our passage today our Lord alludes to the cross even before the crowds. Anyone who wishes to be his disciple must be prepared to follow him, carrying his cross, even to the point of crucifixion. It is a serious business being a disciple of Christ.

All this is to say that we must enter into the Christian life with a lot of deliberation and be as cognisant as possible of its demands. Our Lord asks for a total love and a full-hearted obedience. He is expecting us to love and serve him as we would God — and for this simple reason that he, our brother and redeemer, is God. Let us deliberate carefully, then. “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him.” Let us resolve to give all it takes. It will mean giving our all. Ah! It is worth it!
                                                                    (E.J.Tyler)

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If you are working for Christ and imagine that a position of responsibility is anything but a burden, what disillusionment awaits you!
                                                         (The Way, no.950)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Fifth Chapter     ALL MEN ARE NOT TO BE BELIEVED, FOR IT IS EASY TO ERR IN SPEECH

THE DISCIPLE

How conducive it is for the keeping of heavenly grace to fly the gaze of men, not to seek abroad things which seem to cause admiration, but to follow with utmost diligence those which give fervour and amendment of life! How many have been harmed by having their virtue known and praised too hastily! And how truly profitable it has been when grace remained hidden during this frail life, which is all temptation and warfare!
                                                  (Concluded)

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The Church of England has been the instrument of Providence in conferring great benefits on me.

                                 JHN, from the Apologia pro Vita Sua (1865 Edition)

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Thursday of the thirty first week in Ordinary Time

(November 5) Venerable Solanus Casey (1870-1957)
    Barney Casey became one of Detroit’s best-known priests even though he was not allowed to preach formally or to hear confessions! Barney came from a large family in Oak Grove, Wisconsin. At the age of 21, and after he had worked as a logger, a hospital orderly, a streetcar operator and a prison guard, he entered St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee—where he found the studies difficult. He left there and, in 1896, joined the Capuchins in Detroit, taking the name Solanus. His studies for the priesthood were again arduous. On July 24, 1904, he was ordained, but because his knowledge of theology was judged to be weak, Father Solanus was not given permission to hear confessions or to preach. A Franciscan Capuchin who knew him well said this annoying restriction "brought forth in him a greatness and a holiness that might never have been realized in any other way." During his 14 years as porter and sacristan in Yonkers, New York, the people there recognized him as a fine speaker. "For, though he was forbidden to deliver doctrinal sermons," writes his biographer, James Derum, "he could give inspirational talks, or feverinos, as the Capuchins termed them" (18:96). His spiritual fire deeply impressed his listeners. Father Solanus served at parishes in Manhattan and Harlem before returning to Detroit, where he was porter and sacristan for 20 years at St. Bonaventure Monastery. Every Wednesday afternoon he conducted well-attended services for the sick. A co-worker estimates that on the average day 150 to 200 people came to see Father Solanus in the front office. Most of them came to receive his blessing; 40 to 50 came for consultation. Many people considered him instrumental in cures and other blessings they received. Father Solanus’ sense of God’s providence inspired many of his visitors. "Blessed be God in all his designs" was one of his favourite expressions.
   The many friends of Father Solanus helped the Capuchins begin a soup kitchen during the Depression. Capuchins are still feeding the hungry there today. In 1946 in failing health, he was transferred to the Capuchin novitiate in Huntington, Indiana, where he lived until 1956 when he was hospitalized in Detroit. He died on July 31, 1957. An estimated 20,000 people passed by his coffin before his burial in St. Bonaventure Church in Detroit. At the funeral Mass, Father Gerald, the provincial, said: "His was a life of service and love for people like me and you. When he was not himself sick, he nevertheless suffered with and for you that were sick. When he was not physically hungry, he hungere with people like you. He had a divine love for people. He loved people for what he could do for them —and for God, through them." In 1960 a Father Solanus Guild was formed in Detroit to aid Capuchin seminarians. By 1967 the guild had 5,000 members—many of them grateful recipients of his practical advice and his comforting assurance that God would not abandon them in their trials. He was declared Venerable in 1995.
James Patrick Derum, his biographer, writes that eventually Father Solanus was weary from bearing the burdens of the people who visited him. "Long since, he had come to know the Christ-taught truth that pure love of God and one’s fellowmen as children of God are in the final event all that matter. Living this truth ardently and continuously had made him, spiritually, a free man—free from slavery to passions, from self-seeking, from self-indulgence, from self-pity—free to serve wholly both God and man" (The Porter of St. Bonaventure’s, page 199). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Romans 14:7-12; Psalm 27:1bcde, 4, 13-14; Luke 15:1-10

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering round to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them. Then Jesus told them this parable: Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbours together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbours together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. (Luke 15: 1-10)

God the Shepherd      It is well-known among anthropologists that in traditional native religions the high god, the principal deity, tends to withdraw from view after the initial work of creation. Thereafter the scene tends to be left to lesser spirits, and it is with these inferior beings that man deals. The high god is a remote and withdrawn deity. The Vedic, Buddhist, and Jain religions share cultural roots in north-eastern India and both the Buddha and Mahavira hailed from this region. It is doubtful that these great Asian religious founders had any clear notion of a supreme deity who actively loves man. Man seeks the Absolute, rather than the Absolute seeking man. Indeed Buddha seems to have been firm that to achieve salvation, one did not have to accept the existence of God. I can think of one modern British scholar of Buddhism who maintains with great erudition that Buddhism rejects the notion of a loving Creator. There is no doubt about the monotheism of Islam, but the Judaeo-Christian observer would hesitate with its image of Allah. Man is called to surrender to Allah with all his heart. Allah is absolute Master and Lord. He is not the Husband of a chosen people referred to by the prophets prior to Jesus Christ, the Husband yearning for fidelity from Israel who is his chosen spouse. Least of all is he the ‘dear, dear Father’ revealed by Jesus Christ, the One we are to address as Abba! The God whom Jesus Christ revealed to man and whose revelation he commissioned his Church to bring to all the nations, is a God who lovingly and anxiously seeks man out. He is consumed with love for man, a love far exceeding man’s ordinary experience. That is to say, the Christian religion has brought to the world a revelation from God and an image of him that is unique in its overwhelming stress on divine love. God is love. That is his most complete definition. For many religions this would reduce God to something less than the One who is utterly transcendent and beyond the world. But no. Such is the surprise of God. God is love in his essence and life — being a communion in love of three divine persons who are each the one only God — and he is love in his involvement with man and the world.

In our Gospel today our Lord, the Son of God made man — Oh, wonder of wonders! — speaks of what the transcendent God is like. God — the high god of the native peoples, the Absolute who is obscurely sought by Hinduism and Buddhism, the One whom every man vaguely seeks and in whom lies his only true happiness — is the joy and fulfilment of man’s heart. This one God, in whose hand is held our vast and mighty universe, gazes on every man and woman with a yearning and compassionate love. He is Father to each of us in a sense we can scarcely imagine, precisely because of the infinite power of his love. The world throbs with love and it throbs with hate. The love that is found in the world — that love which exists between man and wife, between parents and children, between friend and friend, and occasionally even between enemies — all this love is as nothing compared with the love which the Creator of all has for each person he sustains in existence. It is a love which seeks each out, pursuing him silently, discreetly, unrelentingly. It is a love which will never give up and which is determined to prevail. Ultimately, though, it is a love that can be rejected and if it is rejected it will be to the sorrow of the mighty Father who is our Creator. God is love, and our Lord shows this in his parable of our Gospel passage today (Luke 15: 1-10). God is like the shepherd, one of whose sheep has strayed. “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbours together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” God will rejoice if we turn back to him, and our turning back to him will be the result of his loving pursuit of us. Moreover, the whole of heaven is filled with this divine love that anxiously pursues wayward and sinful man. Just as God will rejoice, so will all of heaven. This is what the Creator of the world is like. He loves us dearly.

It is one of the features of spiritual maturity to be able to look back on life and see, amid the many bad experiences, the hand of a loving and very particular Providence. God has pursued us with his love amid the cruelty and thoughtlessness of others and amid our own many failings too. He is like the good shepherd going after the stray, or like the woman searching every nook and cranny of her home till she finds the lost coin. As the years pass we must place ourselves more and more deeply in the care of our heavenly Father. Let us do this, determined withal to obey him in all the little and ordinary duties of life. Thus will we reach our true homeland.
                                                                   (E.J.Tyler)

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To be in charge of an apostolic undertaking demands readiness to suffer everything, from everybody, with infinite charity.
                                                          (The Way, no.951)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Sixth Chapter   TRUST IN GOD AGAINST SLANDER

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

MY CHILD, stand firm and trust in Me. For what are words but words? They fly through the air but hurt not a stone. If you are guilty, consider how you would gladly amend. If you are not conscious of any fault, think that you wish to bear this for the sake of God. It is little enough for you occasionally to endure words, since you are not yet strong enough to bear hard blows.
                                                                     (Continuing)

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It is the present fashion to call Zeal by the name of intolerance, and to account intolerance the chief of sins; that is, any earnestness for one opinion above another concerning God’s nature, will, and dealings with man,—or, in other words, any earnestness for the Faith once delivered to the Saints, any earnestness for Revelation as such. Surely, in this sense, the Apostles were the most intolerant of men.

                                                    JHN, from the sermon ‘Christian Zeal’ (1834)

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Friday of the thirty first week in Ordinary Time

(November 6) St. Nicholas Tavelic and Companions (d. 1391)
    Nicholas and his three companions are among the 158 Franciscans who have been martyred in the Holy Land since the friars became custodians of the shrines in 1335. Nicholas was born in 1340 to a wealthy and noble family in Croatia. He joined the Franciscans and was sent with Deodat of Rodez to preach in Bosnia. In 1384 they volunteered for the Holy Land missions and were sent there. They looked after the holy places, cared for the Christian pilgrims and studied Arabic. In 1391 Nicholas, Deodat, Peter of Narbonne and Stephen of Cuneo decided to take a direct approach to converting the Muslims. On November 11, 1391, they went to the huge Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem and asked to see the Qadi (Muslim official). Reading from a prepared statement, they said that all people must accept the gospel of Jesus. When they were ordered to retract their statement, they refused. After beatings and imprisonment, they were beheaded before a large crowd. Nicholas and his companions were canonized in 1970. They are the only Franciscans martyred in the Holy Land to be canonized.
   In the Rule of 1221, Francis wrote that the friars going to the Saracens (Muslims) "can conduct themselves among them spiritually in two ways. One way is to avoid quarrels or disputes and 'be subject to every human creature for God's sake' (1 Peter 2:13), so bearing witness to the fact that they are Christians. Another way is to proclaim the word of God openly, when they see that is God's will, calling on their hearers to believe in God almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Creator of all, and in the Son, the Redeemer and Saviour, that they may be baptized and become true and spiritual Christians" (Ch. 16). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Romans 15:14-21; Psalm 98:1-4; Luke 16:1-8

Jesus told his disciples: There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.' The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg—I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.' So he called in each one of his master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' 'Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,' he replied. The manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.' Then he asked the second, 'And how much do you owe?' 'A thousand bushels of wheat,' he replied. He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight hundred.' The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. (Luke 16: 1-8)

Being shrewd     Karl Marx was obviously inspired by the thought of justice and prosperity being brought to the oppressed masses. The analysis by Engels of the condition of the working classes horrified him. Religion, he thought, was a bad dream, a distraction from the real business of life which was to attain material prosperity. Religion was an opiate, dulling the pain of the oppressed with the thought of a higher happiness. As it turned out, as an economic strategy — setting aside deeper considerations — communism proved to be profoundly misguided. In its various oppressions, it ignored the right to personal freedom involving individual initiative and recompense (profit) for one’s own labour. But there is this to be said, that a religious person could take a cue from Marxism in its setting of clear goals and resolutely using the means to attain them. The economic opponent of Marxism, classic capitalism, was equally intent on material prosperity and, for its part, it regarded religion not as an opiate but as irrelevant. Typically it sought its goals, not as if God was an enemy, but as if God did not exist. In purely economic terms capitalism was much more successful than Marxism but at enormous cost to those without capital. It was a different form of oppression. But once again the religious person could take a cue from capitalism in its setting of goals and in its resolutely applying the means to attain them. The radical mistake of both Marxism and capitalism lay in its blindness to the transcendent. God was not at the heart of the endeavour, which was his proper place, for he is at the heart of the universe and of every slither of it. All things are sustained by the finger of God and if his law is opposed or disregarded, then a vast unravelling is set in place. This is the obvious lesson of the Fall of Adam and Eve, and that Fall is iconic of the fundamental issues in true prosperity. If man is to flourish, God must be listened to and obeyed. That having been said, the man of religion — which should be every man — must beware. Yes, he has the light to see that man’s true calling is to God. But is he working at it, shrewdly applying the means to attain his goals?

If a man sets out to be rich, he simply must set goals and shrewdly identify the means to attain them. If a company is to flourish, its board must have a very good strategy especially in times of uncertainty. Marxism, for instance, was not a very good strategy, even for its own purposes. Many people have been very successful and though favourable circumstances played a part, so did strategy and their hard work. This is the point that Everyman, the Everyman of all times and places, ought take to heart. All must have a strategy and all must put in consistent work. I am referring here to the work of attaining our true end. Whatever be a person’s place in the economic race of human society, whatever be his capital, whatever be his labour, whatever be his accomplishments or lack of them, every person on the face of the earth has a tremendous work ahead of him. If he fails in that work he has lost everything. There is a tremendous prize for everyone, a prize within the reach of the highest and the lowest, and everything that a person does in life ought be part of his strategy to reach that goal. It is the true treasure in the field, the pearl of great price. It is not a treasure that is reserved for the few who may have special resources or abilities and perhaps especially favourable circumstances to assist them. Whatever be the circumstances and whatever be the gifts and resources a person is born with, the treasure is meant to be theirs. God has from before the foundation of the world chosen each for the enjoyment of that everlasting treasure. The treasure is union with Christ here and hereafter. But he must work at it. He must shrewdly set the goal which God has set for him, and he must select the means which God has revealed are necessary to attain it. That goal is personal holiness in Christ. It is a daily work, and those successful in the things of this world can be a lesson to those who are aware that man’s true treasure is God. In our Gospel today, our Lord warns all that “the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light” (Luke 16: 1-8).

Jesus Christ is the greatest Teacher of mankind, but compare his teachings with, say, those of so many philosophers. Compare them with the teachings of Aristotle. One thing that distinguishes the sayings of Christ is their amazing simplicity. Even the highest mysteries are expressed in a wondrous simplicity of expression. Our Lord’s teaching in today’s Gospel is profound and simple. You have been given the light. I am your true happiness. Heaven is your homeland. Learn from those who attain their worldly goals to work shrewdly to attain your heavenly goals. Take the means to live in me and resolutely run the race to the finish. Reach your true end. Do not squander the light.
                                                                     (E.J.Tyler)

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In apostolic work there can be no excuse for disobedience, nor for insincerity. Remember that simplicity is not imprudence, nor indiscretion.
                                                               (The Way, no.952)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Sixth Chapter     TRUST IN GOD AGAINST SLANDER

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

And why do such small matters pierce you to the heart, unless because you are still carnal and pay more heed to men than you ought? You do not wish to be reproved for your faults and you seek shelter in excuses because you are afraid of being despised. But look into yourself more thoroughly and you will learn that the world is still alive in you, in a vain desire to please men. For when you shrink from being abased and confounded for your failings, it is plain indeed that you are not truly humble or truly dead to the world, and that the world is not crucified in you.
                                                                      (Continuing)

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We must believe something; the difference between religious men and others is, that the latter trust this world, the former the world unseen.

                                            JHN, from the sermon ‘Faith and Experience’ (1838)

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Saturday of the thirty first week in Ordinary Time

(November 7) St. Didacus (1400-1463)
   Didacus is living proof that God "chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong" (1 Corinthians 1:27). As a young man in Spain, Didacus joined the Secular Franciscan Order and lived for some time as a hermit. After Didacus became a Franciscan brother, he developed a reputation for great insight into God’s ways. His penances were heroic. He was so generous with the poor that the friars sometimes grew uneasy about his charity. Didacus volunteered for the missions in the Canary Islands and laboured there energetically and profitably. He was also the superior of a friary there. In 1450 he was sent to Rome to attend the canonization of St. Bernardine of Siena. When many friars gathered for that celebration fell sick, Didacus stayed in Rome for three months to nurse them. After he returned to Spain, he pursued a life of contemplation full-time. He showed the friars the wisdom of God’s ways. As he was dying, Didacus looked at a crucifix and said: "O faithful wood, O precious nails! You have borne an exceedingly sweet burden, for you have been judged worthy to bear the Lord and King of heaven" (Marion A. Habig, O.F.M., The Franciscan Book of Saints, p. 834). San Diego, California, is named for this Franciscan, who was canonized in 1588.
    "He was born in Spain with no outstanding reputation for learning, but like our first teachers and leaders unlettered as men count wisdom, an unschooled person, a humble lay brother in religious life. [God chose Didacus] to show in him the abundant riches of his grace to lead many on the way of salvation by the holiness of his life and by his example and to prove over and over to a weary old world almost decrepit with age that God's folly is wiser than men, and his weakness is more powerful than men" (Bull of Canonization). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Romans 16:3-9, 16, 22-27; Psalm 145:2-5, 10-11; Luke 16:9-15 

Jesus said, I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own? No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight. (Luke 16: 9-15)

Money    There is a vast industry designed to ensure the comfortable retirement of the older population. There is the pension, but people are nevertheless urged to prepare well for this final stage of life, by contributing well to their superannuation, by looking after their health, by getting regular exercise, and in general by saving up their finances for it. People are even urged to take out an insurance for their own burial. A lot of time has to be put into considering whether it is financially wise to buy into a retirement home, or to have a more independent and private arrangement. Financial planning for the sunset of life is necessary in modern society. Of course, all through life there has to be financial planning. The fact is that so much of individual, social, national and international life is take up in the pursuit of money and economic prosperity. Now, it could be argued that, notwithstanding the terrible poverty of considerable portions of the globe, there never has been a time of such material prosperity for so many. The obvious question is, how ought all this be used, especially when so many have little or nothing — and certainly no way to prepare for the future? In this respect, our Lord puts a special twist on the question of the use of our material means to prepare for the future. He asks, what about the future beyond this life? How are you using your financial means to prepare for that? That is surely a pivotal question because this life is brief, and any years of retirement will also be very brief. But the next life will be eternal, and this eternity will depend on the use we make of the material means that have come our way. This is surely a matter of ordinary common sense, but so many do not consider this because they have little faith in the word of Christ. As I say, our Lord puts a twist on this. Gain for yourselves friends with the money you have, he says, so that you will be welcomed into your eternal homeland (Luke 16: 9-15). What does he mean? He means that we ought use our money to serve the needs of others (and so to “make yourselves friends”) in such a way that God will be pleased with us.

The best way to prepare for our real future — which is in heaven — is to love our neighbour as Christ has loved us. As St Paul writes in one of his Letters, though he was rich, Christ became poor in order that we might be rich. Our true “retirement” — let us say — is in heaven, which in any case is in just a little while. All our life we ought be preparing for that, and our utmost concern for our children ought be that they, too, reach that final goal. As our Lord says elsewhere in the Gospel, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? In one of his parables he tells the story of the successful farmer who has a string of bumper crops, so much so that he simply has nowhere to store all the grain. So he builds much larger barns, and places his abundant produce in them, and settles back with a great sense of security. He is prepared for the years to come. But all the while God has — as we might say — been shaking his head. You fool! You have this day alone left to you, and what use will all this be to you thereafter? The implication is that he should have been using his wealth to provide security for himself in the hereafter. How could he have done this? His wealth would have been of eternal use to him if he had helped the poor and, in general, had supported the advancement of God’s reign in the hearts of men. Our Lord says, “use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” The money you have is actually in itself little in the sight of God. However much it is, absolutely speaking it is little when compared with the real wealth he wants to give you. Well now, if you cannot be trusted with what is in reality a pittance, how can you expect the real wealth that God wants to give you? That wealth is the divine life of union with Jesus both here and hereafter. Our Lord is drawing parallels between the affairs of this life and those of the next. Very ominously, he warns that we cannot be the slave of money and material goods, and at the same time slaves of God. We must choose.

So then, let us resolve to use the money and material wealth that come our way — and there is nothing wrong with making plenty of money — in a fashion that pleases God. What is wrong is, not making money and even plenty of it, but using it in a way that displeases God. If we are blessed with talent and opportunity for the making of plenty of money, we must remember that it is God who has placed this in our hands. He expects it to be used truly wisely — which is to say, in the light of his will, of his judgment, and of the eternity which will follow his judgment. That is to say, we ought use our material goods to fulfill God’s will, especially in the service of neighbour. In this way we shall be making friends, and will be received into our true homeland.
                                                                               (E.J.Tyler)

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You are under an obligation to pray and sacrifice yourself for the person and intentions of whoever is 'in charge' of your apostolic undertaking. If you are careless in fulfilling this duty, you make me think that you lack enthusiasm for your way.
                                                   (The Way, no.953)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Sixth Chapter     TRUST IN GOD AGAINST SLANDER

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

Listen to My word, and you will not value ten thousand words of men. Behold, if every malicious thing that could possibly be invented were uttered against you, what harm could it do if you ignored it all and gave it no more thought than you would a blade of grass? Could it so much as pluck one hair from your head?
                                                   (Continuing)

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Whatever our Lord said or did upon earth was strictly and literally the word and deed of God Himself.

