CSVF Blog

Happy Independence Day!

And a hearty feast day to all, especially those of the New York Frassati Fellowship!

From our Nuns at Summit:
Today is the feast of BL. PIER GIORGIO FRASSATI (1901-1925), a Third Order Dominican who dedicated his life to study, the pursuit of holiness, and to apostolic and social activity that upheld charity. He is a shining example for all young people of an authentic Christan life lived in the world and completely dedicated to the love of God.

At the age of 21, Pier Giorgio was admitted into the Third Order of St. Dominic by Fr. Martin Stanislaus Gillet, O.P., later Master of the Order, and took the name Jerome, after the great Dominican, Jerome Savonarola.

After Pier Giorgio’s death of polio at age 24 (contracted from the poor he ministered to), Fr. Gillet wrote,

“(Pier Giorgio) loved the Church: the mother of all. He willingly, generously, would have given his life for her. And, in the Church, souls attracted him, especially those of the poor. To the hungry he gave the little he had: to the unloved he gave his heart: to the disgraced who know nothing of God and live in spiritual loneliness, he gave the example of the just one who lives his faith and attracted them to God who would satisfy them.”

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[From our Holy Father's audience on this day last year, 26 May 2011]

Today the Church remembers St Philip Neri, who is distinguished for his joy and for his special dedication to youth, whom he educated and evangelized through the inspired pastoral initiative of the Oratory. Dear young people, look at this saint to learn to live with evangelical simplicity. Dear sick, may St Philip Neri help you to make of your suffering an offering to the heavenly Father, in union with Jesus Crucified. And you, dear newlyweds, supported by the intercession of St Philip, be inspired always by the Gospel to build a truly Christian family.

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[Our Holy Father's catechesis on Venerable Bede points out the way the Bible, history, and liturgy are wonderfully interwoven as the concrete site of God and man's relationship (18 February 2009).]

The Saint we are approaching today is called Bede and was born in the north-east of England, to be exact, Northumbria, in the year 672 or 673. He himself recounts that when he was seven years old his parents entrusted him to the Abbot of the neighbouring Benedictine monastery to be educated: “spending all the remaining time of my life a dweller in that monastery”. He recalls, “I wholly applied myself to the study of Scripture; and amidst the observance of the monastic Rule and the daily charge of singing in church, I always took delight in learning, or teaching, or writing” (Historia eccl. Anglorum, v, 24). In fact, Bede became one of the most outstanding erudite figures of the early Middle Ages since he was able to avail himself of many precious manuscripts which his Abbots would bring him on their return from frequent journeys to the continent and to Rome. His teaching and the fame of his writings occasioned his friendships with many of the most important figures of his time who encouraged him to persevere in his work from which so many were to benefit. When Bede fell ill, he did not stop working, always preserving an inner joy that he expressed in prayer and song. He ended his most important work, the Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, with this invocation: “I beseech you, O good Jesus, that to the one to whom you have graciously granted sweetly to drink in the words of your knowledge, you will also vouchsafe in your loving kindness that he may one day come to you, the Fountain of all wisdom, and appear for ever before your face”. Death took him on 26 May 737: it was the Ascension.

Sacred Scripture was the constant source of Bede’s theological reflection. After a critical study of the text (a copy of the monumental Codex Amiatinus of the Vulgate on which Bede worked has come down to us), he comments on the Bible, interpreting it in a Christological key, that is, combining two things: on the one hand he listens to exactly what the text says, he really seeks to hear and understand the text itself; on the other, he is convinced that the key to understanding Sacred Scripture as the one word of God is Christ, and with Christ, in his light, one understands the Old and New Testaments as “one” Sacred Scripture. The events of the Old and New Testaments go together, they are the way to Christ, although expressed in different signs and institutions (this is what he calls the concordia sacramentorum). For example, the tent of the covenant that Moses pitched in the desert and the first and second temple of Jerusalem are images of the Church, the new temple built on Christ and on the Apostles with living stones, held together by the love of the Spirit. And just as pagan peoples also contributed to building the ancient temple by making available valuable materials and the technical experience of their master builders, so too contributing to the construction of the Church there were apostles and teachers, not only from ancient Jewish, Greek and Latin lineage, but also from the new peoples, among whom Bede was pleased to list the Irish Celts and Anglo-Saxons. St Bede saw the growth of the universal dimension of the Church which is not restricted to one specific culture but is comprised of all the cultures of the world that must be open to Christ and find in him their goal.

Another of Bede’s favourite topics is the history of the Church. After studying the period described in the Acts of the Apostles, he reviews the history of the Fathers and the Councils, convinced that the work of the Holy Spirit continues in history. In the Chronica Maiora, Bede outlines a chronology that was to become the basis of the universal Calendar “ab incarnatione Domini”. In his day, time was calculated from the foundation of the City of Rome. Realizing that the true reference point, the centre of history, is the Birth of Christ, Bede gave us this calendar that interprets history starting from the Incarnation of the Lord. Bede records the first six Ecumenical Councils and their developments, faithfully presenting Christian doctrine, both Mariological and soteriological, and denouncing the Monophysite and Monothelite, Iconoclastic and Neo-Pelagian heresies. Lastly he compiled with documentary rigour and literary expertise the Ecclesiastical History of the English Peoples mentioned above, which earned him recognition as “the father of English historiography”. The characteristic features of the Church that Bede sought to emphasize are: a) catholicity, seen as faithfulness to tradition while remaining open to historical developments, and as the quest for unity in multiplicity, in historical and cultural diversity according to the directives Pope Gregory the Great had given to Augustine of Canterbury, the Apostle of England; b) apostolicity and Roman traditions: in this regard he deemed it of prime importance to convince all the Irish, Celtic and Pict Churches to have one celebration for Easter in accordance with the Roman calendar. The Computo, which he worked out scientifically to establish the exact date of the Easter celebration, hence the entire cycle of the liturgical year, became the reference text for the whole Catholic Church.

Bede was also an eminent teacher of liturgical theology. In his Homilies on the Gospels for Sundays and feast days he achieves a true mystagogy, teaching the faithful to celebrate the mysteries of the faith joyfully and to reproduce them coherently in life, while awaiting their full manifestation with the return of Christ, when, with our glorified bodies, we shall be admitted to the offertory procession in the eternal liturgy of God in Heaven. Following the “realism” of the catecheses of Cyril, Ambrose and Augustine, Bede teaches that the sacraments of Christian initiation make every faithful person “not only a Christian but Christ”. Indeed, every time that a faithful soul lovingly accepts and preserves the Word of God, in imitation of Mary, he conceives and generates Christ anew. And every time that a group of neophytes receives the Easter sacraments the Church “reproduces herself” or, to use a more daring term, the Church becomes “Mother of God”, participating in the generation of her children through the action of the Holy Spirit.

By his way of creating theology, interweaving the Bible, liturgy and history, Bede has a timely message for the different “states of life”: a) for scholars (doctores ac doctrices) he recalls two essential tasks: to examine the marvels of the word of God in order to present them in an attractive form to the faithful; to explain the dogmatic truths, avoiding heretical complications and keeping to “Catholic simplicity”, with the attitude of the lowly and humble to whom God is pleased to reveal the mysteries of the Kingdom; b) pastors, for their part, must give priority to preaching, not only through verbal or hagiographic language but also by giving importance to icons, processions and pilgrimages. Bede recommends that they use the vulgate as he himself does, explaining the “Our Father” and the “Creed” in Northumbrian and continuing, until the last day of his life, his commentary on the Gospel of John in the vulgate; c) Bede recommends to consecrated people who devote themselves to the Divine Office, living in the joy of fraternal communion and progressing in the spiritual life by means of ascesis and contemplation that they attend to the apostolate no one possesses the Gospel for himself alone but must perceive it as a gift for others too both by collaborating with Bishops in pastoral activities of various kinds for the young Christian communities and by offering themselves for the evangelizing mission among the pagans, outside their own country, as “peregrini pro amore Dei”.

Making this viewpoint his own, in his commentary on the Song of Songs Bede presents the Synagogue and the Church as collaborators in the dissemination of God’s word. Christ the Bridegroom wants a hard-working Church, “weathered by the efforts of evangelization” there is a clear reference to the word in the Song of Songs (1: 5), where the bride says “Nigra sum sed formosa” (“I am very dark, but comely”) intent on tilling other fields or vineyards and in establishing among the new peoples “not a temporary hut but a permanent dwelling place”, in other words, intent on integrating the Gospel into their social fabric and cultural institutions. In this perspective the holy Doctor urges lay faithful to be diligent in religious instruction, imitating those “insatiable crowds of the Gospel who did not even allow the Apostles time to take a mouthful”. He teaches them how to pray ceaselessly, “reproducing in life what they celebrate in the liturgy”, offering all their actions as a spiritual sacrifice in union with Christ. He explains to parents that in their small domestic circle too they can exercise “the priestly office as pastors and guides”, giving their children a Christian upbringing. He also affirms that he knows many of the faithful (men and women, married and single) “capable of irreproachable conduct who, if appropriately guided, will be able every day to receive Eucharistic communion” (Epist. ad Ecgberctum, ed. Plummer, p. 419).

The fame of holiness and wisdom that Bede already enjoyed in his lifetime, earned him the title of “Venerable”. Pope Sergius I called him this when he wrote to his Abbot in 701 asking him to allow him to come to Rome temporarily to give advice on matters of universal interest. After his death, Bede’s writings were widely disseminated in his homeland and on the European continent. Bishop St Boniface, the great missionary of Germany, (d. 754), asked the Archbishop of York and the Abbot of Wearmouth several times to have some of his works transcribed and sent to him so that he and his companions might also enjoy the spiritual light that shone from them. A century later, Notker Balbulus, Abbot of Sankt Gallen (d. 912), noting the extraordinary influence of Bede, compared him to a new sun that God had caused to rise, not in the East but in the West, to illuminate the world. Apart from the rhetorical emphasis, it is a fact that with his works Bede made an effective contribution to building a Christian Europe in which the various peoples and cultures amalgamated with one another, thereby giving them a single physiognomy, inspired by the Christian faith. Let us pray that today too there may be figures of Bede’s stature, to keep the whole continent united; let us pray that we may all be willing to rediscover our common roots, in order to be builders of a profoundly human and authentically Christian Europe.

