TWO YEAR LECTIONARY
PATRISTIC VIGILS READINGS
YEAR 2

TWO YEAR LECTIONARY PATRISTIC VIGILS READINGS YEAR 2

Advent Week 1

Advent Week 2

Advent Week 3

Advent II: 17 – 24 December

Christmas

Epiphany

Advent & Christmastide Year Two

Lent

Lent Week 1

Lent Week 2

Lent Week 3

Lent Week 4

Lent Week 5

Passiontide

Easter

Easter Week 2

Easter Week 3

Easter Week 4

Easter Week 5

Easter Week 6

Easter Week 7

Pentecost & Feastdays

Season of the Year | Week 01

Season of the Year | Week 02

Season of the Year | Week 03

Season of the Year | Week 04

Season of the Year | Week 05

Season of the Year | Week 06

Season of the Year | Week 07

Season of the Year | Week 08

Season of the Year | Week 09

Season of the Year | Week 10

Season of the Year | Week 11

Season of the Year | Week 12

Season of the Year | Week 13

Season of the Year | Week 14

Season of the Year | Week 15

Season of the Year | Week 16

Season of the Year | Week 17

Season of the Year | Week 18

Season of the Year | Week 19

Season of the Year | Week 20

Season of the Year | Week 21

Season of the Year | Week 22

Season of the Year | Week 23

Season of the Year | Week 24

Season of the Year | Week 25

Season of the Year | Week 26

Season of the Year | Week 27

Season of the Year | Week 28

Season of the Year | Week 29

Season of the Year | Week 30

Season of the Year | Week 31

Season of the Year | Week 32

Season of the Year | Week 33

Season of the Year | Week 34

Advent Week 1

Sunday of the First Week in Advent

A READING FROM THE CATECHESES OF ST CYRIL OF JERUSALEM

We preach not one coming only of Christ, but a second also, far more glorious than the first. The first revealed the meaning of his patient endurance; the second brings with it the crown of the divine kingdom.

Generally speaking, everything that concerns our Lord Jesus Christ is twofold. His birth is twofold: one, of God before time began; the other, of the Virgin in the fullness of time. His descent is twofold: one, unperceived, like dew falling on the fleece; the other, before the eyes of all, is yet to happen. In his first coming he was wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger. In his second coming he is clothed with light as with a garment. In his first coming he bore the cross, despising its shame; he will come a second time in glory accompanied by the hosts of angels.

It is not enough for us, then, to be content with his first coming; we must wait in hope of his second coming. What we said at his first coming, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, we shall repeat at his last coming. Running out with the angels to meet the Master we shall cry out in adoration, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. The Saviour will come not to be judged again but to call to judgement those who called him to judgement. He who was silent when he was first judged, will indict the malefactors who dared to perpetrate the outrage of the cross, and say, These things you did and I was silent. He first came in the order of divine providence to teach men by gentle persuasion; but when he comes again they will, whether they wish it or not, be subjected to his kingship.

The prophet Malachi has something to say about each of these comings. The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. That is the first coming. Again, of the second coming he says, And the angel of the covenant whom you seek. Behold, the Lord almighty will come: but who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap; he will sit like a refiner and a purifier. Paul pointed to the two comings when he wrote to Titus, The grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men, training us to renounce irreligion and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world, awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ. You see how he has spoken of the first coming for which he gives thanks and of the second to which we look forward.

Hence it is that by the faith we profess, which has just been handed on to you, we believe in him ‘who ascended into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead; and his kingdom will have no end.’ Our Lord Jesus Christ will, then, come from heaven. He will come in glory at the end of this world on the last day. Then there will be an end to this world, and this created world will be made new.

St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 15. 1-3, from The Divine Office vol. I

Monday of the First Week in Advent

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AELRED OF RIEVAULX

Let us take a look at ourselves and our city. Our way of life is a strongly fortified city surrounded on all sides by sound observances which, like walls and towers, rise up to prevent our enemy from deceiving us and enticing us away from our Emperor’s army. What a wall poverty is! How well it defends us against the pride of the world, against harmful and ruinous vanities and superfluities. What a tower silence is! It repels the assaults of contention, quarrelling, dissension, and detraction. What about obedience, humility, cheap clothing? What about a restricted diet? They are walls, they are towers against vices, against the attacks of our enemies. In this city we declare ourselves, not Romans, but angelic beings. For these observances demonstrate that we belong to the fellowship of the angels and are not among the slaves of the Romans. When we make profession of this way of life the words of Isaiah are fulfilled: They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles. Then he goes on: Nation shall not lift sword against nation nor ever again be trained for war.

Everyday this is being fulfilled literally, not in the treacherous nation of the reprobate that neither does, nor has, nor shall enjoy peace, but in the race of the just which is blessed. Do you not see men, nobles in the world, experiencing conversion to monastic life, laying down their spears and swords and earning their food by manual labour like peasants? But this is better, more obviously and more fully understood as being fulfilled in a spiritual way among every class, poor as well as rich, clerical as well as lay.

Let us think about the sword of which the Lord said: Everyone who takes up the sword will perish by the sword, and the ploughshares by which the earth of our heart is broken, in accordance with the text: Rend your hearts and not your garments. And we shall see at the present time countless persons changing their swords into ploughshares. The sword is wrongdoing. With this sword a person wounds himself before he does anyone else; as Saint Augustine says: ‘Every person who is a wrongdoer harms himself before he harms anyone else because, even before he injures the other person, by making up his mind to injure someone else he injures himself, slaying himself with the sword of wrongdoing. This is the sword of which the Lord says to Peter: Everyone who takes up the sword will perish by the sword.

How many there are, brothers, who at the present time are beating this sword of wrongdoing into the ploughshare of compunction! Many who have previously killed their soul with the sword of sin now rend their heart by the compunction of penance. Many today are also changing their spears - that is, the subtlety of their wits by which they used to drag many others down into sin with them - into sickles with which they are reaping a spiritual harvest so that they may come to meet the Lord bearing in their hands the sheaves of justice and salvation.

St Aelred, The Liturgical Sermons 3.7-13, tr. Berkeley & Pennington (2001), from Cistercian Fathers 58

Tuesday of the First Week in Advent

A READING FROM THE ORATIONS OF ST GREGORY NAZIANZEN

The Son of God himself, who is before all ages, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the bodiless, the beginning from the beginning, the light from the light, source of life and immortality, image of the archetype, immovable seal, unchangeable image, the Father’s definition and Word, he it is who came to his own image and took to himself flesh for the sake of our flesh. Then he united himself with an intelligent soul for my soul’s sake, purifying like by like. He took to himself all that is human, except sin. He was conceived by the Virgin who was first purified in body and soul by the Spirit. It was necessary both that childbearing be honoured and that virginity be honoured still more highly.

He came forth as God with what he had taken to himself. Out of two contraries, flesh and spirit, he made one. The Spirit conferred the godhead on the flesh that received it. He who enriches others becomes poor. He took to himself the poverty of my flesh so that I might obtain the riches of his godhead. He who is full empties himself. He emptied himself of his godhead for a brief time so that I might share in his fullness.

What is this wealth of goodness? What is this mystery that touches me? I received the divine image and I did not keep it. He receives my flesh to save the image and grant immortality to the flesh. This, his second communion with us, is far more marvellous than the first. It was necessary that holiness be conferred on man through the humanity God took to himself. In this way, conquering the tyrant by force, he freed us and led us back to himself through his Son, the mediator. The Son brought this about to the honour of the Father to whom in all things, he is seen to defer.

The good shepherd, who lays down his life for his sheep, set out after the strayed sheep, on the mountains and hills on which you used to sacrifice. When he found the stray sheep he carried it on those same shoulders that bore the wood of the cross, and brought it back with him to the life above. The brightest of all lights follows the lamp that goes before him. The Word follows the voice in the wilderness. The bridegroom follows the friend of the bridegroom who is making ready for God a special people, cleansing them with water in anticipation of the Spirit.

We needed an incarnate God who would die that we might live. We died with him that we might be cleansed. We rose again with him because we died with him. We were glorified with him because we rose again with him.

St Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 45. 9,22,26,28, from The Divine Office vol. I

Wednesday of the First Week in Advent

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST BERNARD

We have come to know a threefold coming of the Lord. The third coming takes place between the other two. They are clearly manifest but the third is not. In the first coming the Lord was seen on earth and lived among men in the days when, as he himself bears witness, they saw and hated him. In his last coming all flesh shall see the salvation of our God, and they shall look on him whom they have pierced. The other coming is hidden. In it, only the chosen see him within themselves and their souls are saved. In brief, his first coming was in the flesh in weakness, this intermediary coming is in the spirit and in power, the last coming will be in glory and majesty.

This intermediary coming is like a road leading from the first to the last coming. In the first coming Christ was our redemption, in the last he will appear as our life, in this intermediary coming he is our rest and consolation.

Do not imagine that what we are saying about the intermediary coming is simply our own fabrication. Listen to Christ himself, If a man loves me he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him. I have read elsewhere, The man who fears the Lord will do good, but it is my opinion that more was said of the one who loves, namely that he will keep the words. Where, then, are they to be kept? Without any doubt they are to be kept in the heart, as the prophet says, I have kept your words in my heart, lest I sin against you. Keep the word of God in that way for, blessed are they who keep it. Let it pierce deep into your inmost soul and penetrate your feelings and actions. Eat well and your soul will delight and grow. Do not forget to eat your bread or your heart will wither, but let your soul feast richly.

If you keep the word of God in this way without a doubt you will be kept by it. The Son with the Father will come to you. The great prophet who will renew Jerusalem will come and he will make everything new. The effect of this coming will be that just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man. Just as the old Adam was poured out throughout the whole man and filled him completely, so now let Christ take possession of the whole man, for he created the whole man, he redeemed the whole man and he will glorify the whole man.

St Bernard, Sermon 5 On Advent 1-3, from The Divine Office vol. I

Thursday of the First Week in Advent

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON THE DIATESSARON BY ST EPHREM

To prevent his disciples from questioning him about the time of his coming Christ said, Of that hour no one knows, neither the angels nor the Son. It is not for you to know the times or moments. He hid the time from us so that we would be on the watch and so that each of us might think that the coming will happen in his own lifetime. If he had revealed when he was to come again, his coming would have been made pointless and the peoples and ages in which it will take place would no longer yearn for it. He said that he will come again but he did not say exactly when. Hence, all generations and ages live in eager expectation of him. The Lord pointed out the signs of his coming but we have no knowledge of when they will be completed. In many varied ways they have happened and passed away and are still happening. His last coming is, in fact, like his first.

The just and the prophets longed for him, thinking that he was to appear in their day. So, today, each of the faithful wants to receive him in his own lifetime, just because he did not reveal the day of his coming. His chief reason for this was so that no one might think that he who has power and authority over numbers and times is subject himself to a command and an hour. How could that have been hidden from him which he himself had determined, and for which he had given signs? He gave prominence to those signs so that, from that day onwards, all generations and all ages might think his coming would happen in their own time.

Be on the watch. When the body sleeps, nature gets the better of us. Then, our actions do not come from our will but by force from the impulse of nature. When the soul is overcome by a heavy sleep of timidity or sadness, the enemy takes control of it and works through it what it does not want to do. Force dominates nature and the enemy dominates the soul. The Lord’s command about vigilance holds good for both parts of man. The body must avoid overpowering sleep and the soul must guard against sluggishness and timidity. In the words of Scripture, Awake you just, and I rose up and am still with you, and, Do not lose heart. That is why we do not lose heart in the ministry which is entrusted to us.

St Ephrem, Commentary On the Diatessaron 18. 15-17, from The Divine Office vol. I

Friday of the First Week in Advent

A READING FROM THE PROSOLOGION OF ST ANSELM

Come now, insignificant man, fly for a moment from your affairs, escape for a little while from the tumult of your thoughts. Put aside now your weighty cares and leave your wearisome toils. Abandon yourself for a little to God and rest for a little in him. Enter into the inner chamber of your soul, shut out everything save God and what can be of help in your quest for him and having locked the door seek him out. Speak now, my whole heart, speak now to God: I seek your face, O Lord, your face I seek.

Come then, Lord my God, teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you. Lord, if you are not present here, where, since you are absent, shall I look for you? On the other hand, if you are everywhere why then, since you are present, do I not see you? But surely you dwell in light inaccessible. And where is this inaccessible light, or how can I approach the inaccessible light? Or who shall lead me and take me into it that I may see you in it? Again, by what signs, under what aspect, shall I seek you? Never have I seen you, Lord my God, I do not know your face.

What shall he do, most high Lord, what shall this exile do, far away from you as he is? What shall your servant do, tormented by love of you and yet cast off far from your face? He yearns to see you and your face is too away from him. He desires to come close to you, and your dwelling place is inaccessible; he longs to find you and does not know where you are; he is eager to seek you out and he does not know your face.

Lord, you are my God and my Lord, and never have I seen you. You have created me and re-created me and you have given me all the good things I possess, and still I do not know you. In short, I was made in order to see you, and I have not yet accomplished what I was made for.

And you, O Lord, how long? How long, Lord, will you be unmindful of us? How long will you turn your face from us? When will you look upon us and hear us? When will you enlighten our eyes and show your face to us? When will you give yourself again to us? Look upon us, Lord; hear us, enlighten us, show yourself to us. Give yourself to us that it may be well with us, for without you it goes so ill for us. Have pity upon our efforts and our strivings towards you, for we can avail nothing without you.

Teach me to seek you, and reveal yourself to me as I seek, because I can neither seek you if you do not teach me how, nor find you unless you reveal yourself. Let me seek you in desiring you; let me desire you in seeking you; let me find you in loving you; let me love you in finding you.

St Anselm, The Prosologion 1, from The Divine Office vol. I

Saturday of the First Week in Advent

A READING FROM THE TREATISE ON THE ADVANTAGE OF PATIENCE BY ST CYPRIAN

The command of our Lord and Master which will save us is: He who endures to the end will be saved. And, if you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

The hope of truth and of freedom is already ours, dearly beloved, but if we are to attain truth and freedom in reality we must endure and persevere. The very fact that we are Christians is the substance of faith and hope. But in order that faith and hope may attain their full fruit, there is need of patience. We are pursuing a future, not a present glory, in accordance with the admonition of Paul the Apostle: It is in hope that we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Waiting and patience are necessary if we are to fulfil what we have begun to be, and to receive, through God’s unfailing help, what we hope for and believe.

In another passage from the same Apostle, those who are holy, who work at laying up a treasure for themselves in heaven by increasing the capital that God has given them, are instructed to be patient as well: So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith. And let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap. He urges us that no one give up his work through impatience, that no one stop halfway on the road to praise and glory, being turned aside or overcome by temptations so that past achievement perishes, while what is begun is not brought to completion.

The Apostle, finally, when he would speak of charity, joined to it endurance and patience. Love, he says, is large-souled, love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it thinks no evil; loves all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. He shows that it can tenaciously persevere, for the very reason that it knows how to endure all things.

And in another passage: Forbearing one another, he says, in love, using every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. He proved that neither unity nor peace could be kept unless the brethren treat one another with mutual forbearance, and preserve the bond of concord through patience.

St Cyprian, On the Advantage of Patience 13, 15, from The Divine Office vol. I

Advent Week 2

Sunday of the Second Week in Advent

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ISAIAH BY EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA

The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God. This makes clear that the events spoken of in the prophecy are to take place not in Jerusalem, but in the wilderness. By this is meant that the glory of the Lord will appear, and the salvation of God will be made known to all flesh.

This prophecy was fulfilled historically and literally, when John the Baptist preached the saving advent of God, in the wilderness by the Jordan, where the salvation of God was in fact seen. For Christ and his glory became known to all when, after he had been baptized, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit came down under the appearance of a dove, and rested upon him. Then was the Father’s voice heard in testimony to the Son: This is my Son, my Beloved; listen to him!

These things were said because God was about to come to the wilderness, which had been impenetrable and inaccessible for a whole age. For all the nations were empty of the knowledge of God: access to them had been prohibited to all the men of God and the prophets. That was why that voice ordered a way to be prepared for the Word of God, and the pathless and rugged lands levelled, so that at his coming, our God might find the road clear for his advance. Prepare the way of the Lord: this is the Gospel preaching, the new consolation, the ardent desire that the salvation of God come to the knowledge of all men.

Get you up to a high mountain, O herald of good tidings to Sion, lift up your voice with strength, O herald of good tidings to Jerusalem.

These words fit in very well with the meaning of our first quotation. They make an appropriate reference to the preachers of the Gospel, and announce the coming of God among men, after we have heard of the voice crying in the wilderness. It is fitting that after the prophecy about John the Baptist, the preachers of good tidings be mentioned.

Who then is this Sion, except she who earlier was called Jerusalem? For she too is a mountain, according to that passage of Scripture, The mountain of Sion, where you made your dwelling, and the Apostle says, You have come to Mount Sion. Does this perhaps refer to the band of Apostles, chosen from among the former people of the circumcision?

This Sion and Jerusalem is she who receives the salvation of God. She herself is placed on high on the mountain of God, that is on his Only-begotten Word. To her he gives the command to get up on a high mountain, and preach the word of salvation. But who preaches the good tidings, if not the band of those who make the Gospel known? And what is meant by making the Gospel known? Preaching to all mankind the coming of Christ on earth, and preaching it first to the cities of Judah.

Eusebius of Caesarea, Commentary on Isaiah 40, from The Divine Office vol. I

Monday of the Second Week in Advent

A READING FROM THE LITURGICAL YEAR BY ABBOT PROSPER GUÉRANGER

The earth was in desolation when the Messiah came to deliver and save it. So diminished, so decayed, were truths among men that the race was bordering on its ruin. The knowledge of the true God was becoming rarer as the world got older; idolatry had made everything in creation an object of its adulterous worship; the practical result of a religion which was but gross materialism was frightful immorality; men were forever at war with one another, and the only safeguards of what social order still existed in the world were the execrable laws of slavery and extermination. Among the countless inhabitants of the globe a mere handful could be found who were seeking God; they were as rare as the olives that remain on the tree after a careful plucking, or as grape-bunches after the vintage is ended. Of this happy few were, among the people of the Jews, those true Israelites whom our Saviour chose for his disciples; and, among the Gentiles, the Magi who came from the East asking for the newborn King, and later on, Cornelius the Centurion, whom the angel of the Lord directed to Saint Peter. But with what faith and joy did they not acknowledge the incarnate God!

Now all this will again happen when the time draws near for the Second Coming of the Messiah. The earth will once more be filled with desolation, and mankind will be again a slave of its self-degradation. The ways of men will again grow corrupt, and this time the malice of their evil will be greater because they will have received him who is the Light of the World, the Word of Life. A profound sadness will sit heavily on all nations, and every effort for their well-being will seem paralysed; they, and the earth they live on, will be conscious of decrepitude; and yet it will never once strike them that the world is drawing to an end. There will be great scandals; stars will fall from heaven: that is, many of those who had been masters in Israel will apostatise, and their light will be changed into darkness. There will be days of temptation, and faith will grow slack, so that when the Son of Man appears faith will hardly be found on the earth.

Grant, O Lord, that we may be in the number of those chosen olives, of those select bunches of grapes, wherewith you will complete the harvest which you gather forever into your house. Preserve intact within us the deposit of faith which you have entrusted to us; let our eye be fixed on that Orient of which the Church speaks to us, and where you are suddenly to appear in your majesty. When that day of yours comes, and we behold your triumph, we shall shout our glad delight, and then, like eagles that cluster round a body, we shall be taken up to meet you in the air, as your Apostle says, and thus shall we be ever with you.

Abbot Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, Advent, 198-200, from Word in Season 2

Tuesday of the Second Week in Advent

A READING FROM THE CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

The Church, to which we are all called in Christ Jesus, and in which we acquire sanctity through the grace of God, will attain her full perfection only in the glory of heaven. Then will come the time of the restoration of all things. Then the human race as well as the entire world, which is intimately related to man and achieves its purpose through him, will be perfectly re-established in Christ.

Christ, having been lifted up from the earth, is drawing all men to himself. Rising from the dead, he sent his life-giving Spirit upon his disciples and through this Spirit has established his body, the Church, as the universal sacrament of salvation. Sitting at the right hand of the Father, he is continually active in the world, leading men to the Church, and through her joining them more closely to himself and making them partakers of his glorious life by nourishing them with his own body and blood.

Therefore, the promised restoration which we are awaiting has already begun in Christ, is carried forward in the mission of the Holy Spirit, and through him continues in the Church. There we learn through faith the meaning, too, of our temporal life, as we perform, with hope of good things to come, the task committed to us in this world by the Father, and work out our salvation.

The final age of the world has already come upon us. The renovation of the world has already been irrevocably decreed and in this age is already anticipated in some way. For even now on this earth the Church is marked with a genuine though imperfect holiness. However, until there is a new heaven and a new earth where justice dwells, the pilgrim Church in her sacraments and institutions, which pertain to this present time, takes on the appearance of this passing world. She herself dwells among creatures who groan and travail in pain until now and await the revelation of the sons of God.

Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 48, from The Divine Office vol. I

Wednesday of the Second Week in Advent

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ISAIAH BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

Death prevailed and swallowed us up, but God has wiped away the tears from every face. Death had power over Adam, our first parent, because of his sin, and like some savage and cruel beast, it attacked him and carried him off. After that lamentations, wailings, tears, and mourning for the dead were the lot of all who dwelt upon earth. But in Christ they came to an end. Coming to life again on the third day, he trampled death under foot and became the way by which we were to escape corruption. Christ became the firstborn from the dead and the firstfruits of all who had fallen asleep. Now the firstfruits, the one who comes first, will undoubtedly be followed later by others, that is by us. And so sorrow has been turned into joy; we are no longer clad in mourning but girded with a God-given gladness that inspires the jubilant cry: Death, where is your victory? Grave, where is your sting?

And in that day they will say: Behold your God in whom we have trusted and exulted. We shall rejoice in our salvation, for God will give rest upon this mountain. In other words, you will recognise the one who fills the cup of gladness with wine and anoints with sweet oil the inhabitants of the spiritual Zion. You will recognise him to be truly God and by his very nature the Son of God, even though for the life and salvation of all he appeared in the nature of a slave and became in every respect except sin a man like those who live upon earth.

Behold our God in whom we have trusted. We have exulted in our salvation. I think these words may best be taken as spoken by the Israelites, for since they had been brought up on the teachings of Moses and were familiar with all the prophets had foretold, they expected a saviour and redeemer, who is our Lord Jesus Christ come at the appointed time. Prompted by the Spirit to prophesy Zechariah, the father of John, declared that a mighty saviour been raised up for his people, and Simeon likewise when he received the holy infant in his hands said: My own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people.

And so, recognizing as the hope of our race the Saviour and Redeemer foretold long before, they will cry out in the words the Prophet: Behold, our God, and will proclaim that God will give rest upon this mountain. The mountain referred to must surely be the Church, for it is there that rest is given. We have heard the words of Christ: Come to me, all who are weary and overburdened and I will give you rest. By faith in Christ we have laid aside the grievous, the insupportable burden of sin. And we have been given rest in another way too, for we have been delivered from dread of the punishment we should have had to suffer for our sins. Nor are these the only effects of the presence in us of the grace of Christ our Saviour. We have in addition the hope of blessings yet to come, the kingdom of heaven, eternal life, and freedom from every cause of distress.

St Cyril of Alexandria, In Is. Lib. 3, t. 1 (PG 70, 563-566), from Word in Season 1

Thursday of the Second Week in Advent

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST PETER CHRYSOLOGUS

As God sees the world tottering to ruin because of fear, he acts unceasingly to bring it back by love, invite it by grace, to hold it by charity and clasp it firmly with affection. Hence, he washes the earth grown old in evil with the avenging flood. He calls Noah the father of a new world, speaks to him gently and gives him kindly confidence. He gives him fatherly instruction about the present and consoles him with good hope for the future. He did not give orders but instead shared in the work of enclosing together in the ark all living creatures on the earth. In this way the love of being together was to banish the fear born of slavery. What had been saved by a shared work was to be preserved by a community of love.

God calls Abraham from among the nations and makes his name great. He also makes him the father of those who believe, accompanies him on his journeys, and takes care of him among foreign peoples. He enriches him with possessions, honours him with triumphs, and binds himself to him by promises. He snatches him from harm, looks after him hospitably, and astonishes him with a son he had given up hope of ever having. All this he does, so that filled with so many good things, and drawn by the great sweetness of divine love, Abraham might learn to love God and not to be afraid of him, to worship him by love, not by trembling in fear.

He comforts the fugitive Jacob in his sleep. On his way back he calls him to the contest and grasps him with a wrestler’s arms. This was to teach him to love and not to fear the father of the contest. He invites Moses to be the liberator of his people, calling him with a fatherly voice and speaking to him father’s love.

The events that we have recalled where the hearts of men were fired with the flame of the love of God and their senses flooded to intoxication with that love, led them, wounded by love, to begin to want to look upon God with their bodily eyes. How could the narrowness of human vision enclose God whom the world cannot contain? The law of love has no thought about what will be, what ought to be or what can be. Love knows nothing about judgement, is beyond reason, and is incapable of moderation. Love takes no relief from the fact that its object is beyond possibility, nor is it cured by difficulties.

If love does not attain what it desires, it kills the lover. So, it goes where it is led, not where it ought to go. Love breeds desire that becomes so inflamed as to make its way towards what is forbidden. Love cannot bear not to have sight of what it loves. That is why holy people thought all that they had merited was nothing if they could not see the Lord. That is why love that longs to see God has the spirit of devotion even though it lacks judgement. That is why Moses dares to say, If I have found favour in your sight, show me your face. Finally, that is why the nations fashioned images. In these false things they wanted to see with their own eyes what they were worshipping.

St Peter Chrysologus, Sermon 147, from The Divine Office vol. I

Friday of the Second Week in Advent

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ISAIAH BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

Let us make peace with him, let us who are coming make peace. Jacob will put forth buds and Israel will blossom, and the whole world will be filled with his fruit. Like a wise counsellor the blessed prophet spoke before the event to the nations who are coming from all sides. It seems as though he foresaw that the Jews would refuse to give Christ, the Saviour of the world, their love and faith, that the people God loved would prove recalcitrant, that Christ would send his call to the Gentiles instead and through his holy Apostles would now be spreading his nets to catch men from the very ends of the earth.

And so, in the name of these Gentiles who are coming, the prophet says: Israel has abandoned its Master, the firstborn has grown recalcitrant. Israel is denying its faith and has apostatised from the Redeemer. But as for us who are coming, or who will be coming when the time is ripe – whose coming is nothing less than a passage from darkness into light, from pagan ignorance to the recognition of him who is truly God, from sins to justification – let us make peace with him. Let us destroy the ancient enmity and live at peace with God. Sin has been done away with and Satan rendered powerless; no longer is there anything to stand in our way, to set us at variance with Christ or to separate us from him. Let us then accept his revelation, obey his every wish and word, and bow before the Gospel preaching, for thus we shall make peace with him. Paul also in his great wisdom says to those called from among the Gentiles: Being justified by faith we enjoy peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

After exhorting those who are on their way to Christ, the prophet turns to the holy Apostles themselves. Realising, or rather having learned through the Holy Spirit, that they will win the whole world for God, he almost leaps for joy and overwhelmed by gladness he cries, The children of Jacob will put forth buds; Israel will blossom, and the whole world will be filled with his fruit. The Lord’s inspired disciples were born of the blood of Jacob whose new name was Israel, but from the rising of the sun to its setting through all the world their voice has gone out, and their words to the ends of earth. The multitude of the Gentiles has been called to knowledge of God. The prophecy is coming true, for the whole world has been filled with fruit. Whose fruit? Why, surely, Israel’s; in the sense that the fruit is borne by those who are the descendants of Israel.

Christian believers are the fruit of the Apostles’ toiling. Paul was inspired to call them his joy and his crown; for truly the holy men who initiated us in the faith have cause for boasting and a title to glory in those who through their work have reached salvation.

St Cyril of Alexandria, In Is. Lib. 3, t.1 (PG 598-599), from Word in Season 1

Saturday of the Second Week in Advent

A READING FROM A SERMON BY BLESSED ISAAC OF STELLA

The Son of God is the firstborn among many brethren; though by nature he is the Only-begotten, by grace he united many to himself, to be one with him. For to those who receive him he gave the power of becoming sons of God. When therefore he was made a son of man, he made many to be sons of God. By his love and power he united– as one – many to himself; in themselves, by their birth in the flesh they are many, but by their divine rebirth they are one with him.

For Christ, Head and Body, is one, whole and unique; but this one Christ is of one God in heaven and one mother on earth; this Christ is both many sons and one son. For as Head and Body are one son and many sons, so Mary and the Church are one mother and many; one virgin and many.

Each is mother, each is virgin; both conceive in holiness from the same Spirit; both bring forth a child without sin for God the Father. Mary gave birth to the absolutely sinless Head for the Body; the Church gave birth, in the forgiveness of every sin, to the Body for the Head. Each is the mother of Christ, but neither without the other gives birth to the whole Christ.

And so in the divinely inspired Scriptures, what is said in general of the Virgin Mother the Church, is said individually of the Virgin Mary; and what is said in the particular case of the Virgin Mother Mary, is rightly understood of Virgin Mother Church universally; and when mention is made of either, it is to be understood almost indifferently and conjointly of both.

Every faithful soul, spouse of the Word of God, mother, daughter and sister of Christ is understood to be a virgin with her own form of fertility. This is said of the whole Church, more particularly of Mary and individually of the faithful soul, by the Wisdom itself of God, the Father’s Word.

Therefore the text continues, I shall abide in the inheritance of the Lord. The inheritance of the Lord universally is the Church, more particularly Mary, and individually every faithful soul. Christ abode for nine months in the he tent of Mary’s womb; he abides until the consummation of the ages in the tent of the Church’s faith; he will abide for ever and ever in the knowledge and love of the faithful soul.

Bd Isaac of Stella, Sermon 51, from The Divine Office vol. I

Advent Week 3

Sunday of the Third Week in Advent

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

John was a voice, but the Lord in the beginning was the Word. John was a voice for a time, Christ the eternal Word in the beginning. Take away the word and what is a voice? When it conveys no meaning, it is just an empty sound. A wordless voice strikes the ear, but it does not make the heart grow.

However, as we engage in building up our heart, let us pay attention to the order of things. If I think of what I want to say, the word is already in my heart. And if I want to talk to you, I look for some means whereby what is in my heart may also be in yours. So, wanting the word, which is already in my heart, to come over to you, and make its way into your heart, I make use of my voice to talk to you. The sound of the voice brings you to understand the word. And when my voice has done this, it ceases; but the word carried to you by the sound is now already in your heart, and has not left mine.

Take this sound then. After the word has passed into your possession, does it not seem to say, ‘He must increase, but I must decrease’? The sound of the voice cried out, performing its service, and then passed away, as though it said ‘This joy of mine is now full.’ Let us hold on to the word, and not let slip the word we have inwardly conceived.

Do you want to see a transient voice, and the abiding divinity of the Word? Where is John’s baptism now? He served his purpose and left. It is Christ’s baptism which is now administered. We all believe in Christ, and hope for salvation in him. This is precisely what the voice told us.

Since it is difficult to distinguish the voice and the word, John himself was thought to be Christ. The voice was taken to be the Word. But the voice admitted his identity, lest he might displease the Word. I am not the Christ, he said, nor Elijah, nor the prophet. In reply to, Who are you? he said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, the voice of one breaking the silence. Prepare the way of the Lord, is as though he said: I cry out to lead him into your heart – but he will not condescend to come where I am leading, unless you prepare the way.

What does to prepare the way mean, except to pray as you ought, to be humble-minded? Take an example of humility from John himself. He is thought to be the Christ, but he says he is not what people think. He does not use the mistake of others to feed his own pride. Suppose he had said: I am the Christ. How easily would he have been believed, since that was what people were thinking before he spoke! But he did not say it. He acknowledged who he was, distinguished himself from Christ, humbled himself.

St Augustine, Sermon 293, 3, from The Divine Office vol. I

Monday of the Third Week in Advent

A READING FROM THE TREATISE ON CONTEMPLATING GOD BY ABBOT WILLIAM OF SAINT-THIERRY

You alone are the Lord. To be ruled by you is for us salvation. For us to serve you is nothing else but to be saved by you!

Now how is it we are saved by you, O Lord, from whom salvation comes and whose blessing is upon your people, if it is not in receiving from you the gift of loving you and being loved by you? That, Lord, is why you willed that the Son of your right hand, the Man whom you made strong for your own self, should be called Jesus, that is to say, Saviour, for he will save his people from their sins. There is no other in whom is salvation except him who taught us to love himself when he first loved us, even to death on the cross. By loving us and holding us so dear he stirred us up to love himself, who first had loved us to the end.

You who first loved us did this, precisely this. You first loved us so that we might love you. And that was not because you needed to be loved by us, but because we could not be what you created us to be, except by loving. Having then in many ways and on various occasions spoken to the fathers by the prophets, now in these last days you have spoken to us in the Son, your Word, by whom the heavens were established, and all the power of them by the breath of his mouth. For you to speak thus in your Son was an open declaration, a setting in the sun as it were, of how much and in what sort of way you loved us, in that you spared not your own Son, but delivered him up for us all. Yes, and he himself loved us and gave himself for us.

This, Lord, is your word to us, this is your all-powerful message: he who, while all things kept silence (that is, were in the depths of error), came from the royal throne, the stern opponent of error and the gentle apostle of love. And everything he did and everything he said on earth, even the insults, the spitting, the buffeting, the cross and the grave, all that was nothing but yourself speaking in the Son, appealing to us by your love, and stirring up our love for you.

For you, O God, our souls’ creator, knew that this affection cannot be forced in the souls of the sons of men, but has to be evoked. And this is for the obvious reason that there is no freedom where there is compulsion, and, where freedom is lacking, so too is righteousness.

Now we on our part hold you dear by the affection of love which you have implanted in us. But, O you who are One supremely good and the ultimate Goodness, your love is your goodness, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son! From the beginning of creation he has been borne upon the waters – on the tossing souls of men, that is – offering himself to all, drawing all to himself. And breathing into and upon them, by warding off things harmful and supplying things useful, he unites God to us and us to God.

Abbot William of Saint-Thierry, On Contemplating God 9-11, from The Divine Office vol. I

Tuesday of the Third Week in Advent

A READING FROM A HOMILY BY ST BERNARD

See, the name of the Lord is coming from afar, says the prophet. Who could doubt that something tremendous was responsible, when sublime majesty deigned to come down from such a distance to so unworthy a place? Something tremendous it assuredly was: great mercy, abundant compassion, and overwhelming charity were the cause.

For what purpose did he come, according to our faith? It will be no arduous task to find out, since both his words and his deeds clearly proclaim the reason for his coming. It was to search for the hundredth sheep which had strayed that he hastened down from the mountains; he came for our sake so that his tender mercies and his wonderful dealings with the children of Adam might more evidently give glory to the Lord. How astonishing the condescension on the part of God who searches; how great the value of those he sought! If we should wish to boast of it we shall not be acting foolishly; not that we can claim to be anything as of ourselves, but because he who made us has made us worth so much. All riches, all the glory of the world and whatever in it is an object of desire pale before this glory, compared with which they are nothing. Lord, what is man that you make so much of him and set your heart on him?

All the same I should like to know what it means that he came to us, rather than our going to him. The need was ours, and it is not customary for the rich to go in search of the poor, even if they wish to make them some gift. It would have been seemly, therefore, for us to go to him, but there was a double hindrance. First, our eyes were dim, whereas he dwells in unapproachable light. Second, lying paralysed on our pallet as we were, we tacked the strength to reach the summit of the Godhead. So our most kindly Saviour, the physician of souls, came down from his great height and tempered his glory to our weak eyes. He shielded himself in a lantern when he took to himself that glorious body entirely free from all stain. This body assuredly is that very swift and shining cloud upon which the prophet foretold that he would ride to descend into Egypt.

St Bernard, Sermo 1 de Adventu Domini 7-8 (PL 183, 38-39), from Word in Season 1

Wednesday of the Third Week in Advent

A READING FROM THE TREATISE AGAINST HERESIES BY ST IRENAEUS

There is one God, who by his Word and Wisdom made and ordered all things. His Word is our Lord Jesus Christ who in these last times became man among men, that he might unite the end with the beginning, that is, Man with God. Therefore the prophets who received from this same Word their prophetic gift, proclaimed his advent in the flesh, by which was effected the mingling and uniting of God and man according to the Father’s pleasure.

For the Word of God foretold from the beginning that God would be seen by men and would live with them on earth and converse with them; that he would be present with his creatures to bring salvation to them and to be perceived by them; that he would free us from the hands of those who hate us, that is, from the whole spirit of transgression; and would make us serve him all our days in holiness and righteousness; that man, taking to himself the Spirit of God, would pass to the glory of the Father. The prophets therefore indicated beforehand that God would be seen by men; as the Lord also says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

I grant that in respect of his greatness and marvellous glory, no man shall see God and live, for the Father is incomprehensible. But in respect of his love and kindly mercy, and of his infinite power, he grants even this to such as love him, I mean, to see God, as the prophets also foretold. Because the things which are impossible with men are possible with God.

Man does not see God by his own powers; but God of his own will appears to men, to whom he wills, and when he wills, and as he wills. For God can do all things: he was seen in former times prophetically through the Spirit, he is seen in the Son by adoption, and he will be seen in the kingdom of heaven as Father. The Spirit prepares man for the Son of God, the Son brings him to the Father, and the Father bestows on him incorruptibility for eternal life, which comes to everyone from his beholding God.

As those who see the light are in the light, and partake of its splendour, so those who see God are in God, partaking of his splendour. But God’s splendour gives life; those therefore who see God will partake of life.

St Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses Bk 4, 20, 4-5, from The Divine Office vol. I

Thursday of the Third Week in Advent

A READING FROM THE CONSTITUTION ON DIVINE REVELATION OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

God, who creates and maintains all things by his Word, provides men with constant evidence of himself in created realities. And furthermore, wishing to open up the way to heavenly salvation, he manifested himself to our first parents from the very beginning. After the fall, he buoyed them up with the hope of salvation, by promising redemption; and he has never ceased to take care of the human race. For he wishes to give eternal life to all those who seek salvation by patience in well-doing. In his own time God called Abraham, and made him into a great nation. After the era of the Patriarchs, he taught this nation, by Moses and the Prophets, to recognize him as the only living and true God, as a provident Father and just Judge. He taught them, too, to look for the promised Saviour. And so, throughout the ages, he prepared the way for the Gospel.

After God had spoken many times and in various ways through the Prophets, in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son. For he sent his Son, the eternal Word who enlightens all men, to dwell among men and to tell them about the inner life of God. Hence, Jesus Christ, sent as a man among men, speaks the words of God, and accomplishes the saving work which the Father gave him to do. As a result, he himself - to see whom is to see the Father - completed and perfected Revelation and confirmed it with divine guarantees. He did this by the total fact of his presence and self-manifestation - by words and works, signs and miracles, but above all by his death and glorious resurrection from the dead, and finally by sending the Spirit of truth. He revealed that God was with us, to deliver us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to eternal life.

The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum 3-4, from The Divine Office vol. I

Friday of the Third Week in Advent

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 37 BY ST AUGUSTINE

I cried aloud with the groaning of my heart. There is a hidden groaning which human ears cannot catch. However, if a man’s heart is so obsessed with the thought of some longed-for object that his inward suffering is expressed very audibly, somebody will want to know the reason, and will say to himself: ‘Perhaps such and such a thing has caused his grief; perhaps this or that is the matter with him.’ Who can know, except he in whose sight and hearing the suppliant groans? The reason why the psalmist says: I cried aloud with the groaning of my heart is that when men hear another man groaning, what they hear is often the groaning of the flesh, they do not hear the groaning of the heart.

Now who has understood why he cried aloud? He goes on: And all my desire is before you. Not indeed before men, who cannot see into the heart: but before you is all my desire. Set your desire on him, and the Father who sees in secret will repay you. This very desire of yours is your prayer. If your desire is continual, your prayer is continual too. It was not for nothing that the Apostle said: Pray without ceasing. Was it so that we should be continuously on our knees, or prostrating our bodies or raising our hands that he says: Pray without ceasing? If that is how we say our prayers, then my opinion is that we cannot do that without ceasing.

But there is another and interior way of praying without ceasing, and that is the way of desire. Whatever else you are doing, if you long for that sabbath, you are not ceasing to pray. If you do not want to cease praying, do not cease longing. Your unceasing desire is your unceasing voice. You will lapse into silence if you lose your longing. Who did lapse into silence? Those of whom it was said: Because wickedness is multiplied, the charity of many will grow cold. The coldness of charity is the heart’s silence; its glowing ardour, the heart’s outcry. If charity is always present, you are ever crying out; if always crying out, you are ever longing; if longing, you have not forgotten repose.

And all my desire is before you. What if the desire is before him and the actual groaning is not? Would it be possible, since the groaning is merely the expression of the desire? Therefore the psalmist continues: And my groaning is not hidden from you. From you it is not hidden; from many a human being it is. Sometimes one hears a lowly servant of God crying: And my groaning is hidden from you. And sometimes one sees the same servant of God with a cheerful face: has that desire perished from his heart? No; if the desire is always within, so too is the groaning: it does not always come to the ears of men, but it is never absent from the ears of God.

St Augustine, En. in Ps. 37, 13-14, from The Divine Office vol. I

Advent II: 17 – 24 December

17 December

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ISAIAH BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

Isaiah speaks at some length of Cyrus, king of the Medes and Persians. Raised up against the Chaldeans, he was urged on by God himself, who opened their bronze doors to him and shattered their iron bars. Having conquered the land of Babylon and laid it waste, Cyrus released enslaved Israel from captivity and caused the foundations of the Temple in Jerusalem to be laid.

But this is only part of the story, for after indicating that the rejoicing and the release from captivity were for those of Israelite blood and for them alone, Isaiah goes on to apply these images to Emmanuel, who was consecrated by God the Father to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind; that is to say, to deliver those inescapably bound by the chains of their own sins, to declare them free from the devil’s tyranny, and so to prepare the inhabitants of the earth to return to himself, to be led by him to God the Father.

He has become the mediator between God and men, and through him we have been reconciled in the one Spirit to the Father. As Scripture says, He is our peace. He himself has rebuilt his own holy Temple, which is the Church, and has taken her to himself as a pure virgin, having neither spot nor wrinkle, nor any such imperfection, for she is holy and without fault. Thus one can very easily see in Cyrus and his deeds an image of the divine blessings bestowed by God upon all the inhabitants of the earth.

Let heaven rejoice, says Isaiah, meaning the angels and archangels who inhabit the heavenly city, possessors of that radiant and awesome dwelling place. Now the reason, surely, for the heavenly spirits’ rejoicing is because through Christ, the Saviour of us all, earth’s erring inhabitants have been converted to God, because the blind have received sight; in a word, because the lost have been saved. If they rejoice over one repentant sinner, how can there be any doubt of their joy at seeing the world saved? Let heaven rejoice then, says Scripture, and let the clouds rain down justice. Let earth open and bring forth both mercy and justice.

Mercy is the love which is the fulfilment of the law, for it goes hand in hand with the justice of the Gospel that Christ himself teaches us and bestows on us. It could also be said that mercy and justice coming forth and growing from the earth is our Lord Jesus Christ himself. If anyone thinks it strange for the earth to be commanded to bring forth justice, let him remember that the psalmist also says that God the Father and Emmanuel himself wrought justice in the midst of the earth. For Christ did not bring his own body down to us from heaven, but was born in the body of a woman who was one of the inhabitants of earth. So when he is said to be the fruit and offspring of the earth you must understand this to mean that according to the flesh he was born of one of those fashioned from the earth, from a woman especially chosen for this service.

St Cyril of Alexandria, In Is. Lib. 4, oratio 2 (PG 70, 955-958), from Word in Season 1

18 December

A READING FROM THE LETTER TO DIOGNETUS

No man has ever seen God or known him. He himself has given us the revelation of himself. But he has only revealed himself to faith, by which alone are we permitted to know God. For God, though Lord and architect of the whole world, who made and set in order each single thing that is, was something more than loving towards mankind, he was long-suffering as well. So he has always been, and is, and shall be: merciful, kind, slow to anger, and true. There is none so good as he. He conceived a design, great and beyond all telling, and he imparted it to none but his son alone.

So long as he maintained this secrecy, and kept his own wise counsel, it seemed as though he had no care for us and had put us out of his mind. But as soon as he disclosed it, through his beloved Son, and revealed what had been planned from the beginning, then straightaway he poured out all the fullness of his bounty upon us, permitting us to share his benefactions and to see and know such blessings as none of us could ever have looked for.

Next, after making these dispositions in his mind with the Son, he left us to live for the meanwhile as we pleased, giving free rein to our unruly instincts and being at the mercy of sensuality and lust. This was not because he took any pleasure in those sins of ours; all he was doing was to put up with them. It was not that he was sanctioning that former era of lawlessness. Rather, he was preparing this present ere of righteousness. His purpose was that we, who had been proved by our own works unworthy to achieve life, might in these days be made worthy of it by the goodness of God. After clearly showing our inability to enter into the kingdom of God by our own power, we might now by God’s power be made able.

Accordingly, when our iniquity had come to its full height, and it was clear beyond all mistaking that retribution in the form of punishment and death must be looked for, the hour arrived in which God had determined to make known from then onwards his loving-kindness and his power.

How surpassing is the love and tenderness of God! In that hour, instead of hating us and rejecting us and remembering our wickedness against us, he showed how longsuffering he is. He bore with us, and in pity he took our sins upon himself. He gave his own Son as a ransom for us – the holy for the wicked, the sinless for sinners, the just for the unjust, the incorrupt for the corrupt, the immortal for the mortal. For was there, indeed, anything except his righteousness that could have availed to cover our sins? In whom could we, in our lawlessness and ungodliness, have been made holy, but in the Son of God alone?

O sweet exchange! O unsearchable working! O benefits unhoped for! – that the wickedness of multitudes should thus be hidden in the One who is holy, and the holiness of One should sanctify the countless wicked!

Epistle to Diognetus 8, 5-9, 6, from The Divine Office vol. I

19 December

A READING FROM AGAINST HERESIES BY ST IRENAEUS

God is man’s glory, but it is man who receives the effect of God’s activity, who is the recipient of all God’s wisdom and power. Just as a doctor proves himself in his patients, so God reveals himself in men. That is why Paul states: God has imprisoned all in unbelief that he may have mercy on all. He is speaking here of man, who was excluded from immortality as a result of his disobedience to God, but then obtained mercy through the Son of God by receiving adoption in him.

Without pride or boastfulness, man should have a true evaluation of created things and of their creator, that is, of God, the supremely powerful, who gave existence to all things. He should abide in love of God, in submission, in thanksgiving. If he does, he will receive a greater glory from God and will go on until he becomes like the one who died for him.

He too was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, in order to condemn sin and, as something now condemned, to expel it from the flesh. He came to invite man to become himself, commissioning him to imitate God, placing him under obedience to the Father so as to see God, giving him the power to apprehend the Father. He who did this is the Word of God, who dwelt in man and became Son of man in order to accustom man to receive God and accustom God to dwell in man, in accordance with the Father’s will.

That is why he is a sign of our salvation, Immanuel, born of the Virgin, a sign given us by the Lord himself. It was the Lord who saved men, because they were incapable of saving themselves. When Paul says: I know that nothing good dwells in my flesh, he is affirming this weakness of man, and he is indicating that the ‘good’ which is our salvation comes not from ourselves but from God. In another passage he says: Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?, and then he introduces the rescuer: the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Isaiah too makes the same point: Be strong, weak hands and feeble knees; pluck up your courage, faint-hearted. Be strong, do not be afraid. See, our God is coming with justice and with retribution; he is coming himself to save us – it is not by ourselves but by the help of God that we are saved.

St Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 3,. 20, 2-3, from The Divine Office vol. I

20 December

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 49 BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

God will come openly, says the Prophet. Do you wonder whether he ever came in another way? Indeed he did. His first coming was without a sound, hidden from almost everyone and for many years unnoticed. But why do I say ‘almost everyone’ when even the Virgin carrying him had no knowledge of the mystery, his own relatives did not believe in him, and the man presumed to be his father did not regard him as being anyone very exalted?

I speak of men, but even the devil himself did not know who he was. If he had known he would not, many years later on the mountain, have asked him if he was the Son of God and repeated the question three times. So John was going to make him known, but Jesus said to him: Let it be so for now, ‘Say nothing for the present.’ The time has not yet come to reveal the mystery of my incarnation, which I still wish to keep hidden from the devil. Keep silence. It is fitting that we should.

Christ came to earth as a shepherd seeking his lost sheep, and in order to catch the rebellious creature he kept himself hidden. As a doctor takes care not to alarm his patient at the outset, so the Saviour did not wish to make himself known immediately, but only little by little. Referring to this silent coming the Prophet says: He shall descend like rain on a fleece, like raindrops on the earth.

He did not come with a crash of thunder amid a great upheaval, earthquakes, flashes of lightning, and disturbance in the heavens. He did not come with an escort of angels, tearing the heavens apart to descend upon the clouds. No, he came without a sound. For nine months he was carried in the womb of the Virgin. He was born as the son of a carpenter and laid in a manger. He was plotted against while still in swaddling-bands and with his mother he fled into Egypt. Later, after the death of the perpetrator of such great crimes, he returned and continued to live a wandering life, being to all appearance just an ordinary man.

But this is not how he will come the second time. That coming will be so open that there will be no need to announce it. How open it will be he himself revealed when he said: If they say he is in the inner room, do not go in; if they say he is in the desert, do not go out. For as the lightning flashes across the sky, from east to west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. It will manifest and proclaim itself.

St John Chrysostom, On Psalm 49 1-2 (Bareille, t.9, 286-288), from Word in Season 1

21 December

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ST LUKE’S GOSPEL BY ST AMBROSE

When the angel was announcing the mysteries to the Virgin Mary, he also told her as a precedent, to help her to believe, that an old and barren woman had conceived. This was to show that God can do everything that pleases him. When Mary heard this she hurried off to the hill country. This was not because she disbelieved the oracle, or was uncertain about the messenger, or doubted the precedent offered, but because she was overjoyed with desire, eager to fulfil a duty of piety, and impelled by gladness.

Where could she who was filled with God hasten to, except to the heights? There is no such thing as delay in the working of the Holy Spirit. The arrival of Mary and the blessings of the Lord’s presence are also speedily declared. As soon as Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and she was filled with the Holy Spirit. Notice the choice of words and their precise meaning. Elizabeth was the first to hear the voice; but John was the first to experience grace. She heard according to the order of nature; he leaped because of the mystery. She recognized the arrival of Mary; he the arrival of the Lord. The woman recognized the woman’s arrival; the child, that of the child. The women speak of grace; the babies make it effective from within to the advantage of their mothers who, by a double miracle, prophesy under the inspiration of their babies.

The infant leaped, the mother was filled with the Spirit. The mother was not filled before the son, but after the son was filled with the Holy Spirit, he filled his mother too. John leaped and the spirit of Mary rejoiced. As John leaped, Elizabeth is filled, but we know that Mary was not filled but her spirit rejoiced. For he who cannot be comprehended was working in his mother’s womb in ways beyond comprehension. Elizabeth was filled with the Spirit after she had conceived, and Mary before. Blessed are you, she said, who believed.

But you too, who have heard and have believed, are blessed. Every soul who has believed both conceives and generates the Word of God and recognizes his works. Let the soul of Mary be in each one of you to magnify the lord. Let the spirit of Mary be in each one to exult in God. According to the flesh one woman is the mother of Christ, but according to faith, Christ is the fruit of all men. Every soul, indeed, receives the Word of God, provided it remains unstained and free from sin and preserves its chastity in unviolated modesty. The soul who has been able to reach this state magnifies the Lord, as Mary’s soul magnified the Lord and her spirit rejoiced in God her saviour.

St Ambrose, In Ev. Luc. 2, 19, 22-23, 26-27, from The Divine Office vol. I

22 December

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ST LUKE’S GOSPEL BY ST BEDE

Mary said: My soul glorifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour. The Lord, she said, has exalted me with a great and unheard of gift, which cannot be explained in any words and can scarcely be understood by the deepest feelings of the heart. And so I offer up all the strength of my soul in thanksgiving and praise. In my joy I pour out all my life, all my feeling, all my understanding in contemplating the greatness of him who is without end. My spirit rejoices in the eternal divinity of Jesus, my Saviour, whom I have conceived in time and bear in my body.

For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. Mary looks back to the beginning of the canticle, to the words: My soul glorifies the Lord. Only the soul for whom the Lord does great things can glorify and praise him as he deserves; only that soul can call on those who share the same desire and intent: Glorify the Lord with me. Together let us praise his name. The man who refuses to glorify with all his power the Lord whom he knows, and to keep his name holy, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. God’s name is called holy because he transcends the whole of creation by the loftiness of his unparalleled power, and because he is set apart from all those things which he has made.

He has lifted up Israel, his child, remembering his mercy. In beautiful fashion Mary calls Israel the child of the Lord, for Israel has been lifted up by him to be saved, seeing that Israel was obedient and humble, in accordance with the words of Hosea: Because Israel was a child, I loved him. Now anyone who refuses to humble himself simply cannot be saved, nor can he say with the prophet: Behold, the Lord is my helper; it is God who lifts up my life. But whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

As he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity for ever. Mary does not mean the natural but the spiritual posterity of Abraham; that is, not those who have only descended from him physically, but those who follow in the steps of his faith, whether they are circumcised or uncircumcised. For he too believed while uncircumcised and it was considered as justifying him. The coming of a Saviour therefore was promised to Abraham and to his posterity for ever, that is, to the children of the promise, to whom are addressed the words: If you belong to Christ, then you are the posterity of Abraham, the heirs he was promised.

It was right that the mothers of both the Lord and John should anticipate the birth of their children in prophecy. Just as sin began from women, so too it was fitting that blessings should spring from women, and that life which was lost through the deception of one woman, should be given back to the world by these two women who rival each other in giving praise.

St Bede, In Ev. Luc. 1, 46-55, from The Divine Office vol. I

23 December

A READING FROM THE TREATISE AGAINST THE HERESY OF NOETUS BY ST HIPPOLYTUS

There is one God, and we can come to know him only through sacred Scripture. So then, let us look at what Scripture proclaims, let us discover what its teaching is. As the Father wants to be believed, so let us believe; as he wants the Son to be glorified, so let us glorify him; as he wants the Holy Spirit to be given, so let us receive him. We must not act in accordance with our own mind or our own will; we must not do violence to what God has given. We must look at things rather as God has chosen to make them known through Scripture.

God, existing alone, without contemporary of any sort, decided to make the world. He conceived it in his mind, willed it, spoke the word, and so made it, and immediately it came into being, formed as he had willed it. It is enough for us simply to know that God had no contemporary; apart from him there was nothing. But though alone, God was manifold. He was not without reason or wisdom or power or counsel. All things were in him and he was all. When he willed, and as he willed, he revealed his Word, at times which he himself had determined. Through his Word he made all things.

The Word was in God and was invisible to the created world, but God made him visible. He spoke, as he had done before, and, begetting light from light, he sent forth his own mind to the world as its Lord. He who formerly had been visible only to God and invisible to the world was now made visible, so that through this manifestation the world could see him, and be saved. The Word is the mind of God; he came into the world and was shown forth as Son of God. All things, then, come into being through him, and he alone is from the Father. It was this one God who gave the law and the prophets. In giving them, he made them speak by the Holy Spirit: the Father’s power inspires them, and they proclaim the Father’s purpose and will.

And so the Word was manifested. Saint John sums up what the prophets said and shows that this is the Word through whom all things came to be: In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him. Later he goes on: The world had its being through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own domain and his own people did not accept him.

St Hippolytus, Adv. Noetus 9-12, from The Divine Office vol. I

24 December

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

Wake up, O man — it was for you that God was made man! Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light. For you, I say, was God made man. Eternal death would have awaited you had he not been born in time. Never would you be freed from your sinful flesh, had he not taken to himself the likeness of sinful flesh. Everlasting would be your misery, had he not performed this act of mercy. You would not have come to life again, had he not come to die your death. You would have broken down, had he not come to help you. You would have perished, had he not come.

Let us joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption. Let us celebrate the hallowed day on which the great eternal day came from the great eternal day into this, our so short and temporal day. He has become our justice, and our sanctification, and our redemption. And so, as Scripture says: Let him who glories, glory in the Lord.

Truth, then, is sprung out of the earth: Christ who said, I am the truth, is born of a virgin. And justice looked down from heaven: man, believing in him who has been born, has been justified not by himself, but by God. Truth is sprung out of the earth, for the Word was made flesh. And justice looked down from heaven, for every best gift, and every perfect gift, is from above. Truth is sprung out of the earth — flesh born of Mary. And justice looked down from heaven, for a man cannot receive anything, unless it be given him from heaven.

Being justified by faith, let us have peace with God, for justice and peace have kissed each other, through our Lord Jesus Christ, for Truth is sprung out of the earth. Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we glory in our hope of sharing the glory of God. Saint Paul does not say, our glory, but the glory of God; because justice does not proceed from us, but has looked down from heaven. Let him who glories then, glory, not in himself, but in the Lord. Because of this, when the Lord was born of the Virgin, the angels announced, Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will.

Whence is peace on earth, if not from the fact that Truth is sprung out of the earth, that is, Christ is born of flesh? And he is our peace, who has made both one, that we might be men of good will, bound together by the sweet bonds of unity.

Let us, then, rejoice in this grace, that our glory may be the testimony of our conscience, and we may glory, not in ourselves, but in the Lord. Obviously, it was because of this that it was said, my glory, who lifts up my head. For what greater grace could have dawned upon us from God, than that he, who had only one Son, made him the son of man, and so in turn made the son of man a son of God. Ask yourself whether this involved any merit, any motivation, any right on your part; and see whether you find anything but grace!

St Augustine, Sermon 185, from The Divine Office vol. I

Christmas

Christmas Day

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

Today Truth has sprung up from the earth ; Christ is born in the flesh. We must celebrate this day of joy as worthily as we can. It’s a day which of its nature impels us to consider also the everlasting day, so we must not fail to turn our minds to that also: with hope that cannot be shaken, we should yearn for gifts that are eternal. Today we have received the power to be called children of God, so let us boldly be what we are. For our sake, the bringer-about of all time was himself brought into time; for our sake the maker of the world appeared in the flesh; for our sake the Creator was created. So why do we who must still die still seek our joy in perishable things; why do we put so much futile effort into clutching on to this fleeting life? A much brighter hope has now lit up the whole earth: it promises, even to us who live on earth, eternal life in heaven.

Is this difficult to believe? Well, something much more difficult to believe has already happened. God’s promise is to make men gods. Well, God has already himself been made a man. He did not lose what he was, yet he chose to become what he himself had made. He added our humanity to his divinity, but he did not in any way lose his divinity in our humanity.

We wonder when told that a child has been born of a Virgin. When we try to convince unbelievers, we tell them it’s a completely new way of being born. A new shoot of the human race has sprung up as if from soil without seed; a son of man has been born without any intervention of a human father; virginal integrity has remained intact, both in the conception of a child, and in its bringing to birth. The power that can accomplish all this makes us wonder: but even more wonderful was the mercy that prompted it. It’s wonderful that he could be born in this way: it’s even more wonderful that he chose to be born in this way. For he was the only-begotten of his Father, and he was born today as the only-begotten of his mother. He was made within his mother; yet he was the one who had previously made his mother for himself. He who existed eternally with his Father, today was born in time of his mother. He who was made from his mother, after his mother had been made, was before all creation with his Father; and like his Father was himself unmade. The Father was never without his Son. Without her Son, his mother would never have existed at all.

Let us all together then, perfectly united in mind and heart, celebrate today the birthday of the Lord. Let us celebrate with chaste hearts and holy affections the day on which Truth sprang up from the earth. Does anyone think lightly of this Truth, if it sprang up from the earth? Let him consider that in order that it might come from the earth, it first came down from heaven. He who is this Truth came down in order to raise us up. Let us then learn to be rich in the one who became poor for our sake. Let us accept freedom from the one who for our sake accepted the form of a slave. In the one who for our sake sprang up from the earth, let us in turn take possession of heaven.

St Augustine, Sermon 192, 1 & 3. tr. Pluscarden.

The Octave of Christmas: Holy Family

A READING FROM AN ADDRESS BY POPE PAUL VI

The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus — the school of the Gospel. The first lesson we learn here is to look, to listen, to meditate and penetrate the meaning — at once so deep and so mysterious — of this very simple, very humble and very beautiful manifestation of the Son of God. Perhaps we learn, even imperceptibly, the lesson of imitation. Here we learn the method which will permit us to understand who Christ is. Here everything is eloquent, all has a meaning.

Here, in this school, one learns why it is necessary to have a spiritual rule of life, if one wishes to follow the teaching of the Gospel and become a disciple of Christ. How gladly would I become a child again, and go to school once more in this humble and sublime school of Nazareth: close to Mary, I wish I could make a fresh start at learning the true science of life and the higher wisdom of divine truths. But I am only a passing pilgrim. I must renounce this desire to pursue in this home my still incomplete education in the understanding of the Gospel. I will not go on my way however without having gathered — hurriedly, it is true, and as if wanting to escape notice — some brief lessons from Nazareth.

First, then, a lesson of silence. May esteem for silence, that admirable and indispensable condition of mind, revive in us, besieged as we are by so many uplifted voices, the general noise and uproar, in our seething and over-sensitised modern life. May the silence of Nazareth teach us recollection, inwardness, the disposition to listen to good inspirations and the teachings of true masters. May it teach us the need for and the value of preparation, of study, of meditation, of personal inner life, of the prayer which God alone sees in secret.

Next, there is a lesson on family life. May Nazareth teach us what family life is, its communion of love, its austere and simple beauty, and its sacred and inviolable character. Let us learn from Nazareth that the formation received at home is gentle and irreplaceable. Let us learn the prime importance of the role of the family in the social order.

Finally, there is a lesson of work. Nazareth, home of the ‘Carpenter’s Son’, in you I would choose to understand and proclaim the severe and redeeming law of human work; here I would restore the awareness of the nobility of work; and reaffirm that work cannot be an end in itself, but that its freedom and its excellence derive, over and above its economic worth, from the value of those for whose sake it is undertaken. And here at Nazareth, to conclude, I want to greet all the workers of the world, holding up to them their great pattern, their brother who is God. He is the prophet of all their just causes, Christ our Lord.

Pope Paul VI, Address 5 January 1964, from The Divine Office vol. I

Sixth Day of the Octave of Christmas: 30 December

A READING FROM THE SERMONS ON THE SONG OF SONGS BY ST BERNARD

Our bed is covered with flowers; the beams of our houses are of cedar, the panelling of cypress. She is singing her marriage-song, describing in beautiful language the marriage bed and bridal suite. She invites the bridegroom to repose: for the better thing is to remain at ease and be with Christ; but necessity drives one forth to help those who are to be saved. So now when she feels that the opportunity presents itself, she announces that the bridal suite has been furnished, and pointing to the bed with her finger she invites, as I have said, the Beloved to rest there. Like the disciples on the way to Emmaus she cannot contain the ardour in her heart, but entices him to be the guest of her soul, compels him to spend the night with her. With Peter she says: Lord it is good for us to be here.

Let us now seek the spiritual content of these words. And indeed in the Church the ‘bed’ where one reposes is, in my opinion, the cloisters and monasteries, where one lives undisturbed by the cares of the world and the anxieties of life. This bed is seen to be adorned with flowers when the conduct and life of the brothers brightly reflect the examples and rules of the Fathers, as if strewn with sweet smelling flowers. By ‘houses’ understand the ordinary communities of Christians. Those who enjoy high office, the Christian leaders of both orders, strongly bind them together with laws justly imposed, as beams bind the walls, lest living by their own law and will, they should fall apart from each other like tilting walls and tottering fences, and thus the whole building fall to the ground and be destroyed. The panelling however, which is firmly attached to the beams, and impressively adds to the beauty of the house, seems to me to designate the courteous and disciplined behaviour of a well-trained clergy, who carry out their duties correctly. For how shall the clerical orders stand and fulfil their duties unless they are sustained, as by beams, by the beneficence and munificence of those who govern and protect by their power?

It is worth noting how beautifully every state of the Church is comprehended in one brief expression: the authority of prelates, the good repute of the clergy, the dutifulness of the people, the peacefulness of the monks. As she reflects on these, holy Mother Church rejoices when everything is right; and then she presents them to the beloved to contemplate, since she refers everything to his goodness as the author of all things, attributing nothing of them all to herself.

For the rest, when you hear or read these words of the Holy Spirit, do you think you can apply to yourself some of what is said? Can you recognize in yourself any share in the happiness of the bride that is celebrated by the Holy Spirit himself in this song of love?

St Bernard, Sermon 46 on the Song of Songs, tr. Kilian Walsh OCSO (1976), from Cistercian Fathers 7

Seventh Day of the Octave of Christmas: 31 December

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON THE SONG OF SONGS BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

How should we interpret the words, Behold he comes, leaping over the mountains? Perhaps they foresee the divine plan, spoken of in the Gospel and foretold by the prophets, whereby the Word of God became visible to us by his coming in the flesh. See, there he stands, looking through the windows, peeping through the lattices. The Word unites humanity to God methodically, step by step. First he enlightens us through the prophets and the precepts of the law; for we take the prophets to be the windows admitting the light and the network of the law’s commands to be the lattice. Through both of these steals the brilliance of the true light. Afterward comes the full illumination when by union with our nature the true light shines upon those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. First the light of the ideas contained in the prophets and the law shines upon the soul through windows and lattices apprehended by our minds, filling it with a desire to see the sun in the open air. Then the desire is fulfilled.

Rise up my companion, my fair one, my dove, and come. How much the Word teaches us in these few words! We watch him leading the bride to the heights along the ascending path of virtue, as though up a flight of steps. First he sends her a ray of light through the windows which are the prophets and the lattice which is the precepts of the law, calling her to approach the light and to become beautiful as she takes on in the light the form of a dove. Then when she has taken on as much of the divine beauty as she can, as though she had not yet received any part in it, he draws her once again from the beginning toward the supreme Beauty in which she is to share. As a result her desire becomes more intense the further she advances toward what is continually being revealed to her. Moreover, because of the surpassing greatness of the blessings she is always receiving by his grace who surpasses all, she seems to be making the journey for the first time.

And so, after she has risen the Word again says ‘Rise’ and after she has come he says ‘Come’. One who has thus risen never lacks the opportunity to rise further and one who is running toward the Lord never reaches the end of the space available for the divine race. We should always be rising and those whom the race is bringing close to the goal should never stop. Each time the Word says ‘Rise’ and ‘Come’ he gives the power to ascend to still loftier heights.

St Gregory of Nyssa, Homily 5 on the Song of Songs (Jaeger 6, 140-159), from Word in Season 1

The Octave of Christmas: Mary, Mother of God

A READING FROM THE LETTER TO EPICTETUS BY ST ATHANASIUS

The Word took to himself descent from Abraham, as the Apostle says, and therefore it was essential that he should in this way become completely like his brothers, and take a body similar to ours. That is why Mary is really part of his plan, so that he may take this body from her and offer it up for us as something that is his own. Accordingly, Scripture mentions his birth, and says: She wrapped up in swaddling clothes; the breasts that suckled him were called blessed; sacrifice was offered because he was the first-born. Gabriel announced the good news to Mary with all clarity: he did not say simply: ‘what is born in you’, in case it might be thought that the body had been introduced into her from outside; he said: what is born of you, so that it would be accepted that what she gave birth to, came from her in the natural way.

The Word took this course of action so that he could take on himself what was ours, offer it in sacrifice, and do away with it altogether, and then clothe us in what was his, as he inspired the Apostle to say: This perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. This was no mere fiction, as some have thought. For our Saviour really did become man, and this brought about the salvation of the whole man. Our salvation is no illusion, nor is it salvation of the body only: the salvation of the whole man, body and soul, was really brought about in the Word himself.