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

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Thirty second Sunday of Ordinary Time B

Prayers this week: Let my prayer come before you, Lord; listen, and answer me. (Psalm 87:3)

God of power and mercy, protect us from all harm. Give us freedom of spirit and health in mind and body to do your work on earth. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

(November 8) Blessed John Duns Scotus (c. 1266-1308)
      A humble man, John Duns Scotus has been one of the most influential Franciscans through the centuries. Born at Duns in the county of Berwick, Scotland, John was descended from a wealthy farming family. In later years he was identified as John Duns Scotus to indicate the land of his birth; Scotia is the Latin name for Scotland. John received the habit of the Friars Minor at Dumfries, where his uncle Elias Duns was superior. After novitiate John studied at Oxford and Paris and was ordained in 1291. More studies in Paris followed until 1297, when he returned to lecture at Oxford and Cambridge. Four years later he returned to Paris to teach and complete the requirements for the doctorate. In an age when many people adopted whole systems of thought without qualification, John pointed out the richness of the Augustinian-Franciscan tradition, appreciated the wisdom of Aquinas, Aristotle and the Muslim philosophers—and still managed to be an independent thinker. That quality was proven in 1303 when King Philip the Fair tried to enlist the University of Paris on his side in a dispute with Pope Boniface VIII. John Duns Scotus dissented and was given three days to leave France. In Scotus’s time, some philosophers held that people are basically determined by forces outside themselves. Free will is an illusion, they argued. An ever practical man, Scotus said that if he started beating someone who denied free will, the person would immediately tell him to stop. But if Scotus didn’t really have a free will, how could he stop? John had a knack for finding illustrations his students could remember! After a short stay in Oxford he returned to Paris, where he received the doctorate in 1305. He continued teaching there and in 1307 so ably defended the Immaculate Conception of Mary that the university officially adopted his position. That same year the minister general assigned him to the Franciscan school in Cologne where John died in 1308. He is buried in the Franciscan church near the famous Cologne cathedral. Drawing on the work of John Duns Scotus, Pope Pius IX solemnly defined the Immaculate Conception of Mary in 1854. John Duns Scotus, the "Subtle Doctor," was beatified in 1993.
     Father Charles Balic, O.F.M., the foremost 20th-century authority on Scotus, has written: "The whole of Scotus's theology is dominated by the notion of love. The characteristic note of this love is its absolute freedom. As love becomes more perfect and intense, freedom becomes more noble and integral both in God and in man" (New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, p. 1105). Intelligence hardly guarantees holiness. But John Duns Scotus was not only brilliant, he was also humble and prayerful—the exact combination St. Francis wanted in any friar who studied. In a day when French nationalism threatened the rights of the pope, Scotus sided with the papacy and paid the price. He also defended human freedom against those who would compromise it by determinism. Ideas are important. John Duns Scotus placed his best thinking at the service of the human family and of the Church. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: 1 Kgs 17:10-16;  Ps 146:7-10;  Heb 9:24-28;  Mark 12:38-44 or 12:41-44

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)

Loving the poor    Sir David Attenborough, the famous producer of natural history documentaries, once declared himself to be an agnostic. He did not know if there is a God. When asked why his profound familiarity with the wonderful world of nature did not lead him to the Author of nature, he pointed to the cruelty he saw everywhere in nature. The helpless are attacked and devoured. There is ruthless cruelty by the strong over the weak. Nature does not reflect mercy to the needy — which is what we expect of God. Now, setting aside the question of how that pattern in nature is to be interpreted, we would surely have to allow that a similar impression could be gained from the human scene. While there have been wonderful exceptions, is not neglect and oppression of the needy and the poor an ingrained feature of much of human history? Prescinding from the dictates of Judaeo-Christian revelation, consider a few examples. India is arguably the most religious nation in the world. The religious imagination pervades that vast and teeming people, illustrating the claim that man is, above all, a religious being by nature. He yearns for the Transcendent, the Ultimate, and wishes to be one with it. But look at India’s abominable caste system and the abiding treatment of its Untouchables! The elimination of this despicable attitude to the poorest has proved to be an enormous challenge. All through history the afflicted have been neglected. For long centuries, slavery — accompanied by great cruelty to slaves — has marred civilization and it has been tolerated by religious societies, including even Christian. In the modern era, millions of the most helpless are routinely snuffed out of their struggle for life by abortion, and this cruelty is sanctioned by legislation. The list could go on and on. The point I am making here is that while man may be instinctively religious, he can be instinctively cruel and neglectful of the poor. If man does not check himself by reference to his higher moral instincts, he will not love the poor but rather will be deeply irritated by them. Further, he will even tend to exploit the poor.

Man’s religious life tends to proceed on a sphere distinct from concern for the poor. By nature man longs for the God who is beyond, while tending to neglect the poor man who is right here. In revealed religion, this absolutely will not do. When Cain killed his brother Abel, he incurred the wrath of God. When Moses received the Ten Commandments on Sinai, it was discovered that the first three governed our relations with God, while the remaining seven, our relations with man. The prophets inveighed against a religion of splendid ritual and sacrifices in the midst of a blithe oppression of the poor. I hate such sacrifices, Yahweh God said. To be religious, one had also to be deeply concerned for the poor. Jesus Christ, the image of the unseen God, showed that God identifies with the poor. In his ministry our Lord loved the poor, understanding by this term the person in genuine need. He was profoundly merciful. He saw the widow of Nain and, feeling profoundly sorry for her, raised her son to life. He responded to need everywhere, pointing withal to the greatest misery of all, the misery of sin. It was this pitiable condition which he had come to do away with. Christ showed the unlimited love of God for the one who is poor. In our Gospel today (Mark 12: 38-44) our Lord condemns the experts in the law for, among other things, their lack of concern for the poor. “They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. Such men will be punished most severely.” He notices with a special love the poor and suffering individual. He stopped in the crowd when the poor woman touched his cloak for a healing. He wanted to have contact with her. In our Gospel today he sees the poor widow putting in to the Treasury all she had to live on. He holds her up for imitation. Christ loved the poor, and he requires of his disciples that they love the poor. At the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:40) he will say to every man and woman that whatever we have done to the least person, has been done to him.

Love for the poor must distinguish the Christian life, and the saints have been shining examples of this Christian spirit. The very phrase, “being very Christian,” has come to mean being very concerned for the needy. Love for the poor is manifested on a variety of fronts, in the struggle against material poverty and also against the many forms of cultural, moral and religious poverty. The spiritual and corporal works of mercy and the numerous charitable institutions of the centuries all show the preferential love for the poor which characterizes the spirit of Christ and his disciples. Let us then pray for the grace to love the poor and to show God’s mercy towards them.
                                                                   (E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.2443-2449 (Love for the poor)

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Be particularly respectful to whoever is in charge, whenever he consults you and you have to contradict his opinions. And never contradict him in the presence of those who are subject to him, even if he is in the wrong.
                                                          (The Way, no.954)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Sixth Chapter   TRUST IN GOD AGAINST SLANDER

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

He who does not keep his heart within him, and who does not have God before his eyes is easily moved by a word of disparagement. He who trusts in Me, on the other hand, and who has no desire to stand by his own judgment, will be free from the fear of men. For I am the judge and discerner of all secrets. I know how all things happen. I know who causes injury and who suffers it. From Me that word proceeded, and with My permission it happened, that out of many hearts thoughts may be revealed. I shall judge the guilty and the innocent; but I have wished beforehand to try them both by secret judgment.
                                                                  (Continuing)

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In a famous passage from his Discourses to Mixed Congregations, quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, John Henry Newman describes the dangers of ‘notoriety’ – valuing fame for its own sake. Newman’s remarks have a powerful contemporary ring to them. There is only one way is a way to escape this risk – the Catholic faith:

Wealth is one idol of the day, and notoriety is a second. I am not speaking, I repeat, of what men actually pursue, but of what they look up to, what they revere. Men may not have the opportunity of pursuing what they admire still. Never could notoriety exist as it does now, in any former age of the world; now that the news of the hour from all parts of the world, private news as well as public, is brought day by day to every individual, as I may say, of the community, to the poorest artisan and the most secluded peasant, by processes so uniform, so unvarying, so spontaneous, that they almost bear the semblance of a natural law. And hence notoriety, or the making a noise in the world, has come to be considered a great good in itself, and a ground of veneration. Time was when men could only make a display by means of expenditure; and the world used to gaze with wonder on those who had large establishments, many servants, many horses, richly-furnished houses, gardens, and parks: it does so still, that is, when it has the opportunity of doing so: for such magnificence is the fortune of the few, and comparatively few are its witnesses. Notoriety, or, as it may be called, newspaper fame, is to the many what style and fashion, to use the language of the world, are to those who are within or belong to the higher circles; it becomes to them a sort of idol, worshipped for its own sake, and without any reference to the shape in which it comes before them. It may be an evil fame or a good fame; it may be the notoriety of a great statesman, or of a great preacher, or of a great speculator, or of a great experimentalist, or of a great criminal; of one who has laboured in the improvement of our schools, or hospitals, or prisons, or workhouses, or of one who has robbed his neighbour of his wife. It matters not; so that a man is talked much of, and read much of, he is thought much of; nay, let him even have died justly under the hands of the law, still he will be made a sort of martyr of. … For the question with men is, not whether he is great, or good, or wise, or holy; not whether he is base, and vile, and odious, but whether he is in the mouths of men, whether he has centred on himself the attention of many, whether he has done something out of the way, whether he has been (as it were) canonised in the publications of the hour. [...]

But oh! what a change, my brethren, when the good hand of God brings them by some marvellous providence to the pit’s mouth, and then out into the blessed light of day! what a change for them when they first begin to see with the eyes of the soul, with the intuition which grace gives, Jesus, the Sun of Justice; and the heaven of Angels and Archangels in which He dwells; and the bright Morning Star, which is His Blessed Mother; and the continual floods of light falling and striking against the earth, and transformed, as they fall, into an infinity of hues, which are His Saints; and the boundless sea, which is the image of His divine immensity; and then again the calm, placid Moon by night, which images His Church; and the silent stars, like good and holy men, travelling on in lonely pilgrimage to their eternal rest! [...]

And such as this in its measure is the contrast, to which the awakened soul is witness, between the objects of its admiration and pursuit in its natural state, and those which burst upon it when it has entered into communion with the Church Invisible, when it has come “to Mount Sion, and to the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to a company of many thousand Angels, and to the Church of the first-born, who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the just now perfected, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Testament” [Heb 12: 21-24]. From that day it has begun a new life … a change there will be in its views and estimation of things, as soon as it has heard and has faith in the word of God, as soon as it understands that wealth, and notoriety, and influence, and high place, are not the first of blessings and the real standard of good; but that saintliness and all its attendants,—saintly purity, saintly poverty, heroic fortitude and patience, self-sacrifice for the sake of others, renouncement of the world, the favour of Heaven, the protection of Angels, the smile of the Blessed Virgin, the gifts of grace, the interpositions of miracle, the intercommunion of merits,—that these are the high and precious things, the things to be looked up to, the things to be reverently spoken of.

(Reference: John Henry Newman, Discourses addressed to Mixed Congregations (1849) Discourse no. 5, p. 90-94)

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Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome (November 9)

(November 9) Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome
     Most Catholics think of St. Peter’s as the pope’s main church, but this is not so. St. John Lateran is the pope’s church, the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome where the Bishop of Rome presides. The first basilica on the site was built in the fourth century when Constantine donated land he had received from the wealthy Lateran family. That structure and its successors suffered fire, earthquake and the ravages of war, but the Lateran remained the church where popes were consecrated until the popes returned from Avignon in the 14th century to find the church and the adjoining palace in ruins. Pope Innocent X commissioned the present structure in 1646. One of Rome’s most imposing churches, the Lateran’s towering facade is crowned with 15 colossal statues of Christ, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist and 12 doctors of the Church. Beneath its high altar rest the remains of the small wooden table on which tradition holds St. Peter himself celebrated Mass.
Unlike the commemorations of other Roman churches (St. Mary Major, August 5; Sts. Peter and Paul, November 18), this anniversary is a feast. The dedication of a church is a feast for all its parishioners. In a sense, St. John Lateran is the parish church of all Catholics, because it is the pope's cathedral. This church is the spiritual home of the people who are the Church.
   "What was done here, as these walls were rising, is reproduced when we bring together those who believe in Christ. For, by believing they are hewn out, as it were, from mountains and forests, like stones and timber; but by catechizing, baptism and instruction they are, as it were, shaped, squared and planed by the hands of the workers and artisans. Nevertheless, they do not make a house for the Lord until they are fitted together through love" (St. Augustine, Sermon 36).  (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Ezechiel 47:1-2, 8-9, 12; Psalm 46:2-3, 5-6, 8-9; 1 Cor 3:9c-11, 16-17; John 2:13-22 

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market! His disciples remembered that it is written: Zeal for your house will consume me. Then the Jews demanded of him, What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this? Jesus answered them, Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days. The Jews replied, It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days? But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. (John 2:13-22)

God-with-us     Among the most interesting and popular of series on television are programs portraying archaeological digs. Every so often there is a new find in the pyramids of Egypt. Archaeologists are constantly discovering new sites in the British Isles. In Australia, Aboriginal carvings and remains come to light, putting further back the eras of Aboriginal settlement on the continent. It is taken for granted by those following the discipline that the researchers will presume the importance of religion, which is to say, ritual and religious myth. If something cannot be easily categorized (as, say, a weapon, or an ornament, or some implement of everyday use) then it will be presumed to have a religious significance. From primal man up to the most advanced societies (in archaeological terms) a religious perspective is assumed even by the atheistic or agnostic archaeologist to be fundamental. Perhaps the most characteristic feature of human societies is the temple, the shrine, the religious site or locale of the presence of the deity. It is the means whereby the deity — whether minor or major — can in some sense be encountered. Thus does man typically think. He thinks of his gods, and he wants to be on good relations with them. The testimony of history and the human sciences is that the spirit of man yearns for the divine, and hopes that the divine will come to him. I suggest it is in this context that we ought understand the Judaeo-Christian revelation. God has made man to long for him, a longing which has been deeply frustrated by the original Fall, but which remains nevertheless. He longs for God, and prays repeatedly for his assistance. The remarkable thing is that out of history has come the testimony that God has intervened and chosen to stay with man. He has spoken to certain chosen ones, and has abided with a chosen people. He spoke to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. He promised to be with them and to regard their descendants as his own people. He spoke to Moses and the prophets, and promised to abide with his people as would a Husband with his spouse.

This was the meaning of that great institution, the Temple of Jerusalem. It was the heart of the nation because therein, in some altogether special way, abode the God of Israel. How Jesus Christ must have loved the Temple of Jerusalem! It was the house of his heavenly Father. In our Gospel passage today we see him making a whip of cords and physically driving all the buyers and sellers from the Temple precincts (John 2:13-22). It was his Father’s house! His action reinforces a signal testimony to the world offered by the revealed religion of Israel, that the great God had come to abide personally among men. The longings of the human heart as evidenced in the cultures and societies of the world, were in this way answered. God had come and had chosen to stay. But our passage tells us of a presence of God among us that was more wondrous still. We read that “the Jews demanded of him, What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this? Jesus answered them, Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days. The Jews replied, It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days? But the temple he had spoken of was his body.” The physical person of Jesus was the temple of God. Let us consider the marvel of this. If we look to the heavens with any understanding of the findings of astronomy, we cannot but take our breath away at the thought that this is the work of one only God. One almighty Being holds this ever-so-vast universe in his hands. He is, as he revealed to Moses at the Burning Bush, the one who is. He is pure, pure Being without any qualification or limitation. The mystery of mysteries is that he, the great God, became man. Jesus Christ, a definite and therefore limited man, was the unlimited God incarnate. The second divine person, retaining his divine nature, took to himself a limited human nature. And so there walked the earth one who was God, and he it was who cleansed the Temple on this occasion. He himself was the Temple par excellence, and he had come to stay.

This same Jesus in all his human and divine reality abides now in the Church his body. Those who believe in him may encounter him in the life of the Church, especially in her preaching, teaching and her Sacraments. The greatest presence of God among men is the person of Jesus Christ, and the greatest presence of Jesus Christ among men is in the Eucharist. When we think of Jesus we ought think of the Eucharist, because Jesus here on earth is especially the Eucharistic Jesus. The Eucharistic Jesus abides in our churches, and there our hearts have their true object. On the Feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of John Lateran, let us renew our love for the Eucharistic Jesus, and for our churches where the Eucharistic Jesus constantly awaits us.
                                                                         (E.J.Tyler)

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In your apostolic undertaking don't fear the enemies 'outside', however great their power. This is the enemy most to be feared: your lack of 'filiation' and your lack of 'fraternal' spirit.
                                               (The Way, no.955)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Sixth Chapter    TRUST IN GOD AGAINST SLANDER

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

The testimony of man is often deceiving, but My judgment is true -- it will stand and not be overthrown. It is hidden from many and made known to but a few. Yet it is never mistaken and cannot be mistaken even though it does not seem right in the eyes of the unwise.
                                             (Continuing)

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This then is the special glory of the Christian Church, that its members do not depend merely on what is visible, they are not mere stones of a building, piled one on another, and bound together from without, but they are one and all the births and manifestations of one and the same unseen spiritual principle … they are members of the Body of Christ. … This is the fruitful Vine, and the rich Olive tree upon and out of which all Saints, though wild and barren by nature, grow, that they may bring forth fruit unto God.

                           JHN, from the sermon ‘The Communion of Saints’ (1837)

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Tuesday of the thirty second week in Ordinary Time

(November 10) Saint Leo the Great, pope and doctor of the Church
With apparent strong conviction of the importance of the Bishop of Rome in the Church, and of the Church as the ongoing sign of Christ’s presence in the world, Leo the Great displayed endless dedication as pope. Elected in 440, he worked tirelessly as "Peter’s successor," guiding his fellow bishops as "equals in the episcopacy and infirmities." Leo is known as one of the best administrative popes of the ancient Church. His work branched into four main areas, indicative of his notion of the pope’s total responsibility for the flock of Christ. He worked at length to control the heresies of Pelagianism, Manichaeism and others, placing demands on their followers so as to secure true Christian beliefs. A second major area of his concern was doctrinal controversy in the Church in the East, to which he responded with a classic letter setting down the Church’s teaching on the two natures of Christ. With strong faith, he also led the defence of Rome against barbarian attack, taking the role of peacemaker. In these three areas, Leo’s work has been highly regarded. His growth to sainthood has its basis in the spiritual depth with which he approached the pastoral care of his people, which was the fourth focus of his work. He is known for his spiritually profound sermons. An instrument of the call to holiness, well-versed in Scripture and ecclesiastical awareness, Leo had the ability to reach the everyday needs and interests of his people. One of his sermons is used in the Office of Readings on Christmas. It is said of Leo that his true significance rests in his doctrinal insistence on the mysteries of Christ and the Church and in the supernatural charisms of the spiritual life given to humanity in Christ and in his Body, the Church. Thus Leo held firmly that everything he did and said as pope for the administration of the Church represented Christ, the head of the Mystical Body, and St. Peter, in whose place Leo acted. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Wisdom 2:23–3:9;  Psalm 34:2-3, 16-19;   Luke 17:7-10

Jesus said, Suppose one of you had a servant ploughing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' (Luke 17:7-10)

Duty    At various times I have come across persons who regret that they have the religious duties that are theirs. They envy those with fewer and less demanding duties. Such a person may be, say, a Catholic. He knows that as a Catholic he has various duties to fulfil, and he observes that many non-Catholics do not see themselves as having as many religious duties as he. The non-Catholic may not feel himself required to attend worship every Sunday. He may see himself as having less demanding requirements in certain other spheres of life. This person who envies the other with fewer duties is reluctant about duty, he wishes to be rid of it, and cannot be said to love it. Duty is not for him a friend. Now, it is well to ponder often on the sheer phenomenon of duty in our daily experience. From our earliest years of conscious and reflective thought, we sense duty. I do not refer simply to external impositions which, if they are not respected, bring sanctions. After all, a school bully may demand of others that they do this or that, and he may get compliance because of the threats he makes. But none of those who comply would regard their compliance as a duty. It is merely expedient. The demand coming from other sources may, however, be perceived precisely as a duty — such as the demand by school authorities that there be no bullying. The sanctions which bullying attracts may result in compliance for reasons primarily of expedience, but all know that this compliance cannot be reduced to expedience. This is because the demand in this case is also seen as representing a duty. Duty cannot be reduced to expedience, even though we may recognize that the fulfilment of our duty is also expedient for our happiness. There is something ultimate about the quality of duty because there is something ultimate about the dignity of the one to whom one has the duties — be that person God, or one’s fellows. There is this, too. Duty is not like an unpleasant acquaintance or even an enemy. It is a true friend, and while love for it is not just a matter of utility, still, as with any good friend, love for it will lead to our real happiness.