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[From our Holy Father's catechesis on the great defender of orthodoxy, 20 June 2007]

Only a few years after his death, this authentic protagonist of the Christian tradition was already hailed as “the pillar of the Church” by Gregory of Nazianzus, the great theologian and Bishop of Constantinople (Orationes, 21, 26), and he has always been considered a model of orthodoxy in both East and West.

As a result, it was not by chance that Gian Lorenzo Bernini placed his statue among those of the four holy Doctors of the Eastern and Western Churches – together with the images of Ambrose, John Chrysostom and Augustine – which surround the Chair of St Peter in the marvellous apse of the Vatican Basilica.

Athanasius was undoubtedly one of the most important and revered early Church Fathers. But this great Saint was above all the impassioned theologian of the Incarnation of the Logos, the Word of God who – as the Prologue of the fourth Gospel says – “became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1: 14).

For this very reason Athanasius was also the most important and tenacious adversary of the Arian heresy, which at that time threatened faith in Christ, reduced to a creature “halfway” between God and man, according to a recurring tendency in history which we also see manifested today in various forms.

In all likelihood Athanasius was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in about the year 300 A.D. He received a good education before becoming a deacon and secretary to the Bishop of Alexandria, the great Egyptian metropolis. As a close collaborator of his Bishop, the young cleric took part with him in the Council of Nicaea, the first Ecumenical Council, convoked by the Emperor Constantine in May 325 A.D. to ensure Church unity. The Nicene Fathers were thus able to address various issues and primarily the serious problem that had arisen a few years earlier from the preaching of the Alexandrian priest, Arius.

With his theory, Arius threatened authentic faith in Christ, declaring that the Logos was not a true God but a created God, a creature “halfway” between God and man who hence remained for ever inaccessible to us. The Bishops gathered in Nicaea responded by developing and establishing the “Symbol of faith” ["Creed"] which, completed later at the First Council of Constantinople, has endured in the traditions of various Christian denominations and in the liturgy as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.

In this fundamental text – which expresses the faith of the undivided Church and which we also recite today, every Sunday, in the Eucharistic celebration – the Greek term homooúsios is featured, in Latin consubstantialis: it means that the Son, the Logos, is “of the same substance” as the Father, he is God of God, he is his substance. Thus, the full divinity of the Son, which was denied by the Arians, was brought into the limelight.

In 328 A.D., when Bishop Alexander died, Athanasius succeeded him as Bishop of Alexandria. He showed straightaway that he was determined to reject any compromise with regard to the Arian theories condemned by the Council of Nicaea.

His intransigence – tenacious and, if necessary, at times harsh – against those who opposed his episcopal appointment and especially against adversaries of the Nicene Creed, provoked the implacable hostility of the Arians and philo-Arians.

Despite the unequivocal outcome of the Council, which clearly affirmed that the Son is of the same substance as the Father, these erroneous ideas shortly thereafter once again began to prevail – in this situation even Arius was rehabilitated -, and they were upheld for political reasons by the Emperor Constantine himself and then by his son Constantius II.

Moreover, Constantine was not so much concerned with theological truth but rather with the unity of the Empire and its political problems; he wished to politicize the faith, making it more accessible – in his opinion – to all his subjects throughout the Empire.

Thus, the Arian crisis, believed to have been resolved at Nicaea, persisted for decades with complicated events and painful divisions in the Church. At least five times – during the 30 years between 336 and 366 A.D. – Athanasius was obliged to abandon his city, spending 17 years in exile and suffering for the faith. But during his forced absences from Alexandria, the Bishop was able to sustain and to spread in the West, first at Trier and then in Rome, the Nicene faith as well as the ideals of monasticism, embraced in Egypt by the great hermit, Anthony, with a choice of life to which Athanasius was always close.

St Anthony, with his spiritual strength, was the most important champion of St Athanasius’ faith. Reinstated in his See once and for all, the Bishop of Alexandria was able to devote himself to religious pacification and the reorganization of the Christian communities. He died on 2 May 373, the day when we celebrate his liturgical Memorial.

The most famous doctrinal work of the holy Alexandrian Bishop is his treatise: De Incarnatione, On the Incarnation of the Word, the divine Logos who was made flesh, becoming like one of us for our salvation.

In this work Athanasius says with an affirmation that has rightly become famous that the Word of God “was made man so that we might be made God; and he manifested himself through a body so that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and he endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality” (54, 3). With his Resurrection, in fact, the Lord banished death from us like “straw from the fire” (8, 4).

The fundamental idea of Athanasius’ entire theological battle was precisely that God is accessible. He is not a secondary God, he is the true God and it is through our communion with Christ that we can truly be united to God. He has really become “God-with-us”.

Among the other works of this great Father of the Church – which remain largely associated with the events of the Arian crisis – let us remember the four epistles he addressed to his friend Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis, on the divinity of the Holy Spirit which he clearly affirmed, and approximately 30 “Festal” Letters addressed at the beginning of each year to the Churches and monasteries of Egypt to inform them of the date of the Easter celebration, but above all to guarantee the links between the faithful, reinforcing their faith and preparing them for this great Solemnity.

Lastly, Athanasius also wrote meditational texts on the Psalms, subsequently circulated widely, and in particular, a work that constitutes the bestseller of early Christian literature: The Life of Anthony, that is, the biography of St Anthony Abbot. It was written shortly after this Saint’s death precisely while the exiled Bishop of Alexandria was staying with monks in the Egyptian desert.
Athanasius was such a close friend of the great hermit that he received one of the two sheepskins which Anthony left as his legacy, together with the mantle that the Bishop of Alexandria himself had given to him.

The exemplary biography of this figure dear to Christian tradition soon became very popular, almost immediately translated into Latin, in two editions, and then into various Oriental languages; it made an important contribution to the spread of monasticism in the East and in the West.

It was not by chance that the interpretation of this text, in Trier, was at the centre of a moving tale of the conversion of two imperial officials which Augustine incorporated into his Confessions (cf. VIII, 6, 15) as the preamble to his own conversion.

Moreover, Athanasius himself showed he was clearly aware of the influence that Anthony’s fine example could have on Christian people. Indeed, he wrote at the end of this work: “The fact that his fame has been blazoned everywhere, that all regard him with wonder, and that those who have never seen him long for him, is clear proof of his virtue and God’s love of his soul. For not from writings, nor from worldly wisdom, nor through any art, was Anthony renowned, but solely from his piety towards God. That this was the gift of God no one will deny.

“For from whence into Spain and into Gaul, how into Rome and Africa, was the man heard of who dwelt hidden in a mountain, unless it was God who makes his own known everywhere, who also pro-mised this to Anthony at the beginning? For even if they work secretly, even if they wish to remain in obscurity, yet the Lord shows them as lamps to lighten all, that those who hear may thus know that the precepts of God are able to make men prosper and thus be zealous in the path of virtue” (Life of Anthony, 93, 5-6).

Yes, brothers and sisters! We have many causes for which to be grateful to St Athanasius. His life, like that of Anthony and of countless other saints, shows us that “those who draw near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become truly close to them” (Deus Caritas Est, n. 42).

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There is a plenary indulgence today, which can be obtained in one of two ways: see here. Our sister parish of St. Catherine of Siena, on 68th between 1st and York Aves will have public devotions to the Divine Mercy today at 3 pm.

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[The translated transcript of Our Holy Father's Easter Message to the World here follows:]
“In resurrectione tua, Christe, coeli et terra laetentur!
In your resurrection, O Christ, let heaven and earth rejoice!” (Liturgy of the Hours).

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Rome and across the world, Easter morning brings us news that is ancient yet ever new: Christ is risen! The echo of this event, which issued forth from Jerusalem twenty centuries ago, continues to resound in the Church, deep in whose heart lives the vibrant faith of Mary, Mother of Jesus, the faith of Mary Magdalene and the other women who first discovered the empty tomb, and the faith of Peter and the other Apostles.

Right down to our own time – even in these days of advanced communications technology – the faith of Christians is based on that same news, on the testimony of those sisters and brothers who saw firstly the stone that had been rolled away from the empty tomb and then the mysterious messengers who testified that Jesus, the Crucified, was risen. And then Jesus himself, the Lord and Master, living and tangible, appeared to Mary Magdalene, to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and finally to all eleven, gathered in the Upper Room (cf. Mk 16:9-14).

The resurrection of Christ is not the fruit of speculation or mystical experience: it is an event which, while it surpasses history, nevertheless happens at a precise moment in history and leaves an indelible mark upon it. The light which dazzled the guards keeping watch over Jesus’ tomb has traversed time and space. It is a different kind of light, a divine light, that has rent asunder the darkness of death and has brought to the world the splendour of God, the splendour of Truth and Goodness.

Just as the sun’s rays in springtime cause the buds on the branches of the trees to sprout and open up, so the radiance that streams forth from Christ’s resurrection gives strength and meaning to every human hope, to every expectation, wish and plan. Hence the entire cosmos is rejoicing today, caught up in the springtime of humanity, which gives voice to creation’s silent hymn of praise. The Easter Alleluia, resounding in the Church as she makes her pilgrim way through the world, expresses the silent exultation of the universe and above all the longing of every human soul that is sincerely open to God, giving thanks to him for his infinite goodness, beauty and truth.

“In your resurrection, O Christ, let heaven and earth rejoice.” To this summons to praise, which arises today from the heart of the Church, the “heavens” respond fully: the hosts of angels, saints and blessed souls join with one voice in our exultant song. In heaven all is peace and gladness. But alas, it is not so on earth! Here, in this world of ours, the Easter alleluia still contrasts with the cries and laments that arise from so many painful situations: deprivation, hunger, disease, war, violence. Yet it was for this that Christ died and rose again! He died on account of sin, including ours today, he rose for the redemption of history, including our own. So my message today is intended for everyone, and, as a prophetic proclamation, it is intended especially for peoples and communities who are undergoing a time of suffering, that the Risen Christ may open up for them the path of freedom, justice and peace.