What was born of Mary, according to Scripture, was by nature human; the Lord’s body was a real one - real, because it was the same as ours. This was so because Mary was our sister, since we are all descended from Adam. This is the meaning of John’s words: The Word became flesh, as can be seen from a similar passage in Paul: Christ became a curse for us. The human body has been greatly enhanced through the fellowship and the union of the Word with it. From being mortal, it has become immortal; though physical, it has become spiritual; though made from the earth, it has passed through the gates of heaven. Though the Word took a body from Mary, the Trinity remains a Trinity, and admits neither addition nor diminution. It is always perfect. In the Trinity one Godhead is acknowledged, and so in the Church one God proclaimed, the Father of the Word.

St Athanasius, Letter to Epictetus 5-9, from The Divine Office vol. I

Before Epiphany: 2 January

A READING FROM THE SERMONS ON THE SONG OF SONGS BY ST BERNARD

Throughout the whole of the Song of Songs you will find God the Word foreshadowed. This leads me to think there is a reference to the Word in the prophetic text: Christ the Lord is the breath of life to us; under his shadow we shall live among the peoples. We do not yet see him face to face, but only obscurely as in a mirror. However, this is true only as long as we are living among the peoples of this world. When we are with the angels, it will be different; we shall enjoy exactly the same happiness as they have now. We too shall see him as he is in his divine nature, and not in shadow.

We know that in ancient times the truth was veiled in shadows and figures, but that now the reality itself shines upon us through the grace of Christ, present in the flesh. In the same way we ourselves live at present in the shadow of the truth concerning the world to come. No one will deny this unless he refuses to accept what the Apostle says: Our knowledge is only partial and so is our prophesying; or again: I do not consider that I have fully grasped what I aspire to. There is surely a distinction between those who walk by faith and those who enjoy clear sight; whereas the upright live by faith, the blessed rejoice in the beatific vision. We can say, then, that during this earthly life holy men live in Christ’s shadow, but the holy angels in heaven are bathed in the splendour of the glory of his face.

Happy the shadow of faith that tempers the light to the sighted eye and prepares the eye to bear it! Scripture speaks of God cleansing our hearts by faith, which shows that faith does not extinguish the light, but preserves it. All that the angels see is preserved for me by the obscurity of faith; it is stored up in the believer’s heart, ready to be revealed when the time is ripe. Even the Lord’s mother lived in the obscurity of faith; was she not told: Blessed are you because you have believed? It was the shadow of Christ’s body that fell upon her when she heard the angel say: The power of the Most High will overshadow you. Now this could be no ordinary shadow, coming as it did from the power of the Most High. There was indeed power in Christ’s flesh as it cast its shadow over the Virgin. Under the protecting shadow of his life-giving body she was able to endure the presence of the divine glory and to bear light unapproachable, a thing impossible for mortal man. Clearly this was the power that defeated all the forces of the enemy; it was both strength and shade, invigorating and refreshing, scattering demons and protecting men.

St Bernard, Sermo 31 in Cant. 8-10 (Opera Omnia, Edit. Cist. 1 1957] 224-226), from Word in Season 1

Before Epiphany: 3 January

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON THE SONG OF SONGS BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

Those who gaze upon the infinite beauty of God never cease to find in that vision new and amazing depths, surpassing all the mind had previously comprehended. The bride in the Song of Songs is in constant wonder and amazement at what she is beginning to see, yet never stops longing to see more. Listening in silence she hears the voice of the Word re-echo: Open to me, my sister, my companion, dove, my perfect one. Reflection will teach you the meaning of these words.

At first God appeared to Moses in light; then he spoke to him in a cloud. Later, when Moses had progressed and become more perfect, he saw God in darkness. The lesson this teaches us is that our original abandonment of false and mistaken ideas about God is a passage from darkness to light. Then a deeper understanding of hidden things leads the soul through sense phenomena to the invisible. This understanding becomes a kind of cloud obscuring all that can be seen, and leading and accustoming the soul to look upon what is hidden.

Journeying upward through all these stages, the soul leaves behind everything human nature can attain, and enters the sanctuary of God where it is enveloped on all sides by the divine darkness. Everything that can be apprehended by sense or reason is abandoned; the soul has nothing to contemplate but what is invisible and incomprehensible; and there God is. As Scripture says of the Lawgiver: Moses entered the dark cloud where God was.

In the Song of Songs the bride is surrounded by a divine darkness in which the Bridegroom approaches but does not reveal himself. How could the Invisible reveal himself in darkness? Concealed by the invisibility of his nature he eludes clear comprehension, although he gives the soul a certain perception of his presence. What then is the mysterious teaching which the soul receives in the night? The Word touches the door; and by the door, we may understand the intelligence which is able to apprehend the unutterable, and through which the One whom we seek makes his entrance. Truth stands outside our nature because, as the Apostle says, our knowledge is only partial. Truth knocks at the door of our intelligence with allegories and symbols, saying: Open, and along with this command gives us a hint as to how we are to open the door, handing us, so to speak, as keys to unlock it, the beautiful names: sister, companion, dove, perfect one; for the meanings of these names really are keys that can open up mysteries.

Truth says: ‘If you wish to open the door, and to lift up the gates of your soul so that the King of glory may enter, you must become my sister by accepting my will in your soul; for as the Lord says in the Gospel, those who live according to his will become his brethren. You must come close to truth and become its inseparable companion. You must be perfect like a dove, in other words, without any defect; you must be completely pure and innocent.’

St Gregory of Nyssa, Commentary on the Song of Songs, 11 (Jaeger, 6.321-325), Word in Season vol. 2

Before Epiphany: 4 January

A READING FROM THE SERMONS ON THE SONG OF SONGS BY ST BERNARD

I saw the new Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down from God out of heaven, adorned like a bride for her husband. And I heard a great voice from the throne saying: This is the dwelling place of God among men, where he will live with them. Why should God choose to live among men? I believe his purpose was to take a wife to himself from the human race. He came to earth in search of a bride, yet, paradoxically, he did not come without one. Does this mean that there were two brides? Not at all. In the Song of Songs the bridegroom says: My dove is one and unique. But it was the Lord’s will to gather his sheep together in a single flock so that there would be one fold and one shepherd. While the angels in their myriads had been espoused to him from the beginning, it was his good pleasure to call men together to form a Church which he would then unite to his heavenly bride, and so there would be one bride and one bridegroom. The source of this oneness is our conformity with the angels in love during our earthly life and our participation with them in glory in the life to come.

From heaven, then, we have the bridegroom Jesus, and the bride Jerusalem. In order to be seen on earth Jesus emptied himself, taking the nature of a servant, fashioned in human form and presenting himself to us in the likeness of man. But how did the bride present herself when she came down from heaven? Was it in the form of a throng of angels descending and ascending upon the Son of Man?

I think this question is better answered by saying that we were given a vision of the bride when we saw the incarnate Word, and understood that bride and bridegroom were two in one flesh. When Emmanuel, the Holy One, brought his divine teaching to earth and showed us the beauty of that heavenly Jerusalem which is our mother by revealing to us her visible likeness in himself, were we not then given a vision of the bride in the bridegroom? No one can ascend to heaven except the one who has descended from heaven - the Lord who is one and the same, bridegroom as head and bride as body. Nor was his appearing on earth a fruitless mission: it had the effect of making a great many earthborn men heavenly like himself, so fulfilling the text: The heavenly man is the model for all who are heavenly.

From that time onward men began to live the kind of life on earth that the angels live in heaven. Like those blessed celestial spirits, the Church comes from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. With chaste love she cleaves to her heavenly bridegroom. Though not yet visibly united to him in the way the angels are, she is betrothed to him by faith, in accordance with the promise made through the prophet: I will betroth you to myself in mercy and compassion; I will betroth you to myself in fidelity.

St Bernard, Sermo 27 in Cant., 6-7 (PL 183, 916-917), from Word in Season vol. 1

Before Epiphany: 5 January

A READING FROM THE SERMONS ON THE SONG OF SONGS BY ABBOT JOHN OF FORD

I despise it as nothing, can be quite appropriately taken as referring to the wealth of one’s house but also to love. I mean, of course, the love with which a man loves, not the love with which God first loved this person. However great the love a man like this may have, it can only be human love. But God’s love, purely out of kindness, anticipated it, and every moment the free gift of that love is all that keeps it alive, governs and nourishes it. In comparison with this love, what is a man’s love but a wind that passes and returns not again? If for a single moment that love did not inspire it, there would be nothing left for it but to expire. So God’s love gives life to our love, but our love is of no advantage to God’s.

But the prudent merchant, who has given up all that he owns for love, must keep safely what has cost him dearly, and should make his new treasure grow greater every single minute. So he must take the advice of the true Solomon, God’s wisdom who is Christ, and feel utter scorn for his own feeble love. If he does, he will be able to keep faithfully what he has gained and make a great profit on what he is keeping safe. He must always say: “It is unimportant, it is unimportant”, and think of himself, not as a true lover but as an unprofitable servant. Certainly he must love, but he must realize that he has not yet even begun to love; he must love, while holding his love in utter scorn, as meagre, unworthy, unprofitable.

God’s love is love at its highest, eternally full to repletion, and so has no need of our love, but if our love is to live by him, it must ever draw life from its fullness, by the help of the only Son, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, God, forever and ever. Amen.

John of Ford, Cantici Canticorum Sermones, Sermo 110, 13 (CCCM 18, 749), from Word in Season 2

Before Epiphany: 6 January

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 35 BY ST AMBROSE

We have, I believe, given fitting testimony to the poverty and suffering of the Lord, testimony provided by holy men, one announcing a prophetic vision, the other a message he had been set apart to preach. Let us now set out their testimony, trustworthy witnesses as they are, to the role of the Lord as servant: indeed, their evidence is his own, for through them he spoke about himself. Listen then to what he says: Thus says the Lord who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring back Jacob and Israel to himself. We see from this how it was to gather God’s people into unity that Christ took the nature of a servant.

The Lord, he says, gave me my name from my mother’s womb. Let us hear what this name is, the name given him by the Father. Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel, meaning God with us. What else is Christ’s name but ‘the Son of God’? Consider another text. Gabriel also had spoken to Joseph about Mary: She shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. Now listen to God’s voice: You, Bethlehem of Judea, are not the least among the princes of Juda, for from you shall come a prince to rule my people.

Here is a mystery: in order to establish a kingdom for God in human hearts, the child came forth from the Virgin’s womb as both servant and Lord, servant to obey and Lord to command. Both are one. There are not two persons, one born from the Father and the other from the Virgin. The same person, born of the Father before all ages, was later to take a human nature from the virgin. This is why he is called both servant and Lord. Born as a servant for our sake, in the unity of the divine nature he is God born of God, a king born of a king, an equal born of an equal. The Son in whom the Father declared himself well pleased is none other than the true-born Son of the Father who begot him.

It is a great thing, God says, for you to be called my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob. Christ always retains those designations that belong to his intrinsic dignity: great God, great servant. Even in his human nature he never loses his title to that greatness which has no end. So then, in his unending greatness he is equal to God as God’s Son, yet he assumed the condition of a servant in his human nature and tasted death, because the end of the law is Christ, who justifies everyone who believes in him. Let us have faith in him and adore him in the depth of our hearts. How perfect was that service by which he made us all free! How perfect was his humility, the effect of which is that at his name all bend the knee in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confesses that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father!

St Ambrose, In Ps. 35, 4-5 (CCL 64, 52-54), from Word in Season vol. 1

Before Epiphany: 7 January

A READING FROM THE TREATISE ON THE REFUTATION OF ALL HERESIES BY ST HIPPOLYTUS

Our faith is not founded upon empty words; nor are we carried away by mere caprice or beguiled by specious arguments. On the contrary, we put our faith in words spoken by the power of God, spoken by the Word himself at God’s command. God wished to win us back from disobedience, not by using force to reduce us to slavery, but by addressing to our free will a call to liberty. The Word spoke first of all through the prophets, but because the message was couched in such obscure language that it could only dimly be apprehended, in the last days the Father sent the Word in person, commanding him to show himself openly so that the world could see him and be saved.

We know that by taking a body from the Virgin he refashioned our fallen nature. We know that his humanity was of the same clay as our own; if this were not so, he would hardly have been a teacher who could expect to be imitated. He wanted us to consider him as no different from ourselves, and so he worked, he was hungry and thirsty, he slept. Without protest he endured his passion, he submitted to death and revealed his resurrection. In all these ways he offered his own manhood as the firstfruits of our race to keep us from losing heart when suffering comes our way and to make us look forward to receiving the same reward as he did, since we know that we possess the same humanity.

When we have come to know the true God, both our bodies and our souls will be immortal and incorruptible. We shall enter the kingdom of heaven, because while we lived on earth we acknowledged heaven’s king. Friends of God and co-heirs with Christ, we shall be subject to no evil desires or inclinations, or to any affliction of body or soul for we shall have become divine. It was because of our human condition that God allowed us to endure these things, but when we have been made sharers in his godhead and immortal, he has promised us that his attributes will be ours.

The saying, ‘Know yourself’, means that we should recognize and acknowledge in ourselves the God who made us in his own image, for if we do this, we in turn will be recognized and acknowledged by our Maker. So let us not be at enmity with ourselves, but change our way of life without delay. For Christ who is God, exalted above all creation, has taken away our sin and refashioned our fallen nature. In the beginning God made us in his image and so gave proof of his love for us. If we obey his holy commands and learn to imitate his goodness, we shall be like him and he will honour us. God is not beggarly, and for the sake of his own glory he has given us a share in his divinity.

St Hippolytus, Cap. 10, 33-34 (PG 16, 3452-3453), from Word in Season vol. 1

Epiphany

The Epiphany

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AELRED OF RIEVAULX

Arise, Jerusalem, and be enlightened, for your light has come. The Jerusalem addressed in this text is the city whose true and supreme peace is the Lord Jesus, the city he is building out of stones, the Jerusalem on the march toward that blessed vision of her Lord which she firmly believes will one day be hers. This Jerusalem is holy Church; it is also any religious community, any soul in a state of grace.

Arise, Jerusalem, and be enlightened, Scripture urges her. Such an exhortation is indeed appropriate for one who is lying prostrate and blind in darkness, error, and depravity. Arise, she is told; he who would lift you up is stooping down to you. Be enlightened; he who would shine upon you is already here. Today’s new star reiterates the heavenly message: Arise and be enlightened! A sign of the Lord’s birth has appeared in the sky to invite us to detach ourselves from the love of earthly things and raise ourselves heavenward; and this sign consists of a star, so that we may understand that through Christ's birth we shall be flooded with new light.

But to whom was the star’s invitation originally made? Unquestionably it was to that Jerusalem represented by the queen who hastened from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Solomon’s name means Peacemaker; consequently the queen who came to see him stands for Jerusalem whose name means Vision of Peace. This queen is a type of the Church formed from the pagans, for she was a pagan queen. When we see how many nations and peoples the Church rules over, we easily recognize her as the queen of whom David says: On your right stands the queen in robes of gold.

Today is the birthday of the Church among those pagans who saw the star and understood its message; it is therefore the day on which this queen comes from the ends of the earth to see the face of the one described in the words: Behold a greater than Solomon here. Greater indeed is he than Solomon, for Solomon was a peacemaker only, whereas the Lord Jesus makes peace by being peace incarnate. As the Apostle says: He is our peace; he has made both Jew and pagan one. This queen of ours, then, is well named Jerusalem, Vision of Peace, since she hastens to see the King who is himself peace in person.

She is also called Queen of Sheba; a felicitous title, for Sheba means ‘captivity’. The Queen of Sheba is evidently the Church who disposes and governs all things well during her time of captivity in exile from that kingdom which knows neither captivity nor distress, the kingdom she herself will receive on the Day of Judgment when the Lord says to her: Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you. Until today our queen, the holy Church of the Gentiles, has lain prostrate in the dust without sight, but now the summons comes to her: Arise, and be enlightened!

St Aelred, Sermo 3 in apparitione Domini (PL 195, 228-229), from Word in Season vol. 1

Monday after Epiphany

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST LEO THE GREAT

Justice and reason demand a service of genuine reverence, dearly beloved, in these days which make known the works of' divine mercy. We must rejoice with all our hearts and celebrate with honour the things that have been done for our salvation. Even the law of recurring seasons calls us to this devotion, which, after the day on which the Son of God, co-eternal with the Father, was born of the Virgin, in a short time introduced to us the feast of the Epiphany, consecrated by the Lord’s appearance.

Consequently it came about by the great goodness of the divine plan that a nation living in the distant regions of the East, a nation which possessed the skill of reading stars, should receive a sign that the child who was to rule in Israel had been born. The unusual clarity of a brighter star appeared to the wise men and filled the hearts of those looking on with an admiration for its splendour. As a result, they felt that they must not neglect what had been shown through so great a portent.

As the nature of the event had shown, it was the grace of God that governed this miracle. Although, up to this point, not even all of Bethlehem had learned about Christ’s Nativity, this sign brought knowledge of his birth to nations that were going to believe. What could not yet be described with human eloquence was made known by the proclamation of heaven. The wise men were also able to be reminded through the ancient pronouncements of Balaam, for they knew that it had at one time been spread abroad in a famous and memorable prediction: A star will appear out of Jacob, and a man will rise up from Israel. He will rule over the nations. So the three men, stirred by God through the shining of this unusual star, follow the course of its gleaming light ahead of them, thinking that they would find the indicated child in the royal city of Jerusalem.

When this conjecture had failed them, however, they learned from scribes and teachers of the Jews what the Sacred Scriptures had told about the Birth of Christ. Encouraged by the double evidence, they sought him out with an even more ardent faith, the one to whom both the brightness of the star and the authority of prophets pointed. When the divine oracle was put forth in the responses made by priests, the word of the Spirit was made clear, the one which said: And you, Bethlehem of Judah, are not least among the princes of Judah, for out of you will come the leader who will rule my people Israel.

Then, dearly beloved, when the wise men had been led into Bethlehem by following the star’s guidance, they rejoiced with a very great joy, as the Evangelist has related, and, entering the abode, they saw the Child with Mary his Mother. Prostrating themselves, they adored him. Upon opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

St Leo, Sermon 34: 6 January 444 (Recension A), tr. Freeland & Conway (1996)

Tuesday after Epiphany

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

The Redeemer of all nations was manifested, and so he has made a feast day for all nations. As this is the day on which he is believed to have been worshipped by the Magi, it seemed only right, was indeed right and just, that the nations should dedicate it to Christ the Lord with a solemn service of thanksgiving. Those Magi, the first Gentiles to recognize Christ the Lord, had not yet been moved by any word of his, but they followed the star that appeared to them and that spoke visibly, like a heavenly tongue, on behalf of the infant inarticulate Word.

The shepherds, of course, were the firstfruits of the Jews as regards faith in Christ and his revelation. Coming from close at hand, they saw him on the very day of his birth. They received the news from angels, whereas the Magi received it from a star. The shepherds heard the words: Glory to God in the highest; for the Magi, the prophecy: The heavens declare the glory of God, was fulfilled. The two of them were like the beginnings of two walls coming from opposite directions, one of the circumcision, the other of the uncircumcision, and running toward the cornerstone so that he might be their peace, and make the two one.

The shepherds, then, came from nearby to see, and the Magi came from a great distance to worship. This is the humility for which the wild olive deserved to be grafted into the cultivated one and to produce olives contrary to its nature, since grace enabled it to change its nature. For like the wild olive the whole world had grown wild and bitter, but by the grace of ingrafting it became fertile. People come from the ends of the earth saying in the words of Jeremiah: Truly our ancestors worshiped lies. And they come not just from one part of the world but, as the Gospel according to Luke says, from east and west, north and south to sit at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

The Magi, the firstfruits of the Gentiles, came to see and worship Christ, and were found worthy not only to receive their own salvation but also to be a sign of the salvation of all nations. Let us then celebrate this day with the greatest devotion, worshipping the Lord Jesus in his heavenly dwelling, who was worshiped by those firstfruits of ours as he lay in an inn. They venerated in him what was still to come; we venerate its fulfilment. The firstfruits of the nations worshipped him at his mother’s breast; now the nations worship him seated at the right hand of God the Father.

St Augustine, Sermo 203 (PL 38, 1035-1037), from Word in Season 2

Wednesday after Epiphany

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST LEO THE GREAT

Dearly beloved, the day on which Christ first showed himself to the Gentiles as the Saviour of the world should be held in holy reverence among us. We should experience in our hearts the same joy as the three wise men felt when the sign of the new star led them into the presence of the King of heaven and earth, and they gazed in adoration upon the one in whose promised coming they had put their faith. Although that day belongs to the past, the power of the mystery which was then revealed has not passed away; we are not left with a mere report of bygone events, to be received in faith and remembered with veneration. God’s bounty toward us has been multiplied, so that even in our own times we daily experience the grace which belonged to those first beginnings.

The Gospel story specifically recalls the days when, without any previous teaching from the prophets or instruction in the law, three men came from the far east in search of God; but we see the same thing taking place even more clearly and extensively in the enlightenment of all those whom God calls at the present time. We see the fulfilment of that prophecy of Isaiah which says: The Lord has bared his holy arm in the sight of all nations, and the whole world has seen the salvation that comes from the Lord our God. And again: Those who have not been told about him shall see, and those who have not heard shall understand. When we witness people being led out of the abyss of error and called to knowledge of the true light, people who, far from professing faith in Jesus Christ, have hitherto devoted themselves to worldly wisdom, we can have no doubt that the splendour of divine grace is at work. Whenever a shaft of light newly pierces darkened hearts, its source is the radiance of that same star, which impresses the souls it touches by the miracle of its appearance and leads them forward to worship God.

If on the other hand we earnestly ask ourselves whether the same threefold oblation is made by all who come to Christ in faith, shall we not discover a corresponding gift offering in the hearts of true believers? To acknowledge Christ’s universal sovereignty is in fact to bring out gold from the treasury of one’s soul; to believe God’s only Son has made himself truly one with human nature is to offer myrrh; and to declare that he is in no way inferior to his Father in majesty is to worship him with frankincense.

St Leo the Great, Tract. 36, 1-2 (CCL 138, 195-196), from Word in Season 1

Thursday after Epiphany

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST ODILO OF CLUNY

In order that our fallen human birth might become a new birth in the Spirit, Christ was born of a spotless virgin. He chose to be subject to the law of circumcision to make it clear that the law was of his own making and to enable us too to be circumcised after his example through the experience of spiritual joy. By this I mean that through our formation in the Christian life we might be found worthy of incorporation into God’s heavenly building.

After his circumcision Christ received the homage of the wise men, who brought him gifts of three different kinds. These gifts symbolized their belief that the child who had become man for our sake was the King and Lord of all ages. He also chose to be presented in the temple and to have offered on his behalf a turtledove and a pigeon. This he did to give us an example: when we come to the altar we must bring chastity, innocence and all other virtues as our sacrificial offerings.

At the age of twelve years Jesus remained behind in the temple without the knowledge of his virgin mother. An urgent, anxious search found him after a little while sitting among the doctors, not teaching them but listening to them and absorbing what they said. In answer to his mother’s question as to why he had stayed there without telling her, he replied that he was in his Father’s house. These were the actions of a young boy, yet they are supported by the certitude of Catholic belief. When we see the mother of Jesus searching for him, we have no doubt that he is fully human. When Jesus declares that it is fitting for him to be in his Father’s house, all the faithful believe him to be the true and only Son of God. When they see him sitting among the doctors, listening and asking questions, they see in this a sign that only mature adults should aspire to the work of preaching.

Although as Son of God he needed neither cleansing nor purifying, yet on a particular day at a determined time when he was thirty years old he underwent the rite of baptism, that unique mystery by which alone we receive salvation. By undergoing baptism he consecrated it, and by that consecration he bestowed as a heavenly gift on all believers the holiness which baptism confers.

But while he has granted the faculty of baptizing to the ministers of his Church, the power of baptizing he keeps in his own hands, as if claiming this as a special privilege of his own. This is what the divine voice announced to the great and holy John when, without hesitation, Christ came to him for baptism. The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and rest, said that voice, is the one who is going to baptize. John himself was the friend of the Bridegroom, the faithful and humble forerunner, and Truth in person has testified that none greater than he has arisen among the sons of women. Yet even as John baptized he preached another baptism. So it is written in the holy Gospel, where John is reported as saying: I baptize you with water, but another is to follow me who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

St Odilo of Cluny, Sermo 9 in die pentecostes (PL 142, 1015-1016), from Word in Season 1

Friday after Epiphany

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST FAUSTUS OF RIEZ

On the third day there was a wedding. What wedding can this be but the joyful marriage of our salvation, a marriage celebrated on the third day, according to the symbolic meaning of that number, by profession of faith in the Trinity or by belief in the resurrection? When we turn to another passage of the Gospel we read of the music, dancing, and wedding garments that welcomed the return of the younger son. Here the conversion of the Gentiles is signified.

Like a bridegroom coming forth from his marriage chamber, our incarnate Lord descended to earth in order to be espoused to the Church which was to be formed of all nations. To his Church he gave a pledge of betrothal and a marriage dowry: a pledge when his divinity was joined to our humanity, a dowry when he was offered in sacrifice for our salvation By the pledge we understand our present redemption; by the dowry, eternal life.

To those who see only with the outward eye, all these events are strange and wonderful; to those who understand, they are also signs. For if we look closely we can see a certain likeness to our baptismal rebirth in the water itself. One substance is inwardly changed into another, and in a hidden way a lesser creature is changed into a greater. All this points to the hidden reality of our second birth. At Cana water was suddenly changed; it was destined later to change men.

By Christ’s action in Galilee, wine is made; that is, the law withdraws and grace takes its place, the shadows fade and truth appears, the things of the flesh are paralleled by spiritual realities, and the old covenant with its outward discipline is transformed into the new. As the blessed Apostle says, the old order has passed away; now all is new. Like the water in the jars, which is not diminished in quantity but has become a different substance, so the law is not destroyed by Christ’s coming but brought to fulfilment.

When the wine fails, new wine is served. The wine of the old covenant is good, but the wine of the new is better. The old covenant, which the Jews observed, has become obsolete according to the letter; the new covenant, which belongs to us, has the savour of life and is filled with grace.

St Faustus of Riez, Sermo 5 de epiphania 2 (PLS 3, 560-562), from Word in Season 1

Saturday after Epiphany

A READING FROM A SERMON ATTRIBUTED TO ST MAXIMUS OF TURIN

Today the true Sun has risen upon the world; amid universal darkness light has dawned. God has become man, so that men may become divine; the Lord has assumed the likeness of a slave, so that slaves may become lords. He who created the heavens as his dwelling place has made his home on earth, in order that earth’s inhabitants may find their way to heaven.

O the glory of this day, eclipsing the very sun in its splendour, the culmination of centuries of waiting! The revelation to which the angels looked forward, the secret hidden from seraphim, cherubim, and every heavenly spirit has been disclosed to our generation. What former ages perceived in figures and images, we see in reality. The God who spoke to the people of Israel through Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the rest of the prophets now speaks to us through his Son. Mark the difference between the Old Testament and New! In the Old Testament God spoke in a storm cloud; in the New he speaks in the clear, calm light of day. In the Old Testament God appeared in a bush; in the New he is born of a virgin. In the Old Testament God was present as a fire consuming the sins of his people; in the New he is present as a man who forgives them - or rather, as the Lord who pardons his servants, since no one can forgive sin but God alone.

There are various opinions current in the world, since our ideas reflect a diversity of traditions, but whether the Lord Jesus was born or baptized on this day, this much at least is clear: Christ’s birth both in the flesh and in the spirit is to our benefit. Both are mysteries to me and both are advantageous to me. The Son of God had no need to be born or baptized. He had committed no sin that required forgiveness through baptism. On the contrary, his condescension is the cause of our exaltation, his cross our victory, his gibbet our triumph.

Let us joyfully raise the banner of his cross on our shoulders and bear the ensign of his victory; better still, let us carry this great standard as a sign emblazoned on our foreheads. Whenever the devil sees this sign on our doorposts he trembles; demons who have no reverence for gilded temples fear the cross. They may despise royal sceptres, grand banquets, and imperial purple, but they are cowed by the fasting and humble garb of Christians.

Let us be filled with exultation then, dear friends, and lift up holy hands to heaven in the form of a cross. When Moses held up his hands Amalek was defeated, but if he lowered them for a while Amalek prevailed. Birds too resemble the cross in shape as they are borne aloft and glide through the air on outstretched wings. Even our memorials and victory processions take the form of crosses. Surely then we ought to bear the cross not on our foreheads only but within our very souls, so that by its protection we may trample on the snake and the serpent in Christ Jesus, to whom belongs the glory for ever and ever.

St Maximus of Turin (attr.) Sermo 45, 1-3 (CCL 23, 182-183

The Baptism of the Lord

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST CHROMATIUS OF AQUILEIA

Since Jesus was to give a new baptism for the salvation of the human race and the forgiveness of sin, he deigned to be himself baptized first, not in order to put off sins, since he alone had not sinned, but in order to sanctify the waters of baptism that these might wash away the sins of believers. For the waters of baptism could never have cleansed believers of their sins, unless they had first been sanctified by contact with the Lord’s body. He was baptized, therefore, so that we might be washed clean of sins. He was immersed in the water so that we might be cleansed of the filth of sin. He accepted the bath of rebirth so that we might be reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, for as he himself says elsewhere: Unless reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, no one shall enter the kingdom of heaven.

While John did indeed baptize our Lord and Saviour, in a deeper sense he was baptized by Christ, for Christ sanctified the waters, John was sanctified by them; Christ bestowed grace, John received it; John laid aside his sins, Christ forgave them. The reason? John was a man, Christ was God. For it is God’s prerogative to forgive sins, as it is written: Who can forgive sins, except God alone? This is why John says to Christ: I ought to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? For John needed baptism, since he could not be without sin; Christ, however, did not need a baptism, since he had committed no sin.

In this baptism, then, our Lord and Saviour washed away the sins first of John and then of the entire world. It is for this reason that he says: Allow it to be so now. For it is fitting that we should fulfil all justice. The grace of his baptism had been mystically prefigured long ago, when the people were led across the river Jordan into the promised land. Just as at that time a way was opened for the people through the Jordan, with the Lord going on before, so now through the same waters of the river Jordan access has for the first time been given to the heavenly path by which we are led to that blessed land of promise, that is, to possession of the kingdom of heaven. For the people long ago Joshua, son of Nun, was their leader through the Jordan; our leader through baptism to eternal salvation is Jesus Christ the Lord, the only-begotten Son of God, who is blessed forever and ever. Amen

St Chromatius of Aquileia, Tractatus XII In Math. III, 13-15 (CCL 9A, 244-246), from Word in Season 2

Lent

Ash Wednesday

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

Why do we fast for forty days? Formerly many believers approached the sacraments without any particular preparation, especially at the time when Christ first gave them to us. But when the fathers realized the harm that could result from such neglect, they took counsel together and decreed that a period of forty days of fasting be set aside, during which the people would meet to pray and listen to the word of God. During this Lenten season each of the faithful would undergo a thorough purification by means of prayer, almsgiving, fasting, watching, repentant tears, confession, and every other remedial measure. Then when they had done all in their power to cleanse their consciences, they could approach the sacraments.

It is certain that the fathers did well to use such lenience in their desire to establish us in the habit of fasting. As we know, we could proclaim a fast throughout the whole year, and no one would pay any attention. But now, with a set time for fasting of only forty days, even the most sluggish need no exhortation to rouse themselves to undergo it; they accept it as a regular observance and recurring encouragement.

So, when someone asks you why you fast, you should not answer: because of the Passover, or because of the Cross. Neither of these is the reason for our fasting. We fast because of our sins, since we are preparing to approach the sacred mysteries. Moreover, the Christian Passover is a time for neither fasting nor mourning, but for great joy, since the Cross destroyed sin and made expiation for the whole world. It reconciled ancient enmities and opened the gates of heaven. It made friends of those who had been filled with hatred, restoring them to the citizenship of heaven. Through the Cross our human nature has been set at the right hand of the throne of God, and we have been granted countless good things besides. Therefore we must not give way to mourning or sadness; we must rejoice greatly instead over all these blessings.

Listen to the exultant words of Saint Paul: God forbid that I should boast of anything but the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And elsewhere he writes: God shows his own love for us because when we were still sinners Christ died for our sake.

Saint John’s message is the same. God loved the world so much, he declares, and then, passing over every other manifestation of God’s love, he comes at once to the crucifixion. God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, that is, he gave him up to be crucified, so that those who believed in him might not perish but might have eternal life. If, then, the Cross has its foundation in love and is our glory, we must not say we mourn because of the Cross. Far from it. What we have to mourn over is our own sinfulness, and that is why we fast.

St John Chrysostom, Oratio 3 Adversus Iudaeos (PG 48, 867-868); from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST LEO THE GREAT

Among all the days which Christian devotion holds honourable in many ways, there is none more excellent than the Paschal Feast, through which the dignity of all the solemnities in the Church of God is consecrated. Even the very birth of our Lord from a human mother is credited to this mystery, for there was no other reason for the Son of God to be born than that he could be fixed to a cross. Our mortal flesh was taken up in the womb of a Virgin, and in this mortal flesh the unfolding of his Passion was accomplished. Thus the mercy of God fulfilled a plan too deep for words: Christ’s humanity became for us a sacrifice of redemption, the destruction of sin, and the firstfruits of resurrection to eternal life.

When we consider what the entire world owes to our Lord’s Cross, we realize our need to prepare for the celebration of Easter by a fast of forty days if we are to take part worthily in these sacred mysteries. It is not only the highest bishops or the priests of the second order, nor the ministers who administer the sacraments alone, but the whole body of the Church and the entire company of the faithful who must be purified, so that in the Temple of God, whose foundation is its Founder himself, every stone may be beautiful and all parts radiant.

If it is reasonable to embellish a king’s palace or governor’s residence with every ornamental art, so that the greater a person’s importance the more splendid his dwelling, what zeal ought to be expended in building the House of God himself, and how distinguished should be its furnishing! No doubt such a task can be neither undertaken nor completed without the architect; nevertheless the builder of the house has given it the power to grow in stature through its own efforts. In the building of this Temple living and intelligent materials are being used, which of their own free will assemble themselves into a single structure at the prompting of the Spirit of grace. There was a time when they neither loved God nor sought him; but he loved and sought them so that they might begin to love and seek him in return. This is what the blessed apostle John speaks of when he says: Let us love God, for he first loved us.

Since therefore the entire company of the faithful and each believer in particular form one and the same Temple of God, there must be the same perfection in each individual as there is in the whole; for even if all are not alike in beauty nor is there equal merit in such a diversity of membership, yet the bond of love ensures communion of beauty among them all. While those who are united in holy love may not all have received the same gifts of grace, they rejoice nonetheless in their mutual blessings. Nothing that they love can be wanting to them, for they become rich in their own increase when they rejoice in another’s progress.

St Leo the Great, Sermon 48.1 (CCL 138A:279-280); from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Friday after Ash Wednesday

A READING FROM THE TREATISE ON THE HOLY SPIRIT BY ST BASIL

The type manifests things to come by imitating them, foreshadowing future events in order to make them understood. For example, Adam was a type of the One who was to come, the rock was a type of Christ, and the water that flowed from the rock was a type of the life-giving power of the Word, for the Lord said: If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. The manna typified the living bread that came down from heaven and the serpent fixed to the pole typified the saving Passion consummated upon the Cross, which is why all who looked at it were saved.

Similarly, the reason the story is told of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt is that they prefigure those who are saved by baptism. The firstborn of the Israelites were saved in the same way as are the bodies of the baptized, since grace was given to those marked by the blood. For the blood of the lamb was a symbol of the first man who was created and who of necessity still exists in us, transmitted through succeeding generations until the end of the world.

The sea and the cloud had the immediate effect of producing faith because of the amazement they aroused, but in relation to the future they were types foreshadowing the grace to come. Who is wise enough to understand these things, to understand how the sea is a type of baptism because it separated the Israelites from Pharaoh just as baptism separates us from the tyranny of the devil? In its waters the sea destroyed the enemy and in baptism is slain our enmity with God. From those waters the people emerged unharmed, and we emerge from the waters of baptism as though we had died and come to life again, saved by the grace of him who called us. As for the cloud, that foreshadowed the gift of the Spirit, who cools the heat of the passions by the mortification of our body.

St Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 14.31 (SC 17bis:354-358); from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

A READING FROM THE LIFE OF MOSES BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

Let us, like Moses, live a solitary life, no longer entangled with adversaries or mediating between them. Let us live among those of like mind who are fed by us, while all the movements of our soul are led by reason like sheep by their shepherd. Then, as we are living at peace, the truth will shine upon us and its radiance will illuminate the eyes of our soul.

Now this truth is God. Once in an ineffable and mysterious vision it manifested itself to Moses, and it is not without significance for us that the flame from which the soul of the Prophet was illuminated was kindled from a thorn-bush.

If truth is God and if it is also light – two of the sublime and sacred epithets by which the Gospel describes the God who manifested himself to us in the flesh – it follows that a virtuous life will lead us to a knowledge of that light which descended to the level of our human nature. It is not from some luminary set among the stars that it sheds its radiance, which might then be thought to have a material origin, but from a bush on the earth, although it outshines the stars of heaven.

This also symbolizes the mystery of the Virgin, from whom came the divine light that shone upon the world without damaging the bush from which it emanated or allowing the virgin shoot to wither.

This light teaches us what we must do to stand in the rays of the true light, and that it is impossible with our feet in shackles to run toward the mountain where the light of truth appears. We have first to free the feet of our soul from the covering of dead skins in which our nature was clad in the beginning when it disobeyed God’s will and was left naked.

To know that which is, we must purify our minds of assumptions regarding things which are not. In my opinion the definition of truth is an unerring comprehension of that which is. He who is immutable, who does not increase or diminish, who is subject to no change for better or worse, but is perfectly self-sufficient; he who alone is desirable, in whom all else participates without causing in him any diminution, he indeed is that which truly is, and to comprehend him is to know the truth.

It is he whom Moses approached and whom today all approach who like Moses free themselves from their earthly coverings and look toward the light coming from the bramble bush, at the ray shining on us from the thorns, which stand for the flesh, for as the Gospel says, that ray is the real light and the truth. Then such people will also be able to help others find salvation. They will be capable of destroying the forces of evil and of restoring those enslaved by them to liberty.

St Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, 2.17-26 (SC 1:36-39); from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Lent Week 1

Sunday of the First Week in Lent

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

As we begin our annual Lenten observance with its solemn call to conversion, it is incumbent upon me to make the customary solemn exhortation to all of you. Indeed, it is more than ever my pastoral duty to nourish your minds with the word of God when you are about to mortify your bodies by fasting, for once you have been inwardly refreshed by the food of the spirit you will be able to undertake physical hardships more courageously and endure them with greater stamina.

We are soon to celebrate the Passion of our crucified Lord. It is therefore in keeping with our commitment to him that we should crucify ourselves by restraining the desires of the flesh. As the Apostle says: You cannot belong to Christ Jesus unless you crucify all your self-indulgent passions and desires. Such is the Cross upon which we Christians must continually hang, since our whole lives are beset by trials and temptations. Not for us, as long as we live, to be rid of those nails we read of in the psalm: Pierce my flesh with the nails of your fear.

Flesh means the desires of our lower nature; nails, the demands of God’s justice and holiness. With these the fear of the Lord pierces our flesh and fastens us to the Cross as an acceptable sacrifice to him. In a similar passage the apostle Paul appeals to us by the mercy of God to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.

To hang on such a Cross brings no shame to the servants of God; it is something in which they glory, as Saint Paul does when he says: Far be it from me to glory in anything except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

This crucifixion, I repeat, is something that must continue throughout our life, not for forty days only. It is true that Moses, Elijah, and our Lord himself fasted for forty days; but in Moses, Elijah, and Christ we are meant to see the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel, and to learn from them not to cling to this present world or imitate its ways, but to nail our unregenerate selves to the Cross. Christians must always live in this way, without any wish to come down from their Cross, otherwise they will sink beneath the world's mire. But if we have to do so all our lives, we must make an even greater effort during these days of Lent. It is not a simple matter of living through forty days; Lent is the epitome of our whole life.

St Augustine, Sermon 205.1 (PL 38:1039-1040); from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Monday of the First Week in Lent

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST LEO THE GREAT

The mystery of the Lord’s Passion was ordained before the beginning of time for the salvation of the human race and foretold by many signs in every era of the past. No longer do we look forward to something yet to be made manifest; we bow in adoration before what has already been fulfilled. Both the Old and New Testaments agree for our instruction, and the Gospel story unfolds for us what the prophet’s trumpet had sounded. As Scripture says: Deep calls to deep in the roar of your torrents, since from the depths of each Testament voice answers voice, telling the same story of the glory of God’s grace. What was formerly hidden behind a veil of symbols is now clear in the light of Revelation.

Despite the miracles of performed by our Saviour for all to see, few recognized the presence of Truth himself. If his disciples themselves were troubled by the Passion he voluntarily undertook, and if they yielded to the temptation of fear when faced with the scandal of the Cross, where can our faith find understanding, our minds find strength, except in the fact that all those events we know to have been accomplished were foretold in the Scriptures?

Now the Saviour’s triumph has been accomplished, dearly beloved, and those things which all the words of the Old Testament announced have found their completion, let carnal Jews mourn while spiritual Christians rejoice! This Feast, which has turned into night for unbelievers, shines forth upon us with its light, because the same Cross of Christ brings glory to believers and punishment to unbelievers.

Now that his power and strength have been made manifest in the assumption of human weakness, there must be no sadness among the faithful to cast a shadow upon the Paschal Solemnity. We should not recollect the story of his sufferings with any sadness, since our Lord put the malice of the Jews to such use that his will to show mercy has been fulfilled through their intention to do harm. If, during the exodus of Israel from Egypt, freedom was restored through the blood of a lamb and the wrath of the destroying angel averted through the sacrifice of a beast. And if this deliverance was marked by the institution of a solemn festival, how great should be the joy of Christian people, for whose sake the almighty Father spared not his only Son but delivered him up for us all! Consequently that Passover in the killing of Christ became the true Passover and unique sacrifice, no longer saving a single people from subjection to Pharaoh, but delivering the whole world from bondage to the devil.

St Leo the Great, Sermon 60.1-2 – Palm Sunday 445 (PL 54:342-343); from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Tuesday of the First Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE LIFE OF MOSES BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

Those who love Christ should not be troubled at our taking the transformation of the staff into a serpent as a reference to the incarnation. The serpent may seem an incongruous symbol for this mystery and yet it is an image Truth himself does not repudiate, since he says in the Gospel: As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. And the meaning is clear. Holy Scripture calls the father of sin a serpent, so what is born of him must be a serpent too; sin must have the same name as its father. Now since the Apostle asserts that the Lord was made sin for our sake by clothing himself in our sinful nature, it cannot be inappropriate to apply this symbol to him. If sin is a serpent and the Lord became sin, it must be obvious to all that in becoming sin he became a serpent, which is simply another name for sin.

He became a serpent for our sake, so that he could consume and destroy the serpents of Egypt brought to life by the sorcerers. Once he had done this he was changed into a staff again, and by this staff sinners are chastised and those who are climbing the difficult ascent of virtue are supported. With good hope they lean upon the staff of faith, since faith is the assurance of things hoped for.

Those who attain an understanding of these mysteries become gods in comparison with people who resist the truth, who are seduced by the deceitfulness of the material and contingent, and disdain as useless listening to Him Who Is. They value nothing but material benefits satisfying to their irrational instincts.

On the other hand, those who receive strength from the Light and great power and authority over their enemies are like well-trained athletes, stripping to confront their opponents with courage and confidence. They hold in their hands the staff which is the teaching of faith, and by that staff they will conquer the serpents of Egypt.

St Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, 2.31-36 (SC 1bis:40-41); Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Wednesday of the First Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE PHILOKALIA OF ORIGEN

Nearly all readers of the Book of Exodus, both believers and unbelievers, are disturbed at the frequently occurring words, The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and, I will harden the heart of Pharaoh. For among many other causes of men’s disbelief we must include this: that things unworthy of God are spoken about God; and it is unworthy of God to bring about the hardening of any man’s heart so that he may disobey the will of him who hardens. For readers who are convinced that there is no other God but the Creator think that God arbitrarily has mercy on whom he will have mercy, and hardens whom he will, when there is no reason why this should be so. Others, better advised than these, say they look upon Scripture as containing many secrets, and do not on that account turn aside from the sound faith. One of the secrets they hold to be the true account of this portion of Scripture. Others, alleging that there is a God other than the Creator, will have him to be just but not good, very foolishly and impiously going the length of severing righteousness from goodness.

For ourselves, we are convinced, as we study the sacred Scriptures and contemplate creation with its evidence of orderly design, that things visible and invisible, things temporal and things eternal, come from God the Creator, who is the same with the Father of our Lord and Saviour, the good and just and wise God. In handling the Scriptures we strive to keep that steadily in view, begging God our Saviour to show us all things pertaining to a good and just and wise God, for we suppose that the things we speak of cannot be regarded, at least by intelligent beings, as the result of chance, but that we must ask ourselves whether they are consistent with his goodness and justice and wisdom.

Something like this, then, we suppose is the meaning of the words, The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh. The Word of God is a physician of souls and uses the most diverse methods of healing the sick. Some of these methods of healing give pain and torment to those who are under treatment, some act speedily and some slowly. The whole of inspired Scripture abounds in proofs of each of these statements. The God who designed souls knows all their different constitutions, and, because he is an expert in the art of healing, it is for him alone to say what is best to be done for each, and when.

So it is, I think, when God says, Iwill harden the heart of Pharaoh. The one who hears this as the oracle of God accepts it, and whoever seeks, finds a way even here of showing the goodness of God. For through the many miracles the people of Israel were assured of safety; and there was even goodness as regards the Egyptians, because many, amazed at what took place, decided to follow the Hebrews. There was perhaps also a deeper and more secret purpose of benefiting Pharaoh himself, to enable him not to conceal the poison within but to bring it forth into the light, and then perhaps put a stop to it. Thus, having gone through all the stages of the wickedness within him, he may find the tree which bore the evil fruit less vigorous when he is overwhelmed by the sea; not, as one might suppose, to perish altogether, but that he may be relieved of the burden of his sins, and, perhaps, descend to Hades in peace.

Origen, The Philokalia (compiled by SS Basil and Gregory Nazianzen) 27.1.3-5; tr. G. Lewis (1911).

Thursday of the First Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE TREATISE ON THE PASSOVER BY ORIGEN

Most of the brethren, perhaps all, think that the Passover takes its name from the Passion of the Saviour. Among the Hebrews, however, the real name of this feast means ‘passage’, and should one of us in conversation with Hebrews too rashly mention that the Passover takes its name from the suffering of the Saviour, he would be ridiculed by them as one ignorant of the meaning of the word.

Now when the Apostle says, Christ our paschal lamb has been sacrificed, let us, therefore, celebrate the feast, he teaches us that the Passover still takes place today, that the sheep is sacrificed and that the people come up out of Egypt. If Jesus Christ our Passover has been sacrificed, those who sacrifice Christ come up out of Egypt, cross the Red Sea, and will see Pharaoh engulfed; and if there are any among you who would like to return to Egypt, they will not enter into the Holy Land.

But the lamb was sacrificed by the saints and Nazirites, while the Saviour was sacrificed by sinners. If the Passover lamb was sacrificed by saints and if Christ our paschal lamb has been sacrificed, then Christ has been sacrificed according to the type of the Passover but not by the saints; thus the Passover is indeed a type of Christ but not of his Passion. It is necessary for us to sacrifice the true lamb and to cook and eat its flesh, but if this did not take place in the Passion of the Saviour, then the antitype of the Passover is not his suffering; rather the Passover becomes the type of Christ himself who was sacrificed for us. To show that the true Passover is something spiritual and not this material Passover, he himself says, Unless you eat my .flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. Are we then to eat his flesh and drink his blood in a physical manner? If these words are said spiritually, then the Passover is spiritual not physical.

If the Lamb is Christ and Christ is the Word, what is his flesh that is to be roasted with fire if not the divine Scriptures? Should some cling just to the words themselves, they would eat the flesh of the Saviour raw and would merit death and not life, since the Apostle teaches us that the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life; but the Spirit is given us from God and our God is a devouring fire, so we must roast the Scriptures with this fire. The words are changed by such a fire and we will see that they are sweet and nourishing.

Finally, just as these mysteries of the Passover which are celebrated in the Old Testament are superseded by the truth of the New Testament, so too will the mysteries of the New Testament, which we must now celebrate in the same way, not be necessary in the resurrection, a time which is signified by the morning in which nothing will he left, and what does remain of it will be burned by fire.

Origen, Treatise on the Passover 1, 3, 12-14, 26, 32; Ancient Christian Writers 54 (1992) tr. Daly.

Friday of the First Week in Lent

A READING FROM A TREATISE UPON THE PASSION BY ST THOMAS MORE

The Lord commanded Moses that on the tenth day of the month they should take for every household a lamb without spot, and on the fourteenth day of the same month in the evening, offer it and eat it up entirely, head, entrails, and all, so that nothing thereof should be left. But if anything were left they should burn it up.

That innocent lamb without spot was a figure signifying our Saviour Christ, the true, innocent Lamb of whom Saint John the Baptist witnessed: Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. By whose immolation and sacrifice on the Cross, and by his holy body received into ours, as that lamb was into theirs, his faithful folk should be delivered out of the thralldom of the devil’s dominion. And therefore we may to the benefit of our souls consider in the aforesaid figure of these Egyptians, that in Egypt (which by interpretation signifies darkness) do labour to keep in captivity the children of Israel, the people which God calls from their bondage into the liberty of his service – we may, I say, understand by the proud king Pharaoh and his chief captains, that great high, proud prince, the Sultan of Babylon, the devil. And the two special courtiers of that proud, base Sultan we may well consider to be the world and the flesh. And the whole people of the Egyptians under them may well betoken the devilish people, and the worldly people, and the fleshly people that follow them and are willingly governed by them. For truly, all these labour to draw into their service and to make their vassal servants, bondsmen, and slaves all those whom the goodness of God calls out of the dark devilish, worldly, and fleshly subjection into the lightsome liberty of his celestial service.

By the first-begotten children of the Egyptians we may well understand the first motions of sin, such as the subtle inward suggestions of the devil, and the inward incitement of the flesh, and the outward occasions and provocations of the world and evil people, by all which kind of motions good, well-disposed folk are in many ways drawn into sin. And surely these first-begotten children must be killed, not only of the Egyptian people, that is to say the first motions unto such vices as have their origin in the soul, but also the first-begotten of their animals too, that is to say the first motions unto such vices as specially spring from the sensual animal body, or else it will be very hard for the children of Israel, the well-disposed people, to escape safely out of the bondage of these Egyptians.

St Thomas More, On the Passion, Ch.1, Sermon 1; from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Saturday of the First Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE PASCHAL HOMILIES OF ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

In Egypt the Israelites sacrificed a lamb at the bidding of Moses, who told them to eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. For seven days, says Scripture, you shall eat unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Must we then continue to observe customs that are only types and symbols? Remember the words of Paul, for he was truly learned in the Law and very wise. He says: We know that the Law is spiritual. Can anyone doubt that he who had Christ within him spoke the plain truth and did not deceive? Moreover, Christ himself said clearly: Do not imagine that 1 have come to do away with the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to do away with them, but to fulfil them. I assure you that the Law will not lose a single dot or stroke until its purpose is achieved. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. In what way then must we also fulfil the ancient law?

For us who have been called to live a life of holiness through faith the true lamb has been sacrificed, the lamb that takes away the sin of the world. To this sacrifice we must add a food that is spiritual, wholly good and truly sacred, a food typified in the Law by the unleavened bread, which we now understand in a spiritual way.

In the divinely inspired Scriptures yeast always signifies wickedness and sin. Our Lord Jesus Christ, warning his holy disciples to be on their guard, said: Beware of the yeast of the scribes and Pharisees. And Paul in his great wisdom wrote that those who have once been sanctified should put far from them the yeast of impurity that corrupts mind and heart. Purify yourselves of the old yeast, he urged, and become a fresh batch of bread, since you really are unleavened.

This urgent plea prompted by concern for our well-being shows that spiritual communion with Christ the Saviour of us all is not only a benefit to us but also a real need. It also shows how important it is for us to keep our minds pure by refraining from sin and washing away every stain. In a word, we must avoid everything that defiled us in the past, for it is then, when no fault of ours bars the way and we are wholly free from reproach, that we shall open the way to this communion with Christ.

But we also have to eat bitter herbs. These stand for the bitter sufferings we must undergo, and we should greatly value the endurance they demand. It would indeed be quite absurd if those desiring to serve God imagined they could achieve great virtue, and glory in the supreme reward, without having first contended for it and given proof of the most steadfast courage. The approach to this goal is rugged and steep, and it is inaccessible to most people. It becomes easy only for those whose desire to arrive is so strong that they are dismayed by nothing and are ready to face hardship and toil. Christ's own words urge us to do this: Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road easy that leads to damnation, and those who enter by it are many. The gate is narrow and the road hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Paschal Homilies 19.2 (PG 77:824-825); from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Lent Week 2

Sunday of the Second Week in Lent

A READING FROM A HOMILY ON EXODUS BY ORIGEN

Let us consider the path God pointed out to Moses. From Etham, he said, turn back and make your way between Pi-hahiroth and Migdol, which is opposite Baal-zephon.

We might suppose a path pointed out by God would be a smooth and pleasant one, free of obstacles and requiring no effort from the traveller, but in fact God’s way is an ascent, a tortuous and rugged climb. There can be no downhill road to virtue – it is uphill all the way, and the path is narrow and arduous. Listen also to the Lord's warning in the Gospel: The way that leads to life, he says, is narrow and hard. Notice how close the agreement is between the Gospel and the Law. In the Law the way of virtue is shown to be a tortuous climb; the Gospels speak of the way that leads to life as narrow and hard. Is it not obvious then, even to the blind, that the Law and the Gospels were both written by one and the same Spirit?

And so the road they followed was a winding ascent, an ascent surmounted by a beacon. The ascent refers to works and the beacon to faith, so that we can see the great difficulty and laborious effort involved in both faith and works. Many are the temptations we shall meet and many the obstacles to faith that lie in store for us in our desire to pursue the things of God.

Pharaoh said: ‘The Israelites are wandering in the wilderness.’ In his eyes anyone who obeyed God was wandering in the wilderness because the way of wisdom is a tortuous route, rugged and winding. Thus, when we profess our belief in one God and in the same confession assert that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God, to unbelievers this seems difficult, incomprehensible, and involved. When we go on to say that the Lord of majesty is also the Son of Man who descended from heaven and was crucified, they find this baffling and cannot understand it Whoever hears this and cannot respond to it with faith will say of believers: ‘They are wandering in the wilderness.’ But stand firm in your belief, cast aside all doubt, for we know that the way of faith has been laid down for us by God. We cannot expect the road to life to be a smooth one, free from trials. As Saint Paul warns: All who wish to live a godly life in Christ will suffer persecution. Yet for anyone in search of the perfect life death on the road is preferable to failure even to set out on the quest.

Origen, Homilies on Exodus 5.3-4; from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Monday of the Second Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE CATECHESES OF ST CYRIL OF JERUSALEM

I long ago desired, true born and dearly beloved children of the Church, to speak to you concerning these spiritual and heavenly mysteries in which you came to participate. Knowing well that seeing is far more persuasive than hearing, I waited until now with the hope of finding you more open to the influence of my words from the actions you experience. Thus I might take and lead you to the brighter and more fragrant meadow of this present paradise, especially as you have been made fit to receive the more sacred mysteries and have been counted worthy of divine and life-giving baptism.

On that evening of your baptism you entered into the outer hall of the Baptistry, and there facing toward the west you heard the command to stretch forth your hand, and as in the presence of Satan, you renounced him. This figure is found in ancient history. For when Pharaoh, that most cruel and ruthless tyrant, oppressed the free and royal people of the Hebrews, God sent Moses to bring them out of the evil grip of the Egyptians. Then the doorposts were anointed with the blood of the lamb that the destroyer might flee from the houses which had the sign of the blood. And the Hebrew people were marvellously delivered. The enemy, however, after their rescue, pursued them, and saw the sea wondrously parted for them. Nevertheless he went on, following in their footsteps and was all at once overwhelmed and engulfed in the Red Sea.

Now turn from the ancient to the recent, from the figure to the reality. There, we have Moses sent from God to Egypt; here, Christ sent by his Father into the world. There, that Moses might lead forth an oppressed people out of Egypt; here, that Christ might rescue mankind who is overwhelmed with sins. There, the blood of a lamb was the spell against the destroyer; here, the blood of the unblemished Lamb Jesus Christ is made the charm to scare evil spirits. There, the tyrant pursued even to the sea that ancient people; and in like manner this daring and shameless spirit, the author of evil, followed you, even to the very streams of salvation. The tyrant of old was drowned in the sea; and this present one disappears in the saving water.

What then did each of you standing up say? ‘I renounce Satan’, meaning ‘I fear your power no longer, for Christ has overthrown it, having partaken with me of flesh and blood, that through these he might by death destroy death that I might not for ever be subject to bondage. I renounce you, you crafty and most subtle serpent. I renounce you, plotter as you are, who under the guise of friendship brought about disobedience and the apostasy of our first parents. I renounce you, Satan, the source of all wickedness.’

When you renounced Satan, utterly breaking all covenants with him, that ancient connection with hell, there is opened to you the paradise of God, which he planted toward the east, where for his transgression our first father was exiled. Symbolic of this was your turning from the west to the east, the place of light. Then you were told to say: I believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit, and in one baptism of repentance.

St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis XIX, On the Mysteries 1:1-4.9; from Word in Season II, 2nd ed.

Tuesday of the Second Week in Lent

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON EXODUS BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

We shall think of the manna as a figure foreshadowing the teaching and the spiritual gifts of Christ. These also are from heaven, and have nothing earthly about them. They produce no physical nausea, and are real food not only of men but of angels as well.

In his own person the Son has revealed the Father to us, and through the Son we have come to believe the teaching about the holy and consubstantial Trinity, and have been well and truly guided into all the paths of virtue. The orthodox and unadulterated knowledge of these things is the food of the spirit

To the people of old the manna was given at dawn, as the light began to shine, because the wealth of Christ’s teaching would be distributed so to speak by daylight The day has dawned upon us who believe, as Scripture says; the morning star has risen in all our hearts, and the Sun of Righteousness, Christ, the giver of spiritual manna, has appeared.

From his own words to the Jews we can be certain that Christ himself is the true manna, and the material manna was but an image: Your ancestors ate manna in the desert and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that anyone who eats it may never die. I am the living bread come down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. The bread I shall give is my flesh which I shall give for the life of the world.

Our Lord Jesus Christ nourishes us for eternal life both by his commands, which teach us how to live holy lives, and by the Eucharist. In himself, therefore, he is truly the divine, life-giving manna. Anyone who eats it will be exempt from corruption and will escape death, unlike those who ate the material manna. The type had no power to save, but was merely an imitation of the reality.

God sent down manna like rain from above, and ordered everyone to gather as much as necessary, those who shared a tent gathering together if they wished. Gather it, each of you, he said, with those who share your tent. Let none of it be left over till the morning. That is to say, we must fill ourselves with the divine teaching of the Gospel.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra in Exodum 2:3 (PG 69:456-457); from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Wednesday of the Second Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE SERMONS OF ST AELRED OF RIEVAULX

We read in the Old Testament that, after the people of Israel left Egypt with Moses at their head, the Amalekites, a savage race, came and did battle against them. Moses sent an army against them, while he himself went up on to a mountain to pray for them and raised his hands to the Lord. And it came to pass that while he kept his hands raised, the people of Israel were triumphant but whenever he lowered his hands Amalek started to win. Why was it, do you think, that the raising of his hands possessed such grace? Without doubt God usually takes more account of the attachments of the mind than of the postures of the body.

Why was it then? Did his prayer have no effect before God unless he raised his hands? That lifting up of his hands had such an effect that their enemies could not withstand the Israelites. The reason why this lifting up of hands had such force was that it signified the raising of the hands of him who said in the psalm, The lifting up of my hands is like an evening sacrifice. For, when evening had already come upon the world, his sweetest hands were stretched out on the Cross and there was offered up that evening sacrifice that took away the sins of the whole world.

So that raising of Moses’ hands signified the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ who went up on to a mountain to pray because he ascended into heaven to plead our cause with the Father. There he lifts up his hands so that Amalek – that is, the devil – will not be able to vanquish us. For there he appears in God’s sight on our behalf and represents to him the Passion that he underwent for us. As for us, brothers, as long as we are in this wretched life which is a trial upon earth, as long as our fight is against the principalities and powers, against the rulers of the dark things of the world, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens, we need to have our Lord lifting up his hands within us – that is to say, the remembrance of his Passion should be continually present in our minds. We can be quite sure, my brothers, that as long as the memory of his Passion is in our heart, as long as our hope is directed to where Christ is pleading our cause at the right hand of the Father, the spiritual Amalek – that is, the devil – will not be able to vanquish us. And therefore, my brothers, let us see that this attachment, this remembrance, does not through some negligence on our part grow lukewarm in us. For then we shall immediately grow faint and our enemy will gain the upper hand and cause us distress.

St Aelred of Rievaulx, Sermon 13.27-29 (1st Clairvaux Coll.); CF 58 (2001) tr. Berkeley & Pennington.

Thursday of the Second Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE INSTITUTES OF ST JOHN CASSIAN

Whoever seeks to be received into the discipline of the cenobium is never admitted until, by lying outside for ten days or more, he has given an indication of his perseverance and desire, as well as of his humility and patience.

When a person has been admitted, has been tested in the perseverance about which we have spoken, and has put aside his own garments and been clothed in the monastic habit, he is not permitted to join the community of the brothers immediately but is assigned to an elder who dwells not very far from the entrance of the monastery and is responsible for being hospitable to travellers and strangers. And when he has served for a full year there and has without any complaining waited upon travellers, having in this way been exposed to his first training in humility and patience, and he is about to be admitted from this to the community of the brothers, he is given over to another elder who is responsible for ten younger men, who have been entrusted to him by the Abba. This elder both teaches and rules them in accordance with what we read in Exodus was established by Moses.

The chief concern and instruction of this man, whereby the young man who was brought to him may be able to ascend even to the loftiest heights of perfection, will be, first of all, to teach him to conquer his desires. In order to exercise him assiduously and diligently in this respect, he will purposely see to it that he always demands of him things that he would consider repulsive. For, taught by numerous experiences, they declare that a monk, and especially the younger men, cannot restrain their yearning for pleasure unless they have first learned to mortify their desires through obedience. And so they assert that someone who has not first learned to overcome his desires can never extinguish anger or sadness or the spirit of fornication, nor can he maintain true humility of heart or unbroken unity with his brothers or a solid and enduring peace, nor can he even stay in the cenobium for any length of time.

With these institutes, then, as with the rudiments of the alphabet, they initiate those whom they strive to direct toward perfection. In this way they discern clearly whether they are grounded in a humility that is deceptive and imaginary or in one that is real. In order to be able to arrive easily at this, they are then taught never, through a hurtful shame, to hide any of the wanton thoughts in their hearts but to reveal them to their elder as soon as they surface, nor to judge them in accordance with their own discretion but to credit them with badness or goodness as the elder's examination discloses and makes clear. Thus the clever foe is never able to get the better of a young man when he sees that he is protected not by his own but by his elder's discretion. Indeed, the devil in all his slyness will not be able to deceive or cast down a young man unless he induces him, either by haughtiness or by embarrassment, to cover up his thoughts. For they declare that it is an invariable and clear sign that a thought is from the devil if we are ashamed to disclose it to an elder.

St John Cassian, Institutes 4.3, 7-9; Ancient Christian Writers 58 (2000) tr. Ramsey.

Friday of the Second Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE LIFE OF MOSES BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

Moses entered into the darkness and there he saw God. What does this signify? This present account seems in a way to contradict that of the first theophany. Then God appeared in light, but now he appears in darkness. Yet we must not imagine this to be at variance with our normal experience of spiritual contemplation. By this statement the text teaches us that religious knowledge is first experienced as light. All that is seen to be opposed to religion is darkness, and darkness vanishes when we receive the light. But the more the mind advances and by ever increasing and more perfect application attains an intellectual comprehension of realities and approaches contemplation, the more clearly it sees that the divine nature is invisible. Having left behind all appearances, not only those perceived by the senses but also those the intellect seems to see, it plunges ever deeper within itself, until by spiritual effort it penetrates to the invisible and the unknowable, and there it sees God.

This is the true knowledge of what is sought; this is the seeing that consists in not seeing, because that which is sought transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides by incomprehensibility as by a kind of darkness. This is why John the contemplative, who had penetrated this luminous darkness, said that no one had ever seen God, declaring by this negation that the divine essence is beyond the reach not only of men but of every rational nature as well.

And so, when Moses had advanced in knowledge he declared that he saw God in the darkness, or in other words that he recognized that the Divinity is essentially that which transcends all knowledge and which no mind can apprehend. The text says: Moses entered into the darkness where God was. What God? He who has made the darkness his covering, as David declared, who had himself been initiated into the divine mysteries in that same sanctuary.

When Moses arrived there, he was taught by word what he had formerly learned from darkness, so that, I think, the doctrine on this matter may be made more firm for us by the witness of the divine voice. The divine word at the beginning forbade that the Divine be likened to any of the things known by men, since every concept which comes from some comprehensible image constitutes an idol of God and does not proclaim God.

St Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, 2.162-66 (SC 1, 80-82); from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Saturday of the Second Week in Lent

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

Make it up with your adversary while he is with you on the road. This life is called a road, along which everybody travels. And this adversary does not go away. But who is this adversary? This adversary is not the devil, for Scripture would never urge you to come to an agreement with the devil. So who is this adversary? It is the word of God. Why is it your adversary? Because it commands things against the grain which you do not do. It tells you: Your God is one; worship one God. What you want is to put away the one God who is like the lawful husband of your soul and go fornicating, and what is much more serious, not openly deserting and repudiating him as apostates do, but remaining in your husband’s house and letting in adulterers. That is, as if you were a Christian you do not leave the Church but you consult astrologers or sorcerers.

You are told, Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain and you are told to observe the Sabbath in a spiritual way, in hope of the future rest which the Lord has promised you. Whoever does whatever he can for the sake of that future rest, even though what he is doing seems toilsome, nonetheless he already has the Sabbath in hope, though he does not yet have it in fact. But as for you, the reason you want to rest is in order to work, whereas you ought to be working in order to rest. You are told, Honour your father and your mother. You heap insults on your parents, which you certainly do not want to endure from your children. You are told, You shall not kill. But you want to kill your enemy; and the only reason you do not do it is that you are afraid of the human judge. Do you not realize that God is the witness of your thoughts? The man you want dead is alive, but God holds you to be a murderer in your heart.

You were singing earlier on: O God, I will sing you a new song, on a harp of ten strings I will play to you. Now I am strumming these ten strings. You see, the decalogue of the Law has ten commandments. These ten commandments are arranged in such a way that three refer to God and seven refer to men. Commandments on three strings refer to God. But to the other commandment, that is, the love of neighbour, seven strings refer to how people should live together. This series of seven, like seven strings, begins with the honouring of parents: Honour your father and your mother. God gave his servant Moses two tablets on the mountain, and on these two stone tablets were inscribed the ten commandments of the Law – the harp of ten strings – three referring to God on one tablet, and seven referring to our neighbour on the other tablet. Let us join these to those three that refer to love of God, if we wish to sing the new song to the harp of the ten strings.

The ten commandments are reducible to those two commandments, that we should love God and our neighbour, and these two to the one we are looking for: What you do not want done to you, do not do to another. There the ten are contained, and there also are contained the two. Sing to the harp of ten strings, sing a new song, and come to an agreement with the word of God, while it is with you on the road.

St Augustine, Sermon 9:1-3, 6-7, 14, 16; from Word in Season II, 2nd ed.

Lent Week 3

Sunday of the Third Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE DEGREES OF HUMILITY AND PRIDE BY ST BERNARD

Knowledge of the truth comprises three degrees, which I will try to set out as briefly as possible. In the first place we seek truth in ourselves; then we seek it in our neighbour, and last of all we search for truth in its own essential nature. We discover truth in ourselves when we pass judgment on ourselves; we find it in our neighbour when we suffer in sympathy with others; we search out its own nature by contemplation in purity of heart.