Deep within his soul man senses duty. It abides within, and abides constantly. It does not glare menacingly at man, but while being severe it smiles with the promise of brightness ahead. More, man senses a greater Presence within duty. This Presence summons him to love precisely through his obedience to duty. That is to say, in the dictate of the conscience, the prudent man senses the echo of the voice of God. Our sense of duty is our most natural step to God, and, if we respect the demands of duty — not with a weary reluctance or as a mere expedient, but for love — it will take us higher and higher. In our Gospel today, our Lord surely suggests these ultimate rewards of doing one’s duty. “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty'” (Luke 17:7-10). Our Lord’s words intimate that the fulfilling of one’s duty for love of the God who summons in the duty, will bring happiness aplenty. Such a person will not need further rewards for his happiness. All this is to say that a life of obedience to God in the fulfilment of one’s duties of state will bring a profound happiness in itself. A girl marries early and leaves the home of her happy childhood to embark on her life’s work, being wife and mother. She lives out her long life in the one small locality, bearing up with her difficult husband and disappointing children. She humbly and consistently lives a life of duty, happy withal. She prays daily, she is cheerful, she makes allowances for the unreasonable thoughtlessness of many around her — in a word, she strives to fulfill her duty in life. She does all this because she wants to love and serve God. Her duty brings her peace and a great heart. She finally reaches her end and is buried with her relatives, her grave hardly distinguished. But she became a great soul and was recognized as such. She had done no more than her duty, and her duty had led her to happiness and to sanctity, humble, hidden but real. Duty is our best friend. It is the touch of God’s finger bringing light for the journey ahead and constituting our natural stairway to heaven.

We are unworthy servants. We have done no more than our duty. The greatest saints have had that to say, and if anyone at the end of life is able to say this, that person has reached his term. John Henry Newman was prepared to go a long way in accepting Darwin’s theory of evolution, but he drew the line at duty. The human being is distinguished by his conscience, by his sense of duty. Let us resolve to do our duty, the duties of every day which God has pleased to give us, knowing that our happiness and flourishing, here and hereafter, will come from their loving fulfilment.
                                                          (E.J.Tyler)

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I well understand your being amused by the slights you receive — even though they come from influential enemies — as long as you can feel united to your God and to your brothers in the apostolate. Slighted ? So what!
                                                 (The Way, no.956)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Sixth Chapter   TRUST IN GOD AGAINST SLANDER

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

To Me, therefore, you ought to come in every decision, not depending on your own judgment. For the just man will not be disturbed, no matter what may befall him from God. Even if an unjust charge be made against him he will not be much troubled. Neither will he exult vainly if through others he is justly acquitted. He considers that it is I Who search the hearts and inmost thoughts of men, that I do not judge according to the face of things or human appearances. For what the judgment of men considers praiseworthy is often worthy of blame in My sight.
                                           (Continuing)

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Miracles have a tendency to rouse conscience, to awaken to a sense of responsibility, to remind of duty, and to direct the attention to those marks of divine government already contained in the ordinary course of events.

                                    JHN, from ‘The Miracles of Scripture’ (1825-6)

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Wednesday of the thirty second week in Ordinary Time

(November 11)  Saint Martin of Tours, bishop (316?-397)
A conscientious objector who wanted to be a monk; a monk who was maneuvered into being a bishop; a bishop who fought paganism as well as pleaded for mercy to heretics—such was Martin of Tours, one of the most popular of saints and one of the first not to be a martyr. Born of pagan parents in what is now Hungary and raised in Italy, this son of a veteran was forced to serve in the army against his will at the age of 15. He became a Christian catechumen and was baptized at 18. It was said that he lived more like a monk than a soldier. At 23, he refused a war bonus and told his commander: "I have served you as a soldier; now let me serve Christ. Give the bounty to those who are going to fight. But I am a soldier of Christ and it is not lawful for me to fight." After great difficulties, he was discharged and went to be a disciple of Hilary of Poitiers (January 13). On a bitterly cold day, a famous legend goes, Martin met a poor man, almost naked, trembling in the cold and begging from passersby at the city gate. Martin had nothing but his weapons and his clothes. He drew his sword, cut his cloak into two pieces, gave one to the beggar and wrapped himself in the other half. Some of the bystanders laughed at his now odd apearance; others were ashamed at not having relieved the man's misery. That night in his sleep Martin saw Christ dressed in the half of the garment he had given away, and heard him say, "Martin, still a catechumen, has covered me with is garment." He was ordained an exorcist and worked with great zeal against the Arians. He became a monk, living first at Milan and later on a small island. When Hilary was restored to his see after exile, Martin returned to France and established what may have been the first French monastery near Poitiers. He lived there for 10 years, forming his disciples and preaching throughout the countryside. The people of Tours demanded that he become their bishop. He was drawn to that city by a ruse—the need of a sick person—and was brought to the church, where he reluctantly allowed himself to be consecrated bishop. Some of the consecrating bishops thought his rumpled appearance and unkempt hair indicated that he was not dignified enough for the office. Along with St. Ambrose (December 7), Martin rejected Bishop Ithacius’s principle of putting heretics to death—as well as the intrusion of the emperor into such matters. He prevailed upon the emperor to spare the life of the heretic Priscillian. For his efforts, Martin was accused of the same heresy, and Priscillian was executed after all. Martin then pleaded for a cessation of the persecution of Priscillian’s followers in Spain. He still felt he could cooperate with Ithacius in other areas, but afterwards his conscience troubled him about this decision. As death approached, his followers begged him not to leave them. He prayed, "Lord, if your people still need me, I do not refuse the work. Your will be done."  (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today:   Wisdom 6:1-11;   Ps 82:3-4, 6-7;   Luke 17:11-19 

Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus travelled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, Jesus, Master, have pity on us! When he saw them, he said, Go, show yourselves to the priests. And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him— and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no-one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? Then he said to him, Rise and go; your faith has made you well. (Luke 17: 11-19)

God is very personal     Throughout the history of Western thought there have been numerous variants of the argument that posits a First Cause of our changing, contingent, varied and ordered world. From Plato and Aristotle to Plotinus to Avicenna and on to Aquinas the argument has been worked and reworked. It was Aristotle who gave the discussion a special early impetus, but as Newman remarks in an important sermon of April 1830 (‘The Influence of Natural and Revealed Religion’) the philosophical notion of the First Cause held by the ancients was of a divine Principle rather than of a living Agent. It tended to be an abstraction rather than a concrete person. This observation reminds us of the difficulty inherent in a religion that depends on creation alone for its inspiration. There are so many good things man finds himself blessed with, but these good things alone will probably leave him with but a shadowy impression of the unseen Donor. By intervening in history and entering into a dialogue with specific persons, God has projected himself into our lives and on to our minds in a very personal way. He, the Author of all that is, has presented himself to man as a living Being with his own personal identity. He is not just the Principle of things. Indeed, he even became man. As Pope Benedict XVI put it, Jesus Christ is his face. From that point, there has never been anything of remoteness about God in his relations with us. He deals with us in a very personal way, and invites a personal response on our part to what he does for us. It is not as if, finding ourselves blessed with good things we feel grateful as a result, but, because the great Donor seems virtually anonymous, we carry on regardless. There is nothing anonymous about the Donor of all that we have received. He is Yahweh God, the one who is, who has become man in the person of Jesus Christ. He has been touched, heard and seen. Now, observe how Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, bestowed good things — beyond what could be expected of mere nature, on those who needed them. He made it all very personal.

What do I mean by this? Notice what happened in our Gospel passage today. Our Lord was travelling along the border between Samaria and Galilee and he was accosted by a band of lepers. From the distance which they were required to maintain, they appealed to him for pity, for mercy. Immediately he told them to go and present themselves to the priest, at which they departed and in the process were healed. We notice the pure liberality of Jesus. He gives on request, unless there is a positive reason for not doing so. But he gives not as if he were a mere Principle or Source of things, in the way one might go to the tap and turn it on for the water that is needed. He is not just some impersonal Cause of good things, access to which one might be lucky enough through circumstances to possess. He is a real, living person who chooses to give what persons have need of and ask for. Moreover, he expects, as would any living person, some appropriate response to him who is the giver. He expects appreciation and acknowledgment. He expects us to recognize that he is the source of the good things we have been given. He expects us to thank him, and indeed, to praise him. He wants us to come to him and ask for what we need. In fact, he wants to be our Friend. He does not want us to carry on in life as if whatever good things have come our way have come from some impersonal Force beyond, a Force or Cause which is shadowy and which can hardly be expected to make much difference to the way things are in fact found to be. So it is that, while all it took was a word from Christ to effect the complete physical transformation of the condition of twelve lepers, our Lord expected them to be grateful. God is a living, real, and profoundly interested Person. Jesus is the image of the unseen God, and his response to the Samaritan leper reveals the attitude of the infinite God. “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no-one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? Then he said to him, Rise and go; your faith has made you well” (Luke 17: 11-19).

The Christian religion is a very personal matter between us, considered individually and as a people, and the living triune God. God is not just the benevolent Ultimate, the Absolute, the Principle of all things. He has a face, and that face is Jesus. He smiles, he laughs, he listens, he watches, he actually laid down his own life for each of us. He freely died that we might live forever. He wants a personal relationship with each of us. He calls us not servants, but his friends. The Creator of the universe is my Friend, indeed my Father and my Brother. Let us resolve to cultivate a deep friendship with God by knowing, loving and serving Jesus Christ.
                                                                    (E.J.Tyler)

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I frequently compare our apostolic work to an engine: gears, pistons, valves, bolts.

Well, charity — your charity — is the lubricant.
                                                            (The Way, no.957)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Sixth Chapter   TRUST IN GOD AGAINST SLANDER

THE DISCIPLE

O Lord God, just Judge, strong and patient, You Who know the weakness and depravity of men, be my strength and all my confidence, for my own conscience is not sufficient for me. You know what I do not know, and, therefore, I ought to humble myself whenever I am accused and bear it meekly. Forgive me, then, in Your mercy for my every failure in this regard, and give me once more the grace of greater endurance. Better to me is Your abundant mercy in obtaining pardon than the justice which I imagine in defending the secrets of my conscience. And though I am not conscious to myself of any fault, yet I cannot thereby justify myself, because without Your mercy no man living will be justified in Your sight.
                                                                 (Concluded)

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Unbelief indeed, considers itself especially rational, or critical of evidence; but it criticizes the evidence of Religion, only because it does not like it, and really goes upon presumptions and prejudices as much as Faith does, only presumptions of an opposite nature.

                                         JHN, from the sermon ‘Love the Safeguard of Faith against Superstition’ (1839)

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Thursday of the thirty second week in Ordinary Time

(November 12) Saint Josaphat, bishop and martyr (1580?-1623)
       In 1967, newspaper photos of Pope Paul VI embracing Athenagoras I, the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, marked a significant step toward the healing of a division in Christendom that has spanned more than nine centuries. In 1595, when today’s saint was a boy, the Orthodox bishop of Brest-Litovsk (famous in World War I) in Belarus and five other bishops representing millions of Ruthenians, sought reunion with Rome. John Kunsevich (Josaphat became his name in religious life) was to dedicate his life and die for the same cause. Born in what was then Poland, he went to work in Wilno and was influenced by clergy adhering to the Union of Brest (1596). He became a Basilian monk, then a priest, and soon was well known as a preacher and as an ascetic. He became bishop of Vitebsk (now in Russia) at a relatively young age, and faced a difficult situation. Most monks, fearing interference in liturgy and customs, did not want union with Rome. By synods, catechetical instruction, reform of the clergy and personal example, however, Josaphat was successful in winning the greater part of the Orthodox in that area to the union. But the next year a dissident hierarchy was set up, and his opposite number spread the accusation that Josaphat had "gone Latin" and that all his people would have to do the same. He was not enthusiastically supported by the Latin bishops of Poland. Despite warnings, he went to Vitebsk, still a hotbed of trouble. Attempts were made to foment trouble and drive him from the diocese: A priest was sent to shout insults to him from his own courtyard. When Josaphat had him removed and shut up in his house, the opposition rang the town hall bell, and a mob assembled. The priest was released, but members of the mob broke into the bishop’s home. He was struck with a halberd, then shot and his body thrown into the river. It was later recovered and is now buried in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. He was the first saint of the Eastern Church to be canonized by Rome. His death brought a movement toward Catholicism and unity, but the controversy continued, and the dissidents, too, had their martyr. After the partition of Poland, the Russians forced most Ruthenians to join the Russian Orthodox Church.
   The seeds of separation were sown in the fourth century when the Roman Empire was divided into East and West. The actual split came over relatively unimportant customs (unleavened bread, Saturday fasting, celibacy). No doubt the political involvement of religious leaders on both sides was a large factor, and doctrinal disagreement was present. But no reason was enough to justify the present tragic division in Christendom, which is 64 percent Roman Catholic, 13 percent Eastern Churches (mostly Orthodox) and 23 percent Protestant, and this when the 71 percent of the world that is not Christian should be experiencing unity and Christ-like charity from Christians! (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Wisdom 7:22b–8:1; Psalm 119:89-91, 130, 135, 175; Luke 17:20-25

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you. Then he said to his disciples, The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. Men will tell you, 'There he is!' or 'Here he is!' Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. (Luke 17: 20-25)

The Kingdom    I remember the exultation of his followers when Francois Mitterrand won the Presidency of France. A new period in French life was about to start! But somehow the lustre began to fade. Time and again there is great excitement all over a nation when a party captures Government. The same thing can be seen even when a dictatorial party wins a democratic election and slowly manipulates the processes so as to entrench its power for long years ahead. Its followers can be filled with enthusiasm for the utopia that is promised. Enormous atrocities can be perpetrated for the sake of a utopia, imagined as a regime of material and political prosperity. The French Revolution exploded on the scene with the promise of liberty, equality and fraternity for all in a nation in which all were to be citizens equally. Citoyens! What in fact took shape was a terrible ogre, a monster with blood and flesh dripping from its vast mouth. Terror was in every neighbourhood and the guillotine became a famed household word. Out of its jaws came the thunder of Bonaparte, and Europe was filled with carnage, fire and sword. It began with the dream of a utopia for this world. A century later another utopia was imposed: that of the Russian Revolution with its millions of dead strewn in its wake. Long, long before, God himself had promised a Kingdom. At the dawn of human history, God had promised that the descendant of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. Abraham was promised that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through him. The prophets saw it coming, — a little here, a little there, and gradually the picture formed. A Messiah was coming, one who would fulfil what God had promised for the people and for the world. But how was this interpreted? All too often it was understood as an earthly utopia. Indeed, there are still those who, accepting the revelation that preceded Christ, take the divine promises to mean a world of peace and prosperity here and now. The notion of a Messiah, dead on the cross and calling on all to follow in his footsteps, is a foolishness to them.

In our Gospel today our Lord is asked — by the Pharisees — when the Kingdom of God would come. They knew it would come and the acceptance of historical revelation involves accepting this hope. John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness calling on all to repent, and to prepare the way for the Lord, for he was coming. He pointed to Jesus as God’s Man, his Anointed one, the Messiah. Then John’s star was removed from sight and Christ stood forth as the light that had suddenly arrived. He called on all to repent, for the Kingdom of God was at hand. When, then, the Pharisees asked, would it come? The problem with the Pharisees as with so many, was their very notion of the Kingdom of God. Our Lord said to them that it is not as you think it to be. “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you.” The Kingdom of God is within you! What would the Pharisees have made of this? We read in the Gospel of St John of one of the Pharisees who came to Jesus by night to be instructed by him. He was Nicodemus, a secret but faithful disciple, and to him our Lord spoke of the Kingdom of God (John 3). You have to be born again, our Lord said, otherwise you cannot enter the Kingdom of God. It will mean being born of water and the Holy Spirit. Importantly, our Lord went on to tell him that he himself must be lifted up, that those who believe in him may not perish but have life everlasting (John 3: 14). In our Gospel today, having replied to the Pharisees, our Lord speaks to his disciples. Before his glory, the Son of man “must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation” (Luke 17: 20-25). The Kingdom of God is not a utopian kingdom of this world. It involves crucifixion. A person will enter the Kingdom or Rule of God when he follows Christ along that road for love of him. The Rule or Reign of God is found and embodied in the person of Jesus Christ, and one enters this Kingdom by entering into union with him. It is this Kingdom which will triumph.

Man’s best happiness here consists in union with Jesus Christ. He is the key and the meaning of the universe. He is the grand linchpin, and we reach the heart of reality by entering into an undying friendship with him, whatever be the cost. The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected in order to enter his glory. The Glory and the Utopia will come, but only through union with him. What he asks is that, for love of him, we renounce ourselves and take up our cross every day and follow in his footsteps. Then comes the Glory. That is what the Kingdom is, and it is found in the person of Jesus, who himself is found in his Church. Go to him, then!
                                                   (E.J.Tyler)

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Get rid of that 'self-satisfied air' which isolates your soul from the souls that approach you. Listen to them. And speak with simplicity; only thus will your work as an apostle grow in extent and fruitfulness.
                                            (The Way, no.958)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Seventh Chapter    EVERY TRIAL MUST BE BORNE FOR THE SAKE OF ETERNAL LIFE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

MY CHILD, do not let the labours which you have taken up for My sake break you, and do not let troubles, from whatever source, cast you down; but in everything let My promise strengthen and console you. I am able to reward you beyond all means and measure.
                                                (Continuing)

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When the Church does not speak, others will speak instead.

                 JHN, From Loss and Gain (1848)

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Friday of the thirty second week in Ordinary Time

(November 13) Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, virgin (1850-1917)
Frances Xavier Cabrini was the first United States citizen to be canonized. Her deep trust in the loving care of her God gave her the strength to be a valiant woman doing the work of Christ. Refused admission to the religious order which had educated her to be a teacher, she began charitable work at the House of Providence Orphanage in Cadogno, Italy. In September 1877, she made her vows there and took the religious habit. When the bishop closed the orphanage in 1880, he named Frances prioress of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. Seven young women from the orphanage joined with her. Since her early childhood in Italy, Frances had wanted to be a missionary in China but, at the urging of Pope Leo XIII, Frances went west instead of east. She travelled with six sisters to New York City to work with the thousands of Italian immigrants living there. She found disappointment and difficulties with every step. When she arrived in New York City, the house intended to be her first orphanage in the United States was not available. The archbishop advised her to return to Italy. But Frances, truly a valiant woman, departed from the archbishop’s residence all the more determined to establish that orphanage. And she did. In 35 years Frances Xavier Cabrini founded 67 institutions dedicated to caring for the poor, the abandoned, the uneducated and the sick. Seeing great need among Italian immigrants who were losing their faith, she organized schools and adult education classes. As a child, she was always frightened of water, unable to overcome her fear of drowning. Yet, despite this fear, she travelled across the Atlantic Ocean more than 30 times. She died of malaria in her own Columbus Hospital in Chicago.
At her canonization on July 7, 1946, Pius XII said, "Although her constitution was very frail, her spirit was endowed with such singular strength that, knowing the will of God in her regard, she permitted nothing to impede her from accomplishing what seemed beyond the strength of a woman." (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Wisdom 13:1-9; Psalm 19:2-5ab; Luke 17:26-37 

Jesus said, Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulphur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day no-one who is on the roof of his house, with his goods inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no-one in the field should go back for anything. Remember Lot's wife! Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left. Where, Lord? they asked. He replied, Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather. (Luke 17: 26-37)

The Judgment      I am not sure whether there has ever been an international study of the effect of the installation of road cameras on reducing speeding on the roads. In Australia the fines are hefty and after a few infringements the license is lost for a period. This can lead to immense inconvenience and even to the loss of a person’s job — if his job depends on his having his license. Being caught by the camera can be plain unlucky. A person can be distracted from watching his speedometer for just a few seconds and then quickly recover his attention, but by then it could be too late. His foot has relaxed down a little on his accelerator, his car has exceeded the limit, and he has been caught. For all the camera knows he was caught speeding over a distance, whereas his speeding was but momentary. All of that said, I am sure that for lots of good and careful drivers, the threat of fines and loss of license makes them doubly careful. Perhaps they choose to take the one route to their workplace so as to be entirely familiar with all road cameras to be encountered. The point is that penalties change behaviour, and the whole of life, from childhood to the grave, illustrates this. There is the constant prospect of reward or punishment ahead, depending on our behaviour now. This pattern in life ought prompt man to expect that, if there be an Afterlife ahead, the nature of it will depend on his behaviour now. As it has turned out, this is one of the most prominent features of revealed religion. God has revealed that following death there is a divine judgment, and following that, there will be either Heaven or Hell. What it is to be for each individual will depend on his behaviour — his thoughts, his words and his actions — now. God will reward and he will punish. The revelation of God’s judgment became clearer and more fulsome as divine revelation unfolded in the course of sacred history. That is to say, what Christ reveals of the judgment of God on virtue and on sin far exceeds what was revealed before him. Our Lord is very clear. Remember Lot’s wife! She was engulfed because she disobeyed.

Just as it is foolish to disregard the sanctions imposed on those who exceed the speed limit, so it is foolish to disregard the divine sanctions on our actions. In our Gospel today, our Lord is obviously referring to the final coming of the Son of Man when he will judge the living and the dead. “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulphur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day no-one who is on the roof of his house, with his goods inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no-one in the field should go back for anything. Remember Lot's wife!” (Luke 17: 26-37). Every man and woman will see that day and will be caught up in it for good or ill. The principal thing, in the last analysis, will be this divine Judgment. Man’s ultimate happiness will depend on how he is judged by God, and God is a moral Judge. He judges according to the goodness or evil of our deeds. The secular man, who lives as if God did not exist, is living far from the true reality of things. Every one of us is a heart-beat away from the most awful thing of all, the all-searching judgment of God. Notice how, when a person is caught having committed a grave crime, his apprehension mounts as the date of his trial approaches? Yet every moment of our lives we inexorably approach the judgment of God. It is unavoidable, for time is carrying us along. We cannot stop, we cannot turn back. The destination is getting nearer and nearer. We shall all most certainly arrive, and when that moment comes it will be all over. Then, nothing further can be done. The books will be opened and everything laid bare. Then the sentence will be pronounced: it will be, Come! or it will be, Go!