May the Land which was the first to be flooded by the light of the Risen One rejoice. May the splendour of Christ reach the peoples of the Middle East, so that the light of peace and of human dignity may overcome the darkness of division, hate and violence. In the current conflict in Libya, may diplomacy and dialogue take the place of arms and may those who suffer as a result of the conflict be given access to humanitarian aid. In the countries of northern Africa and the Middle East, may all citizens, especially young people, work to promote the common good and to build a society where poverty is defeated and every political choice is inspired by respect for the human person. May help come from all sides to those fleeing conflict and to refugees from various African countries who have been obliged to leave all that is dear to them; may people of good will open their hearts to welcome them, so that the pressing needs of so many brothers and sisters will be met with a concerted response in a spirit of solidarity; and may our words of comfort and appreciation reach all those who make such generous efforts and offer an exemplary witness in this regard.

May peaceful coexistence be restored among the peoples of Ivory Coast, where there is an urgent need to tread the path of reconciliation and pardon, in order to heal the deep wounds caused by the recent violence. May Japan find consolation and hope as it faces the dramatic consequences of the recent earthquake, along with other countries that in recent months have been tested by natural disasters which have sown pain and anguish.

May heaven and earth rejoice at the witness of those who suffer opposition and even persecution for their faith in Jesus Christ. May the proclamation of his victorious resurrection deepen their courage and trust.
Dear brothers and sisters! The risen Christ is journeying ahead of us towards the new heavens and the new earth (cf. Rev 21:1), in which we shall all finally live as one family, as sons of the same Father. He is with us until the end of time. Let us walk behind him, in this wounded world, singing Alleluia. In our hearts there is joy and sorrow, on our faces there are smiles and tears. Such is our earthly reality. But Christ is risen, he is alive and he walks with us. For this reason we sing and we walk, faithfully carrying out our task in this world with our gaze fixed on heaven.

Happy Easter to all of you!

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Our Prior Provincial Fr. Brian Mulcahy O.P.’s Easter Sunday Homily at St. Vincent Ferrer. Christ is Risen! Alleluia!

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Our Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper will be celebrated at 7:30 pm.

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[Our Holy Father's Homily, Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion 2011]

It is a moving experience each year on Palm Sunday as we go up the mountain with Jesus, towards the Temple, accompanying him on his ascent. On this day, throughout the world and across the centuries, young people and people of every age acclaim him, crying out: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

But what are we really doing when we join this procession as part of the throng which went up with Jesus to Jerusalem and hailed him as King of Israel?

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[St. Joseph is patron of the universal Church, patron of Our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI (Josef Ratzinger), and patron of the St. Joseph province of Dominicans that serves this parish. Here is an excerpt of an audience the pope held in 2005, which offers worthy Lenten considerations about silence.]

Pope Benedict XVI on St. Joseph, The Just Man

“I would like today to turn my attention to the figure of St Joseph. In today’s gospel pages, St Luke presents the Virgin Mary as “engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David” (Lk 1:27). However it is the evangelist Matthew who gives the greatest prominence to the putative father of Jesus, pointing out that, through him, the Child was legally inserted in David’s line and thus he realized the Scriptures, in which the Messiah was prophesied as the “son of David”.

“But Joseph’s role certainly cannot be reduced to this aspect. He is the model of the “just” man (Mt 1:19), who in perfect sympathy with his spouse, welcomes the Son of God made man and guards over his human growth. For this reason, the days leading up to Christmas are as good a time as ever to establish a sort of spiritual conversation with St Joseph, because he helps us to live to the full this great mystery of faith.

“The beloved Pope John Paul II, who was very devoted to St Joseph, left us an awesome meditation dedicated to him in the Apostolic Exhortation Redemptoris Custos, “Guardian of the Redeemer”. Among the many aspects it highlights, particular emphasis is placed on the silence of St Joseph. His is a silence permeated by contemplation of the mystery of God, in an attitude of total availability to his divine wishes. In other words, the silence of St Joseph was not the sign of an inner void, but on the contrary, of the fullness of faith he carried in his heart, and which guided each and every one of his thoughts and actions.

A silence thanks to which Joseph, in unison with Mary, could be the guardian of the Word of God, known through the Sacred Scriptures, coming face to face with it continuously in the events of the life of Jesus; a silence interwoven with constant prayer, prayer of the blessing of the Lord, of adoration of his holy will and of unreserved trust in his providence. It is no exaggeration to say that it was from his ‘father’ Joseph that Jesus acquired – on the human level – that robust interiority which presupposes authentic justice, the “superior justice” which He would one day teach to his disciples (cfr Mt 5:20).

Let us allow ourselves to be “infected” by the silence of St Joseph! We have much need of it in a world which is often too noisy, which does not encourage reflection and listening to the voice of God.”

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Hit play and then read below, if you like.

There are three times that our Lord declares that people are blessed in the Gospel of St. Matthew. Each group increases in particularity and in office: from disciples in general, to the Apostles, to Christ’s personal vicar on earth.

1. The Beatitudes
Inaugurating his teaching ministry through the so-called Sermon on the Mount, our Lord preaches to his disciples as the new law-giver. He is the fulfillment of the Law; for, he is the incarnate Word. Jesus assures as blessed those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the clean of heart, the peacemakers, and those persecuted for the sake of righteousness and his name (Matthew 5:3-12).

2. The Mysteries of the Kingdom
Having summoned The Twelve (Matthew 10 ff.) and having given the parable of the Sower, Christ himself will explain to these select disciples the meaning of the parable (Matthew 13:18-24). Why? “Because knowledge of he mysteries of the kingdom has been granted” to them (Matthew 13:11). While the world does not hear with understanding or see with vision, the Apostles do. “Blessed are your eyes because they see and your ears because they hear” (Matthew 13:16).

3. The Heavenly Father’s Election
By the time we get to Peter’s confession, the select company of disciples have already confessed that Christ is “the Son of God” (Matthew 14:33). This confession was in response to Christ’s calming of a storm, which threatened to sink Peter who was unable to walk across water in perfect faith.

Simon Peter’s unique election is not essentially about the integrity of his faith (which, at any rate, is perfected only after the Resurrection and Pentecost), even though protestant apologetics typically argues that the “rock” is not Peter but his confession of faith. Indeed, Christ will soon rebuke Peter as an obstacle for thinking as human beings do (Matthew 16:21-23). But Peter’s subjective faith is not the object of blessing; such is the significance of the third declaration of beatitude by Christ in the Gospel of St. Matthew, directed manifestly to the person of Peter. Simon Peter confesses not only that Jesus is the Christ (Messiah) and the Son of God, but the Son of the living God, which implies Peter’s awareness of God’s transcendent but present power through the earthly ministry of Jesus. More importantly, however, it implies the work of the living God through Peter!

And so, analogous (… very analogous) to the way in which Jesus is the chosen one of God, Peter is the chosen one of Jesus. In response to St. Peter’s declaration, “you are the Son of the living God,” Jesus says to him, you are “Simon son of Jonah.” Hence, Jesus names Simon Peter (or Cephas in Aramaic, which has none of the ostensible grammatical issues protestants like to level against “Petros” and “petra”). Then he declares the work of the heavenly Father to be present. Clearly, Christ is teaching us about the vicarage of Simon and the Petrine ministry. And even as Peter knows he is the rock, he is well aware that Christ remains the cornerstone of the new and everlasting Temple. For all of Peter’s singularity of office, he is one among many living stones that is built into a spiritual house by God (1 Peter 2:1-11).

This brings us back to all disciples who are called blessed if they are poor in spirit and are persecuted and hated for the sake of Christ’s name. If we open ourselves to the riches of the Church’s apostolic faith and sacraments, no deathly power will conquer us, and the work of heaven will be amongst us. It is not about the men who are chosen, but the One who has chosen them and has promised to work through them (Matthew 28:16-20). God’s operative power is such that, (more literally), “whaterver you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven (Matthes 16:19). The present of the Petrine ministry is connected to the future perfect of God’s heavenly economy.

And that is the key… (cf. Matthew 16.19)

Blessed are those who are meek enough to follow Christ’s shepherds, united under the primacy of Peter.

Fiat voluntas tua sicut in caelo et in terra…

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Mark 8.22-26

Commentary of St. Bede (as cited by St. Thomas)
For the Lord touches us, when He enlightens our minds with the breath of His Spirit, and He stirs us up that we may recognise our own infirmity, and be diligent in good actions. He takes the hand of the blind man, that He may strengthen him to the practice of good works…

…Putting spittle into the eyes of the blind man, He lays His hands upon him that he may see, because He has wiped away the blindness of the human race both by invisible gifts, and by the Sacrament of His assumed humanity; for the spittle, proceeding from the Head, points out the grace of the Holy Ghost. But though by one word He could cure the man wholly and all at once, still He cures him by degrees, that He may shew the greatness of the blindness of man, which can hardly, and only as it were step by step, be restored to light; and He exhibits to us His grace, by which He furthers each step towards perfection.

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Our Holy Father, a couple of years ago, on the co-patrons (with St. Benedict) of Europe. If you need help with the Bavarian accent, or would like a fuller exposition, read our Pope’s text below the video.

Today [17 June 2009] I would like to talk about Sts Cyril and Methodius, brothers by blood and in the faith, the so-called “Apostles to the Slavs”. Cyril was born in Thessalonica to Leo, an imperial magistrate, in 826 or 827. He was the youngest of seven. As a child he learned the Slavonic language. When he was 14 years old he was sent to Constantinople to be educated and was companion to the young Emperor, Michael III. In those years Cyril was introduced to the various university disciplines, including dialectics, and his teacher was Photius. After refusing a brilliant marriage he decided to receive holy Orders and became “librarian” at the Patriarchate. Shortly afterwards, wishing to retire in solitude, he went into hiding at a monastery but was soon discovered and entrusted with teaching the sacred and profane sciences. He carried out this office so well that he earned the nickname of “Philosopher”. In the meantime, his brother Michael (born in about 815), left the world after an administrative career in Macedonia, and withdrew to a monastic life on Mount Olympus in Bithynia, where he was given the name “Methodius” (a monk’s monastic name had to begin with the same letter as his baptismal name) and became hegumen of the Monastery of Polychron.