Notice not only the number of these degrees, but also their order. Before we inquire into the nature of truth, Truth itself must first teach us to seek it in our neighbour. Then we shall understand why, before we find it in our neighbour, we must seek it in ourselves. The sequence of beatitudes given in the Sermon on the Mount places the merciful before the pure in heart. The merciful are those who are quick to see truth in their neighbour; they reach out to others in compassion and identify with them in love, responding to the joys and sorrows in the lives of others as if they were their own. They make themselves weak with the weak, and burn with indignation when others are led astray. They are always ready to share the joys of those who rejoice and the sorrows of those who mourn.

Men whose inner vision has thus been cleansed by the exercise of charity toward their neighbour can delight in the contemplation of truth in itself, for it is love of truth which makes them take upon themselves the misfortunes of others. But can people find the truth in their neighbour if they refuse to support their brothers in this way – if on the contrary they either scoff at their tears or disparage their joys, being insensitive to all feelings but their own? There is a popular saying which well suits them: A healthy person cannot feel the pains of sickness, nor can one who is well-fed feel the pangs of hunger. The more familiar we are with sickness or hunger, the greater will be our compassion for others who are sick or hungry.

Just as pure truth can only be seen by the pure in heart, so the sufferings of our fellow men and women are more truly felt by hearts that know suffering themselves. However, we cannot sympathize with the wretchedness of others until we first recognize our own. Then we shall understand the feelings of others by what we personally feel, and know how to come to their help. Such was the example shown by our Saviour, who desired to suffer himself in order that he might learn to feel compassion, and to be afflicted in order that he might learn how to show mercy. Scripture says of him that he learned the meaning of obedience through what he suffered. In the same way he learned the meaning of mercy. Not that the Lord whose mercy is from age to age was ignorant of mercy’s meaning until then; he knew its nature from all eternity, but he learned it by personal experience during his days on earth.

St Bernard, Degrees of Humility and Pride 3.6 (Opera Omnia, 1963, 3:20-21); Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Monday of the Third Week in Lent

A READING FROM A TREATISE UPON THE PASSION BY ST THOMAS MORE

In the twenty-fourth chapter of Exodus it is related that Moses, in confirmation of the old Law, put half the blood of the sacrifice into a cup, and the other half he shed upon the altar. And, after the book of the Law had been read, he sprinkled the blood upon the people and said unto them: This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in all these words. And so was the Old Testament ratified and confirmed with blood. And in like manner was the New Testament confirmed with blood, saving that, in order to declare the greater excellence of the New Testament brought by the Son of God, above the Old Testament brought by the prophet Moses, whereas the Old Testament was ratified with the blood of a brute beast, the New Testament was ratified with the blood of a rational man, and of that man who was also God, that is to say, with the blessed blood of our holy Saviour himself. And that self-same blood did our Lord here give unto his apostles in this blessed sacrament, as he plainly declared himself, saying: This is my blood of the New Testament, or: This is the chalice of the New Testament in my blood which shall be shed for you and for many for the remission of sins.

When our Lord said this, he declared therein the efficacy of the New Testament above the old, in that the old Law in the blood of beasts could only promise the remission of sin that was to come later. For as Saint Paul says: It was impossible that sin should be taken away by the blood of brute beasts. But the new Law with the blood of Christ does perform the thing that the old Law promised, that is, the remission of sin And therefore our Saviour said: This is the chalice of the New Testament in my blood – that is, to be confirmed in my blood – which shall be shed for the remission of sins.

His words also declared the wonderful excellence of this new blessed sacrament above the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, in these words: For you and for many. For in these words our Saviour spoke, says Saint Chrysostom, as though he meant to say: The blood of the paschal Lamb was shed only for the first-born among the children of Israel, but this blood of mine shall be shed for the remission of the sin of all the whole world.

St Thomas More, A Treatise upon the Passion, 4.1; from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Tuesday of the Third Week in Lent

A READING FROM ON THE DIVINE IMAGES BY ST JOHN OF DAMASCUS

God, the best physician of souls, prohibits from making images those who are still infants and ill with a diseased inclination to idolatry, those who are apt to venerate idols as gods. For it is impossible to make an image of God who is incorporeal, invisible, and with neither shape nor circumscription; how can what cannot be seen be depicted? That they did venerate idols as gods, listen to what Scripture says in Exodus, when Moses went up on to Mount Sinai and was there for some time, waiting to receive the Law from God. The senseless people rose up against the servant of God, Aaron, saying, Make us gods to go before us; as for this man, Moses, we do not know what has become of him.

I know what the One who cannot lie said: The Lord your God is one Lord, and you shall not make any carved likeness, of anything in heaven or on the earth, and all who venerate carved images shall be put to shame. I venerate one God, one divinity but also I worship a trinity of persons, God the Father and God the Son incarnate and God the Holy Spirit. I do not offer three venerations, but one, not to each of the persons separately, but I offer one veneration to the three persons together as one God. I do not venerate the creation instead of the creator, but I venerate the Creator, created for my sake, who came down to his creation that he might glorify my nature and bring about communion with the divine nature. I venerate together with the King and God the purple robe of his body, not as a garment, nor as a fourth person (God forbid!), but as unchangeably equal to God and the source of anointing. For the nature of the flesh did not become divinity, but as the Word became flesh immutably, remaining what it was, so also the flesh became the Word without losing what it was, being rather made equal to the Word hypostatically. Therefore I am emboldened to depict the invisible God, not as invisible, but as he became visible for our sake, by participation in flesh and blood. I do not depict the invisible divinity, I depict God made visible in the flesh.

It was, therefore, for the Jews, on account of their sliding into idolatry, that these things were ordained by the Law. To speak theologically, however, we, who, passing beyond childhood to reach maturity, are no longer under a custodian, have received the habit of discrimination from God and know what can be depicted and what cannot be delineated in an image. For it is now clear that you cannot depict the invisible God. When you see the bodiless become human for your sake, then you may accomplish the figure of a human form; then you may depict him on a board and set up to view the One who has accepted to be seen. Depict his ineffable descent, his birth from the Virgin, his being baptized in the Jordan, his transfiguration on Tabor, what he endured to secure our freedom from passion, the miracles which are symbols of his divine nature and activity accomplished through the activity of the flesh, the saving tomb of the Saviour, the resurrection, the ascent into heaven. Depict all these in words and in colours, in books and on tablets.

St John of Damascus, On the Divine Images III. 4, 6, 8; (1996) tr. Andrew Louth

Wednesday of the Third Week in Lent

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 118 BY ST AMBROSE

Let your face shine on your servant, and teach me your precepts. The Lord enlightens his saints and makes his light shine in the hearts of the just. This means that when you see wisdom in anyone you can be sure that the glory of God has come down and flooded that person’s mind with the light of understanding and knowledge of divine truth. With Moses, however, it was different: God’s glory affected his body also, causing his face to shine. Indeed, his countenance was so transfigured that the Jews were afraid to look at him, and he was obliged to cover his face with a veil so that the children of Israel should not be alarmed at the sight of it.

Now the face of Moses represents the splendour of the Law; yet this splendour is not to be found in the written letter but in the Law’s spiritual interpretation. As long as Moses lived, he wore a veil over his face whenever he spoke to the Jewish people. But after his death Jesus, or Joshua, the son of Nun, spoke to the elders and the people without a veil. When he did so no one was afraid, even though God had spoken to Joshua as well as to Moses, assuring him that he would be with him just as he had been with Moses and would make him resplendent also. Joshua's glory, however, would be seen in his deeds rather than in his face. By this the Holy Spirit signified that when Jesus, the true Joshua, came, he would lift the veil from the heart of anyone who turned to him in willingness to listen, and that person would then see his true Saviour with unveiled face.

So it was that, through the coming of his Son, God the almighty Father made his light shine into the hearts of the Gentiles, bringing them to see his glory in the face of Christ Jesus. This is clearly stated in the Apostle’s letter, where we find the following written: The God who commanded light to shine out of darkness has made his light shine in our hearts, to enlighten us with the knowledge of God’s glory shining in the face of Christ Jesus.

And so when David says to the Lord Jesus: Let your face shine upon your servant, he is expressing his longing to see the face of Christ, so that his mind may be capable of enlightenment. These words can be taken as referring to the incarnation, for as the Lord himself declared: Many prophets and righteous men have desired to have this vision. David was not asking for what had been denied to Moses, namely that he might see the face of the incorporeal God with his bodily eyes. (And yet if Moses, who was such a wise and learned man, could ask for this direct, unmediated vision, it was because it is inherent in our human nature for our desire to reach out beyond us.) There was nothing wrong, therefore, in David’s desire to see the face of the Virgin’s Son who was to come; he desired it in order that God’s light might shine in his heart, as it shone in the hearts of the disciples who said: Were not our hearts burning within us when he opened up the Scriptures to us?

St Ambrose, On Psalm 118 17:26-29 (CSEL 62:390-392); from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Thursday of the Third Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE TREATISE ON PRAYER BY TERTULLIAN

Prayer is the spiritual offering that has replaced the ancient sacrifices. What good do I receive from the multiplicity of your sacrifices? asks God. I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams, and I do not want the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls and goats. Who has asked for these from your hands? What God has asked for, we learn from the Gospel: The hour will come, it says, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. God is spirit, and so he looks for worshipers who are like himself.

We are the true worshipers and the true priests. Praying in spirit we offer prayer to God as a sacrifice. Prayer is an appropriate and an acceptable sacrifice to God. It is the offering he has asked for and the offering he expects. We must make this offering with our whole heart. We must fatten it on faith, prepare it by truth, keep it unblemished by innocence, spotless by chastity, and we must crown it with love. We must escort it to the altar of God in a procession of good works to the sound of psalms and hymns. Then it will gain for us all that we ask of God. What can God refuse to prayer offered in spirit and in truth, when he himself asks for such prayer? How many proofs of its efficacy we read about, hear of, and believe!

Of old prayer brought deliverance from fire and beasts and hunger even before it received its pattern from Christ. How much greater then is the power of Christian prayer! It does not bring an angel of comfort to the heart of a fiery furnace, or shut the mouths of lions, or transport to the hungry food from the fields. The grace it wins does not remove all sense of pain, but it does endow those who suffer with the capacity to endure and the faith to know what the Lord will give those who suffer for the name of God.

In the past prayer caused plagues, routed armies, withheld the blessing of rain. Now the prayer of good people turns aside the anger of God, keeps vigil for their enemies, pleads for their persecutors. If prayer once had the power to call down fire from heaven, is it any wonder that it can call down from heaven the waters of grace? Prayer is the one thing that can conquer God. But Christ has willed that it should work no evil: all the power he has given it is for good.

All the angels pray. Every creature prays. Cattle and wild beasts pray and bend the knee. As they come from their barns and caves they look up to heaven and call out, lifting up their spirit in their own fashion. The birds too rise and lift themselves up to heaven: they open out their wings, instead of hands, in the form of a cross, and give voice to what seems to be a prayer.

What more need be said about the duty of prayer? Even the Lord himself prayed. To him be honour and power for ever and ever. Amen.

Tertullian, De oratione 28-29 (CCL 1:273-274); from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Friday of the Third Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE LIFE OF MOSES BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

What then is that tabernacle not made with hands which was shown to Moses on the mountain and to which he was commanded to look as to an archetype so that he might reproduce it in a handmade structure? God said, See that you make them according to the pattern shown you on the mountain. Of what things not made with hands are these an imitation? And what benefit does the material imitation of those things Moses saw there convey to those who look at it?

Taking a hint from what has been said by Paul, who partially uncovered the mystery of these things, we say that Moses was earlier instructed by a type in the in mystery of the tabernacle which encompasses the universe. This tabernacle would be Christ who is the power and the wisdom of God, who in his own nature was not made with hands, yet capable of being made when it became necessary for this tabernacle to be erected among us. Thus, the same tabernacle is in a way both unfashioned and fashioned, uncreated in pre-existence but created in having received this material composition. This one is the Only Begotten God, who encompasses everything in himself but who also pitched his own tabernacle among us.

Whenever the prophet looks to the tabernacle above, he sees the heavenly realities through these symbols. But if one should look at the tabernacle below, since in many places the Church also is called Christ by Paul, he would see the Church. In this tabernacle both the sacrifice of praise and the incense of prayer are seen offered continually at morning and evening. The great David allows us to perceive these things when he directs the incense of his prayer in an odour of sweetness to God, performing his sacrifice through the lifting up of his hands.

The skin dyed red and the coverings made of hair, which add to the decoration of the tabernacle, are perceived respectively as the mortification of the sinful flesh and the ascetic way of life. By these the tabernacle of the church is especially beautified. By nature these skins do not have in themselves a vital power, but they become bright red because of the red dye. This teaches that grace, which flourishes through the Spirit, is not found in men unless they first make themselves dead to sin. Whether or not Scripture signifies by the red dye chaste modesty, I leave for whoever wishes to decide. The woven hair, which produced a fabric rough and hard to the touch, foreshadows the self-control which is rough and consumes the habitual passions. The life of virginity demonstrates in itself all such things, as it chastises the flesh of all those who live this way.

If the interior, which is called the Holy of Holies, is not accessible to the multitude, let us not think that this is at variance with the sequence of what has been perceived. For the truth of reality is truly a holy thing, a holy of holies, and is incomprehensible and inaccessible to the multitude. Since it is set in the secret and ineffable areas of the tabernacle of mystery, the apprehension of the realities above comprehension should not be meddled with; one should rather believe that they do exist and that they remain in the secret and ineffable areas of the intelligence.

St Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses 170, 173-175, 184-188; CWS (1978) tr. Malherbe & Ferguson

Saturday of the Third Week in Lent

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

Emmanuel, God-with-us, is presented in figure and image when Scripture says: And you will place the ark of the testimony in the tabernacle and cover it with the veil. For in the preceding account the Word was described to us as in the whole tabernacle; for it was the house in which God dwelt, namely, the holy body of Christ. But despite that, the ark gives us the same meaning in detail. For it was made of acacia wood, for you to perceive his incorruptibility. It was entirely overlaid with pure gold, as it is written, both inside and outside. For everything in him, both divine and human, is precious and splendid; and in everything he is pre-eminent, as Paul says. Gold, then, stands for honour and pre-eminence in general. So the ark was made of acacia wood and overlaid with gold, and had the divine Law put into it as a symbol of the indwelling Word of God united to a holy body. For the Word of God was also the Law, even, if not in human form, as the Son is. But it is covered with the veil.

It was much the same with God the Word made man, the covering of his own body obscured to the many. He, too, was hidden by his holy flesh as by a veil. Some of the Jews, therefore, failing to recognize his divine majesty, sometimes tried to stone him to death, accusing him of claiming to be God, when he was a man. Others again did not hesitate to say: Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How, then, can he say: ‘I have come down from heaven.’ So the laying of a veil on the ark tells us symbolically that Jesus would not be recognized by the many. Then even the ark itself was a symbol of him. So it was even he who went before the Israelites in the desert, taking the place of God at that time; for it was he who led the people. The psalmist is also a witness to this, saying: When you went before your people, O God, when you crossed the desert, the earth shook and the heavens, too, poured down rain. For the ark being always in front clearly means that God leads the way.

For Christ is one, but is understood in many and various ways: he is the tabernacle, because of the veil of flesh; he is the ark, containing the divine Law, as he is the Word of God the Father; again he is the table, as life and nourishment; the lampstand, as intellectual and spiritual light; he is the altar of sacrifice, as the fragrant odour in sanctity; and the altar of offerings, as an offering for the life of the world. Thus all things in life are sanctified, for Christ is entirely holy, in whatever way he is understood.

St Cyril of Alexandria, On John IV.4 (PG 73:620-621, 625); from Word in Season II, 2nd ed.

Lent Week 4

Sunday of the Fourth Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ST JOHN’S GOSPEL BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

As a man the Mediator between God and man intercedes on our behalf, and because he is our very great and most holy High Priest who offers himself as a sacrifice for us, his prayers appease the anger of his Father. Christ is himself both sacrifice and priest, both mediator and victim without blemish, the true lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

The mediation of Moses in ancient times was a clear type and symbol of the mediation of Christ as manifested in the last days, and the high priest of the Law was a figure of the High Priest who is above the Law. Indeed, all that relates to the Law is a foreshadowing of the truth. The saintly Moses, and with him the celebrated Aaron, always stood between God and the people of Israel. They placated God’s anger at the people’s sins, calling on heaven to be merciful to their weakness; they invoked blessings on them and offered the sacrifice and gifts ordained by the Law for sins, or as thank-offerings for the blessings God had given them.

But Christ, who appeared in the last days to supersede the types and symbols of the Law, is both High Priest and Mediator. As a man he intercedes for us, but as God he is one with God the Father in bestowing blessings upon those who are worthy of them. Paul’s saying, Grace and peace be with you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, teaches us this quite clearly. Christ prays for us as a man, but as God he also gives. For being a High Priest who is holy, innocent, and undefiled, he did not offer himself in sacrifice for his own frailty as did those to whom it fell to offer sacrifice according to the Law. No, it was for the salvation of our souls and on account of our sin that he made this offering, and made it once for all. He undertook to plead on our behalf and he is himself the sacrifice for our sins, and not for our sins only but also for the sins of the whole world, for the sins of every nation and race that is called to attain righteousness and holiness through faith.

St Cyril of Alexandria, On John 11.8 (PG 74:505-508); from Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Monday of the Fourth Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE LETTER OF BARNABAS

Bear in mind, O children of joy, that there is not a single thing which the Lord in his goodness has not made clear to us beforehand, so that we may know to whom all our thanks and praises are due. Though the Son of God was the divine Lord, and the future Judge of living and dead alike, yet nevertheless he suffered, in order that his affliction might win life for us.

Notice the directions he gave. Take a couple of goats, unblemished and well-matched; bring them for an offering, and let the priest take one of them for a burnt offering. And what are they to do with the other? The other, he declares, is accursed. (Now see how plainly the type of Jesus appears.) Spit on it, all of you; thrust your goads into it, wreathe its head with scarlet wool, and so let it be driven out into the desert. This is done, and the servant leads the animal into the desert, where he takes off the wool and leaves it there, on the bush we call a bramble (the plant we usually eat the berries of, if we come across it in the countryside; nothing has such tasty fruit as a bramble). Now what does that signify? Notice that the first goat is for the altar, and the other is accursed; and that it is the accursed one that wears the wreath. That is because they shall see him on That Day clad to the ankles in his red woollen robe, and will say, ‘Is not this he whom we once crucified, and mocked and pierced and spat upon? Yes, this is the man who told us that he was the son of God.’ But how will he resemble the goat? The point of there being two similar goats, both of them fair and alike, is that when they see him coming on the Day, they are going to be struck with terror at the manifest parallel between him and the goat. In this ordinance, then, you are to see typified the future sufferings of Jesus.

But why should they put the wool on the thorns? This too is a type of Jesus, meant for the Church’s instruction. For if one wanted to take the scarlet wool for himself, it would cost him much suffering, since the thorns were fearsome and could only be mastered with anguish. Similarly, says he, those who would behold me and possess my kingdom must go through affliction and suffering before they can reach me.

What now, do you suppose, is the significance of his next direction to the Jews? Men whose sins had come to a head were to bring a heifer for an offering, and slay it and burn it. Then, after gathering up the ashes and putting them into basins of water, young children were to tie scarlet wool on branches of wood (here again, you see, we have the scarlet wool and the type of the Cross), together with sprigs of hyssop; and with these the people were to be sprinkled, man by man, by the youngsters, to cleanse them from their sins. See how clearly he is speaking to you here! The calf is Jesus, and the sinners who offer it are those who dragged him to the slaughter. Why was the wool put on living wood? Because the royal realm of Jesus is founded on a Tree, and they who hope in him shall have eternal life. To ourselves it is plain enough that these were the true reasons for doing things in this way; but to them it was all dark, because their ears were deaf to the voice of the Lord.

The Letter of Barnabas 7-8; Ancient Christian Writers 6 (1948) tr. Kleist.

Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE WRITINGS OF ST DOROTHEUS OF GAZA

When God created man, he implanted in us something of his own divinity, in the way of a more ardent disposition, with a shining spark of reason to illuminate our minds and teach us the difference between good and evil. This is called conscience, which is the natural law. It was by submitting to this law, that is, to the conscience, that the patriarchs and all the faithful in the days before the written Law were well-pleasing to God. But since conscience was clogged and trampled on by humanity in general through successive sins, we needed the written Law, we needed the holy Prophets, and we needed the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ to uncover and awaken it, and to bring the buried spark back to life through the observance of his holy commands. So it is now up to us either to keep it buried, or to allow it to shine in us and illuminate us if we obey it. For when our conscience tells us to do something and we ignore it, and it speaks again and we still do nothing but trample on it, we finally bury it, and it can no longer speak clearly to us because of the weight pressing on it.

Let us take the greatest care, then, brothers, to guard our conscience as long as we live in this world, and not allow it to convict us of any wrongdoing, nor despise it even in the smallest matters for any reason at all. For, as you know, from scorning such small and supposedly unimportant things we are led to despise even great things. Both living a good life and living a life of sin grow from small beginnings, to end in either great good or great evil.

Then we must guard our conscience in relation to God, in relation to our neighbour and in relation to material things. In relation to God, so as not to despise his commands, even if no one sees us or expects anything of us. We guard our conscience for God in secret, for instance, when we do not neglect prayers and, when our mind is inflamed with passion, we agree to calm down and relax; and, when we see our neighbour talking or doing anything, we refrain from suspecting and condemning him for appearing to be up to no good.

Guarding our conscience in relation to our neighbour means to do nothing at all which we know will distress or frighten our neighbour, either by deed, word, gesture or look. For, as I have often told you before, even a gesture can upset a neighbour, and so can a look.

Guarding our conscience in relation to material things means not to misuse anything, nor let anything be wasted or left lying about, but if we see anything lying about not to ignore it, even if it is something quite unimportant, but pick it up and return it to its right place; it also means not to neglect our clothes. Equally with food: you can satisfy your needs with a small amount of vegetables or lentils, or a few olives; but to refuse to do so, and to insist on having either pleasanter or more expensive food – all such things are against conscience.

St Dorotheus of Gaza, On Conscience, 40-45 (SC 92:209-216); from Word in Season II, 2nd ed.

Wednesday of the Fourth Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON LEVITICUS BY ORIGEN

The omnipotent God, who lays down for men the contest of observing his Law in this world, lists what ought to be done and not done, announces suitably at the end of the book of Leviticus where each individual observance is established, what reward he who fulfils them bears and what punishment he who does not observe them undergoes.

But if the Law, according to what the Jews maintain, is not spiritual but carnal, there is no doubt that he grants carnally observed blessings also to those who observe them carnally. But if, as it seems to the Apostle Paul, the Law is spiritual then it must be observed spiritually and there is a spiritual reward of the blessings for which they hope. For it is by a perfect logic that the spiritual Law gives spiritual blessings and by a no less perfect logic that the curses and condemnations of the spiritual Law are not physical. So that what we say may not be doubted, let us hear the voice of the Apostle Paul himself writing about spiritual blessings to the Ephesians: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heaven.

And you will eat your bread in abundance. I do not take that to be a physical blessing, as if he who keeps the Law of God obtains this ordinary bread in abundance. Why? Do not the impious and wicked eat bread not only in abundance but even in delight? Therefore, if we turn our attention more to him who said, I am the living bread which descended from heaven, and whoever eats this bread will live forever, and if we consider that he who said this was the Word by which souls are nourished, then we will understand about which bread it was said, And you will eat your bread in abundance. In Proverbs, Solomon also proclaims similar things about the just man when he says, When the just man eats, he will fill his soul; but the souls of the impious will be in extreme poverty. If you take it according to the literal sense, it appears false. For the souls of the impious take food with eagerness and strive after satiety; but the just meanwhile are hungry. Paul was just and he said, Up to this hour we are hungry, and thirsty, and naked, and we are beaten with fists. But if you consider how the just man always and without interruption eats from the living bread and fills his soul with the heavenly food which is the Word of God and his Wisdom, you will find how the just man eats his bread in abundance from the blessing of God.

And you will dwell secure upon your land. The unjust man is never secure but is always moved and wavers and is carried about by every wind of doctrine. But the just man who keeps the Law of God dwells secure upon his land. For his understanding is made firm by saying to God, Confirm me, O Lord, in your words. Therefore, he lives upon his land grounded in the faith because his building is not placed upon sand, and his root is not ‘upon a rock’, but indeed his house was founded upon the earth, but his plant took root in the depth of the earth, that is, in the interior of his soul. Therefore, it is rightly said to a soul of this kind in the blessings, You will dwell secure upon your land; and I will give peace upon your land.

Origen, In Lev. 16:1-3, 4-5; Fathers of the Church 83 (1990) tr. G.W. Buckley.

Thursday of the Fourth Week in Lent

A READING FROM AGAINST THE HERESIES BY ST IRENAEUS

From the beginning God formed man in view of his gifts. He chose the Patriarchs in order to save them. He began to prepare a people, teaching it, obstinate as it was, to follow him. He provided Prophets, to make men accustomed to having God’s Spirit within them and to having communion with God. God indeed needed no one’s company, but he shared his company with those who needed him. For those who pleased him he set down, like an architect, his plan of salvation. In his own person he gave guidance to his people in Egypt, though they did not see him. To those in the desert, who were restless, he gave an appropriate Law. To those who entered the good land he gave a fitting inheritance. For those who returned to the Father he killed the fatted calf, and put on them the best robe in these many ways he blended the human race to a harmony of salvation.

For this reason John said in the Apocalypse, His voice was like the sound of many waters. The Spirit of God is indeed like many waters, because the Father is both rich and great. And the Word passing through all those men, without grudging gave help to all who were obedient by drawing up in writing a Law adapted and applicable to every class among them. By this Law he prescribed how they were to make the Tabernacle, build the Temple, choose Levites, offer sacrifices and oblations, carry out rites of purification, and fulfil all the rest of their service.

He himself has no need of these things. Even before the time of Moses, every good was to be found in him, and the origin of every fragrance and all the smoke of pleasant incense. The people were quick to turn back to idols, but God instructed them. Many times he freed them, urging them to persevere in his service. He called them to things of supreme importance by means of things of less importance, that is, he called them by shadows to those things which are real; he called them by temporal things to eternal things, by the carnal to the spiritual, by the earthly to the heavenly.

God told Moses, See that you make them all after the pattern which you have seen on the mountain. For forty days Moses was learning to remember God’s words, the heavenly patterns, the spiritual images, the foreshadowing of things to come. Paul, too, says this, For they drank from that spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ. Paul, again, listed the things which were in the Law, and concluded, All these things happened to them but they were written down as a warning to us upon whom the end of the ages has come.

By means of shadows they began to learn the fear of God and perseverance in his service. So the Law was both instruction for them and the foretelling of things to come.

St Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 4.14.2-3; 15, 1; from The Divine Office II.

Friday of the Fourth Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE ADORATION AND WORSHIP OF GOD IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

The glory of Christ filled the true Tabernacle, which is the Church, from the very moment it was set up on earth. This, surely, is what is signified by the cloud that covered the first Tabernacle. Christ has filled the Church with his glory, and now like a fire, he shines forth to give light to those who live in the darkness of ignorance and error. He shades and protects those already enlightened by the dawn of his day in their hearts. He refreshes them with the heavenly dew of his consolations sent down from above through the Spirit. This is what we should understand by the saying that by night he appeared in the form of fire, and by day in the form of cloud. Those who were as yet uninstructed in the teaching of Christ required spiritual enlightenment to bring them to a knowledge of God; but the more advanced, whose minds had been illumined by faith, were in need of protection from the scorching heat of the day, and of courage to bear the burdens of this present life. For all who desire to live a godly life in Christ will suffer persecution.

Whenever the cloud moved forward, the Tabernacle went with it; when the cloud settled, the Tabernacle came to rest with it and the Israelites broke their journey. Now the meaning of this for us is that wherever Christ leads, the Church, the holy multitude of believers, follows him. The faithful are never separated from the Saviour who calls them to himself. We may not be able to find any special meaning in the constant halts and new departures throughout our spiritual journey under Christ's guidance. It is the whole journey, following the cloud whether it moves forward or settles, that symbolizes our desire to be with God.

Nevertheless, if we would have a more subtle interpretation, we could perhaps say that our first departure is from unbelief to faith, from ignorance to knowledge, and from having no perception of the true God to clear recognition of the Creator and Lord of the universe. The second stage, and an essential one, is conversion from sin and licentiousness to a desire for amendment both in thought and deed. But the best and most glorious is the third part of the journey, because in it we leave behind what is deficient and move onward toward what is perfect both in our actions and in our belief.

So, little by little, we advance toward the ideal we see in Christ, to become the perfect man, sharing in the perfection of Christ himself. This surely is what Saint Paul means by saying: Forgetting what lies behind me and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the goal, the heavenly reward to which God calls me in Christ Jesus.

St Cyril of Alexandria, The Adoration and Worship of God in Spirit and in Truth, 5 +(PG 68:393-396); Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Saturday of the Fourth Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE CONFERENCES OF ST JOHN CASSIAN

Now something must be said about the renunciations which the tradition of the Fathers and the authority of Holy Scripture show to be three and which each one of us ought to pursue with all our zeal. The first is that by which in bodily fashion we despise all the wealth and resources of the world. The second is that by which we reject the former behaviour, vices, and affections of soul and body. The third is that by which we call our mind away from everything that is present and visible and contemplate only what is to come and desire those things that are invisible.

We read that the Lord commanded Abraham to do these three things all at once when he said to him, Leave your country and your kinsfolk and your father’s house. First he spoke of your country – namely, of the resources of this world and of earthly wealth; secondly, of your kinsfolk – namely, of the former way of life and behaviour and vices that have been related to us from our birth by a connection as it were of a certain affinity or consanguinity; thirdly, of your father’s house – namely, of every vestige of this world which the eyes gaze upon.

Therefore, if we desire to achieve true perfection we ought to strive so that, just as with our body we have disdained parents, homeland, wealth, and the pleasures of the world, we may also in our heart abandon all these things and not turn back again in our desires to what we have left behind, like those who were led out by Moses. Although, to be sure, they did not return in body, nonetheless they are said to have turned back to Egypt in their heart, for they abandoned the God who had led them out with such powerful signs and they venerated the idols of Egypt that they had once disdained. Scripture recalls it thus: In their hearts they turned back to Egypt, saying to Aaron: Make for us gods who will go before us. We would be censured along with those who dwelled in the desert and who desired the disgusting food of vice and filthiness after having eaten the heavenly manna, and we would seem to complain like them: It was well with us in Egypt, when we sat over pots of flesh and ate onions and garlic and cucumbers and melons. Although this manner of speaking first referred to that people, nonetheless we see it now daily fulfilled in our life and profession. For everyone who has first renounced this world and then returns to his former pursuits and his erstwhile desires proclaims that in deed and in intention he is the same as they were, and he says: ‘It was well with me in Egypt’.

I fear that there will be found as many such people as we read there were multitudes of sinners in the time of Moses. For although six hundred and three thousand armed men were said to have left Egypt, no more than two of these entered the promised land. Hence we must strive to take our models of virtue from the few and far between, since, according to that figure of speech in the Gospel, many are said to be called but few are said to be chosen. Bodily renunciation and removal from Egypt, as it were, will be of no value to us, therefore, if we have been unable to obtain at the same time the renunciation of heart which is more sublime and more beneficial.

St John Cassian, Conference 3.6.1, 7.5-7; Ancient Christian Writers, tr. Ramsey.

Lent Week 5

Sunday of the Fifth Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON NUMBERS BY ORIGEN

According to St Paul, everything that happened to the Israelites was symbolic, and was recorded as a warning to us. If this is so we should try to learn what we can from the story of Aaron and Miriam, who were rebuked by God for speaking against their brother Moses. Miriam received the additional punishment of leprosy. The chosen people took this chastisement so much to heart that they discontinued their journey to the promised land, and the Tent of the Presence stood still, until Miriam had completed her seven days’ exclusion from the camp. What we are given here, in the first place, is a useful and necessary lesson not to speak ill of our neighbours, and not to make derogatory remarks about good and holy people, or indeed about anyone at all, when we see the anger and vengeance of God that result. Those who do so may be said to speak against Moses. Because of this they become spiritual lepers; their unclean hearts exclude them from the camp which is the Church of God.

Now whether speaking against Moses means that these people are heretics, or whether they are members of the Church who slander their brothers and sisters and speak ill of their neighbours, there is no doubt that all who practise this vice are lepers at heart. In the case of Miriam, this leprosy was healed on the seventh day, thanks to the intervention of Aaron the High Priest; but as for us, if we allow ourselves to indulge our cruel habit of speaking ill of people and our souls are punished with leprosy, we shall continue in our spiritual uncleanness until the last day of all, that is until the day of resurrection, unless we change our ways while there is still time for us to repent and turn to the Lord Jesus, asking him to help us to do penance and be purified.

And now let us hear the account of what happened afterward, and how the Holy Spirit paid tribute to Moses. Scripture tells us that the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the door of the Tent of the Presence. Aaron and Miriam were summoned, and they both came forward. The Lord said to them: Listen to my words. If any one of you is a prophet, I make myself known to him in visions, and speak to him in dreams. It is not so, however, with my servant Moses; he alone is faithful of all my household. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not by means of symbols or parables, and he has seen the glory of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses? Scripture goes on to say that the Lord’s anger struck them, and he dismissed them from his presence. When the cloud departed from the tent, there stood Miriam, white as snow with leprosy.

You see what punishment those envious tongues brought on themselves, and in contrast what honours they earned for the brother they had abused. He was honoured, they were disgraced; he was covered with glory, they were covered with leprosy; he was praised, they were blamed.

Origen, In Num. 7.1-2 (SC 29:133-136); Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Monday of the Fifth Week in Lent

A READING FROM A LETTER BY ST AUGUSTINE

When the time came for the grace of the New Testament to be revealed through the man Christ Jesus, there was no question of his attracting us to himself with the promise of earthly happiness. This explains our Lord’s willingness to undergo suffering, to be scourged, spat upon, mocked, nailed to the Cross, and to accept death itself like one conquered and humiliated. All this he endured so that those who believed in him might learn what recompense for their dutiful service they could ask for and expect from God who had made them his children They had to learn to serve him without any eye to earthly prosperity, for to value their faith at so low a price would be tantamount to rejecting it and trampling it underfoot.

By his great human compassion and by appearing among us in the form of a servant, Christ, who is both God and man, meant to teach us what we should spurn in this life and what we should hope for in the next It was accordingly at the very height of his Passion, when his enemies thought they had won such a mighty victory, that he gave voice to our human weakness which was being crucified together with our former selves to set our sinful bodies free; and his cry was My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

In taking up this expression of our frailty our Head is praying the psalm: My God, my God, look upon me: why have you forsaken me? Here the suppliant feels abandoned; his prayer seems to be of no avail. Jesus made these words his own; they are the words of his Body, that is, of the Church which must endure the travail of conversion from unregenerate human nature into the new creation. His is the voice of our human weakness, which has to be weaned from the good things of the Old Testament and taught to long after and hope for those of the New.

St Augustine, Letter 140.13-15 (PL 33:543-544); Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Lent

A READING FROM A HOMILY ON ST JOHN’S GOSPEL BY ST AUGUSTINE

The Lord marked out for us the fullness of love we ought to have for each other when he told us: There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one’s friends. Taking into account his previous words, namely: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you, the conclusion we must draw is the same as that of the evangelist John who recorded these statements. In his first letter John tells us that we ought to lay down our lives for our brethren in the same way as Christ laid down his life for us, loving one another after the example of Christ who loved us and made the supreme sacrifice for us.

Surely this is what we read in the Proverbs of Solomon: When you sit down to eat at the table of a ruler, consider carefully what is set before you, then stretch out your hand and take your portion knowing that you in your turn will have to provide the same kind of meal. What is this ruler’s table, if not the altar at which we receive the body and blood of him who laid down his life for us? And what does it mean to sit at this table, if not to approach it with humility? What does it mean to stretch out your hand and take your portion knowing that you will have to provide the same kind of meal yourself, if not what I have already told you, namely that just as Christ laid down his life for us so we too ought to lay down our lives for our brethren? This is what the apostle Peter said: Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we might follow in his footsteps.

This is what it means to provide the same kind of meal, and what their burning love enabled the blessed martyrs to do. If we are to give true meaning to our celebration of their memorials, approaching the Lord’s table at the very feast at which they were fed, we must, like them, provide the same kind of meal. At this table we do not commemorate the martyrs in the same way as we commemorate others who now rest in peace, so as to include them in our prayers, but rather in order that they should pray for us and help us to follow in their footsteps. They practiced that perfect love which Christ said could not be surpassed, offering their brethren the same kind of meal as they themselves had received from the table of the Lord.

This must not be understood as implying that we can be the Lord’s equals by bearing witness to him to the extent of shedding our blood. Christ had the power to lay down his life and to take it up again; but we cannot choose how long we shall live, and death comes to us even against our will. Finally, even if martyrs die for their brethren, none of them by shedding his blood brings forgiveness for the sins of his brothers, as Christ brought forgiveness to us. In this he gave us not so much an example to imitate as a reason for rejoicing. Insofar, then, as they shed their blood for their brethren, the martyrs provided the same kind of meal as they themselves had received from the table of the Lord. Let us therefore love one another as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.

St Augustine, In Joh. 84.1-2 (CCL 36:536-538); Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Lent

A READING FROM THE TREATISE ON THE TRINITY BY DIDYMUS THE BLIND

The font in which they are baptized in the name of the Trinity is the source of salvation for all believers, and those washed in it escape the jaws of the serpent. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the font becomes a universal mother while remaining a virgin.

In that font we receive every grace. In it we are given a pledge of the blessings of paradise; in it he who created our soul takes it for his bride, according to the words of Paul: I have betrothed you to Christ, so as to present you as a pure bride to this one husband. But how shall I tell briefly of the most wonderful grace of all? He whom the angels in heaven do not dare to call Father, we on earth learn to call by that name without fear. In psalm twenty-six we sing: My father and mother have forsaken me (because Adam and Eve lost their immortality), but the Lord has taken me into his care. It is the same as saying: ‘The Lord has given me baptism as a mother, the Most High as a father, and the Saviour who was baptized for us as a brother. Now I know that I have really been born again and have been saved, since I no longer hear it said, Weep for the dead man who lies in darkness, but the invitation I longed for, Come, all you that labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. I will anoint each one of you, I will wash you and clothe you with myself, completely and for ever, and I will feed you with my body and blood.’

Now it is time to enumerate the passages I have found, some even in the Old Testament, that refer to the Holy Spirit and to the baptism by which we are born to eternal life. The undivided and transcendent Trinity, foreseeing from all eternity the frailty of human nature, created water out of nothing for our healing. It is clear, therefore, that when the Holy Spirit moved over the waters, they were sanctified for ever and endowed with life-giving power.

The Holy Spirit appeared above the waters of the Jordan when our Lord was baptized and rested upon him. The Spirit appeared this time in the form of a dove because the dove is a symbol of innocence and the Lord said: You must be innocent as doves.

The flood too, which purified the world from its primeval wickedness, prefigures our purification from sin by holy baptism. And the ark itself, which saved those who entered it, was an image of holy Church and of the good hope she holds out to us. The dove that carried an olive branch to the ark as a sign that the waters had subsided symbolized the coming of the Holy Spirit and our reconciliation with God, the olive being a symbol of peace. The Red Sea received the Israelites whose faith did not waver and delivered them from the perils they faced in Egypt from Pharaoh and his army. The whole history of their journey from Egypt was therefore a foreshadowing of our salvation through baptism.

Didymus the Blind, On the Trinity 2.13-14 (PG 39:691-698); Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Thursday of the Fifth Week in Lent

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON GALATIANS BY ST AUGUSTINE

If our natural, sinful life had not been symbolically hanging on the Cross when the Lord died, the unregenerate instincts that were once ours would not have been crucified with him. But the apostle Paul assures us that our former selves were put to death with Christ on the Cross. The Lord died to free our bodies from the tyranny of sin. He intended us to be slaves of sin no longer.

Christ’s death and our sin were foreshadowed long ago in the desert, when Moses fastened a serpent to a wooden stake and held it on high. We must remember that it was through heeding the voice of a serpent that the human race had incurred the penalty of death, and so it was appropriate that a serpent, fastened to a wooden standard and raised aloft, should prefigure the death of Christ. In that symbol we have an image of the Lord's death by hanging.

Now if Scripture were to say: Cursed be all that hang from a tree, we should scarcely feel disturbed. Yet that serpent hanging from a tree represents our Lord’s physical death. He himself confirmed this interpretation by saying: Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up above the earth. No one therefore will be likely to accuse Moses of intending to insult the Lord by this action, when he understands the power the Cross contains for the healing of the human race. Only because the serpent was a symbol of our Lord’s Cross did Moses command it to be erected, so that the people who were dying from snakebite might find instant cure through fixing their gaze upon it.

The serpent was fashioned from bronze as a symbol of faith in the enduring effects of the Lord’s Passion (A number of ancient artefacts, commonly called bronzes, are actually in existence today.) The fact is that if people were to forget that Christ died for them and every record of the time of his Passion were to be destroyed, the human race would indeed be in the grip of death. But faith in Christ’s Cross abides for ever; it is as enduring as bronze. Despite the constant cycle of birth and death the Cross continues to be held high above the earth for the healing of all who gaze upon it.

There need be no surprise, then, at the way in which Christ dealt with the curse on the human race. He overcame that curse by taking it upon his own person. He vanquished death by undergoing death himself, sin by identifying himself with sin, and the ancient serpent by means of another serpent. Death, sin and the serpent were all included in God’s curse, but the Cross has triumphed over each of them. And so there is profound truth in that word of Scripture: Cursed be all that hang on a tree. Christ grants justification to those who believe in him, simply because they have faith and not because they observe the Law. This means that any fear of falling under the curse attached to the Cross has been taken away, while love endures. The blessing granted to Abraham for his exemplary faith is extended to the Gentiles, so that we may receive the promised Spirit through faith. In other words, the promised gift to believers is not a spirit of outward observance based on fear, but one of inward devotion inspired by love.

St Augustine, In Gal. 22 (PL 35:2120-2121); Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Friday of the Fifth Week in Lent

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS BY ORIGEN

While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Few people would die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man one might have the courage to die.

Saint Paul has just told us that the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Now in his desire to demonstrate the power of that love more fully, he gives us the convincing proof that it was not for good men but for sinners that Christ died. It is indeed true that we were sinners before we turned to God, and that our Lord Jesus Christ laid down his life for us before we believed in him. This he surely could not have done without an immense love for us, either the love he himself showed by dying for sinners, or the love God the Father showed by giving his only Son for our redemption.

Few people would give their lives even for a righteous man, and all of us face death with reluctance, even in a just cause. How great a Saviour we have then, and how deeply we ought to ponder his love for us! It is a clear proof of his divine goodness that when the appointed time came, he did not hesitate to suffer and die for the ungodly and the unjust. In the Gospel it is said that no one is good but God the Father; and so unless our Saviour had been his Son, sharing in the Father's very substance, he could not have shown such great goodness toward us. By this proof, therefore, we can recognize in him that good man for whom someone might have the courage to die.

Once people have understood the extent of Christ’s goodness toward them and his love has been poured into their hearts, they will long not only to die for this good man Christ, but to die voluntarily. In fact we often see this happen, when Christians whose hearts are overflowing with the love of Christ present themselves before their persecutors of their own free will and with the utmost courage, confessing the name of Christ in the presence of angels and men for the whole world to hear. Not only do they have the courage to suffer injustice for the name of this good man, but for his sake they are even ready to give their lives. Few would do this even for a righteous man, since our love of this mortal life is so great that even in a just cause hardly anyone can bear to die. Only for God’s sake will people have the courage to submit to death of their own free will. For any other reason they can scarcely endure it, even in the cause of justice and in obedience to the laws of nature.

Origen, In Rom. 4.10-11 (PG 14:997-999); Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Saturday of the Fifth Week in Lent

A READING FROM A HOMILY BY ST GREGORY NAZIANZEN

We are soon going to share in the Passover, and although we still do so only in a symbolic way, the symbolism already has more clarity than it possessed in former times, because under the Law the Passover was, if I may dare to say so, only a symbol of a symbol. Before long, however, when the Word drinks the new wine with us in the kingdom of his Father, we shall be keeping the Passover in a yet more perfect way, and with deeper understanding: he will then reveal to us and make clear what he has so far only partially disclosed. For this wine, so familiar to us now, is eternally new.

It is for us to learn what this drinking is, and for him to teach us. He has to communicate this knowledge to his disciples, because teaching is food, even for the teacher.

So let us take our part in the Passover prescribed by the Law, not in a literal way, but according to the teaching of the Gospel; not in an imperfect way, but perfectly; not only for a time, but eternally. Let us regard as our home the heavenly Jerusalem, not the earthly one; the city glorified by angels, not the one laid waste by armies. We are not required to sacrifice young bulls or rams, beasts with horns and hoofs that are more dead than alive and devoid of feeling; but instead, let us join the choirs of angels in offering God upon his heavenly altar a sacrifice of praise. We must now pass through the first veil and approach the second, turning our eyes toward the Holy of Holies. I will say more: we must sacrifice ourselves to God, each day and in everything we do, accepting all that happens to us for the sake of the Word, imitating his Passion by our sufferings, and honouring his blood by shedding our own. We must be ready to be crucified.

If you are a Simon of Cyrene, take up your Cross and follow Christ. If you are crucified beside him like one of the thieves, now like the good thief acknowledge your God. For your sake, and because of your sin, Christ himself was regarded as a sinner; for his sake, therefore, you must cease to sin. Worship him who was hung on the Cross because of you, even if you are hanging there yourself. Derive some benefit from the very shame; purchase salvation with your death. Enter paradise with Jesus, and discover how far you have fallen. Contemplate the glories there, and leave the other scoffing thief to die outside in his blasphemy.

If you are a Joseph of Arimathea, go to the one who ordered his crucifixion, and ask for Christ's body: make your own the expiation for the sins of the whole world. If you are a Nicodemus, like the man who worshiped God by night, bring spices and prepare Christ's body for burial. If you are one of the Marys, or Salome, or Joanna, weep in the early morning. Be the first to see the stone rolled back, and even the angels perhaps, and Jesus himself.

St Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 45:23-24 (PG 36:653-656); Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Passiontide

Palm (Passion) Sunday

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AELRED OF RIEVAULX

Our Lord Jesus Christ worked our salvation not in one way only, but undoubtedly in many ways. Since it was in mercy that he had planned our redemption, he wrought this redemption in such a way that he might serve as an example for us. My brothers, in this season you are recalling this redemption of ours. Be careful, then, to reflect not only on the fact of this redemption but also on two other points: the manner in which this redemption was wrought, and the place in which it was wrought. The manner of redemption is the suffering of the Cross; the place, outside the city.

Let us then learn from the Cross of Jesus our proper way of living. Should I say ‘living’ or, instead, ‘dying’? Rather, both living and dying. Dying to the world, living for God. Dying to vices and living by the virtues. Dying to the flesh, but living in the spirit. Thus in the Cross of Christ there is death and in the Cross of Christ there is life. The death of death is there, and the life of life. The death of sins is there and the life of the virtues. The death of the flesh is there, and the life of the spirit. But why did God choose this manner of death? He chose it as both a mystery and an example. In addition, he chose it because our sickness was such as to make such a remedy appropriate.

It was fitting that we who had fallen because of a tree might rise up because of a tree. Fitting that the one who had conquered by means of a tree might also be conquered by means of a tree. Fitting that we who had eaten the fruit of death from a tree might be given the fruit of life from a tree. And because we had fallen from the security of that most blessed place on earth into this great, expansive sea, it was fitting that wood should be made ready to carry us across it. For no one crosses the sea except on wood, or this world except on the Cross.

Let me say something now about the mystery contained in the manner of our redemption. Death on a Cross is endured not on the earth but above the earth; and the victim’s limbs are not cut off but stretched. They are stretched horizontally and perpendicularly, so that the crucified man is stretched out in the four directions and seems to embrace the four quarters of the world, taking possession of both heaven and earth. For when a Cross is set upright, the head is directed to heaven and the feet to earth, and the outstretched arms to what is located between heaven and earth. Moreover, if you lay a crucified man on the ground, one part of him will occupy the east, another the west, another the south, and another the north.

Do you see, now, the mystery in the kind of death Christ chose? The Apostle sets forth this point with clarity, when he says: He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the Cross. And, revealing the mystery, he says: Therefore God exalted him and gave him the name that is above all names, so that at the name of Jesus every knee might bend of those who are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. Since, then, he was to take possession of heaven and earth through the Cross, on the Cross he embraced heaven and earth.

St Aelred, In Hebd. Sancta, sermon 36.1-2.4 (CCM 2A:294-295); Word in Season II, 2nd ed.

Monday in Holy Week

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST LEO THE GREAT

I think that the instructions I have given you about our share in Christ’s Cross have sufficiently shown how the Paschal Mystery should enter into the very life of the faithful, and how our daily conduct should be a proclamation of what we honour at the Easter festival. You yourselves have experienced the value of this participation, and you have learned by your Lenten exercises how much both soul and body have to gain from extended fasting, prolonged prayers, and increased generosity in almsgiving. There is scarcely anyone who has not been enriched by these practices, and who has not preserved in the depths of his memory something in which he may justifiably rejoice.

Since, then, the aim of our forty days’ observance has been to know something about the Cross in this season of our Lord’s Passion, we must also strive to be found companions of Christ’s resurrection, and to pass from death to life while we are yet in this mortal body.

The result of our undergoing a conversion from one state to another is that we cease to be what we were and begin to be something more. But the end of our dying or living is of the utmost importance, for there is a death that brings life, and a life that brings death. It is only in this fleeting world that both are sought together, so that the difference in our future rewards depends upon the quality of our present actions. We must therefore be dead to Satan and alive to God; we must abandon sin in order to rise to holiness. And since Truth himself says: No one can serve two masters, let our master be the Lord who has raised up the fallen to glory, not the one who has brought the upright to ruin.

The Apostle tells us: The first man came from the earth, a man of dust: the second man is from heaven. As the man of dust was, so are those who are of the dust; and as the man of heaven is, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have been fashioned after the man of dust, so we shall also be fashioned after the man of heaven. There is therefore every reason for us to rejoice at this exchange, which translates us from earthly disrepute to heavenly honour through the untold mercy of him who descended to our level in order to lift us up to his, by assuming not only the reality of our human nature but also its sinful condition, and allowing his divine impassibility to be assailed by all the sufferings which are our mortal lot.

St Leo the Great, Sermon 71.1-2 – Easter Vigil 443 (PL 54:386-387); Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Tuesday in Holy Week

A READING FROM ON THE VIRTUE OF PATIENCE BY ST CYPRIAN

Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, said that he had come down to earth to do his Father’s will. Among the virtues that revealed his divine majesty was the endurance that mirrored his Father’s patience. Every act of his, from the moment of his first appearing, bore the stamp of the patience with which it was carried out. He was no sinner, but the Son of God; yet when he descended to earth from the heights of heaven, he did not disdain to assume human nature and bear the sins of men. Laying aside his immortality for a while, he suffered himself to be made mortal, in order that the innocent could die to save the guilty. He, the Lord, was baptized by a servant, and though he had come to grant forgiveness of sins he did not think it beneath him to wash in the life-giving waters. He fasted for forty days, yet it is through him that others are filled with good things. If he hungered and thirsted, it was to enable those who were faint for want of the word and grace of God to be filled with bread from heaven He engaged in combat with the devil who tempted him, but was content to defeat his enemy by words alone.

He did not govern his disciples as a master rules his slaves. He was kind and gentle, loving them as brothers, even washing the feet of the apostles, showing by his example how a servant should bear himself toward his equals when his master dealt in such a way with his servants. No wonder he could show such goodness to the disciples who obeyed him, if he was able to bear so long and so patiently with Judas, eating and drinking with his enemy, recognizing the foe in his own household yet neither exposing him publicly nor refusing his treacherous kiss.

At the time of his Passion and Cross, even before it had gone as far as the inhuman crucifixion and the shedding of his blood, how patiently he bore reviling and reproach, insult and mockery! A little while before, he had cured the eyes of a blind man with his spittle, yet now he allowed his tormentors to spit in his face. His servants today scourge the devil and his angels in the name of Christ, but at the time of his Passion Christ himself submitted to being scourged. He crowns the martyrs with never-fading flowers, though he himself was crowned with thorns. Others he clothes in the garment of immortality, yet he himself was stripped of his earthly garments. He had fed them with bread from heaven, yet he himself was fed with gall; and he who had poured out the saving cup was offered vinegar to drink

He the innocent, he the just, he rather who is the embodiment of innocence and justice, is counted among evil-doers. Truth is confuted by false evidence. The future judge is subjected to judgment; the Word of God is led to the Cross in silence. At the Lord's crucifixion the stars are thrown into confusion, the elements are disturbed, earth trembles, and night swallows up day. But he himself is silent, unmoved, hiding every sign of his godhead throughout the whole duration of his Passion. Enduring all things, he perseveres to the end, so that in him patience may be brought to its full measure of perfection.

St Cyprian, On the Virtue of Patience 6-7 (CSEL 3:401-402); Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Wednesday in Holy Week

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST LEO THE GREAT

When God, whose absolute being is immune from suffering, assumed our fragile humanity in Christ, he strengthened it beyond measure. Henceforth it was no longer to remain under death’s dominion; through a nature immortal in itself, mortal man would be raised to life.

We must strive, dearly beloved, with great effort of soul and body to join ourselves inseparably to this mystery. While failure to observe the Paschal Solemnity would be a very grave offence, it would be still more dangerous to be united with congregations at Church but have no sharing in our Lord’s Passion. The apostle’s saying is true: If we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him. No one can truly worship the suffering, dead and risen Christ unless he himself suffers, dies, and rises again with him.

For all the Church’s children this sharing in Christ’s death and resurrection begins at the mystery of regeneration, when sin is destroyed and we are born to new life. There the Lord’s three-day sojourn in the grave is represented by a three-fold immersion. The stone is, as it were, rolled away from the tomb, and those who enter the font in their old, sin-stained condition are brought forth new by the baptismal waters. What has been effected in mystery, however, must still be carried out in their daily lives. As long as they are in this mortal body, those who are born of the Spirit must take up their cross.

Christ has lifted us up with himself on the Cross: there let the Christian take his stand. He knows it is the place where his human nature was redeemed, and all his steps should be directed toward it – for the Lord’s Passion is prolonged until the end of the world. Just as it is he whom we honour and love in the saints, he whom we feed and clothe in the poor, so too it is he who suffers in all who endure adversity for the sake of what is right, unless, indeed, we are to imagine that, with the spread of the faith, all persecution has come to an end together with every conflict which ever raged against the blessed martyrs – as if the bearing of the Cross were reserved only for those who have to suffer atrocious torments for the love of Christ.

Wise souls who have learned to fear and love the one and only Lord and to hope in him alone, mortify their passions and crucify their bodily senses. They prefer the will of God to their own lives, and insofar as they renounce love of self for love of God, they love themselves all the more truly. In such members of Christ’s body, beloved brethren, the Holy Passover is celebrated properly and they shall lack none of those victories which our Saviour’s Passion has won.

St Leo the Great, Sermon 70.3-5 – Good Friday 443 (PL 54,:382-384); Word in Season II, 2nd ed.

Maundy Thursday

A READING FROM THE WRITINGS OF ST EPHREM OF SYRIA

The evening before our Lord gave himself up to death he shared his own body with his Apostles and offered them his blood, with the command that they were to do what he had done in order to keep the memory of his Passion alive. Then a strange thing happened. Earlier Jesus had charged his disciples not to fear death. Do not be afraid of those who have power to kill your body, he had said. But now he himself showed fear, and begged to be spared the cup of suffering. Father, he prayed if it be possible, let this cup pass me by. How are we to explain this?

The answer is that our Lord’s petition was wrung from the human weakness he had made his own. There was no pretence about his incarnation; it was absolutely real. And since the donning of our poor humanity had made him puny and defenceless, it was only natural that he should experience fear and alarm. Eating to alleviate hunger, showing weariness after exertion, and revealing human weakness by the need for sleep were all the effects of his taking our flesh and clothing himself with our infirmity. Consequently when the moment of death drew near, he necessarily experienced the ultimate frailty of our human condition; he was gripped by a dreadful horror of dying.

It was then that Jesus said to his disciples: Stay awake and pray that you may be spared the test. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And in answer to our question he might well say: ‘When you are afraid, it is not your spirit that trembles but your human weakness. Remember then that I myself tasted the fear of death in my desire to convince you that I truly shared your flesh and blood.’

A further answer to our question is that Jesus wished to teach his disciples how to commit themselves to God both in life and in death. His own divine knowledge made him supremely wise, yet he prayed for what his Father judged to be expedient. How much more ought we ignorant men to surrender our wills to God’s omniscience!

We may also tell ourselves that we too were in our Lord’s mind as he prayed. In time of temptation our minds become confused and our imagination runs riot. By persevering in prayer Jesus was showing us how much we ourselves need to pray if we are to escape the wiles and snares of the devil. It is only by constant prayer that we gain control of our distracted thoughts.

Finally, there is our Lord’s desire to strengthen all who are afraid of death. By letting them see that he himself had experienced fear he would show them that fear does not necessarily lead to sin, provided one continues to resist it. This is the force of our Lord’s concluding prayer: Not my will, Father, but yours be done. He is saying: ‘Yes, Father, I am ready to die in order to bring life to many.’

St Ephrem of Syria, Diatessaron 20.3-4, 6-7 (CSCO 145:201-204); Word in Season II, 2nd ed.

Good Friday

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST LEO THE GREAT

When our Lord was handed over to the will of his cruel foes, they ordered him, in mockery of his royal dignity, to carry the instrument of his own torture. This was done to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah: A child is born for us, a son is given to us; sovereignty is laid upon his shoulders. To the wicked, the sight of the Lord carrying his own Cross was indeed an object of derision; but to the faithful a great mystery was revealed, for the Cross was destined to become the sceptre of his power. Here was the majestic spectacle of a glorious conqueror mightily overthrowing the hostile forces of the devil and nobly bearing the trophy of his victory.

As the crowd accompanied Jesus to the place of execution, the soldiers found a man called Simon of Cyrene, onto whose shoulders they transferred the weight of the Lord’s Cross. This action prefigured the faith of the Gentiles, to whom the Cross of Christ would mean glory rather than shame. By this substitution the atonement of the unblemished lamb and the fulfilment of all the rites of the old Law passed from the people of the circumcision to the Gentiles, from the children born of the flesh to those born of the spirit

In the words of the Apostle: Christ our Passover is sacrificed. As the new and authentic sacrifice of reconciliation, it was not in the Temple, whose cult was now at an end, that he offered himself to the Father; nor was it within the walls of the city doomed to destruction for its crimes. It was beyond the city gates, outside the camp, that he was crucified, in order that when the ancient sacrificial dispensation came to an end a new victim might be laid on a new altar, and the Cross of Christ become the altar not of the Temple, but of the world.

You drew all things to yourself, Lord, when all the elements combined to pronounce judgment in execration of that crime. Figures gave way to reality, prophecy to manifestation, Law to Gospel. You drew all things to yourself in order that the worship of the whole human race could be celebrated everywhere in a sacramental form which would openly fulfil what had been enacted by means of veiled symbols in that single Jewish Temple.

St Leo the Great, Sermon 59.4-6 – Weds in HWK 444 (PL 54:339-341); Word in Season II, 1st ed.

Holy Saturday in the Easter Triduum

A READING FROM A BYZANTINE CANON FOR HOLY SATURDAY

O Lord my God, I will sing to you a funeral hymn, a song at your burial: for by your burial you have opened for me the gates of life, and by your death you have slain death and hell. All things above and all beneath the earth quaked with fear at your death, as they beheld you, my Saviour, upon your throne on high and in the tomb below. For you lie before our eyes in a way beyond our understanding: a corpse and yet the very source of life.

Today you keep holy the seventh day, which you blessed of old by resting from your works. You bring all things into being and make all things new, observing the sabbath rest, my Saviour, and restoring your strength. You have gained the victory by your greater strength: your soul was parted from your body yet by your power, O Word, you have burst asunder the bonds of death and hell. Hell was filled with bitterness when it met you, O Word, for it saw a man deified, marked by wounds yet all-powerful; and it shrank back in terror at this sight.

You were torn but not separated, O Word, from the flesh you had taken. For though your temple was destroyed at the time of your Passion, the person of your Godhead and of your flesh is one: in both you are one Son, the Word of God, both God and man. The fall of Adam brought death to man but not to God. Hell is king over mortal men, but not for ever. Laid in the tomb, mighty Lord, with your mighty hand you burst asunder the bars of death. To those from every age who slept in the tombs, you have proclaimed true deliverance, O Saviour, who have become the firstborn from the dead.

Be astounded, O heavens, and let the foundations of the earth be shaken. He who dwells on high is numbered among the dead and dwells as a stranger in a narrow tomb. The second Adam, he who dwells on high, has come down to the first Adam in the depths of hell. The disciples’ courage failed, but Joseph of Arimathea was more bold; for seeing the God of all a naked corpse, he asked for the body and buried him.

Coming forth from a birth without travail and wounded in your side with a spear, O My Maker, you have brought to pass the re-creation of Eve. Becoming Adam, you have in a way surpassing nature slept a life-giving sleep, awakening life from sleep and from corruption by your almighty power.

‘Do not weep for me O Mother, beholding in the tomb the Son whom you conceived in your womb without seed. For I shall rise and be glorified, and as God I shall exalt in everlasting glory those who magnify you with faith and love.’

‘O Son without beginning, I was blessed by your strange birth in ways surpassing nature, for I was spared all travail. But now looking upon you, my God, as a lifeless corpse, I am pierced by the sword of bitter sorrow. But arise, that I may be truly magnified.’

From Matins of Holy Saturday in The Lenten Triodion (1978)

Easter

Easter Monday

A READING FROM A PASCHAL HOMILY ATTRIBUTED TO ST HIPPOLYTUS

Now the holy rays of the light of Christ shine forth, the pure stars of the pure Spirit rise, the heavenly treasures of glory and divinity lie open. In this splendour the long dark night has been swallowed up and the dreary shadows of death have vanished.

For us who believe in him a glorious day has dawned, a long unending day, the mystical Passover symbolically celebrated by the Law and effectually accomplished by Christ, a wonderful Passover, a miracle of divine virtue, a work of divine power. This is the true festival and the everlasting memorial, the day upon which freedom from suffering comes from suffering, immortality from death, life from the tomb, healing from a wound, Resurrection from the fall, and Ascension into heaven from the descent into hell.

To show that he had power over death Christ had exercised his royal authority to loose death’s bonds even during his lifetime, as for example when he gave the commands, Lazarus, come out and Arise, my child. For the same reason he surrendered himself completely to death, so that in him that gluttonous beast with his insatiable appetite would die completely. Since death’s power comes from sin, it searched everywhere in his sinless body for its accustomed food, for sensuality, pride, disobedience or, in a word, for that ancient sin which was its original sustenance. In him, however, it found nothing to feed on and so, being entirely closed in upon itself and destroyed for lack of nourishment, death became its own death.

Many of the just, proclaiming the Good News and prophesying, were awaiting him who was to become by his Resurrection the firstborn from the dead. And so, to save all members of the human race, whether they lived before the Law, under the Law, or after his own coming, Christ dwelt three days beneath the earth. After his Resurrection it was the women who were the first to see him, for as a woman brought the first sin into the world, so a woman first announced the news of life to the world. Thus they heard the holy words, Women, rejoice; for sadness was to be swallowed up by the joy of the Resurrection.

When Christ had clothed himself completely in the humanity created in God’s image and transformed into the heavenly man the old man he had put on, the image united to himself ascended with him into heaven. At the sign of the great mystery of human nature now ascending with God the angelic powers cried out with joy, commanding the hosts of heaven: Lift up your gates, you princes, be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall enter. They, seeing the unheard of wonder of human nature united to God, exclaimed in their turn: Who is this King of glory? and received the reply: The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory, the strong, the mighty, the powerful in battle.

O God, spiritual and eternal Lord, and Christ, Lord and King, we entreat you to extend your strong protecting hands over your holy Church and over your holy people, for ever devoted to you. Raise high in our defence the trophies of your triumph and grant that we like Moses may sing a hymn of victory, for yours is the glory and the power throughout all ages. Amen.

St Hippolytus (attr.), Paschal Homily (SC 27:116-118, 184-190); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Easter Tuesday

A READING FROM ON THE PASCHAL SOLEMNITY BY EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA

Each year we mark the beginning of the paschal season by a feast for which we prepare by a period of fasting. Our fast, like that of Moses and Elijah, lasts for forty days, but the feast itself we shall celebrate repeatedly until the end of time.

When we set out on our journey to God we gird our loins with chastity and, safeguarding the steps of our soul as though with sandals, we prepare to run the race of our heavenly vocation. Repelling our enemies with the staff of the word of God and with the power of prayer, we hasten eagerly toward our Passover into heaven, away from things below toward those above, away from this mortal life toward life everlasting.

For when we have successfully accomplished our Passover an even greater feast awaits us. The Jews call this feast Pentecost and it is a foreshadowing of the kingdom of heaven. Moses said: You are to count seven weeks from the time when you begin to harvest the grain, and then you shall offer the new loaves of this new harvest to God. In the symbol of the harvest he was clearly referring prophetically to the vocation of the Gentiles. The new loaves are the souls offered to God through Christ; they are the Churches made up of all nations, for whom God in his love for us gives the greatest feast of all. Reaped by the sickles of the Apostles’ teaching, we are gathered into the Churches all over the world, as though onto threshing-floors. We are made into one body by our common faith, salted by the word of God in which we are instructed, reborn through water and the fire of the Holy Spirit, and offered to God through Christ like loaves full of goodness, a pleasing and acceptable sacrifice.

So now that the Mosaic types have given place to the sacred reality they foreshadowed, we have learned to celebrate this more joyful festival as though already united to our Saviour in the blessedness of his kingdom. During this feast we are allowed to rest from our labours, for we are taught to imitate the rest that we hope to enjoy in heaven. We neither kneel for prayer nor exhaust ourselves with fasting: it is not fitting for those who have been granted the grace of Resurrection to cast themselves onto the ground again, nor for those who have been freed from their passions to endure the same hardships as those still enslaved.

Accordingly, we celebrate the feast of Pentecost for seven full weeks after Easter, just as in the six weeks before Easter we spent forty days in courageous self-denial. Six is a number associated with activity, since we are told that God created the world in six days: but as the number seven symbolizes rest, it is appropriate for our labours to be followed by a period of rest lasting seven weeks, during which we celebrate a second great feast. Because we see in these holy days of Pentecost an image of the rest to come, it is right for our souls to rejoice and for our bodies to find repose and cease fasting as though already united to the bridegroom

Eusebius of Caesarea, On the Paschal Solemnity 4-5 (PG 24:698-699); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Easter Wednesday

A READING FROM THE MYSTAGOGICAL CATECHESES OF ST CYRIL OF JERUSALEM

When you were baptized into Christ and clothed yourselves in him, you were transformed into the likeness of the Son of God. Having destined us to be his children by adoption, God gave us a likeness to Christ in his glory, and, living as you do in communion with Christ, you yourselves are rightly called ‘christs’ or anointed ones. When he said: Do not touch my anointed ones, God was speaking of you.

You became ‘christs’ when you received the sign of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, everything took place in you by means of images, because you yourselves are images of Christ. Christ bathed in the river Jordan, imparting to its waters the fragrance of his divinity, and when he came up from them the Holy Spirit descended upon him; like resting upon like. So you also, after coming up from the sacred waters of Baptism, were anointed with chrism, which signifies the Holy Spirit, by whom Christ was anointed and of whom blessed Isaiah prophesied in the name of the Lord: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach good news to the poor.

Christ’s anointing was not by human hands, nor was it with ordinary oil. On the contrary, having destined him to be the Saviour of the whole world, the Father himself anointed him with the Holy Spirit. The words of Peter bear witness to this: Jesus of Nazareth, whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit. And David the prophet proclaimed: Your throne, O God, shall endure forever, your royal sceptre is a sceptre of justice. You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above all your fellows.