St John Fisher was Bishop of Rochester in the time of King Henry VIII and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, to which university post he was re-elected annually for ten years and then appointed for life. He was martyred by Henry VIII for his defence of the Church and her teachings. He kept a human skull before him as he worked — it reminded him of the judgment of God. What must sinful man do? He should acknowledge his sinfulness and repeatedly ask pardon of God in the ways taught to us by Christ and his Church. That said and done, he should trust in the mercy and goodness of God. With this thought in mind, let us take our stand with Jesus, trusting in his love and his sacrifice for our sins. That is the way to prepare for God’s judgment.
                                                                          (E.J.Tyler)

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Contempt and persecution are blessed signs of divine predilection, but there is no proof and sign of predilection more beautiful than this: to pass unnoticed.
                                                                   (The Way, no.959)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Seventh Chapter    EVERY TRIAL MUST BE BORNE FOR THE SAKE OF ETERNAL LIFE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

You will not labour here long, nor will you always be oppressed by sorrows. Wait a little while and you will see a speedy end of evils. The hour will come when all labour and trouble shall be no more. All that passes away with time is trivial.
                                                     (Continuing)

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No doctrine is defined till it is violated.

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

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Saturday of the thirty second week of Ordinary Time

(November 14) St. Gertrude (1256?-1302)
  Gertrude, a Benedictine nun in Helfta (Saxony), was one of the great mystics of the 13th century. Together with her friend and teacher St. Mechtild, she practiced a spirituality called "nuptial mysticism," that is, she came to see herself as the bride of Christ. Her spiritual life was a deeply personal union with Jesus and his Sacred Heart, leading her into the very life of the Trinity. But this was no individualistic piety. Gertrude lived the rhythm of the liturgy, where she found Christ. In the liturgy and Scripture, she found the themes and images to enrich and express her piety. There was no clash between her personal prayer life and the liturgy.
    "Lord, you have granted me your secret friendship by opening the sacred ark of your divinity, your deified heart, to me in so many ways as to be the source of all my happiness; sometimes imparting it freely, sometimes as a special mark of our mutual friendship. You have so often melted my soul with your loving caresses that, if I did not know the abyss of your overflowing condescensions, I should be amazed were I told that even your Blessed Mother had been chosen to receive such extraordinary marks of tenderness and affection" (Adapted from The Life and Revelations of Saint Gertrude). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Wisdom 18:14-16; 19:6-9; Psalm 105:2-3, 36-37, 42-43; Luke 18:1-8 

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.' For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' And the Lord said, Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? (Luke 18: 1-8)

Prayer of petition     From time immemorial man has engaged with the unseen powers who are understood to control, to a greater or lesser extent, the course of the world. For thousands of years the Australian Aborigines performed ceremonies invoking mythic beings, and by this means gained access to the spiritual powers of the Dreaming. The ceremonies enabled participants to enter into the ongoing renewal of the Dreaming on which life and the world depended. So it has been across the teeming ocean of human life. Prayer and ritual is characteristically a feature of human society. Man has been convinced that the course of the world depended on higher powers and that these same powers could be brought over to his side. They could be placated and made friendly by the ceremonies — though often they were friendly in the first place. The secular student typically regards this image of the deity as a mere projection by religious man of his inner desires or experience of life. But it could be viewed more profoundly as a dim perception by man of something of the real and objective Other. When he addressed the Australian Aborigines at Alice Springs in 1986, Pope John Paul II said that “for thousands of years” they had fashioned their culture, and that “during all this time, the Spirit of God has been with you.” The Pope said that “Your "Dreaming", which influences your lives so strongly that, no matter what happens, you remain for ever people of your culture, is your own way of touching the mystery of God’s Spirit in you and in creation. You must keep your striving for God and hold on to it in your lives.” The point here is that man is a being of prayer and religion, even though this can deform and degenerate into magic and religious manipulation. Now, God, who created man with a religious instinct for him, has intervened in history and revealed his plan for man. What does he — made man in Christ — say to us about our prayer? Our Gospel today is very clear about one point.

Our Lord encourages us to pray for all that we need. Apart from anything, this sets a divine seal on the fact that in all places and at all times man has prayed. Christ in effect says, it is very good that you have prayed. It is what you ought be doing. But of course God has now revealed himself in person, and so we have all the more reason to pray with all our heart. We can pray with real light, all the while following divine instructions. In our Gospel passage today, our Lord tells us another thing about prayer. It is that we should pray persistently for what we need. Our Lord gives an illustration drawn from everyday life. It is the picture of the unjust judge who is badgered by the poor widow to grant her rights. She wore him down, and he granted her request. Even if a person is not loving and thoughtful, even if he is unjust, sheer persistence will make him get up and grant a petition — if only to be rid of the importunate petitioner. We see ongoing prayer in human societies and in fallen man — well then, how much more ought we pray in ongoing fashion to our loving and all-powerful Father in heaven! Our Lord is inviting us to be importunate with God. “And the Lord said, Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18: 1-8). The teaching of Christ about the prayer of petition as expressed in this passage is that we should persist in asking for what we need. But all too often we simply lack the faith to persist in prayer. We give up on God because he delays or seems not to be answering our prayer. We think he does not care, or that he cannot give what we are asking for, or it may even become clear that we doubt the reality of God anyway. If we truly believe that God is God, then we shall believe that the one to whom we are praying is all-loving, all-powerful and all-wise. If our prayer is not answered in the precise way we wish, it must be because God is answering it in a better way. We must not give up on God.

If there is something important to pray for, and if in the presence of God we genuinely think our asking for it would not displease him, then we ought pray for it. If it continues to seem to be the will of God that we ask him for this favour, then we ought continue to ask for it. We ought humbly persist. If nothing results, we ought persist in faith, unless it becomes manifest that it is not according to the will of God that we pray for it. We ought pray persistently and not lose heart. If in the event the favour is not granted, we may be sure that it is in our best interest that we not receive that favour, and that God will answer our prayer in a much better way.
                                                        (E.J.Tyler)

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Just as the clamour of the ocean is made up of the noise of each one of its waves, so the sanctity of your apostolate is made up of the personal virtues of each one of you.
                                                 (The Way, no.960)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Seventh Chapter   EVERY TRIAL MUST BE BORNE FOR THE SAKE OF ETERNAL LIFE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

What you do, do well. Work faithfully in My vineyard. I will be your reward. Write, read, sing, mourn, keep silence, pray, and bear hardships like a man. Eternal life is worth all these and greater battles. Peace will come on a day which is known to the Lord, and then there shall be no day or night as at present but perpetual light, infinite brightness, lasting peace, and safe repose. Then you will not say: "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" nor will you cry: "Woe is me, because my sojourn is prolonged." For then death will be banished, and there will be health unfailing. There will be no anxiety then, but blessed joy and sweet, noble companionship.
                                              (Continuing)

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A Prophet is one who comes from God, who speaks with authority, who is ever one and the same, who is precise and decisive in his statements, who is equal to successive difficulties, and can smite and overthrow error. Such has the Catholic Church shown herself in her history, such is she at this day.

                                    JHN, from ‘Mysteries of Nature and of Grace’ (1849)

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Thirty third Sunday of Ordinary Time B

Prayers this week: The Lord says: my plans for you are peace and not disaster; when you call to me, I will listen to you, and I will bring you back to the place from which I exiled you.

Father of all that is good, keep us faithful in serving you, for to serve you is our lasting joy. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

(November 15) St. Albert the Great (1206-1280)
Albert the Great was a 13th-century German Dominican who influenced decisively the Church's stance toward Aristotelian philosophy brought to Europe by the spread of Islam. Students of philosophy know him as the master of Thomas Aquinas. Albert’s attempt to understand Aristotle’s writings established the climate in which Thomas Aquinas developed his synthesis of Greek wisdom and Christian theology. But Albert deserves recognition on his own merits as a curious, honest and diligent scholar. He was the eldest son of a powerful and wealthy German lord of military rank. He was educated in the liberal arts. Despite fierce family opposition, he entered the Dominican novitiate. His boundless interests prompted him to write a compendium of all knowledge: natural science, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, astronomy, ethics, economics, politics and metaphysics. His explanation of learning took 20 years to complete. "Our intention," he said, "is to make all the aforesaid parts of knowledge intelligible to the Latins." He achieved his goal while serving as an educator at Paris and Cologne, as Dominican provincial and even as bishop of Regensburg for a short time. He defended the mendicant orders and preached the Crusade in Germany and Bohemia. Albert, a Doctor of the Church, is the patron of scientists and philosophers. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Daniel 12:1-3; Psalm 16:5, 8-11; Hebrews 10:11-14, 18; Mark 13:24-32 

Jesus said, in those days, following that distress, 'the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.' At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens. Now learn this lesson from the fig-tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. No-one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. (Mark 13:24-32)

The Last Judgment    A person has applied for an advertised position, the upshot of which he knows will have a profound effect on his life. He has sent his curriculum vitae and the accompanying references, and very soon he must present himself before the selecting panel for his interview. The panel will make a judgment on his suitability over other candidates. The day looms and he prepares anxiously. So much will depend on it. Or again, after a few years of grinding and difficult work, a Ph.D. candidate is still uncertain of his thesis. But he must present it because his time is up. It will now be examined by three judges external to his University and his concern is considerable. Much depends on the acceptance of his thesis. His whole career will be affected by it. Or again, a person’s doctor has told him that there is something wrong with his lungs, and it does not look good. Indeed, it may be cancer. Tests must be taken, and then sent away for examination. All this is done and the person’s apprehension grows as the medical judgment is awaited. There are so many instances in life of a judgment being made, a judgment on which so much depends. Life is filled with tests, and in passing one we go on to yet another. In failing one we still have the opportunity of others. All of life is a scene of trials and tests. Some persons pass certain tests with distinction and achieve acclaim in certain spheres of activity. Amid all of this, though, there is a deeper test that most people are aware of, and that is the test of one’s very humanity. A person may have climbed from rags to riches, succeeding in test after test in his special line. But, at a deeper level, those around him know that he is not much of a man after all. He is self-centred and seems to have little sense of God. That is to say, there is a deeper test in life that is going on every day, and that is the moral test to which all are subject. This is the greatest test in life. It is present in all of life’s tests, and a man’s moral state will show if he is distinguishing himself in it. The supreme test that life presents is the test as to whether we are good, not much good, or even bad.

The fact that the life of everyone is made up of tests, especially moral tests, suggests to ordinary reflection that testing does not end with life. That is to say, the fact that all our life we are looking ahead to being tested in one sense or another, ought naturally lead us to expect a test beyond this life. Moreover, life ought intimate to us that this final test hereafter will be about the main issue, personal goodness. God has intervened in history to reveal himself and his plan for us, and at the forefront of his revelation is the confirmation that life indeed is a trial and that it will be consummated by a judgment when life is over. As happens so often during life, after life we shall be up for a judgment. This time, though, it will be the last we shall face. The judgment following death will determine the course of each soul for all eternity. Judgment will be pronounced on the one important thing in life: the goodness or evil of the soul. There will be no escaping the reward or the sentencing as the case may be. There will be no new opportunity beyond this. We have all this on the word of Christ as proclaimed by the Church. There will be either Heaven or Hell for each soul, with a further purification for many who are pronounced to be saved. But our Lord has also revealed, and he speaks of it in our Gospel today (Mark 13:24-32), that there will be a Last Judgment not merely for the individual, but for all together. All mankind will be gathered before the Judge. The judgment on those who have died will be confirmed, and the judgment on those still living will be uttered. This time, though, the resurrected body of each will at once share in the eternal retribution which the soul received at his or her particular judgment following death. To that point the soul will have undergone the reward or punishment due to him, but with this Last Judgment the resurrected body will now share in the lot of the soul. The whole person, body and soul will be with God forever, or lost forever, as the case may be. It is an awesome and solemn thought. Eternity for body and soul will depend on each person’s judgment, which in turn will have depended on each person’s life.

Christ has gone from sight, but he dwells among us in his body, the Church. As the Church’s Head he drives the mission of the Church, which is to bring redemption to all the nations. There is a tremendous urgency about the work, for each soul is the apple of God’s eye. At death comes the particular judgment of each. At the end of history Christ will come again — and he refers to it in our Gospel today. He will come as Judge of the living and the dead, and judgment will be pronounced on all. The mighty hand of God will cause a final parting of the ways, some — body and soul — to go up to be with him, and others to go down to be lost forever. Let us love and serve him, then!
                                                           (E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1038-1041 (The Last Judgment)

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You have got to be a 'man of God', a man of interior life, a man of prayer and sacrifice. Your apostolate must be the overflow of your life 'within'.
                                               (The Way, no.961)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Seventh Chapter    EVERY TRIAL MUST BE BORNE FOR THE SAKE OF ETERNAL LIFE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

If you could see the everlasting crowns of the saints in heaven, and the great glory wherein they now rejoice -- they who were once considered contemptible in this world and, as it were, unworthy of life itself -- you would certainly humble yourself at once to the very earth, and seek to be subject to all rather than to command even one. Nor would you desire the pleasant days of this life, but rather be glad to suffer for God, considering it your greatest gain to be counted as nothing among men.
                                           (Continuing)

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In a famous passage from his Discourses to Mixed Congregations, quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, John Henry Newman describes the dangers of ‘notoriety’ – valuing fame for its own sake. Newman’s remarks have a powerful contemporary ring to them. There is only one way is a way to escape this risk – the Catholic faith:

Wealth is one idol of the day, and notoriety is a second. I am not speaking, I repeat, of what men actually pursue, but of what they look up to, what they revere. Men may not have the opportunity of pursuing what they admire still. Never could notoriety exist as it does now, in any former age of the world; now that the news of the hour from all parts of the world, private news as well as public, is brought day by day to every individual, as I may say, of the community, to the poorest artisan and the most secluded peasant, by processes so uniform, so unvarying, so spontaneous, that they almost bear the semblance of a natural law. And hence notoriety, or the making a noise in the world, has come to be considered a great good in itself, and a ground of veneration. Time was when men could only make a display by means of expenditure; and the world used to gaze with wonder on those who had large establishments, many servants, many horses, richly-furnished houses, gardens, and parks: it does so still, that is, when it has the opportunity of doing so: for such magnificence is the fortune of the few, and comparatively few are its witnesses. Notoriety, or, as it may be called, newspaper fame, is to the many what style and fashion, to use the language of the world, are to those who are within or belong to the higher circles; it becomes to them a sort of idol, worshipped for its own sake, and without any reference to the shape in which it comes before them. It may be an evil fame or a good fame; it may be the notoriety of a great statesman, or of a great preacher, or of a great speculator, or of a great experimentalist, or of a great criminal; of one who has laboured in the improvement of our schools, or hospitals, or prisons, or workhouses, or of one who has robbed his neighbour of his wife. It matters not; so that a man is talked much of, and read much of, he is thought much of; nay, let him even have died justly under the hands of the law, still he will be made a sort of martyr of. … For the question with men is, not whether he is great, or good, or wise, or holy; not whether he is base, and vile, and odious, but whether he is in the mouths of men, whether he has centred on himself the attention of many, whether he has done something out of the way, whether he has been (as it were) canonised in the publications of the hour. [...]

But oh! what a change, my brethren, when the good hand of God brings them by some marvellous providence to the pit’s mouth, and then out into the blessed light of day! what a change for them when they first begin to see with the eyes of the soul, with the intuition which grace gives, Jesus, the Sun of Justice; and the heaven of Angels and Archangels in which He dwells; and the bright Morning Star, which is His Blessed Mother; and the continual floods of light falling and striking against the earth, and transformed, as they fall, into an infinity of hues, which are His Saints; and the boundless sea, which is the image of His divine immensity; and then again the calm, placid Moon by night, which images His Church; and the silent stars, like good and holy men, travelling on in lonely pilgrimage to their eternal rest! [...]

And such as this in its measure is the contrast, to which the awakened soul is witness, between the objects of its admiration and pursuit in its natural state, and those which burst upon it when it has entered into communion with the Church Invisible, when it has come “to Mount Sion, and to the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to a company of many thousand Angels, and to the Church of the first-born, who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the just now perfected, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Testament” [Heb 12: 21-24]. From that day it has begun a new life … a change there will be in its views and estimation of things, as soon as it has heard and has faith in the word of God, as soon as it understands that wealth, and notoriety, and influence, and high place, are not the first of blessings and the real standard of good; but that saintliness and all its attendants,—saintly purity, saintly poverty, heroic fortitude and patience, self-sacrifice for the sake of others, renouncement of the world, the favour of Heaven, the protection of Angels, the smile of the Blessed Virgin, the gifts of grace, the interpositions of miracle, the intercommunion of merits,—that these are the high and precious things, the things to be looked up to, the things to be reverently spoken of.

(Reference: John Henry Newman, Discourses addressed to Mixed Congregations (1849) Discourse no. 5, p. 90-94)

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Monday of the thirty third week in Ordinary Time

(November 16) St. Margaret of Scotland (1050?-1093)
Margaret of Scotland was a truly liberated woman in the sense that she was free to be herself. For her, that meant freedom to love God and serve others. Not Scottish by birth, Margaret was the daughter of Princess Agatha of Hungary and the Anglo-Saxon Prince Edward Atheling. She spent much of her youth in the court of her great-uncle, the English king, Edward the Confessor. Her family fled from William the Conqueror and was shipwrecked off the coast of Scotland. King Malcolm befriended them and was captivated by the beautiful, gracious Margaret. They were married at the castle of Dunfermline in 1070. Malcolm was good-hearted, but rough and uncultured, as was his country. Because of Malcolm’s love for Margaret, she was able to soften his temper, polish his manners and help him become a virtuous king. He left all domestic affairs to her and often consulted her in state matters. Margaret tried to improve her adopted country by promoting the arts and education. For religious reform, she instigated synods and was present for the discussions which tried to correct religious abuses common among priests and lay people, such as simony, usury and incestuous marriages. With her husband, she founded several churches. Margaret was not only a queen, but a mother. She and Malcolm had six sons and two daughters. Margaret personally supervised their religious instruction and other studies. Although she was very much caught up in the affairs of the household and country, she remained detached from the world. Her private life was austere. She had certain times for prayer and reading Scripture. She ate sparingly and slept little in order to have time for devotions. She and Malcolm kept two Lents, one before Easter and one before Christmas. During these times she always rose at midnight for Mass. On the way home she would wash the feet of six poor persons and give them alms. She was always surrounded by beggars in public and never refused them. It is recorded that she never sat down to eat without first feeding nine orphans and 24 adults. In 1093, King William Rufus made a surprise attack on Alnwick castle. King Malcolm and his oldest son, Edward, were killed. Margaret, already on her deathbed, died four days after her husband.
   "When [Margaret] spoke, her conversation was with the salt of wisdom. When she was silent, her silence was filled with good thoughts. So thoroughly did her outward bearing correspond with the staidness of her character that it seemed as if she has been born the pattern of a virtuous life" (Turgot, St. Margaret's confessor). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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1 Maccab 1:10-15, 41-43, 54-57, 62-63;   Ps 119:53, 61, 134, 150, 155, 158;    Luke 18:35-43 

As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard the crowd going by, he asked what was happening. They told him, Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. He called out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! Those who led the way rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me! Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him. When he came near, Jesus asked him, What do you want me to do for you? Lord, I want to see, he replied. Jesus said to him, Receive your sight; your faith has healed you. Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus, praising God. When all the people saw it, they also praised God. (Luke 18: 35-43)

Doing one’s best    It is the last quarter of the nineteenth century. A young couple who live in Camden just outside Sydney has just bought a property in a fairly remote location in Burragorang Valley. The Valley is not far from them but because of lack of roads, quite difficult of access. The couple have two infants with one more on the way. They move down there and over the years that follow they build up the farm and raise a large family. They love their farm but, as is often said about Australia, they suffer from the tyranny of distance. They must do without many things because those things are far away. The education of the children is less than it could have been were they elsewhere. They do not have the medical attention they used to have. It is a great event when a road is built from their area to the nearest town outside the Valley. In giving this example I am referring to the fact that ours is an order of reality which is governed by space and time, and the limitations of space and time deprive us of enjoying certain benefits. It is a law of our material condition that while we enjoy some benefits in our existing situation, our enjoyment of many other benefits will depend on the limitations of time and space being overcome. This applies also to the benefits of religion. At the dawn of history, God promised redemption from the Fall of our first parents. The descendant of the woman would crush the Serpent’s head. But thousands upon thousands of years would pass till the revelation granted to Abraham, and then the best part of two millennia would pass till the arrival of the Messiah himself. It seems a slow route to be following to attain the salvation of the world. But God respects the limitations and laws of his creation. Blessings reach us amid the limitations of place and time. In our Gospel today, a blind beggar sits by the roadside begging. He has been many years in his blindness. He is suddenly fortunate, for he is told that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. Now is the time, and he, Jesus, is not far away! If he does not act now, the time will pass and distance will prevent his gaining the blessing. So he shouts.