Attracted by his brother’s example, Cyril too decided to give up teaching and go to Mount Olympus to meditate and pray. A few years later (in about 861), the imperial government sent him on a mission to the Khazars on the Sea of Azov who had asked for a scholar to be sent to them who could converse with both Jews and Saracens. Cyril, accompanied by his brother Methodius, stayed for a long time in Crimea where he learned Hebrew and sought the body of Pope Clement I who had been exiled there. Cyril found Pope Clement’s tomb and, when he made the return journey with his brother, he took Clement’s precious relics with him. Having arrived in Constantinople the two brothers were sent to Moravia by the Emperor Michael III, who had received a specific request from Prince Ratislav of Moravia: “Since our people rejected paganism”, Ratislav wrote to Michael, “they have embraced the Christian law; but we do not have a teacher who can explain the true faith to us in our own language”. The mission was soon unusually successful. By translating the liturgy into the Slavonic language the two brothers earned immense popularity.

However, this gave rise to hostility among the Frankish clergy who had arrived in Moravia before the Brothers and considered the territory to be under their ecclesiastical jurisdiction. In order to justify themselves, in 867 the two brothers travelled to Rome. On the way they stopped in Venice, where they had a heated discussion with the champions of the so-called “trilingual heresy” who claimed that there were only three languages in which it was lawful to praise God: Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The two brothers obviously forcefully opposed this claim. In Rome Cyril and Methodius were received by Pope Adrian ii who led a procession to meet them in order to give a dignified welcome to St Clement’s relics. The Pope had also realized the great importance of their exceptional mission. Since the middle of the first millennium, in fact, thousands of Slavs had settled in those territories located between the two parts of the Roman Empire, the East and the West, whose relations were fraught with tension. The Pope perceived that the Slav peoples would be able to serve as a bridge and thereby help to preserve the union between the Christians of both parts of the Empire. Thus he did not hesitate to approve the mission of the two brothers in Great Moravia, accepting and approving the use of the Slavonic language in the liturgy. The Slavonic Books were laid on the altar of St Mary of Phatmé (St Mary Major) and the liturgy in the Slavonic tongue was celebrated in the Basilicas of St Peter, St Andrew and St Paul.

Unfortunately, Cyril fell seriously ill in Rome. Feeling that his death was at hand, he wanted to consecrate himself totally to God as a monk in one of the Greek monasteries of the City (probably Santa Prassede) and took the monastic name of Cyril (his baptismal name was Constantine). He then insistently begged his brother Methodius, who in the meantime had been ordained a Bishop, not to abandon their mission in Moravia and to return to the peoples there. He addressed this prayer to God: “Lord, my God… hear my prayers and keep the flock you have entrusted to me faithful …. Free them from the heresy of the three languages, gather them all in unity and make the people you have chosen agree in the true faith and confession”. He died on 14 February 869.

Faithful to the pledge he had made with his brother, Methodius returned to Moravia and Pannonia (today, Hungary) the following year, 870, where once again he encountered the violent aversion of the Frankish missionaries who took him prisoner. He did not lose heart and when he was released in 873, he worked hard to organize the Church and train a group of disciples. It was to the merit of these disciples that it was possible to survive the crisis unleashed after the death of Methodius on 6 April 885: persecuted and imprisoned, some of them were sold as slaves and taken to Venice where they were redeemed by a Constantinopolitan official who allowed them to return to the countries of the Slavonic Balkans. Welcomed in Bulgaria, they were able to continue the mission that Methodius had begun and to disseminate the Gospel in the “Land of the Rus”. God with his mysterious Providence thus availed himself of their persecution to save the work of the holy Brothers. Literary documentation of their work is extant. It suffices to think of texts such as the Evangeliarium (liturgical passages of the New Testament), the Psalter, various liturgical texts in Slavonic, on which both the Brothers had worked. Indeed, after Cyril’s death, it is to Methodius and to his disciples that we owe the translation of the entire Sacred Scriptures, the Nomocanone and the Book of the Fathers.

Wishing now to sum up concisely the profile of the two Brothers, we should first recall the enthusiasm with which Cyril approached the writings of St Gregory of Nazianzus, learning from him the value of language in the transmission of the Revelation. St Gregory had expressed the wish that Christ would speak through him: “I am a servant of the Word, so I put myself at the service of the Word”. Desirous of imitating Gregory in this service, Cyril asked Christ to deign to speak in Slavonic through him. He introduced his work of translation with the solemn invocation: “Listen, O all of you Slav Peoples, listen to the word that comes from God, the word that nourishes souls, the word that leads to the knowledge of God”. In fact, a few years before the Prince of Moravia had asked the Emperor Michael III to send missionaries to his country, it seems that Cyril and his brother Methodius, surrounded by a group of disciples, were already working on the project of collecting the Christian dogmas in books written in Slavonic. The need for new graphic characters closer to the language spoken was therefore clearly apparent: so it was that the Glagolitic alphabet came into being. Subsequently modified, it was later designated by the name “Cyrillic”, in honour of the man who inspired it. It was a crucial event for the development of the Slav civilization in general. Cyril and Methodius were convinced that the individual peoples could not claim to have received the Revelation fully unless they had heard it in their own language and read it in the characters proper to their own alphabet.

Methodius had the merit of ensuring that the work begun by his brother was not suddenly interrupted. While Cyril, the “Philosopher”, was more inclined to contemplation, Methodius on the other hand had a leaning for the active life. Thanks to this he was able to lay the foundations of the successive affirmation of what we might call the “Cyrillian-Methodian idea”: it accompanied the Slav peoples in the different periods of their history, encouraging their cultural, national and religious development. This was already recognized by Pope Pius XI in his Apostolic Letter Quod Sanctum Cyrillum, in which he described the two Brothers: “Sons of the East, with a Byzantine homeland, of Greek origin, for the Roman missions to reap Slav apostolic fruit” (AAS 19 [1927] 93-96). The historic role they played was later officially proclaimed by Pope John Paul II who, with his Apostolic Letter Egregiae Virtutis, declared them Co-Patrons of Europe, together with St Benedict (31 December 1980; L’Osservatore Romano English edition, 19 January 1981, p. 3).

Cyril and Methodius are in fact a classic example of what today is meant by the term “inculturation”: every people must integrate the message revealed into its own culture and express its saving truth in its own language. This implies a very demanding effort of “translation” because it requires the identification of the appropriate words to present anew, without distortion, the riches of the revealed word. The two holy Brothers have left us a most important testimony of this, to which the Church also looks today in order to draw from it inspiration and guidelines.

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[The entirety of the post that follows is authored by Fra Lawrence Lew, OP, of the English province, who published it here .]

…Forty days after Christmas, the Liturgy commemorates the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple and the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in fulfilment of the Jewish Law. This feast brings to a close the extended season of Christmas and we, here in Blackfriars Cambridge, will finally take down our Christmas trees and put away the Crib! One of the names associated with this Feast is Candlemas and the characteristic rite of the Liturgy is the blessing of and procession with candles. The most obvious reason for this feast of light is to celebrate the True Light, Jesus Christ, whom Simeon foretold would be a “light to enlighten the Gentiles”. However, the ‘Golden Legend’ of Fra’ Jacobus de Voragine – as always – gives us other illuminating reasons for blessing and processing with candles on the Feast of Candlemas:

“The Church established this usage for four reasons. The first is to do away with an erroneous custom. On the calends of February the Romans honoured February, mother of Mars the god of war, by lighting the city with candles and torches throughout the night of that day. This they did every fifth year (that span of years being called a ‘lustrum’) in order to obtain victory over their enemies from the son whose mother they so solemnly celebrated. Also in February the Romans sacrificed to Februus, i.e., to Pluto and the other gods of the underworld, that the gods might be propitious to the souls of their ancestors: they made solemn offerings to them and sang their praises throughout the night by the light of candles and torches. Pope Innocent says that the Roman wives observed a feast of lights that had its origins in some poets’ fables, according to which Prosepina was so beautiful that the god Pluto, smitten with desire, abducted her and made her a goddess. Her kinsmen sought her for a long time through the forests and woodlands with torches and lanterns, and the Roman wives imitated this, going about with torches and candles. Since it is hard to relinquish such customs and the Christians, converted from paganism, had difficulty giving them up, Pope Sergius transmuted them, decreeing that the faithful should honour the holy mother of the Lord on this day by lighting up the whole world with lamps and candles. Thus the Roman celebration survived but with an altered meaning.

Another reason for solemnizing the feast of Candlemas was to show the purity of the Virgin Mary. Some people, hearing that she had accepted purification might think that she had needed to be purified. Therefore to show that she was totally pure and radiant, the Church ordered that we should carry luminous candles, as if the Church were in effect saying: ‘O Blessed Virgin, you need no purification! You are wholly shining, wholly resplendent!’…

The third reason for celebrating the feast of Candlemas is to recall the procession that occurred on this day, when Mary and Joseph and Simeon and Anna formed a solemn procession and presented the child Jesus in the Temple. On the feast day we too make a procession, carrying in our hands a lighted candle which signifies Jesus, and bearinng it into the churches. In the candle there are three things – the wick, the wax and the fire. These three signify three things about Christ: the wax is the sign of his body, which was born of the Virgin Mary without corruption of the flesh, as bees make honey without mingling with each other; the wick signifies his most pure soul, hidden in his body; the fire or the light stands for divinity, because God is a consuming fire…

The fourth reason for celebrating the feast is to instruct us. We learn that if we wish to be purified and clean before God, we have three things in us, namely, true faith, good works and right intention. The lighted candle in the hand is faith with good works; for as a candle without a light is said to be dead, and as a light does not illumine without a candle and seems to be dead, so works without faith and faith without good works can be called dead. The wick hidden within the wax is the right intention, and Gregory says: ‘Let the work be visible to the public in such a way that the intention remains in hiding.’”