The oil of gladness with which Christ was anointed was a spiritual oil; it was in fact the Holy Spirit himself who is called the oil of gladness because he is the source of spiritual joy. But you also have been anointed with oil, and by this anointing you have entered into fellowship with Christ and have received a share in his life. Beware of thinking of this chrism as merely ordinary oil. As the eucharistic bread after the invocation of the Holy Spirit is no longer ordinary bread but the body of Christ, so also the oil after the invocation is no longer plain ordinary oil but Christ’s gift which by the presence of his divinity becomes the instrument through which you receive the Holy Spirit. While symbolically, on your foreheads and organs of sense, your bodies are anointed with this oil that we see; your souls are sanctified by the holy and life-giving Spirit.

St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 21.1-3 (PG 33:1087-1091); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Easter Thursday

A READING FROM THE CONSTITUTION ON THE SACRED LITURGY OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

In ancient times God, who wishes everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, spoke to our fathers through the prophets in many different ways. Then in the fullness of time he sent his Son, the word made flesh and anointed by the Holy Spirit, to preach the Good News to the poor, to heal the contrite of heart, to be a physician for both body and soul and the mediator between God and the human race. Through his human nature united with the person of the Word, we have been saved. Christ made the perfect satisfaction needed to reconcile us with God and he gave us the means of worshiping God worthily.

The work of redeeming our race and giving full glory to God, foreshadowed by the divine wonders performed among the people of the old covenant, was accomplished by Christ the Lord principally by the paschal mystery of his blessed Passion, Resurrection from the dead, and Ascension in glory. By dying he destroyed our death and by rising he restored our life. From his side as he slept the sleep of death on the Cross came forth the wonderful Sacrament which is the whole Church.

As Christ was sent by the Father, so he in his turn sent the Apostles, men filled with the Holy Spirit, to preach the Good News to all creation. They were to proclaim that by his death and Resurrection the Son of God has freed us from the power of Satan and from death and introduced us into the kingdom of the Father. Moreover, they were to give effect to the saving work they proclaimed by means of the sacrifice around which all our liturgical life revolves.

So it is that by Baptism men, women, and children are plunged into the paschal mystery, dying, being buried, and rising again with Christ. They receive the Spirit who makes them children of God so that they cry out, Abba, Father, and become the true worshipers the Father seeks. So likewise they proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes every time they eat the Lord’s Supper. On the very day of Pentecost, when the Church appeared before the world, those who believed the word of Peter were baptized. They then devoted themselves to listening to the Apostles’ teaching, sharing the common life, breaking bread, and praying. They gave praise to God and won the good will of all the people.

From that time onward the Church has never failed to gather together to celebrate the paschal mystery. It reads what is written about Christ in every part of Scripture, it celebrates the Eucharist, in which the triumphant victory of his death is once again made present, and at the same time it praises God’s glory by thanking him for the priceless gift he has given us in Christ Jesus.

Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium 5-6; Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Easter Friday

A READING FROM THE MYSTAGOGICAL CATECHESES OF ST CYRIL OF JERUSALEM

On the night he was betrayed our Lord Jesus Christ took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples and said: ‘Take, eat: this is my body.’ He took the cup, gave thanks and said: ‘Take, drink: this is my blood.’ Since Christ himself has declared the bread to be his body, who can have any further doubt? Since he himself has said quite categorically, This is my blood, who would dare to question it and say that it is not his blood?

Therefore it is with complete assurance that we receive the bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ. His body is given to us under the symbol of bread, and his blood is given to us under the symbol of wine, in order to make us by receiving them one body and one blood with him. Having his body and blood in our members, we become bearers of Christ and sharers, as Saint Peter says, in the divine nature.

Once when speaking to the Jews Christ said: Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you shall have no life in you. This so horrified them that they left him. Not understanding his words in a spiritual way, they thought the Saviour wished them to practise cannibalism.

Under the old covenant there was showbread, but it came an end with the old dispensation to which it belonged. Under the new covenant there is bread from heaven and the cup of salvation. These sanctify both soul and body, the bread being adapted to the sanctification of the body, the Word to the sanctification of the soul.

Do not, then, regard the Eucharistic elements as ordinary bread and wine: they are in fact the body and blood of the Lord, as he himself has declared. Whatever your senses may tell you, be strong in faith.

You have been taught and you are firmly convinced that what looks and tastes like bread and wine is not bread and wine but the body and the blood of Christ. You know also how David referred to this long ago when he sang: Bread strengthens the heart and makes the face glow with the oil of gladness. Strengthen your heart, then, by receiving this bread as spiritual bread, and bring joy to the face of your soul.

May purity of conscience remove the veil from the face of your soul so that by contemplating the glory of the Lord, as in a mirror, you may be transformed from glory to glory in Christ Jesus our Lord. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 22.1. 3-6 (PG 33:1098-1106); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Easter Saturday

A READING FROM AN EASTER SERMON BY BLESSED GUERRIC OF IGNY

Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. Christ is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep and the firstborn from the dead. His Resurrection, which is the prototype of all others, has guaranteed the rising of our souls in the first resurrection and of our bodies in the second, for he offers his own risen body to our souls as Sacrament and to our bodies as exemplar. Even for our souls Christ’s single Resurrection has prepared a twofold grace: through the living out of the paschal mystery in our daily lives we rise from the death of sin, and by our joyful celebration of the paschal feast today we rouse ourselves from the torpor of sleep.

Truly slothful and half-hearted must that person be who does not feel a thrill of joy, a sense of new life and vigour, at the glad cry: The Lord is risen! For myself; when I looked upon the dead Jesus I was overwhelmed by despairing grief, but in the living God, as Scripture says, my heart and my flesh rejoice. It is with no mean profit to faith, no slight dividend of joy, that Jesus returns to me from the tomb, for I recognize the living God where only a little while ago I mourned a dead man. My heart was sorrowing for him as slain; but now that he is risen, not only my heart but my flesh also rejoices in the confident hope of my own resurrection and immortality.

I slept and I arose, Christ says. Awake, then, my sleeping soul, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light! As the new sun rises from below, the grace of the Resurrection already casts its radiance over the whole world, a radiance reflected in the eyes of those who have watched for him since daybreak, a dawn that ushers in the day of eternity. This is the day that knows no evening, the day whose sun will never set again. Only once has that sun gone down, and now once and for all it has ascended above the heavens, leading death captive in its train.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad. And you also, if you watch daily at the threshold of wisdom, fixing your eyes on the doorway and, like the Magdalen, keeping vigil at the entrance to his tomb, you also will find what she found. You will know that what was written of Wisdom was written of Christ: She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her. Anyone who rises early to seek her will have no trouble; he will find her sitting at his gates. While it was still dark Mary had come to watch at the tomb, and she found Jesus whom she sought standing there in the flesh. But you must know him now according to the spirit, not according to the flesh, and you can be sure of finding his spiritual presence if you seek him with a desire like hers, and if he observes your persevering prayer. Say then to the Lord Jesus, with Mary’s love and longing: My soul yearns for you in the night, my spirit within me earnestly seeks for you. Make the Psalmist’s prayer your own as you say: O God, my God, I watch for you at morning light; my soul thirsts for you. Then see if you do not also find yourselves singing with them both: In the morning fill us with your love; we shall exult and rejoice all our days.

Bd Guerric of Igny, Sermon 3 On the resurrection 1-2 (PL 185:148-149); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Easter Week 2

Low Sunday

A READING FROM A PASCHAL HOMILY BY BISHOP BASIL OF SELEUCIA

Christ descended into hell to liberate its captives. In one instant he destroyed all record of our ancient debt incurred under the Law, in order to lead us to heaven where there is no death but only eternal life and righteousness.

By the Baptism which you, the newly-enlightened, have just received, you now share in these blessings. Your initiation into the life of grace is the pledge of your resurrection. Your Baptism is the promise of the life of heaven. By your immersion you imitated the burial of the Lord, but when you came out of the water you were conscious only of the reality of the Resurrection.

Believe in this reality, of which previously you saw only the outward signs. Accept the assurance of Paul when he says: If we have been united to Christ in a death like his, we shall be united to him also in a resurrection like his. Baptism is the planting of the seed of immortality, a planting which takes place in the font and bears fruit in heaven. The grace of the Spirit works in a mysterious way in the font, and the outward appearance must not obscure the wonder of it. Although water serves as the instrument, it is grace which gives rebirth. Grace transforms all who are placed in the font just as the seed is transformed in the womb. It refashions all who go down into the water as metal is recast in a furnace. It reveals to them the mysteries of immortality; it seals them with the pledge of resurrection

These wonderful mysteries are symbolized for you, the newly-enlightened, even in the garments you wear. See how you are clothed in the outward signs of these blessings. The radiant brightness of your robe stands for incorruptibility. The white band encircling your head like a diadem proclaims your liberty. In your hand you hold the sign of your victory over the devil. Christ is showing you that you have risen from the dead. He does this now in a symbolic way, but soon he will reveal the full reality if we keep the garment of faith undefiled and do not let sin extinguish the lamp of grace. If we preserve the crown of the Spirit, the Lord will call from heaven in a voice of tremendous majesty, yet full of tenderness: Come, blessed of my Father, take possession of the kingdom prepared for you since the beginning of the world. To him be glory and power forever, through endless ages. Amen.

Bishop Basil of Seleucia, Paschal Homily (PG 28:1079-1082); World in Season III, 1st ed.

Monday of the Second Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE CONFERENCES OF ST JOHN CASSIAN

There are in Egypt three kinds of monks. Two of them are very good, whilst the third is lukewarm and utterly to be avoided. The first is that of the cenobites, who live together in a community and are governed by the judgement of one elder. The greatest number of monks dwelling in Egypt are of this kind. The second is that of the anchorites. These are first instructed in the cenobia and then, perfected in their practical way of life, choose the recesses of the desert. We too have chosen to be part of this profession. The third and blameworthy type is that of the sarabaites.

The discipline of the cenobites took its rise at the time of the apostolic preaching. For such was the whole multitude of believers in Jerusalem described in the Acts of the Apostles: The multitude of believers had one heart and one soul, and none of them said that what he possessed was his own, but all things were common to them. They sold their possessions and their belongings and distributed them to all as each had need.

Such, I say, was the whole Church then, whereas now it is difficult to find even a few like that in the cenobia. But, at the death of the Apostles, the multitude of believers began to grow lukewarm, especially those who came over to the faith of Christ from different foreign nations. Because of their rudimentary faith and inveterate paganism, the Apostles asked nothing more of them than that they abstain from things sacrificed to idols, from fornication, from things strangled, and from blood. But this liberty, which was conceded to the pagans because of the weakness of their new faith, gradually began to spoil the perfection of the Church in Jerusalem, and, as its number daily increased, the warmth of that new faith grew cold, and not only newcomers to the faith of Christ but even the leaders of the Church relaxed their strictness. For some people, thinking that what they saw conceded to the pagans because of their weakness was lawful for them as well, thought that it would be no loss to themselves if they believed in and confessed Christ whilst keeping their belongings and property.

Those in whom the apostolic fervour still existed, however, where mindful of that earlier perfection. Abandoning their towns and the company of the negligent, they began to live in rural and more secluded places and to practise privately and individually what they remembered had been taught by the Apostles throughout the body of the Church. As time went on they gradually separated themselves from the crowds of believers because they abstained from marriage, cut themselves off from the company of their parents and from the life of this world. They were called monks or monazontes because of the strictness of their solitary lives. They are also called cenobites from their common fellowship, and their cells and dwelling places are called cenobia. This alone, then, was the most ancient kind of monks, which is first not only in time but also in grace, and which remained inviolable throughout the years, up until the era of Abba Paul and Abba Antony. We see that remnants of it endure even now in strict cenobia.

St John Cassian, The Conferences 18.4.2-5.4; ACW 57 (1997) tr Ramsey.

Tuesday of the Second Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE ASCETICON OF ST BASIL THE GREAT

Is it necessary first to renounce everything and then come to the way of life according to God?

Since our Lord Jesus Christ says to all, If anyone comes to me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me; and again, whoever does not renounce all he has cannot be my disciple, we think that this commandment extends to a necessary estrangement from many things. For first of all, we who have given up the hidden things of shame renounce the devil and the passions of the flesh, family ties and human friendships and any manner of life that conflicts with the strictness of the Gospel of salvation. And, what is still more necessary, he who has put off the old nature with its practices which is corrupt through deceitful desires renounces even himself. He also renounces all affections of this world which can hinder the aim of godliness.

Such a man regards as his true parents those who have given birth to him by the Gospel, he regards as his brothers those who received the same spirit of adoption, and he will consider all possessions as foreign to him, as indeed they are. In a word, how can he to whom the whole world has been crucified on account of Christ, and he to the world, be a sharer any longer in the cares of the world? For our Lord Jesus Christ goes to extremes in hatred of the soul and denial of self, when he says, If anyone comes to me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. Again, If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Perfect renunciation, therefore, consists in one’s attaining freedom from desire concerning this life and having the sentence of death so as not to rely on oneself. Its beginnings, however, are alienation from external things such as possessions, vainglory, the common customs of life, or attachment to useless things. Examples are given us by the holy disciples of the Lord: John and James, who left their father Zebedee and even their boat, their only source of livelihood; Matthew, who rose up from the tax-office and followed the Lord, not only leaving the profits in the tax-office, but also despising the dangers likely to come upon himself and his family at the hands of the authorities for leaving the accounts of the tax-office in disorder. To Paul the whole world was crucified, and he to the world.

In the same way one who is violently seized by the desire to follow Christ can no longer care for anything to do with this life: not for the love of parents or relations, if this is in opposition to the commandments of the Lord; not for the fear of men according to the example of the saints who said, we must obey God rather than men; and not because of derision from outsiders on account of their good works.

St Basil the Great, The Asketikon, Longer Response 8; tr. Pluscarden

Wednesday in the Second Week of Eastertide

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

You have all heard in the reading how the blessed Stephen was ordained Deacon with six others, himself being the seventh, and how he won through to his heavenly crown. This is the first special privilege of the first martyr: that whilst we can scarcely lay hands on the stories of other martyrs to read them as we celebrate their feasts, the passion of this one is to be found in a book from the canon of Scripture, The Acts of the Apostles. The reading of this book starts on Easter Sunday, as is the custom of the Church. In this book you have heard how seven Deacons, including St Stephen, were elected and then ordained by the Apostles. The Apostles first, the Deacons second; and the Deacons produced a martyr before the Apostles, the lambs provided a victim before the rams.

But what a very similar passion he underwent to that of his Lord and Saviour! False witnesses against the one as against the other; and about the same matter. You know what the false witnesses said against the Lord Christ: We heard him say ourselves, I will pull down this temple, and after three days I will build another new one. The Lord, though, hadn’t actually said this; but falsehood wanted to stick close to the truth. Where he said ‘Pull down’, the false witnesses said ‘I will pull down’. They changed a few syllables; but the false witnesses were all the worse, for wishing to stick near the truth in their calumny.

And what was Stephen charged with? We heard him say that Jesus the Nazarene will destroy this temple, and change the custom of the Law. They were giving false testimony, and prophesying the truth. Just as Caiaphas, their master, chief of the priests, when advising the Jews that Christ should be killed, said this: It is expedient that one should die, rather than that the whole nation should perish; but the evangelist says, This he did not say of himself; but since he was High Priest that year, he prophesied that it was necessary for Christ to die for the people. What’s this, brothers? Great indeed is the force of truth. People hate the truth, and they prophecy the truth without knowing it. Actually, they don’t do it, but it is done through them.

They brought him before the Council, in order to obtain a more impressive judgement. But the friend of Christ, when they had stated their case, proclaimed the truth about his Lord. He was going to die; why should a God-fearing tongue keep quiet before the godless? Why not die for the truth? In this one respect he was unlike his Lord when their trials are compared, because of a very definite mystery. When the Lord was brought to his Passion, he preferred to keep quiet on being interrogated; this man did not keep quiet. Why did Christ prefer to keep quiet? Because it had been foretold about him: Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb without a voice before its shearer, so he did not open his mouth. Why, though, did St Stephen refuse to keep quiet? Because the Lord himself had said, What I tell you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear in the ear, proclaim on the rooftops.

St Augustine, Sermon 315, 1-3; WSA (1994), tr. Hill

Thursday in the Second Week of Eastertide

A READING FROM THE EXHORTATION TO MARTYRDOM BY ORIGEN

If passing from unbelief to faith means that we have passed from death to life, we should not be surprised to find that the world hates us. Anyone who has not passed from death to life is incapable of loving those who have departed from death’s dark dwelling place to enter a dwelling made of living stones and filled with the light of life. Jesus laid down his life for us; so we too should lay down our lives, I will not say for him, but for ourselves and also, surely, for those who will be helped by the example of our martyrdom.

Now is the time for Christians to rejoice. Scripture says: We should rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering trains us to endure with patience, patient endurance makes us pleasing to God, and being pleasing to God gives us ground for a hope that will not be disappointed. Only let the love of God be poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

The more we share in the sufferings of Christ, the more we share, through him, in his consolation. We should be extremely eager to share in Christ’s sufferings and to let them be multiplied in us if we desire the superabundant consolation that will be given to those who mourn. This consolation will not perhaps be the same for all, for if it were, Scripture would not say: The more we share in the sufferings of Christ, the more we share in his consolation. Sharing in his consolation will be proportionate to our sharing in his suffering.

God says through the prophet: At an acceptable time I heard you, on the day of salvation I helped you. What time could be more acceptable than when, for our fidelity to God in Christ, we are made a public spectacle and led away under guard, not defeated but triumphant?

In Christ and with Christ the martyrs disarm the principalities and powers and share in his triumph over them, for their share in Christ’s sufferings makes them sharers also in the mighty deeds those sufferings accomplished. What could more appropriately be called the day of salvation than the day of such a glorious departure from this world?

Origen, Exhortation to Martyrdom, 41-42 (PG 11:618-619); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Friday in the Second Week of Eastertide

A READING FROM THE CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

In the liturgy the Holy Spirit is the teacher of the faith of the People of God and the artisan of ‘God’s masterpieces’, the Sacraments of the New Covenant. The desire and work of the Spirit in the heart of the Church is that we may live from the life of the risen Christ. When the Spirit encounters in us the response of faith which he has aroused in us, he brings about genuine cooperation. Through it, the liturgy becomes the common work of the Holy Spirit and the Church.

In this sacramental dispensation of Christ’s mystery the Holy Spirit acts in the same way as at other times in the economy of salvation: he prepares the Church to encounter her Lord; he recalls and makes Christ manifest to the faith of the assembly. By his transforming power, he makes the mystery of Christ present here and now. Finally the Spirit of communion unites the Church to the life and mission of Christ.

In the sacramental economy the Holy Spirit fulfils what was prefigured in the Old Covenant. Since Christ's Church was ‘prepared in marvellous fashion in the history of the people of Israel and in the Old Covenant’, the Church’s liturgy has retained certain elements of the worship of the Old Covenant as integral and irreplaceable, adopting them as her own: notably, reading the Old Testament; praying the Psalms; above all, recalling the saving events and significant realities which have found their fulfilment in the mystery of Christ: promise and covenant, Exodus and Passover, kingdom and temple, exile and return.

It is on this harmony of the two Testaments that the Paschal catechesis of the Lord is built, and then, that of the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church. This catechesis unveils what lay hidden under the letter of the Old Testament: the mystery of Christ. It is called ‘typological’ because it reveals the newness of Christ on the basis of the ‘figures’ or ‘types’ which announce him in the deeds, words, and symbols of the first covenant. By this re-reading in the Spirit of Truth, starting from Christ, the figures are unveiled. Thus the flood and Noah’s ark prefigured salvation by Baptism, as did the cloud and the crossing of the Red Sea. Water from the rock was the figure of the spiritual gifts of Christ, and manna in the desert prefigured the Eucharist, the true bread from heaven.

For this reason the Church, especially during Advent and Lent and above all at the Easter Vigil, re-reads and re-lives the great events of salvation history in the ‘today’ of her liturgy. But this also demands that catechesis help the faithful to open themselves to this spiritual understanding of the economy of salvation as the Church’s liturgy reveals it and enables us to live it.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1091-1095

Saturday in the Second Week of Eastertide

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

What did Stephen do? First take a look at the one whom this good friend was imitating. While the Lord Jesus Christ was hanging on the Cross, he said, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. He, though, said, Father; Stephen said, Lord Jesus. What else did he also say? Receive my spirit. You spoke to the Father, I to you. I recognize the Mediator; you came to lift up the fallen; you hadn’t fallen with me. Receive, he said, my spirit.

That was his prayer for himself; something else came into his mind, in which he might imitate his Lord. Recall the words of the one hanging on the Cross, and mark the words of the one who was being stoned for confessing him. What did the former say? Father, forgive them, because they know not what they do. Possibly, Stephen was at that time among those who did not know what they were doing. Many of them, you see, afterward came to believe. And we are not certain which group the blessed Stephen came from, whether he was one of those who had previously believed in Christ. If not, then that prayer also availed for him: Father, forgive them, because they know not what they do.

And yet Saul too was one of those. When Stephen the lamb was being stoned, he was still a wolf, still thirsting for blood, still thinking his own hands were not enough to stone him with, and therefore keeping the coats of those who were doing the stoning. So Stephen recalled what had been said for him, Father, forgive them, because they know not what they do; and to imitate his Lord even in this respect, in order to be his friend, he too said, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. Do you suppose Saul heard these words? He certainly heard, but he jeered; and yet he was included in Stephen’s prayer. He was still rampaging around, and already Stephen was being heard on his behalf.

Such a lovely picture this is: where you see holy Stephen being stoned, you can see Saul keeping the coats of those doing the stoning. This man is Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus, this man is Paul, the servant of Christ Jesus. Yes, you listened very well to the voice saying Why are you persecuting me? You were laid low, you were raised up; laid low as a persecutor, raised up as a preacher. Tell us, let us hear it: Paul, the servant of Christ Jesus by the will of God. Certainly not by your will, was it, dear Saul? We have seen the fruit of your will: Stephen was slain by your will. We can see your fruits that came by the will of God: you are read everywhere, chanted everywhere, everywhere you are converting to Christ the hearts that oppose him, everywhere as a good shepherd you are gathering huge flocks.

You are reigning with the one you stoned, reigning with Christ. There you can both see each other, can both now hear my sermon; both of you please pray for us. He will listen to you both, the one who crowned you; first one, and then the other; one who suffered persecution, the other who did the persecuting. Then the first was a lamb, the other a wolf; now, though, both are lambs. May the lambs acknowledge us, and see us in the flock of Christ. May they commend us to him in their prayers, so as to obtain a quiet and tranquil life for the Church of their Lord.

St Augustine, Sermon 316, 3-5; WSA (1994) tr. Hill

Easter Week 3

Sunday in the Third Week of Eastertide

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

Sing to the Lord a new song; his praise is in the assembly of the saints. We are urged to sing a new song to the Lord. This new song is the song that has been learned by the new man. Now a song it is a thing of joy; more profoundly, it is a thing of love. It is the person who has learned to love the new life who has learned to sing the new song. In order to be able to sing the new song, therefore, we need to be reminded of the nature of the new life, for the new man, the new song, the new covenant, all belong to the same kingdom. Not only, then, will the new man sing the new song, he will also belong to the new covenant.

There is no one who does not love something, but the question is, what to love. The psalms do not tell us not to love, but to choose the object of our love. But how can we choose unless we are first chosen? We cannot love unless someone has loved us first Listen to the Apostle John: We love him, because he first loved us. The source of our love for God can only be found in the fact that God loved us first. He has given us himself as the object of our love, and he has also given us its source. What this source is you may learn more clearly from the Apostle Paul who tells us: The love of God has been poured into our hearts. This love is not something we generate ourselves; it comes to us through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Since we have such an assurance, then, let us love God with the love he has given us. As John tells us more fully: God is love, and whoever dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him. It is not enough to say: Love is from God. Which of us would dare to pronounce the words of Scripture: God is love? He alone could say it who knew what it was to have God dwelling within him. God offers us a short route to the possession of himself. He cries out: Love me and you will have me, for you would be unable to love me if you did not possess me already.

My dear brethren and children, fruit of the true faith and holy seed of heaven, all you who have been born again in Christ and whose life is from above, listen to me; or rather, listen to the Holy Spirit saying through me: Sing to the Lord a new song. Look you tell me, I am singing. Yes indeed, you are singing; you are singing clearly, I can hear you. But make sure that your life does not contradict your words. Sing with your voices, your hearts, your lips, and your lives: Sing to the Lord a new song.

Now it is your unquestioned desire to sing of him whom you love, but you ask me how to sing his praises. You have heard the words: Sing to the Lord a new song, and you wish to know what praises to sing. The answer is: His praise is in the assembly of the saints; it is in the singers themselves. If you desire to praise him, then live what you express. Live good lives, and you yourselves will be his praise.

St Augustine, Sermon 34, 1-3.5-6 (CCL 41:424-426); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Monday in the Third Week of Eastertide

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

The Lord said somewhere, after he had risen from the dead, Receive the Holy Spirit, and after saying Receive the Holy Spirit, he immediately added, Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them; that is, it’s the Spirit who forgives, not you. But the Spirit is God. So it’s God who forgives, not you. What, though, are you in relation to the Spirit? Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you? So God dwells in his holy temple, that is among his holy faithful, in his Church and it is through them he forgives sins.

But if he forgives through human agency, he can also forgive apart from human agency. To some he gave forgiveness through John; through whom did he give grace to John himself? Wishing to demonstrate this and to confirm this truth, God very suitably arranged that when some people in Samaria had been evangelized and baptized, and baptized by Philip, one of the seven Deacons originally chosen, they did not receive the Holy Spirit, and yet they had been baptized. This was told to the disciples in Jerusalem, and they came to Samaria so that those who had been baptized might receive the Holy Spirit by their laying on their hands.

When Simon saw this, he thought it was something possessed by men, and wanted to possess it himself. Thinking it was possessed by men, he wanted to buy it from men. Then Peter denounced him and said, You have neither part nor portion in this faith. For you thought the gift of God is something to be bought with money. Now I would like you to take note of why I have wanted to remind you of this story. It was proper for God to show first that he works through men; but next that he works through himself, in case people should think what Simon thought, that that sort of power belongs to men, not to God – though the disciples themselves already knew this. After all, one hundred and twenty people had been gathered together when the Holy Spirit came upon them without the laying on of anyone’s hands. I mean, who had then imposed hands on them? And yet he came, and they were the first ones he filled.

After that scandal of Simon, what did God do? Notice him teaching, not by words but by events. Philip had baptized people and the Holy Spirit hadn’t come upon them until the Apostles had come along and laid their hands upon them. This same Philip later baptised the eunuch of Queen Candace. He had been worshipping in Jerusalem, and on his way back from there was reading the prophet Isaiah in his chariot and not understanding it. Philip was prompted to approach the chariot, and he explained the reading, insinuated the faith, preached Christ. The eunuch believed in Christ, and said when they came to some water, Look, here is water; who is to prevent me being baptized? Philip said to him, Do you believe in Jesus Christ? He answered, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. And immediately he went down with him into the water. Once the mystery and Sacrament of Baptism had been carried out, since there was no expectation of the Apostles coming as on the previous occasion, so that no one should think the gift of the Holy Spirit was at the disposal of men, the Holy Spirit came immediately. That put an end to Simon’s ideas, to make sure he didn’t have imitators in that kind of thinking.

St Augustine, Sermon 99, 9-11; WSA (1992) tr. Hill

Tuesday of the Third Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

We have heard the Apostle’s words, or rather through the Apostle the words of Christ speaking in the one whom he made into a preacher out of a persecutor; the lamb slain by wolves making lambs out of wolves. What happened in the case of Paul had been foretold in a notable prophecy when the holy Patriarch Jacob was blessing his sons. This concerned them as present then, but also looked forward to things to come. Paul, as he informs us himself, was of the tribe of Benjamin. Now when Jacob, in blessing his sons, came to the blessing of Benjamin, he said about him, Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. So what, then? If the wolf is ravenous, is it always ravenous? Surely not! In the morning he will ravage, at evening he will divide the prey. This was fulfilled in the Apostle Paul, because it had also been foretold about him.

Now, if you agree, let us take a look at him ravaging in the morning, and in the evening dividing the prey. Morning and evening were said, as though to say, ‘Before and after’. So let us take it like this: ‘He will ravage before, he will divide the prey afterward.’ Observe him ravaging: Saul, as the Acts of the Apostles tell us, on receiving letters from the chief priests, that wherever he should find followers of the way of God, he should arrest and bring them, to be punished, of course, went off breathing and panting slaughter.

We have heard how in the morning he will ravage; let us see how at evening he will divide the prey. He was laid low by the voice of Christ from heaven, and as he received the injunction forbidding him to rage, he fell on his face. First he must be laid low, then raised up; first he must be struck, later on healed. Christ, after all, would not be able to live in him later on, unless what had previously lived badly were slain in him. So what did he hear when he was laid low? Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goad. And he said: Who are you, Lord? And the voice from above: I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting. The head in heaven was crying out for his members still located on earth, and he didn’t say, ‘Why are you persecuting my servants?’ but Why are you persecuting me? And he answered What do you wish me to do?

He is now preparing himself to obey, where previously he had worked himself up to destroy. Already the preacher is being fashioned out of the persecutor, the sheep out of the wolf, the loyal soldier out of the enemy. He heard what he must do. Yes, certainly he was struck blind. For his heart to shine with an inner light, the outer light was for a time snatched away from him; it was withdrawn from the persecutor, to be restored in due course to the preacher. And yet during the period when he couldn’t see anything else, he was seeing Jesus. Thus even in his very blindness the mystery of what it is to be a believer was taking shape; since those who believe in Christ ought to fix their gaze on him, ought to reckon everything else as scarcely even real; so that the creature becomes cheap in their eyes, while the creator grows all the dearer in their hearts.

St Augustine, Sermon 279,1-2; WSA (1994) tr. Hill

Wednesday of the Third Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE WRITINGS OF ST ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA

If it is by the sign of the Cross and by faith in Christ that death is trampled underfoot, it is clear that it is Christ himself and none other who is the Archvictor over death and has robbed it of its power. Death used to be strong and terrible, but now, since the advent of the Saviour and the death and Resurrection of his body, it is despised. When the sun rises after the night and the whole world is lit up by it, nobody doubts that it is the sun which has thus shed its light everywhere and driven away the dark. Equally clear is it, since this utter scorning and trampling down of death has ensued upon the Saviour’s manifestation in the body and his death on the Cross, that it is he himself who brought death to nought and daily raises monuments to his victory in his own disciples. How can you think otherwise, when you see people naturally weak hastening to death, unafraid at the prospect of corruption, fearless of the descent into Hades, even indeed with eager soul provoking it, not shrinking from tortures, but preferring thus to rush on death for Christ’s sake, rather than to remain in this present life?

If, as we have shown, death was destroyed and everybody tramples on it because of Christ, how much more did he himself first trample and destroy it in his own body! How could the destruction of death have been manifested at all, had not the Lord’s body been raised?

People who are dead cannot take effective action; their power of influence on others lasts only till the grave. Deeds and actions that energise others belong only to the living. Well, then, look at the facts in this case. The Saviour is working mightily among us every day. He is invisibly persuading numbers of people all over the world to accept his faith and be obedient to his teaching. Can anyone, in face of this, still doubt that he has risen and lives, or rather that he is himself the Life? Does a dead man prick the consciences of men, so that they throw all the traditions of their fathers to the winds and bow down before the teaching of Christ? If he is no longer active in the world, as would be the case if he were dead, how is it that he makes the living to cease from their activities, the adulterer from his adultery, the murderer from murdering, the unjust man from avarice, while the profane and godless become religious? This is the work of One who lives, not of one dead; and, more than that, it is the work of God.

St Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 29-30; Word in Season III, 2nd ed.

Thursday of the Third Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

All the commandments given to the Jews are shadowy signs of things to come. After the light of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ, has come, they are read only in order to be understood, not also in order to be observed. So Christians have been given the freedom to eat what they like, in moderation, with a blessing, with thanksgiving. So perhaps Peter too was told Kill and eat in this sense, that he need no longer be bound to Jewish observances.

But all the same, to prove to you that all this was a symbolic showing, that vessel contained creeping things; could he possibly eat creeping things? So what does all this symbolism mean? That receptacle signifies the Church; the four lines it was hanging from are the four quarters of the earth, through which the Catholic Church stretches. So all those who wish to go apart into a sect and to cut themselves off from the whole, do not belong to the sacred reality signified by the four lines. God says his holy ones are to be gathered together at the end from the four winds, because now the Gospel faith is being spread abroad through all those four cardinal points of the compass. So those animals are the nations which were unclean in their superstitions and lusts before Christ came.

It’s clear, you see, from many places in Scripture that Peter can stand for, or represent, the Church; the Church is the body of Christ. Let him then receive the Gentiles now made clean, their sins having been forgiven; that’s why the gentile Cornelius had sent for him. This man’s charities had been accepted and had cleansed him after a fashion; it only remained for him, like clean food, to be incorporated into the Church, that is, into the Lord’s body. Peter, though, was worried about handing the Gospel over to the Gentiles, because those of the circumcision who believed were not allowing the Apostles to hand on the Christian faith to the uncircumcised unless they accepted circumcision, which had been the tradition of their ancestors.

So that receptacle removed this hesitation of his; and that’s why after that vision he was allowed by the Holy Spirit to go with the men who had come from Cornelius; and off he went. Cornelius, you see, and the people with him were to be regarded as being among those animals which had been shown him in that receptacle; God, however, had already made them clean, because he had accepted the charitable acts they had performed from there. So now they had to be killed and eaten; that is, the old life in which they had not known Christ was to be slain in them, and they were to pass over into his body, as into the new life of the fellowship of the Church.

Why was it let down three times from heaven? Because all these nations, who belong to the four quarters of the globe, where the Church signified by the four lines to which that receptacle was connected is being sown like seed, are baptized in the name of the Trinity. They are being renewed by believing in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in order to belong to the communion of the saints. So the four lines and the triple letting down also yields the number twelve of the Apostles; as though three each were allotted to the four quarters. Four threes, you see, make twelve. I think that’s enough, don’t you, about this vision.

St Augustine, Sermon 149, 5-10; WSA (1992), tr. Hill

Friday of the Third Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 96 BY ST AUGUSTINE

Sion heard and was glad. What did Sion hear? That all God’s angels worship him? Yes, to be sure; but what else did Sion hear? This is what it heard: the heavens have proclaimed his justice, and the nations have seen his glory. Let all who worship graven images be put to shame, those who boast of their idols. The Church had not yet extended to the Gentiles, you see. Some of the Jews in Judea had come to believe, but these Jews imagined that they alone belonged to Christ. Then the Apostles were sent to the Gentiles, and the word was preached to Cornelius.

He believed and was baptised, and his companions were baptised with him. You know what had happened to lead them to Baptism: Peter came to Cornelius’ house; but Cornelius was from the Gentiles, so he and his friends were uncircumcised. In order, therefore that Peter and his companions might have no hesitation about delivering the Gospel to uncircumcised persons, the Holy Spirit came upon Cornelius and the others even before they were baptised; the Spirit filled them and they began to speak in tongues. Until this time the Holy Spirit had never fallen upon any unbaptised person; but he fell on these before their Baptism. Peter might well have hesitated over whether to baptise the uncircumcised, but the Holy Spirit came and they began to speak in tongues. The invisible gift was conferred and removed any doubt about the visible Sacrament; so they were all baptised.

Now you find it recorded in Scripture that the Apostles and the brethren in Judea heard that the Gentiles too had accepted the word of God, and they glorified God. It is this thanksgiving on their part which is mentioned in our psalm: Sion heard and was glad, and the daughters of Judea leapt for joy. What did Sion hear, to inspire such gladness? That the Gentiles too had accepted the word of God. One wall had already been set in place, but as yet there was no corner. The Church in Judea is rightly called Sion here. Scripture records that the Apostles and the brethren in Judea heard – does that not mean that the daughters of Judea leapt for joy. What did they hear? That the Gentiles too had accepted the word of God. And where does the psalm testify to the same event? The heavens have proclaimed his justice and all nations have seen his glory. And since they were Gentiles who had come to believe, former idol-worshippers, the psalm continued, Let all who worship graven images be put to shame, those who boast of their idols. Rightly, then, is it said, Sion heard and was glad, and the daughter of Judea leapt for joy.

St Augustine, Exposition of Psalm 96, 13; WSA (2002) tr. Maria Boulding

Saturday of the Third Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM ON CHRISTIAN PERFECTION BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

No one has known Christ better than Paul, nor has anyone surpassed him in the example he gave of what anyone should be who bears Christ’s name. So perfectly did he mirror his Master that he became his very image. He was transformed into his model and it seemed to be no longer Paul who lived and spoke, but Christ himself living in Paul. His words Since you seek a proof that it is Christ who speaks in me, and, It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, show his keen awareness of this grace.

Paul teaches us the meaning of Christ’s name when he calls him the power and wisdom of God, our peace, the unapproachable light in which God dwells, our sanctification and redemption, our great High Priest, our paschal sacrifice, our expiation; when he declares him to be the reflection of God’s glory, the perfect likeness of his nature, the Creator of all ages, our spiritual food and drink, the rock and the water, the foundation of our faith, the cornerstone, the image of the invisible God. He shows what Christ’s name means when he says that he is the mighty God, the Head of his Body the Church, the firstborn of the new creation, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, the firstborn from the dead, the eldest of many brethren, and when he tells us that Christ is the mediator between God and man, the only-begotten Son crowned with glory and honour, the Lord of glory, the beginning of all things, the King of justice and of peace, the King of the whole universe, the ruler of a realm that has no boundaries.

Paul calls Christ by many other titles too numerous to mention. Their cumulative force when taken together gives some conception of what the name ‘Christ’ really means, and shows us his inexpressible majesty in so far as our minds can comprehend it. Since by the goodness of God we who are called Christians have been granted the honour of sharing this name, the greatest, the highest, the most sublime of all names, each of the titles that explains its meaning should have its reflection in us: if we are not to be false to this name we must bear witness to it by our lives.

St Gregory of Nyssa, On Christian Perfection (Jaeger 8:174-177); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Easter Week 4

Sunday of the Fourth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST MAXIMUS OF TURIN

Christ is risen! He has burst open the gates of hell and let the dead go free; he has renewed the earth through the members of his Church now born again in Baptism, and has made it blossom afresh with men brought back to life. His Holy Spirit has unlocked the doors of heaven, which stand wide open to receive those who rise up from the earth. Because of Christ’s Resurrection the thief ascends to Paradise, the bodies of the blessed enter the holy city, and the dead are restored to the company of the living; there is an upward movement in the whole of creation, each element raising itself to something higher. We see the underworld restoring its victims to the upper regions, earth sending its buried dead to heaven, and heaven presenting the new arrivals to the Lord. In one and the same movement our Saviour’s Passion raises men from the depths, lifts them up from the earth, and sets them in the heights.

Christ is risen! His rising brings life to the dead, forgiveness to sinners, and glory to the saints. And so David the prophet summons all creation to join in celebrating the Easter festival: Rejoice and be glad, he cries, on this day which the Lord has made.

The light of Christ is an endless day that knows no night. Christ is this day, says the Apostle; such is the meaning of his words: Night is almost over; day is at hand. He tells us that night is almost over, not that it is about to fall. By this we are meant to understand that the coming of Christ’s light puts Satan’s darkness to flight, leaving no place for any shadow of sin. His everlasting radiance dispels the dark clouds of the past and checks the hidden growth of vice. The Son himself is the day to whom The Day, his Father, communicates the mystery of his Divinity. He it is who says through the mouth of Solomon, I have caused an unfailing light to rise in heaven. And as in heaven no night can follow day, so no sin can overshadow the justice of Christ. The celestial day is perpetually bright and shining with brilliant light; clouds can never darken its skies. In the same way, the light of Christ is eternally glowing with luminous radiance, and can never be extinguished by the darkness of sin. This is why John the Evangelist says: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never been able to overpower it.

And so, my friends, each of us ought surely to rejoice on this holy day. Let no one, conscious of his sinfulness, withdraw from our common celebration, nor let anyone be kept away from our public prayer by the burden of guilt. Sinner one may indeed be, but no one must despair of pardon on this day which is so highly privileged; for if a thief could receive the grace of Paradise, how could a Christian be refused forgiveness?

St Maximus of Turin, Sermon 53, 1-2 (CCL 23:214-216); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Monday of the Fourth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE WRITINGS OF BISHOP EUSEBIUS OF EMESA

Two men entered a city, carrying with them no food, no money, no extra garment. Who do you think welcomed them? What lodging was prepared for them, and where? Do you not marvel at the authority of the one who sent them and at the faith of those who were sent? Two strangers entered a city. What did they possess? What did they preach? ‘He was crucified,’ they said. They were humble, untrained, unlettered, needy. Yet what they preached was the Cross, and it was from this preaching that faith was to come!

But despite the obstacles virtue won out. The Cross was preached and temples were razed; the Cross is preached and kings are won over. The Cross is preached and the wise are proved wrong, pagan feasts are abolished, and their gods are melted down. Why do you marvel that the Apostles were believed or that they were received? Let not these great wonders pass us by. Men who were strangers, unknown and knowing no one, and bringing nothing to catch the eye, traversed the world, preaching the crucified one, and commending fasting in place of drunkenness, a troublesome chastity in place of lust: a serious burden to those who were concerned to accept these exhortations to moral behaviour in place of abominable practices.

These men took possession of peoples and made cities their own. Yet what treasure did they have? The power of the Cross. Consider the riches of kings and the riches of the Apostles. See how different is their condition. A king is magnificent, the Apostles are humble; though mortal, they effect by God’s power the deeds of God.

Before the crucifixion the disciples do nothing, but after it they act. If they accomplished anything before the crucifixion, they did so in obscurity. But after the sacred blood erased the decree written against us; after we who were unclean were sprinkled; after death was put to death by death; after God, through a man, conquered him who was devouring men; after death swallowed him up, only to cast him forth; after sin was put to death by obedience; after Adam had been restored by another man; after error had been corrected by the Virgin; after the thief entered Paradise on the very day on which Adam had departed from Paradise; after error that had entered through a tree was corrected through a tree; after thorns on the forehead replaced the thorns produced by the soil; after the Father showed mercy and the Son received this mercy in our place; after sin was put to death and corruption was destroyed – then the disciples, who before the crucifixion had been fearful, after the crucifixion raised their voices.

The Apostles obey; they rouse up men laid low in darkness. For power was imparted to those to whom the Apostles came. They were no longer what they had been, what we had been; but they were clad with power. And just as iron is cold before the fire is kindled, but when it is placed in the fire and grows white-hot, it casts off its coldness and enkindles other things with its heat, so do mortal men who have put on Jesus.

Bishop Eusebius of Emesa, The Apostles and the Faith, 2:15-16; Word in Season III, 2nd ed.

Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM ON THE SACRAMENTS BY ST AMBROSE

You were asked: ‘Do you believe in God the Father almighty?’ You replied: ‘I believe’, and you were immersed: that is, buried. You were asked for a second time: ‘Do you believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and in his Cross?’ You replied: ‘I believe’, and you were immersed: which means that you were buried with Christ. For one who is buried with Christ rises again with Christ. You were asked a third time: ‘Do you believe also in the Holy Spirit?’ You replied: ‘I believe’, and you were immersed a third time, so that the threefold confession might absolve the manifold lapses of the past.

We can give you an illustration of this. The holy Apostle Peter appeared to lapse through human weakness during the Lord’s Passion. To wipe out and absolve the fault of his denial, he was asked by Christ three times if he loved him. Peter replied: Lord, you know that I love you. He answered three times so as to be absolved three times.

Thus the Father forgives sin, so does the Son, and so does the Holy Spirit. Do not be surprised that we are baptized in one name: in the name, that is, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; because Christ spoke of only one name where there is one substance, one divinity, one majesty. This is the name of which it is written: In this must all find salvation. It is in this name that you have all been saved, that you have been restored to the grace of life.

So the Apostle exclaims, as you have just heard in the reading, Whoever is baptized, is baptized in the death of Jesus. What does in the death mean? It means that just as Christ died, so you will taste death; that just as Christ died to sin and lives to God, so through the Sacrament of Baptism you are dead to the old enticements of sin and have risen again through the grace of Christ. This is a death, then, not in the reality of bodily death, but in likeness. When you are immersed, you receive the likeness of death and burial, you receive the Sacrament of his Cross; because Christ hung upon the Cross and his body was fastened to it by the nails. So you are crucified with him.

The font has the shape and appearance of a sort of tomb. When we believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we are received and immersed in it; that is, we are restored to life. You also receive the myrrh, that is, the chrism, over your heads. Why over your heads? Because the faculties of the wise man are situated in his head, says Solomon. Wisdom without grace is inert; but when wisdom receives grace, then its work begins to move toward fulfilment. This is called regeneration.

What is regeneration? You can read in the Acts of the Apostles that a verse from the second Psalm, You are my son, today I have begotten you, seems to refer to the Resurrection. That is why he is also called The firstborn from the dead. For what is resurrection except that we rise from death to life? So it is in Baptism, which is an image of death: when you are immersed and rise up again, there, certainly, is an image of the Resurrection. So as Christ’s Resurrection is interpreted by the Apostle as a regeneration, so also this resurrection from the font is a regeneration.

St Ambrose, On the Sacraments 2:20-23, 3:1-2; (1972) tr. Yarnold

Wednesday of the Fourth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE WRITINGS OF ST PROSPER OF AQUITAINE

There can be no reason to doubt that Jesus Christ our Lord died for the unbelievers and the sinners. If there had been anyone who did not belong to these, then Christ would not have died for all. But he did die for all without exception. There is no one, therefore, in all mankind who was not, before the reconciliation which Christ effected in his blood, either a sinner or an unbeliever.

The whole of mankind was under the sway of sin, in fetters because of the very same guilt. No one of the ungodly, who differed only in their degree of unbelief, could be saved without Christ’s redemption. This redemption spread throughout the world to become the good news for all without any distinction. In fact, on the fiftieth day after the paschal feast on which the true Lamb had offered himself as a victim to God, when the Apostles and those who were of one mind with them were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the language of all the nations, a multitude of men of different races, stirred by the miracle, flocked together, and in them the whole world was to hear the Gospel of Christ. There were then assembled, as Scripture says, Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews also and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, who all heard the wonderful works of God preached in their own tongues. Their testimony was to spread far and wide also to the more distant nations. We believe that God’s providence had willed the expansion of the Roman Empire as a preparation for his design over the nations, who were to be called into the unity of the body of Christ: He first gathered them under the authority of one Empire.

But the grace of Christianity is not content with the boundaries that are Rome’s. Grace has now submitted to the sceptre of the Cross of Christ many peoples whom Rome could not subject with her arms, though Rome by her primacy of the apostolic priesthood has become greater as the citadel of religion than as the seat of power.

St Prosper of Aquitaine, The Call of all Nations II.16; Word in Season III, 2nd ed.

Thursday of the Fourth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON AN EASTER HYMN OF ST GREGORY NAZIANZEN BY ST DOROTHEUS OF GAZA

The Apostle urges us to worship God in a way worthy of rational creatures, by offering him our bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to him. How are we to offer our bodies to God as a living sacrifice? By no longer obeying the promptings of body and mind, but being guided by the Spirit, and not gratifying the desires of our fallen nature. For that is how we put to death what is earthly in us. Such a sacrifice is said to be living, holy, and pleasing to God.

But why is it called a living sacrifice? Because while an animal victim is sacrificed and dies at the same time, Christians who offer themselves to God sacrifice themselves daily but remain alive. As David says: For your sake we are put to death all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.

‘Let us offer ourselves,’ says St Gregory; that is, let us sacrifice ourselves, let us die to ourselves all day long, like all the Saints, for the sake of Christ our God, for the sake of him who died for us.

But how did the Saints die to themselves? By not loving the world or anything in the world, as the Catholic Epistles say, but renouncing everything that panders to the appetites, or entices the eyes, and all pride in possessions, that is, pleasure-seeking, covetousness, and vainglory, and taking up the Cross to follow Christ, crucifying the world to themselves and themselves to the world. About this the Apostle says: Those who belong to Christ have crucified the body, with its passions and desires. That is how the Saints died to themselves.

But how did they offer themselves? By not living for themselves, but according to God’s commandments, giving up their own desires in order to obey God, and to love him and their neighbours. As St Peter said: We have given up everything to follow you. What did he give up? He had no money or property, no silver or gold. All he had was his fishing net, and that was old, as St John Chrysostom remarked. But he gave up, as he said, all his own desires, all worldly attachments, so that it is clear that if he had possessed wealth and property he would have despised these as well. Then he took up his Cross and followed Christ, according to the words: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. That is how the Saints offered themselves: dying, as we said, to all disordered inclinations and self-will, and living only for Christ and his commandments.

St Dorotheus of Gaza, Discourse 16,167-169 (SC 92:462-464); Word in Season III, 2nd ed.

Friday of the Fourth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

The Lord Jesus, having prayed at length to the Father, called to himself those he desired and appointed twelve to be with him, whom he might send to preach the kingdom of God. These Apostles he established in the form of a College or permanent assembly, at the head of which he placed Peter who was chosen from amongst them. He sent them first of all to the children of Israel and then to all peoples, so that, sharing in his power, they might make all peoples his disciples and sanctify and govern them. Thus they would spread the Church, administer it under the guidance of the Lord, and shepherd it until the end of the world. They were fully confirmed in this mission on the day of Pentecost according to the Lord’s promise: You will receive power when the Holy Spirit descends on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

So, just as by the Lord’s decree St Peter and the rest of the Apostles constitute a unique apostolic College, so the Roman Pontiff, Peter’s successor, and the Bishops, the successors of the Apostles, are related with and united to one another. By ancient discipline the Bishops throughout the whole world lived in communion with one another and with the Roman Pontiff in a bond of unity, charity and peace; they also held Councils in order to settle together, in a decision rendered balanced and equitable by the advice of many, all questions of major importance. Both these facts show clearly the collegiate character and structure of the episcopal order, which is confirmed by the holding of Ecumenical Councils in the course of the centuries. Indeed, pointing to it also quite clearly is the custom, dating from very early times, of summoning a number of Bishops to take part in the elevation of one newly chosen to the highest sacerdotal office. A man is made a member of the episcopal body by sacramental consecration and hierarchical communion with the head and members of the College.

This College, composed of many members, is the expression of the diversity and universality of the People of God. It also shows the unity of the flock of Christ because it is assembled under one head. In it the Bishops, whilst loyally respecting the primacy and pre-eminence of their head, exercise their own proper authority for the good of their faithful and of the whole Church, whose organic structure and harmony are strengthened by the continued influence of the Holy Spirit. The supreme authority over the whole Church, which this College possesses, is exercised in a solemn way in an Ecumenical Council. Every Ecumenical Council is confirmed or at least recognized as such by the successor of Peter and it is the prerogative of the Roman Pontiff to convoke such Councils, to preside over them and to confirm them.

Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 19, 22

Saturday of the Fourth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM ON THE MYSTERIES BY ST AMBROSE

What did you see? Water, certainly, but not water alone; you saw the Deacons ministering there, and the Bishop asking questions and sanctifying. First of all, the Apostle taught you that you should not consider the things which we see, but the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. Believe, then, that the presence of the Godhead is there. Do you believe the working, and not believe the presence? How can you have the working without the presence?

Consider, however, how ancient is this mystery which was prefigured even in the origin of the world itself. In the very beginning, when God made the heaven and the earth, the Spirit, it is said, moved upon the waters. Take another testimony. All flesh was corrupted by its iniquities, as God said, My Spirit shall not remain among men, because they are flesh, by which he shows that the grace of the Spirit is turned away by carnal impurity and the pollution of grave sin. Because of this God, who desired to restore what was lacking, sent the flood and commanded the just man Noah to go up into the ark. Noah, as the flood was subsiding, first sent out a raven which did not return and then sent a dove which returned with an olive branch. You see the water, you see the wood, you see the dove, do you still hesitate as to the mystery?

The water, then, is that in which the flesh is dipped, that all carnal sin may be washed away and all wickedness therein buried. The wood is that on which the Lord Jesus was fastened when he suffered for us. The dove is that in the form of which the Holy Spirit descended, as you have read in the New Testament, who inspires in you peace of soul and tranquillity of mind. The raven is the figure of sin, which goes forth and does not return, if, in you, too, righteousness is preserved both inwardly and outwardly. You must not, then, trust your bodily eyes; that which is not seen is seen more truly, for the object of sight is temporal, but what is discerned by the mind and the spirit is eternal.

Is there, then, here any room left for doubt, when the Father clearly calls from heaven in the Gospel narrative, and says: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased? When the Son also speaks, upon whom the Holy Spirit showed himself in the likeness of a dove? When the Holy Spirit also speaks, who came down in the likeness of a dove? When Scripture testifies that at the prayer of Jerubbaal, fire came down from heaven, and again, when Elijah prayed, fire was sent forth and consecrated the sacrifice.

Do not consider the merits of individuals, but the office of the priests. Or, if you look at the merits, consider the priest as Elijah. Look also upon the merits of Peter and Paul who handed down to us this mystery which they had received of the Lord Jesus. To those of old a visible fire was sent that they might believe; for us who believe, the Lord works invisibly. Believe, then, that the Lord Jesus who said, where two or three are, there am I also, is present at the invocation of the priest. How much more where the Church is and where his Mysteries are does he truly impart his presence!

St Ambrose, On the Mysteries, 3.8-12, 15; 5.26-28; NPNF 2.10 (1989) tr. de Romestin

Easter Week 5

Sunday of the Fifth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM ON THE PASCHAL SOLEMNITY BY EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA

In the time of Moses the paschal lamb was sacrificed only once a year, on the fourteenth day of the first month toward evening, but we of the new covenant celebrate our Passover every week on the Lord’s day. We are continually being filled with the body of the Saviour and sharing in the blood of the Lamb. Daily we gird ourselves with chastity and prepare, staff in hand, to follow the path of the Gospel. Leaning on the rod that came forth from the root of Jesse, we are always departing from Egypt in search of the solitude of the desert. We are constantly setting out on our journey to God and celebrating the Passover. The Gospel would have us do these things not only once a year but daily.

We hold our eucharistic celebration every week on the day of our Lord and Saviour, for this is our paschal feast, the feast of the true Lamb who redeemed us. We do not circumcise the body with a knife, but with the sharp edge of the word of God we cut away all evil from our souls. We use no unleavened bread, except for that of sincerity and truth. Grace has freed us from outworn Jewish customs and created us anew in the image of God. It has given us a new Law, a new circumcision, a new Passover, and made us Jews inwardly, thus releasing us from our former bondage.

On the fifth day of the week, while having supper with his disciples, the Saviour said to them: With all my heart I have longed to eat this Passover with you. It was not the old Jewish Passover that he desired to share with his disciples, but the new Passover of the new covenant that he was giving to them, and that many prophets and upright people before him had longed to see. He proclaimed his desire for the new Passover which he, the Word himself, in his infinite thirst for the salvation of the whole human race, was establishing as a feast to be celebrated by all peoples everywhere. The Passover of Moses was not for all peoples, indeed it could not be, because the Law allowed it to be celebrated only in Jerusalem. Christ’s desire, then, must have been not for that old Passover, but for the saving mystery of the new covenant which was for everyone.

And so we too should eat this Passover with Christ We should cleanse our minds of all the leaven of evil and wickedness and be filled with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, becoming Jews inwardly, in our souls, where the true circumcision takes place. We should anoint the lintel of our mind with the blood of the Lamb who was sacrificed for us, and so ward off our destroyer. We should do this not only once a year, but every week, continually.

On the day before the Sabbath we fast in memory of our Saviour’s Passion, as the Apostles were the first to do when the bridegroom was taken from them. On the Lord’s day we receive life from the sacred body of our saving Passover and our souls are sealed with his precious blood.

Eusebius of Caesarea, On the Paschal Solemnity 7.9.10-12 (PG 24:701-706); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Monday of the Fifth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM A HOMILY BY ST ANASTASIUS OF ANTIOCH

Christ, who had shown by his words and actions that he was truly God and Lord of the universe, said to his disciples as he was about to go up to Jerusalem: We are going up to Jerusalem now, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the Gentiles and the chief priests and scribes to be scourged and mocked and crucified.

These words bore out the predictions of the prophets, who had foretold the death he was to die in Jerusalem. From the beginning Holy Scripture had foretold Christ’s death, the sufferings that would precede it, and what would happen to his body afterward. Scripture also affirmed that these things were going to happen to one who was immortal and incapable of suffering because he was God.

Only by reflecting upon the meaning of the incarnation can we see how it is possible to say with perfect truth both that Christ suffered and that he was incapable of suffering, and why the Word of God, in himself incapable of suffering, came to suffer. In fact we could have been saved in no other way, as Christ alone knew and those to whom he revealed this truth. For he knows all the secrets of the Father, even as the Spirit penetrates the depths of all mysteries.

It was necessary for Christ to suffer: his Passion was absolutely unavoidable. He said so himself when he called his companions dull and slow to believe because they failed to recognize that he had to suffer and so enter into his glory. Leaving behind him the glory that had been his with the Father before the world was made, he had gone forth to save his people. This salvation, however, could be achieved only by the suffering of the author of our life, as Paul taught when he said that the author of our life himself was made perfect through suffering. Because of us he was deprived of his glory for a little while, the glory that was his as the Father’s only begotten Son, but through the Cross this glory is seen to have been restored to him in a certain way in the body that he had assumed. Explaining what water the Saviour referred to when he said: He that has faith in me shall have rivers of living water flowing from within him, John says in his Gospel that he was speaking of the Holy Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified. The glorification he meant was his death upon the Cross for which the Lord prayed to the Father before undergoing his Passion, asking his Father to give him the glory that he had in his presence before the world began.

St Anastasius of Antioch, Oration 4,1-2 (PG 89:1347-1349); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

Your Graces will have noticed when the book of the Acts of the Apostles was being read that Paul was talking at Athens. The Athenians enjoyed a great reputation among other peoples for every kind of learning. The city was the native home of great philosophers. From it had spread through the rest of Greece and other countries of the world a complex variety of philosophies. That’s where the Apostle was talking, that’s where he was proclaiming Christ crucified, to the Jews indeed a stumbling block, to the nations folly; but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. When he finished his address and they heard mention of the resurrection of the dead, which is the most distinctive point of the faith of Christians, some of them scoffed, while others said, We will hear you again on this matter.

Now, there is one overriding concern common to all philosophers within which they divide up into five different sets of special opinions. In common, all philosophers strive by dedication, investigation, discussion, by their way of life, to lay hold of the blessed life. This is their one reason for philosophising; but I rather think the philosophers also have this in common with us. I mean, if I were to ask you why you became Christians, every single one of you would answer me truthfully: ‘For the sake of the blessed life.’ Therefore the urge for the blessed life is common to philosophers and Christians, and I would even say common to the whole human race. People who are good, after all, are good in order to be happy, and those who are bad would not be bad unless they hoped they would thereby be made happy.

Now set before your eyes Epicureans, Stoics, and the Apostle; that is: Epicureans, Stoics, and Christians. Let’s first question the Epicureans on what thing it is that makes life happy. They answer, ‘Bodily pleasure.’ The Stoic answers: ‘A virtuous mind.’ The Christian: ‘The gift of God.’ And so brethren, in front of our very eyes Epicureans and Stoics are debating with the Apostle, and teaching us by their debate what we should reject and what we ought to choose. A virtuous mind is something very praiseworthy; but tell me, Stoic, where do you get it from? It is not really your virtuous mind that makes you happy, but the one who has given you virtue, who has inspired you to desire it, and granted you the capacity for it.

There is no life that deserves the name, to be called life, but a blessed life; and there can be no blessed life that is not eternal. This is what everybody wants: truth and life. But how is one to get to such a great possession, such a grand fortune? The philosophers have worked out for themselves ways that go wrong. They have missed the true way, because God opposes the proud. We would also miss it, unless it had come to us. That’s why the Lord says, I am the way. Lazy traveller, you didn’t want to come to the way; the way came to you. You were inquiring how you should go: I am the way; you were asking where you should go: I am the truth and the life. This is the doctrine of Christians; certainly not something to be set beside the doctrines of the philosophers, but to be set incomparably above them, whether the sordid one of the Epicureans, or the arrogant one of the Stoics.

St Augustine, Sermon 150, 1-2, 4, 8-10; WSA (1992) tr. Hill

Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE LIFE IN CHRIST BY NICHOLAS CABASILAS

After receiving the Sacrament of Chrismation, we approach the Holy Table, the consummation of our life in Christ, which leaves no further happiness to be desired. Now it is no longer a question of sharing in Christ’s death or burial or in a higher kind of life, but of welcoming the risen Lord himself. It is no longer the gifts of the Spirit that we receive, insofar as we are able, but our benefactor himself, the very temple that enshrines all gifts.

Christ is present in each of the Sacraments: he himself confirms us and cleanses us, and he is our food. He is present to those receiving the Sacraments of initiation, though in different ways. In Baptism he takes away the stain of sin and imprints his own image on the baptized. In Chrismation he brings into action the gifts of the Holy Spirit, of which his own flesh is the repository. But when he leads communicants to his Table and gives them his body to eat he completely transforms them, raising them to his own level. This is the last Sacrament we receive because it is impossible to go beyond it or to add to it anything whatever.

We remain imperfect even after Baptism has produced in us its full effect because we have not yet received the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are given in Chrismation Those baptized by Philip did not receive the Holy Spirit simply by the grace of Baptism: it was necessary for John and Peter to lay their hands on them. As Scripture says, the Holy Spirit had not yet come down on any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.

Yet even among those who had been filled with the Spirit and who prophesied, spoke in tongues and displayed other such gifts, there were some in the time of the Apostles who were so far from being divine and spiritual as to be guilty of envy, rivalry, contention, and other similar vices. This is what Paul referred to when he wrote to them: You are still unspiritual and are living on a purely human plane. They were indeed spiritual by reason of the graces they had received, but these graces did not suffice to free them from all sinfulness. With the Eucharist, however, it is different. No such charge can be brought against those in whom the Bread of Life, which has saved them from death, has had its full effect and who have not brought to this feast any wrongful dispositions. If this Sacrament is fully effective it is quite impossible for it to allow the slightest imperfection to remain in those who receive it.

If you would know the reason for this, it is because through communion, in fulfilment of his promise, Christ dwells in us and we in him. He lives in me, he said, and I in him. When Christ lives in us, what can we lack? When we live in Christ, what more can we desire? We at once become spiritual in body and soul and in all our faculties because our soul is united to his soul, our body to his body, our blood to his blood. The consequence is that the higher prevails over the lower, the divine over the human. As Paul says, referring to the Resurrection: What is mortal is swallowed up by life. And elsewhere he writes: It is no longer I who live: it is Christ who lives in me.

Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ, 4 (PG 150:582-583); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Thursday of the Fifth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE LIFE IN CHRIST BY NICHOLAS CABASILAS

The purpose of Chrismation is to enable us to share in the power of the Holy Spirit. This anointing brings the Lord Jesus himself to dwell in us, our only salvation and hope. Through him we are made sharers in the Holy Spirit and are led to the Father. Unfailingly it procures for Christians those gifts that are needed in every age, gifts such as faith, reverence for God, prayer, love, and purity. It does so even though many are unaware of having received such gifts. Many do not know the power of this Sacrament or even that there is a Holy Spirit, as it says in the Book of Acts, because they were anointed before reaching the age of reason and afterward they blinded their souls by sin. Nevertheless, the Spirit does in truth give the newly initiated his gifts, distributing them to each one as he wills; and our Lord, who promised to be with us always, never ceases to shower blessings on us.

Chrismation cannot be superfluous. We obtain the remission of our sins in Baptism and we receive the body of Christ at the Altar. These Sacraments will remain until the unveiled appearance of their author. It cannot be doubted, then, that Christians also enjoy the benefits that belong to this holy anointing and receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit. How could some Sacraments be fruitful and this one without effect? How can we believe that Saint Paul’s words: He who promised is faithful, apply to some Sacraments but not to this one? If we discount the value of any Sacrament we must discount the value of all, since it is the same power that acts in each of them, it is the immolation of the same Lamb, it is the same death and the same blood that gives each of them its efficacy.

The Holy Spirit is given to some, as St Paul says, to enable them to do good to others and to edify the Church by prophesying, teaching revealed truth, or healing the sick by a mere word. The spirit is given to others for their own sanctification, imparting to them a shining faith and reverence for God, or making them outstanding in purity, charity, or humility.

Nicholas Cabaslilas, The Life in Christ, 3 (PG 150:574-575); Word in Season III, 2nd ed.

Friday of the Fifth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE LETTERS OF ST AUGUSTINE

In accordance with ancient prediction, he comes: the promised Christ; and in his birth, life, words, and actions, in his Passion, death, Resurrection, and Ascension, all that the prophets foretold is fulfilled. He sends the Holy Spirit upon the believers as they are all gathered together in one place, waiting with expectant longing for the promised gift. And as soon as they are filled with the Holy Spirit, they begin to speak in the languages of every nation, to refute errors boldly, to preach the saving truth of the Gospel, to urge people to repent of their former sinful lives, and to promise them the grace of God’s forgiveness. Their proclamation of the true religion and of God’s loving kindness is confirmed by signs and wonders. Unbelievers stir up cruel persecution against them. They endure what they have been warned to expect, they hope for what they have been promised, and they teach what they have been commanded. Few in number, they are no sooner dispersed throughout the world than they convert whole peoples with marvellous ease; in the midst of their enemies they grow in strength. Persecution multiplies them; no suffering, no trial can hinder them from spreading to the very ends of the earth. Once a despised handful of ignorant men, they become a noble company of enlightened teachers, brilliantly gifted and of polished speech, who press into Christ’s service for the preaching of the Gospel all the skill and experience of the wise, the eloquent, and the learned.

Now in adversity, now in prosperity, they vigilantly practice patience and self-control, and in the calamities which exhaust the earth and herald the final consummation at the end of the world, they discern the fulfilment of prophecy and so look forward with increased confidence to the eternal happiness of their heavenly country. Although in all these events unbelieving and godless nations continue to rage against the Church of Christ, the Church gains the victory by its endurance and by the profession of a faith unshaken by the cruelty of its adversaries.

For long ages the truth lay hidden behind mysterious prophecies, but now it is revealed in the sacrifice of Christ, and those sacrificial rites which foreshadowed it are abolished by the destruction of the Jewish temple. By degrees the temples of the heathen divinities are also being destroyed together with their images and impious rites, as the prophets foretold. Under cover of Christ’s name heresies spring up against his very person. This too was predicted, but by means of such errors the doctrines of our holy faith are developed.

All these things we now see accomplished in fulfilment of the Scriptures, and from so many important instances of fulfilled prophecy we confidently look forward to the fulfilment of the remainder. Is there anyone, then, longing for eternity and conscious of the shortness of this present life, who can resist such clear and perfect proofs of the divine origin of our faith?

St Augustine, Letter 137, 16 (PL 33:523-524); Word in Season III, 2nd ed.

Saturday of the Fifth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE FIRST APOLOGY IN DEFENCE OF THE CHRISTIANS BY ST JUSTIN MARTYR

None may share the Eucharist with us unless they believe that what we teach is true; unless they are washed in the regenerating waters of Baptism for the remission of their sins; and unless they live in accordance with the principles given us by Christ.

We do not consume the eucharistic bread and wine as ordinary food and drink, for we have been taught that as Jesus Christ our Saviour became a man of flesh and blood by the power of the Word of God, so also the food that our flesh and blood assimilates for its nourishment becomes the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus by the power of his own words contained in the prayer of thanksgiving.

The Apostles in their recollections, which are called Gospels, handed down to us what Jesus commanded them to do. They tell us that he took bread, gave thanks and said: Do this in memory of me, this is my body. In the same way he took the cup, he gave thanks and said: This is my blood, and he distributed it only to them. Ever since then we have constantly reminded one another of these things. The rich among us help the poor and we are always united. For all that we receive we praise the Creator of the universe through his Son Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit

On Sunday we have a common assembly of all our members, whether they live in the city or in the outlying districts. The recollections of the Apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. When the reader has finished, the president of the assembly speaks to us, urging everyone to imitate the examples of virtue we have heard about in the readings. Then we all stand up together and pray.