These things are obvious, but they bear consideration. If that beggar had not been sitting by that roadside at that particular time, and if Jesus had not chosen to take that route at that point of time, the beggar would have remained in his blindness. Much depended on a coincidence of factors governing space and time — all of which, of course, falls within the guiding Providence of God. If the beggar had not made the very best of his circumstances at that precise point, nothing would have happened. If the beggar had not inquired from the passing crowd what it was that was going on, he would not have been led to impose himself vociferously on the crowd and make his voice heard above the din. His voice carried, and overcame the distance. Having heard his cries to Jesus, Christ stopped and directed that the man be brought to him. Then there followed his complete cure, and his following of Jesus along the road. He became a disciple — and we might say that a great deal depended on a coming together of factors of time and place. It also depended on the beggar — and even Christ himself — making the best use of that propitious moment. This is, we might say, a picture of the workings of God in the world he has created. There were vast numbers of persons whom Christ did not reach despite his tremendous efforts, because though he was God, he took to himself a human nature with all its limitations. God chose to respect the restraints inherent in his own creative and redeeming work. But he also maximized its possibilities. Now, what has this to do with each of us? We too, aware of the constraints of time and place, must make the very best use of time and place to make Christ our life and the life of others. Just before he ascended into heaven our Lord entrusted his disciples with a tremendous responsibility. It was to go to the whole world and make disciples of all the nations. They were to bring him to all those represented by the blind man of our Gospel today. We must every day set about maximising both time and place to tell every man and woman, Come! He is calling you!

Life is short — so time limits us. Space and place also limit our options. But we must maximise the possibilities as did the blind beggar. This applies not only to our own benefiting from the blessings of Christ, but also to our bringing those blessings to others. We have a pressing work to do in life, the work of God which is — as St John says in his Gospel (ch.6) — to believe in the One he has sent. Let us do our best to surmount the things that can prevent us from knowing Christ our life, and that can prevent others from knowing him too. This is what the blind beggar did, and as a result he followed our Lord along the road. Let us take our cue from him, then!
                                                         (E.J.Tyler)

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Unity. Unity and subjection. What good to me are the loose parts of a clock — even though they are finely— wrought — if they cannot tell me the time?
                                                  (The Way, no.962)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE      INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Seventh Chapter   EVERY TRIAL MUST BE BORNE FOR THE SAKE OF ETERNAL LIFE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

Oh, if these things appealed to you and penetrated deeply into your heart, how could you dare to complain even once? Ought not all trials be borne for the sake of everlasting life? In truth, the loss or gain of God's kingdom is no small matter.
                                                      (Continuing)

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Mary … is pre-eminently faithful to her Lord and Son. Let no one for an instant suppose that she is not supremely zealous for His honour, or, as those who are not Catholics fancy, that to exalt her is to be unfaithful to Him. Her true servants are still more truly His. Well as she rewards her friends, she would deem him no friend, but a traitor, who preferred her to Him. As He is zealous for her honour, so is she for His.

                                 JHN, from Meditations and Devotions (1893)

A people’s religion is ever a corrupt religion, in spite of the provisions of Holy Church. If she is to be Catholic, you must admit within her net fish of every kind, guests good and bad, vessels of gold, vessels of earth.

                 JHN, from A Letter Addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey (1865)

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Tuesday of the thirty third week in Ordinary Time

(November 17) Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, religious (1207-1231)
          In her short life Elizabeth manifested such great love for the poor and suffering that she has become the patroness of Catholic charities and of the Secular Franciscan Order. The daughter of the King of Hungary, Elizabeth chose a life of penance and asceticism when a life of leisure and luxury could easily have been hers. This choice endeared her in the hearts of the common people throughout Europe. At the age of 14 Elizabeth was married to Louis of Thuringia (a German principality), whom she deeply loved; she bore three children. Under the spiritual direction of a Franciscan friar, she led a life of prayer, sacrifice and service to the poor and sick. Seeking to become one with the poor, she wore simple clothing. Daily she would take bread to hundreds of the poorest in the land, who came to her gate. After six years of marriage, her husband died in the Crusades, and she was grief-stricken. Her husband’s family looked upon her as squandering the royal purse, and mistreated her, finally throwing her out of the palace. The return of her husband’s allies from the Crusades resulted in her being reinstated, since her son was legal heir to the throne. In 1228 Elizabeth joined the Secular Franciscan Order, spending the remaining few years of her life caring for the poor in a hospital which she founded in honor of St. Francis. Elizabeth’s health declined, and she died before her 24th birthday in 1231. Her great popularity resulted in her canonization four years later.
            Elizabeth understood well the lesson Jesus taught when he washed his disciples' feet at the Last Supper: The Christian must be one who serves the humblest needs of others, even if one serves from an exalted position. Of royal blood, Elizabeth could have lorded it over her subjects. Yet she served them with such a loving heart that her brief life won for her a special place in the hearts of many. Elizabeth is also an example to us in her following the guidance of a spiritual director. Growth in the spiritual life is a difficult process. We can play games very easily if we don't have someone to challenge us or to share experiences so as to help us avoid pitfalls. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: 2 Maccabees 6:18-31; Psalm 3:2-7; Luke 19:1-10 

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today. So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, He has gone to be the guest of a 'sinner'. But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount. Jesus said to him, Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. (Luke 19: 1-10)

Conversion        In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI declared the year to be a Year of the Priesthood. He proposed that the Church contemplate especially Saint John Vianney, the famous Cure of Ars in nineteenth century France. The Cure of Ars has been declared by the Church to be patron saint of parish priests. I can remember some fifty years ago a priest who went on to be the Provincial superior of his religious order. He himself had never served a term working in a parish, and he took St John Vianney as his patron saint. The fact is that the Cure of Ars was a remarkable religious prodigy. He was a great saint and from his backwater parish he had a remarkable reputation and influence. Archbishop Ullathorne of Birmingham once visited his parish to speak with the Cure, and he saw numerous people sleeping in the fields awaiting their turn to go to Confession. Now, if one reads the story of his life — and there are several — a notable thing about him is that from his earliest years he had a remarkable propensity for religious faith. He received his First Holy Communion with the most profound reverence. I am not aware that there was what we would normally call "a conversion" in his life. Doubtless, all through his life there were daily "conversions" from sin and he was acutely aware of sin in his life, as are all the saints. But there was no notable turning point because he always seemed to be growing in grace. The case is very different with vast numbers of good and holy persons. Due to the grace of God, they undergo conversions. Archbishop Ullathorne himself underwent a conversion while at Mass in Memel (Autobiography, p.34). His famous and brilliant friend, John Henry Newman, underwent a profound conversion at age 15 (Apologia, p.4). St Paul underwent a conversion on the way to Damascus. Augustine underwent his conversion after years of sin and heresy. The fact is that God calls people to himself in thousands of varied ways. Our Gospel today gives us one of those ways and it certainly involved a dramatic conversion.

Imagine our Gospel scene. Zacchaeus was a chief tax collector of Jericho and had done extremely well, but had compromised himself seriously and repeatedly in the business of garnering his wealth. Would anyone have regarded him as having spiritual potential? Scarcely, and yet there was something in him that drew him in a spiritual direction, for he was anxious to see Jesus. He ran ahead of where Jesus was going, for he could not catch a glimpse of him for the crowd. Jesus was holy. He exercised the power of God. He was a great prophet. God was in him. So Zacchaeus ran ahead and climbed the tree which he could see Jesus would be approaching. It is a beautiful scene, but something much more beautiful was about to happen. Our Lord did not just deal with crowds — he dealt with individuals. On one occasion he was pressed by the crowd while on his way to heal someone who was seriously ill. Suddenly he stopped and asked who touched him. Everything came to a halt and Jesus carefully looked around, his penetrating gaze searching the crowd. Someone had touched him, and as a result, had been healed. The unknown woman came forward and then received the loving assurance of Jesus that her faith had saved her. Christ is interested in each individual. And so it was that, as Jesus moved along with the crowd around and behind him, he suddenly stopped and looked up. A smile came across his face as he addressed the chief tax collector by name. He had immediately plumbed the heart of Zacchaeus and asked him to come down from the tree, for he was to dine in his house that day. Zacchaeus clambered down, with his heart in a process of profound change. The fact that Zacchaeus’s name is given suggests that he became a faithful disciple, and it all began with this dramatic conversion. What does this tell us? It tells us that Christ can change the life of anyone if there is but an opening. He can change our lives too, if like Zacchaeus, we truly want to see him. Every saint is a model for all of us but there is something special that the converted saint offers us. It is the lesson that grace can overcome sin.

Let us place ourselves in the company of Zacchaeus and run ahead, as it were, to see Jesus. Let us climb that tree and receive the loving gaze of Jesus Christ as he asks us to come down and receive him into the house of our soul. Let us receive him every day, for he wants to abide with us constantly. He asks that, like Zacchaeus, we renounce sin and make him our Friend. He asks for ongoing conversion from sin, all sin. His love will enable us to do this, because with his love has come grace, that grace that changes the heart of the sinner and sets him on the path of sanctity. 
                                                                                                     (E.J.Tyler)

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May I never see 'cliques' developing in your work. It would make a mockery of the apostolate: for if, in the end, the 'clique' got

control of a universal undertaking, how quickly that universal undertaking would be reduced to a clique itself!
                                                         (The Way, no.963)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ     BOOK THREE       INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Seventh Chapter      EVERY TRIAL MUST BE BORNE FOR THE SAKE OF ETERNAL LIFE
 

Lift up your countenance to heaven, then. Behold Me, and with Me all My saints. They had great trials in this life, but now they rejoice. They are consoled. Now they are safe and at rest. And they shall abide with Me for all eternity in the kingdom of My Father.
                            (Concluded)

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Man seems to die and to be no more, when he is but quitting us, and is really beginning to live. Then he sees sights which before it did not even enter into his mind to conceive, and the world is even less to him than he to the world.

                                                       JHN, from the sermon ‘The Lapse of Time’ (1832)

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Wednesday of the thirty third week in Ordinary Time

(November 18) Dedication of St. Peter and St. Paul
      St. Peter’s Basilica is probably the most famous church in Christendom. Massive in scale and a veritable museum of art and architecture, it began on a much humbler scale. Vatican Hill was a simple cemetery where believers gathered at St. Peter’s tomb to pray. In 319 Constantine built on the site a basilica that stood for more than a thousand years until, despite numerous restorations, it threatened to collapse. In 1506 Pope Julius II ordered it razed and reconstructed, but the new basilica was not completed and dedicated for more than two centuries. St. Paul’s Outside the Walls stands near the Abaazia delle Tre Fontane, where St. Paul is believed to have been beheaded. The largest church in Rome until St. Peter’s was rebuilt, the basilica also rises over the traditional site of its namesake’s grave. The most recent edifice was constructed after a fire in 1823. The first basilica was also Constantine’s doing. Constantine’s building projects enticed the first of a centuries-long parade of pilgrims to Rome. From the time the basilicas were first built until the empire crumbled under “barbarian” invasions, the two churches, although miles apart, were linked by a roofed colonnade of marble columns.
     “It is extraordinarily interesting that Roman pilgrimage began at an…early time. Pilgrims did not wait for the Peace of the Church [Constantine’s edict of toleration] before they visited the tombs of the Apostles. They went to Rome a century before there were any public churches and when the Church was confined to the tituli [private homes] and the catacombs. The two great pilgrimage sites were exactly as today—the tombs, or memorials, of St. Peter upon the Vatican Hill and the tomb of St. Paul off the Ostian Way” (H.V. Morton, This Is Rome).  (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: 2 Maccabees 7:1, 20-31; Psalm 17:1bcd, 5-6, 8b and 15; Luke 19:11-28 

While they were listening to this, he went on to tell them a parable, because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once. He said: A man of noble birth went to a distant country to receive for himself a kingdom and then to return. So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. 'Put this money to work,' he said, 'until I come back.' But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, 'We don't want this man to be our king.' He was made king, however, and returned home. Then he sent for the servants to whom he had given the money, in order to find out what they had gained with it. The first one came and said, 'Sir, your mina has earned ten more.' 'Well done, my good servant!' his master replied. 'Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.' The second came and said, 'Sir, your mina has earned five more.' His master answered, 'You take charge of five cities.' Then another servant came and said, 'Sir, here is your mina; I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man. You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow.' His master replied, 'I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant! You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow? Why then didn't you put my money on deposit, so that when I came back, I could have collected it with interest?' Then he said to those standing by, 'Take his mina away from him and give it to the one who has ten minas.' 'Sir,' they said, 'he already has ten!' He replied, 'I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what he has will be taken away. But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be a king over them— bring them here and kill them in front of me.' After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. (Luke 19: 11-28)

The End    It is well recognized that in structuring his Gospel, Luke brought out the climactic character of the Passion and Death of Christ. Our Lord’s final journey up to Jerusalem is given special emphasis, and important teachings are placed in the course of that journey — as he approaches Jericho, as he leaves Jericho, and so on, as the case may be. In our Gospel passage today “he went on to tell them a parable, because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once.” It seems that there was something about our Lord’s manner and teaching that suggested that “the kingdom of God” was imminent. They had formed the impression that the kingdom of God was about to appear — that is, immediately. As Jerusalem was approached, there was mounting expectation. A little later in the chapter, our Lord approaches the city seated on a colt and is acclaimed of his disciples. They welcome him as the King who had been promised. All this is to say that our Lord had connected his entry into Jerusalem and what would then follow, with the coming of the Kingdom. That general point had been conveyed, even though its detail had been — as usual — misinterpreted. This does remind us of the central role of the Passion and Death of the Lord in the coming of the Kingdom. By means of it, Jesus would, to use the imagery he employs in his parable, go away and be appointed King. Then he would return. That return would occur in multiple senses. He would return at his Resurrection. He would return in his gift of the Holy Spirit to his Church at Pentecost, to remain with the Church in the power of the Spirit to the end. Finally, he would return on the clouds of heaven at his final coming to judge the living and the dead. But the climax of his life and the beginning of the Kingdom would be achieved by his Passion and Death. It was necessary that he suffer in order to enter his glory as King of kings and Lord of lords. The people had not appreciated the Passion, but they had picked up that the Kingdom was near at hand.

However, it was not as they thought. They thought that very soon, they too would experience the glory if they followed him now with acclaim. But no, there was much work ahead for the servants of the King — and it was to be real, industrious, fruitful work. They had to put their heads down and enter into the task, for the man of noble birth would come back as King and demand an account. That is, they had to work with energy and effect for the Kingdom, if they wanted to participate in its glory. And so, while in the parable the man of noble birth goes to a far country to receive for himself the kingdom, prior to his leaving he entrusts his servants with his money (Greek: mna). With that money they were to gain more for the King. We read that “A man of noble birth went to a distant country to receive for himself a kingdom and then to return. So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. 'Put this money to work,' he said, 'until I come back.'” Now, we notice in the parable that there are two groups of persons whom the man of noble birth leaves behind as he goes forth to receive the kingship. There are his servants to whom he entrusts his funds, and there are citizens who hate him and who, when he has gone, refuse to accept his authority. Thus, in very simple terms, is the world divided. There are the servants of Christ, and there are those who do not accept him. St John, in the Prologue of his Gospel, speaks of the Word coming to his own, and his own not receiving him. But to those who do receive him he gives the power to become children of God. In the famous Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola there is the very important meditation on the Two Standards, the Standard of Christ and the Standard of Satan. Those citizens who do not accept him will be condemned when he returns. But the servants too, must face a judgment at his return. Their judgment will be on the industry with which they have served the interests of the King, and that judgment will affect all the servants down to the least. The servant who had done nothing with his master’s money would lose everything.

Our Lord is saying that he, and he alone, is the King. He will come to judge all. Those who wilfully and knowingly refuse his authority will be condemned. It will be a sentence of death. But those servants of his who accept his authority as King and who have been entrusted with the promotion of his Kingdom in their everyday lives, will also face a tribunal. Their judgment will concern the use they have made of the treasure they were given. Let us then use every day of our lives to serve Christ our Lord and to enhance his lordship in the world — for he is coming. When he comes, there will be a solemn judgment, and then his kingdom will have no end.
                                                             (E.J.Tyler)

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'There are so many ways', you told me dejectedly. There need to be many; so that each soul can find its own in that wonderful variety.

Bewildered? Make your choice once and for all: and the bewilderment will turn into certainty.
                                                (The Way, no.964)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Eighth Chapter   THE DAY OF ETERNITY AND THE DISTRESSES OF THIS LIFE

THE DISCIPLE

O MOST happy mansion of the city above! O most bright day of eternity, which night does not darken, but which the highest truth ever enlightens! O day, ever joyful and ever secure, which never changes its state to the opposite! Oh, that this day shine forth, that all these temporal things come to an end! It envelops the saints all resplendent with heavenly brightness, but it appears far off as through a glass to us wanderers on the earth. The citizens of heaven know how joyful that day is, but the exiled sons of Eve mourn that this one is bitter and tedious.
                                                    (Continuing)

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Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.

                                        JHN, from the ‘Biglietto Speech‘ (1879)

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Thursday of the thirty third week in Ordinary Time

(November 19) St. Agnes of Assisi 1197-1253
Agnes was the sister of St. Clare and her first follower. When Agnes left home two weeks after Clare’s departure, their family attempted to bring Agnes back by force. They tried to drag her out of the monastery, but all of a sudden her body became so heavy that several knights could not budge it. Her uncle Monaldo tried to strike her but was temporarily paralyzed. The knights then left Agnes and Clare in peace. Agnes matched her sister in devotion to prayer and in willingness to endure the strict penances which characterized their lives at San Damiano. In 1221 a group of Benedictine nuns in Monticelli (near Florence) asked to become Poor Clares. St. Clare sent Agnes to become abbess of that monastery. Agnes soon wrote a rather sad letter about how much she missed Clare and the other nuns at San Damiano. After establishing other Poor Clare monasteries in northern Italy, Agnes was recalled to San Damiano in 1253 when Clare was dying. Agnes followed Clare in death three months later. Agnes was canonized in 1753. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: 1 Maccabees 2:15-29; Psalm 50:1b-2, 5-6, 14-15; Luke 19:41-44 

As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace— but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognise the time of God's coming to you. (Luke 19: 41-44)

The heart of Christ     Consider the mythical gods of Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman and, say, Nordic religions. Religious myth is an important part of the life of man, and its meaning is the object of unending research. Consider the mythical figure of Baiame (or Daramulan) of the traditional Aboriginal religion of South East Australia, as reported by Howitt in the nineteenth century. Baiame is impressive. But of course, philosophy at its best — for example, the thought of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the best systems that built on their foundations — attained far more to the truth of God than did religious myth. St Augustine considered Christianity as the successor, not of the religions of the ancient world, but of its philosophy. But for all its achievements, philosophy, of itself, also has serious limitations — especially, say, in envisaging God as a living person. Consider the conclusion of philosophy that the ultimate Foundation of this ever-changing world is pure Act, a simple actuality that excludes all potential. This provides an ultimate Principle accounting for a transient and changing world, but how is man to imagine or even conceive of this Principle as a living Person, with whom he can enter into some form of communion? Of course, this could be discussed in philosophical fashion at great length. My point here is that man longs for communion, and for all his best efforts, he could not apprehend God adequately as a living Person without the decisive help of God himself. Somehow he needs to encounter God, and not just reason to him. Enter the living God on this difficult scene. He takes his place on the very stage of human history, and does so as a concrete, living man. He can be heard, seen and touched. He can be imagined. This is the living God of all creation, pure Being, and the abiding Cause of all limited being. He takes on a shape, and he has a face. He can be approached with the utmost ease and befriended, and he means to befriend man. He appears as every bit a man, indeed he is fully and completely human in a way we are not — in the sense that there is no sin to spoil and warp his humanity. Just as he is utterly divine, so he is utterly human. In our Gospel today, he beholds the city of his love and considers its moral and spiritual state. Contemplating it, he breaks down in tears.

It is well to consider the implications of our scene in which the Son of God weeps. It is now no longer difficult for man to apprehend the living God as a real person. We are speaking here of a man whose spirit has depths beyond our imagining. The power, the resources and the life of the heart of Jesus Christ far exceed anything of our experience. In his spirit, Jesus Christ had strength and love that towered beyond compare. Here we see the sensitivity and feeling that marked this unique man of the ages. He beholds Jerusalem which he is soon to enter, and he weeps over its sin and hardness of heart. If Christ wept over Jerusalem, how he must have wept over Judas, a disciple of his special choice! We read that on an earlier occasion Christ was in confrontation with the leaders of the Jews, this time over his imminent action of healing on the Sabbath. Christ asked them to answer his question. They refused, because they knew they would be forthwith defeated in debate. They would not engage, so as not to be exposed to the light of his words. We read that Christ looked around on them in anger, and proceeded to cure the person on the Sabbath. Christ, full of holy love, was angry. We have here a living Person, one who was truly human, and one who has made it easy to imagine God as a living person. At the time of our Gospel scene today, which is to say just before his final entry into Jerusalem — but reported in a different Gospel — Christ goes to the tomb of Lazarus his friend. We read that before he raised him from the tomb, he wept. This is the living God who invites us to be his friend. Let us often think of Christ in tears over fallen, wayward, stubborn, sinful man. Christ weeps for each one of us, and with his tears rolling down his strong face he calls us to him. He said of Jerusalem that he had wished to gather its children to him as a hen gathers its chicks under its wings, but they refused. What we are speaking of here is the living heart of God. Jesus Christ reveals to us that God has a heart. He is not just the Principle behind all things, but the Person we have been made to relate to.