Incidentally, the Dominican writer goes on to recount a story of a mystical vision of a Mass of Candlemas and says: “When it was time for the offertory, the Queen of the virgins and the other virgins, together with all those in the choir, genuflected and offered their candles to the priest, as is customary.” Of course, those who are familiar with the (old Tridentine and/or reformed, Vatican II) Roman Rite might be rather puzzled by this; the 1962 rubric clearly states that the faithful light their candles during the Sanctus until Communion, so they could not have offered them to the priest at the offertory. What we have here then is a reminder of the antiquity of the Dominican Rite which retained this older form from the early medieval Roman Rite; for we still have the Dominican custom of offering the blessed candles to the Prior at the offertory, which we shall do [today].

And as the candles are offered, this antiphon is sung:

“Felix namque es, sacra virgo Maria, et omne laude dignissima: quia ex te ortus est sol justitiae, Christus Deus noster”

‘Happy are you, holy virgin Mary, and most worthy of all praise: because from you arose the sun of justice, Christ our God.’

May we, through her glorious intercession, be inflamed with God’s holy charity and so deserve to be presented in the holy temple of God’s glory. Amen. (cf Prayer of blessing over the candles)

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[From our Holy Father's Wednesday catechesis on St. Hilary of Poitiers, 10 October 2007]

To sum up the essentials of his doctrine, I would like to say that Hilary found the starting point for his theological reflection in baptismal faith. In De Trinitate, Hilary writes: Jesus “has commanded us to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (cf. Mt 28: 19), that is, in the confession of the Author, of the Only-Begotten One and of the Gift. The Author of all things is one alone, for one alone is God the Father, from whom all things proceed. And one alone is Our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things exist (cf. I Cor 8: 6), and one alone is the Spirit (cf. Eph 4: 4), a gift in all…. In nothing can be found to be lacking so great a fullness, in which the immensity in the Eternal One, the revelation in the Image, joy in the Gift, converge in the Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit” (De Trinitate 2, 1). God the Father, being wholly love, is able to communicate his divinity to his Son in its fullness. I find particularly beautiful the following formula of St Hilary: “God knows not how to be anything other than love, he knows not how to be anyone other than the Father. Those who love are not envious and the one who is the Father is so in his totality. This name admits no compromise, as if God were father in some aspects and not in others” (ibid., 9, 61).

For this reason the Son is fully God without any gaps or diminishment. “The One who comes from the perfect is perfect because he has all, he has given all” (ibid., 2, 8). Humanity finds salvation in Christ alone, Son of God and Son of man. In assuming our human nature, he has united himself with every man, “he has become the flesh of us all” (Tractatus super Psalmos 54, 9); “he took on himself the nature of all flesh and through it became true life, he has in himself the root of every vine shoot” (ibid., 51, 16). For this very reason the way to Christ is open to all – because he has drawn all into his being as a man -, even if personal conversion is always required: “Through the relationship with his flesh, access to Christ is open to all, on condition that they divest themselves of their former self (cf. Eph 4: 22), nailing it to the Cross (cf. Col 2: 14); provided we give up our former way of life and convert in order to be buried with him in his baptism, in view of life (cf. Col 1: 12; Rom 6: 4)” (ibid., 91, 9).

Fidelity to God is a gift of his grace. Therefore, St Hilary asks, at the end of his Treatise on the Trinity, to be able to remain ever faithful to the baptismal faith. It is a feature of this book: reflection is transformed into prayer and prayer returns to reflection. The whole book is a dialogue with God.

I would like to end today’s Catechesis with one of these prayers, which thus becomes our prayer: “Obtain, O Lord”, St Hilary recites with inspiration, “that I may keep ever faithful to what I have professed in the symbol of my regeneration, when I was baptized in the Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit. That I may worship you, our Father, and with you, your Son; that I may deserve your Holy Spirit, who proceeds from you through your Only Begotten Son… Amen” (De Trinitate 12, 57).

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[From the homily at the canonization of St. John Neumann (1811-1860) by Pope Paul VI, 19 June 1997]

….At the time of John Neumann, America represented new values and new hopes. Bishop Neumann saw these in their relationship to the ultimate, supreme possession to which humanity is destined. With Saint Paul he could testify that “all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3, 22). And with Augustine he knew that our hearts are restless, until they rest in the Lord (S. AUGUSTINI Confessiones, 1, 1)….

There are many who have lived and are still living the divine command of generous love. For love still means giving oneself for others, because Love has come down to humanity; and from humanity love goes back to its divine source! How many men and women make this plan of God the program of their lives! Our praise goes to the clergy, religious and Catholic laity of America who, in following the Gospel, live according to this plan of sacrifice and service. Saint John Neumann is a true example for all of us in this regard. It is not enough to acquire the good things of the earth, for these can even be dangerous, if they stop or impede our love from rising to its source and reaching its goal. Let us always remember that the greatest and the first commandment is this: “You shall love the Lord your God” (Matth. 22, 36).

True humanism in Christianity. True Christianity-we repeat is the sacrifice of self for others, because of Christ, because of God. It is shown by signs; it is manifested in deeds. Christianity is sensitive to the suffering and oppression and sorrow of others, to poverty, to all human needs, the first of which is truth.

[Born in what is today the Czech Republic, St. John Neumann is the only male citizen (naturalized in 1848) of the US who is a canonized Saint. St. John's namesake, as a note of local interest, was he under whom our neighbor church on 1st Ave and 66 finds its patron - St. John Nepomucene.]

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[Excerpted from Pope Paul VI's homily at the canonization of Mother Seton, the first canonized native-born American, 14 September 1975]

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton is an American. All of us say this with spiritual joy, and with the intention of honoring the land and the nation from which she marvellously sprang forth as the first flower in the calendar of the saints. This is the title which, in his original foreword to the excellent work of Father Dirvin, the late Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York, attributed to her as primary and characteristic: «Elizabeth Ann Seton was wholly American»! Rejoice, we say to the great nation of the United States of America. Rejoice for your glorious daughter. Be proud of her. And know how to preserve her fruitful heritage. This most beautiful figure of a holy woman presents to the world and to history the affirmation of new and authentic riches that are yours: that religious spirituality which your temporal prosperity seemed to obscure and almost make impossible. Your land too, America, is indeed worthy of receiving into its fertile ground the seed of evangelical holiness. And here is a splendid proof-among many others-of this fact….

And then we must note that Elizabeth Seton was the mother of a family and at the same time the foundress of the first Religious Congregation of women in the United States. Although this social and ecclesial condition of hers is not unique or new (we may recall, for example, Saint Birgitta, Saint Frances of Rome, Saint Jane Frances Fremiot de Chantal, Saint Louise de Marillac), in a particular way it distinguishes Saint Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton for her complete femininity, so that as we proclaim the supreme exaltation of a woman by the Catholic Church, we are pleased to note that this event coincides with an initiative of the United Nations: International Women’s Year. This program aims at promoting an awareness of the obligation incumbent on all to recognize the true role of women in the world and to contribute to their authentic advancement in society. And we rejoice at the bond that is established between this program and today’s Canonization, as the Church renders the greatest honor possible to Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton and extols her personal and extraordinary contribution as a woman -a wife, a mother, a widow, and a religious….

To all our beloved sons and daughters in the United States and throughout the entire Church of God we offer, in the name of Christ, the glorious heritage of Elizabeth Ann Seton. It is above all an ecclesial heritage of strong faith and pure love for God and for others-faith and love that are nourished on the Eucharist and on the Word of God.

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A plenary indulgence is offered today to the faithful, who devoutly assist either at the solemn singing or recitation of the Veni Creator to implore divine assistance for the course of the whole year… (under the usual conditions).

Those of us at the 8 am recited this beautiful hymn with the intention of receiving the indulgence.

May God bless this New Year!

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In the following passage, Jacques Maritain gives the “thesis” of St. John of the Cross’s mystical doctrine, and then introduces a helpful distinction about the kinds of language we use to talk about God. Our lives of faith and prayer need to be cognizant of the different registers of conceptual and imaginative expression. From Maritain’s chapter on St. John of the Cross in The Degrees of Knowledge:

The precis:

Since all human means, whatever they may be, are disproportionate with respect to possessing God in his own life, the best thing the creature can do is to cast himself off, rid himself of self, renounce his own proper operations and make a void within himself. This the central thesis of St. John of the Cross would be absurd were God not supernaturally present in the soul (and it is a question of a soul already called in a proximate manner to contemplation), were God not there knocking at the gate, to invade the soul wholly, to replace all it has lost by a better life which is the life of God Himself, the torrent of His peace. A mad courage, heroic confidence corresponding in the very order of the spirit to the “insane” love of God. All-holy, such is the basic character of the spirituality of St. John of the Cross. “Nothing, nothing, nothing,” as he said to Ana de Penalosa, “even to leaving one’s skin and all else for Christ.”

And the helpful distinction:

What? Was he not aware that grace completes nature and does not destroy it? He knew it much better than we do. We are now at the crux of the apparent antimony between the ontological language of theology [which speaks of things as they are in their deepest reality] and the practical and mystical language of a St. John of the Cross or of the Imitation of Christ [which speaks of things in terms of our action and experience of the world and ourselves]. St. John of the Cross is not laying hand upon the ontological order and upon the perfecting, the enrichment, the superelevation which nature received from grace: he supposes this order and all truths concerning it. He is preaching neither mutilation nor suicide, nor the slightest ontological destruction of the least vein in the wing of the smallest gnat. His point of view is not that of the structure of our substance andf its faculties: it is the point of view of our ownership of ourselves in the free use and moral exercise of our activity. And there he asks for everything. There we must give all. The death he preaches is very real…

This is helpful for maintaining St. John of the Cross as the Mystical Doctor… of the Christian faith. His wisdom is not a naturally conceived nihilism that abandons Christian doctrine or the true judgments of philosophy about being, man, and the world.