On the conclusion of our prayer, bread and wine and water are brought forward. The president offers prayers and gives thanks to the best of his ability, and the people give their assent by saying, ‘Amen’. The Eucharist is distributed, everyone present communicates, and the Deacons take it to those who are absent

The wealthy if they wish may make a contribution, and they themselves decide the amount. The collection is placed in the custody of the president, who uses it to help the orphans and widows and all who for any reason are in distress, whether because they are sick, in prison, or away from home. In a word, he takes care of all who are in need.

We hold our common assembly on Sunday because it is the first day of the week the day on which God put darkness and chaos to flight and created the world, and because on that same day our Saviour Jesus Christ rose from the dead. For he was crucified on Friday and on Sunday he appeared to his Apostles and disciples and taught them the things that we have passed on for your consideration.

St Justin Martyr, First Apology, 66-67; Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Easter Week 6

Sunday of the Sixth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM A HOMILY ON ST JOHN’S GOSPEL BY ST AUGUSTINE

The Lord said, I tell you the truth: it is for your own good that I am going away, because unless I go the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go I will send him to you.

In other words, it is to your advantage that I should be taken from you as I am now, in the condition of a servant. Now indeed I dwell among you as the Word made flesh; but I do not want you to go on loving me with a merely natural affection, content with baby’s milk and lacking any ambition to leave the nursery. It is for your own good that I am going away, because unless I do the Advocate will not come to you. So far I have given you nothing but children’s food. Unless I wean you, you will never have any appetite for solid meat. As long as you cling to my bodily presence in a purely natural way you will remain incapable of receiving the Holy Spirit.

A question arises, however: when the Lord said that he had to go before the Advocate could come to the disciples, and that if he went he would send him to them, did he mean that it was impossible for him to send the Holy Spirit while he was still on earth? Surely no one would make such an assertion. He had never left the dwelling-place of the Spirit; nor had he come from the Father in such a way as no longer to be with the Father. Besides, how could it have been impossible for Christ to send the Holy Spirit while he was yet on earth, when we know he had received the abiding presence of the Spirit at his Baptism? In fact, we know that he and the Holy Spirit were inseparable.

What this Gospel passage means is that the disciples could not receive the Holy Spirit as long as they only knew Christ according to the flesh. Hence the assertion made by the Apostle Paul after he himself had received the Holy Spirit: Even if we used to think of Christ according to the flesh, we do so no longer. When we know the incarnate Word spiritually, our knowledge even of his flesh becomes more than merely according to the flesh. This, without any doubt, is the lesson their good Master wanted to give the disciples when he told them he was going away for their own good, otherwise the Advocate would not come to them.

The withdrawal of Christ’s bodily presence from his disciples meant not only that the Holy Spirit would come to them, but that the Father and the Son would also dwell with them in a spiritual manner. Christ’s departure did not mean that the Holy Spirit would simply take his place. It meant rather that together with Christ the Spirit would make his home in the hearts of the disciples. If this were not so, what would become of our Lord’s promise to be with his disciples always, to the end of time? And what of that other saying of his, The Father and I will come to him and make our home with him? The fact is that our Lord promised to send the Holy Spirit in such a way that he himself would always remain with his disciples. And when through the coming of the Spirit their purely natural and human affections had become spiritualised, then they would be capable of the indwelling of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

St Augustine, Commentary on John’s Gospel, 94.4-5 (PL 35:1869-1870); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Monday of the Sixth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST MAXIMUS OF TURIN

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Our Lord blossomed afresh when he rose from the tomb, and he bore fruit when he ascended to heaven. As a flower he burgeoned from the depths of the earth; as the fruit he took his place on his lofty throne. Enduring the torment of the Cross alone, he is that grain which he himself describes; surrounded by his Apostles, now unshakeable in their faith, he is the fruit. In his converse with his disciples during those forty days after his Resurrection, he taught them the fullness of mature wisdom, and reaped from them an abundant harvest by the life-giving power of his words. Then he ascended to heaven, bringing his Father the fruits of his incarnate life, and leaving in his disciples the seed of holiness. Just as the eagle leaves the low lying ground, makes for the heights, and climbs high to heaven, in like manner our Saviour left the lower regions, made for the heights of Paradise, and reached heaven’s highest summit.

But what of the fact that an eagle often steals its prey by carrying off what belongs to another? Even so, our Saviour did something not unlike that, for in a manner of speaking he stole his prey when he snatched the manhood he had assumed from the jaws of hell and carried it off to heaven, freeing the human race from slavery to an alien prince, that is, from the power of the devil, and leading it captive into a higher captivity. As the prophet says, Ascending on high he led captivity captive; he gave gifts to men. The undoubted meaning of these words is this: that since the devil held the human race captive, our Lord, by wresting it from him, took it captive himself and as the prophet tells us led that very captivity to the heights of heaven. Both captivities do indeed bear the same name, but they differ one from the other. The devil’s captivity means enslavement; Christ’s, on the contrary, means restoration to freedom.

St Maximus of Turin, Sermon 56, 1-2 (CCL 23:224-225); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Tuesday of the Sixth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM A SERMON ON THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

The Gospel describes the Lord’s life upon earth and his return to heaven. But the sublime prophet David, as though unencumbered by the weight of his body, rose above himself to mingle with the heavenly powers and record for us their words as they accompanied the Master when he came down from heaven. Ordering the angels on earth entrusted with the care of human life to raise the gates, they cried: Lift up your gates, you princes; be lifted up you everlasting doors. Let the King of glory enter.

But because wherever he is, he who contains all things in himself makes himself like those who receive him, not only becoming a man among men, but also when among angels conforming his nature to theirs, the gatekeepers asked: Who is this King of glory?

He is the strong one, they were told, mighty in battle, the one who is to grapple with and overthrow the captor of the human race who has the power of death. When this last enemy has been destroyed, he will restore us to freedom and peace.

Now the mystery of Christ’s death is fulfilled, victory is won, and the Cross, the sign of triumph, is raised on high. He who gives us the noble gifts of life and a kingdom has ascended into heaven, leading captivity captive. Therefore the same command is repeated. Once more the gates of heaven must open for him. Our guardian angels, who have now become his escorts, order them to be flung wide so that he may enter and regain his former glory. But he is not recognized in the soiled garments of our life, in clothes reddened by the winepress of human sin. Again the escorting angels are asked: Who is this King of glory? The answer is no longer, The strong one, mighty in battle, but, The lord of hosts, he who has gained power over the whole universe, who has recapitulated all things in himself who is above all things, who has restored all creation to its former state: He is the King of glory.

You see how much David has added to our joy in this feast and contributed to the gladness of the Church. Therefore as far as we can let us imitate the prophet by our love for God, by gentleness and by patience with those who hate us. Let the prophet’s teaching help us to live in a way pleasing to God in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

St Gregory of Nyssa, On the Ascension (Jaeger 9.1.323-327); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Wednesday of the Sixth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM A SERMON BY THE VENERABLE JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

Christ’s going to the Father is at once a source of sorrow because it involves his absence, and of joy because it involves his presence. And out of the doctrine of his Resurrection and Ascension spring those Christian paradoxes, often spoken of in Scripture, that we are sorrowing yet always rejoicing; as having nothing yet possessing all things.

This, indeed, is our state at present; we have lost Christ and we have found him; we see him not, yet we discern him. We embrace his feet, yet he says, Touch me not. How is this? It is thus: we have lost the sensible and conscious perception of him; we cannot look on him, hear him, converse with him, follow him from place to place; but we enjoy the spiritual, immaterial, inward, mental, real sight and possession of him; a possession more real and more present than that which the Apostles had in the days of his flesh, because it is spiritual, because it is invisible. When he says that he should go away, and come again and abide forever, he is speaking not merely of his omnipresent, divine nature, but of his human nature. As being Christ he says that he, the incarnate mediator, shall be with his Church forever.

But again, you may be led to explain his declaration thus: ‘He has come again, but in his Spirit; that is, his Spirit has come instead of him; and when it is said that he is with us, this only means that his Spirit is with us.’ No one, doubtless, can deny this most gracious and consolatory truth, that the Holy Spirit has come; but why has he come? To supply Christ’s absence or to accomplish his presence? Surely to make him present. Let us not suppose that God the Holy Spirit comes in such sense that God the Son remains away. No; he has not so come that Christ does not come, but rather he comes that Christ may come in his coming. Through the Holy Spirit we have communion with Father and Son. In Christ we are built together, says St Paul, for a dwelling place of God through the Spirit. You are the temple of God, the Spirit of God dwells in you. Thus the Holy Spirit does not take the place of Christ in the soul, but secures that place for Christ. St Paul insists much on this presence of Christ in those who have his Spirit. Do you not know, he says, that your bodies are the members of Christ? By one Spirit we are all baptized one body… you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it?

The Holy Spirit, then, vouchsafes to come to us, that by his coming Christ may come to us, not carnally or visibly, but may enter into us. And thus he is both present and absent, absent in that he has left the earth, present in that he has not left the faithful soul; or, as he says himself: The world sees me no more, but you see me.

Ven. John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, VI, 121-127; Word in Season III, 2nd ed.

The Ascension

A READING FROM A SERMON ON THE ASCENSION BY ST LEO THE GREAT

After the blessed and glorious Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, when the divine power in three days raised the true Temple of God which Jewish wickedness had destroyed, on this very day, dearly beloved, the number of the forty holy days is completed. While the Lord draws out the time of his bodily presence, our faith in his Resurrection is being strengthened by the necessary signs. The Death of Christ had greatly disturbed the hearts of the disciples. When the holy women, as the Gospel story has told us, proclaimed that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, the sepulchre was empty, and that angels were witnesses of the living Lord, their words seemed to the Apostles and other disciples as pure nonsense.

The Spirit of Truth would by no means have permitted this wavering in human weakness to enter the hearts of his preachers, if their trembling anxiety and questioning delay were not to have established the foundations of our faith. Consequently, it was our doubts, our danger, that was being considered in the Apostles. We, in the guise of the Apostles, were being instructed against the slanders of the wicked and the proofs of earthly wisdom. Let us give thanks for necessary slowness of the Holy Fathers. They doubted so that we need not doubt.

These days, dearly beloved, between the Resurrection of the Lord and his Ascension provided the opportunity to confirm great mysteries, to reveal great secrets. In these days the Holy Spirit was poured into all the Apostles by the breath of the Lord; and to blessed Peter above all the others, after the keys of the kingdom, the care of the Lord’s sheep is entrusted. Through all this time which went by between the Resurrection of the Lord and his Ascension, the providence of God took thought for this: that they should recognize the Lord Jesus Christ as truly risen, who was truly born, truly suffered, and truly died.

The result was that not only were they not afflicted with sadness but were filled with great joy when the Lord went into the heights of heaven. Truly it was a great and indescribable source of rejoicing when, in the sight of the heavenly multitudes, the nature of our human race ascended over the dignity of all heavenly creatures, to pass the angelic orders and to be raised beyond the heights of archangels. In its ascension it did not stop at any other height until this same nature was received at the seat of the eternal Father, to be associated on the throne of the glory of that One to whose nature it was joined in the Son.

Since the Ascension of Christ is our elevation, and since, where the glory of the Head has preceded its, there hope for the body is also invited, let us exult, dearly beloved, with worthy joy and be glad with a holy thanksgiving. Today we are established not only as possessors of Paradise, but we have even penetrated the heights of the heavens in Christ, prepared more fully for it through the indescribable grace of Christ which we had lost through the ill will of the devil. Those whom the violent enemy threw down from the happiness of our first dwelling, the Son of God has placed, incorporated within himself, at the right hand of the Father, the Son of God who lives and reigns with God the Father Almighty and with the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen.

St Leo the Great, Sermon 73; FoC 93 (1996) tr. Freeland & Conway

Friday of the Sixth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM A SERMON ON THE ASCENSION BY ST LEO THE GREAT

The faith of the infant Church was increased by the Lord’s Ascension and strengthened by the gift of the Spirit; it was to remain unshaken by fetters and imprisonment, exile and hunger, fire and ravening beasts, and the most refined tortures ever devised by brutal persecutors. Even the blessed Apostles, though they had been strengthened by so many miracles and instructed by so much teaching, took fright at the cruel suffering of the Lord’s Passion and could not accept his Resurrection without hesitation. Yet they made such progress through his Ascension that they now found joy in what had terrified them before. They were able to fix their minds on Christ's divinity as he sat at the right hand of the Father, since what was presented to their bodily eyes no longer hindered them from turning all their attention to the realization that he had not left his Father when he came down to earth, nor abandoned his disciples when he ascended into heaven.

The truth is that the Son of Man was revealed as Son of God in a more perfect and transcendent way once he had entered into his Father’s glory. He now began to be indescribably more present in his divinity to those from whom he was further removed in his humanity. A more mature faith enabled their minds to stretch upward to the Son in his equality with the Father; it no longer needed contact with Christ’s tangible body, in which as man he is inferior to the Father. For while his glorified body retained the same nature, the faith of those who believed in him was now summoned to heights where, as the Father’s equal, the only-begotten Son is reached not by physical handling but by spiritual discernment. This explains why our Lord said to the Church in the person of Mary Magdalene, as she ran forward to cling to him: Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father. In other words, I do not want you to come to me corporeally, to recognize me by what your bodily senses tell you; I want you to wait for something higher.

And when the eyes of his disciples, rapt in wonder, followed their ascending Lord to heaven, there stood beside them two angels, in garments of marvellously shining whiteness, who said to them: Men of Galilee, why are you standing looking up to heaven? This Jesus who has been taken from you will come again in the same way as you have seen him going up to heaven. By these words all the Church’s children have been taught to believe that Jesus Christ will come again visibly in the same flesh in which he ascended, and that there can be no doubt concerning the subjection of all things to him who was served by angels from the moment of his birth. As it was an angel who announced to the blessed Virgin that Christ would be conceived of the Holy Spirit, so too it was the song of heavenly beings that told the shepherds of his virginal birth; and as the first attestations of his rising from the dead were delivered by messengers from on high, so it was the task of angels to proclaim that he would come in the same flesh to judge the world. All these things were intended to make us realise what tremendous angelic powers are to accompany him when he comes to judge, since such mighty spirits ministered to him even when he came to be judged himself.

St Leo the Great, Sermon 74, 3-4 (CCL 138A:457-459); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Saturday of the Sixth Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM A SERMON ON THE ASCENSION BY ST LEO THE GREAT

Dearly beloved, let us exult with spiritual joy and rejoice before the Lord with the thanksgiving that is his due, freely raising the eyes of our hearts to Christ’s dwelling place on high. Let no earthly desires weigh down the minds that are summoned heavenward, no perishable things encumber those predestined for what is everlasting, no deceptive snares entangle the feet that have entered upon the path of truth. The faithful should make their way swiftly through these temporal things, knowing themselves to be mere pilgrims in this earthly vale. The world’s consolations may attract us, but they must be bravely passed by; it would be an unworthy act for us to embrace them We are urged to such total dedication by the blessed Apostle Peter, who, in that zeal for feeding Christ’s sheep, which his threefold profession of love for his Lord inspired in him, entreats us as strangers and pilgrims to abstain from carnal desires which war against the soul. And on whose behalf do these carnal desires wage war? Are they not tools of the devil, who enjoys bringing upward-striving men into bondage to lust for passing pleasures and robbing them of the place from which he himself has fallen? Against his plots each of the faithful must keep careful watch, so that he may be able to repulse the enemy from whatever quarter he may attack.

Now nothing is more effective against the devil’s wiles, dearly beloved, than tender compassion and unselfish love; by these every sin can be either avoided or conquered. But such a degree of virtue cannot be attained until its contrary is overcome; and there is surely nothing so hostile to mercy and works of charity as the love of money, from the root of which all evil springs up. Unless this noxious weed is starved to death, it is inevitable that the heart in which it has taken root will bring forth the thorns and briars of vice rather than any flower of true virtue. Therefore, my beloved, let us resist this most pestilent of evils and make charity our aim, for no virtue can flourish without it; and then by the same path of love which Christ trod when he came down to us, we shall be able to ascend to him, to whom, with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, belong honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

St Leo the Great, Sermon 74, 5 (CCL 138A:459-461); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Easter Week 7

Sunday of the Seventh Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ST JOHN’S GOSPEL BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

As the reason for his departure, our Lord mentioned his desire to open the way for our ascent to the heavenly places and to prepare a safe passage for us by making smooth the road that had previously been impassable. For heaven was then completely inaccessible to us – human foot had never trodden that pure and holy country of the angels. It was Christ who first prepared the way for our ascent there. By offering himself to God the Father as the firstfruits of all who are dead and buried, he gave us a way of entry into heaven and was himself the first man the inhabitants of heaven ever saw. The angels in heaven, knowing nothing of the sacred and profound mystery of the incarnation, were astonished at his coming and almost thrown into confusion by an event so strange and unheard of. Who is this coming from Edom? they asked; that is, from the earth. But the Spirit did not leave the heavenly throng ignorant of the wonderful wisdom of God the Father. Commanding them to open the gates of heaven in honour of the king and master of the universe, he cried out: Lift up your gates, you princes, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, that the king of glory may come in.

And so our Lord Jesus Christ has opened up for us a new and living way, as Paul says, not by entering a sanctuary made with hands, but by entering heaven itself to appear before God on our behalf. For Christ has not ascended in order to make his own appearance before God the Father. He was, is, and ever will be in the Father and in the sight of him from whom he receives his being, for he is his Father’s unfailing joy. But now the Word, who had never before been clothed in human nature, has ascended as a man to show himself in a strange and unfamiliar fashion. And he has done this on our account and in our name, so that being like us, though with his power as the Son, and hearing the command, Sit at my right hand, as a member of our race, he might transmit to all of us the glory of being children of God.

As man then he appeared before the Father on our behalf, to enable us whom original sin had excluded from his presence to see the Father’s face once more. As the Son he took his seat to enable us as sons through him to be called children of God. So Paul, who claims to speak for Christ, teaching that the whole human race has a share in the events of Christ’s life, says that God has raised us up with him and enthroned its with him in heaven. To Christ as the Son by nature belongs the prerogative of sitting at the Father’s side; this honour can rightly and truly be ascribed to him alone. Yet because his having become man means that he sits there as one who is in all respects like ourselves, as well as being as we believe God from God, in some mysterious way he passes this honour on to us.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on St John’s Gospel, 9 (PG 74:182-183);Word in Season III, 2nd ed.

Monday of the Seventh Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ST JOHN’S GOSPEL BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

All who receive the sacred flesh of Christ are united with him as members of his body. This is the teaching of St Paul when he speaks of the mystery of our religion that was hidden from former generations, but has now been revealed to the holy Apostles and Prophets by the Spirit; namely, that the Gentiles are joint-heirs with the Jews, that they are members of the same body, and that they have a share in the promise made by God in Christ Jesus.

If in Christ all of us, both ourselves and he who is within us by his own flesh, are members of the same body, is it not clear that we are one both with one another and with Christ? He is the bond that unites us, because he is at once both God and man

With regard to our unity in the Spirit we may say, following the same line of thought, that all of us who have received one and the same Spirit, the Holy Spirit, are united intimately both with one another and with God. Taken separately we are many, and Christ sends the Spirit who is both the Father’s Spirit and his own, to dwell in each of us. Yet that Spirit, being one and indivisible, gathers together those who are distinct from each other as individuals and causes them all to be seen as a unity in himself. Just as Christ’s sacred flesh has power to make those in whom it is present into one body, so the one, indivisible Spirit of God, dwelling in all, causes all to become one in spirit

Therefore Saint Paul appeals to us to bear with one another charitably, and to spare no effort in securing by the bonds of peace, the unity that comes from the Spirit. There is but one body and one Spirit just as there is but one hope held out to us by God’s call. There is one Lord, one faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and works through all, and is in all. If the one Spirit dwells in us, the one God and Father of all will be in us, and he through his Son will gather together into unity with one another and with himself all who share in the Spirit.

There is also another way of showing that we are made one by sharing in the Holy Spirit. If we have given up our worldly way of life and submitted once for all to the laws of the Spirit it must surely be obvious to everyone that by repudiating in a sense our own life, and taking on the supernatural likeness of the Holy Spirit who is united to us, our nature is transformed so that we are no longer mere men but also children of God, spiritual men, by reason of the share we have received in the divine nature. We are all one, therefore, in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We are one in mind and holiness, we are one through our communion in the sacred flesh of Christ, and through our sharing in the one Holy Spirit.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on St John’s Gospel, 11.11 (PG 74:559-562); Word in Season III.1

Tuesday of the Seventh Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE TREATISE ON THE HOLY SPIRIT BY ST BASIL THE GREAT

Who is there who can hear the names of the Holy Spirit and not feel exaltation in his soul, not lift up his thoughts to that supreme nature? For he is called the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, the upright Spirit, the guiding Spirit. His chief and distinguishing name is Holy Spirit.

To the Spirit all creatures turn for their sanctification; all who live virtuously seek him, and are, by his influence, refreshed and helped towards their own natural end.

He is the source of holiness, the light of our understanding, for to every mind he offers his own light for the discovery of truth.

Though by nature he is inaccessible, yet through his generosity men can receive him in themselves. He fills all creatures with his power, but only those who are worthy can participate in him. But all do not share him in the same measure; he distributes his power in proportion to men's faith.

He is simple in essence, but manifold in power. He is present to each in his fullness, and in his fullness is present everywhere. He is divided, but does not suffer by the division; all share in him, but he remains whole, like a sunbeam whose kindly influence benefits each creature as though it were present to that creature alone, and shines over land and sea and dissolves in the air.

So too the Spirit is present like the sun to each individual who is capable of receiving him, and emits an influence which is sufficient to help them all, but is not divided; and they profit by sharing in him according to their natures, not according to his power.

Through him hearts are raised on high, the weak are led by the hand, those who are advanced gain perfection. He it is who shines on those whose hearts are purified and stainless and makes them truly spiritual through the common communion they have with him.

Even as bright and shining bodies, once touched by a ray of light falling on them, become even more glorious and themselves cast another light, so too souls that carry the Spirit, and are enlightened by the Spirit, become spiritual themselves and send forth grace upon others.

This grace enables them to foresee the future, to understand mysteries, to grasp hidden things, to receive spiritual blessings, to have their thoughts fixed on heavenly things, and to dance with the angels. So is their joy unending, so is their perseverance in God unfailing, so do they acquire likeness to God, so – most sublime of all – do they themselves become divine.

St Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, 9.22-23; The Divine Office II

Wednesday of the Seventh Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

On the day of Pentecost when the Son had completed the work on earth assigned to him by the Father, the Holy Spirit was sent to sanctify the Church unceasingly so that through Christ, in the one Spirit, believers would have access to the Father. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life, a fountain of water welling up to give a life that is eternal. Through him the Father gives life to those who were dead because of their sins, and at last raises up their mortal bodies.

Building up and guiding the Church by means of varied gifts, both hierarchical and charismatic, and adorning her with his fruits, the Spirit leads her into all truth and gives her unity in communion and service. The Spirit is perpetually renewing the Church’s youth by the power of the Gospel and leading her to perfect union with her Bridegroom. The Spirit and the bride say to the Lord Jesus: ‘Come!’

The whole Church is thus shown to be a people made one as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one.

The body of believers as a whole, each one of whom has been anointed by the Holy One, cannot err in matters of faith They demonstrate this special inerrancy of theirs when their supernatural instinct of faith causes all from the Bishops down to the most humble lay person to agree in matters of faith and morals.

Through this instinct of faith, which is awakened and kept alive by the Spirit of truth, the people of God hold indefectibly to the faith once delivered to the Saints; with true insight they penetrate it more deeply and they apply it ever more perfectly in their lives. They do all this under the guidance of the sacred Magisterium of the Church to which they loyally defer, not as to the words of men, but as to the very word of God.

The Holy Spirit sanctifies and guides God’s people and enriches them with virtues through the Sacraments and other ministrations of the Church. He also distributes special graces among believers in every state of life, apportioning his gifts to each one as he wills. By these gifts the Spirit prepares them and makes them eager to undertake various tasks and offices which serve the renewal and building up of the Church As Scripture says: The power of the Spirit is shown in a particular way in each one for the good of all.

These charisms, the simpler and more widespread as well as the most outstanding, should fill us with a sense of gratitude, for they are especially adapted to the needs of the Church and are of the greatest value to her.

Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 4, 12; Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Thursday of the Seventh Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ST JOHN’S GOSPEL BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

After Christ had completed his mission on earth, it still remained necessary for us to become sharers in the divine nature of the Word. We had to give up our own life and be so transformed that we should begin to live an entirely new kind of life that would be pleasing to God. This was something we could do only by sharing in the Holy Spirit.

It was most fitting that the sending of the Spirit and his descent upon us should take place after the departure of Christ the Saviour. As long as Christ was with them in the flesh, it must have seemed to believers that they possessed every blessing in him; but when the time came for him to ascend to his heavenly Father, it was necessary for him to be united through his Spirit to those who worshiped him, and to dwell in our hearts through faith. Only by his own presence within us in this way could he give us the confidence to cry out, Abba, Father, make it easy for us to grow in holiness and, through our possession of the all-powerful Spirit, fortify us invincibly against the wiles of the devil and the assaults of other men.

It can easily be shown from examples both in the Old Testament and the New that the Spirit changes those in whom he comes to dwell; he so transforms them that they begin to live a completely new kind of life. Saul was told by the prophet Samuel: The Spirit of the Lord will take possession of you, and you shall be changed into another man. St Paul writes: As we behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces, that glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit, transforms us all into his own likeness, from one degree of glory to another.

Does this not show that the Spirit changes those in whom he comes to dwell and alters the whole pattern of their lives? With the Spirit within them it is quite natural for people who had been absorbed by the things of this world to become entirely otherworldly in outlook, and for cowards to become people of great courage. There can be no doubt that this is what happened to the disciples. The strength they received from the Spirit enabled them to hold firmly to the love of Christ and to face without fear the violence of their persecutors. Very true, then, was our Saviour’s saying that it was to their advantage for him to return to heaven: his return was the time appointed for the descent of the Holy Spirit.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on St John’s Gospel, 10 (PG 74:434); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Friday of the Seventh Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM THE MIRROR OF FAITH BY BLESSED WILLIAM OF SAINT-THIERRY

If you feel a natural hesitation when confronted with the more profound mysteries of faith, take courage, Christian soul, and say not contentiously but with loving submission: ‘How can these things be?’ Let your question be a prayer, let it be an expression of love, piety, and humble longing. Seek not to explore the heights of the divine majesty, but to find salvation in the saving deeds of God our Saviour.

Then the Messenger of God’s great design will reply: When the Paraclete comes, whom I shall send you from the Father, he will remind you of everything and teach you all truth. Even as no one knows the thoughts of man except the spirit of the man that is within him, so no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

Hasten therefore to share in the Holy Spirit. He is with you when you call upon him; you can call upon him only because he is already present. When he comes in answer to your prayer, he comes with an abundance of divine blessings. He is the river whose streams give joy to the city of God.

If when he comes he finds you humble, silent, and trembling at the words of God, he will rest upon you and reveal what God the Father has hidden from the wise and the prudent of this world. You will then begin to understand the things holy Wisdom could have told his disciples on earth, but which they were unable to bear until the Spirit of truth came who was to teach them all truth. We cannot hope to learn from the lips of any man truths that Truth himself could not convey. For he himself has told us: God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth, so those who wish to know him must seek understanding of their faith and perception of its pure and simple truth only through the Holy Spirit.

In the darkness and ignorance of this life the Holy Spirit is the light that enlightens the poor in spirit, the love that draws them on, the sweetness that attracts them, their access to God, the love of the loving. The Spirit is devotion and piety. From one degree of faith to the next the Spirit reveals to believers the justice of God, so that grace follows grace, and the faith that comes from hearing gives place to a faith enlightened by understanding.

Blessed William of Saint-Thierry, The Mirror of Faith (PL 180:384); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Saturday of the Seventh Week in Eastertide

A READING FROM ON THE TRINITY BY DIDYMUS THE BLIND

The Holy Spirit renews us in Baptism through his Godhead, which he shares with the Father and the Son. Finding us in a state of deformity, the Spirit restores our original beauty and fills us with his grace, leaving no room for anything unworthy of our love. The Spirit frees us from sin and death, and changes us from the earthly men we were, made of dust and ashes, into spiritual men, sharers in the divine glory, sons and heirs of God the Father, who bear a likeness to the Son and are his coheirs and his brothers, destined to reign with him and to share his glory. In place of earth the Spirit reopens heaven to us and gladly admits us into Paradise, giving us even now greater honour than the angels, and by the holy waters of Baptism extinguishing the unquenchable fires of hell.

We have two conceptions: to the human body we owe our first conception; to the divine Spirit, our second. John says: To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. All who believed in Christ, he says, received power to become children of God, that is, of the Holy Spirit, and to gain kinship with God. To show that their parent was God the Holy Spirit, he adds these words of Christ: I give you this solemn warning, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Visibly, through the ministry of priests, the font gives symbolic birth to our visible bodies. Invisibly, through the ministry of angels, the Spirit of God, whom even the mind’s eye cannot see, baptizes into himself both our souls and bodies, giving them a new birth

Speaking quite literally, and also in harmony with the words, of water and the Spirit, John the Baptist says of Christ: He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Since we are only vessels of clay, we must first be cleansed in water and then hardened by spiritual fire – for God is a consuming fire. We need the Holy Spirit to perfect and renew us, for the fire of the Spirit can also wash us and the water of the Spirit can also melt us down and recast us.

Didymus the Blind, On the Trinity, 2.12 (PG 39:667-674); Word in Season III, 1st ed.

Pentecost & Feastdays

Pentecost

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

The blessed day has dawned for us on which holy Church makes her first radiant appearance to the eyes of faith and sets the hearts of believers on fire. It is the day on which we celebrate the sending of the Holy Spirit by our Lord Jesus Christ, after he had risen from the dead and ascended into glory. In the Gospel it is written: If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, rivers of living water shall flow from his heart. The evangelist explains these words by adding: Jesus said this about the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive. For the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus had not yet been glorified. Now the glorification of Jesus took place when he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, but all was not yet accomplished. The Holy Spirit still had to be given; the one who made the promise had to send him. This is precisely what occurred at Pentecost.

After being in the company of his disciples for the forty days following his Resurrection, the Lord ascended into heaven, and on the fiftieth day – the day we are now celebrating – he sent the Holy Spirit. The account is given in Scripture: Suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and there appeared to them tongues like fire, which separated and came to rest on each one of them, And they began to speak in other tongues, as the Holy Spirit gave them power of utterance. That wind cleansed the disciples’ hearts, blowing away fleshly thoughts like so much chaff. The fire burnt up their unregenerate desires as if they were straw. The tongues in which they spoke as the Holy Spirit filled them were a foreshadowing of the Church’s preaching of the Gospel in the tongues of all nations.

After the flood, in pride and defiance of the Lord, an impious generation erected a high tower and so brought about the division of the human race into many language groups, each with its own peculiar speech which was unintelligible to the rest of the world. At Pentecost, by contrast, the humble piety of believers brought all these diverse languages into the unity of the Church. What discord had scattered, love was to gather together. Like the limbs of a single body, the separated members of the human race would be restored to unity by being joined to Christ, their common head, and welded into the oneness of a holy body by the fire of love. Anyone therefore who rejects the gift of peace and withdraws from the fellowship of this unity cuts himself off from the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So then, my fellow members of Christ’s body, you are the fruits of unity and the sons of peace. Keep this day with joy, celebrate it in freedom of spirit, for in you is fulfilled what was foreshadowed in those days when the Holy Spirit came. At that time, whoever received the Holy Spirit spoke in many languages, individual though he was. Now in the same way unity itself speaks through all nations in every tongue. If you yourselves are established in that unity you have the Holy Spirit among you, and nothing can separate you from the Church of Christ which speaks in the languages of every nation of the world.

St Augustine, Sermon 271 (PL 38:1245-1246); Word in Season III, 2nd ed.

Holy Trinity

A READING FROM THE ORATION ON HOLY BAPTISM BY ST GREGORY NAZIANZEN

Before all else, I beg you, keep the good deposit of the faith, by which I live and work; with which I endure all that is so distressful and despise all delights; that is, hold fast to the confession of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This I commit unto you today; with this I will baptize you and make you grow. This I give you to share, and to defend all your life, the one Godhead and power, found in the Three in unity, and comprising the Three separately, not unequal in substance or nature, neither increased nor diminished by superiorities or inferiorities; in every respect equal, in every respect the same; just as the beauty and the greatness of the heavens is one. This is the infinite conjunction of three infinite Ones, each is God when considered in Himself; as the Father, so the Son; as the Son, so the Holy Spirit.

No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the One. When I think of any One of the Three I think of him as the Whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking of escapes me. I cannot grasp the greatness of that One so as to attribute a greater greatness to the Rest. When I contemplate the Three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the Undivided Light.

I should like to call the Father the greater, because from him flows both the equality and the being of the equals, but I am afraid to use the word ‘origin’, lest I should make him the origin of inferiors and thus insult him by creating a precedence of honour. For to put down those who are from him gives no glory to him as the source. I fear you should take hold of this word ‘greater’, and divide the nature, using the word greater in all senses, although in reality it does not apply to the nature but only to origination. For in the consubstantial Persons there is nothing greater or less in terms of substance.

Are you afraid of being reproached with Tritheism? Just accept this one good thing, the unity in the Three, and leave me to fight the battle. Let me be the ship-builder, and you use the ship. See how great is my indulgence; see the goodness of the Spirit; the war shall be mine, yours the achievement; I will be under fire, and you shall live in peace; only join with your defender in prayer. I have three stones which I will sling at the Philistine; I have three floods against the brushwood with which I will consecrate the sacrifice with water, raising the most unexpected fire; and I will throw down the prophets of shame by the power of the Sacrament.

What need have I any more of speech? It is the time for teaching, not for controversy. I protest before God and the elect angels: be baptized in this faith. If there is any other writing on your heart than that which my teaching demands, come and have the writing changed; I am no unskilled calligrapher of these truths. I write that which is written upon my own heart; I teach that which I have been taught, and I have kept it from the beginning even up to the time of these grey hairs.

St Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 40, 41-44: NPNF 2.7, tr. Browne & Swallow

Corpus Christi

A READING FROM THE BULL TRANSITURUS OF POPE URBAN IV

Bishop Urban, servant of the servants of God, to the venerable brothers, Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, and other prelates of the Church, health and the apostolic blessing.

About to pass from this world to the Father, our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ, since the time of his Passion was at hand, instituted the great and wonderful Sacrament of his Body and Blood, bestowing his Body as food and his Blood as drink. For, as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we announce the death of the Lord. Indeed, at the institution of this Sacrament, he himself said to the Apostles: Do this in memory of me: so that for us the special and outstanding memorial of his love would be this venerable Sacrament; a memorial in which we attain the corporeal Presence of the Saviour himself.

Other things which we remember we embrace spiritually and mentally: we do not thereby obtain their real presence. However, in this sacramental commemoration, Jesus Christ is present with us in his proper substance, although under another form. As he was about to ascend into heaven, he said to the Apostles and their helpers, I will be with you all days even unto the consummation of the world. He comforted them with a gracious promise that he would remain and would be with them even by his corporeal presence. Therefore he gave himself as nourishment, so that, since man fell by means of the food of the death-giving tree; man is raised up by means of the food of the life-giving tree. Eating wounded us, and eating healed us. Thus the Saviour says, My Flesh is real food. This bread is taken but truly not consumed, because it is not transformed into the eater. Rather, if it is worthily received, the recipient is conformed to it.

We should celebrate continuously the memory of this memorial, because the more frequently his gift and favour are looked upon, so much the more firmly are they kept in memory. Therefore, although this memorial Sacrament is frequented in the daily solemnities of the Mass, we nevertheless think suitable and worthy that, at least once a year – especially to confound the lack of faith and the infamy of heretics – a more solemn and honourable memory of this Sacrament be held. This is so because on Holy Thursday, the day on which the Lord himself instituted this Sacrament, the universal Church, occupied with the reconciliation of penitents, blessing the chrism, fulfilling the Commandments about the washing of the feet and many other such things, is not sufficiently free to celebrate so great a Sacrament.

Moreover we know that, while we were constituted in a lesser office, it was divinely revealed to certain Catholics that a feast of this kind should be celebrated generally throughout the Church. Therefore, to strengthen and exalt the Catholic Faith, we decree that, besides the daily memory that the Church makes of this Sacrament, there be celebrated a more solemn and special annual memorial. Then let the hearts and mouths of all break forth in hymns of saving joy; then let faith sing, hope dance, charity exult, devotion applaud, the choir be jubilant, and purity delight. Then let each one with willing spirit and prompt will come together, laudably fulfilling his duties, celebrating the Solemnity of so great a Feast.

Pope Urban IV, The Bull Transiturus; tr. O’Connor (1988) from The Hidden Manna

Sacred Heart

A READING FROM CHRIST, THE IDEAL OF THE MONK BY BLESSED COLUMBA MARMION

When a person fails in charity, and receives Christ in Holy Communion, he cannot say to him: ‘My Jesus, I love you with all my heart.’ It would be a lie, since he does not envelop Christ and his members with a self-same love. He has not accepted the mystery of the Incarnation in its totality; he stops at Christ’s individual manhood, and forgets the spiritual prolongation of the Incarnation which is the Mystical Body of Jesus. So, then, when we communicate, we ought ever to be ready to embrace, in one and the same charity, Christ and all that is united to him; for the measure of the giving of Christ to our souls is that of our own donation to our brethren. The Eucharist is a Sacrament of union with Christ, and of union between souls.

Thus a soul who draws near to our Lord, in Communion, in these dispositions of unreserved love towards the neighbour is very pleasing to the Sacred Heart. Christ showers magnificent gifts upon it; moreover, faults and shortcomings in respect to the other virtues are at once forgiven, because of this fervent love it bears towards the members of Jesus. When, on Maundy Thursday, the Abbot has communicated all the members of the monastic family, the angels who behold us see that we are all one in Christ, each one being united to Christ Jesus, and Christ being one, we are then truly one in him. We thus fulfil the dearest desire of the Word Incarnate.

Indeed, at the supreme farewell hour, when Christ Jesus spoke for the last time with his Apostles before entering into his sorrowful Passion and sacrificing himself for the world’s salvation, what is the exclusive theme of his discourse and the first object of his prayer? Spiritual charity. A new commandment I give unto you… by this shall all men know that you are my disciples… Father… that they may be one, as we also are one, I in them, and you in me, that they may become perfectly one. That is the testament of Christ’s Heart.

Our Blessed Father St Benedict, in concluding his Rule, also leaves us as his last testament, his magnificent teaching on good zeal. After having set forth in detail the ordering of our life, he sums up all his doctrine in this short chapter. And what does he tell us? Does he speak to us of prayer? Of contemplation? Of mortification? Undoubtedly, the holy Patriarch forgets nothing of all this, as we have seen; but having reached the end of his long life so full of experience, at the moment of closing the monastic code which contains for us the secret of perfection, he speaks to us, before all else, of mutual love; he wishes, with that intense desire which was that of Jesus at the Last Supper, to see us excel in most fervent love. This chapter is the worthy crowning of a Rule which is but the pure reflection of the Gospel.

Blessed Columba Marmion, Christ, the Ideal of the Monk, 2.17.5

Season of the Year | Week 01

Monday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM AGAINST HERESIES BY ST IRENAEUS

The heretics do not accept the Incarnation and so they remain in Adam who was conquered and cast out of Paradise. They fail to see that, just as when we were formed in Adam the breath of life was added to make a rational animal, so, at the end, the Word of the Father and the Spirit of God were united to the same ancient substance of Adam. This made man truly alive and perfect, capable of knowing the perfect Father. It was done so that, as in the ‘animal man’ we all die, so in the ‘spiritual man’ we might all be made alive. Adam at no time escaped the hands of God, the Son and the Spirit, to whom the Father said, Let us make man in our image and likeness. That is why, at the end, not by the will of the flesh or the will of a man, but by the good pleasure of the Father, these hands of God made the living Man, so that Adam might come at last into the image and likeness of God.

The soul and the spirit may be part of man, but they are certainly not the complete man. The complete man is a mixture and a union: the soul, which has received the Spirit of the Father, mixed with the flesh fashioned in the image of God. If you take away the substance of the flesh, the shaped clay, and consider just the naked spirit, what you are left with is not ‘the spiritual man’, but merely ‘the spirit of a man’ or ‘the Spirit of God’. However, when this Spirit is blended with the soul and united to the shaped clay, the result, thanks to the outpouring of the Spirit, is a spiritual and complete man. It is this, the complete man, who is made in the image and likeness of God. Thus the Apostle, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, explains that the redeemed man is this complete and spiritual man: May the God of peace sanctify you completely, and may your whole being, spirit and soul and body, be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The truth of all this was shown when the Word of God became man. He assimilated himself to man and man to himself, so that man, by his resemblance to the Son, might become precious to the Father. For in times past it was merely said that man was made in the image of God, but not shown, because the Word, in whose image man was made, was still invisible. That is why man lost the likeness so easily. But when the Word of God was made flesh, he confirmed both things: he showed the true image, when he himself became what his image was; and he restored the likeness, making man like the invisible Father through the visible Word.

St Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 5.1.3, 6.1, 16.2; tr. Pluscarden.

Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE WRITINGS OF ST HILARY OF POITIERS

In Adam’s sleep and the creation of Eve we should see a revelation of the mystery hidden in Christ and the Church, since it contains an analogy pointing to faith in the resurrection of the body. For in the creation of woman dust is not taken from the ground as before; a body is not formed from earth; inanimate matter is not transformed by the breath of God into a living soul. Instead flesh grows upon bone, a complete body is given to the flesh, and the power of the spirit is added to the complete body. That this is the way the resurrection will take place God proclaimed through the Prophet Ezekiel to teach us what his power would accomplish in time to come. Then everything will happen at once: the body will be there, the spirit will fly towards it, and none of his works will be lost to God.

Now this, according to the Apostle, is the mystery hidden for long ages in God, namely, that the Gentiles are joint heirs with the Jews, part of the same body, having a share in his promise in Christ, who is able, as the same Apostle says, to transform our humble bodies into the likeness of his own glorious body. Therefore when the heavenly Adam rose again after the sleep of his passion, he recognised the Church as his bone, its flesh not now created from dust or given life by breath, but growing upon bone it became a body made from a body and was perfected by the coming of the Spirit.

For those who are in Christ will rise again like Christ, in whom the resurrection of all flesh has already taken place, since he himself was born in our flesh with the power of God by which the Father begot him before the world began. And since Jew and Greek, barbarian and Scythian, the slave and the free, men and women, are all one in Christ, since flesh is recognized as proceeding from flesh, and the Church is the body of Christ, and the mystery which is in Adam and Eve is a prophecy concerning Christ and the Church, all that has been prepared by Christ and the Church for the end of time was already accomplished in Adam and Eve at the beginning of time.

St Hilary of Poitiers, Tractatus Mysteriorum, (SC19 b i s:83-85); Word in Season VII.

Wednesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON REBUKE AND GRACE BY ST AUGUSTINE

The Lord of all things created all things very good, he foreknew that evils would arise from good, and he knew that it pertains to his omnipotent goodness to make good use of evils rather than not to allow evils to exist. He made man with free choice and, though ignorant of his future fall, man was still happy because he knew that it was in his power both not to die and not to become miserable. If through free choice he had willed to remain in this upright state without defect, he would, without any experience of death and unhappiness, certainly have received that fullness of beatitude enjoyed by the holy angels. But because Adam abandoned God through free choice, he experienced the just judgement of God to the point that he was condemned along with all his offspring which in its entirety had sinned in him and along with him.

What then? Did Adam not have the grace of God? On the contrary, he had a great grace, but a different grace from ours. He existed amid goods which he had received from the goodness of his Creator, but in this life the Saints who have the grace of deliverance exist amid the evils from which they cry out to God, Deliver us from evil. In those goods Adam did not need the death of Christ, whereas the blood of that Lamb washes these Saints from inherited and personal sin. For in them the flesh has desires opposed to the spirit and the spirit has desires opposed to the flesh, and in this struggle they ask that the grace of Christ give them the power to fight and to conquer. What grace is more powerful than the only-begotten Son of God, equal to and coeternal with the Father, who became man for them and, without any sin of his own, either original or personal, was crucified by human sinners? God, therefore, assumed our nature, that is, the rational soul and the flesh of Christ the man, and he assumed it in a singularly marvellous manner. For, without any preceding merits of his own righteousness, Christ was the Son of God from the first moment he began to be a man in such a way that he and the Word, which is without beginning, was one person. Good works followed his birth; good works did not merit it. For there was no reason to fear that the human nature assumed in this ineffable way into the unity of the person by God the Word would sin by free choice of the will.

The first man did not have this grace with which he would never have willed to be evil, but even in his free choice God did not leave Adam without grace. For free choice is sufficient for evil, but not sufficient for good, unless it is helped by the Omnipotent Good. But that man abandoned this help through free choice, he abandoned it and was in turn abandoned. This is the first grace which was given to the first Adam, but there is a more powerful grace than this in the second Adam. For the first grace brought it about that the man had righteousness if he willed to; but the second even makes one to will, and to will so strongly and to love with such ardour that by the will of the Spirit one conquers the contrary desires of the flesh.

St Augustine, On Rebuke and Grace, 27-31; WSA (1999) tr. Teske.

Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 39 BY ST AMBROSE

At the beginning of the book Scripture speaks of me. In the opening chapters of Genesis it was foretold that Christ would come to fulfil his Father’s will for the redemption of mankind. This was when the sacred writer described how in creating Eve to be man’s helpmate God made her a type of the Church. Where indeed can we find help for our bodily weakness and protection against the upheavals of the world around us, except in the grace of salvation which comes to us through the Church and the faith by which we live?

In the first pages of the Bible we read: Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh! Because of this a man will leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they will be two in one flesh. If you wish to know the real speaker of these words, listen to the following: this is a great mystery; I tell you it refers to Christ and the Church. The meaning is that the love that should exist between man and wife can be compared with Christ's love for his Church. We are members of Christ's body, sharers of his flesh and bone. What greater well-being can we have than to be so close to Christ, to cleave to him in a kind of bodily oneness, in a union with that body of his which is without blemish or stain of sin?

We are told in the early pages of the same book that righteous Abel’s sacrifice was acceptable to God while his murderous brother’s was rejected. This, surely, is a clear sign that the Lord Jesus was to offer himself up for us, and that in and through his passion he would hallow a new sacrifice to supersede a rite proper to a parricidal people. It is even more clearly expressed in the holy Patriarch Abraham’s offering of his son Isaac, in whose stead a ram was ultimately immolated. And this showed that it was man’s flesh, the flesh he has in common with the animals and not the divinity of the only Son of God, that was destined to endure the rigours of the passion.

At the beginning of the book it is written that in due time there would come a man who held command over the powers of heaven. This prophecy was fulfilled when the Lord Jesus arrived on earth and angels ministered to him, according to his own prediction: You will see the heavens opened and God's angels ascending and descending around the Son of Man.

Again at the beginning of the book it is said that you must choose out for yourselves a full-grown yearling lamb, a male without blemish, which the whole assembly shall then ceremonially slay. The identity of that lamb you know already: Behold the Lamb of God who is to bear away the sin of all the world! He is the one that was slain by the entire Jewish people. It was indeed necessary that he should die for all men, so that through his cross every sin might find forgiveness and in his blood the stains of all the world be washed away.

St Ambrose, In Ps. 39, 11-14 (PL14:1061-1062); Word in Season VII.

Friday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON GENESIS BY ORIGEN

As we begin to speak about the ark which was constructed by Noah at God’s command, we can ascend from the historical account to the mystical and allegorical understanding of the spiritual meaning and, if these contain anything secret, we can explain it as the Lord reveals knowledge of his word to us.

Just as at that time Noah made an ark, so also our Noah, who is Christ Jesus, is told by the Father to make himself an ark of squared planks and give it dimensions filled with heavenly mysteries. The people, therefore, who are saved in the Church, are compared to all those, whether men or animals, who are saved in the ark. But since all are not equal in merit or progress in faith, therefore, this ark does not offer one abode for all. There are two lower decks and three upper decks to show that in the Church, although all are contained within the one faith and are washed in the one baptism, progress is not one and the same for all, but each one in his own order.

Since God orders that the ark be constructed not only with two decks but also with three, let as also make sure we join to our twofold exposition of the Scriptures also a third meaning. For the literal meaning which comes first is a kind of foundation at the lower level. The mystical interpretation comes second, being higher and loftier. Let us attempt, if we can, to add a moral exposition as the third level.

If there is anyone who, while evils are increasing, can turn from the things which are in flux, and can hear the word of God, this man is building an ark of salvation within his own heart and is dedicating a library, so to speak, of the divine word within himself. He does not construct this library from planks which are unhewn and rough, but from planks which have been squared and arranged in a uniform line, that is, not from the volumes of secular authors, but from the prophetic and apostolic volumes and from the works of those who have followed them in the right lines of faith. You shall make it with two decks and with three decks. From this library learn the historical narratives; from it recognise the great mystery which is fulfilled in Christ and in the Church. From it also learn how to correct habits and to curtail vices. You ought also to bring in animals of every kind, the unclean as well as the clean. I think that concupiscence and wrath, which are in every soul, are necessarily said to be unclean in the sense that they serve to make man sin. But because the human race is not renewed without concupiscence nor can any correction or discipline exist without anger, they are said to be necessary and must be preserved.

Let us pray, however, the mercy of the omnipotent God to make us not only hearers of his word, but also doers and to bring upon our souls also a flood of his water and destroy in us what he knows should be destroyed and quicken what he knows should be quickened, through Christ our Lord and through his Holy Spirit. To him be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Origen, Homilies on Genesis, 2.1, 3, 6; FoC 71 (1981) tr. Heine.

Saturday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

Watch yourselves: this world is passing away. Remember how the Lord foretells in the Gospel that it will be the same on the last day as it was in the days of Noah: People ate and drank, bought and sold and married right up to the day when Noah entered the ark; then the flood came and destroyed them all.

The reason the ark took so long to build was to make unbelievers wake up. Noah worked on it for a hundred years, yet people were not awake enough to say: ‘The man of God must have good reason for building this ark: it must mean that the human race will soon be destroyed.’

Once again the ark is being built, and those hundred years represent the days in which we live: this whole period of time was prefigured by that number of years. If those, then, who paid no heed when Noah was building the ark deserved to die, what do they deserve who are careless about their salvation while Christ is building his Church? There is as much difference between Noah and Christ as between servant and lord, or rather as between men and God, for the servant and his master are both men. And yet the people of those days have become a fearful example for their descendants because they did not believe the man who was building the ark.

Christ, who is God become man for us, is building his Church, the ark of which he has made himself the foundation. Every day incorruptible timber, that is, believers renouncing this world, is added to the structure of this ark, and still people say: Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. Answer them back, then, and say: ‘Let us fast and pray for tomorrow we shall die.’ Those who say Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die have no hope of rising again, but we who, thanks to the words of the Prophets and the preaching of Christ and the Apostles, believe in and proclaim the resurrection, we who hope for a life after death, must not lose courage or let our minds be dulled by dissipation and drunkenness. Let us rather be dressed for action with our lamps alight as we await the Lord’s coming with all sobriety; let us fast and pray, not because tomorrow we shall die, but so that we may die without fear.

St Augustine, Sermon 361, 20-22 (PL 39:1610-1611); Word in Season VII.

Season of the Year | Week 02

Sunday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM HOLY PAGANS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT BY JEAN CARDINAL DANIÉLOU

It is in connection with Noah that the momentous notion of a covenant appears for the first time in holy Scripture. The covenant is one of the essential characteristics, the most characteristic quality perhaps, of the God of the Bible. It signifies that God communicates certain good things to mankind and that this is in the nature of an irrevocable settlement. Thus it allows us to depend upon these benefits, not in virtue of any right we have to them but by reason of God’s fidelity to his word.

The covenant made with Noah is connected with the cosmic religion and bears essentially upon God's fidelity in the order of the world. It is first of all a question of a covenant not with a particular people but with humanity as a whole and even with the whole cosmos. By this covenant God pledges himself not to destroy life upon the earth, whatever may be the sins of the human race. God’s fidelity will be expressed particularly in the regularity of the laws of the cosmos, in the recurrent seasons: All the days of the earth seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, night and day, shall not cease. This text is of prime importance. It establishes the right to see in the recurrent seasons the revelation of the fidelity of the living God. And this revelation, says Saint Paul, is given to all people among whom God has not left himself without testimony, giving them rain and fruitful seasons. This revelation constitutes the authentic basis of the pagan religions for which the recurrent seasons are the foundations of their worship.

By this covenant, God gives, as it were, an official document which bears witness to his pledge for all the generations to come. This document is the rainbow: as the paschal lamb is to be the memorial of the Mosaic covenant, as the holy Eucharist is the sacrament of the new eternal covenant replacing the ancient, so the rainbow is the memorial and sacred sign of the cosmic covenant which persists throughout the establishment of new and more perfect covenants.

The order of the world is no longer at the mercy of human sin. In the economy now beginning God will give temporal goods to sinners as well as to saints. The God of the covenant is not a God who will rain upon the just and will refuse rain to the unjust, but, in line with the very words of Christ, he makes the sun to rise upon the good and bad, and rains upon the just and unjust.

By the covenant with Noah a break is made in the connection between sin and punishment whereby salvation can be brought in. Thus the covenant is a manifestation of love. It reveals something new about God, for it is the first manifestation of redemptive love, while the former divine economy showed only creative love. What now appears is that long-suffering mercy with which God endures in order to save the sinner.

Jean Cardinal Daniélou, Holy Pagans of the Old Testament, 78-80.83; Word in Season VII.

Monday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A HOMILY BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

When the Apostles had heard the Lord’s words, Go and make disciples of all nations, and were perplexed, not knowing where each of them should go or in what part of the world they should preach the word, the Holy Spirit came upon them in the form of tongues and assigned to each of them the place where he was to teach. By means of the language given to each, he made known, as though by a letter of credence, the boundaries of the region in which he was to have authority and give instruction.

That was one reason for the Spirit’s coming in the form of tongues, but not the only one. It was also to remind us of something that happened in ancient times. When long ago men fell into such madness that they decided to build a tower reaching the sky, God thwarted their evil design by confusing their language. By alighting on them now in the form of tongues of fire the Holy Spirit united the divided world. Something happened that was new and contrary to all expectation: for as in the past languages had divided the world and frustrated an evil plan, so now languages unite the world and bring discord into harmony.

This then is why the Holy Spirit appeared in the form of tongues; but the reason they were tongues of fire was to destroy the thorns of sin running riot within us. For just as rich and fertile land that is not cultivated produces an abundant crop of thistles, so was it also with human nature. Created good by God, it was capable of producing the fruits of virtue, but because it had not been ploughed by faith or sown with the knowledge of God it brought forth thistles and the other weeds of wickedness. And as the ground is often completely overgrown by thistles and other weeds, so also the nobility and purity of our souls was quite invisible until the cultivator of human nature came and poured out on it the fire of the Spirit to cleanse it and make it capable of receiving the heavenly seed.

St John Chrysostom, Deuxième homilie sur Pentecôte 2 (Bereille 5.123-124); Word in Season VII.

Tuesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM AGAINST EUNOMIUS BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

Let us, if we may, interpret the meaning of the sacred history, according to the profound insight of the Apostle, by transposing the story of Abraham to an allegorical level, even though we allow the validity of the literal meaning. Abraham at the divine command went forth from his own country and from his own kin, but his migration was such as befitted a Prophet in quest of the knowledge of God. Indeed, there is no physical migration, I think, that can prepare us for the knowledge of those things which are discovered by the spirit. But by going out of his native land, that is, out of himself, out of the realm of base and earthly thoughts, Abraham raised his mind as far as possible above the common limits of our human nature and abandoned the association which the soul has with the senses. Thus, unhindered by sense data, his mind was clear for the apprehension of the invisible, and neither the operation of his sight nor hearing could cause his mind to err because of appearances. And so, as the Apostle says, walking by faith and not by sight, Abraham was so raised in the grandeur of his knowledge that he understood the limitation of human perfection; he knew God insofar as it was possible for his weak and mortal faculties to attain him when strained to their capacity.

Hence the Lord of all creation is called the God of Abraham, almost as though he had been discovered by the Patriarch himself. And yet, what does the text say of him? That he went out, not knowing whither he went. He was not even allowed to know the name of him whom he loved; yet he was not ashamed or disturbed by this ignorance. Here, at any rate, was the sure path to his goal, in that he was not guided in his knowledge of God by anything merely on the surface; nor was his mind ever overwhelmed by what he had already learned so as to stop in its progress towards that which transcends all knowledge.

Abraham surpassed in understanding his native wisdom, that is, the philosophy of Chaldea, which rested merely in appearances; he went far beyond that which can be perceived by the senses, and from the beauty that he saw around him and from the harmony of the heavenly phenomena he gained a yearning to gaze upon the archetypal Beauty. So too, all the other qualities which are attributed to the divine nature, such as goodness, omnipresence, necessity, infinity and the like, Abraham understood them all as he advanced in thought; and he took all these as his provisions on his journey to heaven, using them as steps; and relying on what he had already found he stretched himself forth to the things that were ahead.

Abraham passed through all the reasoning that is possible to human nature about the divine attributes, and after he had purified his mind of all such concepts, he took hold of a faith that was unmixed and pure of any concept. Thus in his life we are taught that, for those who are advancing in the divine paths, it is only through faith that the questing soul can unite itself with the incomprehensible Godhead.

St Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium 3.2 (Jaeger 2.67-70); Word in Season VII.

Wednesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON THE SACRAMENTS BY ST AMBROSE

You have come to the altar; you have seen the sacraments placed on the altar. Perhaps someone may say: ‘God gave the Jews so much grace; manna rained upon them from heaven; what more has he given his faithful; what more has he allotted to those he promised more?’

Accept what I say: that the mysteries of the Christians are earlier than those of the Jews and the sacraments of the Christians are more divine than those of the Jews. How? Accept this. When did the Jews begin? Surely from Judah, the great-grandson of Abraham, or, if you prefer, when they merited to receive the Law of God. Therefore, from the name of the great-grandson of Abraham they were called Jews in the time of holy Moses. Then God rained manna from heaven on the Jews when they murmured. But for you a figure of these sacraments came first: when Abraham gathered three hundred and eighteen servants born in his house and went to deliver his great-grandson from captivity. Then, when he returned as a victor, Melchisedech the priest met him and offered bread and wine. Who had the bread and wine? Abraham did not have it. But who had it? Melchisedech. He himself then is the author of the sacraments. Who is ‘Melchisedech’? Who is this ‘king of justice, king of peace’? Who, then, can be the king of justice other than the justice of God? Who is the peace of God, the wisdom of God? Only him who was able to say: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you.

Thus Melchisedech offered bread and wine. Who is Melchisedech? Without father, it says, without mother, it says, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life. The Epistle to the Hebrews has this. The Son of God was born by heavenly generation without mother, because he was born of the only God the Father; and again he was born without father, since he was born of a virgin. Melchisedech, also, was a priest in all respects likened unto the Son of God, to whom it is said: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech.

Therefore, who is the author of the sacraments but the Lord Jesus? You perhaps say: ‘My bread looks ordinary.’ But that bread is only bread before the words of the sacraments; when consecration has been added, from bread it becomes the flesh of Christ. So let us confirm this, how it is possible that what is bread is the body of Christ. By whose words, then, does the consecration come about? By those of the Lord Jesus. For all the rest that come before are said by the priest: praise to God, prayer is offered, that is a petition for the people, for kings, and for all the others. When it comes to performing the venerable sacrament, though, the priest uses not his own words, but the words of Christ. Thus the words of Christ performs this sacrament.

Therefore, to reply to you, there was no body of Christ before the consecration, but after the consecration I say to you that now there is the body of Christ. He himself spoke and it was made; he himself commanded and it was created.

St Ambrose, de Sacramentis 4.3-4 FoC 44 (1963), tr. Deferrari.

Thursday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON GENESIS OF DIDYMUS THE BLIND

As he contemplated the wonderful things of God, Abraham was struck with fear, the fear that belongs to the perfect. It will be noted that the ecstasy came upon him towards sunset. The text suggests by this a progression, because the present day has passed by for Abraham so that further progress might follow. Thus Abraham was given a blessing in the words, I will fill you with the length of days, a blessing that promised him not longevity but, as is quite clear, further advances in illumination.

An ecstasy then fell upon him, not the ecstasy that resembles a loss of reason but that of wonder, the thrill of passing from visible to invisible things. When Abraham then had been transported out of himself, a dark fear fell upon him, dark not by participation in darkness but in the sense of obscurity, of something whose meaning is not immediately evident. Being a great fear, it is not the kind that happens to average men. It is indeed true that the contemplation and grasp of supernatural truths produce, even among great people, a divine vertigo and fear, and it is with some trepidation that they apply themselves to such things.

What is clearly stated in the text can be expounded as follows. When the sun was already near setting, a flame emerged, and there appeared a smoking oven and fiery torches that passed between the two parts of the divided animals, burning and lighting up the place, to allow the Patriarch to see what was happening and to reveal in a more divine manner the mysteries to be searched out. It should be noted that fire did not appear only after the covenant had been made. The gift of the Law through Moses also took place itself in the midst of a fire. What is suggested here is perhaps something like that. As the Law contains rewards and punishments, it was given in the midst of fire to indicate that it brings burning to some and illumination to others. So too here, torches and smoke appeared; now smoke is the consequence of a fire that has been lit. Moreover, the flame had appeared first. We conclude, then, that one who is defining what is to be done and what is not to be done in a matter this difficult requires the light of God and also fear, symbolised by the furnace, so as to accomplish everything in accordance with right reason.

When the torches had passed over the divided animals, the covenant was made. God said to Abraham, To your descendants I will give this land, and he described in detail how far the land extended in each direction. But, through an anagogical transposition, we must understand that this land is given to the holy man’s spiritual posterity. The Saviour too promises it to those who practise gentleness. This is a promise that applies to the true children and not to all who descend from Abraham, for it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, for the children of the promise of reckoned as descendants. It is the one who does the works of Abraham who is in fact his child.

Didymus the Blind, In Gen. 230, 233-4 (SC 244:188-90, 196-200); ACC 2 (2002) tr. Sheridan.

Friday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE GLAPHYRA ON GENESIS BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

As in a concrete image, we see here foreshadowed the fact that once the Emmanuel has appeared and his mystery has been shown to the world, the types of the Mosaic cult necessarily disappear. They give way to the evangelical teachings, to the better and more perfect commandments.

What is the image of which I am speaking? It is this: Sarah had not had children, and because of this Hagar, after having given birth to Ishmael, began to show arrogant contempt for her owner, the free woman. Sarah was unable to bear that arrogance and began to mistreat the Egyptian woman. The latter fled from the house and lost her way in the desert. An angel from heaven asked her where she was going and where she had come from. She replied, I am fleeing from a mistress, Sarah. And the holy angel replied, Return to your mistress, and humble yourself under her hands. She was ordered then, by the voice of the angel, not to depart from the free woman – from instruction, that is, which summons us to the dignity of free persons. She was ordered to humble herself instead under the free woman’s hands.

Worship according to the Law, which takes place through images and types, is as it were the servant of the teachings of the Gospel. In it, in an obscure manner, the beauty of the truth is revealed. At this point in time, the Law, which was once established by Moses through the ministry of angels, receives an order from the voice of an angel to bend the neck to the evangelical oracles and to bow and yield, even if unwillingly, to the free woman. This, I maintain, is the spiritual interpretation of Hagar’s imposed submission to the rule of Sarah. We should remember, moreover, that even the venerable Paul sees Hagar and Sarah as prefiguring the two Testaments: The one, who bears children for slavery, corresponds to the present Jerusalem, and the other – Sarah – bears children who are destined for the dignity of the free.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyrorum in Genesim, 3.79.9 (PG 69: 132-33); ACC 2 (2002) tr. Sheridan.

Saturday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON GENESIS BY ORIGEN

Many responses are given to Abraham by God, but they are not all delivered to one and the same man. For some are given to Abram and some to Abraham, that is, some are expressed after the change of name and others while he was still known by his name given at birth. First of all, before the change of name, that oracle is delivered to Abram by God which says: Go out from your country and your kindred and from your father’s house, and the rest. But no order is given in this about the covenant of God, no order about circumcision. For it was not possible while he was still Abram and was bearing the name of his physical birth to receive the covenant of God and the mark of circumcision. But when he went out from his country and his kindred then responses of a more sacred kind are delivered to him. First God says to him: You shall no longer be called Abram, but Abraham shall be your name. Then at once he both received the covenant of God and accepted circumcision as a sign of faith, something he could not accept while he was still in his father’s house, still in the relationship of flesh and while he was still called Abram.

Since, therefore, we have reached these passages I wish to enquire if the omnipotent God, who holds dominion of heaven and earth, when he wished to make a covenant with a holy man put the main point of such an important matter in this, that the foreskin of his flesh and of his future progeny should be circumcised. For my covenant, the text says, shall be upon your flesh. Was this what the Lord of heaven and earth was conferring in the gift of the eternal covenant to him whom alone he had chosen from all men?

We, therefore, instructed by the Apostle Paul, say that just as many other things were made in the figure and image of future truth, so also that circumcision of flesh was bearing the form of spiritual circumcision. Hear, therefore, how Paul, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth teaches the Church of Christ about the mystery of circumcision. Behold, he says, the mutilation – speaking about the Jews who are mutilated in the flesh – for we, he says, are the circumcision, who serve God in spirit and have no confidence in the flesh. This is one opinion of Paul about circumcision. Hear also another: For he is not a Jew who is so outwardly; nor is that circumcision which is outwardly in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly with circumcision of the heart in the spirit, not in the letter. Does it not seem more appropriate to you to speak of a circumcision like this among the saints and friends of God than to speak of a pruning of the flesh?

But also each of our members must be said to be circumcised if they are devoted to the service of God’s commands. This is truly the mark of faith which contains the agreement of the eternal covenant between God and man.

Origen, Homilies on Genesis, 3.3-4, 6; FoC 71 (1981) tr. Heine.

Season of the Year | Week 03

Sunday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE SERMONS OF ST CAESARIUS OF ARLES

God appeared to Abraham, it said, as he sat at the entrance of his tent near the oak of Mamre. Behold three men stood at a distance from him, and he went to meet them, and so forth. Notice, brethren, how God appeared to Abraham, and how he appeared to Lot. The three men came to Abraham and stood over him; two came to Lot and stayed in the street. Consider, brethren, whether these things did not happen through the dispensation of the Holy Spirit according to their merits. Indeed, Lot was far inferior to Abraham; if he had not been, he would not have merited to be separated from Abraham, nor would the dwelling of Sodom have pleased him. Now the three men came to Abraham at noon, while the other two came to Lot in the evening for this reason: Lot was unable to endure the power to of the noonday sun, but Abraham could stand its full brightness.

Three men came to Abraham, and stood over him. Observe how it is that they come upon him, but not against him. He had subjected himself to God’s will, and for this reason God is said to stand over him. They stood over him; not against him to repulse him, but over him for protection. He received the three men and served them loaves out of three measures. Why is this, brethren, unless it means the mystery of the Trinity? He also served a bullock; not a tough one, but a good, tender one. Now what is so good and tender as he who humbled himself even unto death? He himself is that fatted calf which the father killed upon receiving his repentant son. For God so loved the world that he gave his only–begotten Son. For this reason Abraham went to meet the three men and adored them as one. In the fact that he saw three, as was already said, he understood the mystery of the Trinity; but since he adored them as one, he recognized that there is one God in the three persons.

Now where did this happen? Near the oak of Mamre, which in Latin is interpreted as ‘vision’ or ‘discernment’. The vision and discernment of Abraham delighted the Lord; Abraham was clean of heart, so he could see God. Therefore, in such a place and in such a heart the Lord can have his feast. Of this vision our Lord spoke to the Jews in the Gospel when he said: Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day, he saw it and was glad. He saw my day, he says, because he recognised the mystery of the Trinity. He saw the Father as day, the Son as day, the Holy Spirit as day, and in these three, one day. Thus, the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and these three are one God. For individually each person is complete God. Moreover, because of the unity of substance, in those three measures of flour the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is not unfittingly understood. However, this can also be taken in another way by understanding Sarah as the Church; the three measures of flour then are faith, hope, and charity. In these three virtues all the fruits of the Church are contained, so that if a man merits to possess the three within himself, he can with security receive the entire Trinity at the banquet of his heart.

St Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 83.2, 4-5; FoC (1963) tr. Mueller.

Monday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LETTER OF ST CLEMENT OF ROME TO THE CORINTHIANS

Dear friends, let us obey the sovereign, glorious will of God. Let us cast ourselves in entreaty upon his mercy and kindness, and turn back once more to his compassion. Let us have done with our vain struggles, our discords and the jealousy which leads to death, and direct our gaze instead towards the men who perfectly served his glorious majesty.

Look at Enoch, for example: he was found righteous in his obedience and was taken away by God, so that no trace was ever found of his death. Noah too was found faithful. His ministry was to be the herald of rebirth, for through him the Lord saved all the living creatures which agreed to enter the ark together. Abraham, whom God called his ‘friend’, proved his loyalty by his obedience to God’s orders. He forsook his country, his kindred and his father’s house out of obedience, so that leaving behind a restricted homeland, an obscure family and a little house he might inherit the promises of God. For God had said to him, Come away from your land, your kindred and your father's house into a land which I am going to show you. I will make you into a mighty nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be blessed. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you, and all the races of the earth will be blessed in you. And again at the time of his separation from Lot God said to him: Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are standing toward the north and the south, to the sunrise and to the sea, for I am going to give all the land you can see to you and to your descendants forever. I will make your descendants as many as the earth's grains of sand; if anyone is able to number the grains of sand on the ground, then he will be able to count your descendants too. Elsewhere Scripture tells us, God took Abraham outside and said to him, ‘Look up to heaven and count the stars, if it is in your power to reckon them. That is what your posterity will be like.’ Abraham believed God, and this was accounted to him as righteousness. In view of his faith and his hospitality a son was granted to him in his old age, and in obedience he offered the boy as a sacrifice to God on one of the mountains that he had shown him.

Lot was rescued from Sodom because of his hospitality and his piety, when the whole surrounding countryside was punished by fire and brimstone. In this way the Lord made it dear that he does not abandon those who hope in him. But he does consign the rebellious to chastisement and torment; a sign of this was given when Lot’s wife, who had indeed left Sodom with her husband but was inconstant in mind and out of harmony with him, was turned into a pillar of salt. So she remains to this day, as a reminder to all of us that wavers who doubt God’s power are condemned to stand as a warning sign for all generations.

St Clement of Rome, Corinthians, 9.1-4; 10.1-7; 11.1-2 (SC 167:114-118); Word in Season VII.

Tuesday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON GENESIS BY ORIGEN

Abraham rejoiced and gave a great banquet on the day that Isaac was weaned. Sometime later Isaac was playing, playing with Ishmael. Sarah was indignant at the son of a slave playing with the son of a free woman. Thinking that these games would be her ruin, she gave Abraham this advice: Throw out the slave and her son, she said. The son of a slave shall not share the inheritance with my son Isaac.

There is no need for me to explain how this is to be understood, for this was done by the Apostle when he said: You who read the Law, do you not hear the Law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and the other by a free woman. The son of the slave was born in the ordinary course of nature; the son of the free woman was born as the result of a promise. What do I mean? Was Isaac not born in the ordinary course of nature? Did Sarah not give birth to him? Was he not circumcised? When he played with Ishmael, did he not play like any other boy? Indeed, this is what is marvellous in the Apostle’s interpretation. Events which undoubtedly took place in the ordinary way he called allegories, in order to teach us how to understand other passages, especially those in which the historical narrative seems to reveal nothing worthy of the divine Law.

Ishmael, then, was born the son of a slave, in the ordinary course of nature, but Isaac’s birth of the free woman was not an ordinary birth, but the result of a promise. The Apostle says of the two women that Hagar bore children into slavery, a carnal people, but Sarah, who was free, brought forth a people which is not carnal but which has been called in freedom, the freedom whereby Christ has made it free.

But let us see what the Apostle adds to this by way of explanation. But as the son who was born according to nature persecuted the son born through the Spirit, so it is now. For you also, if you live a worldly life, are a child of Hagar and therefore an enemy of those who live by the promptings of the Spirit. If you have within you the fruits of the Spirit, which are joy, love, peace, and patience, you can be Isaac, the child of the free woman, born not in the course of nature but in fulfilment of the promise. If the words of the Apostle, but you are not carnal but spiritual, if the Spirit of God dwells in you, can fittingly be applied to you, then you also have been born not in the ordinary way but in a spiritual way in fulfilment of the promise, and you will be heir to the promises according to the text: heirs indeed of God and co-heirs of Christ. You will not be the co-heir of the son born in the course of nature, but the co-heir of Christ, for even if we once knew Christ in the flesh, that is not how we know him now.

Origen, Homilies on Genesis, 7.2 (SC 7 b i s:196-202); Word in Season VII.

Wednesday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON GENESIS BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to kill his son. What love for God he had! What strength of mind! What intense devotion that enabled him to overcome his natural human feelings! He took the knife to kill his son. Which should amaze me, astonish me more – the steadfastness of the father or the obedience of the son? For the boy made no resistance or objection, but submitting to whatever his father did, he lay like a lamb on the altar, silently waiting for his father to strike.

However, once the interior sacrifice had been made, without any omission, the good Lord showed that his command was given not from any desire for the boy’s death, but only to reveal the holy Patriarch’s virtue. Therefore, accepting the Patriarch’s intention of making the complete sacrifice, he rewarded the holy man for his resolve by showing his own goodness.

The angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said: ‘Abraham, Abraham! Do not lay your hand on the boy or do him any harm.’ Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by his horns in a thicket. He went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of Isaac his son.

All this was a foreshadowing of the cross, which is why Christ said to the Jews: Your father Abraham rejoiced to think that he would see my day, he saw it and was glad. How did he see it when he lived so long before? Through a symbol and foreshadowing. As the sheep was then offered for Isaac, so the spiritual lamb was offered for the whole world. It was only fitting for the reality to be portrayed beforehand by a symbol – see how faithfully everything was prefigured. Then there was an only son; now there is an only Son. Then there was a beloved and legitimate son; now too there is a beloved and legitimate Son, for God says in the Gospel: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Isaac was delivered up by his father as a burnt offering; Jesus too was delivered up by his Father, as Paul declares when he says: He did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all. How then can he fail to give us every other gift as well?

So much for the foreshadowing: the reality far surpasses it. For this spiritual lamb that was offered for the whole world has cleansed the whole world. He has freed us from error and brought us back to the truth. He has made earth heaven, not by changing its physical composition, but simply by showing us how to lead a heavenly life here on earth. Thanks to him the worship of demons has come to an end. Men no longer adore sticks and stones; creatures endowed with reason do not bow down before senseless objects. On the contrary, all error has taken flight, and the light of truth has illumined the whole world.

St John Chrysostom, Hom. in Gen., 47.3-4 (PG 54:432-434); Word in Season VII.

Thursday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A HOMILY BY BISHOP JACOB OF SARUGH

There are symbols hidden in the Scriptures for those who know how to interpret them, and great wealth to be found by those who immerse themselves in these texts. The inspired Prophets were artists who drew portraits of the Son of God, and they used symbolism to veil his beauty in their writings. Let those who would see the Son spiritually open the Bible: there, in his splendour, they will find him.

Thus the fiancée, whom the old servant Eliezer presented to Isaac as his bride, represents the church of the nations. Isaac himself is a symbol of the Son of God, our Lord, the incorruptible Victim. For anyone who seeks to understand, Eliezer symbolises John the Baptist, who also brought about the wedding of his Master through water. Rebecca’s wells represent and foretell the baptism that prepares the bride for her marriage with the Son of God. Abraham is the symbol of the true Father who gave his Son a mysterious bride, chosen from far off among the nations, to make her heir of his wealth.

You who have understanding, take the book, study it, and recognise the image of the Son hidden in these texts. When one goes over the broad outlines of this history, it is the path of our Lord that stands out. When you listen to the Bible being read, open your ears to the two ways of understanding it; develop the art of distinguishing the two levels of meaning. When the history of Isaac is related literally, learn how to see in it another figurative meaning.

Thus the Son of God used water to celebrate his marriage. By water he wedded the Church and made her his own. By baptism the Bridegroom and the bride were united; they were two and they became only one in the one Spirit, as it is written. It is toward these symbols that Eliezer speeds when he unites the daughter of pagans to the son of promise. The way he travels is a foreshadowing of the true and definitive way opened by John the Baptist. The wedding of Rebecca, a virgin of dazzling beauty, prefigures the spiritual wedding of the Church.

Bishop Jacob of Sarugh, Hom. sur les fiancailles de Rebecca (L’Orient Syrien 3.324-326); Word in Season VII)

Friday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST CAESARIUS OF ARLES

Now, dearly beloved, let us briefly see, as far as we can, what this story means. When blessed Abraham directed his servant to take a wife for his son, he was an image of God the Father, just as he had been when he offered the boy as a holocaust. His servant signified the words of prophecy and so Abraham sent him into a distant land to take a wife for his son, because God the Father intended to send his prophetic word throughout the world to search for the Catholic Church as a spouse for his only-begotten Son. Just as through Abraham’s servant a bride is brought for blessed Isaac, so by his prophetic word the Church of the Gentiles is invited to Christ the true bridegroom from distant lands. But where is found that spouse who was to be joined to Christ? Where, unless near the water? It is true, dearly beloved: If the Church had not come to the waters of Baptism, she would not have been joined to Christ. For this reason Rebecca found Abraham’s servant at the well, and the Church finds Christ at the sacrament of Baptism.

As the Scriptures say: Toward evening blessed Isaac went out in the field to meditate. That field contained a figure of the world. Isaac went out into the field because Christ was to come into the world; Isaac toward the evening of the day, Christ at the end of the world. He went out, it says, to meditate. Isaac went to meditate in the field because Christ came into the world to fight against the devil, that he might justly conquer him while being unjustly killed by him, so that by dying he might destroy death, and by rising again bring life to all who believe. Moreover, just as Rebecca was bodily joined to Isaac, so the Church was spiritually joined to Christ, receiving at present the Blood of her Spouse as a precious dowry, and later to receive the dowry of his kingdom.

Therefore, Isaac took Rebecca and led her into the tent of his mother. Christ also took the Church and established it in place of the synagogue. As by infidelity the synagogue became separated from God and died, so by faith the Church was joined to Christ and received life. As the Apostle says, by pride the branches of the olive tree have been broken off, in order that the lowly wild olive may be engrafted. For this reason Isaac took Rebecca, and because he loved her he was consoled for the loss of his mother. Christ took the Church and loved her so much that by this very love he tempered the grief which was occasioned by the death of his mother, the synagogue. Moreover, dearly beloved, because from us Christ the Lord prepared for himself a spiritual spouse which, as I said, he redeemed with his precious Blood, therefore, with his help, each one of us should not only guard the benefits conferred upon him by divine gift, but should strive to increase them. Truly, it is right that our spouse, fairer in beauty than the sons of men, should find in us no sins to offend the eyes of his majesty. To him, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is honour and might forever. Amen.

St Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 85.3-5; FoC 47 (1963) tr. Mueller.

Saturday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

All who have ever been saints belong to the same Church. You can’t say that our father Abraham doesn’t belong to us, just because he lived before Christ was born of the virgin; after all, the Apostle says that we are the children of Abraham by imitating Abraham’s faith. If then we are admitted to the Church by imitating him, are we going to exclude the man himself from the Church? It is this Church that was represented by Rebecca the wife of Isaac. It is this Church that was also to be found in the holy Prophets who understood the Old Testament, realising that its material promises signified something spiritual. If it was spiritual, then all spiritual people belong to Isaac’s younger son, because first comes the material one and afterward the spiritual.

The reason why the elder son is called Esau is that no one becomes spiritual without first having been ‘of the flesh’ or materialistic. But if they persist in the wisdom of the flesh, they will always be Esau. If, however, they become spiritual, they will then be the younger son. Well before Isaac blessed his sons, Esau had longed to have the lentils Jacob had cooked. And Jacob said to him, Give me your birthright, and I will give you the lentils I have cooked. He sold his right as firstborn to his younger brother. He went off with a temporary satisfaction, the other went off with a permanent honour. So those in the Church who are slaves to temporary pleasures and satisfactions eat lentils; lentils which Jacob certainly cooked, but which Jacob did not eat. Idols, you see, flourished more than anywhere else in Egypt; lentils are the food of Egypt; so lentils represent all the errors of the Gentiles.

Now apply this. You have a Christian people. But among this Christian people it is the ones who belong to Jacob that have the birthright or right of the firstborn. Those, however, who are materialistic in life, materialistic in faith, materialistic in hope, materialistic in love, still belong to the Old Testament, not yet to the new. They still share the lot of Esau, not yet in the blessing of Jacob. The mother, you see, gave birth to both sons; she bore one hairy, the other smooth. Hairiness stands for sins, smoothness for mildness, that is, for cleanness from sins. Just as Rebecca bore two sons, so two are begotten in the Church’s womb, one hairy, the other smooth. There are people, after all, who even after baptism are unwilling to give up their sins, and want to do the same things as they used to do before. For instance, if they used to swear to lies, they want to perjure themselves still; if they used to cheat the simple, they want to go on cheating still; if they used to fornicate, to get drunk, they are doing the same things as much as ever. There is Esau for you, born hairy. But what does Jacob do? He is told by his mother: Go and let your father bless you. And he says, I’m afraid, I won’t go. There are people in the Church today who are afraid to mix with sinners, in case they are contaminated by consorting with sinners within the communion of the Church - and so they perish through heresies and schisms.

St Augustine, Sermon 4.11-12, 14; WSA (1990) tr. Hill.

Season of the Year | Week 04

Sunday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE GLAPHYRA ON GENESIS BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

Isaac’s words were not completely fulfilled in Jacob, they are fulfilled in Christ and in those who are justified through faith, who are also made sons according to the promise in Isaac. The words of the blessing, I believe, signify the sweetness of the spiritual perfume in Christ, like that of a garden or a plentiful field spreading a sweet and beautiful perfume from its spring flowers. And so Christ described himself to us in the Song of Songs: I am a flower of the field, the lily of the valleys. He was actually a lily and a rose born of the earth for the sake of humanity. Since he did not know sin, he was the most divine of all those who inhabited the whole world and produced a perfume through his works. For this reason Scripture compares Christ with a field blessed by God, and with very good reason, because he is the perfume of the knowledge of God the Father. As the divine Paul says, But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him.

These things therefore fit with Christ and also fit quite reasonably with the new people: May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. The dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth is the Word, was given to us by the Father, together with the participation through the Spirit, and therefore we were made sharers in the divine nature through him. And we also received plenty of grain and wine, that is, strength and happiness. In fact, it is said truly, Bread strengthens the heart of man, and wine makes glad his heart. Bread is the symbol of spiritual strength, wine of the physical. They are given to those who are in Christ through him. How else are we made stable and firm in piety and immovable and aware to think the right things?

Afterward the power of blessing is transferred again to the Emmanuel himself. And let nations serve you, and princes bow down to you, and be lord of your brother. The Emmanuel was called the firstborn when he became so with reference to us, among many brothers. But for this reason we must not forget that he is God and Lord of the universe. We worship him as God, and he has reigned as God over those who were called from the brothers through grace. Who in the heavens shall be compared to the Lord among the sons of God? Therefore the Emmanuel has reigned as God over those who were received into the brotherhood, and to him every knee should bow in heaven and an earth, and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. This is the blessing of Jacob, whose strength refers to the Emmanuel himself and to those who are justified in the faith.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyrorum in Genesim, 3.5 (PG 69.172-173); ACC 2 (2002) tr. Sheridan.

Monday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON JACOB AND THE BLESSED LIFE BY ST AMBROSE

After Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, the elder brother arrived. By this it is revealed that the Kingdom was predestined to be bestowed on the Church rather than on the synagogue, but had secretly entered the synagogue so that sin might abound and, when sin had abounded, that grace might also abound. At the same time, it makes it clear that the candidate for the kingdom of heaven must be quick to carry off the blessing for which he has been recommended. On this account the younger son was not blamed by his father but praised, for Isaac says, Your brother came deceitfully and received your blessing. For deceit is good when the plunder is without reproach. Now the plunder of piety is without reproach, because from the days of John the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent bear it away. Our fathers celebrated the Pasch in haste and ate the Lamb in haste with no delay, and the holy Joseph summoned his brother Benjamin by a holy fabrication and deceit.

Nevertheless, Esau brought it about by his demands and entreaties that he did receive a blessing, but such a blessing as was in agreement with the earlier one, namely that he should serve his brother. Indeed, the one who could not command the other ought to have served him, in order to be ruled by the one who was more wise. It was not the role of the holy Patriarch to deliver his own son to the ignoble state of slavery. But since he had two sons, one without moderation and the other moderate and wise, in order to take care for both like a good father, he placed the moderate son over the son without moderation, and he ordered the foolish one to obey the one who was wise. For the foolish man cannot of his own accord be a disciple of virtue or persevere in his intent, because the fool changes like the moon. Isaac was right to deny Esau freedom to make his own choices; else he might drift like a ship in the waves without a helmsman. But Isaac made him subject to his brother according to that which is written, The unwise man is the slave of the wise man. Therefore the Patriarch was right to make him subject, so that he might amend his dispositions under rule and guidance. And so Isaac says, By your sword shall you live; you shall serve your brother, for holiness has mastery over cruelty and kindness excels over emotions that are harsh.

Every man who does not possess the authority conferred by a clear conscience is a slave; whoever is ensnared by pleasure or seduced by desires or provoked by wrath or felled by grief is a slave. In fact, every passion is servile, because everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin, and, what is worse, he is the slave of many sins. The man who is subject to vices has sold himself to many masters, so that he is scarcely permitted to go out of servitude. But the man who is the master over his own will, judge over his counsels, and who restrains the longing of his bodily passions, is assuredly a free man. For the man who does all things wisely and in complete accord with his will is the only truly free man.

St Ambrose, On Jacob and the Blessed Life, 3.10-12; FoC 65 (1971) tr. McHugh.

Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 44 BY ST AUGUSTINE

Jacob the Patriarch set a stone under his head and while he slept he saw the heavens open and a ladder stretching from heaven to earth, and angels ascending and descending. After seeing this, he woke up, anointed the stone, and departed. In this stone he understood Christ, that is why he anointed it. And this was done symbolically, and then he left. For he did not anoint the stone, and keep going back there to worship, and to offer sacrifices there. What happened was this: expression was given to a mystery. Take a look at the stone: The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. And it is because Christ is the head of man that the stone is placed at the head. Take note of this great symbol: the stone is Christ. A living stone, says Peter, rejected by mankind, but chosen by God. And the stone is at the head, because Christ is the head of the man. And the stone is anointed because the name Christ derives from anointing.

And as Christ unfolds this picture, a ladder is seen, from earth to heaven, or from heaven to earth, and angels ascending and descending. What this is all about we shall see better when we have look at the Lord’s words in the Gospel. You know that Jacob himself is Israel. When the Lord saw Nathaniel in the Gospel, he said: Behold, here is a true Israelite, in whom there is no guile. This is the sort of language that was used about Jacob himself: And Jacob was free from guile and he lived at home. The Lord called Nathaniel an Israelite in whom there was no guile because of Jacob. And Nathaniel said: How do you know me? And the Lord said: When you were beneath the fig tree I saw you. This means, when you were within the Jewish people and under the Law, which covered over that people with a bodily shadow, that is where I saw you. And Nathaniel made his confession and said: You are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel. And the Lord said: It is because I saw you under the fig tree that you have believed. You shall see things greater than these. He is speaking with Israel, with Jacob, with the one who placed a stone under his head. What greater things? The fact that already that stone is by the head: Truly 1 tell you, you shall see the heavens open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Let God’s angels ascend and descend on that ladder. Let this happen in the Church. God’s angels are heralds of the truth, let them ascend and see: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. Let the angels descend and see that, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

This is happening in the Church: God’s angels ascend and descend on the Son of Man. This is because the Son of Man is above. They ascend to him in their heart, that is, his head. And the Son of Man is below, that is, his body. His limbs are here, his head is up above. One rises up to the head, comes down to the limbs. It is the same Christ here and there. For were he there only, and not here, what would be the point of saying: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?

St Augustine, Enarr. In Ps. 44.20 (CCL 38:508-509); Word in Season VII.

Wednesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LADDER OF DIVINE ASCENT BY ST JOHN CLIMACUS

There is such a thing as exile, an irrevocable renunciation of everything in one’s familiar surroundings that hinders one from attaining the ideal of holiness. Exile is a disciplined heart, unheralded wisdom, an unpublicised understanding, a hidden life, masked ideals. It is unseen meditation, the striving to be humble, a wish for poverty, the longing for what is divine. It is an outpouring of love, a denial of vainglory, a depth of silence.

For followers of the Lord, this manner of thinking operates abundantly at the beginning and they are greatly disturbed by it, as though by some holy fire. I mean separation from their relations for the sake of hardship and simplicity which drives on the lovers of this good. Yet for all that it is praiseworthy, it requires discretion, since not every kind of exile is good if taken to extremes. Detachment is good and its mother is exile. Someone withdrawing from the world for the sake of the Lord is no longer attached to possessions, that he should not appear to be deceived by the passions. If you have left the world, then do not begin to reach out for it. Otherwise your passions will come back to you. Eve had no wish to be driven from paradise, whereas a monk will abandon his homeland willingly.

Let us say we manage for some time to live away from our relatives. We practise a little piety, compunction, self-control. And then the empty thoughts come tramping toward us, seeking to turn its back to the places we knew. They tell us what an example we are, what a help to those who witnessed our former wicked deeds. If we happen to be articulate and well informed, they assure us that we could be rescuers of souls and teachers to the world. They tell us all this so that we might scatter at sea the treasures we have assembled while in port. So we had better imitate Lot, and certainly not his wife. The soul turning back to the regions from which it came will be like the salt that has lost savour, indeed like that famous pillar. Run from Egypt, run and do not turn back. The heart yearning for the land there will never see Jerusalem, the land of dispassion.

There is no greater example of renunciation than that great man who heard the command, Leave your country and your family and the house of your father. Obediently he went to a foreign country where the language was different. And so it is that anyone following this model of renunciation is glorified all the more by the Lord.

But even though this glory is given by God, it is still good to deflect it with the protective shield of humility. When demons or men lavish praise on us for our exile as if it were a great achievement, let us remind ourselves at once of him who came down from heaven for our benefit and exiled himself to earth. Nothing we could ever do would match that.

St John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 85-87; Word in Season VII.

Thursday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON EZEKIEL BY ST GREGORY THE GREAT

The pursuit of the contemplative life is something for which a great and sustained effort on the part of the powers of the soul is required, an effort to rise from earthly to heavenly things, an effort to keep one's attention fixed on spiritual things, an effort to pass beyond and above the sphere of things visible to the eyes of flesh, an effort finally to hem oneself in, so to speak, in order to gain access to spaces that are broad and open.

There are times indeed when one succeeds, overcoming the opposing obscurity of one's blindness and catching at least a glimpse, be it ever so fleeting and superficial, of boundless light. But the experience is momentary only, so that all too quickly the soul must again return to itself. From that light which is approached with bated breath, it must now, sighing and mournful, go back once more to the obscurity of its blindness.

We have a beautiful illustration of all this in the sacred history of the Scriptures where the story is told of Jacob's encounter with the angel, while on his return journey to the home of his parents. On the way he met an angel with whom he engaged in a great struggle and, like anyone involved in such a contest, Jacob found his opponent, now stronger, now weaker than himself.

Let us understand the angel of this story as representing the Lord, and Jacob who contended with the angel as representing the soul of the perfect individual who in contemplation has come face to face with God. This soul, as it exerts every effort to behold God as he is in himself, is like one engaged with another in a contest of strength. At one moment it prevails so to speak, as it gains access to that boundless light and briefly experiences in mind and heart the sweet savour of the divine presence. The next moment, however, it succumbs, overcome and drained of its strength by the very sweetness of the taste it has experienced. The angel, therefore, is, as it were, overcome when in the innermost recesses of the intellect the divine presence is directly experienced and seen.

Here, however, it is to be noted that the angel, when he could not prevail over Jacob, touched the sciatic muscle of Jacob’s hip, so that it forthwith withered and shrank. From that time on Jacob became lame in one leg and walked with a limp. Thus also does the all-powerful God cause all carnal affections to dry up and wither away in us, once we have come to experience in our mind and hear the knowledge of him as he is in himself.

Previously we walked about on two feet, as it were, when we thought, so it seemed, that we could seek after God while remaining at the same time attached to the world. But having once come to the knowledge and experience of the sweetness of God, only one of these two feet retains its life and vigour, the other becoming lame and useless. For it necessarily follows that the stronger we grow in our love for God alone, the weaker becomes our love for the world.

St Gregory the Great, Hom. in Ez., 1.12 (PL 76:955); Word in Season VII.

Friday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE GLAPHYRA ON GENESIS BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

After he was called by God, Jacob ascends to Bethel, that is, to the house of God which is what Bethel means, there he offers sacrifices to God and is declared chief and master of the sacred rites. He teaches his successors and descendants how they must enter the house of God. He orders the foreign gods to be rejected like dung and filth and he commands a change of garments. It is fitting for us to do likewise when we are called before God, or to enter the divine Temple, especially in the time of the holy baptism. We, as if we drive away the foreign gods and part from such error, must assert, ‘I refuse you, Satan, and all your pomp and all your worship.’ We also must change completely our garment by stripping off the old man that is corrupt through deceitful lusts and by clothing ourselves with the new man, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its Creator. The women who were with Jacob took off their earrings. And in fact women by entering the house of God without wearing any carnal ornament and with loose hair remove from their head any accusation of pride. That is why, I believe, those women took off the precious stones they wore in their ears.

When we ascend to Bethel, that is, to the house of God, we will know the stone, I mean, the chosen stone, which was made into a cornerstone. By this I mean Christ. We will see the one who is anointed by the Father in joy and exultation for all the creatures that live under the sky. As I said, the Son is anointed by God the Father: he is the Joy of us all, the universal exultation, according to the words of the psalmist. And you see how this is prefigured in the words that were just said to us: And Jacob set up a stone and poured oil upon it. That action as a symbol of the mystery of Christ, through whom and with whom the glory to God the Father and the Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyrorum in Genesim, 5.4-5 (PG 69.284); ACC 2 (2002) tr. Sheridan.

Saturday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM GLAPHYRA ON GENESIS BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

The devout Joseph obeyed his father’s command to go to Shechem to see if his brothers were well, and where and how they were feeding their flocks. But when they saw him coming they smiled a cruel and fateful smile, saying: Here comes that dreamer! And they cast him into a pit. But a little later they drew the boy out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites who were going to Egypt. And so Joseph was led away into Egypt.

In the same way our Lord Jesus Christ was sent by God the Father to see if the Israelites continued to be well, obviously in a spiritual sense, and if the sheep in their care were still in a good state, and the shepherds not lacking in gentleness towards them. But people were aware that the beloved Son, the spiritual Joseph, was among them in person. For the blessed evangelist John said: Yet many even of the people in authority believed in him, but they kept it to themselves because of the Pharisees. So the fact that they recognised him did not prevent them from insulting him. Indeed they killed him and the cowards threw him into a kind of pit, the deep and dark pit of death, that is, Hades. For that is just how the inspired David showed him to us, speaking as if addressing his words to God the Father in heaven, as if in the person of Christ: Lord, you brought my soul out of Hades, you saved me from the fate of those who go down to the pit.

We are told: The pit was empty, there was no water in it, to show us distinctly and clearly that this was meant to represent Hades. And I shall tell you why: water is a symbol of life, as something life-giving. It is said there was no water in the pit, naturally, for Hades was thought of as the home and dwelling-place of those deprived of life. However, the boy was raised from the pit. Christ too came back to life from the dead. For just as Joseph was not kept down in the pit, so neither did Christ remain in Hades, and what is more he left it empty. For he said to the prisoners: Come out!

It was not long after he had been raised from the pit that the devout Joseph went away to Egypt, when the Ishmaelites bought him. Christ too came back to life and rose from the pit. Then leaving Judea he went to the land of the Gentiles, taken there by the spiritual Ishmaelites, those in obedience to God, for that is the literal meaning of their name. Who would such people be? Again they were the blessed disciples, who had listened to Christ's teaching and were the first-fruits of those distinguished in their obedience, their faith and glorious achievements above the Law. It was these who in a way bought Jesus, giving up all the treasure they possessed in the Law to buy that single pearl of great value, in the words of our Saviour’s own parable. It was they who conveyed Christ to the gentiles as ministers of the Gospel. Throughout every land under the sun they proclaimed him as God and Lord, and as the chosen stone, rejected by those who clung to the Law, the spiritual builders, but chosen and precious in God’s sight, and laid as the cornerstone of the building.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyrorum in Genesim, 6 (PG 69:3-4-5); Word in Season VII.

Season of the Year | Week 05

Sunday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST CHROMATIUS OF AQUILEIA

As you have just heard in the reading, the saintly Joseph was of good appearance but even better in mind, because he was both physically and mentally chaste. He shone in outward appearance but even more so in the excellence of his mind. And though for many people good looks are usually a hindrance to a good life, they could not harm this saintly man because his handsome appearance was governed by the excellence of his mind. So the soul must rule the body, not the body the soul, because the soul is mistress of the body; the body is really a servant to the soul. Hence the unhappiness of the soul which is ruled by the body, and after being mistress becomes servant, because it breaks faith with the Lord and submits to the slavery of sin.

But the soul of the Patriarch Joseph was faithful to its dominion, and there was no question of the body usurping its power. In fact when his master’s wife, an unchaste woman, asked him to lie with her he refused to do so, because even in his state of slavery he had not lost command of his soul. As a result he was falsely accused and put into prison. But the saintly man regarded that prison as a palace, or rather was himself a palace in the prison, because where there is faith, chastity and modesty, there is the palace of Christ, the Temple of God, the abode of the Holy Spirit. So if any man prides himself on his good looks, or any woman boasts of the beauty of her body, let the man follow Joseph’s example and the woman Susanna’s: let them be chaste in body and mind; then they will also be beautiful not only to their fellow human beings but to God. For there are three examples of chastity in the Church, so that all have someone to copy: Joseph, Susanna, and Mary; Joseph for men to copy, Susanna for women, and Mary for virgins.

St Chromatius of Aquileia, Sermon 24.2 (SC 64:70-72); Word in Season VII.

Monday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON GENESIS BY ST PROCOPIUS OF GAZA

Not only does God pour out his gifts upon us, he also draws good out of evil. Had Joseph remained in his father’s house, Egypt would have had no one to act in advance to prevent the full effects of the impending famine. In the same way, had the only Son of God remained hidden from us in the glory of the Father, the whole world would still be unredeemed.

Joseph was born in his father’s old age, and for this reason Jacob loved him all the more. There is a foreshadowing here of the events of these last days. With immeasurable love God looked upon his Son as he came into the world in the fullness of time, at the end of a long line of Prophets and saintly men and women. This Son of his encountered the hate of the Pharisees because the Father had clothed him with a garment of many glorious attributes – rather as Jacob had clothed Joseph with a tunic of many colours. Christ was the light, and he was the life. He cleansed those dead in sin, commanded the sea and walked on the water. The fire of envy, however, smouldered in the hearts of the Pharisees when they considered that the time would come when the whole world, and not merely the Jews, would worship this man. Here is the heir. Let us kill him and take his inheritance.

Joseph was handed over to the Ishmaelites and went down into Egypt. Christ, too, was delivered to the Gentiles: Behold we go to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the Gentiles. When Joseph first arrived in Egypt, he was deeply afflicted. Christ, too, suffered persecution at the hands of both Jews and Gentiles. Both men were falsely accused. Joseph was thrown into prison, Christ was consigned to the grave. Joseph rose to a position of eminence and ruled over his captors. Christ’s rule extends to the living and the dead.

Think, however, with what constancy of mind Joseph was endowed. Though oppressed by servitude and imprisonment, he possessed true freedom of mind. He languished in prison, but one day he would be clothed with royal dignity. Doubts never violated his faith. What was the source of his watchfulness and self-control? If he had no faith in the divinely inspired gift of interpretation, why did he interpret the dreams of Pharaoh’s servants in prison with him? Why did he not rather persuade them that nothing was to be gained by self-discipline?

When the time came, not one of his brothers was able to recognise Joseph. Envy obscures the truth, and too much cunning can lead to a form of slavery. It was Joseph’s father who paid him the highest tribute of all when he wept for the son whom he loved. The envy of the Jews obscured the truth concerning the Christ, and so does the hate of the Greeks. Christ is not truly recognized either by those bogged down in heresy. But if you desire to attain true knowledge of Christ, you must hear God saying to you: This is my beloved Son; listen to him.

St Procopius of Gaza, In Gen. (PG 87/1:468-469, 475-478); Word in Season VII.

Tuesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE BOOK OF PROMISES BY QUODVULTDEUS OF CARTHAGE

Impelled by the famine, Joseph’s brethren came to Egypt to buy corn from their brother, whom they had sold. Those who had crucified our Joseph, that is Christ our Lord, came to him to be revived by his bread, and so take away the hunger which was distressing their souls. The former, Joseph’s brethren, do him reverence; the latter, Christ’s brethren, likewise do him reverence. On seeing his brothers, Joseph recognised them; but they did not know who he was. This applies to us also: for his brethren knew him not. For if they had known who he was, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. Joseph was estranged from his brethren and said to them, through an interpreter, you are spies, you have come to spy out the roads and the tracks of this country. So also our Joseph, Christ our Lord, said to his persecutors through his interpreter Peter, you have denied what is holy and just and you have killed the prince of eternal life.

Joseph’s brethren are sorry for what they did. To those others also, Christ’s persecutors, the word is: Repent. They, of the olden times, say, we are at fault over our brother. So also the Jews who had told Pilate, his blood be upon us and our children, now say to the Apostles, what are we to do, brethren? Show us. So as not to be thought spies, Joseph’s brethren state that they are the sons, twelve in all, of one father; and they say that one of them is no more (since it was he to whom they telling this), while the youngest is at home with their father.

On hearing mention of his younger brother, Joseph, ardently longing for him, says, I will test your claim not to be spies by seeing whether your younger brother will come with you. And he took Simeon apart from them, had him fettered in their presence, and put him under guard. Surely our latter day Benjamin and youngest brother, sought after by the Joseph who is Christ our Lord, is none other than Paul, formerly Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin, as he himself says, calling himself the least of the Apostles. Simeon, bound by the three bonds of his denial, he whom fear held bound and love released, this Simeon we may take as Peter. That said, we had better acknowledge that it is by him that sins are bound and loosed; him indeed to whom it was said that What you hold bound on earth will be bound in heaven; and what you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Quodvultdeus of Carthage, Liber Promissionum, 1.30, 42 (SC 101:242-246); Word in Season VII.

Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE GLAPHYRA ON GENESIS BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

When the sons of Jacob arrived with Benjamin, Joseph called them to the feast, and after they had washed with water he fed them to the full with food and wine. For at the right moment the Jews, distressed and as if overwhelmed by unbearable hunger, obviously in a spiritual sense, will abandon their haughty and arrogant pride and come to Christ. They will long to be fed by him, I mean with holy, spiritual and life-giving food. But he will not receive them without the new people, of whom Benjamin is the symbol. And when they come as it were in concord and unanimity he will receive them cheerfully, and welcome them as if to his own house, that is, the Church. Then after he has washed them with pure water, the baptismal water of spiritual rebirth, he will feed them with bread and wine.

This is the spiritual interpretation. But we may take it further. For Joseph made himself known to his brothers when they arrived with Benjamin, and even thought them worthy to eat at his table, as I said just now. But he gave them no inheritance, and actually ordered them to return home and fetch their father, Jacob. But when Jacob went down and Joseph now saw him there with his children, then and only then he assigned them the best of all his land. This too is a clear indication that Christ will receive the Israelites converted in the last days of this age, since the new people are obviously united with them in unity of soul. The new people, as I said, are foreshadowed in Benjamin. But the inheritance we hope for will not be given to us without the holy Fathers. For just as they, although they died in faith, in the words of the wise Paul, did not obtain what was promised, since God had foreseen something better for ourselves, that they should not attain perfection without us, so we too shall wait for the Fathers, so as not to attain perfection without them. Therefore with the holy Fathers, the first, middle, and last people, we shall receive the best and inalienable inheritance of the kingdom of heaven in Christ, through whom and with whom be glory to God the Father with the Holy Spirit for ever. Amen.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyrorum in Genesim 4 (PG 69:324-5); Word in Season VII.

Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON JOSEPH BY ST AMBROSE

Now by raising his eyes he saw Benjamin, the son of his mother. The moral sense is, that we see those we love before others and the gaze of our eyes lights first on those whom we consider first in our mind’s eye. In the mystical sense, however, the Lord Jesus saw Paul – for the eyes of the Lord are upon the just – and said, is this your youngest brother?

The greater prerogative is given to Paul for the beginning of his faith; of him it is said to Ananias, Go, because he is to me a vessel of election to carry my name amongst the Gentiles. And the silver cup is put in his sack alone. Benjamin did not know this; Paul was in error, but he was called. The sacks of the brothers are first examined according to the order of age of each brother. Joseph indeed practiced deception, and sent the cup so that he might by a holy trick recall the brother whom he loved; yet the light of God’s mysterious plans is clearly reflected.

Christ finds this money in us, which he has himself given us. We possess the money of nature, we also possess the money of grace. Nature is the work of the Creator, grace the gift of the Redeemer. Even though we are unable to see Christ’s gifts, nevertheless he is giving them; he is working in a hidden way and is giving them to all men, but there are few who are able to keep them and not lose them. Yet he does not give all things to all men. Wheat is given to many, but the cup to one, who is presented with the prophetic and priestly function. For it is not everyone but only the Prophet who says, The cup of salvation I will take up and I will call upon the name of the Lord. Therefore the word of heavenly teaching already shone in Paul’s body, since he was instructed in the Law. But because he was still not subject to the justice of God, the cup was within the sack, the teaching within the Law, the lamp within the bushel. Nevertheless, Ananias was sent to give a blessing and to lay on his hand and open the sack. When the sack was opened, the money shone forth, and when the scales fell, in a way like fastenings on the sack, Paul saw straightway. Free of the bond, he obtained the grace of liberty and said, But we all, beholding the glory of God with faces unveiled, are transformed into the same image.

Those who lose Christ do return back. Indeed, in the Gospel too, when they were seizing the Lord Jesus for death, they drew back and fell upon the ground. It was appropriate that they went back, for they fell from heavenly grace to earthly defilement. And so, by an interpretation in the moral sense, they did not wish to return without their brother; in the mystical sense, they were unwilling to return without Paul. With the loss of him, they claimed that the old age of the father of the people would be brought down into sorrow. And so Judah desired to remain with Joseph so as not to see the evils which came upon his father; that is, he foresaw and desired to guard against the evils which were going to come to the people of the Jews.

St Ambrose, On Joseph, 10.56, 58, 60-66; FoC 65 (1972) tr. McHugh.

Friday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON GENESIS BY ORIGEN

It appears fitting indeed to contemplate what God says to Israel through the vision and how he sends him to Egypt strengthening and encouraging him as if he were setting out to engage in some struggles. For he says, Fear not to descend into Egypt, this is to say: You shall contend against principalities and powers and against the rulers of this world of darkness, – which is figuratively called Egypt – fear not, be not afraid. But if you wish to know the reason why you ought not to fear, hear my promise: For I will make a great nation of you there, and I will go down with you into Egypt, and I will recall you from there in the end. He, therefore, with whom God shall go down into the struggles, is not afraid to go down into Egypt; he is not afraid to approach the struggles of this world and the battles with those demons who resist.

But I think a still greater mystery lies hidden in this passage. For this statement disturbs me: I will make a great nation of you, and I will go down with you into Egypt, and I will recall you from there in the end. Who is it who is made into a great nation in Egypt and is recalled in the end? If it is that Jacob to whom it seems to refer, it does not appear true. For he was not recalled from Egypt in the end, since he died in Egypt. But it will be absurd if someone says Jacob was recalled by God because his body was carried back. If you believe this, it will be false to say that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. These words apply not to a dead body but to a living and vigorous man.

Are these words, then, a figure of the Lord who descends into this world and is made into a great nation, that is, the Church of the Gentiles, and who, after all was completed, returned to the Father. Or is it a figure of the first-formed man who descends to the struggles of this world after he was cast out of the delights of paradise? God does not desert those placed in this struggle, but is always with them. He is pleased with Abel; he reproaches Cain; he is present with Enoch, when he is invoked; he commands Noah to construct an ark of salvation in the flood; he leads Abraham from the house of his father and from his kinsmen; he blesses Isaac and Jacob; he leads the sons of Israel out of Egypt; he writes the Law of the letter through Moses; he completes what was lacking through the Prophets. This is what it means to be with them in Egypt.

But as regards the statement, I will recall you from there in the end, I think this means, as we said above, that at the end of the ages his only begotten Son descended even into the underworld for the salvation of the world and recalled the first-formed man from there. For what he said to the thief, This day you shall be with me in paradise, you should understand not to have been said to him alone, but also to all the saints for whom he had descended into the underworld. In this man, therefore, more truly than in Jacob, the words I will recall you from there in the end, will be fulfilled.

Origen, Hom. in Gen. 15.5-6; FoC 71 (1982) tr. Heine.

Saturday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON THE PATRIARCHS BY ST AMBROSE

This blessing appears to be directed to the Patriarch Judah, but in reality that later Judah is meant, Jesus Christ, the true Confessor who was born of that tribe and who alone is praised by his brothers; of them it is said, I will declare your name to my brothers. He is the Lord by nature, but a brother by grace; his hands, which he stretched out to an unbelieving people, are on the back of his enemies. For with those same hands and by that same passion he protected his own, subjugated hostile powers, and made subject to himself all men who were without faith.

A lion’s whelp is Judah. Isn’t it clear that he both represented the Father and manifested the Son? Is there any clearer way to teach that God the Son is of one nature with the Father? The one is the lion, the other the lion’s whelp. By this paltry comparison, their unity in the same nature and power is perceived. King proceeds from king, a strong one from one who is strong. Because Jacob foresaw that there would be those to claim that the Son was younger in age, he replied to them by adding, From my seed you have come up to me. Resting you have slept like a lion and like a whelp. And in a different passage you find that the whelp is himself the lion of the tribe of Judah. Therefore, seeing that he had said whelp, it was good that Jacob at once put lion; this is to say: ‘Do not to let your ears be deceived, because they heard ‘whelp’; I described that Son, I did not say he was younger. He also is a lion just as the Father is. Jacob, who confesses the Son, also esteems him equal.

Moreover, he represented the Son’s incarnation in a wonderful fashion when he said, From my seed you have come up to me. For Christ sprouted in the womb of the virgin like a shrub upon the earth; like a flower of good fragrance. He was sent forth in the splendour of new light and came up from his mother’s womb for the redemption of the entire world. Just as Isaiah says, There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse and a flower shall come up out of the root. The root is the household of the Jews, the rod is Mary, the flower of Mary is Christ. She is rightly called a rod, for she is of royal lineage, of the house and family of David. Her flower is Christ, who destroyed the stench of worldly pollution and poured out the fragrance of eternal life.

Therefore you have become acquainted with the incarnation; learn of the passion. Resting, you have slept like a lion. When Christ lay at rest in the tomb as if in a kind of bodily sleep, as he himself says, I have slept and have taken my rest and have risen up, because the Lord will sustain me. On this account also Jacob says, Who will arouse him? Who else is there to rouse him again, unless he rouses himself by his own power and the power of the Father? Therefore he is the Author of his own resurrection, he is the Judge of his death, he is expected by the nations. And he is the expectation of the nations. Jacob spoke more meaningfully than if he had said, ‘The nations are expecting him’, for in Christ lies the entire hope of the Church.

St Ambrose, On the Patriarchs, 4.17-24; FoC 65 (1972) tr. McHugh.

Season of the Year | Week 06

Sunday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A HOMILY ON 1 THESSALONIANS BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

You have become imitators of the Lord, says the Apostle, by receiving the word amidst much oppression, with the joy of the Holy Spirit. Oppression in what pertains to the body, but joy in the spirit. You wonder, perhaps, how that can be. Well, what happened was distressing for you, but not so what came of it: the Holy Spirit does not allow it to be. On the one hand, you cannot be joyful while suffering for your sins; but on the other, you can find joy even in being scourged, when you suffer for Christ.

For that is how the joy of the Spirit shows itself: it brings gladness in place of what seemed like affliction. They have oppressed you, he says, and persecuted you, but the Spirit has not forsaken you all the while. Just as the three young men were refreshed in the fiery furnace, so it has been with you in your oppression. Whereas it is not in the nature of fire to refresh, but of the revivifying Spirit, it is likewise not in the nature of oppression to beget joy and gladness: that comes of suffering for Christ, and of the revivifying Spirit bringing relief even through the furnace of trials and temptations.

With joy, St Paul says, but, more than that, with great joy: for it comes from the Holy Spirit. This has made you an example to all the faithful in Macedonia and Achaia. Indeed, he tells them that they have shone so brightly that they have become teachers of those who preceded them. That is what it means to be apostolic. He did not say, ‘So as to set an example in believing’, but ‘to set an example to those who already believe’. That is to say, ‘You have taught them how to have faith in God, by enduring hardships from the very first days.’ And when he says Achaia, he means the whole of Greece.

Do you see what zeal can do? No need for time, no procrastination or delay; it only has to show itself and everything is accomplished. For thus it was that people who had only later heard the teaching of the Gospel became teachers of the first to do so. Let no one despair, then. Even those who have spent a good deal of time unprofitably may nevertheless do as much in a short time as they previously failed to do. For if people who did not believe could become such shining lights once they did believe, how much more could those do so who already believed?

On the other hand, let no one pondering all this slacken off, on learning that everything can be put right in a short while; for the future is always unclear, and the day of the Lord is like a thief that comes upon us suddenly as we sleep. But if we are not asleep, it will not come upon us like a thief, or take us all unaware. For if we stay awake and keep watch, it will arrive not like a thief, but like a royal messenger calling us to the good things prepared for us.

St John Chrysostom, Première Epître aux Thessaloniens (Bareille 19.184-6); Word in Season VII.

Monday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE DISCOURSES ON THE PSALMS BY ST HILARY OF POITIERS

Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. It is good and pleasant for brothers to dwell in unity because when they dwell in unity they are gathered in the community of the Church; when they are called brothers it is because they are of one heart in the charity of a single will.

At the first preaching of the Apostles we read that this was the great precept, summed up in the words, The company of those who believed were of one heart and soul. It is fitting then, for the people of God to be brothers under one Father, to be one under one Spirit, to enter with one mind under the same roof, under one head to be members of one body.

It is good and pleasant when brothers dwell in unity. And the Prophet uses a simile to illustrate that goodness and pleasantness, It is like the precious oil upon the head, running down upon the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes. By that oil, made up of perfumes, Aaron was anointed to the priesthood. It was God’s pleasure that this be the anointing of his first priest. And we know that our Lord, too, was invisibly anointed when it is said, Your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness. That anointing is not a material thing, he was anointed not with a horn of oil as kings are, but with the oil of gladness. Furthermore, after this anointing Aaron was called according to Law, the Christ, which means the anointed one.

And since wherever it is poured out, this oil quenches the unclean spirits of the heart, so through the anointing of charity we breathe forth to God a sweet odour, as the Apostle says, we are the aroma of Christ. Just as this oil was pleasing to God in his first priest, so it is good and pleasant for brothers to dwell in unity.

The oil ran down from the head into the beard. Now, a beard is an ornament of adult manhood. For we must not be little children in Christ except, as it is written, we should be babes in evil not in thinking. The Apostle calls all who have not faith ‘babes’ since they are not strong enough for solid food and still need milk, as he says, I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready.

St Hilary of Poitiers, On Psalm 132; The Divine Office I.

Tuesday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM AGAINST HERESIES BY ST IRENAEUS

For this reason the Word of God became man and the Son of God became the son of man in order that man, being mingled with the Word of God, and being granted adoption should become the son of God.

In no other way could we have received incorruptibility and immortality, without ourselves first being united to them. How could we be made one with incorruptibility and immortality unless these two had first become what we are? Only in this way could corruptibility be absorbed by incorruptibility and mortality by immortality and so enable us to receive adoption as sons.

This same Son of God, therefore, who is our Lord and the existing Word of the Father is also son of man. He was born, like other men, born of Mary, who was herself of human stock and a member of the human race, and so he became the Son of Man.

It was for this reason that the Lord gave a sign here below and in heaven above that man had not asked for. Man had neither hoped that a virgin could be with child and bear a son, although she was a virgin; nor that this child would be God with us, coming down to the earth below in search of the sheep that was lost (which he himself had made) and once again ascending on high and offering in trust to the Father the man he had found. This same Lord himself became the first-fruits of the resurrection of man, so that the resurrection of the head should mean the resurrection of the rest of the body, and that every man alive should rise again on completion of the time of the punishment, which his disobedience had earned. For the body in its varied joints and ligaments grows up and is strengthened by God’s aid, and each of the members has its appropriate place in the body. The Father has many mansions in the same way as there are many members in the body.

When, therefore, man fell, God was generous in mercy, since he foresaw the victory which would be his through the agency of the Word. For because his power was made perfect in weakness, he displayed the kindness of God and the greatness of his power.

St Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 3.19.1, 3 - 3.20.1; The Divine Office I.

Wednesday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A HOMILY ON PSALM 37 BY ST AUGUSTINE

There is another, inner prayer which is without ceasing. It is the desire which consists in longing. Whatever else you do, if you long for that Sabbath, you never cease praying. If you do not want to cease praying, do not cease longing. Your unending stream of longing is your unending stream of speech. If you cease loving, you will cease speaking. Who are those who have ceased speaking? Those of whom it is said: Because there is an abundance of iniquity, the love of many shall grow cold. The cooling-off of love is the silence of the heart. The leaping flames of love are the shouting of the heart. If love lasts for ever, then you are always shouting. If you are always shouting, you are always longing. If you are longing, then you are recollecting the future rest. And you ought to understand before whom the roaring of your heart takes place.

Consider now what sort of longing it ought to be which is before the eyes of God. Should it really be a longing for the death of our enemy? This is the sort of thing people think they are right to ask for. Indeed sometimes we do pray for the thing we ought not to. Let us have a look at what people think they are entitled to pray for. For they pray for the death of someone, and for an inheritance to come their way. But let even those who pray for their enemies to die listen to the Lord when he says: Pray for your enemies. Let them not, therefore, pray for the death of their enemies, but let them pray for their improvement. Indeed their enemies will in a very real sense be dead, for once they have been corrected, they will no longer be enemies.

And before you is all my longing. What if their longing is before God, and their groaning is not before God? How can this possibly be, when the voice of that longing is groaning? That is why the psalm says: And my groaning is not hidden from you. For you it is not hidden, but it is hidden from many people. Sometimes God’s humble servant is seen to be saying: And my groaning is not hidden from you. Sometimes God’s servant is seen also to laugh. You could hardly say that the longing for God was dead and buried in his heart, could you? And if there is longing within it, there is also groaning. It does not always filter through to the ears of people like you and me, but it never escapes the attention of God’s ears.

St Augustine, Enarr. In Ps. 37.14 (CCL 38.391-2); Word in Season VII.

Thursday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LETTER TO DIOGNETUS

The distinction between Christians and other men, is neither in country nor language nor customs. For they do not dwell in cities in some separate place of their own, nor do they use any strange variety of dialect, nor practise an extraordinary kind of life. This teaching of theirs has not been discovered by the intellect or thought of busy men, nor are they the advocates of any human doctrine as some men are. Yet while living in Greek and barbarian cities and following the local customs, both in clothing and food and in the rest of life, they show forth the wonderful and paradoxical character of their own citizenship.

They dwell in their own fatherlands, but as if strangers in them; they share all things as citizens, and suffer all things as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is a foreign country. They marry as all men, they bear children, but they do not expose their offspring. The offer free hospitality, but guard their purity. Their lot is cast in the flesh, but they do not live according to the flesh. They pass their time upon the earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven. They obey the appointed laws, and they surpass the laws in their own lives. They love all men and are persecuted by all men. They are unknown and they are condemned. They are put to death and they gain life. They are poor and make many rich; they lack all things and have all things in abundance. They are dishonoured, and are glorified in their dishonour, they are spoken evil of and are justified. They are abused and give blessing, they are insulted and render honour. When they do good they are reviled as evil-doers, when they are reviled they rejoice as men who receive life. Those who hate them cannot state the cause of their enmity.

To put it shortly what the soul is in the body, that is what the Christians are in the world. The soul is spread through all the members of the body, and Christians are spread throughout the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but is not of the body, and Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world. The soul is invisible, and is guarded in a visible body, and Christians are recognised when they are in the world, but their religion remains invisible. The flesh hates the soul, and wages war upon it, though it has suffered no evil, because it is prevented from gratifying its pleasures, and the world hates the Christians though it has suffered no evil, because they are opposed to its pleasures. The soul loves the flesh which hates it, and Christians love those that hate them. The soul has been shut up in the body, but itself sustains the body; and Christians are confined in the world as in a prison, but themselves sustain the world. The soul dwells immortal in a mortal tabernacle, and Christians sojourn among corruptible things, waiting for the incorruptibility which is in heaven. The soul when treated badly in food and drink becomes better, and Christians when buffeted day by day increase more. God has appointed them to so great a post in the battle line and it is not right for them to decline it.

The Letter to Diognetus, 4.4 – 5.5; Loeb (1913) tr. Lake.

Friday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CITY OF GOD BY ST AUGUSTINE

No one can doubt that Paul is here speaking of Antichrist, telling us that the day of judgement (which he calls the Day of the Lord) will not come without the prior coming of a figure whom he calls the Apostate, meaning, of course, an apostate from the Lord God. There is, however, some uncertainty about the ‘temple’ in which he is to take his seat. Is it in the ruins of the Temple built by King Solomon, or actually in a Church? For the Apostle would not say the temple of God if he meant the temple of some idol or demon. For that reason some people would have it that Antichrist means here not the leader himself but what we may call his whole body, those who belong to him, together with himself, their leader. And they suppose that then it would be more correct to say, following the original Greek, that he takes his seat as the temple of God, instead of in the temple of God, claiming that he himself is God’s temple, that is, the Church.

As for the statement, and you know what now restrains him so that he will be revealed only at the right time, Paul did not choose to speak explicitly, because, as he says, they knew it. And that is why we who have not their knowledge, are anxious to arrive at the Apostle’s meaning; but we find ourselves unable to do so, for all our efforts. Some people suppose those words to refer to the Roman imperial power, and they think that the reason for Paul’s reluctance to write more explicitly was the fear of slandering the Roman Empire when many hoped that it would last forever. On this assumption the secret power of wickedness already at work would be intended as a reference to Nero, whose actions already seemed like those of Antichrist. Hence there are people who suggest that Nero is to rise again and become Antichrist.

However, there are others who think that you know what restrains and the secret power of wickedness refer only to the evil people and the pretended Christians who are in the Church, until they reach such a number as to constitute a great people for Antichrist. Thus there are different interpretations of the obscure words of the Apostle, put forward by different commentators. But the general meaning of what he said is not doubtful. Christ will not come to judge the living and the dead without the prior coming of his adversary, Antichrist, to seduce those who are dead in soul. It is, in fact, at that time that Satan will be unloosed, and by the agency of the Antichrist he will carry on his work with every kind of lying miracle.

Those led astray by these signs and wonders will be those who deserve to be led astray, because, in the Apostle’s words, they did not welcome the love of truth so that they might be saved. And the Apostle had no hesitation in adding, for this reason God will subject them to the influence of delusion, so that they may believe a lie. Thus they will be led astray after being judged, and after being led astray they will be judged by that last and open judgement administered by Jesus Christ, who is to judge with perfect justice, though it was with utter injustice that he himself was judged.

St Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 20.19; tr. Bettenson.

Saturday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONFERENCES OF ST JOHN CASSIAN

Although some people are in the habit of speaking of monasteries instead of cenobia, without drawing a distinction, nonetheless the difference is that monastery is the name of a dwelling and means nothing more than a place for monks, whereas cenobium indicates the character and discipline of the monastic profession itself. The dwelling of even one monk can be called a monastery, but something cannot be called a cenobium unless a united community with several inhabitants lives there. Indeed, even where groups of sarabaites live are said to be monasteries.

Therefore, since I see that you have learned the principles of this profession from the best kind of monks – that is, from the praiseworthy school of the cenobia – and that you are heading toward the highest reaches of anchorite discipline, toward the virtue of humility and patience which I do not doubt that you learned there, you should pursue this with a sincerely disposed heart, not feigning it, as some do, by false humility in speech and certain bodily practices.

Abba Serapion once cleverly mocked this feigned humility. When someone came to him displaying the greatest abjection in dress and speech and the old man encouraged him, as was the custom, to say the prayer, the man would not agree. He demeaned himself and said that he had been involved in such wicked behaviour that he did not deserve to breathe the same air as everyone else; he even refused to sit on a mat but sat on the ground instead. But when he refused to have his feet washed, Abba Serapion, having finished the meal and having been given the opportunity by the customary conference, began to warn him kindly and gently not to wander about everywhere like a lazy vagrant, especially since he was young and strong; he encouraged him to sit in his cell in keeping with the rule of the elders and, following the example of the Apostle Paul, to prefer being supported by his own toil rather than by others’ generosity.

At this the man was filled with such annoyance that he was unable to conceal on his face the bitterness that he had conceived in his heart. The old man said to him: ‘Up until now, my son, you have burdened yourself with the full weight of your misdeeds, not fearing to incur a notorious reputation by confessing such atrocious crimes. Why, I ask you now in reference to our simple little admonition, which contained no reproach at all but rather edification and love, do I see you moved with such indignation that you are unable to hide it on your face? Were you perhaps, in humiliating yourself, hoping for praise from our mouth?’

Hence, a humility of heart must be maintained which is genuine and which does not come from an affected humbleness of body and speech. It will glow with the clearest indications of patience precisely when a person does not boast to others about crimes of his that are not to be believed but, rather disregards what is insolently said against him by someone else and endures insults inflicted upon him with a gentle and placid spirit.

St John Cassian, The Conferences, 18.10-11; ACW 57 (1997) tr. Ramsey.

Season of the Year | Week 07

Sunday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON THE PAULINE EPISTLES BY AMBROSIASTER

Freed from all anxiety about the Corinthians, Paul now confidently declares that he is an Apostle of the Lord. In the first letter, when he heard some had been lured away from his teaching, he simply said that he was called an Apostle. In order to affirm that his Apostleship has been ratified, he adds here that he has been made an Apostle by the will of God. He writes in association with Timothy, from whom he has heard the good news of the changes which have taken place at Corinth, and he associates the people there with believers in other Churches, in order to confirm to them that they have made progress.

Since the gift of God and of Christ is one and the same, Paul wants them to be partakers in the grace of God, that is, in the grace of Jesus Christ. Paul always speaks in this way, indicating the personhood of the Father and of the Son, even though they are of one substance. By these words he is giving much relief to those who had been saddened by his rebuke, for when they hear that God is not just the Father of creation but the Father of mercies as well, they will have hope and be assured that they have been rebuked so that they may find the mercy of God, once they have mended their ways. Through repentance they are born again and made anew, and this is not just a pardon but a restoration of their previous state of existence.

Paul mentions two kinds of consolation. One is the sort by which people who are suffering distress unjustly on account of the name of Christ find consolation in being set free. The other is the consolation of those who, when they are grieved because of sins, receive consolation from the fact that hope of forgiveness is promised to them when they mend their ways. This happens in a community of those who have received consolation from God and have been rescued from distress. It is thus clear that Christ himself, for whose sake we are suffering, is present with us, consoling us and rescuing us from trouble by his divine intervention.

Paul also wanted the Corinthians to know what evils he was enduring for the sake of their salvation. That way, they would not take it too badly if their own errors were admonished by people who were enduring such harsh treatment for their sake. The boast of Paul’s conscience was simplicity and sincerity, qualities which belong to God’s teaching. In his first letter Paul had criticised teaching based on earthly wisdom, and he alludes to that again here. He accused preachers of that kind both because they preached according to the wisdom of the world and because they were doing it in order to make money. For that reason, Paul was unwilling to receive any payment from the Corinthians. What Paul says is backed up by his actions, and it is through their actions that we learn what a person really thinks.

Ambrosiaster, On the Pauline Epistles (CSEL 81:3.3.195-201); ACC 7 (1999) tr. Bray.

Monday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON 2 CORINTHIANS BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

God the Father makes us firm in Christ and establishes in all souls a faith that is correct and unshakable in holding that Christ is God by nature and in truth. That is so even if he was visibly in a form like ours, being born from a woman according to human nature and yet being above every created thing. At any rate, when Peter confessed his faith, saying clearly that, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus Christ our Lord replied himself, saying, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. For since the mystery is a great one, it is reasonable that it has need of the revelation which is from above, from the Father.

It is God, therefore, who makes us firm in Christ, God who seals and anoints us and gives the Spirit as the guarantee, so that we might know that the Son is not ‘yes’ and ‘no’ but, rather, is truly God and that the ‘yes’ to all good things is in him. God is said to seal and to anoint us, giving the guarantee of the Spirit, so that Christ might be the one who fulfils these things in us, not in a servile way nor as one anointing and sealing us with an alien spirit, but with the Spirit which is his own and the Father’s. For the Holy Spirit is in both Father and Son by means of the identity of nature, not as something shared between them but rather as coming forth from the Father through the Son to the created universe. Christ breathed on the holy Apostles and said Receive the Holy Spirit, and it is through him and in him that we have received the impress of the divine and intelligible image. For the divine Apostle himself said in his letter to the Galatians, My children, with whom I am again suffering labour pains until such time as Christ is formed in you. Now if we are conformed to Christ, and if we are enriched by the divine image within us, then Christ himself is the image of God the Father, and his exact resemblance, and we are called to his likeness, not by means of a participation in holiness but rather in nature and essence.

For it is not unreasonable that the one who, by nature, is related to him who is true God by nature and who is generated from his substance should himself be God. He has been sealed by God the Father, as John the wise says, He who receives his witness has put his seal to the fact that God is true. But he has not been sealed in the same way as we have, for the Father reveals that he himself is wholly in the nature of the Son, which is not true for us. Thus Christ says, He who has seen me has seen the Father.

St Cyril of Alexandria, In Ep II ad Corinthios, (PG 74:921-3); Word in Season VII.

Tuesday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON LEVITICUS BY ORIGEN

The Word of God, who was clothed with the flesh of Mary, proceeded into this world as in the Last Days. What was seen in him was one thing; what was understood was something else. For the sight of his flesh was open for all to see, but the knowledge of his divinity was given to the few who were chosen. So also when the Word of God was brought to men through the Prophets and the Lawgiver, it was not brought without proper clothing. For just as in the incarnation the Word was covered with a veil of flesh, so here it was covered with the veil of the letter, and this letter is seen as flesh but the spiritual sense hiding within is perceived as divinity.

Such, therefore, is what we now find as we go through the book of Leviticus, in which the sacrificial rites, the diversity of offerings, and even the ministries of the priests are described. Both the worthy and the unworthy see and hear these things according to the letter, which is, as it were, the flesh of the Word of God and the clothing of its divinity. But blessed are those eyes which inwardly see the divine spirit that is concealed in the veil of the letter; and blessed are they who bring the ears of the inner man to hear these things. Otherwise, they will only perceive the letter which kills, in these words.

If I also should follow the literal understanding, as some among us do, without using what they ridicule as a confusing cloud of allegory, I would only arrive at the voice of the Lawgiver. From this I, a man of the Church, living under the faith of Christ and placed in the midst of the Church, would then be compelled by the authority of the divine precept to sacrifice calves and lambs and to offer fine wheat flour with incense and oil. This is what happens when we are forced to be subservient to the historical sense and to keep to the letter of the Law.

We are happy to be attacked for the way we read the Holy Scriptures so long as the Church, which has already turned to Christ the Lord, may know the truth of the Word which is completely covered under the veil of the letter. For thus the Apostle said, if anyone turns to the Lord, the veil will be removed; for where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Thus, the Lord himself, the Holy Spirit himself must be entreated by us to remove every cloud and all darkness which obscures the vision of our hearts hardened with the stains of sin, in order that we may be able to behold the spiritual and wonderful knowledge of his Law, according to him who said: Take the veil from my eyes and I shall observe the wonders of your Law.

Origen, Hom. in Lev. 1.1-4; FoC 83 (1990) tr. Barkley.

Wednesday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON THE SONG OF SONGS BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

In changeable human nature, good and evil exist by turns because we have the capacity to choose either one of two contraries. As a result, the good in us alternates with the evil, and the evil becomes a limit on the good. All the activities of our souls, insofar as they are opposed, define and limit one another. On the other hand, the divine nature is simple, pure, of one kind, unmoved, unchangeable, always the same, and always self-contained. Because it is incapable of fellowship with evil, it remains unlimited in the good. It recognises no limits because it contains no opposites in itself. So then, when God draws a human soul to participate in himself, he always remains in equal measure superior to the participating soul because of his superabundant goodness. On the one hand, the soul continually grows through participation in what is beyond it and never stops growing. On the other hand, the good in which the soul shares remains unlimited so that the more the soul participates in it, the more she recognises that it transcends her as much as before.

We now see the bride being led by the Word up a rising staircase by the steps of virtue to the heights of perfection. First the Word sends her a ray of light through the windows of the Prophets and the lattices of the Law. He exhorts her to draw near to the light and to become beautiful by being transformed into a dove’s image in the light. The bride at this point partakes in the good as much as she can. Then he starts again to draw her to participate in a higher beauty, as if she had never tasted it. Thus, as she progresses, her desire grows with each step. And, because there is always an unlimited good beyond what the bride has attained, she always seems to be just beginning her ascent.

Therefore the Word says once again to the bride whom he has awakened: Arise. And when she has come to him, he says, Come. For one who has been called to rise in this way can always rise further, and one who runs to the Lord will always have wide open spaces before him. And so we must constantly rise and never cease drawing closer. As often as the bridegroom says Arise and Come, he gives the power to ascend to what is better. Thus you must understand what follows in the Song of Songs. When the bridegroom exhorts the bride who is already beautiful to become beautiful, he clearly recalls the words of the Apostle who bids the same image to be transformed from glory to glory. By glory he means what we have grasped and found at any given moment. No matter how great and exalted that glory may be, we believe that it is less than that for which we still hope. Although she is a dove by what she had achieved, nevertheless, the bride is bidden to become a dove once again by being transformed into something better.

St Gregory of Nyssa, In Cant. 5.158-160; (1987) tr. McCambley.

Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE DISCOURSES ON THE PSALMS BY ST AMBROSE

Why do you turn away your face? We think that God turns his face away from us when we are suffering, so that darkness is poured out on our heart and we are so hindered by the darkness that we are unable to look upon the radiance of the truth. But if God touches our intellect and deigns to visit our mind we are sure that nothing is able to bring darkness upon us. The countenance of a man shines out more than the other parts of his body, and whenever we see someone either we come to know him if he is a stranger, or recognise him as one we know. How much more then does the countenance of God illuminate him on whom he looks!

As in his other teaching so here the Apostle has something notable to say about this. He is truly an interpreter of Christ, bringing him to our understanding with apt ideas and words. He says: The God who said, ‘Out of darkness the light shall shine’, is the same God who made his light shine in our hearts, to bring us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory, shining in the face of Christ. We have heard then where Christ shines in us: he is the eternal brightness of soul whom the Father sent into the world that we might be illuminated by his face and so be able to look upon eternal and heavenly truths – we who before were imprisoned in earthly darkness.

Why am I speaking about Christ when even Peter the Apostle said to the cripple, lame from birth: Look on us? He then looked at Peter, and found light by the grace of faith; nor would he have been restored to health unless he had believed in faith.

Now, when there was so much glory to be seen among the Apostles, Zacchaeus, hearing that the Lord Jesus was passing by, climbed up into a tree, because he was himself a small slight man and could not see Jesus in the crowd. He saw Christ and he found light, he saw him and he who had been robbing others of their goods now was happy to give away his own!

Why do you turn away your face? Even if you do turn your face from us, O Lord, yet the light of your countenances is imprinted upon us. We keep this in our hearts and it glows in our inmost will, nor can anyone survive if you turn away your face.