Let us place ourselves in the Gospel scene of today (Luke 19: 41-44), and near to Jesus Christ as he beholds the city of his love. That city had been the love of God’s heart for centuries — and his Temple, his abode among his chosen people, was there. Jesus Christ gazes on the city and he weeps. He has a great heart and that same heart loves you and me. Let us be devoted to the heart of Christ and let us, by the power of grace, strive to model our hearts on his. Learn from me, he said, for I am gentle and humble of heart. That is what grace can do — it can transform us into his likeness.
                                                            (E.J.Tyler)

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Rejoice, when you see others working in good apostolic activities. And ask God to grant them abundant grace and that they may respond to that grace.

Then, you, on your way: convince yourself that it's the only way for you.
                                                     (The Way, no.965)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Eighth Chapter     THE DAY OF ETERNITY AND THE DISTRESSES OF THIS LIFE

THE DISCIPLE

The days of this life are short and evil, full of grief and distress. Here man is defiled by many sins, ensnared in many passions, enslaved by many fears, and burdened with many cares. He is distracted by many curiosities and entangled in many vanities, surrounded by many errors and worn by many labours, oppressed by temptations, weakened by pleasures, and tortured by want.
                                                     (Continuing)

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The Church is the oracle of religious truth, and dispenses what the apostles committed to her in every time and place. We must take her word, then, without proof, because she is sent to us from God to teach us how to please Him; and that we do so is the test whether we be really Catholics or no.

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

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Friday of the thirty third week in Ordinary Time

(November 20) St. Rose Philippine Duchesne (1769-1852)
Born in Grenoble, France, of a family that was among the new rich, Philippine learned political skills from her father and a love of the poor from her mother. The dominant feature of her temperament was a strong and dauntless will, which became the material — and the battlefield — of her holiness. She entered the convent at 19 and remained despite their opposition. As the French Revolution broke, the convent was closed, and she began taking care of the poor and sick, opened a school for street urchins and risked her life helping priests in the underground. When the situation cooled, she personally rented her old convent, now a shambles, and tried to revive its religious life. The spirit was gone, and soon there were only four nuns left. They joined the infant Society of the Sacred Heart, whose young superior, St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, would be her lifelong friend. In a short time Philippine was a superior and supervisor of the novitiate and a school. But her ambition, since hearing tales of missionary work in Louisiana as a little girl, was to go to America and work among the Indians. At 49, she thought this would be her work. With four nuns, she spent 11 weeks at sea en route to New Orleans, and seven weeks more on the Mississippi to St. Louis. She then met one of the many disappointments of her life. The bishop had no place for them to live and work among Native Americans. Instead, he sent her to what she sadly called "the remotest village in the U.S.," St. Charles, Missouri. With characteristic drive and courage, she founded the first free school for girls west of the Mississippi. It was a mistake. Though she was as hardy as any of the pioneer women in the wagons rolling west, cold and hunger drove them out — to Florissant, Missouri, where she founded the first Catholic Indian school, adding others in the territory. "In her first decade in America, Mother Duchesne suffered practically every hardship the frontier had to offer, except the threat of Indian massacre — poor lodging, shortages of food, drinking water, fuel and money, forest fires and blazing chimneys, the vagaries of the Missouri climate, cramped living quarters and the privation of all privacy, and the crude manners of children reared in rough surroundings and with only the slightest training in courtesy" (Louise Callan, R.S.C.J., Philippine Duchesne). Finally, at 72, in poor health and retired, she got her lifelong wish. A mission was founded at Sugar Creek, Kansas, among the Potawatomi. She was taken along. Though she could not learn their language, they soon named her "Woman-Who-Prays-Always." While others taught, she prayed. Legend has it that Native American children sneaked behind her as she knelt and sprinkled bits of paper on her habit, and came back hours later to find them undisturbed. She died in 1852 at the age of 83.  (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture: 1 Maccabees 4:36-37, 52-59; 1 Chronicles 29:10bcd-12bcd; Luke 19:45-48

Then Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were selling. It is written, he said to them, 'My house will be a house of prayer'; but you have made it 'a den of robbers'. Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words. (Luke 19: 45-48)

Christ our Priest     Our brief Gospel scene today depicts an event of high drama. Christ had arrived in the city. His journey to Jerusalem is one of the structural planks of St Luke’s Gospel. On his journey to the city much teaching was given, and the arrival is a climax of the Gospel. In the city Christ would offer the great sacrifice of his life which would redeem the world. It is to be noted that Christ never in this Gospel calls himself a priest because, obviously, such a statement would place him within the ranks of the Jewish priesthood. His high priesthood was new and the sacrifice of his life for the sins of the people and all mankind would be the supreme act of his priesthood. So then, Christ has entered the city riding the colt as the prophet had foretold. He enters, acclaimed as prophet and Messiah-king who comes in the name of the Lord. But, unknown to the people, he was also entering the holy city as priest, mankind’s high priest about to offer sacrifice. What does he do? He immediately enters the Temple and shows that he is Master of the Temple, filled with zeal for the worship of God. We read that “Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were selling. It is written, he said to them, 'My house will be a house of prayer'; but you have made it 'a den of robbers'.” Who were the masters of the Temple? They were the priests, and here our Lord is taking charge of the Temple — he physically expels all commercial activity. Nothing but worship, teaching and prayer is allowed. Then he himself sets up, teaching the word of God every day. All this is under the very nose of the chief priests and the scribes and the chief men of the people. He acts with an authority he has not obtained from anyone — it is authority he possesses from God. It is a signal, to be understood in the future, that here was the true high priest ordained by God, and his offering of sacrifice was imminent. In the Gospel of St John, this symbolic action occurs at the outset of our Lord’s ministry (2:14), and in that scene our Lord is even more explicit: he states that his own body is the Temple. Our Lord is filled with the awareness that he is mankind’s priest and victim.

It would be an interesting thing to analyse the popular image of Jesus of Nazareth. I suspect it is that of a great prophet. When our Lord asked his disciples who men said he was, he was told that they thought of him as a great prophet: John the Baptist come back, or one of the great prophets back with them again. I think that generally mankind would still imagine him as a great prophet and teacher of religion. Our Lord then asked his disciples who they themselves thought he was. Peter spoke up: he was the Messiah, and indeed the Son of the Living God. It was a splendid avowal, a remarkable perception that actually came from God. God the Father had revealed to Simon the true identity of Jesus of Nazareth, and our Lord immediately went on to appoint Simon to be the Rock on which he would build his Church. But there was a further dimension to our Lord’s identity and mission which had not yet been explicitly acknowledged, but which our Lord then alludes to. The Son of Man, he told them, must suffer greatly and be rejected and put to death. Having no idea as yet of Christ being priest and victim, Simon Peter reacted strongly at such a thought. He was severely rebuked by our Lord and accused of being a Satan — showing just how central to his identity and mission his sacrifice was. He had come to offer a great sacrifice, the sacrifice of his life. That is to say — though our Lord did not put it in these terms — he had come as high priest and victim. He was Prophet, King and, notably, Priest. The priesthood of Christ was fundamental to his identity and mission. In our Gospel today (Luke 19: 45-48), our Lord takes command of the Temple and sets up there. He is acting as the Priest of God who has responsibility for mankind’s worship of the Father. Soon he would offer the perfect sacrifice which would reconcile man to God and take away the sin of the world. He would act as supreme Pontiff, bringing man’s gifts to God and God’s gifts to man. Though the leaders could not touch him because of the people, our Lord as priest-victim would place himself in their hands.

Let us pray for the grace to appreciate the priesthood of Jesus Christ. This priesthood he shares with all those who are baptized into him. All the baptized faithful posses what the Church calls the common priesthood, while the ordained, by the singular grace of ordination, share in the ministerial priesthood. The two are different in kind and not merely in degree, but each is just a share in the priesthood of Jesus Christ. He is our one and only high priest, and by his sacrifice the world was redeemed. Let us take our stand with him, then!
                                                             (E.J.Tyler)

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You show bad spirit if it hurts you to see others work for Christ without regard for what you are doing. Remember this passage in Saint Mark: 'Master, we saw a man who is not one of us casting out devils in your name; and because he was not one of us we tried to stop him.' But Jesus said, 'You must not stop him: no one who works a miracle in my name is likely to speak evil of me. Anyone who is not against us is for us'.
                                                        (The Way, no.966)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Eighth Chapter    THE DAY OF ETERNITY AND THE DISTRESSES OF THIS LIFE

THE DISCIPLE

Oh, when will these evils end? When shall I be freed from the miserable slavery of vice? When, Lord, shall I think of You alone? When shall I fully rejoice in You? When shall I be without hindrance, in true liberty, free from every grievance of mind and body? When will there be solid peace, undisturbed and secure, inward peace and outward peace, peace secured on every side? O good Jesus, when shall I stand to gaze upon You? When shall I contemplate the glory of Your kingdom? When will You be all in all to me? Oh, when shall I be with You in that kingdom of Yours, which You have prepared for Your beloved from all eternity?
                                                             (Continuing)

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Natural Religion is based upon the sense of sin; it recognizes the disease, but it cannot find, it does but look out for the remedy. That remedy, both for guilt and for moral impotence, is found in the central doctrine of Revelation, the Mediation of Christ.

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

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Saturday of the thirty third week in Ordinary Time

(November 21) The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
    Mary’s presentation was celebrated in Jerusalem in the sixth century. A church was built there in honour of this mystery. The Eastern Church was more interested in the feast, but it does appear in the West in the 11th century. Although the feast at times disappeared from the calendar, in the 16th century it became a feast of the universal Church. As with Mary’s birth, we read of Mary’s presentation in the temple only in apocryphal literature. In what is recognized as an unhistorical account, the Protoevangelium of James tells us that Anna and Joachim offered Mary to God in the Temple when she was three years old. This was to carry out a promise made to God when Anna was still childless. Though it cannot be proven historically, Mary’s presentation has an important theological purpose. It continues the impact of the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and of the birth of Mary. It emphasizes that the holiness conferred on Mary from the beginning of her life on earth continued through her early childhood and beyond.
    "Hail, holy throne of God, divine sanctuary, house of glory, jewel most fair, chosen treasure house, and mercy seat for the whole world, heaven showing forth the glory of God. Purest Virgin, worthy of all praise, sanctuary dedicated to God and raised above all human condition, virgin soil, unploughed field, flourishing vine, fountain pouring out waters, virgin bearing a child, mother without knowing man, hidden treasure of innocence, ornament of sanctity, by your most acceptable prayers, strong with the authority of motherhood, to our Lord and God, Creator of all, your Son who was born of you without a father, steer the ship of the Church and bring it to a quiet harbour" (adapted from a homily by St. Germanus on the Presentation of the Mother of God). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: 1 Maccabees 6:1-13; Psalm 9:2-4 and 6, 16 and 19; Luke 20:27-40 

Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus 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 a woman and died childless. The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her? Jesus replied, The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God's children, since they are children of the resurrection. But in the account of the bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord 'the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive. Some of the teachers of the law responded, Well said, teacher! And no-one dared to ask him any more questions. (Luke 20: 27-40)

Resurrection    Josephus informs us in his work, The Jewish War (recounting the Jewish revolt against Rome, 66-70 AD), that there were “three philosophical sects among the Jews. The followers of the first of which are the Pharisees; of the second, the Sadducees; and the third sect, which pretends to a severer discipline, are called Essenes.” He tells us that the Sadducees did not allow “the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades.” This is corroborated Matthew 22:23 and its parallel passage in our Gospel today from Luke 20:27-40. It is mentioned again by Luke in his Acts of the Apostles 23:8, when St Paul exploits the division between the Pharisees and Sadducees on this point to extricate himself from accusations of the Jews. The fact is that the beliefs of mankind on the Afterlife display a bewildering variety. Zoroastrianism had a judgment after death followed by reward or punishment. Ancient Egyptian religion is impressive in its insistence on an ethically based judgment after death, and there are some who regard the Egyptians as having pioneered the notion of an afterlife judgment. In traditional Australian Aboriginal religion it seems that at death the true soul returns to the eternal Dreaming, where in some sense it resided prior to birth. The list of beliefs that have marked man’s idea of the Afterlife goes on, but what is clear is that while generally man looks forward to an Afterlife in some sense, its nature is clouded in obscurity. The Sadducees of our Gospel today (Luke 20: 27-40) emphasised the first five books of the Bible (as being, presumably, the primitive revelation), and, like the ancient Hebrews, emphasized the present. God's rewards and punishments were given now in this life. Now, modern secular man typically goes an important step further. Nature is all there is. There is no Supernatural. His philosophy is Naturalism. Rewards and punishments, then, can occur only in this life. Let us regard the confrontation between Christ and the Sadducees as, in a sense, involving modern man. Modern man has an ingrained assumption that makes it difficult to him to take seriously any talk of a resurrection.

Our Lord is clear and adamant. There is a resurrection from the dead. There will be a judgment on each and every person following his death. For those “considered worthy” of the age to come and of the rising to life with God, the glory of heaven will not be simply a continuation of this life, for they will no longer die. And so there will be no more marriage and married life as such, but in that respect all will be like the angels, for death will have gone forever. It is worth pondering the thought that the glory of heaven will be free of all that pertains to death. There will be nothing that hints of the breakdown or reduction of life. Christ said that he came to bring life, life in abundance, and this gift of life will reach its zenith in the presence of God in heaven. Our Lord points out to the Sadducees that it was alluded to by Yahweh God himself in his meeting with Moses from the Burning Bush, when he described himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This was from one of the five books they accepted. God was referring to living persons, for he was not a God of lifeless remains. It meant that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were alive when God spoke to Moses, although the fullness of their life in God would come with the sacrifice of Christ. What this means is that we ought think often and deeply of what our Lord has revealed of the resurrection from the dead. An eternity of bliss awaits the one who is faithful to God. The bliss will be total and it will be unceasing. This is because it will involve the direct sight of God and unimaginable union with him. The one in heaven will be enfolded in a divine embrace that will immerse him in the infinite love of God. The smile of God will never fade and an eternity of joy will be ahead. Never will there be a tear to dampen the happiness of every soul who has been taken to glory. Moreover, the day will arrive when each soul will be reunited to the body and thus will happiness be complete. The resurrection is a tremendous thought. It ought be at the forefront of our lives till the end. What a tragedy not to be judged worthy of it! The thought of the resurrection from the dead ought impel us to believe in Christ and to share in his saving mission.

Christ often urges us to pray with faith. Ask, and you will receive, he says. What better thing to ask for than that we be saved, and that those for whom we have some responsibility be saved too? Is not this the greatest favour to be asked for, and would it not be the greatest catastrophe to lose it? We ought pray to Christ and to those who are now in heaven that we may join them there. Let us pray to Mary the mother of Christ too, that she will pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
                                                                      (E.J.Tyler)

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All that exterior activity is a waste of time, if you lack Love. It's like sewing with a needle and no thread.

What a pity if in the end you had carried out 'your' apostolate and not 'his' apostolate!
                                                                 (The Way, no.967)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Eighth Chapter    THE DAY OF ETERNITY AND THE DISTRESSES OF THIS LIFE

THE DISCIPLE

I am left poor and exiled in a hostile land, where every day sees wars and very great misfortunes. Console my banishment, assuage my sorrow. My whole desire is for You. Whatever solace this world offers is a burden to me. I desire to enjoy You intimately, but I cannot attain to it. I wish to cling fast to heavenly things, but temporal affairs and unmortified passions bear me down. I wish in mind to be above all things, but I am forced by the flesh to be unwillingly subject to them. Thus, I fight with myself, unhappy that I am, and am become a burden to myself, while my spirit seeks to rise upward and my flesh to sink downward. Oh, what inward suffering I undergo when I consider heavenly things; when I pray, a multitude of carnal thoughts rush upon me!
                                                                 (Continuing)

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As neither the local rulers nor the pastors of the Church are impeccable in act nor infallible in judgment, I am not obliged to maintain that all ecclesiastical measures and permissions have ever been praiseworthy and safe precedents.

                               JHN, from the ‘Preface to the Third Edition’ of the Prophetical Office of the Church (1877)

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The Solemnity of Christ the King B
(34th Sunday of Ordinary Time)

(November 22) St. Cecilia (3rd century)
Although Cecilia is one of the most famous of the Roman martyrs, the familiar stories about her are apparently not founded on authentic material. There is no trace of honour being paid her in early times. A fragmentary inscription of the late fourth century refers to a church named after her, and her feast was celebrated at least in 545. According to legend, Cecilia was a young Christian of high rank betrothed to a Roman named Valerian. Through her influence Valerian was converted, and was martyred along with his brother. The legend about Cecilia’s death says that after being struck three times on the neck with a sword, she lived for three days, and asked the pope to convert her home into a church. Since the time of the Renaissance she has usually been portrayed with a viola or a small organ. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Daniel 7:13-14; Psalm 93:1, 1-2, 5; Revelation 1:5-8; John 18:33b-37

Pilate asked Jesus, Are you the king of the Jews? Is that your own idea, Jesus asked, or did others talk to you about me? Am I a Jew? Pilate replied. It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done? Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place. You are a king, then! said Pilate. Jesus answered, It is you who say it. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. (John 18: 33b-37)

The Truth    It is possible, for considerable periods of one’s life, to be living on the surface of things. Life can be made to consist in the pursuit of this or that interest or distraction, based on mere personal preference. In this case, life is lived and developed on the basis of what happens to attract. Those attractions can be massive and lead to enormous activity, but in the final analysis their basis can be mere preference. But if a person reflects more profoundly, it ought become clear to him that if he is to be truly and fully himself, he must not spend his life simply acting on personal preference. At the heart of being the person he discovers himself to be, is the call of duty. It is not mere preference but duty which — if he has developed an inner sensitivity to it — touches and beckons his deepest self. He senses that the path of duty is the way to his truest happiness and the flourishing of his best self. Very many ignore the call of duty and choose the path of preference, but they do so to their ultimate cost. Duty is at the heart of authentic human experience, and a man’s sense of duty constitutes a moment of choice in his road ahead. What will it be? Duty will be hard and narrow, but it will lead to abundant life. Mere preference will be broad and perhaps exciting, but its end will be an arid desert. Now, if a person stands and contemplates the duty which sweetly and sternly summons him, he notices that in fact it is the summons of truth. It is what is true that constitutes the duty of every life. Every person is called to sincerity and truthfulness in acting and speaking. Everyone has the duty to seek the truth, to adhere to it and to order his life in accordance with its demands. He finds that if he tries always to be true and faithful to the truth as it seems to him, then he flourishes in his being. If he abandons the demands of truth and acts merely on personal preference irrespective of what the truth of the situation may be, then he gradually crumbles as a person. But as Pilate asked the Man before him, What is truth? Where is it? Is it just a phantom?

There are elements of the truth everywhere, and massive attempts have been made by seekers of the truth to attain it. Many have, to a greater or lesser extent, been successful, and mankind has benefited accordingly. But what of the whole of truth, and in particular the source and the heart of truth? Of course, no one can attain all possible elements of the truth as represented by, say, the libraries and wise men of the world. But is there some way of being in intimate union with the heart, soul and source of all truth, and then of surrendering oneself to the duty of loving and serving it? This would obviously bring the greatest possible flourishing to the human spirit and the perfection of his being — because man knows he is made for duty, duty to the truth. The good news of the Gospel is that in Jesus Christ the whole of God’s truth has been made manifest. He is “the Truth.” Christ formally stated that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life. In him the fullness of the godhead abides bodily. To know him is to know the Truth. All that is true, be it visible or invisible, has its source in him. All of duty is, then, founded in his person, for all of duty is founded in the Source of truth and being. To discover the person of Jesus Christ is to have found the Source of all that we are called to do and be. Any person who is of the truth and who accepts the fundamental duty to live according to it, and not according to mere preference, comes to him. Thus it is that our Lord responds to Pilate with the simple yet profoundly significant words: “for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (John 18: 33b-37). The fundamental vocation of every person is to hear the word of Christ, to perceive it as the truth, to live according to it, and to bear witness to it before men. The Christian is called to bear witness to Christ as the Truth in every field of his activity, both public and private, and also, if necessary, with the sacrifice of his life. Martyrdom is the supreme act of witness to the truth, and is the greatest fulfilment of duty. In this, Christ is our exemplar.

Let us in our hearts place ourselves before the person of Jesus Christ as he utters the words spoken to Pilate. What is truth? Supremely and fundamentally, truth is that which comes from God — and God, God the Son, is Jesus Christ. I am the truth, he says, and I bear witness to the truth — that truth which is me and my teaching. All violations of the truth, such as lying, slander, flattery, whatever it may be, strike at the person and law of Jesus Christ. Because he is the Truth, he is also our Way and our Life. Let us then resolve to place him at the centre of our life and to hear our duty as it is expressed in his word. This will be the source of our unending happiness.
                                                                         (E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.2471-2492 (Bearing witness to the truth)

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Joyfully I bless you, son, for that faith in your mission as an apostle which inspired you to write: 'There's no doubt about it: the future is certain, perhaps in spite of us. But it's essential that we should be one with the Head — 'ut omnes unum sint, that all be one!' — through prayer and sacrifice.
                                                                (The Way, no.968)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Eighth Chapter    THE DAY OF ETERNITY AND THE DISTRESSES OF THIS LIFE

THE DISCIPLE

O my God, do not remove Yourself far from me, and depart not in anger from Your servant. Dart forth Your lightning and disperse them; send forth Your arrows and let the phantoms of the enemy be put to flight. Draw my senses toward You and make me forget all worldly things. Grant me the grace to cast away quickly all vicious imaginings and to scorn them. Aid me, O heavenly Truth, that no vanity may move me. Come, heavenly Sweetness, and let all impurity fly from before Your face.
                                                             (Continuing)

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In late 1842 John Henry Newman preached a series of sermons on the relation of Christianity to Judaism, and on the nature and mission of the Church. We publish here an extract from ‘The Christian Church an Imperial Power‘ in which Newman explains that whilst Christ is ‘invisible’, governing his Church from heaven, his Kingdom on earth may be seen and found:

When [Christ] was ascending, He said, “All power is given unto Me in heaven, and in earth.” We believe in His power in heaven, but, strange to say, it is usual with us to grudge Him His power upon earth. We believe that He exercises His powerful intercession with the Father in heaven; but we seem to think that the Mediator has no earthly kingdom. As God indeed, of course, we accord Him a rule upon earth; but that rule He had from the time He created land and sea, and all things therein. But on His resurrection as Mediator, a kingdom was given unto Him; do we believe that He has a kingdom?