At any rate, let the last words here be St. John’s, from the Spiritual Canticle, singing of the grace-infused soul:

O crystalline font. If on that thy silvered surface
Thou wouldst of a sudden form the eyes desired
Which I bear outlined in my inmost parts!

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The first called

In a Wednesday catechesis from 2006, our Holy Father explains why St. Andrew is called the “protoclete”:

<<He was truly a man of faith and hope; and one day he heard John the Baptist proclaiming Jesus as: “the Lamb of God” (Jn 1:36); so he was stirred, and with another unnamed disciple followed Jesus, the one whom John had called “the Lamb of God”. The Evangelist says that “they saw where he was staying; and they stayed with him that day…” (Jn 1:37-39).

Thus, Andrew enjoyed precious moments of intimacy with Jesus. The account continues with one important annotation: “One of the two who heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon, and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus” (Jn 1:40-43), straightaway showing an unusual apostolic spirit.

Andrew, then, was the first of the Apostles to be called to follow Jesus. Exactly for this reason the liturgy of the Byzantine Church honours him with the nickname: “Protokletos”, [protoclete] which means, precisely, “the first called.”>>

For Pope Benedict, the example of St. Andrew “especially [teaches us] to cultivate a true familiarity with [Jesus], acutely aware that in him alone can we find the ultimate meaning of our life and death.

Apostolic encounter

During Advent, the Protoclete reminds us of the great privilege of our Apostolic faith. Indeed, after we recite the Our Father during the Communion Rite of the Mass, we proclaim the joyful hope with which we await our Lord’s coming; then, the priest affirms: “Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your Apostles, ‘I leave you peace, my peace I give you;’ look not on our sins but on the faith of your Church, and grant us the peace and unity of your Kingdom…” This is to say that the peace we receive and offer is the very peace that the Apostles themselves received from Christ, the peace that surpasses all understanding and is the fruit of possessing the true faith in love.

When we affirm that our Church is “Apostolic,” we don’t merely refer to the linear continuity that our present shepherds ultimately hold with the Apostles. Moreover, we mean that, through the Church’s Sacraments and Faith, we participate in the very experience of the Apostles. Just recall that great opening of the First Letter of St. John: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled, of the word of life. For the life was manifested: and we have seen and do bear witness and declare unto you the life eternal, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. That which we have seen and have heard, we declare unto you: that you also may have fellowship with us and our fellowship may be with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you, that you may rejoice and your joy may be full.”

The mystery of nearness

The nearness to Christ that the Apostles experienced is something absolutely unique. They were called by him, fed the Eucharist by him, instructed by him; they saw him both crucified and glorified. Thus did St. Andrew not only live with him but die like him.

Accordingly, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches: “The ultimate consummation of grace was effected by Christ, wherefore the time of His coming is called the “time of fullness [Vulgate: 'fullness of time']” (Galatians 4:4). Hence those who were nearest to Christ, wherefore before, like John the Baptist, or after, like the Apostles, had a fuller knowledge of the mysteries of faith” (STh, II-II, 1.7, ad 4).

Of course, given St. Thomas’s use of Galatians as well as the season in which we find ourselves, we have to ask about Our Lady. Elsewhere Thomas writes: “God gives to each one according to the purpose for which He has chosen him. And since Christ as man was predestinated and chosen to be predestinated the Son of God in power… of sanctification (Rom 1.4), it was proper to Him to have such a fullness of grace that it overflowed from Him unto all, according to Jn 1.16: ‘Of his fullness we have all received.’ Whereas the Blessed Virgin Mary received such a fullness of grace that she was nearest of all to the Author of grace; so that she received within her Him Who is full of all grace; and by bringing Him forth, she, in a manner, dispensed grace to all” (STh, III, 27.5).

The hope for us lies in the fact that this “nearness” is not essentially physical. Our Lady didn’t receive her plenitude of grace as a result of her physical closeness to the one whose flesh she gave. Rather, her fullness of grace is due to her divinely ordained mission to be the God-bearer, to receive for all the world the Creator’s renewing “Let it be” within her own created “let it be done unto me.” It is her providential closeness to the Author of salvation that is so singular!

We too can draw as close to Jesus as is accordant with all the graces of sanctity and charisma that God gives us to be the saints He desires us to be for Him, for the world, and for our happiness.

This Advent, as we prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ, let us do so by drawing nearer to those who were nearest: Our Lady and the Apostles. (The Gloria is sung only twice this Advent–on the feasts of St. Andrew and the Immaculate Conception.) By God’s grace and our docile cooperation, let us become more fully the Christians we have been called to be.

For, in the Kingdom of Heaven, even the last will be called first.

O glorious St. Andrew,
you were the first to recognize and follow the Lamb of God.
With your friend, St. John,
you remained with Jesus for that first day, for your entire life, and now throughout eternity. As
you led your brother, St. Peter, to Christ and many others after him,
draw us also to Him.
Teach us to lead others to Christ solely out of love for Him and dedication in His service.
Help us to learn the lesson of the Cross and
to carry our daily crosses without complaint
so that they may carry us to Jesus.
Amen.

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Our Vigil for all Nascent Human Life was beautiful, thanks to all those who joined in the prayer, the Sisters of Life, and Fr. Walter’s inspiring homily. He deftly cast the pro-life challenge in terms of the world’s growing sense that it is “every man for himself,” desperate and empty, but without any room for other persons… even those in the womb. Our call, then, as pro-lifers, is to herald the Marian message that we have space for God in our lives, and room for life in our world.

I can’t do his sermon justice, but we’re having some problems with our recording equipment, which also explains why there have not been audio files of our homilies.

In lieu of the pastor’s homily, how about the pope’s?

With this evening’s celebration, the Lord gives us the grace and joy of opening the new liturgical year beginning with its first stage: Advent, the period that commemorates the coming of God among us. Every beginning brings a special grace, because it is blessed by the Lord. In this Advent period we will once again experience the closeness of the One who created the world, who guides history and cared for us to the point of becoming a man. This great and fascinating mystery of God with us, moreover of God who becomes one of us, is what we celebrate in the coming weeks journeying towards holy Christmas. During the season of Advent we feel the Church that takes us by the hand and – in the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary – expresses her motherhood allowing us to experience the joyful expectation of the coming of the Lord, who embraces us all in his love that saves and consoles.

While our hearts reach out towards the annual celebration of the birth of Christ, the Church’s liturgy directs our gaze to the final goal: our encounter with the Lord in the splendour of glory. This is why we, in every Eucharist, “announce his death, proclaim his resurrection until he comes again” we hold vigil in prayer. The liturgy does not cease to encourage and support us, putting on our lips, in the days of Advent, the cry with which the whole Bible concludes, the last page of the Revelation of Saint John: “Come, Lord Jesus “(22:20).

Dear brothers and sisters, our coming together this evening to begin the Advent journey is enriched by another important reason: with the entire Church, we want to solemnly celebrate a prayer vigil for unborn life. I wish to express my thanks to all who have taken up this invitation and those who are specifically dedicated to welcoming and safeguarding human life in different situations of fragility, especially in its early days and in its early stages. The beginning of the liturgical year helps us to relive the expectation of God made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, God who makes himself small, He becomes a child, it speaks to us of the coming of a God who is near, who wanted to experience the life of man, from the very beginning, to save it completely, fully. And so the mystery of the Incarnation of the Lord and the beginning of human life are intimately connected and in harmony with each other within the one saving plan of God, the Lord of life of each and every one of us. The Incarnation reveals to us, with intense light and in an amazing way, that every human life has an incomparable, a most elevated dignity.

Man has an unmistakable originality compared to all other living beings that inhabit the earth. He presents himself as a unique and singular entity, endowed with intelligence and free will, as well as being composed of a material reality. He lives simultaneously and inseparably in the spiritual dimension and the corporal dimension. This is also suggested in the text of the First letter to the Thessalonians which was just proclaimed: “May the God of peace himself – St. Paul writes – make you perfectly holy and may you entirely, spirit, soul, and body, be preserved blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ “(5:23). Therefore, we are spirit, soul and body. We are part of this world, tied to the possibilities and limits of our material condition, at the same time we are open to an infinite horizon, able to converse with God and to welcome Him in us. We operate in earthly realities and through them we can perceive the presence of God and seek Him, truth, goodness and absolute beauty. We savour fragments of life and happiness and we long for total fulfilment.

God loves us so deeply, totally, without distinction, He calls us to friendship with him, He makes us part of a reality beyond all imagination, thought and word; His own divine life. With emotion and gratitude we acknowledge the value of the incomparable dignity of every human person and the great responsibility we have toward all. ” Christ, the final Adam, – says the Second Vatican Council – by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear…. by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man. “(Gaudium et Spes, 22).

Believing in Jesus Christ also means having a new outlook on man, a look of trust and hope. Moreover, experience itself and reason show that the human being is a subject capable of discernment, self-conscious and free, unique and irreplaceable, the summit of all earthly things, that must be recognized in his innate value and always accepted with respect and love. He has the right not to be treated as an object of possession or something to manipulate at will, not to be reduced to a mere instrument for the benefit of others and their interests. The human person is a good in and of himself and his integral development should always be sought. Love for all, if it is sincere, naturally tends to become a preferential attention to the weakest and poorest. In this vein we find the Church’s concern for the unborn, the most fragile, the most threatened by the selfishness of adults and the darkening of consciences. The Church continually reiterates what was declared by the Second Vatican Council against abortion and all violations of unborn life: “from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care ” (ibid., n. 51).