St Ambrose, In Ps. 43.89-90; The Divine Office III.

Friday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF ST AUGUSTINE

The true mediator, whom in the secret of your mercy you have shown to men and sent to men, that by his example they may learn humility – the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, appeared between sinful mortals and the immortal Just One: for like men he was mortal, like God he was just. The wages of justice being life and peace, through the union of his own justice with God he was able to make void the death of those sinners whom he justified by choosing to undergo death as they do.

How much you have loved us, O good Father, who spared not even your own Son, but delivered him up for us wicked men! How you have loved us, for whom he thought it not robbery to be equal with you became obedient even unto the death of the cross, he who alone was free among the dead, having power to lay down his life and power to take it up again: for us he was to you both victor and victim, and victor because victim; for us he was to you both priest and sacrifice, and priest because sacrifice: turning us from slaves into your sons, by being your Son and becoming a slave. Rightly is my hope strong in him, who sits at your right hand and intercedes for us; otherwise I should despair. For many and great are my infirmities, many and great; but your medicine is of more power. We might well have thought your Word remote from union with man and so have despaired of ourselves, if he had not been made flesh and dwelt among us.

Terrified by my sins and the mass of my misery, I had pondered in my heart and thought of flight to the desert, but you forbade me and strengthened me, saying: Christ died for all: that they also who live, may now not live to themselves but with him who died for them. See, Lord, I cast my care upon you, that I may live; and I will consider the wondrous things of your Law. You know my unskilfulness and my infirmity: teach me and heal me. He your only One, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, has redeemed me with his blood. Let not the proud speak evil of me, for I think upon the price of my redemption, I eat it and drink it and give it to others to eat and drink; and being poor I desire to be filled with it amongst those that eat and are filled: those who seek the Lord shall praise him.

St Augustine, Confessions 10.43, 68-70; The Divine Office III.

Saturday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON THE LETTERS TO THE CORINTHIANS BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

Just as what brings heat makes things expand, so it is the gift of love to stretch hearts wide open; it is a warm and glowing virtue. Love caused Paul to open his mouth and expand his heart. ‘I do not love only by words,’ he says, ‘my heart itself joins in the song of love and so I speak with confidence with my whole mouth and with my whole heart.’ Nothing was wider than the heart of Paul which embraced all the saints, just like the individual lover, in close bonds of love. And yet his love did not stretch to breaking point, not become weak, but remained whole in every case. What wonder that he had such feeling for the saints when even in the case of unbelievers his heart embraced the whole world?

And so he did not say, ‘I love you’, but – and this is more emphatic – We have spoken frankly to you, we have opened wide our hearts. We have all men in our heart; and not merely that alone, but with ample room. For he who is loved wanders in the inmost heart of the lover without any fear: accordingly Paul says: On our part there is no constraint; any constraint there may be is in yourselves. Notice that the reproach is uttered with restraint, which is the mark of lovers. He did not say, ‘You people do not love me’, but, ‘Not in an equal measure’, nor does he wish them to be too bitterly reproached.

It is evident in all his writings how he burns with love for the faithful. Choose quotations out of every epistle. Writing to the Romans, the Apostle says: I long to see you, and, I have often made it my object to come to you, and If in any way at all I may have a prosperous journey to you. To the Galatians he speaks as follows: My little children, with whom I am again in travail; to the Ephesians again: For this reason I kneel in prayer on your behalf; to the Thessalonians: What is our hope or joy or crown of boasting? Is it not you? For he said that he carried them round both in his heart and in his chains.

Furthermore, he writes to the Colossians: I wish you to see how great a conflict I have on your behalf and on behalf of those who have not seen my face in the flesh so that your hearts can have comfort and to the Thessalonians: Like a nurse who cherishes her charges, thus we yearn for you, and we wanted to give you not only the Gospel but even our lives. On our part there is no constraint, he says. He does not say only that he loves them, but that he is loved by them, that in this way too he may draw them to him. And about them he bears this witness: Titus has come bringing us your longing, your tears, and your eagerness.

St John Chrysostom, Hom in Ep. ad Cor. 13.1-2; The Divine Office III.

Season of the Year | Week 08

Sunday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LADDER OF ST JOHN CLIMACUS

Mourning which is according to God is a melancholy of the soul, a disposition of an anguished heart that passionately seeks what it thirsts for, and when it fails to attain it, pursues it diligently and follows behind it lamenting bitterly. Those making some progress in blessed mourning are usually temperate and untalkative. Those who have succeeded in making real progress do not become angry and do not bear grudges. As for the perfect – these are humble, they long for dishonour, they look out for involuntary sufferings, they do not condemn sinners and they are inordinately compassionate. The first kind are acceptable, the second praiseworthy, but blessed surely are those who hunger for suffering and thirst for dishonour, for they will be filled to abundance with the food that cannot satiate them.

If you are endowed with mourning, hold fast to it with all your strength, for it can easily be lost if it is not well secured. Like wax melting near fire, it can easily be dissolved by noise, worldly cares, and luxury, but, in particular, by talkativeness and frivolity.

A man misses the true beauty of mourning if he can mourn at will, rather than because he genuinely wants to, or, more accurately, because God wishes him to. The ugly tears of vainglory mingle frequently with mourning which is pleasing to God, as we shall discover by experience whenever we find ourselves mourning and yet doing wrong.

True compunction is pain of soul without any distraction. It offers itself no rest and thinks hourly of death. It stands in wait for the God who brings comfort, like cool waters, to humble monks. God does not demand or desire that someone should mourn out of sorrow of heart, but rather that out of love for him he should rejoice with the laughter of the soul. Take away sin and then the sorrowful tears that flow from bodily eyes will be superfluous. Why look for a bandage when you are not cut? Adam did not weep before the fall, and there will be no tears after the resurrection when sin will be abolished, when pain, sorrow, and lamentation will have taken flight.

As I ponder the true nature of compunction, I find myself amazed by the way in which inward joy and gladness mingle with what we call mourning and grief, like honey in a comb. There must be a lesson here, and it surely is that compunction is properly a gift from God, so that that there is a real pleasure in the soul, since God secretly brings consolation to those who in their heart of hearts are repentant. When we die, we will not be criticised for having failed to work miracles. We will not be accused of having failed to be theologians or contemplatives. But we will certainly have some explanation to offer to God for not having mourned unceasingly.

St John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 7; CWS (1982) tr. Luibheid & Russell.

Monday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE SERMONS OF ST CAESARIUS OF ARLES

Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. Sweet is the name of mercy, dearest brethren, and if the name is sweet, how much sweeter is the quality itself? Yet though all men would wish to receive it, alas, their own conduct is not such as to deserve it. All wish to receive mercy, few are ready to show mercy to others. What effrontery to want to receive what you neglect to give! You must show mercy in this life if you hope to receive it in the next. And so, dearest brethren, since we all wish for mercy, let us make her our patroness in this age that she may free us in the future. For there is mercy in heaven, and we attain it through the acts of mercy that we perform on earth. This is what Scripture says: O Lord, your mercy is in heaven.

There are two kinds of mercy then, mercy on earth and mercy in heaven, human mercy and divine mercy. What is human mercy like? It makes you concerned for the hardship of the poor. What is divine mercy like? It forgives sinners. Whatever generosity human mercy shows during our life on earth divine mercy repays when we reach our fatherland. In this world God is cold and hungry in all the poor, as he himself said: As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me. God then is pleased to give from heaven, but he desires to receive on earth.

What sort of people are we – when God gives, we want to receive, when he asks, we refuse to give? When a poor man is hungry, Christ is in need, as he said himself: I was hungry and you gave me no food. Take care not to despise the hardship of the poor, if you would hope, without fear, to have your sins forgiven. My dear brethren, Christ is now hungry, he is hungry and thirsty in all the poor; and what he receives on earth he returns in heaven.

I put to you this question, dearly beloved: what is it you want, what is it you are looking for, when you come to Church? What indeed if not mercy? Show mercy on earth, and you will receive mercy in heaven. A poor man is begging from you, and you are begging from God; he asks for a scrap, you ask for eternal life. Give to the beggar, so that you may deserve to receive from Christ. Listen to his words: Give and it shall be given you. What effrontery it is for you to want to receive what you refuse to give! And so when you come to Church give whatever alms you can to the poor in accordance with your means.

St Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 25.1; The Divine Office III.

Tuesday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE SERMONS OF ST LEO THE GREAT

The sublime nature of God’s grace lies in this, my dear friends, that daily in our Christian hearts all our desires are transferred from what is earthbound to what is heavenly. Yet it is still true that our present life is lived with the Creator’s aid and is supported by his providence. It is the one and same Lord who bestows temporal blessings and who promises the eternal blessings. There is a correspondence between two duties which we have of giving thanks to God. First of all for the fact that we are carried along by the hope of future happiness to the fulfilment of this great preparation. It is faith which gives us speed. And secondly, we are to honour and praise God for the goods which we receive annually. It is he who from the creation has granted the earth’s fruitfulness and who has established the cycles of fruit production in the various plants and seeds. He never abandons his decrees so that his kindly providence as Creator remains throughout the creation.

Whatever benefit the harvests, the vines and olives have brought to man’s use, all of it flows from the generosity of God’s goodness. In his delicate way he helps on the hesitant labours of the farmers by the varied nature of the elements. Thus it is that wind and rain, cold and heat, day and night, serve our needs. If the Lord did not grant increase with his habitual planting and watering, human reason by itself would not be able to carry through its tasks to the end. Consequently it is perfectly right and just that we should help others from the things which our heavenly Father has mercifully bestowed on us.

There are many who have no share in fields, vines, or olives. It is worthwhile remembering the poverty of these people so that, out of the plentifulness which God has given, they too may bless God with us for the fruitfulness of the earth. With the landowners they can also rejoice at having been given what is the common part of the poor and of the pilgrims; that barn is a truly happy one and worthy to have all its products multiplied from which the hunger of the poor and weak is satisfied, from which the pilgrim's need is satisfied and from which the sick man's desire is cared for. God's justice allows these people to labour under various disabilities so that he may reward the lowly for their patience and the merciful for their kindness.

The most effective form of intercession for sin is in almsdeeds and fasting; and prayer which is offered with such good works is quickly heard by God. As it is written, The merciful man does good to his own soul, and nothing is more personal than what we bestow on our neighbour. For the share of earthly commodities which is given to those in need becomes eternal wealth. The riches which are born of this kindness will not be diminished by use, nor subjected to any corruption. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall have mercy shown to them by God. God is the highest reward and the form of the commandment.

St Leo the Great, Sermons, 16.1-2 (CCL 138:61-62); Word in Season VII.

Wednesday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON JUDGEMENT BY ST BASIL OF CAESAREA

When I turn to the New Testament I find our Lord Jesus Christ, while not absolving from punishment sins committed in ignorance, yet extending his warning more sternly against those who possess knowledge, when he says: that servant who knew his master’s will, but did not make ready or act according to his will, shall receive a severe beating. But he who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, shall receive a light beating.

When I find such declarations on the part of the only-begotten Son of God, and also the indignation of the holy Apostles against sinners, then I learn the severity of Christ’s judgement. For everyone to whom much is given, of him will much be required. Note also what the blessed Paul says, showing at once the dignity of our calling and God’s anger against every sin, For the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. In this passage, if one examines carefully each word of what is said, he may perceive accurately the intention of the divine Scripture: that we may not go astray with erroneous notions, thinking that some sins are punished and others left unpunished. But what does it say? We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, so that every sin because it despises the divine commandment is called a high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God.

Then it says: take every thought captive to obey Christ. – every thought, not this or that one – and being ready to punish every disobedience – here again not this or that one, but every disobedience. Truly bad custom has led us astray; great evils have been wrought upon us by the perverted tradition of men, which indeed avoids some sins, but chooses others freely. It feigns violent indignation against some, such as murder and adultery and so forth; but judges others not deserving even bare rebuke – I mean anger or slander or drunkenness, and many similar sins, against all of which in other passages Paul, speaking in Christ, pronounced the same sentence: those who do such things deserve to die. But where every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God is brought down, and every thought is taken captive to obey Christ, and every disobedience in similar fashion is punished, then nothing remains not brought down, nothing is left unpunished nothing remains outside the obedience of Christ.

St Basil of Caesarea, De Iudicio 84-86; tr. Clarke.

Thursday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE SERMONS OF ST AUGUSTINE

When the Lord sent Ananias to baptise Paul, Ananias said, Lord, I have heard of this man, that he is everywhere persecuting your servants. As though to say, ‘Why are you sending a sheep to a wolf?’ Ananias, you see, is a Hebrew word, which in English means ‘sheep’. About Saul, on the other hand, the future Paul, about the persecutor who was the future preacher, the Prophet had given advance notice: Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. What’s Benjamin got to do with it? Listen to Paul himself: For I too am an Israelite, of the race of Abraham, the tribe of Benjamin. A ravenous wolf; in the morning he will ravage, in the evening he will divide the food.

You see, he was dividing the food now that he was a preacher; he knew what to give to whom; what nourishment to administer to the sick and the weak, or what food to feed the strong. But when the sheep Ananias heard the name of this wolf, he started trembling. What answer did the Lord give Ananias as he trembled at the notoriety of Paul? Let it be so now; this man is a chosen vessel for me, to carry my name before nations and kings. I myself will show him how much he must suffer for my name’s sake. I’ll show him; it sounds like a threat, but it’s the preparation for a crown. Anyway, once turned preacher from persecutor, what did he have to endure? Dangers at sea, dangers from rivers, dangers in the town, dangers in the countryside, dangers among false brethren; in toil and hardship, in many vigils, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, often at the point of death; besides these outward things, the daily assault on me of my anxiety for all the Churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is tripped up, and I am not hot with indignation?

Here is this persecutor for you. Suffer, endure; you’ll suffer more than you inflicted on others; but don’t resent it, you have received a good rate of interest. But what was he expecting, when he was enduring such things? Listen to him in another place: Indeed, he says, this light affliction of ours. Does he seriously mean all these things are just light? Why? Is working to an incredible degree an eternal weight of glory for us, as we keep our gaze fixed, not on the things that can be seen but on those that cannot be seen? For the things that can be seen are temporary, while the things that cannot be seen are eternal. So he was aflame with love for eternal things, while he was bravely enduring evils which, even if harsh and extreme, were still only temporary. All punishment that comes to an end is light, when it is promised a reward that has no end.

And yet wasn’t it rather the one who couldn’t fall away that was enduring it all in him and with him? I’ve not the slightest hesitation in saying that it wasn’t Paul who was enduring it. Yes, he was the one enduring it, because he was faithfully willing to do so; and he wasn't the one enduring it, because the strength of Christ was dwelling in him. Christ was controlling him, Christ was providing him with power, Christ was not abandoning him, Christ was running in the runner, Christ was guiding him through to the winning post.

St Augustine, Sermon 299C.1-4; WSA (1994) tr. Hill.

Friday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ISAAC, OR THE SOUL BY ST AMBROSE

The king brought me to his inner apartment. Blessed the soul that enters the inner chambers. For, rising up from the body, she becomes more distant from all, and she searches and seeks within herself, if in any way she can pursue the divine. And when she can obtain it, having passed beyond intelligible things, she is strengthened in it and fed by it. Such was Paul, who knew that he had been caught up into paradise but did not know whether he had been caught up in the body or out of the body. For his soul had risen up from the body, had withdrawn from the bonds of the flesh, and had lifted herself up. And he was made alien to himself and held within his very self the secret words which he heard and could not reveal, because, as he remarked, it was not permitted a man to speak such thoughts.

And so the good soul scorns visible and material things and does not linger over them or delay or tarry or despising them. Rather, she rises to things eternal and immaterial and filled with wonders, for she rises with pure thought from a pious mind. Intent on perfection, she strives only for the good that is God’s and considers none other necessary, because she possesses that which is supreme. And so a man of this kind, in whom there is beauty of soul, has more than enough for himself, though he is alone, for he is himself sufficient for himself. And yet the man is never alone who has the Lord with him as his protector. Indeed, when she was brought into the secret place of divinity, the soul said, Let us rejoice and be gladdened in you. Let us love your breasts more than wine. For the just man rejoices, not in riches and in treasures of gold and silver, not in the proceeds of his property, not in power or in feasts, but in God alone.

Therefore know yourself and the beauty of your nature, and go forth as if your foot had been freed of bonds and were visible in its bare step, so that you may not feel the fleshly coverings, that the bonds of the body may not entangle the footstep of your mind, that your foot may appear beautiful. For such are they who are chosen by the Lord to announce the kingdom of heaven, and of them it was said, How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the Gospel of peace! Such was Moses, to whom it is said, Remove the sandals from your feet, so that when he was about to call the people to the kingdom of God he might first put aside the garments of the flesh and might walk with his spirit and the footstep of the mind naked.

St Ambrose, Isaac, or the Soul 4.11-12, 16; FoC 65 (1972) tr. McHugh.

Saturday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LETTER OF ST CLEMENT OF ROME TO THE CORINTHIANS

The Church of God dwelling in Rome to the Church of God dwelling in Corinth, to those who are called and sanctified by the will of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Grace and peace from God Almighty be multiplied to you through Jesus Christ.

Owing to the sudden and repeated misfortunes and calamities which have befallen us, we consider that our attention has been somewhat delayed in turning to the questions disputed among you, beloved, and especially the abominable and unholy sedition, alien and foreign to the elect of God, which a few rash and self-willed persons have made blaze up to such a frenzy that your name, venerable and famous, and worthy as it is of all men's love, has been much slandered. For who has stayed with you without making proof of the virtue and steadfastness of your faith? For you did all things without respect of persons, and walked in the Laws of God, obedient to your rulers, and paying all fitting honour to the older among you.

And you were all humble-minded and not at all arrogant, yielding subjection rather than demanding it, giving more glory than receiving, satisfied with the provision of Christ. You paid attention to his words and stored them up carefully in your hearts, and kept his sufferings before your eyes. Thus a profound and rich peace was given to all, you had an insatiable desire to do good, and the Holy Spirit was poured out in abundance on you all. You were full of holy plans, and with pious confidence you stretched out your hands to Almighty God in a passion of goodness, beseeching him to be merciful towards any unwilling sin. Day and night you strove on behalf of the whole brotherhood that the number of his elect should be saved with mercy and compassion. You were sincere and innocent, and bore no malice to one another. All sedition and all schism was abominable to you. You were adorned by your virtuous and honourable citizenship and did all things in the fear of God. The commandments and ordinances of the Lord were written on the tables of your heart.

All glory and enlargement was given to you, but then that which was written was fulfilled: My Beloved ate and drank, and he was enlarged and waxed fat and kicked. From this arose jealousy and envy, strife and sedition, persecution and disorder, war and captivity. Thus the worthless rose up against those who were in honour, those of no reputation against the renowned, the foolish against the prudent, the young against the old. For this cause righteousness and peace are far removed from you, while each deserts the fear of God. The eye of faith has grown dim, and men walk neither in the ordinances of God’s commandments nor use their citizenship worthily of Christ, but each goes according to the lusts of his wicked heart, and has revived the unrighteousness and impious envy, by which death came into the world.

St Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians, I-III; Loeb (1912) tr. Lake.

Season of the Year | Week 09

Sunday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON GALATIANS BY ST AUGUSTINE

The purpose of the Apostle’s letter to the Galatians was to make them realise that God’s grace, once implanted in them had effectively freed them from subjection to the Law. Now, at the time when the grace of the Gospel was first announced to them, there remained some Jews among them who, though now professing Christianity, did not yet fully appreciate the value of the grace they had received, and wished to be under the burden of the Law. This Law had been imposed by God on men who had given themselves over not to righteousness but to sin; it was a Law, in itself just, that had been given to wicked men to show up rather than to take away their sins. For it is only by the grace of faith, working through love, that sin can be removed. They wished to bring back under the burden of the Law the Galatians who were already under the grace of faith. They asserted that the Gospel was of no profit to them unless they had first been circumcised and obeyed the other fleshly ceremonies of the Jewish rite.

This caused them to start suspecting Paul, by whom the Gospel had been preached to them, of not holding the same teaching as the rest of the Apostles, who at that time were compelling their Gentile converts to conform to Jewish customs. It would even seem that that the Apostle Peter had yielded to the scandal of such agitators and had been led to the hypocrisy of agreeing that Gentiles would not benefit from the Gospel unless they shouldered the burdens of the Law. Paul in this same letter tells us how he recalled Peter from that hypocrisy. A similar question is raised in his letter to the Romans; but with this difference that he seems to have been able to resolve their problem and amicably to settle the dispute that had arisen in Rome between the Gentile converts and those who had come to the faith from Judaism.

By contrast, in this present letter he is writing to who had already been unsettled by the authority of those who had come over from Judaism and were forcing on them the observance of the Law. Many had already started to believe them and to suspect Paul, who had not wished to allow them to be circumcised, of not having preached the truth. That is why his first words are: I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different Gospel. In that brief opening sentence he sums up the whole matter. Also, in his introductory greeting, by declaring that his apostolic commission came to him not from men nor through man – a statement quite unparalleled in any of his other letters – he makes two things clear beyond all doubt. First, that those who were promoting such ideas were certainly not authorised by God but spoke on human authority alone; and secondly, that he must be regarded and accepted as of equal standing with the rest of the Apostles so far as concerned the authority of his Gospel witness, since he was conscious that his commission as an Apostle had come to him, not from any man nor through the medium of any human agency, but straight from Jesus Christ and God.

St Augustine, In Gal., Preface; The Divine Office I.

Monday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON THE PRESCRIPTION OF HERETICS BY TERTULLIAN

When classifying things, we must of necessity consider their origins. Now, if we examine the many great Churches that there are, we see that they all stem from the original Church, which was founded by the Apostles, and that they therefore constitute but one Church. Moreover, the reality of their writing is affected by three characteristics: by the peaceful relations which exist between the Churches, by the mutual hospitality which Christians offer one another, and by the fraternal charity they all display. These are duties which no other society enjoins, but which are characteristic of the one faith all Christians have.

This being the case, we put forward the following argument. If our Lord Jesus Christ entrusted the mission of preaching to the Apostles, then no one should be received as a preacher, unless Christ has ordained him. After all, no one knows the Father but the Son and those to whom the Son has revealed him. However, the Son does not seem to have revealed the Father to anyone except his Apostles, whom he sent out with the command that they should preach what he had made known to them. The Apostles, then, preached exactly what Christ had revealed to them and so the only way in which we can determine the content of that revelation – and this is the crux of the matter – is by consulting the Churches which the Apostles themselves established by their preaching, whether it was by word of mouth, as we say, or by letter as happened later on.

So then, it is perfectly obvious that any doctrine which accords with the teaching of the apostolic Churches, which are the original wellsprings of the faith, must be held to be true, since it must contain the teaching which the Churches received from the Apostles, and which the Apostles received from Christ and which Christ received from God. But, on the other hand, any doctrine which is at variance with the truth as taught by the Churches and therefore by the Apostles and by Christ and by God must be condemned out of hand as being false. All we have to do is to show whether our doctrine derives from the apostolic tradition; then anything different must ipso facto proceed from falsehood. Well, we have already outlined the text: because none of our teachings is at variance with the teaching of the Churches founded by the Apostles. We are in communion with them, and that is proof that we teach the truth.

This test is so simple that, if we applied it straightaway, there would be nothing further to discuss. So let us suppose that we cannot prove our position and so give our opponents the chance of invalidating our argument, if they can. They are crazy enough to say that the Apostles did not know everything, they did not hand on all they knew to everyone. Either way they put the blame on Christ, for choosing to send out Apostles who were ignorant or else over-sophisticated.

Tertullian, De Praes. Haeret. 20.7-22.9 (CCL 1:202-4); Word in Season VII.

Tuesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON GALATIANS BY ST JEROME

A Jew by nature is one of Abraham’s stock, who has been circumcised by his parents on the eighth day. One who is a Jew not by nature is one of Gentile origin who has been subsequently made so. That I may embrace the whole argument in a brief discourse, the sense of the text is as follows: We are Jews by nature, doing those things that were precepts of the Law. We are not sinners who come from the Gentiles – even in the sense of those who are sinners generically because they worship idols or those whom Jews now regard as unclean. Yet we know that we cannot be saved by the works of the Law but rather by faith in Christ. We have believed in Christ so that what the Law had not given us, our faith would guarantee to us. Seceding from the Law in which we could not be saved, we have gone over to faith, in which not the circumcision of the flesh but the devotion of a pure heart is demanded. But what if we now belatedly declare by seceding from the Gentiles that whoever is uncircumcised is unclean? In that case faith in Christ – and which we previously thought we were saved – would rather become a minister of sin than of righteousness. For by this argument faith would take away the circumcision without which one is unclean.

Some say that if Paul is right in asserting that no one is justified by the works of the Law but only by faith in Christ, the Patriarchs and Prophets and Saints who lived before Christ were imperfect. We should tell such people that those who were said not to have obtained righteousness are those who believe that they can be justified by works alone. The Saints who lived long ago, however, were justified from faith in Christ, seeing that Abraham saw in advance Christ’s day.

We must expand what follows – Who has bewitched you? – in a way worthy of Paul, who even if rough in his speech is not so in his understanding. It must not be interpreted in such a way as to make Paul legitimise the witchcraft that is popularly supposed to do harm. Rather he has used a colloquial expression, and as elsewhere so here he has adopted a word from everyday speech. In the same way as tender infants are said to be harmed by witchcraft, so too the Galatians, recently born in the faith of Christ and nourished with milk, not solid food, have been injured as though someone has cast a spell on them.

Christ is rightly said to be portrayed before us, since the whole chorus of Old Testament Prophets spoke of his gallows and passion, his blows and whippings. Nor was it a small number of Galatians who believed in the crucifixion as it has previously been portrayed for them. It was of course by this means that, reading the Prophets continually and knowing all the ordinances of the Law, they were led in due course to belief.

St Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, 1.2.15-16, 1.3.1; ACC⁸ (1999) tr. Edwards.

Wednesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LETTERS OF ST AMBROSE

The Apostle says that he who by the spirit puts to death the deeds of the body will live. Small wonder that he should live, since he who has the Spirit of God becomes a son of God. Being a son of God means that he is not received the spirit of slavery but the spirit of adopted sonship, so much so that the Holy Spirit bears witness to our spirit that we are sons of God. And this is the witness of the Holy Spirit, he himself cries out in our hearts, Abba! Father!, as Paul writes to the Galatians. Then there is that great witness to our being sons of God, the fact that we are heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ. To be a fellow heir of Christ means to be glorified with him; but he will be glorified with him who by suffering for him suffers with him.

In order to encourage us to suffer, Paul adds that everything we suffer is of no account and not worth comparing to the future good things, the immense reward for our labours, that is to be revealed in us. For then we shall be reformed in the image of God and be graced to see his glory face to face.

In praise of the greatness of this future revelation he goes on to say that creation waits for this revealing of the sons of God – creation which is now subjected to futility not of its own will but in hope, because it takes hope in Christ through the ministry of Paul. Or else because creation itself will be liberated from the slavery of corruption to be taken up into the liberty of the sons of God, so that when their future glory is revealed there will be but one liberty for both creation and the sons of God. But now, in truth, whilst that revelation is in daily expectation, the whole creation groans as it awaits the glory of our adoption and redemption, giving birth to that spirit of salvation, yearning to be freed from slavery to what is devoid of meaning.

But the meaning is plain enough – they who have the first-fruits of the Spirit groan in expectation of their adoption as sons. Now, that adoption is the redemption of the whole body. That will come about when he sees face to face, as an adopted son of God, the divine and eternal goodness. Even so is the adoption of sons in the Church of the Lord, when the Spirit cries out, Abba! Father! as you have it in Galatians. But that redemption will be perfected when all, who are graced to see the face of God, rise again in incorruptibility, honour and glory. Then indeed our human nature will judge that it is redeemed. That is why the Apostle makes his boast when he says, In this hope we are saved. Hope saves as does faith, of which it is said, Your faith has saved you.

St Ambrose, Letter 35, 4-6, 13; The Divine Office I.

Thursday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON THE SONG OF SONGS BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

We must give a response to those members of the Church who think it always right only to follow the letter of holy Scripture and do not take into account the symbolic and allegorical meanings. It is indeed necessary to search the divinely inspired Scriptures with every means at our disposal, and so if the literal sense is of any use, we will readily have the object of our search. But if anything in the hidden, symbolic sense cannot be understood literally, we will, as the Word teaches and as Proverbs says, understand the passage either as a parable, a dark saying, or an utterance of wise men such as a riddle.

The great Apostle Paul says that the Law is spiritual. He includes under the name of Law the historical narratives, since all the inspired Scriptures is Law for those who read them. They teach not only through precepts but through the historical narratives: both lead to knowledge of the mysteries and to a pure way of life for those who have diligent minds. Paul uses exegesis with an eye to what is useful and best for him, and he calls his consideration of the two children of Abraham – one born of a slave woman and the other from a free woman – an allegory. In another place, after having related certain details of a story, he says, These things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction. And again, after using the expression You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain, he added, God does not care about oxen, but clearly it has been written for our benefit. Yet Paul somewhere calls the shift from the corporeal to the spiritual a turning to the Lord and the removal of a veil.

In all these different expressions and names of contemplation Paul is teaching us an important lesson: we must pass to a spiritual and intelligent investigation of Scripture so that considerations of the merely human element might be changed into something perceived by the mind once the more fleshly sense of the words has been shaken off like dust. For this reason Paul says, the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. If we stay only with the mere facts of the text, the historical narratives of Scripture do not offer us examples of a good life. For what benefit to virtuous living can we obtain from the Prophet Hosea, or from Isaiah having intercourse with a prophetess, unless something else lies beyond the mere letter? Or how did the stories regarding David, his terrible act of adultery and murder, pertain to virtuous living? If anyone argues that these stories are reprehensible, then the saying of the Apostle will certainly be true – the letter kills, for its examples of evil conduct, but the spirit gives life. For the apparent, reprehensible sense is changed into something having a divine meaning.

St Gregory of Nyssa, Commentary on the Song of Songs, Prologue 3-7; (1987) tr. McCambley.

Friday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

Just now, when the Apostle’s letter was read, we heard, Walk by the Spirit, and do not carry through the lusts of the flesh. For these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you would. He was talking to people who had been baptized; but he was still building the temple of God, not yet dedicating it. Notice, my dear brethren, how when these material buildings are being converted to better use, some things are destroyed and broken up, others are just changed and put to better use; it’s the same with us. The works of the flesh used to be in us. You heard the list of them: But the works of the flesh, he said, are manifest; such as fornication, impurities, worship of idols, sorceries, quarrels, enmities, heresies, jealousies, drunkenness, and things like them; he says, I am warning you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God. These things in us, like idols, are to be smashed. But the actual members of our bodies are to be turned to better use, so that what used to serve the impurity of greed may henceforth serve the grace of love.

But observe what he has been saying, and take careful note of it. God’s Temple is still being built. In its Head it has already been dedicated, since the Lord has risen from the dead, conquering death, and swallowing mortality has ascended into heaven. But you are still being built, you see, you are not yet being dedicated. What would you like? That there should be absolutely no lusts at all for evil and unlawful delights? Which of the saints wouldn’t like that? But none achieve it; as long as you are living here, this is not fulfilled. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other, so that what you would like to do - that there should be absolutely no lusts whatever in you for unlawful things - you cannot. So what’s left for you to do? Walk by the Spirit, and, because you cannot manage to annihilate the lusts of the flesh, do not carry through the lusts of the flesh. You ought indeed to want to annihilate them and finish them off and totally eradicate them in every possible way; but as long as they are in you, and there is another law in your members fighting back against the law of your mind, do not carry through the lusts of the flesh.

What is it, after all, that you want? That there should simply not be any lusts of the flesh. They don’t allow you to achieve what you want; don’t allow them to achieve what they want. First you must square up to the battle, in order eventually to gain the victory. So when you begin to find the going hard in your fight against the lusts of the flesh, walk by the Spirit, call upon the Spirit, start seeking the gift of God. And if the law of your members is fighting back against the law of your mind from the lower part, that is from the flesh, even that will be corrected, even that will be changed into the rights of victory. All you have to do is cry out, all you have to do is call upon him. It is necessary to pray always and not lose heart.

St Augustine, Sermon 163.2-3, 6, 12; WSA (1992) tr. Hill.

Saturday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

Far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. He could have said, in the wisdom of our Lord Jesus Christ: and he would have spoken the truth. Or he could have said, in the majesty - and again spoken the truth. But in fact he said: in the cross. Where the worldly-wise philosopher is abashed, there the Apostle finds his treasure: by not despising the unprepossessing outer husk he gets through to the precious centre. Not for me, he says, to boast, save in the cross of Christ. You have borne a fine burden; and there is everything you sought: what there was of significance hidden there, that you have now revealed. What help did he get? Through whom, he says, the world is crucified to me and I to the world. When could the world have been crucified to you, except when he through whom the world was made was crucified for you? He who boasts, then, let him make his boast in the Lord. What Lord? Christ crucified. Where there is humility, there also is majesty; where there is weakness, there also is strength; where there is death, there is life. If you wish to arrive at the latter, do not despise the former.

You have heard about the sons of Zebedee, in the Gospel. They sought the high places of preferment, asking that one of them might sit at the right hand of the great leader, and the other on his left. They were asking for great rank indeed: but because they relented, Christ called them from where they wished to go to that place whither they must go. What does he say, to those who sought such eminence? Can you drink of the chalice that I am to drink?

What chalice is that, unless it be that of humility and suffering? As he is about to drink it and change our infirmity in his own person, he says to the Father: Father, if it might be so, grant that this cup might pass from me. Changing those people into his own likeness who refused to drink his cup and instead sought the high places, ignoring the path of humility, he says this: Can you indeed drink the cup which I am to drink? You who seek Christ exalted and glorified, go back to Christ crucified. You wish to reign and to be glorified in Christ’s resting place. But first learn to say: It is not for me to glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the Christian teaching, the precept of humility, the commendation of humility: that we should not glory, save in the cross of Christ. For it is not saying much if you glory in Christ’s wisdom: but it is if you glory in Christ's cross. Where the impious revile you, there the pious soul makes his boast; where the proud man reviles him, there the Christian makes his boast. Do not be ashamed of Christ’s cross: you have taken the mark of it on your brow, in an embarrassing place. Remember what you have on your brow, for all to see, and be not in fear of idle tongues.

St Augustine, Sermon 160.4-5 (PL 38:875-6); Word in Season VII.

Season of the Year | Week 10

Sunday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON PHILIPPIANS BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

I am sure of this, Paul says, that he who began a good work in you will continue it till the day of Jesus Christ. Notice how he also teaches them to be humble. For after bearing witness to their great achievement, to prevent them from feeling humanly proud of themselves, he immediately tells them to attribute both past and future achievements to Christ. How did he do this? By not saying: ‘I am sure that you will finish what you have begun’, but: He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. He did not deny them their success, for he said: I am glad of your partnership, that is, because they were good workers. But he denied that such success was theirs alone, saying it belonged principally to God. For he is speaking of God when he says: I am confident that he who has begun a good work in you will continue it till the day of Jesus Christ. He says: I am convinced of this not only with regard to you but to your descendants. And this indeed is no small praise, to tell people that God works in them.

For if God is no respecter of persons, which is certainly true, but looks at our aims before taking part in our achievements, it is clear that we ourselves are responsible for drawing him to us. So in that way too Paul has not denied them praise, since if God worked in us indiscriminately nothing would have prevented him working in the Gentiles and the whole of humanity as well, if he moved us like lumps of wood or stone and desired no cooperation from ourselves. So when Paul says: God will bring it to completion, this too is to their praise, since they had attracted the grace of God to work with them in their efforts to transcend human nature. And this is also praise in another way, due to the very fact that their achievements were beyond human capacity but needed the help of God. Then if God is going to complete the work, their labour will still be great, but we must be confident as we shall easily accomplish everything with God to help us.

St John Chrysostom, Phil. 1.3 (Bareille XVIII:459-460); Word in Season VII.

Monday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST COLUMBANUS

It is natural for travellers to hasten toward their native land, and natural too that they should have trouble on the way and safety at home. So let us who are on the way to it hasten toward our native land; for our whole life is like a single day’s journey.

And therefore let us devote ourselves to divine rather than human affairs, and like exiles be always sighing for our native land and longing for it. For the journey’s end must always be wished and longed for by travellers, and so because we ourselves are travellers and exiles in the world we should always be thinking of the journey’s end, that is, the end of our life, for our journey brings us to our native land. But, there, all who have been travelling the world get different lots according to their merits. The good travellers come home because they love the journey. Let us not love the journey to our native land, so that we do not lose our eternal home, for that is the kind of home we have, and which we must love. Let this, then, be our constant aim: to live our way like travellers, exiles, visitors to the world, without clinging to any worldly ambitions or longing to fulfil any worldly desires, but to fill our minds entirely with heavenly and spiritual images, singing in thought and deed: When shall I come and appear before the face of my God? For, my soul thirsts for the strong and living God. And saying with Paul: I long to die and be with Christ.

Let us realise that although We are exiles from the Lord as long as we are in the body, we are present in the sight of God. Therefore spurning all laziness, putting away all lukewarmness, let us do our best to please him who is present everywhere. Then, with a good conscience, we may pass happily from our journey in this world to the holy and eternal home of our eternal Father, from the present to the absent, from sorrow to joy, from transitory to eternal, from earth to heaven, from the region of the dead to that of the living. And then we shall see, face to face, the world of heaven and the king of kings, our Lord Jesus Christ, ruling his kingdom with right government, to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

St Columbanus, Instructio VIII.1-2 (PL 80:244-246); Word in Season VII.

Tuesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

The Apostle said to his brethren, Have this mind among yourselves which is also in Christ Jesus. Be willing, he is saying, to imitate the Son of God by being compassionate to the little ones. The Son of God who, though he was in the form of God, that is, equal to God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God.

What, my dearest brethren, what is it that the Apostle is saying, did not think it robbery? Because he was equal by nature. So for whom was equality with God a kind of robbery? For the first man, to whom it was said, Taste, and you will be like gods. He wished by an act of robbery to stretch himself up to equality, and as a punishment he lost his immortality. The one, you see, for whom it was not robbery, did not think it robbery to be equal to God. But what did he do? He emptied himself, he says, taking the form of a servant; being made into the likeness of men, and found in condition as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on the cross.

It wasn’t enough to say death, he even indicated the kind of death, he chose the worst kind, one that was abominable to all Jews. He wasn’t afraid to die, you see, through false witnesses and the sentence of a judge, though he is going to come to judge the living and the dead. He wasn't afraid to die disgracefully on the cross, in order to deliver all believers from all kinds of disgrace. So he became obedient to the death, even death on the cross; yet by nature he is equal to God; strong in the power of his greatness, weak in the compassion of his humanity; strong, in order to make all things; weak, in order to remake all things.

The next thing that happened was that the flesh, that is the head, went before us into heaven. The other members will follow. Why? Because it’s right that these members should get some sleep for a while, and that they should all rise again in their time. If the Lord had also wanted to rise then, at the end, there would be no one for us to believe in. The reason he wished to deliver the first fruits of them that sleep to God in his own person, was so that you could see in him what has been restored, and hope in yourself for what is to be granted. The whole people of God will be equated and associated with the angels.

And so, my brethren, hold on to the true, genuine, Catholic faith. The Son is equal to the Father; the gift of God the Holy Spirit is equal to the Father; and that’s why Father and Son and Holy Spirit are one God, not three gods; they are not attached to each other in grades, but united in majesty, and one God. But all the same, for our sakes the Son, the Word, became flesh and dwelt among us. He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and humbled himself, becoming obedient to the death, even death on the cross.

St Augustine, Sermon 264.1, 3, 6-7; WSA (1993) tr. Hill.

Wednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

Serve the Lord in fear, and exalt him with trembling. Exalt him, it says, not yourself, him from whom you are what you are, both because you are a man and because you are made just, if indeed you already are. If you think that your being man comes from him but your being just comes from yourself, you are not serving the Lord in fear, nor exalting him with trembling: you are exalting yourself in presumption. And what else should then befall you than the logical consequence? Lest the Lord's anger be kindled and you stray, he says, from the way of righteousness.

These are the Apostle’s words: Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Why, then, with fear and trembling, if it is within my power to work out my salvation at all? The reason is this: For it is God working within you even so. So with fear and trembling let it be: for what the humble man secures with his petition, the proud man loses with his. If, then, it really is God working within us, why those words Work out your salvation – your own salvation? Because he so works in us that we also work: Be my helper, the psalmist says. The man who summons up a helper is calling himself a worker. But the good will, he says, is mine. That is true: but what of the will that grants all that and stirs it up? Do not take my word for it, but refer to St Paul. For it is God, he says, whose effect on you is that you resolve on and perform the acts of a good will. What, then, were you claiming as your own? Why should you want to walk proudly and go astray? Return to your first resolve, and realise your lack of virtue; and that you may become good yourself, call upon him who is that already. For what pleases God in you is that alone which you have received from God – and not anything you have from yourself, for that is displeasing to him. If you consider your assets, what are they but what you have received? And if you have received all that, why brag about it as though you had not? He stands alone, only able to give. For him who has no superior, there can be no donor, no benefactor. Granted that you are his inferior, for that very reason you should give thanks for having been made in his image even so, that you may yet be found in him, you who have gone astray inside yourself. For there you could only lose yourself and you do not know how to find yourself, unless he who made you seeks you out.

St Augustine, Sermon 13.2-3 (CCL 41:177-179); Word in Season VII.

Thursday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONFERENCES OF ST JOHN CASSIAN

In every art and discipline a certain scopos or goal takes precedence. This is the soul’s goal and the mind’s constant intention, which cannot be maintained, nor the final end of the longed for fruit arrived at, except by diligence and perseverance. For, as I have said, the farmer who has as his end a secure and comfortable life, thanks to his fruitful lands, pursues his scopos or goal by clearing his field of all the briers and emptying it of every unfruitful weed, and he does not believe that he will achieve his end of peaceful affluence in any other way than as it were by first possessing by toil and hope what he desires to have the actual use of. Hence, too, the end of our journey is the kingdom of God. But we should inquire carefully into the nature of our goal. If we have not in similar fashion grasped this we shall be wearied fruitlessly by our toil, because if the road is uncharted, then those who undertake the hardships of the journey will have nothing to show for it.

The end of our profession, as we have said, is the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven; but the goal or scopos is purity of heart, without which it is impossible for anyone to reach that end. Fixing our gaze on this goal, then, as on a definite mark, we shall take the most direct route. Thus, indeed, the end of our vocation is eternal life, according to the very words of the Apostle: Having your reward, indeed, in holiness, but your end in the eternal life. But the scopos is purity of heart, which is called holiness. Without this the aforesaid end will not be able to be seized. It is as if he had said in other words: Having your scopos, indeed, in purity of heart, but your end in eternal life. When he was teaching us about our immediate goal the same blessed Apostle significantly used the very term ‘scopos’ when he said: Forgetting what is behind, but reaching out to what is ahead, I press on to the goal (in Greek the scopos), to the prize of the heavenly calling of the Lord. It is just as if he had said: By way of this goal I forget what is behind – namely, the vices of my earlier life – and I strive to attain to the end, which is the heavenly prize. Whatever therefore can direct us to this scopos, which is purity of heart, is to be pursued with all our strength, but whatever deters us from this is to be avoided as dangerous and harmful. For it is for its sake that we do and endure everything, for its sake that family, homeland, honours, wealth, the pleasures of this world, and every enjoyment are disdained – so that perpetual purity of heart may be kept. With this goal always set before us, therefore, our actions and thoughts are ordered to attaining it in the most direct way.

For the sake of this, then, everything is to be done and desired. For its sake solitude is to be pursued; for its sake we know that we must undertake fasts, vigils, labours, bodily deprivation, readings, and other virtuous things, so that by them we may be able to acquire and keep a heart untouched by any harmful passion, and so that by taking these steps we may be able to ascend to the perfection of love.

St John Cassian, Conferences 1.4-5, 7.1; ACW 57 (1997) tr. Ramsey.

Friday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONFERENCES OF ST JOHN CASSIAN

Something must be said about the renunciations which the tradition of the fathers and the authority of Holy Scripture show to be three and which each one of us ought to pursue with all our zeal. The first is that by which in bodily fashion we despise all the wealth and resources of the world. The second is that by which we reject our former behaviour, vices, and affections of soul and body. The third is that by which we call our mind away from everything that is present and visible and contemplate only what is to come and desire those things that are invisible.

This third renunciation is the case when we have died with Christ to the elements of this world and, in the words of the Apostle, we contemplate not those things that are seen but those that are unseen, for the things that are seen are temporal, but those that are unseen are eternal, and, departing in heart from this temporal and visible house, we direct our eyes and our mind to the one in which we shall abide forever. We shall accomplish this when, walking in the flesh but not according to the flesh, we have begun to soldier for the Lord and are crying out in deed and virtue that phrase of the blessed Apostle: Our citizenship is in the heavens.

The three books of Solomon refer to these three renunciations. For Proverbs is related to the first renunciation; by it the desire for fleshly things and the earthly vices are cut off. Ecclesiastes, wherein all that is accomplished under the sun is declared vain, is related to the second renunciation. The Canticle of Canticles, in which the mind transcends everything that is visible and is already joined to the Word of God by the contemplation of heavenly things, is related to the third.

Therefore it will not be of much value for us to have embraced the first renunciation with a very devout faith if we do not seize upon the second with the same zeal and the same fervour. When we have attained this, we shall also be able to reach the third. Here, having left the house of our former parent, who we remember has been our father from the time of our birth according to the old man, when we were by nature children of wrath like the rest, we shall turn our mind’s gaze completely to heavenly things. Of this father it is said to Jerusalem, who had disdained God her true father: Your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite. And in the Gospel: You are of your father the devil, and you wish to fulfil your father’s desires.

When you have left him and have gone from visible to invisible realities you will be able to say with the Apostle: We know that if our earthly dwelling-place is destroyed we shall have a dwelling from God, an eternal home in heaven, not made by hand. And what we mentioned a little bit before: Our citizenship is in the heavens, whence we also await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus, who will change our lowly body in conformity to his glorious body.

St John Cassian, Conferences 3.6.1-7.2; ACW 57 (1997) tr. Ramsey.

Saturday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LETTER OF ST POLYCARP TO THE PHILIPPIANS

Polycarp and the Elders with him to the Church of God sojourning in Philippi; mercy and peace from God Almighty and Jesus Christ our Saviour be multiplied in you.

I rejoice greatly with you in our Lord Jesus Christ that you have followed the pattern of true love, and have helped on their way, as opportunity was given you, those who were bound in chains, which are the diadems of those who have been truly chosen by God and our Lord. I rejoice also that your firmly rooted faith, which was famous in past years, still flourishes and bears fruit unto our Lord Jesus Christ, who endured for our sins, even to the suffering of death, whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of Hades, in whom, though you did not see him, you believed in unspeakable and glorified joy, - into which joy many desire to come, knowing that by grace you are saved, not by works but by the will of God through Jesus Christ.

These things, brothers, I write to you concerning righteousness, not at my own instance, but because you first invited me. For neither am I, nor is any other like me, able to follow the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul, whom when he was among you in the presence of the men of that time taught accurately and steadfastly the word of truth, and also when he was absent wrote letters to you, from the study of which you will be able to build yourselves up into the faith.

Now I beseech you all to obey the word of righteousness, and to endure with all the endurance which you also saw before your eyes, not only in the blessed Ignatius, and Zosimus, and Rufus, but also in others among yourselves, and in Paul himself, and in the other Apostles; being persuaded that all of these did not run in vain, but in faith and righteousness, and that they are with the Lord in the place which is their due, with whom they also suffered. For they did not love this present world but him who died on our behalf, and was raised by God for our sakes. Stand fast therefore in these things and follow the example of the Lord, firm and unchangeable in faith, loving the brotherhood, affectionate to one another, joined together in the truth, forestalling one another in the gentleness of the Lord, despising no man.

I am deeply sorry for Valens, who was once made a presbyter among you, that he so little understands the place which was given to him. Keep yourself from all evil. For how may he who cannot attain self control in these matters enjoin it on another? If any man does not abstain from avarice he will be defiled by idolatry, and to be judged as if he were among the Gentiles who know not the judgement of God. Or do we not know that the saints shall judge the world, as Paul teaches? But I have neither perceived nor heard any such thing among you, among whom the blessed Paul laboured, who are praised in the beginning of his Epistle. For concerning you he boasts in all the Churches who then alone had known the Lord, for we had not yet known him.

St Polycarp, Ad Phil. 1, 3, 9-11; Loeb (1912) tr. Lake.

Season of the Year | Week 11

Sunday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 125 BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

When the Lord returned the captives to Zion, we were like people who are comforted. If it was a comfort for them to be released from a barbaric nation, how much more should we not be glad and leap for joy at being set free from sin, and preserve that joy always, never destroying or disturbing it by falling again into the same faults?

Then our mouths were filled with joy and our tongues with gladness. Then they will say among the nations: the Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us. To rejoice at deliverance from captivity helps not a little to inspire people with nobler sentiments. But who, you may ask, would not rejoice at this? The ancestors of these people did not. When they were released from Egypt and set free from slavery, they were so ungrateful that in the midst of all their benefits they did nothing but grumble, and were angry and embittered and perpetually distraught. But we are not like that, says the psalmist; we leap for joy.

Let us learn the reason for their joy. We do not only rejoice, they say, because of our deliverance from terrible suffering, but because it will make the whole world know God’s care for us. For as the psalmist says: Then they will say among the nations: The Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us. There is no repetition here; the words are meant to describe their joy. The first saying is that of the nations, the second is their own. Notice this too: they did not say ‘He saved us’, or ‘He delivered us’, but ‘He did great things for us’, for they wanted to show the incredible event in all its wonder.

Can you not see that this people gave a lesson to the whole world when they were carried off into captivity as well as when they returned? For their return preached its own message. News

of them went round everywhere and made God’s love for humankind known to everyone, because the wonderful things he had done for them were truly great and incredible. Cyrus himself, who had them in his power, set them free without anyone asking him because God made him relent.

St John Chrysostom, In Ps. 125.1 (Bareille IX:491-493); Word in Season VII.

Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON EZRA AND NEHEMIAH BY ST BEDE

Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem which is in Judah and rebuild the house of the Lord.

A great faith shines out in these words of King Cyrus, and a great love. He understood that the people of Israel, above all other nations, was the people of God, and he gave leave to all without exception who wished to return to their native land to do so as free men. He acknowledged that the Lord God who dwelt in heaven dwelt also in Jerusalem and could go up with each one of those returning from Babylon to Jerusalem. Is it not clearer than daylight that he believed this God to be non-corporeal, unrestricted by place, a spirit, present everywhere; whom he acknowledged dwelt in Jerusalem and its Temple yet without doubting that he held sway simultaneously in the kingdom of heaven; whom he believed reigned in heaven yet was with his faithful on earth, guiding their hands and hearts to accomplish what was good and salutary? For the rest, all the words of this text are full of spiritual significance.

For who does not easily recognise that it is only those whom God is with who can pass from sinfulness to sanctity – from captivity in Babylon to freedom in Jerusalem? Without me, Christ says, you can do nothing. Can anyone fail to see here a reference to the spiritual ascent, the ‘going-up’ to Jerusalem? Those who really desire to please God must necessarily lift up their hands to higher things, long for what is divine and transcend the display of this world and its attractions through their love of eternal reality. We are reminded that Jerusalem is in Judah, so that we who through disregard of God were once held captive by the Chaldeans and thereafter freed from malign spirits, may return to the vision of peace and light by our recognition of God’s love. And there let us build a house to the Lord God of Israel – in the unity of Catholic peace, in the acknowledgment of our sinfulness and God’s loving-kindness and grace. Let us prepare our hearts so that he himself may deign to dwell in them and enlighten them by his presence. But let us also take care to set the hearts of our neighbours alight, so that they too may praise their Creator and engage in the works of love. Indeed, either way we build a house to the Lord: whether we commit ourselves to the pursuit of holiness or, by our words and example, inspire those whom we can to walk in the way of holiness.

St Bede, In Esdram et Nehemiam (PL 91:812-813); Word in Season VII.

Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 126 BY ST HILARY OF POITIERS

Unless the Lord build the house for himself, they labour in vain who build it. The hearing of the psalm, then, is not restricted to the days of Solomon, but is to be understood also as appropriate to those of Haggai. Either labour, whether Solomon’s building or Haggai’s, is in vain, it says. For of the city built by Zerubbabel, today there remain only the ashes from the conflagration and the ugly sight of ruin and devastation. These seats of kings, where the builders thought to restore the glory of the eternal kingdom, have undergone further destruction as the seat of every other kingdom, one after another, has been overthrown. For it to endure, then, a house ought to be built by God; for unless it be built by the Lord, it will not last.

As to which house is God’s we are to understand that this can be ascertained from how long it is built to last. So it is that houses, in the sense of buildings, do not bespeak an infinite God as their owner; neither can his unlimited power be confined in some place, the omnipotence that made all things. As the Apostle bears witness: The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made by the hands of men.

Is there, then, no repose in God, no dwelling place for him? Some people might suppose that he who is nowhere ought to be non-existent. So let us hear his own testimony about his rest and his dwelling place. This is what he says: This is my resting place for ever; here will I live, for I have chosen it. Now it is Zion that he chose: but is that the place about which the lament in this prophecy is being made? Unless the Lord build the house (it says) they labour in vain who build it. Zion, where the Temple stood, has been turned upside down. So where is the Lord’s seat and eternal dwelling place now? What precisely is that temple which is fit for his habitation? It is the one of which it was said: You are a temple of God; and the Spirit of God dwells in you. To this, the same Prophet bears testimony: your holy temple, wonderful in its proportions. The holiness of men, their judiciousness and self-restraint – that is the temple of God.

The house, then, must be built by God. Any house made by the works of men will not endure; neither can any based on the maxims of this world stand its ground; neither can our vain labours and useless worry have any lasting effect. The construction and the maintenance must be otherwise. The beginnings must not be made on water and shifting sands, but foundations laid on the Prophets and the Apostles. Then living stones must serve to build it up; the cornerstone to keep it in place and hold it together; the interlocking pieces making up the whole man, built on the scale of Christ’s body, to be adorned by the beauty and elegance of spiritual graces. What is built by God, that is to say his teachings, will not fall down. Israel, once made captive after the abundance and prosperity of the nations, will now secure the building of this house. This house is itself growing, into more houses, so as to build up the faithful at every turn and to beautify and extend that blessed city in each one of us.

St Hilary of Poitiers, In Ps. 126.3-8 (CSEL 22:615-619); Word in Season VII.

Wednesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON HAGGAI BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

With the coming of the Saviour there appeared a far more glorious Temple, one that was divine. It was as much more excellent and noble than that old one as worship in Christ in accordance with the Gospel might be judged to differ from worship in accordance with the Law or truth to differ from shadows.

I think that I should add this: there was only one Temple and that was in Jerusalem, and only the Jewish people were allowed to offer sacrifice there; but now that the only-begotten Son has become like us (although he was Lord and God, he has appeared to us, as the Scriptures say), the world is full of sacred places and countless worshippers, who adore God with spiritual sacrifices and acceptable offerings. This is what I think Malachi meant when, acting as God’s mouthpiece, he prophesied: I am a great king, says the Lord, and my name is glorified among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure sacrifice.

Therefore, it is true that the glory of this latest Temple, by which you must understand the Church, will be even greater. And those who are involved in its construction will be given Christ, the source of peace for all men, as a reward from God our Saviour and a gift from heaven, through whom we have access in one Spirit to the Father. This is clearly what is meant when the Prophet says: In this place I will give peace … and peace of soul, to save all those who laid the foundation for the rebuilding of this Temple. Christ also says somewhere: My peace I give to you. And Paul will explain how this will benefit those who love God. The peace of Christ, he says, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds. In the same way the wise Prophet Isaiah prayed in these words: O Lord our God, give us peace, for you have given us everything. For, once men have received the peace of Christ, they will find it easy to save their souls and to devote themselves completely to the pursuit of virtue.

That is why it is said that peace will be given to everyone helping with the building. Whether a man is building the Church because he is set over God’s house as a spiritual teacher, that is to say an interpreter of the sacred mysteries, or whether he is acting for the good of his own soul in proving himself a living and spiritual stone, fit to be built into a holy temple, a spiritual house of God, such a man will certainly be given the gift of saving his soul without any great difficulty.

St Cyril of Alexandria, In Hag., 14; The Divine Office III.

Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CITY OF GOD BY ST AUGUSTINE

This House of God which is the Church of Christ is of greater glory than was that former house built of wood and precious scones and other costly materials and metals. Thus the prophecy of Haggai was not fulfilled in the restoration of that earlier Temple, for at no time after the restoration can it be shown to have had as great a glory as the Temple had in Solomon’s time. The truth is rather that the diminished glory of that house is demonstrated first in the cessation of prophecy, and then by great disasters of the nation itself down to the final destruction at the hands of the Romans. In contrast, this house of ours, which belongs to the new covenant, has assuredly a greater glory in that its stones are of more worth; for they are living stones, and the building is constructed of those men who believe and who have themselves been created anew. And yet this new house was symbolised in the restoration of that Temple, just because the very renewing of the Temple symbolises in a prophetic message the second covenant, the new covenant, as it is called. Thus, when God said, through the mouth of the Prophet just mentioned, And in that place I shall give peace, the word ‘place’ is symbolic, and by it we are to understand the person whom it symbolises. And so the rebuilding ‘in that place’ stands for the Church which was destined to be built by Christ; and the only acceptable meaning of the saying, ‘in that place I shall give peace’ is, ‘I shall grant peace in the place which this place symbolises.

The fact is that all things with symbolic meaning are seen as in some way acting the part of the things they symbolise; for instance, the Apostle says, That rock was Christ, because the rock in question undoubtedly symbolised Christ. And so the glory of this house, the new covenant, is greater than the glory of the former house, the old covenant, and it will be seen to be even greater when it is dedicated. For then will come the one who is longed for by all nations, as the Hebrew reads. Now his first coming was not yet longed for by all nations, for they did not know of him whom they were destined to long for, in whom they had not yet believed. Then too, in the version of the seventy translators (and their rendering is also prophetic), will come the chosen of the Lord from all nations. For then, in truth, none but the elect will come, and it is of them that the Apostle says, Just as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. Then, we may be sure, the master builder himself, who said, Many are called, but few are chosen, is going to show us a house, built not of those who were called but came in such a way that they were thrown out of the feast, but of those who have been truly chosen. And that house will thereafter dread no downfall, whereas at the present time the Churches are made up of those who will later be separated out as by a winnowing from on the threshing floor. Thus the glory of this house is not yet shown in the splendour which will be seen when only the righteous remain.

St Augustine, De Civitate Dei 18.48; (1972) tr. Bettenson.

Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON EZEKIEL BY ST GREGORY THE GREAT

It is precisely because the vision of inward peace is made up of a community of saints as its citizens that the heavenly Jerusalem is built as a city. Even while, in this earthly life, its citizens are lashed by whips and subjected to oppression, its stones are being quarried every day.

It is also the city, namely, the holy Church, which is to reign in heaven but is still toiling on earth. It is to its citizens that Peter says: And you are being built up like living stones. Paul also says: You are God’s land, God’s building. Clearly the city already has its great building here on earth in the lives of the saints. In a building, of course, one stone supports another, since they are placed one on top of another, and one supporting another is itself supported by another. So in the same way, in the holy Church, every member both supports and is supported by the other. For neighbours give each other mutual support, so that the building of love may rise through them. Hence too Paul’s instruction to us: Bear each other’s burdens, and in that way you will fulfil the law of Christ; and he claims the virtue of this law, saying: It is love which fulfils the law.

For if I neglect to support you in the way you live, and you pay little attention to supporting me in mine, how will the building of love rise among us? He alone who supports the whole fabric of the holy Church supports us in our good ways and our faults as well. But in a building, as we have said, the supporting stone is itself supported. For just as I already support the ways of those whose behaviour in the matter of good works is still unformed, so I too am supported by those who have surpassed me in the fear of the Lord, and yet have supported me, so that I myself should learn to support through being supported. But they have also been supported by their predecessors.

However the stones placed at the top of the building to finish it off, though supported of course by others, have no one to support in turn. For those, too, who are born at the Church’s end, that is, at the end of the world, will certainly be supported by their predecessors, to dispose them to behave in a way that leads to good works; but when they have none to follow them who could profit by them, they have no more stones to support for the building of the faithful above them. So for the time being they are supported by us, and we are supported by others. However it is the foundation that carries the entire weight of the building, because our Redeemer alone supports the lives of all of us together. As Paul says of him: For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid, which is Christ Jesus. The foundation supports the stones and is not supported by the stones, because our Redeemer supports us in all our troubles, but in himself there was no evil demanding support.

St Gregory the Great, Hom. in Ez., 2.1.5 (CCL 142:210-212); Word in Season VII.

Saturday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ZECHARIAH BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

Be delighted and rejoice, daughter of Zion, because I am coming and shall dwell among you, says the Lord. And many nations will flee for refuge to the Lord in that day and become his people, and they will dwell in your midst.

Even from this you may understand that the Saviour’s coming will be the occasion of the sublimest joy for those on earth. For of necessity he commanded the spiritual Zion to be delighted and glad, since she is the Church of the living God, or rather she is the holiest multitude of those saved through faith. And he promised he would come, and would certainly live among her people.

For Saint John tells us: He was in the world, and the Word who was God did not hold aloof from his created beings. But it was he who gave life to those partaking of life, and who also sustains all things for their own well-being in life. But the world refused to recognise him, for it ‘worshiped created things’. Yet he came among us when, assuming our own likeness, he was born of the Holy Virgin. When too he appeared on earth and lived among men. And holy David will also bear witness, saying: God, our God, will come visibly, and will not keep silence. Then too he became visible to the Gentiles.

For it was no longer only the Israelites who were being taught by the old commandment. But rather the whole world was made splendid by the preaching of the Gospel, and the Lord’s name became great among all the nations and in every land. For he was the expectation of the nations, as the Prophet says. And every knee will bow to him in heaven, on earth and in hell, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. For the nations ran together in faith toward him, and dwelt with him in the holy spiritual Zion, coming from the ends of the earth. And they understood clearly that God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that all who believed in him should not perish but have eternal life. For the Father sent his Son to us from heaven, as Saviour and Redeemer, so that we should believe in him and see in him the Father. And so that looking at him, the exact image of the Father from whom he was born according to nature, we should think of the original.

St Cyril of Alexandria, In Zachariam Prophetam (PG 72:40); Word in Season VII.

Season of the Year | Week 12

Sunday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ZECHARIAH BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

This is the word of the Lord concerning Zerubbabel: Not by great power, nor by force, but by my Spirit, says the Almighty Lord. This is the same as saying that all that Zechariah had just seen would come to completion at the appointed time, not as the achievement of human power, nor by physical force, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, and as at a sign from God.

For the Only Son was made a man like ourselves. However, he did not engage in physical combat to set up the Church as a light to the world. Nor did he wield arms in a literal sense, drawing up the two nations in warlike battle-lines around him. He did not even provide the lamp-stand with spiritual lamps, but by the force of the Holy Spirit he first appointed Apostles in the Churches, next Prophets and Evangelists and the rest of the holy assembly, filling them full of God’s gifts and enriching them with the Spirit in abundant profusion.

So it was neither by great power nor by the physical strength of Christ but by the power of the Spirit that Satan was despoiled, and the whole horde of hostile powers fell with him, and that the Israelites and those who formerly worshiped created things rather than the Creator were called through faith to knowledge of God. Lamps were revealed in the Churches too, the saints who shone out together with the lantern, that is, Christ. For they became, as Paul writes in his great wisdom, stars in the universe, holding fast to the word of life.

Again, the fact that it was not by human hand but by his own power as God that Emmanuel saved the world he solemnly affirmed through the mouth of Hosea. These are his words: but I shall have mercy on the children of Judah, and I shall save them – not by bow and arrow, sword, war, chariots, horses or horsemen, but by the Lord their God. But he gave the clearest message to Zerubbabel, of the tribe of Judah, who was at that time placed in the position of king of Jerusalem. For in case he thought that the splendid and marvellous achievements foretold for him meant wars, and it was fighting that would begin at the appointed time, the Lord had to drive such unsound human thoughts out of his mind, and instead commanded him to understand that it was by activity worthy of God and not by human power that Christ would bring such things to a conclusion. And then we remember saying that in himself Zerubbabel signified Christ, since he was of the tribe of Judah and a king, but he was also this in conjunction with Jesus the son of Jehozadak, so that Emmanuel might be understood as both king and high priest at once in the same person.

St Cyril of Alexandria, In Zachariam Prophetam (PG 72:64-65); Word in Season VII.

Monday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LADDER OF PERFECTION BY WALTER HILTON

There was a man that would go to Jerusalem, and because he did not know the way, he asked another man, who he believed knew the way better than him. When he asked him whether he would come to Jerusalem or not, the man answered that he could go no further without great pains and hardships, saying the way is long and perilous, and full of great thieves and robbers, and many other hindrances that come to pass to a man along the way. Nevertheless, there is one way, if one takes and sticks to it, that I am sure one will come to that city of Jerusalem, and never lose one’s life, nor be slain, nor die by default. Though he would often be robbed and beaten, and suffer much pain along the way, his life will be safe.

Then said the pilgrim, ‘So I may have my life saved, and come to the place that I covet, I care not what mischief I suffer in going.’

That other man answered and said, ‘Lo, I set you in the right way. This is the way, and see that you bear in mind all that I tell you. Whatsoever you see, hear, or feel, that would hinder you in the way, stick not at it, willingly consent not to it, abide not with it, behold it not, like it not, fear it not, but still go forward holding on your way, and ever think and say with yourself that you would rather be at Jerusalem. Jerusalem is, as much as to say, a sight of peace, and beholds contemplation in perfect love of God, for contemplation is nothing else but a sight of God, which is very peace.

The beginning of the highway, in which you shall go, is reforming in faith, and grounded humbly on the faith and on the laws of holy Church as I have said before. For trust assuredly, though you have sinned up to now, if you are now reformed by the sacrament of penance, after the law of holy Church, you are on the right way. Now then, since you are in the safe way, if you hurry along in your going and make a good journey, it behoves you to hold these two things often in mind: Humility and Love; and often say to yourself, I am nothing, I have nothing, I covet nothing, but one. Humility says, I am nothing, I have nothing; Love says, I covet nothing, but one, and that is Jesus.

And if you do all this, then you shall resolve in your heart fully and wholly that you will be at Jerusalem, and at no other place but there; that is, your heart shall have wholly and fully nothing but the love of Jesus and the spiritual sight of him in such manner as he shall please to show himself; for to that end only are you made and redeemed, and he it is that is your beginning and your end, your joy and your bliss.

Walter Hilton, The Ladder of Perfection, II.3; Word in Season VII.

Tuesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON EZRA AND NEHEMIAH BY ST BEDE

And they celebrated the feast of unleavened bread. Now the Apostle teaches us how we must celebrate the feast in spirit, when he says: Let us therefore keep the feast, not in the old leaven, nor in the leaven of malice and iniquity, but in the fresh leaven of sincerity and truth. Seven days of celebrating go into that: for throughout our time in this world, however many days it may run, we are to live our lives in sincerity and truth, and indeed in every kind of sacrifice and offering. For our blessed Lord himself tasted death for a time at Eastertide, only to vanquish it by the eternal power of his resurrection. And our celebration of Easter here and now can be taken to represent symbolically our resurrection. Hence just as the building of the Temple stands for the present condition of Holy Church, so the dedication of it symbolises the life that is to come, consisting in the rejoicing of the holy souls who have left the life of the body behind.

The sacrifice of the passover hints at the glory of the resurrection, when no longer will all the elect need to be refreshed by the flesh of the spotless Lamb - that is, our Lord and our God - in the sacrament, as believers; for they will be refreshed indeed by seeing him as he is in very truth. Wherefore in this passover all priests and Levites, all the congregations of the people, all those who had joined them from among the Gentiles, are held to have been of the world, all brought into one, as it were; for truly then will the Lamb of God have taken away the sins of the world. And as Saint John the Apostle said: The blood of Jesus the Son of God cleanses us of all sin. Then there will be true unity, for God will be all in all. Then the true feast of unleavened bread will be celebrated with rejoicing with no leaven of malice or wickedness remaining among the elect, but all clinging in truth and in sincerity of heart, to the vision of God. And all this will come to pass, not in seven days of this changing world, but in that one day of eternal life within the courts of the Lord which is better than thousands, and in the light of the Holy Spirit whose sevenfold grace the Prophet commends to us.