We know what is meant by a kingdom. It means a body politic, bound together by common laws, ruled by one head, holding intercourse part with part, acting together. We know what is meant by the kingdom of Chaldea, or of Persia, or of Rome, which the Prophet Daniel mentions; do we believe that Christ now has a kingdom, as those earthly powers once had? “Yes;” we reply, “He has a kingdom; it is an invisible kingdom.” An invisible kingdom on earth? what is meant by an invisible kingdom? A kingdom is an organized body: do we mean then a secret society? no; what we really mean by the words is, that He has no earthly kingdom at all. We admit a truth and explain it away. We explain away His words into a mere metaphor, as when we speak of the animal kingdom, or the vegetable kingdom. When we say that Christ has an invisible kingdom, we mean, I suppose, that He has servants on earth, and gives them laws; that He interposes in the world’s history, and punishes the guilty; but all this surely He did before He came in the flesh; and all this surely does not come up to the idea, does not answer to the name, of kingdom. It is as unmeaning to speak of an invisible kingdom on earth, as of invisible chariots and horsemen, invisible swords and spears, invisible palaces: to be a kingdom at all it must be visible, if the word has any true meaning.

But it may be said, that Christ Himself, the King, is invisible, and therefore His kingdom may well be invisible also. It is true, He is the invisible King of a visible kingdom; for it does not at all follow, because a monarch is withdrawn from view, that therefore His kingdom must cease to be a fact in the face of day also. It is seldom that the monarch of any kingdom is seen, and then not by many, except on certain occasions. Kings are within their palaces, yet their power is in the public world. It is seldom they rule by themselves; they rule by instruments. Such is Christ’s mode of governing; He is away; He has not resigned His rule; He does not simply abandon it to His servants: but still He rules through His appointed servants, and has committed His subjects to them. He resembles earthly sovereigns, not only in having a kingdom, but in His mode of governing it.

Now this description of Christ’s kingdom is what He gives us of it Himself. “The kingdom of heaven,” He says, “is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one.” [Matt. 25:14-15] Another parable, spoken in warning, represents the officers of the kingdom under the image of a steward: “Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season?” [Luke 12: 42]

So much is spoken in general; but next who are spoken of as the rulers in the kingdom, Christ’s viceroys? the Twelve Apostles, and first of all Peter. To him our Lord addressed these wonderful words: “I say unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” [Matt. 16: 18-19] By the “Church” must be meant a community or polity of men, and you see that St. Peter had the keys of this Church or kingdom, or the power of admitting into it, and excluding from it: and besides that, an awful power of binding and loosing, about which it does not fall within our present subject to inquire.

(Reference: John Henry Newman, Sermons bearing on Subjects of the Day (1843) Sermon no. 16, p. 219-222)

 

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Monday of the thirty fourth week in Ordinary Time

(November 23) Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro (1891-1927)
   ¡Viva Cristo Rey! (Long live Christ the King) were the last words Father Pro uttered before he was executed for being a Catholic priest and serving his flock. Born into a prosperous, devout family in Guadalupe de Zacatecas, he entered the Jesuits in 1911 but three years later fled to Granada, Spain, because of religious persecution in Mexico. He was ordained in Belgium in 1925. He immediately returned to Mexico, where he served a Church forced to go “underground.” He celebrated the Eucharist clandestinely and ministered the other sacraments to small groups of Catholics. He and his brother Roberto were arrested on trumped-up charges of attempting to assassinate Mexico’s president. Roberto was spared but Miguel was sentenced to face a firing squad on November 23, 1927. His funeral became a public demonstration of faith. He was beatified in 1988. In 1927 when Father Miguel Pro was executed, no one could have predicted that 52 years later the bishop of Rome would visit Mexico, be welcomed by its president and celebrate open-air Masses before thousands of people. Pope John Paul II made additional trips to Mexico in 1990, 1993 and 1999. Those who outlawed the Catholic Church in Mexico did not count on the deeply rooted faith of its people and the willingness of many of them, like Miguel Pro, to die as martyrs.
      During his homily at the beatification Mass, Pope John Paul II said that Father Pro “is a new glory for the beloved Mexican nation, as well as for the Society of Jesus. His life of sacrificing and intrepid apostolate was always inspired by a tireless evangelizing effort. Neither suffering nor serious illness, neither the exhausting ministerial activity, frequently carried out in difficult and dangerous circumstances, could stifle the radiating and contagious joy which he brought to his life for Christ and which nothing could take away (see John 16:22). Indeed, the deepest root of self-sacrificing surrender for the lowly was his passionate love for Jesus Christ and his ardent desire to be conformed to him, even unto death.” (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Daniel 1:1-6, 8-20; Daniel 3:52-56; Luke 21:1-4

As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. I tell you the truth, he said, this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on. (Luke 21: 1-4)

Giving all    The scene of our Gospel passage (Luke 21: 1-4) is the Temple of Jerusalem, and our Lord has arrived in Jerusalem, cleansed the Temple of its commercial traffic, and imposed a regime of prayer and teaching in its precincts. The hostility of the chief priests, the scribes and other prominent persons is intense (19:47; 20:19), but they are helpless before the admiration of the people for Jesus. While our Lord continues to teach in the Temple, the bulk of the chapter prior to our passage today is given over to the attempts by the chief priests, the scribes as well as the Sadducees to confront him or trap him in his teaching. He sovereignly confutes them all, leaving some in admiration (20:39) and others conclusively cowed in debate before him (20:40). Despite this, the hostility of the leaders remains implacable. In our Gospel passage today our Lord is there, Master of the Temple and Teacher of the truth of God. He “looks up,” and observes the rich as they cast their gifts into the treasury. His eye catches “a certain poor widow” who dropped in two small coins. Now, the word for “poor” here (Greek: penichran) signifies one for whom life is a struggle (21:2). But we notice that when our Lord draws the attention of his disciples to this widow (21:3), he himself describes her poverty by means of a more drastic word — she is ptoke, one who is in abject poverty, a virtual beggar, one in danger of starvation. The two small coins she gave to the treasury were two lepta. The lepton was the smallest Jewish bronze coin. F. W. Madden in his History of Jewish Coinage (Reprint 1967, p.296-302) tells us that it was worth about one eighth of a cent of his day. It must have been something like the old farthing — or, I suppose, less than the modern single cent. In any case, it had scarcely any value. Presumably St Luke was drawing on the Gospel of St Mark (12: 41-44) for this incident, and Mark’s Gospel is recognized as being the account of St Peter. So we may take it that the eye-witness source for our event here is Simon Peter who may have been next to our Lord as he pointed to the widow and spoke of her.

Now, in drawing attention to her, our Lord was not just speaking of generosity in the matter of giving to the Temple treasury. He was speaking of generosity: the remarkable generosity to God of one who had virtually nothing. It is to be remembered that while the rich person can be profoundly attached to his wealth, the poor person can also be profoundly attached to the little he has. He can be found clinging on to it for dear life. But this destitute widow was not attached to anything. She was attached only to God, and she wanted to give to God all she had. She was a widow, and possibly bereft of relatives and support. She had her two small coins, and anyone would have expected her to carefully husband any small means that came her way. But no — she, elderly and without support, gave it to God and trusted in him alone. It was yet another example of the holiness that was indeed to be found in the chosen people of God — and the Gospels give us other examples of this holiness. Holiness of a kind was seen even outside the chosen people. Our Lord said, in astonishment, that he had not seen in Israel the faith that he encountered in the centurion who had asked him to cure his servant. Here, though, our Lord holds aloft before his disciples the magnificence of the poor widow. Simon Peter took careful note of it, related the event in his preaching, and perhaps directed that it be included in Mark’s Gospel. This gift of all that we are and all we have is the ideal for every disciple of Christ. Our Lord said on one occasion that no one could be his disciple unless he gives up all his possessions. He meant that his disciples must be like the poor widow, and give all to God. We must devote all our mind, heart, soul and strength to Jesus. It means doing our very best in the fulfilment of God’s will every day. There is a particular application of this which comes to mind as we think of the context of this event. The context, as we saw, was Christ’s conflict with the leaders due to his bearing witness to the truth of God. For our part, we are called to give our best in bearing witness to the truth of Christ. This we do in our homes, at our work, among our friends and associates.

Let us resolve to love Jesus Christ and to do our best for him. It is often said that love is not just a feeling — in fact feelings can be largely absent. I remember one person who, for five years, went to visit his mother in hospital. She never knew him, because her mind had gone. Love is not a feeling, it is a decision. Let us make the decision to love Jesus, and to show our love by giving him all we have and all we are. Let us take to heart the example of the poor widow, for Christ himself has held her up to his disciples, and through them to the whole Church.
                                                                                        (E.J.Tyler)

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Those who, leaving action for others, pray and suffer, will not be noticed here; but what a radiant crown will be theirs, in the kingdom of Life! Blessed be the 'apostolate of suffering'!
                                                                           (The Way, no.969)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Eighth Chapter    THE DAY OF ETERNITY AND THE DISTRESSES OF THIS LIFE

THE DISCIPLE

Pardon me also, and deal mercifully with me, as often as I think of anything besides You in prayer. For I confess truly that I am accustomed to be very much distracted. Very often I am not where bodily I stand or sit; rather, I am where my thoughts carry me. Where my thoughts are, there am I; and frequently my thoughts are where my love is. That which naturally delights, or is by habit pleasing, comes to me quickly. Hence You Who are Truth itself, have plainly said: "For where your treasure is, there is your heart also." If I love heaven, I think willingly of heavenly things. If I love the world, I rejoice at the happiness of the world and grieve at its troubles. If I love the flesh, I often imagine things that are carnal. If I love the spirit, I delight in thinking of spiritual matters. For whatever I love, I am willing to speak and hear about.
                                                                               (Continuing)

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My Lord … can this be the world which Thou hast created, so full of pain and suffering? Who among the sons of Adam lives without suffering from his birth to his death? … Why is this, O my God? Why is this, O my soul? Dwell upon it, and ask thyself, Why is this? Has God changed His nature? … O my God, I know full well why all these evils are. Thou hast not changed Thy nature, but man has ruined his own. We have sinned, O Lord, and therefore is this change. All these evils which I see and in which I partake are the fruit of sin.

                                                 JHN, from Meditations and Devotions (1893)

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Tuesday of the thirty fourth week in Ordinary Time

(November 24) Saint Andrew Dung-Lac, priest and martyr, and his companions, martyrs
St. Andrew was one of 117 people martyred in Vietnam between 1820 and 1862. Members of this group were beatified on four different occasions between 1900 and 1951. Now all have been canonized by Pope John Paul II. Christianity came to Vietnam (then three separate kingdoms) through the Portuguese. Jesuits opened the first permanent mission at Da Nang in 1615. They ministered to Japanese Catholics who had been driven from Japan. The king of one of the kingdoms banned all foreign missionaries and tried to make all Vietnamese deny their faith by trampling on a crucifix. Like the priest-holes in Ireland during English persecution, many hiding places were offered in homes of the faithful. Severe persecutions were again launched three times in the 19th century. During the six decades after 1820, between 100,000 and 300,000 Catholics were killed or subjected to great hardship. Foreign missionaries martyred in the first wave included priests of the Paris Mission Society, and Spanish Dominican priests and tertiaries. Persecution broke out again in 1847 when the emperor suspected foreign missionaries and Vietnamese Christians of sympathizing with a rebellion led by of one of his sons. The last of the martyrs were 17 laypersons, one of them a 9-year-old, executed in 1862. That year a treaty with France guaranteed religious freedom to Catholics, but it did not stop all persecution. By 1954 there were over a million and a half Catholics—about seven percent of the population—in the north. Buddhists represented about 60 percent. Persistent persecution forced some 670,000 Catholics to abandon lands, homes and possessions and flee to the south. In 1964, there were still 833,000 Catholics in the north, but many were in prison. In the south, Catholics were enjoying the first decade of religious freedom in centuries, their numbers swelled by refugees. During the Vietnamese war, Catholics again suffered in the north, and again moved to the south in great numbers. Now the whole country is under Communist rule. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Daniel 2:31-45; Daniel 3:57-61; Luke 21:5-11 

Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down. Teacher, they asked, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place? He replied: Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am he,' and 'The time is near.' Do not follow them. When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away. Then he said to them: Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven. (Luke 21: 5-11)

The lesson of the Temple     It is difficult for the modern reader to appreciate the magnificence of the Temple building Herod constructed, nor to appreciate the central place that the Temple occupied in the ethos of the Jewish nation. It had been a long and tremendous project, and together with his rebuilding of parts of Jerusalem (following the attack of 37 BC) it earned for Herod the title of the Great. Our scene of today’s Gospel has Christ teaching in the Temple as its Master, with his Passion soon to begin. He has cleansed its precincts of non-religious activities and has insisted on religious decorum. The leaders of the people are helpless before his assertion of authority because of the support of the people for their great prophet. Soon, as an act of supreme witness, Jesus would deliver himself into the hands of his enemies. So with the magnificent Temple all around them, some remarked to our Lord on the beauty of the stonework and the gifts there that were dedicated to God. It was a sight that moved the human spirit and lifted it in praise of God. Christ himself loved the Temple — as just mentioned, he had very recently caused a sensation by single-handedly putting an end to the busy commerce going on there. The Temple was the House of his Father, and he insisted it be treated as a place of prayer. But our Lord replied to those about him that the massive and awesome Temple would in time be nothing but rubble: “the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down” (Luke 21: 5-11). It was a statement that harkened back to those of the great prophets who had foretold the destruction of Jerusalem. It would have immediately reminded our Lord’s listeners of the great destruction of Jerusalem centuries before, which represented God’s judgment on his people. Our Lord was alluding to the judgment of God on his people’s sins. Well now, rather than lingering on the details of our Lord’s description of coming troubles both soon and distant, let us consider the essential point. The essential point was that all this magnificence would go because of sin.

St Paul writes in his Letter to the Romans that death entered the world through one man’s sin, and then spread to the whole human race. Death and all that is associated with death is ultimately the upshot of sin. The sin of man is, in the final analysis, the rejection of God and his will. This rejection of God destroys the linchpin of created reality, and, with the commission of sin, life unravels. The Scriptures portray this pattern, and the consequences of sin are seen in Scripture in certain iconic events — such as the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians. Our Lord is pointing to a tremendous destruction that is coming, which would also be due to sin and infidelity. Just before he entered the city, he referred to the coming destruction and wept over what he saw would happen (19:41-44). The cause was his own rejection. We ought take the historical fact of the destruction of the Temple and the City some decades later as a sign of the seriousness of the call to accept the person of Christ. Just before he ascended into heaven, he charged his disciples to go to the whole world and make disciples of all the nations. Those who believe would be saved, those who refused to believe would be condemned. The point is that the issues are ultimately clear-cut and stark, as are the consequences of our decision. They apply to each individual, and they apply to the world. There will be a particular judgment for each individual, and there will be a general judgment for the whole world. All the good things that we see will fall away before the ultimate issue, which is the acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord. Let us take our stand with him, then! He is our true rock of security. Our days may be filled with ordinary things, they may even seem secure, but all that matters is the full-hearted acceptance of Christ and his will, lived out in the daily life which the providence of God has made our own. A life which is one of spectacle alone — symbolized, perhaps, by the beautiful Temple our Lord remarks upon — will not stand. All that will stand is a life built on the rock of Christ and his word.

There is one sense in which we must be living constantly in the present. It is no good at all to be caught up in constant bitter memories or daydreams of the future. The one real thing is the present and we ought be trying constantly to make the best of it. We ought live in the present moment. At the same time, we must live in the present with the revealed future before us. Our Lord has revealed the future, and it consists of the divine judgment. Let us bear in mind the lesson of the Temple of Jerusalem so as to gain life everlasting.
                                                (E.J.Tyler)

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It is true that I have called your discreet apostolate a 'silent and effective mission.' And I won't go back on what I said.
                                         (The Way, no.970)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE    INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Eighth Chapter    THE DAY OF ETERNITY AND THE DISTRESSES OF THIS LIFE

THE DISCIPLE

Blessed is the man who for Your sake, O Lord, dismisses all creatures, does violence to nature, crucifies the desires of the flesh in fervour of spirit, so that with serene conscience he can offer You a pure prayer and, having excluded all earthly things inwardly and outwardly, becomes worthy to enter into the heavenly choirs.
                                   (Concluded)

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In these times especially, we should be on our guard against those, who hope by inducing us to lay aside our [liturgical] forms, at length to make us lay aside our Christian hope altogether. This is why the Church itself is attacked, because it is the living form, the visible body of religion; and shrewd men know that when it goes, religion will go too. This is why they rail at so many usages as superstitious; or propose alterations and changes, a measure especially calculated to shake the faith of the multitude.

                       From the sermon ‘Ceremonies of the Church’ (1831)

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Wednesday of the thirty fourth week in Ordinary Time

(November 25) St. Columban (543?-615)
         Columban was the greatest of the Irish missionaries who worked on the European continent. As a young man who was greatly tormented by temptations of the flesh, he sought the advice of a religious woman who had lived a hermit’s life for years. He saw in her answer a call to leave the world. He went first to a monk on an island in Lough Erne, then to the great monastic seat of learning at Bangor. After many years of seclusion and prayer, he travelled to Gaul (modern-day France) with 12 companion missionaries. They won wide respect for the rigor of their discipline, their preaching, and their commitment to charity and religious life in a time characterized by clerical slackness and civil strife. Columban established several monasteries in Europe which became centres of religion and culture. Like all saints, he met opposition. Ultimately he had to appeal to the pope against complaints of Frankish bishops, for vindication of his orthodoxy and approval of Irish customs. He reproved the king for his licentious life, insisting that he marry. Since this threatened the power of the queen mother, Columban was deported to Ireland. His ship ran aground in a storm, and he continued his work in Europe, ultimately arriving in Italy, where he found favour with the king of the Lombards. In his last years he established the famous monastery of Bobbio, where he died. His writings include a treatise on penance and against Arianism, sermons, poetry and his monastic rule.
    Writing to the pope about a doctrinal controversy in Lombardy, Columban said: “We Irish, living in the farthest parts of the earth, are followers of St. Peter and St. Paul and of the disciples who wrote down the sacred canon under the Holy Spirit. We accept nothing outside this evangelical and apostolic teaching.... I confess I am grieved by the bad repute of the chair of St. Peter in this country.... Though Rome is great and known afar, she is great and honoured with us only because of this chair.... Look after the peace of the Church, stand between your sheep and the wolves.” (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Daniel 5:1-6, 13-14, 16-17, 23-28; Daniel 3:62-67; Luke 21:12-19 

Jesus said, But before all this, they will lay hands on you and persecute you. They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. This will result in your being witnesses to them. But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. All men will hate you because of me. But not a hair of your head will perish. By standing firm you will gain life. (Luke 21: 12-19)

Bearing witness    Our Lord has just foretold the destruction of the glory of Israel, its Temple. Not one stone will be left upon another — and within a few decades, so it was. His disciples questioned him more, and his vision of the future broadens beyond the Temple to the world: Luke records that “the end is not so soon” (21:9). History would entail great upsets and disturbances: “nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. Great earthquakes will occur in various places and famines and plagues. There will be fearful sights” (21:10-11). And so it has been — so much so that philosophers have argued that there could not be a God, for there is manifestly no purpose, no order, no design in the world as it is. The world is a mess. On the night of November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall--the symbol of the Cold War division of Europe--came down. It was the culminating point of the revolutionary changes sweeping east central Europe in 1989. The collapse of communism in east central Europe and the Soviet Union marked the end of the Cold War. There was euphoria at the thought of peace — the two Germanys were united. Then suddenly as if out of nowhere — although there was a long background to it — the cyclone of Islamic terrorism appeared on the horizon. It is now a world threat and long-standing democracies are faced with numerous terrorist cells spawning in their own societies. Suicide bombers are being groomed across the globe. The very word “martyrdom” — meaning the ultimate witnesses with one’s life to goodness and truth — is now debased because of horrifying suicides being given that name. This is to say that there is a mysterious pattern in human history which our Lord describes in this chapter of St Luke, a pattern of unending conflict and turbulence. The refrain of Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth well describes it: “Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn, and caldron bubble.” Yet, as our Lord says, the end is not so soon.