There are cultural tendencies that seek to anesthetize consciences with misleading motivations. With regard to the embryo in the womb, science itself highlights its autonomy capable of interaction with the mother, the coordination of biological processes, the continuity of development, the growing complexity of the organism. This is not an accumulation of biological material, but a new living being, dynamic and wonderfully ordered, a new unique human being. So was Jesus in Mary’s womb, so it was for all of us in our mother’s womb. With the ancient Christian writer Tertullian we can say: ” he who will be a man is already one” (Apologeticum IX, 8), there is no reason not to consider him a person from conception.
Unfortunately, even after birth, the lives of children continue to be exposed to abandonment, hunger, poverty, disease, abuse, violence or exploitation. The many violations of their rights that are committed in the world sorely hurt the conscience of every man of good will. Before the sad landscape of the injustices committed against human life, before and after birth, I make mine Pope John Paul II’s passionate appeal to the responsibility of each and every individual: ” respect, protect, love and serve life, every human life! Only in this direction will you find justice, development, true freedom, peace and happiness!”(Encyclical Evangelium vitae, 5). I urge the protagonists of politics, economic and social communications to do everything in their power to promote a culture which respects human life, to provide favorable conditions and support networks for the reception and development of life.

To the Virgin Mary, who welcomed the Son of God made man with faith, with her maternal womb, with loving care, with nurturing support and vibrant with love, we entrust our commitment and prayer in favour of unborn life . We do in the liturgy – which is the place where we live the truth and where truth lives with us – worshiping the divine Eucharist, we contemplate Christ’s body, that body who took flesh from Mary by the Holy Spirit, and from her was born in Bethlehem for our salvation. Ave, verum Corpus, natum de Maria Virgine!

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From Our Holy Father’s Wednesday Catechesis (5 March 2008):

[Pope St. Leo the Great] appears in all his greatness, devoted to the service of truth in charity through an assiduous exercise of the Word which shows him to us as both Theologian and Pastor. Leo the Great, constantly thoughtful of his faithful and of the people of Rome but also of communion between the different Churches and of their needs, was a tireless champion and upholder of the Roman Primacy, presenting himself as the Apostle Peter’s authentic heir:  the many Bishops who gathered at the Council of Chalcedon, the majority of whom came from the East, were well aware of this.

This Council, held in 451 and in which 350 Bishops took part, was the most important assembly ever to have been celebrated in the history of the Church. Chalcedon represents the sure goal of the Christology of the three previous Ecumenical Councils:  Nicea in 325, Constantinople in 381 and Ephesus in 431… The Council of Chalcedon, which rejected the heresy of Eutyches who denied the true human nature of the Son of God, affirmed the union in his one Person, without confusion and without separation, of his two natures, human and divine.

The Pope asserted this faith in Jesus Christ, true God and true man, in an important doctrinal text addressed to the Bishop of Constantinople, the so-called Tome to Flavian which, read at Chalcedon, was received by the Bishops present with an eloquent acclamation. Information on it has been preserved in the proceedings of the Council:  “Peter has spoken through the mouth of Leo”, the Council Fathers announced in unison. From this intervention in particular, but also from others made during the Christological controversy in those years, it is clear that the Pope felt with special urgency his responsibilities as Successor of Peter, whose role in the Church is unique since “to one Apostle alone was entrusted what was communicated to all the Apostles”, as Leo said in one of his sermons for the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul (83, 2). And the Pontiff was able to exercise these responsibilities, in the West as in the East, intervening in various circumstances with caution, firmness and lucidity through his writings and legates. In this manner he showed how exercising the Roman Primacy was as necessary then as it is today to effectively serve communion, a characteristic of Christ’s one Church….

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From the Church’s General Directory for Catechesis (1997):
“26. There is a certain number of baptized Christians who, desiring to promote dialogue with various cultures and other religious confessions, or on account of a certain reticence on their part to live in contemporary society as believers, fail to give explicit and courageous witness in the their lives to the faith of Jesus Christ. These concrete situations of the Christian faith call urgently on the sower to develop a new evangelization, especially in those Churches of long-standing Christian tradition where secularism has made greater inroads.”

And now, from Pope St. Pius X’s encyclical in honor of St. Charles Borromeo, Editae Saepe (1910):

17. The reformers that Borromeo opposed … tried to reform faith and discipline according to their own whims. Venerable Brethren, it is no better understood by those whom We must withstand today. These moderns, forever prattling about culture and civilization, are undermining the Church’s doctrine, laws, and practices. They are not concerned very much about culture and civilization. By using such high-sounding words they think they can conceal the wickedness of their schemes.

29. … The sincere and zealous reformer will, like Charles, avoid extremes and never overstep the bounds of true reform. He will always be united in the closest bonds with the Church and Christ, her Head. There he will find not only strength for his interior life but also the directives he needs in order to carry out his work of healing human society. The function of this divine mission, which has from time immemorial been handed down to the ambassadors of Christ, is to “make disciples of all nations” both the things they are to believe as well as the things they are to do since Christ Himself said, “Observe all that I have commanded you.”[46] He is “the way, and the truth, and the life,”[47] coming into the world that man “may have life, and have it more abundantly.”[48] The fulfillment of these duties, however, far surpasses man’s natural powers. The Church alone possesses together with her Magisterium the power of governing and sanctifying human society. Through her ministers and servants (each in his own station and office), she confers on mankind suitable and necessary means of salvation.

True reformers understand this very clearly. They do not kill the blossom in saving the root. That is to say, they do not divorce faith from holiness. They rather cultivate both of them, enkindleing them with the fire of charity, “which is the bond of perfection.”[49] In obedience to the Apostle, they “keep the deposit.”[50] They neither obscure nor dim its light before the nations, but spread far and wide the most saving waters of truth and life welling up from that spring. They combine theory and practice. By the former they are prepared to withstand the “masquerading of error” and by the latter they apply the commandments to moral activity. In such a way they employ all the suitable and necessary means for attaining the end, namely, the wiping out of sin and the perfecting “the saints for a work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.”[51] This is the purpose of every kind of instruction, government, and munificence. In a word, this is the ultimate purpose of every discipline and action of the Church. When the true son of the church sets out to reform himself and others, he fixes his eyes and heart on matters of faith and morals. On just such matters Borromeo based his reformation of ecclesiastical discipline. Thus he often referred to them in his writings, as, for example, when he says, “Following the ancient custom of the holy Fathers and sacred Councils, especially the ecumenical Synod of Trent, we have decreed many regulations on these very matters in our preceding provincial Councils.”[52] In the same way, when providing for the suppression of public scandals, he declares that he is following “both the law and sacred sanctions of the sacred canons, and especially the decrees of the Council of Trent.”[53]

31. Moreover, he seconded every one of [the conciliar] acts with the practical means needed to realize the end in view, namely, the real reform of sacred discipline. In this respect also he proved that in no wise he resembled those false reformers who concealed their obstinate disobedience under the cloak of zeal. He began “the judgment…with the household of God.”[55] He first of all restored discipline among the clergy by making them conform to certain definite laws. With this same end in view he built seminaries, founded a congregation of priests known as the Oblates, unified both the ancient and modern religious families, and convoked Councils. By these and other provisions he assured and developed the work of reform. Then he immediately set a vigorous hand to the work of reforming the morals of the people. He considered the words spoken to the Prophet as addressed to himself; “Lo, I have set thee this day…to root up and to pull down, and to waste and to destroy, and to build and to plant.”[56] Good shepherd that he was, he personally set out on wearisome visitation of the churches of the province. Like the Divine Master “he went about doing good and healing.” He spared no efforts in suppressing and uprooting the abuses he met everywhere either because of ignorance or neglect of the laws. He checked the rampant perversion of ideas and corruption of morals by founding schools for the children and colleges for youth. After seeing their early beginnings in Rome, he promoted the Marian societies. He founded orphanages for the fatherless, shelters for girls in danger, widows, mendicants, and men and women made destitute by sickness or old age. He opened institutions to protect the poor against tyrannical masters, usurers, and the enslavement of children. He accomplished all these things by completely ignoring the methods of those who think human society can be restored only by utter destruction, revolution, and noisy slogans. Such persons have forgotten the divine words: “The Lord is not in the earthquake.”[57]

42. The Catholics of our days, together with their leaders, the Bishops, will deserve the same praise and gratitude as Charles as long as they are faithful to their duties of good citizenship. They must be as faithful in their loyalty and respect to “wicked rulers” when their commands are just, as they are adamant in resisting their commands when unjust. They must remain as far from the impious rebellion of those who advocate sedition and revolt as they are from the subservience of those who accept as sacred the obviously wicked laws of perverse men. These last mentioned wicked men uproot everything in the name of a deceitful liberty, and then oppress their subjects with the most abject tyranny.

43. This is precisely what is happening today in the sight of the whole world and in the broad light of modern civilization. Especially is this the case in some countries where “the powers of darkness” seem to have made their headquarters. This domineering tyranny has suppressed all the rights of the Church’s children. These rulers’ hearts have been closed to all feelings of generosity, courtesy, and faith which their ancestors, who gloried in the name of Christians, manifested for so long a time. It is obvious that everything quickly lapses back into the ancient barbarism of license whenever God and the Church are hated. It would be more correct to say that everything falls under that most cruel yoke from which only the family of Christ and the education it introduced has freed us. Borromeo expressed the same thought in the following words: “It is a certain, well- established fact that no other crime so seriously offends God and provokes His greatest wrath as the vice of heresy. Nothing contributes more to the down fall of provinces and kingdoms than this frightful pest.”[81] Although the enemies of the Church completely disagree among themselves in thought and action (which is a sure indication of error), they are nevertheless united in their obstinate attacks against truth and justice. Since the Church is the guardian and defender of both these virtues, they close their ranks in a unified attack against her. Of course, they loudly proclaim (as is the custom) their impartiality and firmly maintain they are only promoting the cause of peace. In reality, however, their soft words and avowed intentions are only the traps they are laying, thus adding insult to injury, treason to violence. From this it should be evident that a new kind of warfare is now being waged against Christianity. Without a doubt it is far more dangerous than those former conflicts which crowned Borromeo with such glory.

44. His example and teaching will do much to help us wage a valiant battle on behalf of the noble cause which will save the individual and society, faith, religion, and the inviolability of public order. Our combat, it is true, will be spurred on by bitter necessity. At the same time, however, we will be encouraged by the hope that the omnipotent God will hasten the victory for the sake of those who wage so glorious a contest. This hope increases through the fruitfulness of the work of Saint Charles even down to our own times. His work humbles the proud and strengthens us in the holy resolve to restore all things in Christ.

Finally, from our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio, Ubicumque et semper (2010):

In our own time, [evangelization] has been particularly challenged by an abandonment of the faith—a phenomenon progressively more manifest in societies and cultures which for centuries seemed to be permeated by the Gospel. The social changes we have witnessed in recent decades have a long and complex history, and they have profoundly altered our way of looking at the world. We need only think of the many advances in science and technology, the expanding possibilities with regard to life and individual freedom, the profound changes in the economic sphere, and the mixing of races and cultures caused by global-scale migration and an increasing interdependence of peoples. All of this has not been without consequences on the religious dimension of human life as well. If on the one hand humanity has derived undeniable benefits from these changes, and the Church has drawn from them further incentives for bearing witness to the hope that is within her (cf. 1 Pt 3:15), on the other hand there has been a troubling loss of the sense of the sacred, which has even called into question foundations once deemed unshakable such as faith in a provident creator God, the revelation of Jesus Christ as the one Saviour, and a common understanding of basic human experiences: i.e., birth, death, life in a family, and reference to a natural moral law.

Even though some consider these things a kind of liberation, there soon follows an awareness that an interior desert results whenever the human being, wishing to be the sole architect of his nature and destiny, finds himself deprived of that which is the very foundation of all things.

A future post will deal with the affirming dynamics of the new evangelization, as envisioned by the post conciliar (Vatican II) Magisterium.

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Some of you may remember Anthony Giambrone, O.P., who served at St. Vincent Ferrer as a deacon a couple of summers ago, now an ordained priest studying Scripture in South Bend, IN. Here’s a homily he delivered a couple of years ago at the Dominican House of Studies on the feast of St. Jerome.

Whether this image does justice to the saint, I leave you to decide.  It seems that, perhaps, in a day when Pelagian monks could burn down your monastery, some leniency might be given to a man’s verbal indiscretions.  Regardless, for my part, I’d like to focus on a different image.  There is, and perhaps you’ve seen it, a striking sculpture which sits in front of the Albanian Embassy: a huge gaunt figure, lightly clad, with sun-baked skin stretched tight across his ribs, seated simply cross-legged upon the ground, with a massive tome opened on his lap, and beneath him, on the pedestal, the simple bold words: “The Church’s Greatest Doctor”—not (in turns out) the bombast of inflated Dalmatian nationalism; but the Church’s own name for Jerome.  Even so, lest I expose myself to a violent refectory attack in defense of the Doctors Universal and Angelic, it is the image rather than the title that I’d like to explore.

The Church’s commitment to nicknaming each of her doctors has at times become dubious.  Consider the quaint triumphalism of calling the Cardinal Inquisitor, Bellarmine, “Gentle Doctor of Controversies.”  On this model, we might expect today’s controversialist saint to bear quite the opposite title: something, perhaps, like doctor curmudgeonus, the Irritable Doctor.  This, at any rate, has become the prevailing image of the man.  Even the lectionary today baits us in this direction: Jerome, melancholic and morbid as Job; irascible as a son of Zebedee, calling down heavenly fire on his foes.

I find the open tome particularly striking.  You have noticed, no doubt, that while all of the four great doctors on the wall behind me have a book in hand, only one is actually reading it.  It brings to mind a certain saying about men who write more books than they read.  Of course, even if others hold the quills, Jerome was no stranger to writing; his own works fill nine full volumes of the Patrologia latina, second only to Augustine.  It takes very little acquaintance with Jerome’s style, however, to discover how vast and wide this writer’s reading was.  His treasured personal library was one of the best in the ancient world (he is in fact the patron of librarians), and every page he wrote overflows with the gathered wisdom of those Illustrious Men whose lives and publications he eventually complied in a book by that title.  If Jerome could produce at a remarkable rate, it was because he was able first to ingest such huge amounts of intellectual matter.

The man’s sheer appetite for learning and the capacious tenacity of his memory are at times staggering.  His drive to master Hebrew shows the mettle of his mind as well as anything.  It is small wonder he became, effectively, the sole Hebraist of Christendom: there were no dictionaries; no grammars; no concordances; not even vowel points, which were still several centuries away (and trust me they do make a difference).  How deeply he absorbed the language and its literature might be judged from a stray remark in one of his epistles.  Speaking of the obscure word Rissah, he recalled no other occurrence of it but Numbers 33:21—no concordance mind you—and one use in the apocryphal book of Jubilees; and as BibleWorks electronic search engine can now confirm, his memory did not fail him.

Clearly, intellectual consumption on this level belongs exclusively to a life of leisure, in the classical sense.  And here we touch the major mark distinguishing Jerome from the three great bishop saints whose company he keeps.  The monk Jerome was given over fully to the life of contemplation and study, a life those doctors saddled with pastoral duties ever lamented that they had lost.

It is, then, not merely an anachronism, but a gross distortion to see our doctor dappled in red and crowned with a galero.  It is true he put his scholarship in service of the pope; he was, you might say, the original Pontifical Biblical Commission; and (I dare say) his monumental bequest to the Church in the Vulgate makes the PBC’s recent remarks on the vegan diet of Adam and Eve seem, somehow, rather pale.  Jerome was a man of ecclesial service, yes; and he freely gave his life and labors to the good of the institutional Church; yet, he was always and above all a monk, or better an ascetic.  Even scholarship, as powerful as its attraction was for him, was always only secondary.  We would hardly find him as a hermit in the Syrian desert, parched by the fire of the sun, with (as he says) only scorpions and wild beasts and for company, if the pursuit of an academic life had ever been his principal end.  No, in all things Jerome’s consuming passion was to be purged of every sinful longing that might pull him away from Christ.  He was a penitent, fired by that same Zeitgeist of zeal that impelled so many Christian souls of that renowned generation to seek their salvation with tears in the desert.

Max Scheler somewhere describes asceticism as the modulation of appetites into a higher key, “the spiritualization of hunger” I think he calls it.  In Jerome, uniquely, we see this spiritual sublimation not only with bodily appetite, but with the highest natural appetite: the desire to know.  Jerome disciplined his mind as he disciplined his body, in order that it too might be drawn up into the life of the spirit.  “The flesh I might try to break with frequent fasting,” he wrote, “but my mind was still seething with imagination: so to tame it, I gave myself up for training.”  Seeking something harsh and barren to chasten his rebellious mind, the sensitive lover of Quintilian and Fronto fed himself on “words that hissed and gasped.” (He means Hebrew.)  This asceticism of the mental appetite is Jerome’s most marvelous discovery and the root of his entire greatness.

“You are a Ciceronian and not a Christian.”  To the very end of his life, these words were more bitter to him than his most austere fasts; and they prompted from him an act of intellectual renunciation as great as any in recorded Christian history.  With a generosity born of both love and sorrow, Jerome relinquished his vain love of worldly learning and subordinated his intellect entirely and forevermore to the sole study of Christian truth.

Jerome’s life and priorities challenge us, who also aspire to integrate learning with the pursuit of perfection; for it was this great man who forged and fused in his person the first synthesis of Origen and Anthony; at once exegete and athlete of Christ.  In this, Jerome teaches us our own weakness by revealing the focus, rigor, and energy of a man truly crucified to the desk.  If we would have sanctity through study and find the Lord at the end of our learning, this wise man of Bethlehem shows that our way must lead through the desert.

Jerome is often pictured, as in our chapel, with a lion as his companion.  It is not, to be sure, the emblem of his temper.  The legend tells, rather, that he once saw the beast limping and tenderly removed a thorn from its paw.  The story gives us an apt metaphor, I think, for how Jerome came to tame his own ferocious yet noble nature.  His delicate sensitivity to the wound of another is the key, and it shows us how we might love like him.

As neglectful and cruel as he was to his own body, Jerome could not endure to see the honor of his king, the Lord Christ, suffer the slightest pin-prick of shame.  This is what so often summoned his wrath: not that he had been wronged, but that the truth of Christ’s Gospel was imperiled by error.  He was like the prophets of old, whom Heschel said roared with divine pathos.  This is not to say it was never personal; but only that it was never petty.  He was noble; and if at times he felt betrayed in his friendships, he felt, quite keenly, that honor and virtue had somehow been betrayed.  Jerome insisted, demanded that all the world be upright before God.  This ruthless loyalty and virile, impetuous love is what finally focused all the wild energy of his mind on one steady aim and opened him to receive the discipline of grace.  The lectionary has not, in fact, led us astray.  Jerome was quite like those sons of Zebedee, who bristled and raged at an insult suffered by their Lord.  Yet the simple mollifying lesson our Lord taught those sons of thunder was in no way lost on the Church’s Greatest Student.  For loving attention to the honor of another, easily becomes careful attention to the every word of another; and Jerome, who preferred to reading to writing, was that Doctor who understood above all how to listen.  He knew how to open his ear, if not when to close his mouth.

So, in the end, there can be no doubt what book it is that lies open on his lap.  For a man who does not live on bread alone, but on every word that falls from the mouth of God, only one book can feed the soul’s hunger.  It is the Book of Life which is spread like a meal before our starving scholar saint.  And Jerome fed on its fruit as Ezechiel once swallowed the scroll.  Commenting on this very scene in the Gospels, the penitent doctor offers us this:

“If fire was sent from heaven to protect the servant Elias from harm and to consume, not Samaritans, but Jews, how much more should the flames ravage the impious Samaritans, who had showed contempt for the Son of God.  But the Lord, who had come, not to judge but to save, not in power but in humility, not in the glory of his Father but in the lowliness of man, rebuked the disciples because they did not remember His teaching and the merciful precepts of the Gospel.”May we learn to love with the loyal force of this son of thunder and great Father of the Church.  By our study and self-denial may we, like Jerome, learn to hear, digest, and remember the Lord’s teaching, to find the sweet fruit of His mercy, ripe on each page of His Word.

Amen.

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