This is the broad context of life for much of mankind. Is there any special word from Christ to the Christian, to his disciple? Yes — he says that there will be special and added difficulties for him. He will be hauled before authorities and persecuted because of faith in Christ his Lord. “Jesus said, But before all this, they will lay hands on you and persecute you. They will deliver you to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name” (Luke 21: 12-19). So not only does the world rise up, as it were, and toss man to and fro, but the society of men will make the one who witnesses to the truth of Christ suffer. There is a strange rebellion at the heart of things. St John tells us in the Prologue of his Gospel that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He came unto his own, and his own did not receive him. He who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, was rejected. The pattern our Lord foretells to his own disciples was in the first instance exemplified in him. He was delivered to the leaders of the synagogues and cast into prison. He was brought before the governor, the representative of the Emperor on account of the truth he had revealed. Thus did he himself bear witness to his truth by his suffering and death. So it will be for the disciple of Christ, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on vocation and circumstances. The disciple of Christ can expect difficulties coming from the world because its condition is one of turbulent instability. He can expect difficulties coming from society because to one degree or another, in one sense or another, society is not disposed to accept testimony to Jesus Christ. Consider the vituperation Cardinal George Pell attracted from politicians in mid 2007. He had repeatedly insisted that no Catholic politician should vote for an expansion of embryonic stem cell research because of the destruction of the embryo that this entails. Again, consider the storm that erupted when Pope Benedict declared during a flight to Africa in 2009 that condoms were not the answer to AIDS.

There are many Christian positions which will attract persecution. But what does our Lord say of this persecution? He tells his disciples that this persecution constitutes an opportunity. It will be the opportunity to bear witness, and help will come from on high when the time comes. “This will result in your being witnesses to them. But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.” Let us resolve to use the little occasions of every ordinary day to follow in the footsteps of the Master, bearing witness to him and his truth in whatever way is appropriate and possible.
                                                          (E.J.Tyler)

Further reading:  Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.1816

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I think so highly of your devotion to the early Christians that I will do all I can to encourage it, so that you — like them — will put more enthusiasm each day into that effective apostolate of discretion and friendship.
                                                    (The Way, no.971)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Ninth Chapter     THE DESIRE OF ETERNAL LIFE; THE GREAT REWARDS PROMISED TO THOSE WHO STRUGGLE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

MY CHILD, when you feel the desire for everlasting happiness poured out upon you from above, and when you long to depart out of the tabernacle of the body that you may contemplate My glory without threat of change, open wide your heart and receive this holy inspiration with all eagerness. Give deepest thanks to the heavenly Goodness which deals with you so understandingly, visits you so mercifully, stirs you so fervently, and sustains you so powerfully lest under your own weight you sink down to earthly things. For you obtain this not by your own thought or effort, but simply by the condescension of heavenly grace and divine regard. And the purpose of it is that you may advance in virtue and in greater humility, that you may prepare yourself for future trials, that you may strive to cling to Me with all the affection of your heart, and may serve Me with a fervent will.
                                              (Continuing)

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As that which is created differs from what is not yet created, so the Christian differs from the natural man. He is brought into a new world, and, as being in that new world, is invested with powers and privileges which he absolutely had not in the way of nature.

                                            JHN, from the sermon ‘The State of Salvation’ (1838)

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Thursday of the thirty fourth week in Ordinary Time

(November 26) St. Catherine of Alexandria (c. 310)
According to the Legend of St. Catherine, this young woman converted to Christianity after receiving a vision. At the age of 18, she debated 50 pagan philosophers. Amazed at her wisdom and debating skills, they became Christians—as did about 200 soldiers and members of the emperor’s family. All of them were martyred. Sentenced to be executed on a spiked wheel, Catherine touched the wheel and it shattered. She was beheaded. Centuries later, angels are said to have carried the body of St. Catherine to a monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Devotion to her spread as a result of the Crusades. She was invoked as the patroness of students, teachers, librarians and lawyers. Catherine is one of the 14 Holy Helpers, venerated especially in Germany and Hungary. (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today:  Daniel 6:12-28;  Daniel 3:68-74;  Luke 21:20-28

Jesus said, When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. For this is the time of punishment in fulfilment of all that has been written. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people. They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. (Luke 21:20-28)

Christ our hope    It is generally recognized that many passages of the Gospels consist of “sayings” of our Lord — statements of his that are strung together and situated in certain contexts. The present passage would seem to be an example of this. The context is our Lord speaking in the Temple, in the course of which he gives his prophecy that it will be destroyed. When would this happen? some had asked. Our Lord did not choose to answer the question as to the date, but foretold that the magnificent Temple would be attacked by armies and destroyed. That is to say, it would be a repetition of what had happened in the past. Jerusalem will be “surrounded by armies.” There will be “desolation” and “great distress in the land and wrath against this people.” Inhabitants “will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” In the event, all of this occurred and with a vengeance. Did it have a meaning, or was it just the way things happened to turn out? It was, of course, an historical event, the causes of which could be traced in the processes of history. But it did have a higher meaning. Our Lord says that “this is the time of punishment in fulfilment of all that has been written.” The cataclysm was allowed as a judgment of God on sin, and was part of the fulfilment of prophecy. Now, there is this too. The destruction of Jerusalem some decades after the death and resurrection of Christ was an event not only with meaning in itself, but is a grand lesson that holiness and sin have historical results. Man’s moral life affects the course of history, which lies in the hands of God who is the moral Ruler and Judge of all. One of the points that Pope Benedict made in his Encyclical Letter, Caritas in Veritate, is that the morality of decisions affects the world economy for good or ill as the case may be. We are reminded by our Gospel today that man is not just the lord of the manor. He is subject to moral law, and if that law is disregarded, history will be subject to a judgment.

While the destruction of Jerusalem is a reminder, to anyone of any age, of the presence in history of the divine judgment, it is also an indicator of what will come at the end. So it is that our Lord’s piercing and prophetic vision goes beyond the fall of the city to what we might call the fall of the world. “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.” Our Lord tells his listeners that this world will pass away. The world shares in the fallen character of man, and so it bears death within its lungs. Of itself it cannot last forever. Just as the city will suffer its cataclysm, so too will the world. But for those who have striven to be obedient to God, there is a great hope at hand. They may look ahead with confidence, for the world has not been left by God in its own inadequacy and sin. “At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:20-28). The city will fall, and the world will come to its end, but there is a great Rock upon which every man and woman may take a secure stand. That Rock is Jesus Christ who suffered and died, and who now abides with us in his body the Church. He is the Beginning and the End, and in living in union with him by faith and baptism we live in an ultimate security. Whatever may happen to us, in the final analysis we shall come to no harm. He is with us now, and he will be “coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” He will come to bring redemption. Our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel passage speak of the presence and results of sin in God’s chosen people and in the entire world. But they also speak of what God has done about this. He has come and, in Jesus his Son, has saved his people from their sins.

Our Lord’s words begin on a profoundly sombre note, and they end with a ringing note of hope. Whatever situation you are in, be faithful to the end! Stay close to me and walk in my footsteps. No matter what life may bring, place your trust in me, and at the end your trust will be vindicated. I shall come, and your redemption will be near at hand. The Christian faith and vision is one of profound optimism, based on a certain fact. That fact is the person of Jesus Christ. On him does everything depend, and in clinging to him we shall be secure and strong, both now and hereafter.
                                                         (E.J.Tyler)

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When you carry out your 'apostolate of discretion and friendship', do not tell me you don't know what to say. For, with the psalmist, I will remind you: Dominus dabit verbum evangelizantibus virtute multa — the Lord places on his apostles' lips words filled with efficacy.
                                                (The Way, no.972)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ   BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Ninth Chapter     THE DESIRE OF ETERNAL LIFE;    THE GREAT REWARDS PROMISED TO THOSE WHO STRUGGLE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

My child, often, when the fire is burning the flame does not ascend without smoke. Likewise, the desires of some burn toward heavenly things, and yet they are not free from temptations of carnal affection. Therefore, it is not altogether for the pure honour of God that they act when they petition Him so earnestly. Such, too, is often your desire which you profess to be so strong. For that which is alloyed with self-interest is not pure and perfect.
                                                     (Continuing)

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Our Lord, … when He commanded the winds and the sea, said “Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” [Matt. 8: 26] … Do at least as much as what the disciples did. They had but little faith, they feared, they had not any great confidence and peace, but at least they did not keep away from Christ. They did not sit still sullenly, but they came to Him. Alas, our very best state is not higher than the Apostles’ worst state. Our Lord blamed them as having little faith, because they cried out to Him. I wish we Christians of this day did as much as this.

 John Henry Newman, from the sermon ‘The Omnipotence of God the Reason for Faith and Hope’ (1848)

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When a passage of Scripture, descriptive of God’s dealings with man, is obscure or perplexing, it is as well to ask ourselves whether this may not be owing to some insensibility, in ourselves or in our age, to certain peculiarities of the Divine law or government therein involved. Thus, to those who do not understand the nature and history of religious truth, our Lord’s assertion about sending a sword on earth is an obscurity. To those who consider sin a light evil, the doctrine of eternal punishment is a difficulty.

                             John Henry Newman, from the sermon ‘Obedience without Love, as instanced in the Character of Balaam’ (1837)

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Friday of the thirty fourth week in Ordinary Time

(November 27) St. Francesco Antonio Fasani 1681-1742
    Born and raised Lucera in southeast Italy, Francis Anthony was a pious and reserved youth who joined the Conventual Franciscans at age 14, in 1695. During the novitiate year he befriended a gregarious novice named Antonio Lucci who told him that "the fastest way to become a saint was through laughter." These two young friars remained friends and witnessed the importance of close fraternal bonds in the sanctification of self and the world. Francis Anthony served the community as a theology and philosophy professor, a novice master, and as a minister provincial. He was also a tireless confessor and minister of compassion among prisoners and those condemned to death. Known as "Padre Maestro" among the people of Lucera, Francis Anthony was especially dedicated to his work among the poor and destitute. Likewise, his friend Antonio was called the "Father of the Poor" when he served as the Franciscan bishop of Bovino. Saint Francis Anthony Fasani died in 1742 and was canonized in 1986. His friend Blessed Antonio Lucci died in 1752 and was beatified in 1989.
   During his homily at the canonization of Francesco, Pope John Paul II reflected on John 21:15 in which Jesus asks Peter if he loves Jesus more than the other apostles and then tells Peter, "Feed my lambs." The pope observed that in the final analysis human holiness is decided by love. "He [Francesco] made the love taught us by Christ the fundamental characteristic of his existence, the basic criterion of his thought and activity, the supreme summit of his aspirations" (L'Osservatore Romano, vol. 16, number 3, 1986). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Daniel 7:2-14; Daniel 3:75-81; Luke 21:29-33 

Jesus told them this parable: Look at the fig-tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. (Luke 21: 29-33)

The truth    One of the great events in the history of the Anglican Church was the rise of the Oxford Movement, beginning formally in 1833. Within a short time John Henry Newman became its leader, and by 1838 he was the foremost intellectual representative of what might be called Catholic Anglicanism. His theory was firm and fearless: Christianity is the religion of the Scriptures and the early Church Fathers, and it is this that Anglicanism at its best looked to and embodied. For many, Newman was an oracle in both his defence of dogmatic religion and in his attack on Liberalism and Rationalism in religion — which was the forerunner of the Modernism of the early twentieth century, and the Relativism of our time. But then, at the height of the Movement, Newman sustained a serious blow. In 1839 Wiseman’s momentous article on St Augustine and the Donatists appeared in the “Dublin Review,” pressing home the parallel between the Donatists and the Anglican Church. It was a blow that turned the tide in Newman’s life. Five years later Newman was moving inexorably towards the Church of Rome, but one thing that deeply concerned him was that his change might lead to latitudinarianism and liberalism in some of his previous disciples. He wrote to John Keble that “a sort of latitudinarianism and liberalism may be the end of those (God forbid it!) whom I am keeping from Rome” (June, 1844). If the great teacher of Anglicanism could on his own admission have been in error all along, how could anyone hope to attain objective religious truth? Was religious truth a mere phantom, an illusion? In the event some did indeed become liberals in religion — such as Mark Pattison (1813-1884). Why do I mention this example of people losing faith because, as they saw it, there was no one whom they could trust as an authority in respect to the truth? It is meant as an illustration. It is yet another reminder of the wonder of Jesus Christ. He is the one person in human history who claimed to have the fullness of truth, who possessed it, and who asked for complete faith in himself. By trusting in him we possess the truth that saves.

In our Gospel today our Lord makes a claim that no prophet had made: “I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Luke 21: 29-33). Consider those words, Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. I have referred to Newman. In a lecture given in 1852 (Discourse 8, Idea of a University) he refers to Aristotle as the master philosopher: “He is the oracle of nature and of truth,” Newman writes, so much so that “we men cannot help, to a great extent, being Aristotelians.” Even if we grant that, still, Aristotle would never have claimed that “heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” No man of sense would ever make such an audacious assertion — no man, except the Man who is God become man. One man has appeared on the stage of human history who is all that man aspires to know and love, such that eternal life consists in knowing him. As our Lord said in his prayer to his heavenly Father during the Last Supper, “Eternal life is this, to know you, Father, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Jesus Christ is the absolute Rock of certitude for every man and woman of history. The task of each person is to turn to this Rock, and to build the house of life upon it. As our Lord said elsewhere in the Gospel, the sensible man is the one who builds his house on rock so that when the floods, the wind and the rain come, the house will stand. That sensible man is the one who hears the word of God as uttered by Christ his divine Son, and puts it into practice. There is nothing more certain than the person and word of Jesus Christ. Religion is not just a feeling. It involves knowledge of objective reality. The ultimate reality on which everything else depends is God, and God has revealed himself in his incarnate Son. We should resolve to live in him, knowing that in doing this we rest absolutely secure in the truth. This is precisely what Newman strove to do and succeeded so resoundingly in doing.

Let us resolve to base our lives on the person and the truth of Jesus Christ. “For this I came into the world,” he declared to Pontius Pilate, “to bear witness to the truth, and those who are of the truth listen to my voice.” His word will never pass away. Where, then, is Jesus Christ, and where is his word to be heard? Jesus Christ abides in his body the Church which he founded on the Apostle Peter. His word is present in the Church’s teaching, that teaching uttered in his name. We know where to go, and to whom we ought listen. Let us begin, then!
                                                             (E.J.Tyler)

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Those well-timed words, whispered into the ear of your wavering friend; the helpful conversation that you managed to start at the right moment; the ready professional advice that improves his university work; the discreet indiscretion by which you open up unexpected horizons for his zeal. This all forms part of the 'apostolate of friendship.'
                                                       (The Way, no.973)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ    BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Ninth Chapter      THE DESIRE OF ETERNAL LIFE; THE GREAT REWARDS PROMISED TO THOSE WHO STRUGGLE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

Ask, therefore, not for what is pleasing and convenient to yourself, but for what is acceptable to Me and is for My honour, because if you judge rightly, you ought to prefer and follow My will, not your own desire or whatever things you wish.
                                                      (Continuing)

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It is no new thing then with the Church, in a time of confusion or of anxiety, when offences abound, and the enemy is at her gates, that her children, far from being dismayed, or rather glorying in the danger, as vigorous men exult in trials of their strength—it is no new thing, I say, that they should go forth to do her work, as though she were in the most palmy days of her prosperity.

                       JHN, from the discourse ‘Prospects of the Catholic Missioner’ (1849)

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Saturday of the thirty fourth week in Ordinary Time

Prayers this week: The Lamb who was slain is worthy to receive strength and divinity, wisdom and power and honour: to him  be glory and power for ever. (Revelation 5:12; 1:6)

Almighty and merciful God, you break the power of evil and make all things new in your Son Jesus Christ, the King of the universe. May all in heaven and earth acclaim your glory and never cease to praise you. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

(November 28) St. James of the Marche (1394-1476)
    James was born in the Marche of Ancona, in central Italy along the Adriatic Sea. After earning doctorates in canon and civil law at the University of Perugia, he joined the Friars Minor and began a very austere life. He fasted nine months of the year; he slept three hours a night. St. Bernardine of Siena told him to moderate his penances. James studied theology with St. John of Capistrano. Ordained in 1420, James began a preaching career that took him all over Italy and through 13 Central and Eastern European countries. This extremely popular preacher converted many people (250,000 at one estimate) and helped spread devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus. His sermons prompted numerous Catholics to reform their lives and many men joined the Franciscans under his influence. With John of Capistrano, Albert of Sarteano and Bernardine of Siena, James is considered one of the "four pillars" of the Observant movement among the Franciscans. These friars became known especially for their preaching. To combat extremely high interest rates, James established montes pietatis (literally, mountains of charity) — non profit credit organizations that lent money at very low rates on pawned objects. Not everyone was happy with the work James did. Twice assassins lost their nerve when they came face to face with him. James was canonized in 1726.
   "Beloved and most holy word of God! You enlighten the hearts of the faithful, you satisfy the hungry, console the afflicted; you make the souls of all productive of good and cause all virtues to blossom; you snatch souls from the devil’s jaw; you make the wretched holy, and men of earth citizens of heaven" (Sermon of St. James). (AmericanCatholic.org)

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Scripture today: Daniel 7:15-27; Daniel 3:82-87; Luke 21:34-36

Jesus said to his disciples, Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man. (Luke 21: 34-36)

Vigilance    There is an expression, “the Law of the Jungle.” It more or less means that animals prey on other animals, and there is no mercy shown. The serpent strikes when it can, and the rodent is taken. Then the reptile too is attacked and killed by an eagle or some other bird of prey. The same pattern is present in the world of the sea, and in his turn man preys on animals whether they be of the land or the sea. Those that are prey must be constantly on the look-out because they sense they are vulnerable and can be taken by anything that approaches. Thus it is that birds will immediately fly away at the approach of man or animal. There is a pattern of constant hazard for all of life. In the world of man, while human ingenuity is able to build up networks and systems of protection, still, great hazards remain. Without warning an electrical fire breaks out in a home and the elderly resident is killed. Numerous shoppers are going about their business in a large mall, and suddenly there is a vast explosion. A suicide bomber has struck, and numerous people lie dead, and many more are maimed and seriously injured. A war is in progress in Afganistan, and suddenly there is a roadside explosion. The armoured vehicle is smashed to pieces, and despite constant vigilance, four young soldiers in the prime of life have died. Vigilance is required everywhere. A person gets into his car to drive to work. He says his customary prayer for safe driving, but fifteen minutes later a drunken driver smashes into his vehicle and leaves him seriously injured. So it is that we gradually learn — though some do not seem to learn it — that we who exist, need not exist. We can very easily lose the life which has been granted to us. If we are imprudent and lacking vigilance, we can have life snatched from our possession. But there is this to remember. While the loss of life, health or possessions is itself an evil to be guarded against, what follows after that loss is far more awesome. I refer to the judgment of God.

In our Gospel today our Lord instructs his disciples to be “always on the watch.” There is nothing new about this advice in view of the constant vulnerability of all things to serious hazard. What is distinctive is its reference to a hazard of far greater proportions than anything that meets the eye. It is a hazard for the one who, as it were, goes to sleep on the job of being a true disciple of Christ and an obedient child of God. “Jesus said to his disciples, Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all those who live on the face of the whole earth. Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21: 34-36). We can be like the young animal that wanders from its den, lacking all vigilance as to the dangers that are imminent. We can be like the young soldier who fails to take constant precautions. Suddenly he is snatched from his company and becomes a hostage, finally being killed by his crazed captors despite a ransom being paid. The danger our Lord is referring is that of falling into sin, of being ensnared by attachments to enjoyment and ease or concern for material prosperity, and losing interest in God and his holy will. Then suddenly, blissfully unconcerned about the essential vulnerability of human life, the unrepentant sinner is called from this life. Indeed, he might suddenly die precisely because of his dissipated and sinful life. He has lost his life, but more awesomely, he now stands before the Son of Man who is his Judge. There is no recourse from the judgment, no second chance, no one to appeal to, no one who can help. All is laid bare and the divine scrutiny is absolute and immediate. It will be plain what the sentence must be. Eternity will yawn before the soul, and how paltry will seem the brief and sinful enjoyments of the moment during life! So, our Lord warns, be always on the watch!

It is an excellent rule of thumb to begin each day remembering that there is no absolute reason why that day may not be the last. There are too many cases constantly occurring of persons whose day was their last, and it was their last unexpectedly. There was no warning, and they had to pass immediately to the judgment of God. In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet’s father has been murdered without warning and his ghost comes back to his son to bemoan his present lot. He had lost his life, all unprepared. So then, let us be constantly loving and serving Christ, and vigilant against all that might lead us away from him.
                                                          (E.J.Tyler)

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'The dinner-table apostolate': it is the old hospitality of the Patriarchs, together with the fraternal warmth of Bethany. When we practise it, we seem to glimpse Jesus there, presiding, as in the house of Lazarus.
                                              (The Way, no.974)

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Continuing The Imitation of Christ     BOOK THREE     INTERNAL CONSOLATION

The Forty-Ninth Chapter     THE DESIRE OF ETERNAL LIFE; THE GREAT REWARDS PROMISED TO THOSE WHO STRUGGLE

THE VOICE OF CHRIST

I know your longings and I have heard your frequent sighs. Already you wish to be in the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. Already you desire the delights of the eternal home, the heavenly land that is full of joy. But that hour is not yet come. There remains yet another hour, a time of war, of labour, and of trial. You long to be filled with the highest good, but you cannot attain it now. I am that sovereign Good. Await Me, until the kingdom of God shall come.
                                               (Continuing)

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God is not a hard master to require belief, without affording grounds for believing; only follow your own sense of right, and you will gain from that very obedience to your Maker, which natural conscience enjoins, a conviction of the truth and power of that Redeemer whom a supernatural message has revealed; do but examine your thoughts and doings; do but attempt what you know to be God’s will, and you will most assuredly be led on into all the truth.

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

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