St Bede, In Esdram et Nehemiam Allegorica expositio, II.7 (PL 91:858); Word in Season VII.

Wednesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON EZRA AND NEHEMIAH BY ST BEDE

Just as Zerubbabel and Jesus stand for our Lord and Saviour, who releases our race from captivity by his grace and himself makes his dwelling in us, building himself up there by sanctifying us and taking possession of us; so also Ezra the priest and nimble scribe openly claims the same Lord, who has not come to abolish the law but to bring it to perfection. For he, the Lord, could truly be called a scribe of God’s Law or a nimble scribe in the Law of Moses, having given Moses the Law himself through an angel. He it was who taught the holy Prophets all truth, by the grace of his Spirit, he who was soon to touch with his love the minds of all his chosen ones, kindling in them the understanding of his Father’s will and the urge to accomplish it.

Wherefore promising the grace of the New Covenant the Prophet says: And this is the covenant I have made with the house of Israel since those days, says the Lord; I shall make my laws in their minds, and on their hearts shall I write them. The psalmist touchingly recalls the man who wrote that, when he says: My tongue is the pen for a scribe nimbly writing. The Prophet’s tongue indeed was the scribe’s busy pen; for whatever the Lord taught by inwardly enlightening him without any delay in time, that he himself revealed in time to men, outwardly, by means of the spoken ministry. Ezra, whose name means ‘helper’, clearly shows this in his own person. For it is through him alone that the congregation of the faithful can be released from their tribulations and is to be (as it were) conducted from the Babylonian captivity to the liberty of Jerusalem, from the confusion of vice to the peace and serenity of virtue, step by step according to their merits.

The resemblance to Ezra was kept up even in his deeds. For it was not the least part of the people that he led back from captivity to Jerusalem, bringing at the same time both the money and the vessels consecrated to God, for the glory of his Temple, while purging the same people of their alien wives by his authority as mediator. All of which reveals to the thoughtful reader what deeds the Lord has wrought in his holy Church and what is to be done. We too shall take pains to make clear the message, so that it may be understood by those even less thoughtful than we. For Ezra’s going up from Babylon, the children of Israel and the sons of the priests and Levites with him, represents the merciful dispensation of our Redeemer, whereby he appeared in the flesh, and his entering into the confusion of this world, being free himself from the confusion brought by vice, so that when returning he might bring us with him, freed from all confusion, to the tranquillity of eternal peace. We have received a pledge of that eternal peace in the Church as it now is: for as the Lord says, My peace I leave you; my peace I give unto you.

St Bede, In Esdram et Nehemiam Allegorica expositio, II.9 (PL 91:860-861); Word in Season VII.

Thursday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A HOMILY BY ST LEO THE GREAT

The Apostle exhorts us to put off the old man with its actions and to be renewed day by day through a holy way of life, for he says, you are the temple of God. If we are the temple of God then, and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts, we must be very watchful to see that our hearts are not an unworthy dwelling for so great a guest.

When dealing with houses made by hands, people exercise a praiseworthy diligence and make sure to repair quickly any damage done by the rain or wind or the simple passage of time. So we too must constantly take care not to let anything disordered or unclean be found in our souls. For although our edifice will not last without the help of its builder, and the structure cannot remain intact without the watchful care of its maker, yet we are living matter and spiritual stones, and therefore the author of our being works in such a way that the person being renewed must collaborate with him. We must not, then, be disobedient to the grace of nor separate ourselves from that Good without which we are unable to be good. If we find anything impossible or extremely difficult in what we are commanded, we must not only look to our own powers but have recourse to him who commands. God issues his commands with the intention of rousing our desire and giving us the help we need. Therefore, as the Prophet says, Cast your cares upon the Lord, and he will sustain you. Is there anyone so proud and arrogant, so sure of his own purity and integrity, as to think he needs no renovation? Such an attitude is mistaken, and the person who believes himself to be invulnerable amid the temptations of life has become excessively conceited.

The believer has no doubt that divine providence is at work always and everywhere. He knows that the outcome of human affairs does not depend on the power of the stars for that power is non-existent, and that everything is ordered by the utterly equitable and merciful judgement and will of the supreme King. Nonetheless, things do not always work out as we desire, and the cause of the wicked often triumphs over that of the just. It is only too likely, then, that even generous souls may be disturbed and driven to wrongful complaints. Therefore, since few have such solid strength as not to be shaken by any shifts of circumstance and since prosperity no less than adversity leads many believers astray, we must be diligent in healing the wounds we receive because of our human weakness.

St Leo the Great, Tract. 43.1-4 (CCL 138A:251-255); Word in Season VII.

Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 146 BY ST AUGUSTINE

The Lord is rebuilding Jerusalem, and calling the exiles from Israel back. So the Lord is rebuilding Jerusalem and recalling its exiled people; for the people of Jerusalem are the people of Israel. There is an eternal Jerusalem in heaven, where the citizens are also angels. What, then, does Israel mean? Seeing God. So all the citizens of that city rejoice at seeing God in that great and splendid heavenly city. God himself is their theatre. But we are exiles from that city: banished for our sins, to prevent us remaining there, and burdened with mortality, to prevent us returning there. God has noted our exile, and he who rebuilds Jerusalem has reinstated the sinners. How did he reinstate them? By calling the exiles from Israel back. For sin had made them exiles. God took pity on these and searched for them, since they were not seeking for him. Where did he look? Whom did he send to set us free from our captivity? He sent the Redeemer, as the Apostle tells us: God shows his love for us, by the fact that when we were still sinners Christ died for us.

So he sent his Son, our Redeemer, to set us free from our captivity. ‘Take a purse with you,’ he said, ‘and put the price of the prisoners in it.’ For he clothed himself in a mortal body, and there was the blood which was shed for our redemption. With that blood he called the exiles from Israel back. Yet if he called back exiles long ago, why should he want to call back exiles today? If the exiles were called back to be shaped into a building by the craftsman’s hand, why should those be called back whose own turbulence caused them to fall out of the craftsman’s hand? He heals those who have a contrite heart. That is why the exiles from Israel are called back: to be healed through a contrite heart. Those who have failed to mortify their heart are not healed. What does it mean: to mortify our heart? If you had wanted a sacrifice, I should certainly have given you one; but you take no pleasure in burnt offerings. What then? Are we to remain without the oblation of sacrifice? Listen to what he wants you to offer, as he goes on to say: The sacrifice acceptable to God is a contrite spirit; God will not despise a contrite and humble heart. So he heals those who have a contrite heart; for he comes near them to heal them; as it is said elsewhere: The Lord is near to those who have a contrite heart. Such are the people he heals; but their healing will only be perfect at the end of their mortal life, when this corruptible body will put on incorruptibility, and this mortal body will put on immortality.

St Augustine, Enarr. In Ps. 146.4-5 (CCL 40:2124-2125); Word in Season VII.

Saturday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON MICAH BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

Behold I am laying a stone for the foundations in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone; and he who has faith in it will not be put to shame. The builders of Zion rejected the tested and precious stone, but now it is in place as the cornerstone. For Christ has become king of both the Gentiles and the Jews, whom he has created into a single new man, making peace through the cross, and joining them in spiritual union to form a cornerstone. For it is written: The whole multitude of believers were united in heart and soul.

Through sanctification and faith they have become similar in form to that most precious cornerstone, and so St Peter wrote well and wisely: You yourselves, like living stones, must be built up into a spiritual house, to be a holy temple and a dwelling place for God in the Spirit.

And in the last days the mountain of the Lord’s house will be revealed. We can see in these prophetic words a clear reference to the future Church of the Gentiles. For Israel in the flesh had, as it were, ceased to exist, the sacrificial rites of the Law had come to an end, the priests of the house of Levi had abandoned their office, and lastly the famous temple itself had been destroyed by fire and Jerusalem demolished. This was the moment when Christ proclaimed the Church of the Gentiles, as if in the last days, that is, at the consummation of our age; for it was then that he became man. The Prophet speaks of the Church as a mountain, which is the house of the living God. It soars aloft, because there is nothing whatsoever earthbound in the Church. It is raised on high by the knowledge of the precepts of God; and the very mode of life of those justified by Christ and sanctified by the Spirit is made sublime.

Yet the Prophet shows that Israel could not entirely lose hope. The people were indeed crushed and rejected, or rather cast off, because of their utter disregard for God. They fought against him, with shameless and profane idolatry, and were liable in no small degree to charges of blood-guilt. For they had killed the Prophets, and in the end they crucified the very Saviour and Redeemer of the world. But, for the sake of their fathers, the remnant were pitied and saved, to become a great people.

For it is true and right to consider this holy multitude whom Christ has justified as a very great people. The things that distinguish them, and should make them a cause of wonder, are goodness of mind and nobility of heart, that is, sanctification, hope in Christ, faithful sonship, admirable virtues and marvellous endurance, submission to Christ’s rule and devotion to his teaching. For we have one teacher, Christ. And the Prophet’s Mount Zion is the heavenly Jerusalem, mother of the first-born, where we shall dwell in unity with Christ.

St Cyril of Alexandria, In Michaeam prophetam, 3.35-36 (PG 71:689-703); Word in Season VII.

Season of the Year | Week 13

Sunday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY BLESSED GUERRIC OF IGNY

Keep awake, brethren, intent upon your prayers; keep awake, careful how you carry out your duties, all the more so since the morning of that unending day has dawned, which saw the doubly welcome, serene, eternal light, return to us from the dead, and the morning rising caused the sun to shine with a new brightness. It is now time for you to wake out of sleep; it is far on in the night; day is near. Keep awake, I say, that the morning light may rise upon you, no other than Christ, who will reveal himself, sure as the dawn; prepared to enable those who are on the watch for him, to relive once more the mystery of his resurrection in the morning. Then indeed you will sing with joyful heart: The Lord is God; he has given light to us. This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it; the day, that is, when he will allow the light which he has hidden with his hands to shine upon you, telling you, his friend, it is his to give, and that you may raise yourself up to receive it.

Sluggard, how much longer are you going to sleep? Yes, how much longer are you going to slumber on? Scripture says, A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands in rest; otherwise, while you are asleep, unaware of it, Christ will have risen from his tomb; and when, resplendent, he passes by, you will not deserve to see even his back. Then, when it is too late, you will utter lamentations of repentance, and say with the ungodly, Because we have wandered from the way of truth, neither the light of righteousness has shone upon us, nor has the sun of understanding risen upon us.

But, for you who fear my name, says the Prophet, the sun of righteousness shall rise. And the man who lives an upright life, his eyes shall see the king in his splendour.

This undoubtedly refers to happiness in the life to come; but, as Christ’s resurrection clearly proves, it is also granted to us in due measure for our consolation in this life.

So let us all rouse up and requicken our spirits, whether to watch in prayer or to work with a will, so that our renewed and lively zest may show that, once again, we have received a share in Christ’s resurrection. Indeed the chief sign of a man’s return to life is vigorous and energetic action. Moreover, he will make a perfect return to life, if he dies to the body and opens his eyes to contemplation. However, his understanding will be undeserving of this until he increases his love by frequent longings and ardent desires, to render himself capable of something so sublime.

Life begins to return when prayer increases love; it reaches perfection when the understanding receives the light of contemplation. Strive, then, brethren, to mount ever higher on the ladder of the virtues, the means whereby we grow in holiness of life, so that, as the Apostle says, you may finally arrive at the resurrection of Christ from the dead: he who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

Bd Guerric of Igny, Sermo 3 de Resurrectione Domini, 3.5 (SC 202:250, 256-258); Word in Season VII.

Monday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST CYPRIAN OF CARTHAGE

God’s will is what Christ did and taught: it means humility in behaviour, steadfastness in faith, modesty in words, justice in deeds, mercy in good works, discipline in daily life; to be incapable of doing injury to anyone, but able to bear the injury done to rejoice at the prosperity of our neighbour as if we ourselves had deserved to prosper, to think of another’s loss as our own loss, and another’s gain as our own gain. It is to love a friend not for the world’s sake but for God’s, to put up with and even love an enemy, to do to nothing to anyone which you would not want to suffer yourself, to refuse no one what you rightly want given to you; to help your neighbour in time of trouble not only according to your means, but willing to be of use to him even beyond your means, and to keep the peace with your brothers. It is to love God with all your heart, to love him as Father but fear him as Lord; and to put nothing before Christ, for he has never put anything before us.

But all who love the name of the Lord will be glorified. Let us be unhappy here, so as to be happy afterwards. Let us follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Those who say they believe in him must live in the same way as he lived. Christ, the Son of God, came not to reign, but though king he shunned the kingdom; he came not to rule, but to serve. He became poor to make us rich; he took blows for us, so that we ourselves should feel no pain when scourged.

Let us imitate Christ. Christian is a name that stands for justice, kindness, and integrity. A Christian is one who imitates and follows Christ in everything, who is holy, innocent, undefiled, and chaste. There is no place in the heart of a Christian for malice, but only for devotion and goodness. A Christian is one who follows the life of Christ, who is merciful to all and ignorant of injustice. A Christian is one who forbids the poor to be disparaged in his presence, who helps the unfortunate, mourns with those who mourn, feels another’s pain as if it was his own, and is moved to tears by the tears of others. A Christian’s house is open to all, no one is ever shut out. The poor are always welcome at his table; everyone knows that Christians are really good, and no one is left with any sense of injustice. A Christian is one who serves God diligently day and night, whose soul is sincere and immaculate, whose conscience is faithful and pure, whose mind is wholly on God, and who despises worldly possessions so that he may acquire heavenly ones.

St Cyprian of Carthage, Sermon (attrib.), (PLS 1:51-52); Word in Season VII.

Tuesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON EZRA AND NEHEMIAH BY ST BEDE

As Nehemiah was seeking to make plans and decide who should reside in the city which they had built, the seventh month arrived. The point to note here is the devotion and like-mindedness of the people who as one man (that is, with one and the same faith and love) came together at the Lord’s Temple. They themselves asked their pontifex to bring the book and recount for them the commandments of the Law that they must observe, so that along with the rebuilt city, a structure of good works pleasing to God might spring up in case, just as before, neglect of religion should lead to the ruination of the city.

Even today too, according to the spiritual meaning, the construction of the holy city should be followed by divine reading and the frequent sounding of trumpets, no doubt because it is necessary that when a people has been initiated into the heavenly sacraments they should also, as occasion requires, be carefully instructed by divine discourses how they should live.

Solomon, being a king, made a bronze platform, whereas Ezra, as a man of lesser power, built a wooden step to speak upon, just as Solomon or Moses also made the altar of holocaust out of bronze and the descendants of the exiles replaced it with a stone one. But it should not be supposed that the wooden step walls are less perfect mystery than the bronze scaffold. For, as has often been said, just as bronze, for the length of time that it endures or for the sweetness of its sound, corresponds to the divine sacraments which fail with no passing of the ages and their sound has gone out into all the earth, in the same way wood too fits most aptly with these same sacraments on account of the trophy of the Lord’s passion. The pontifex, therefore, stands out above all the people when he who receives the rank of teacher rises above the activity of the crowd by the merit of a more perfect life; but he stands on a wooden step that he made to speak upon when he makes himself higher than the rest through exceptional imitation of the Lord’s passion.

So the people went out and brought back and made tabernacles for themselves, each man on his dwelling, and in his courtyards. ‘on the dwelling’ means ‘on the roof of the houses’, for in Palestine they do not have sloping roofs on the houses but the tops of all houses are flat and covered with beams and boards. This is why in the Law it is commanded that whoever builds a new home should make breast-works round the roof so that no one will fall from it and die. And so each one of us goes out and makes tabernacles on his dwelling when, rising by means of the mind above the abode of his body, he tramples down his harmful emotions with constant meditation on heavenly light and liberty. We do the same thing in our courtyards too when, with a mind burning for heavenly things, we stand as it were outside the world and desire to leave its dwelling-place as quickly as possible.

St Bede, In Esdram et Nehemiam, 3; (2006) tr. DeGregorio.

Wednesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONFERENCES OF ST JOHN CASSIAN

We must explain one by one the different kinds of prayer that the Apostle divided in fourfold fashion when he said: I urge first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made. There is not the least doubt that the Apostle established these distinctions in this way for a good reason.

I urge first of all that supplications be made. A supplication is an imploring or a petition concerning sins, by which a person who has been struck by compunction begs for pardon for his present or past misdeeds.

Prayers are those acts by which we offer or vow something to God, which is called euché in Greek – that is, a vow. For where the Greek says tas euchas, the Latin has ‘vows’: I will pay my vows to the Lord. This will be fulfilled by each one of us in this way. We pray when we renounce this world and pledge that, dead to every earthly deed and to an earthly way of life, we will serve the Lord with utter earnestness of heart. We pray when we promise that, disdaining worldly honour and spurning earthly riches, we will cling to the Lord in complete contrition of heart and poverty of spirit. We pray when we promise that we will always keep the most pure chastity of body and unwavering patience, and when we vow that we will utterly eliminate from our heart the roots of death-dealing anger and sadness.

In the third place there are intercessions, which we are also accustomed to make for others when our spirits are fervent, beseeching on behalf of our dear ones and for the peace of

the whole world, praying with the Apostle, for kings and for all who are in authority.

Finally, in the fourth place there are thanksgivings, which the mind, whether recalling God’s past benefits, contemplating his present ones, or foreseeing what great things God has prepared for those who love him, offers to the Lord in unspeakable ecstasies. And with this intensity, too, more copious prayers are sometimes made, when our spirit gazes with most pure eyes upon the rewards of the holy ones that are stored up for the future and is moved to pour out wordless thanks to God with a boundless joy..

These four kinds sometimes offer opportunities for richer prayers, for from the class of supplication which is born of compunction for sin, and from the state of prayer which flows from faithfulness in our offerings and the keeping of our vows because of a pure conscience, and from intercession which proceeds from fervent charity, and from thanksgiving which is begotten from considering God’s benefits and his greatness and loving-kindness, we know that frequently very fervent and fiery prayers arise. Thus it is clear that all these kinds which we have spoken about appear helpful and necessary to everyone, so that in one and the same man a changing disposition will send forth pure and fervent prayers of supplication at one time, prayer at another, and intercession at another.

St John Cassian, Conferences, 9.9, 11-15; ACW (1997) tr. Ramsey.

Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE STROMATEIS OF ST CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

We are commanded to worship and honour him whom we believe to be the Word, our Saviour and ruler, and through him the Father. Nor must we confine our worship to special days, but offer it perpetually throughout our lives and in every way. The chosen race, justified by the commandment, declared: Seven times a day I praise you. So he who possesses true knowledge honours God, that is, thanks him for his gifts of spiritual knowledge and right conduct, in no specific place or appropriate sanctuary, still less at certain feasts or on definite days, but everywhere and all his life, whether in solitude or with others of his own faith.

Now the presence of some good man, because it inspires respect and reverence, is always an influence for the better on those who chance to meet him. Then surely one who is always in the presence of God, through spiritual knowledge and a life of ceaseless thanksgiving, cannot help but become a better person in every way, in deed, word, and thought. Such is the man who is convinced of God’s presence everywhere, refusing to believe that he is enclosed in any specific place. Then because of this conviction of ours that God is present everywhere, our whole life becomes a celebration. We praise God as we till the fields or sail the seas, and in all the other ways of life in which we employ our skills. Thus he who possesses true knowledge draws closer to God, and is always serious and always happy. He is serious because his attention is concentrated on the divine being, and happy because of his continuous awareness of the blessings which God has given to mankind.

Yet petitionary prayer is not superfluous, even though we receive blessings without asking for them. Both thanksgiving and prayer for the conversion of his fellowmen are required of the true Christian. That is the very way in which our Lord prayed. First he gave thanks because he had fulfilled his earthly ministry. Then he prayed that as many as possible might receive true knowledge so that thanks to that knowledge they might set out on the road to salvation, and by their salvation glorify God, and so that he who alone is good, and alone is the Saviour, might be recognized through his Son for all eternity. And yet, the faith of one who believes that he will receive what he has need of is in itself a kind of prayer, stored up within the spirit.

But if prayer is an opportunity for communion with God, like any other opportunity of approach to God we must not neglect it. God is not compelled to do good, but chooses to reward those who of their own free will turn to him. So the true worshipers and servants of the divine being are those who offer him the most free and the most royal service, arising both from a devout mind and from spiritual knowledge.

St Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 7.7 (PG 9:450-1, 458-9); Word in Season VII.

Friday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON MATTHEW BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

Let us give thanks to God throughout our lives. For how wrong it would be, if every day we enjoyed his blessings in deed, and yet in word gave him no return, and that too when an offering of gratitude would but increase our advantage. For God needs nothing from us, but we need everything from him. So our thanks are of no profit to him, but they make us more worthy of him. For if the memory of their kindness towards us deepens our love for our fellow men, how much more will the perpetual memory of the Lord’s goodness to us make us more eager to keep his commands.

For the best safeguard of a kindness is to remember it with everlasting gratitude. That is why that awe-inspiring and life-giving sacrament which we celebrate at every gathering is called the Eucharist. It is the commemoration of many blessings and the culmination of divine providence, and teaches us to give thanks always.

For if to be born of a Virgin was a great miracle, and the amazed evangelist wrote of it: All this happened, what can we say of the Lord's sacrifice? For if the Lord’s birth was called all this, what should we call his crucifixion, the shedding of his blood, and his giving himself to us as a spiritual feast? Therefore we must give thanks to him continuously, and let thanksgiving be the motive of all we do and say. And let us give thanks not only for our own blessings, but for those of our neighbours too. Thus we shall be able to rid ourselves of envy, and increase our love and make it more sincere. For to continue to envy those on whose behalf we give thanks to the Lord will be impossible.

Therefore the priest too, when that sacrifice is set before him, bids us give thanks for the whole world, for the old dispensation and the new, for all that was done for us before and all that awaits us hereafter. For this sets us free from earth and turns us towards heaven, and makes angels out of men. Even the very angels, in heavenly choirs, give thanks to God for his goodness to us, as they sing: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men in whom he is well pleased.

But what is this to us who are not on earth and are not men? It means a great deal, for it teaches us so to love our fellow-servants that we rejoice in their good fortune as if it were our own. It is for that reason that St Paul in all his letters gives thanks for the blessings of the whole world. So let us too give everlasting thanks for all the gifts, large or small, that are given both to ourselves and to others.

St John Chrysostom, In Matth., XXV.3 (Bareille XII:40-42); Word in Season VII.

Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE OF JULIAN OF NORWICH

In his merciful way our Lord shows us our sin and weakness by that light, lovely and gracious, which shines from himself. Our sin is so vile and horrible that in his courtesy he will not show it to us except under the light of his mercy and grace. It is his will that we should know four things: first, that he is the ground of our life and existence; second, that he protects us by his might and mercy all the time we are in sin among the enemies out to wreck us – we are in so much the greater danger since we give them the opportunity they want, being ignorant of our own need; third, how courteously he protects us, making us know when we are going astray; fourth, how loyally he waits for us, with unvarying affection; he wants us to turn to him, uniting with him in love, as he is with us.

So it is that with this gracious information we are able to view our sin positively and not despairingly. For, indeed, we must face it and by such sight be made ashamed of ourselves, and humbled for our pride and presumption. We have got to see that of ourselves we are nothing but sin and wretchedness. We can estimate from the little our Lord shows us how great is the total we do not see. For in his courtesy he limits the amount we actually see: we could not stand the sight of what in fact it is, so vile and horrible it is. And by this humiliating knowledge, through our contrition and his grace we shall break with everything that is not our Lord. Then will our blessed Saviour heal us completely, and unite us to himself. This break and healing our Lord intends for mankind generally. The man who is highest and nearest to God sees himself as sinful and as needy as I am; and I who am the least and most lowly of all who are to be saved can be comforted along with the highest. So has our Lord made us one in his charity.

When he showed me that I would sin, I was so enjoying looking at him that I did not pay much attention to this revelation, so our Lord in his courtesy refrained from further teaching until he gave me the grace and will to attend. By this I was taught that though we may be raised to contemplation by our Lord’s especial favour we still need to recognise our sin and weakness. Without such knowledge we cannot be truly humble, nor indeed can we be saved.

I saw afterwards, too, that we may not always have this knowledge of ourselves, or of our spiritual enemies – they do not wish us so much good! If they had their way we should not know it till our dying day. We are greatly indebted to God then that he himself, for love’s sake, wills to show it to us in this time of mercy and grace.

Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, 78; Word in Season VII.

Season of the Year | Week 14

Sunday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON THE DIATESSARON BY ST EPHREM

Lord, who can grasp all the wealth of just one of your words? What we understand is much less than what we leave behind, like thirsty people who drink from a fountain. For your word, Lord, has many shades of meaning just as those who study it have many different points of view. The Lord has coloured his words with many hues so that each person who studies it can see in it what he loves. He has hidden many treasures in his word so that each of us is enriched as we meditate on it.

The word of God is a tree of life that from all its parts offers you fruits that are blessed. It is like that rock opened in the desert that from all its parts gave forth a spiritual drink. As the Apostle says, All ate the same supernatural food and all drank the same supernatural drink.

He who comes into contact with some share of its treasure should not think that the only thing contained in the word is what he himself has found. He should realise that he has only been able to find that one thing from among many others. Nor, because only that one part has become his, should he say that the word is void and empty and look down on it; but because he could not exhaust it he should give thanks for its riches. Be glad that you were overcome and do not be sad that it overcame you. The thirsty man rejoices when he drinks and he is not downcast because he cannot empty the fountain. Rather let the fountain quench your thirst than have your thirst quench the fountain. Because if your thirst is quenched and the fountain is not exhausted you can drink from it again whenever you are thirsty. But if when your thirst is quenched the fountain also is dried up your victory will bode evil for you.

Be grateful for what you have received and do not grumble about the abundance left behind. What you have received and what you have reached is your share, what remains is your heritage. What, at one time, you are not able to receive because of your weakness, you will be able to receive at other times if you persevere. Do not have the presumption to try and take in one draught what cannot be taken in one draught, and do not abandon out of laziness what you may only consume little by little.

St Ephrem, Commentary on the Diatessaron, 1.18-19; The Divine Office I.

Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON EXODUS BY ORIGEN

After the crossing of the Red Sea and the secrets of the magnificent mystery, after dances and tambourines, after triumphant hymns, they come to Mara. The water of Mara, however, was bitter and the people could not drink it.

I think that the Law, if it be undertaken according to the letter, is sufficiently bitter and is itself Mara. For what is so bitter as for a child to receive the wound of circumcision on the eighth day and tender infancy suffer the hardness of the iron? A cup of this kind of Law is extremely bitter, so bitter in fact that the people of God – not that people who were baptized in Moses in the sea and in the cloud, but that people who were baptized in spirit and in water – cannot drink from that water. But indeed they cannot taste the bitterness of circumcision nor are they able to endure the bitterness of victims for the observance of the Sabbath.

But if God shows a tree which is thrown into this bitterness so that the water of the Law becomes sweet, they can drink from it. Solomon teaches us in his proverbs that that tree is the one which the Lord showed, when he says that wisdom is a tree of life for all who embrace it. If, therefore, the tree of the wisdom of Christ has been thrown into the Law and has shown us how circumcision ought to be understood, how the Sabbath and the law of leprosy are to be observed, what sort of distinction should be held between clean and unclean, then the water of Mara is made sweet and the bitterness of the letter of the Law is changed into the sweetness of spiritual understanding and then the people of God can drink. Whence it is established that if anyone without the tree of life, that is without the mystery of the cross, without faith in Christ, without spiritual understanding should wish to drink from the letter of the Law, he will die from too much bitterness. Because the Apostle Paul knew this he said, The letter kills. This openly states that the water of Mara kills if it is drunk unchanged and not made sweet.

After this the text says that they came to Elim and there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees there. Do you suppose there is no reason why the people were not previously led to Elim where there were twelve springs of water in which there was no bitterness but rather exceptional pleasantness from the density of the palms, but first were led to the salty and bitter waters and come to the springs only after the bitter waters have been made sweet by the tree which was shown by the Lord? If we follow only the simple record of facts, it does not edify us much to know to what place they came first and to what place second. But if we pry into the mystery lying hidden in these matters we discover the order of faith. For first people are led to the letter of the Law. They cannot withdraw from this while they remain in its bitterness. But when the Law has been made sweet by the tree of life and has begun to be understood spiritually, then they pass over from the Old Testament to the New and come to the twelve apostolic springs.

Origen, In Ex., 7.1, 3; FoC 71 (1982) tr. Heine.

Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE DISCOURSES AGAINST THE ARIANS OF ST ATHANASIUS

The Only-begotten, the absolute Wisdom of God is the creator and maker of all things. In wisdom you made all things Scripture says, and again: the earth is full of your creation. In order that what was made might not only be, but might be good, God willed that his own Wisdom should come down to the level of created things and impress a sort of stamp and likeness of its image on all in common and on each individually, so that what was made would be seen to be wise, a worker worthy of God.

As our word is the image of the Son of God considered as Word, so too the wisdom which is impressed on us is an image of the same Son considered as Wisdom. In this wisdom we have the power of knowledge and thought, and we become capable of receiving the creative Wisdom; and through this we are enabled to know its Father. As Scripture says: He who has the Son has the Father also; and again: He who receives me receives him who sent me. Because such an impress of Wisdom has been created in us and is found in all the works of creation, it is natural that the true, creative Wisdom would apply to itself what belongs to its impress, and say: The Lord created to me for his works.

But since, in the wisdom of God, as we have explained, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. God no longer wanted, as in former times, to be known through the image and shadow of wisdom that exists in created things. He made the true Wisdom itself take flesh, and become man, and suffer the death of the cross, so that for the future all who believe might be saved by faith in him.

The Wisdom of God formerly revealed itself through its own image impressed on created things (by reason of which it is said to be created) and through itself revealed its own Father. It is the same Wisdom of God which later, being the Word, became flesh, as John says, and after destroying death and saving our race revealed himself still more fully and through himself his Father. As so he said: Grant that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Hence the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of him. The knowledge of Father through Son and of Son from Father is one and the same; the Father rejoices in him, and with the same joy the Son delights in the Father. It was I in whom he rejoiced, he says, every day I took delight in his presence.

St Athanasius, Against the Arians, 2.78, 81-2; The Divine Office I.

Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON PROVERBS BY ST PROCOPIUS

Wisdom has built herself a house. The personal, subsistent power of God the Father has built as his dwelling place not only the whole universe in which he lives by his activity, but also man whom he has made in his own image and likeness, with a nature partly seen, partly unseen.

She has set up her seven pillars. To man thus created in Christ’s image after his birth, Wisdom gives the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, in so far as he believes in Christ and keeps his commandments. If he lives by the Spirit, these gifts will bring him to perfection, if by their means his virtue is motivated by his knowledge, and this knowledge itself is embodied in virtue. He will be made perfect by participating in the divine nature of faith, and by his sharing in supernatural things. The gifts of the Spirit direct aright the enlightenment in the spirit according to nature: fortitude which prepares him eagerly to rush forward and be moved to the reasons for things that are, namely the will of God according to which all things have come into being; counsel which discriminates between the all holy will of God, as being uncreated and indestructible and allowing thought and speech and action, and what is opposite to that will; understanding which makes a man turn towards these and not to their opposites and to agree with them.

She has mixed her wine in her chalice; she has laid her table. Such a man is like a chalice in which a nature both spiritual and physical is mixed. In him God has united a recognition of himself as the cause of the universe, and a knowledge of his creatures. On the mind possessed of this knowledge it is natural for the things of God to have the inebriating effect of wine. So does he himself, the bread from heaven, become the nourishment of souls whereby they grow in virtue. He makes them drink in knowledge to their delight, and all this he has prepared as a heavenly banquet for the spiritual entertainment of those who wish to share it.

She has sent out her servants with the sublime invitation to receive the chalice. Christ sent out the Apostles as the ministers of his divine will. They were to proclaim that spiritual Gospel which ranks above natural law and written codes, and to call men to himself. In him, as in a chalice, the mystery of the Incarnation effected without confusion that astounding hypostatic union of the divine and human natures. Through the Apostles he says: He who is foolish let him turn aside to me. It is the man who thinks in his heart There is no God who is foolish. Let him give up his disbelief and draw near to me through faith; then he will know that I am the Creator of all things and their Lord.

And to those who lack wisdom she says: Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine I have mixed for you. To those who are still deficient in the works of faith and in the more perfect knowledge of God that inspires them, he says ‘Come, eat my body, the bread that makes you grow according to virtue, and drink my blood, the wine that delights you according to knowledge and intoxicates you to become divine – the blood which I miraculously mingled with my divine nature for your salvation.’

St Procopius of Gaza, On Proverbs 9; The Divine Office I.

Thursday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 36 BY ST AMBROSE

Let us be for ever pondering on wisdom in our hearts and discussing it with our lips; let your tongue speak only what is right, and let God’s Law be constantly in your hearts. For that is what Scripture enjoins on us: let your concern be only with such things as these when you sit in your house and walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. Let the Lord Jesus then be the sole object of your discourse, for he is Wisdom, even the Word, God’s own word. For Scripture also commands, Open your mouth to receive God’s word. That man manifests him who constantly repeats his sayings and meditates on his words. Let us always be speaking of him. Whenever we speak of wisdom it is of him we speak; when we speak of virtue it is of him; and when we speak of truth and life and redemption it is of him.

It is written, Open your mouth to the word of God. It is for you to open, but he speaks. Therefore David said, I will hear what the Lord says within me, and the Son of God himself says, Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it. But not all of us can receive, like Solomon and Daniel, the perfection of wisdom, but upon all will be poured out the Spirit of wisdom to each according to his capacity, provided that he is a man of faith. If you believe, you have the spirit of wisdom.

Therefore when you sit in your house meditate and speak always of the things of God. House we can take to mean the Church or our own interior house where we may speak within ourselves. Choose your words when you speak so that you avoid sin and do not fall through empty chatter. When you are seated speak to yourself as one who is a judge. When you are by the way speak lest you be idle. You speak by the way if you speak in Christ, for Christ is the way. Speak to yourself by the way and you speak to Christ. Hear then how you are to talk to him, I desire, he said, that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarrelling: Speak, O man, when you are falling asleep lest the sleep of death overtake you. Hear how you should speak as you go to sleep, I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids, until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the mighty one of Jacob.

In your rising or resurrection speak of him that you may carry out what you are commanded to do. Hear how Christ wakens you. Your soul says, The voice of my brother sounds at the gate, and Christ says, Open to me, my sister, my spouse. And hear how you are to awaken Christ. The soul says, I have adjured you, O daughters of Jerusalem, to waken and to re-awaken love. Love is Christ.

St Ambrose, In Ps. 36, 65-66; The Divine Office I.

Friday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON THE FIRST LETTER OF ST JOHN BY ST AUGUSTINE

What have we been promised? We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. The tongue has said all it can, the rest must come from the thoughtful heart. In comparison with HIM WHO IS, what are the words even of St John? And what can we men say who are so far from equalling John’s merits?

Let us go back to that anointing of his, let is go back to that anointing that reaches from within what we cannot express in words, and since for the present you cannot see, let your efforts consist in desire.

The whole life of a good Christian is a holy desire. What you desire you cannot see yet. But the desire gives you the capacity, so that when it does see, you may be fulfilled.

Suppose you want to fill some sort of bag, and you know the bulk of what you will be given, you stretch the bag or the sack or the skin or whatever it is. You know how big the object that you want to put in and you see that the bag is narrow so you increase its capacity by stretching it. In the same way by delaying the fulfilment of desire God stretches it, by making us desire he expands the soul, and by this expansion he increases its capacity.

Then, brothers, let us desire because we are to be filled. Look at St Paul stretching wide his heart to make it big enough to receive what was to come. He says in effect, Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; brethren I do not consider that I have made it my own. What, then, Paul are you doing in life if you have not yet made it your own? But one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call. He describes himself as straining forward and pressing on. He felt too small to encompass what the eye has not seen nor the ear heard nor has entered into the heart of man.

This is our life, to be exercised by desire. But we are exercised by holy desire only in so far as we have cut off our longings from the love of the world. I have already pointed out – empty that which is to be filled. You are to be filled with good, pour out the bad.

Consider that God wants to fill you up with honey, but if you are already full of vinegar where will you put the honey? What was in the vessel must be emptied out; the vessel itself must be washed out and made clean and scoured, hard work though it may be, so that it be made fit for something else, whatever it may be.

Let us say honey, or gold, or wine, whatever we say it cannot be named and whatever we want to say is in fact called ‘God’. And when we say ‘God’ what have we said? That one syllable contains all that we hope for. Whatever is in our power to say is less than he, let us stretch ourselves out towards him so that when he comes he may fill us. ‘We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

St Augustine, On 1 John, 4; The Divine Office I.

Saturday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE SERMONS OF ST AUGUSTINE

The book of Scripture which I am holding in my hands commends a certain woman to us to be praised. She’s a great woman and has a great husband, the husband who found her when she was lost and adorned her once she was found. About her I shall say a few things in the time available, as the Lord suggests to me, it’s the feast day of the martyrs, after all, and that’s all the more reason for praising the mother of martyrs.

You have already grasped who this woman is from these opening remarks of mine, you are saying to yourselves, ‘She must be the Church.’ Yes. Who else, after all, could be the mother of martyrs? The woman I want to say something about is the Church. Pay attention to whose members you are; observe carefully whose children you are. A valiant woman who shall find? The woman’s valour fits the martyrs’ feast day very well. If she hadn’t been valiant, those members of hers would have broken down under their sufferings.

A valiant woman who shall find? She’s difficult to find – or rather she’s difficult to be ignorant of. Isn’t she the city on the hill, which cannotbe hidden? She is the city, but she is also that one sheep which the shepherd went looking for when it was lost, and when he found it brought it home on his shoulder rejoicing. So now, having heard the words A valiant woman who shall find, you mustn’t think they are said about a Church that is hidden away, but about that Church which was found by one man, so that nobody now can possibly miss her. So let her be described, then, let her be praised, let her be commended, to be loved by all of us as our mother, because she is the wife of one man.

The heart of her husband is confident about her. He certainly is confident, and he has taught us to be confident too. He commissioned the Church, you see, to the ends of the earth, among all nations, from sea to sea. If she wasn’t going to persevere to the end, her husband’s heart would not be confident about her. The heart of her husband is confident about her. With foreknowledge he is confident, he cannot be mistaken in his confidence.

If you are a child of this woman, notice what riches are promised you: Her children have risen up and been enriched. Get yourself ready to receive the riches of the resurrection. And her husband has praised her. We too praise her, but not from our own resources. When her children have risen up and been enriched, he has turned to her, and gazed at her, and praised her. Could anyone not want to hear how he has praised her? If you have listened so happily while she was being praised by me, how do you imagine we would listen if we could hear just how her husband has praised her? He has praised her in the resurrection. When we have risen, we shall hear. Or perhaps even now he hasn’t kept this praise a secret, even now we can hear how her husband has praised her when he sees her finally with that stupendous blessing of children, rich in the resurrection of the dead.

St Augustine, Sermon 37.1-2, 4, 25-26; WSA (1990) tr. Hill.

Season of the Year | Week 15

Sunday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE MORALIA IN JOB OF ST GREGORY THE GREAT

When Job lost everything, at Almighty’s God decree, to preserve his peace of mind he remembered the time when he did not yet possess the things he had now lost; in that way, by realising more and more clearly that once he had not had them, he would the more easily moderate his grief over their loss. For indeed whenever we lose something it can be a great consolation to call to mind the days when we did not have it.

So, then, the blessed Job, wishing to cultivate patience as he bewails his losses, carefully considers to what state he is now reduced. To enhance his peace of mind he ponders yet more closely his origins, saying as he does so: Naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I shall return whence I came. In other words, the earth produced me naked, and naked will receive me back when I leave it. Since therefore the things I have lost were only what I had received and must leave behind, what have I lost that really belonged to me? But then, because consolation derives not only from thinking about one’s condition but also about the Creator’s uprightness, he is right to add: The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away; as it has pleased the Lord, so has he wrought.

He well says, as it has pleased the Lord. For since in this world we have to put up with things we do not like, it is necessary that we should accommodate our best endeavours to him who cannot will anything that is unjust. If therefore we know that what is just and equitable pleases the Lord, and that we can suffer nothing but what is pleasing to him, then all our sufferings must for that reason be justly and fairly imposed: and it would therefore be very unjust of us to grumble at them.

We should note that, having got all that right, Job ends by praising God. This was so that his adversary might realise, overcome by shame at seeing Job’s plight, that his own attitude in his prosperity is one of contempt for God, the same God to whom even this man, now fallen on evil times, can nevertheless sing a hymn of praise. We should realise that the enemy of our race can smite us with as many of his darts as there are temptations for him to afflict us with. For we do battle daily; and daily his onslaught of temptations rains down on us. But we in turn can fire our darts against him if, while buried in our tribulations, we will but react in humility. Thus Job, although suffering in material things, is still a blessed and happy man.

We should not think that our champion merely receives wounds without inflicting any in return. Indeed, every prayer of patience offered by the sufferer in God’s praise is a dart turned against the enemy’s breast: and a much sharper blow is thereby struck than the one sustained. For the man in his afflictions loses only earthly goods, whereas in bearing humbly with his afflictions he has increased many times over his stock in heaven.

St Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 2.17.30-18.31 (SC 32 b i s:203-205); Word in Season VII.

Monday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A HOMILY BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

We can find ample consolation not only in the New Testament but in the Old Testament as well. Consider the story of Job, and how, after the loss of his wealth and the destruction of his herds, not one, two or even three of his children were taken from him, but all of them together in the very flower of their youth. When you hear of his great spiritual courage, even if you are the weakest of men, it is not so difficult to recover yourself and return to life.

For you, my friend, at least watched over your sick child as he lay on his bed, you heard his last words and attended him as his life came to an end, you shut his eyes and closed his mouth. But Job was not present at his children’s death, nor saw them dying in the house where all were buried as in a single tomb. Yet after such overwhelming disasters he neither grieved nor despaired, but said: The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; it has been done as the Lord willed. Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever.

Let us too utter these words in every misfortune that life brings us, be it loss of wealth, bodily sickness, abuse, slander, or any other human ill. Let us say: The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; it has been done as the Lord willed. Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever.

If we make this our philosophy, no misfortune will ever cause us suffering, however many we endure. The gain will always be greater than the loss, and the good will outweigh the bad, since with these words you attract the favour of God and shake off the tyranny of the devil. For as soon as you utter them, the devil at once takes to flight, and when he has gone the cloud of dejection lifts too and oppressive thoughts disappear in the company of their master; and besides all this you will have as your reward all the blessings both of earth and of heaven. You have a steadfast example in Job and also in the Apostles, who scorned the terrors of this world for God’s sake, and so gained the blessings of eternity. Let us then follow them, and in all that happens to us rejoice and give thanks to the benevolent God. So shall we pass this present life in contentment and gain the blessings to come, by the grace and kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory, honour and power at all times, now and forever and to endless ages. Amen.

St John Chrysostom, Hom. in paralyticum demissum per tecta (PG 51:62-63); Word in Season VII.

Tuesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON JOB OF ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

Do not be amazed when I tell you that Job did not say, Why did I not die at birth? These are words I lend him, words that seem contrary to his profound goodness. We know Job suffered righteously what he was suffering, and so he must have reasonably and wisely said that It would have been better if I had not been born; but this is exactly what Christ said about Judas: It would have been better for that man if he had not been born. And yet Job says much the same thing of himself: Why was I born? It would have been better if I had not been born.

It seems to me that Job is attempting to humble his friends and to persuade them not to attach a great importance to human affairs. Job has not introduced the dead kings into this passage without purpose when he speaks of those who gloried in their swords. Notice how even amidst his afflictions Job possesses words full of wisdom. Their wealth, in fact, has granted the kings no protection; their power has been of no use; death has come at the end for everyone. After this Job goes on to say of himself, why was I not as a stillborn child that never sees the light? Notice how, in order that he may not appear to be arrogant, he even compares himself with a stillborn child, so absolutely wretched and pitiful is he.

Why is light given, Job asks, to those whose soul dwells in bitterness, and life to those souls who are in pain? Again this is not the language – God forbid – of someone who makes rebukes, but of someone who searches and suffers. From this we learn that not only life but also death is useful, when it is more desired than evil. In this way Job speaks of those who long for death, but, he says, it does not come. That is why the Preacher in Ecclesiastes says, For everything there is a season and, in another passage, O death, how your memory is sweet.

When you hear Job’s wife suggesting to him, Curse God, and die, you should not suppose that he did not answer her because of his love of life but rather because of his piety. Indeed he who considered death to be very desirable and saw it as a real goodness when he was allowed to obtain it did not dare speak against God. Job declares, Death is rest for man. Now if death brings rest, why don’t the majority of people rush to it? Because God has made life desirable in order to prevent us from running to death. Job goes on to say of death, It’s way is hidden, and he adds, they dig for it more than for hidden treasures. By this Job is saying that our future is unknown. We ourselves do not uncover it, neither should we attempt to do so. Please do not speak to me about those who attempt to take their life in their own hands and who hang themselves; Job is here speaking about what conforms to nature and the commandments of God, not about an unnatural sin. He says of death, God has surrounded it with a wall, and the Gospel likewise states that the day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night. Thus to respond to the question, Why do you not choose death? Job answers, The Lord has surrounded it with a wall: Its doors are closed.

St John Chrysostom, In Job, 3.11-16, 20-23; ACC 6 (2006) tr. Simonetti & Conti.

Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF ST AUGUSTINE

In what place then did I find you to learn of you? For you were not in my memory, before I learned of you. Where did I find you to learn of you, save in yourself, above myself? Place there is none, we go this way and that, and place there is none. You, who are Truth, reside everywhere to answer all who ask counsel of you, and in one act reply to all though all seek counsel upon different matters.

And you answer clearly, but all do not hear clearly. All ask what they wish, but do not always hear the answer that they wish. That man is your best servant who is not so much concerned to hear from you what he wills as to will what he hears from you.

Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you! For behold you were within and I outside; and I sought you outside and in my ugliness fell upon those lovely things that you have made. You were with me and I was not with you. I was kept from you by those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called and cried to me and broke open my deafness: and you sent forth your beams and shone upon me and chased away my blindness: you breathed fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do now pant for you: I tasted you, and now hunger and thirst for you: you touched me, and I have burned for your peace.

When once I shall be united to you with all my being, there shall be no more grief and toil, and my life will be alive, filled wholly with you. You raise up him whom you fill; whereas being not yet filled with you I am a burden to myself. The pleasures of this life for which I should weep are in conflict with the sorrows of this life in which I should rejoice, and I know not on which side stands the victory.

Woe is me, Lord, have pity on me! For I have likewise sorrows which are evil and these are in conflict with joys that are good, and I know not on which side stands the victory. Woe is me, Lord have mercy upon me! Woe is me! See, I do not hide my wounds: you are the physician, I the sick man; you are merciful, I need mercy. Is not the life of man on earth a trial? Who would choose trouble and difficulty? You command us to endure them, not to love them. No one loves what he endures, though he may love to endure. For though he rejoices at his endurance, yet he would rather that there were nothing to endure. In adversity I desire prosperity, in prosperity I fear adversity. Yet what middle place is there between the two, where man’s life may be other than trial? There is woe and woe again in the prosperity of this world, woe from the fear of adversity, woe from the corruption of joy. There is woe in the adversity of the world, and a second woe, and a third, from the longing for prosperity, and because adversity itself is hard, and for fear that endurance may break! Is not man’s life upon earth trial without intermission? All my hope is naught save in your great mercy.

St Augustine, Confessions, 10.26.37-29.40; The Divine Office I.

Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON JOB BY DIDYMUS THE BLIND

Eliphaz acknowledges that God is the Ruler and Creator of all things. He is a man who possesses wisdom in human things. Eliphaz also has an understanding of the invisible and visible, since he speaks of the inexplorable, the great, the honourable, and also of water and rain. If he distinguishes that water from rain, he must have in mind water from wells, from creeks and from cracks in stone. One can find very wise thoughts of this kind in many places in Scripture, not least of all in Paul, who writes, In him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible. But it seems clear that Eliphaz became afraid in a very human way because of the things that it happened to holy Job, and so he turned from this to admire the works of providence. Regarding the things without number, one has to admit that Eliphaz speaks from a human perspective. For God himself knows everything, there is no miracle in that. Doesn’t Solomon say, For it is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements; the beginning and end and middle of times; the alternations of the solstices and so on? This knowledge is also given to those who, like Solomon, are worthy of this benefit.

Again Eliphaz vigorously criticises the one who has been rebuked by the Lord, but too often it is righteous people who have been vilified. Among them are Joseph, whom the Egyptian woman charged with excess in spite of his modesty, and Susanna, who suffered as a hostage the humiliations from the lawless elders. Consequently, if he understands his words that the just man rebuked by the Lord will be hidden from the scourge of the tongue to mean that he is neither humiliated nor vilified, he is wrong. It is more accurate to say that the one who lives by the will of God cannot be harmed by humiliation or vilification, by the scourge of the tongue. Virtue protects him from being found guilty of the false allegations. Nor does such a person fear the coming destruction, since he says with St Paul, Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or sword? Over all this he prevails through virtue’s abundance. Likewise, he is protected from the intrigues of false wisdom, since God takes the wise in their own craftiness.

The words of the Prophet, The calamity will come from far away, must be understood like this: the good comes from us. For it is said, The kingdom of God is within you, and so we have an inclination toward virtue that Christ called ‘kingdom’. But the punishment and damage and disorder of sin come from the outside. For the man, who is created after God’s image, carries the seed of the good within, but if he deviates from the right path, he encounters evil, without having received such an inclination from God.

Didymus the Blind, In Job, 5.9-10, 21; ACC 6 (2006) tr. Simonetti & Conti.

Friday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE MORALIA ON JOB OF ST GREGORY THE GREAT

It is because the ancient Fathers resemble trees bearing abundant fruit, being not merely attractive figures in themselves but productive also of positive results, that their lives are so well worth considering. For in so doing, we realise, as we wonder at the freshness and originality of people in history, how much fecundity there is in allegory, and how the sweetness of fruit to the taste can be anticipated from the allurement of fragrant leaves. No one has ever had the grace of supernatural adoption except through his acknowledgment of the Only-begotten. And so it is fitting that he who enlightens men that they may merit to shine forth should himself be manifest in their lives and their words. For when a lantern is lit in the darkness it is the lantern itself which is seen before all the rest, everything else that it lights up. Hence if we really wish to discern what has been made visible, we must try to open the eyes of our minds to the light itself. This lesson shines through the speeches of the blessed Job, like a fleeting twinkle, even when those involved allegories are edited out and forgotten, and the shadows of the darkest hours of night are as it were removed. For he says: I know that my Redeemer lives, and in my flesh I shall see God.

Indeed Saint Paul had found this same light in the night of history, when he said: All were baptized in the power of Moses, in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink. But they drank of the spiritual rock which lay in their path: and the rock was Christ. If, then, the rock was a type or figure of the Redeemer, why should not the blessed Job apply and use a figure of him whom he foretold and marked, indeed identified, with suffering? Wherefore Job is not without reason said to be grieving precisely because he bears in himself the likeness of him whom Isaiah had long ago announced as taking our sorrows on himself. Moreover our Redeemer showed himself to be one and the same person identified with his Holy Church which he took up and manifested. For of him it is said: He is the head, Christ himself. And again, of his Church it is written: And the body of Christ, which is the Church. Hence the blessed Job, who presented the type and bore the mark of the Mediator all the more faithfully for having prefigured his passion not merely in speech but even in suffering, since in his words and deeds he finds support in the idea of a redeemer, has lighted in a flash on the very significance of the body itself. Believing Christ and his Church to be one person, let us view it in the light of one person and everything he does, the body and its every act.

St Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 23.2 (PL 76:251); Word in Season VII.

Saturday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE MORALIA ON JOB BY ST GREGORY THE GREAT

My flesh is clothed with corruption and foulness of dust. If we take Job’s words as the voice of the holy Church universal, doubtless we find it at one time sunk to the earth by the corruption of the flesh, at another time by the defilement of dust. For the Church has many within it who, while devoted to the love of the flesh, become corrupted by the putrefaction of excess. In addition, there are some people who certainly keep from the gratification of the flesh, yet grovel with all their heart in earthly practices. So let holy Church speak through the words of one of its members, let it express what it endures from either sort of person. My flesh is clothed with corruption and the defilement of dust. It is as if the Church said in plain words, ‘There are many who are members of me in faith, yet these are not sound or pure members in practice. For they either are mastered by foul desires and run to and fro in corruption’s rottenness, or, being devoted to earthly practices, they are soiled with dust. For in those whom I have to endure, people filled with wantonness, I do plainly lament for the flesh turned corrupt. And in those from whom I suffer, those who are seeking the earth, what else is this but the defilement of dust that I bear?’

My days pass more swiftly than the weaving of cloth by the weaver. In a very suitable image, the time of the flesh is compared with a cloth web. As the web advances thread by thread, so this mortal life passes day by day; in proportion as the web increases, so it advances to its completion. Just as we said before, while the time in our hands passes, the time before us is shortened. Moreover, of the whole length of our lives, the days to come are proportionally fewer to those days that have gone by.

Job says that, The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more; while your eyes are upon me, I shall be gone. For the human eye is the pity of the Redeemer that softens the hardness of our insensibility when it looks upon us. Hence, as the Gospel witnesses, it is said, And the Lord turned, looked upon Peter, and Peter remembered the word of the Lord. And he went out, and wept bitterly. However, when the soul is divested of the flesh, the human eye henceforth does not see anything. The Redeemer’s pity never delivers anyone after death whom it has not gracefully restored to pardon before death.

St Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 8.23, 26, 30, 34; ACC 6 (2006) tr. Simonetti & Conti.

Season of the Year | Week 16

Sunday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE MORALIA ON JOB BY ST GREGORY THE GREAT

As often as a mighty wrestler goes down into the arena, those who are no match for him present themselves in turn to be overthrown. When one is beaten another takes his place to try to overcome by a succession of adversaries him who cannot be beaten by their individual powers. Thus, in this theatre of men and angels, the blessed Job showed himself a mighty wrestler to whom first Eliphaz came forth, then Bildad, and now finally Zophar the Naamathite who begins with an insult: Should a multitude of words go unanswered, and a man full of talk be vindicated?

It is always the practice of the impertinent to answer the opposite of the truth that has been said to them lest, if they assent to the things asserted, they should seem inferior. To them the words of the righteous, however few, are always a multitude. The wicked cannot hear good words with patience and they answer back so that they do not have to amend their life, as Zophar plainly shows us when he adds: Should your babble silence men, and when you mock, shall no one shame you? The uninstructed mind is offended by the truth and reckons silence to be a punishment. When scorners cannot defend the evils that are reproved in them, they feel worse through shame and defend themselves vigorously digging up bad things to say about the life of their reprover, thinking themselves not guilty if they can fasten guilty deeds upon the heads of others. When they can’t find true ones, they make them up, so that they too can appear to rebuke with equal justice. Thus Zophar adds with lying lips, For you say, ‘My doctrine is pure, and I am clean in God's eyes.’ Whoever remembers the words of blessed Job knows how false this charge is; how could he call himself pure who said, If I justify myself, my own mouth would condemn me. Here is the wickedness of the unrighteous, it refuses to bewail the real evil in itself while inventing evil in others, for it gains comfort for its evil deeds if the life of the reprover can be stained with false accusation.

Zophar is not afraid to dare to instruct one better than himself, and so he exhorts Job and shows how unimportant punishment appears to the righteous man, by saying: You will forget your misery; you will remember it as waters that have passed away. The mind feels the ills of the present life all the more severely in proportion as it neglects the good of the next life. Now Zophar does well in likening the miseries of the present life to waters that have passed away; if a man raises himself up to things eternal and fixes the eye of his soul on those things which remain without change, he sees that everything here below that has an end is to be counted as almost nothing. Even when evil spirits also tempt the mind of a righteous man so that he is both saddened by affliction and chilled within by temptation, grace never leaves him and the more he is struck by the dispensation of providence, the more God watches over him in pity, for when it grows dark through temptation, the inner light is kindled again.

St Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 10.1-4, 32; tr C.M. (1844) amended.

Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE MORALIA ON JOB BY ST GREGORY THE GREAT

He who is mocked by his neighbour, as I am, will call upon God and he will answer him. Often, the frail mind, acclaimed for its good actions by the breath of human regard, dissipates itself in outward delights, so that it lays aside what it inwardly desires and is willing to lie loosely in the external things to which it directs its attention. It delights not so much in becoming, as in being called, blessed; and because it longs for the words of applause, it ceases to strive after what it had begun to be; and so, the very means through which it appeared to be commendable in God, sever it from God.

But sometimes it perseveres in good works with a constant heart, and yet is pushed hard by the scoffing of men; it does admirable deeds, and gets only abuse; and he who might have been encouraged to come out of himself by commendation, is repulsed by insults and returns back again into himself. He establishes himself the more firmly in God, as he finds no place else where he may rest in peace: for all his hope is fixed in his Creator. Amidst ridicule and abuse, he implores only the interior witness. His soul in distress becomes God’s neighbour, in proportion as he is a stranger to the favour of man’s esteem. So he pours himself out in prayer and, hard-pressed from without, is refined with a more perfect purity to enter more deeply into all that is interior. Therefore, it is well said at this time, He who is mocked by his neighbour as I am, will call upon God and he will answer him. For though the wicked reproach the soul of the good, yet the good are showing them whom to seek as witness of their actions. And while the soul of the good strengthens itself, with compunction, in prayer, it is united within itself in the hearing of the Most High, in the very act that severs it from the approval of men outside itself.

But we should note how thoughtfully are inserted the words as I am. For there are some men who are downcast at the ridicule of their fellowmen; and yet they are not the kind of men to be heard by the ears of God. For when they are ridiculed because of their sin, surely they gain no virtuous merit from that mocking.

For the upright man’s simplicity is laughed to scorn. It is the wisdom of this world to conceal one’s feelings with pretence, to veil the sense with words, to show things that are false as true, and to make out as fallacious what is true. But on the other hand it is the wisdom of the righteous to pretend nothing in show, to discover the meaning by words, to love the truth as it is, to avoid falsehood, to set forth good deeds freely, to bear evil more gladly than to do it, to seek no revenge of a wrong, to count ill repute as a gain for the truth’s sake. But this simplicity of the righteous is laughed to scorn, because the goodness of purity is taken for folly by the wise men of this world. For doubtless everything that is done from innocence is counted foolish by them, and whatever truth sanctions in practice sounds weak to carnal wisdom.

St Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 10.47-8; The Divine Office I.

Tuesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST ZENO OF VERONA

As far as can be understood, dear brothers, Job was a type of Christ, and a comparison between them shows the truth of this. God himself called Job a righteous man. And God is righteousness itself, the source whence all who are blessed drink, for of him it is said, for you the sun of righteousness shall rise. Job is called truthful. And the Lord is the very truth as he said in the Gospel, I am the way and the truth.

Job was a rich man. But who is richer than the Lord? All the rich are his slaves and to him belongs the whole world and every creature, as holy David says, The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. The devil tempted Job three times. In the same way, as the evangelist tells us, he tried to tempt the Lord. Job lost everything that he owned. And the Lord left behind his heavenly goods for love of us and made himself poor that he might make us rich. The raging devil brought Job’s sons to destruction. So, in their madness, the people of the Pharisees slew the Prophets, the sons of the Lord. Job was infected with ulcers. And the Lord, taking on our flesh, was befouled with the filth of the sins of the whole human race.

Job’s wife urged him to sin. And the synagogue did its best to make the Lord follow the corrupt observances of their elders. It is told that Job’s friends insulted him. So too, did his priests and worshippers insult the Lord. Job sat upon a dunghill full of worms. The Lord also moved about on the real dunghill of the filth of this world amidst men seething with all manner of vices and lusts, which are the real worms.

Job recovered both his health and his possessions. But the Lord at his resurrection held out to those who believe in him not merely health but immortality, and took back to himself dominion over all nature as he himself bears witness when he says, All things have been delivered to me by my Father. Job begat new sons to replace those he had lost. The Lord too begat holy sons, the Apostles, in place of the Prophets. Job, blessed, rested in peace. But the Lord remains blessed forever before all ages, from all ages and throughout all ages.

St Zeno of Verona, Sermon 15.2; The Divine Office I.

Wednesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A LETTER OF ST FULGENTIUS OF RUSPE

There are blessings in the temporal order which God may grant here, but withhold or withdraw there: for instance, the blessings of the married state, the procreation of children, abundance in worldly goods, bodily health, and so forth. Such things can make people happy – or make them miserable. The Lord bestows them on the good and the wicked alike: and sometimes they are removed by the same divine hand, whether from the good or the wicked.

Job was blessed, a happy man indeed, when living uprightly amidst all his wealth; and yet he was more blessed in his even more upright and irreproachable condition of poverty. He was blessed when surrounded by his ten children, but more blessed when, smitten with the loss of all of them at once, he nevertheless remained unshakable in his love for God. He was blessed in his bodily health, but rendered more so by the wounds and injuries, the ulcers and sores that he received: more blessed on his dung heap than in a palace adorned with marble.

We observe the difference, the contrast: one man is well endowed with riches and good health, yet miserable; another, destitute and plagued by ill-health, is a genuinely happy man even so. The rich man who dressed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day lived such a pointless life, for all his feasting. How impoverished he really was, despite the vast wealth! How naked despite the fine apparel, how sick for all his bodily fitness, how famished for all the unstinted fare, how wretched in his merry-making, how lonely amidst the conversation of friends, how downcast for all the pampering by the menials! How different from Lazarus, made rich in his poverty, blessed in his wretchedness, happy in his misfortune, made sound again despite his sores, homeless indeed, yet making himself at home; without clothing but not without faith; without the strength of bodily health, yet strong in charity; without food yet not without Christ; exposed to dogs, but the companion of angels; not offered even the very crumbs from the rich man’s table, yet regaled with the bread of heaven.

The good things of this life can be ours for good or evil; they are to be rated accordingly. Temporal blessings, then, it is sometimes good to enjoy, but sometimes not; sometimes it is good to despise them, but sometimes it is not. It is good indeed to have them when they conduce to the fear of God; but equally it can be good to despise them, when that is done for the sake of the glory that comes from Almighty God himself, and not from men.

St Fulgentius of Ruspe, Epistolae, 2.9, 15-18 (CCL 91:2-3); Word in Season VII.

Thursday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LETTER OF ST CLEMENT OF ROME TO THE CORINTHIANS

Think, my dear friends, how the Lord offers us proof after proof that there is going to be a resurrection, of which he has made Jesus Christ the first-fruits by raising him from the dead. My friends, look how regularly there are processes of resurrection going on at this very moment. The day and the night show us an example of it; for night sinks to rest, and day arises; day passes away, and night comes again. Or take the fruits of the earth; how, and in what way, does a crop come into being? When the sower goes out and drops each seed into the ground, it falls to the earth shrivelled and bare, and decays; but presently the power of the Lord's providence raises it from decay, and from that single grain a host of others spring up and yield their fruit.

Look at that strange portent that occurs in the East (in the neighbourhood of Arabia, to be precise). There is a bird known as a Phoenix, which is the only specimen of its kind and has a life of five hundred years. When the hour of its dissolution and death approaches, it makes a nest for itself out of frankincense and myrrh and other fragrant spices, and in the fullness of time it enters into this and expires. Its decaying flesh breeds a small grub, which is nourished by the moisture of the dead bird and presently grows wings. This, on reaching full growth, takes up the nest containing the bones of its predecessor and carries them all the way from the land of Arabia into Egypt, to the city called Heliopolis. There, in the full light of day and before the eyes of all beholders, it flies to the Altar of the Sun, deposits them there, and speeds back to its homeland; and when the priests consult their time records, they find that its arrival has marked the completion of the five-hundredth year.

Now, when the Creator of all things has even made use of a bird to disclose the magnitude of his promises to us, need we find it such a great wonder that he has a resurrection in store for those who have served him in holiness and in the confidence of a sound faith? For in Scripture we read, You will raise me up, and I will praise you; and also, After I had lain down and fallen asleep, I rose up again; for you are with me. Job too, says, You will raise up this flesh of mine which has had all these trials to endure. Seeing then that we have this hope, let us knit fast our souls to him who is ever true to his word and righteous in his judgements.

St Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians, 24.1-27.1; Penguin (1968) tr. Staniforth.

Friday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE MORALIA ON JOB OF ST GREGORY THE GREAT

You will abound with delicacies in the Almighty means that one is to be entirely filled with the banquet of holy Scripture in the love of God. In those words surely we find as many delicacies for our profiting as we obtained diversities of meaning. The bare history should now be our food veiled under the text of the letter, the moral allegory should refresh us from our inmost soul, and, regarding the deeper things, contemplation should hold us, even in the darkness of the present life, suspended in the light of eternity.

You will pray to him, and he will hear you, for those who reject the precepts of the Lord make their prayer to God but never obtain a hearing. Hence it is written, He that turns away his ear from hearing the Law, even his prayer shall be an abomination. So long then as Eliphaz believed the blessed Job was not heard, he decided that he had lived badly. He goes on, You will decide on a matter, and it will be established for you. Weak people esteem a person righteous as they see him obtain all that he desires; whereas, in truth, we know that earthly goods are sometimes withheld from the righteous whilst they are bestowed with liberal bounty on the unrighteous. Now if Eliphaz had been talking about spiritual gifts, it is true that a thing is decreed and is established in a person when the virtue that is longed for in the desire, is, by God’s granting it, happily put into practice.

The innocent will be saved, but he will be saved by the cleanness of his hands. This opinion of Eliphaz, if it is said concerning the reward of the kingdom of heaven, is supported by truth, in that it is written concerning God, He renders to every man according to his deeds. The justice of the eternal Judge saves that person in the last judgement, his mercy sets him free from impure deeds. But if the person we are talking about is supposed to be saved by the cleanness of his own hands, so that by his own powers he should be made innocent, then assuredly it is an error. For if grace from above does not come before the sinner, assuredly it will never find anyone faultless to reward for being without fault. It is said by the truthful voice of Moses, And no man of himself is innocent in your sight. So, heavenly pity first works something in us without our help, so that our own free will might follow as well, and it is by this means that the good which we now desire may be accomplished. Yet the good that is given us by grace is, in the last judgement, rewarded by God as if it had come only from ourselves.

St Gregory the Great, Moralia on Job, 16.24-30; ACC 6 (2006) tr. Simonetti & Conti.

Saturday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE MORALIA ON JOB OF ST GREGORY THE GREAT

Who else except the Mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, is denoted by the title of ‘just judgement’? Concerning whom it is written, Who became for us wisdom and righteousness from God. This same righteousness came into this world against the ways of sinners, so that we might get the better of our old enemy by whom we were held captive. So let Job say, I do not want him to contend with me with great power or oppress me with the weight of his mightiness. Let him judge me justly, and my judgement will come to victory. In other words, for the correction of my ways let him send his incarnate Son. Then by the sentence of my absolution, I will become a victor over the devious foe.

If the only-begotten Son of God had remained invisible in the strength of his divine nature and admitted nothing derived from our weakness, when could weak people ever have found the access of grace to him? For the weight of his greatness would have oppressed them. Yet he assumed our weakness, that he might elevate us to his own abiding strength.

It goes on, And he will try me like gold that passes through fire. Gold in the furnace is advanced to the brightness of its nature while it loses the dross. And so like gold that passes through fire the souls of the righteous are tried. Their defects are removed and their good points are increased by the fire of tribulation. The holy man Job compared himself with one who is being tested in fire as gold. This was not said out of pride. He who by the voice of God was pronounced righteous before his suffering was not out of pride being permitted to be tried in order that bad qualities might be cleared off and that excellences might be heightened. Gold is purified by fire. As he was being delivered over to suffer tribulation, he believed that he was being purified, although he had nothing in him to be purified.

The text continues, I have treasured in my bosom the words of his mouth. For we treasure the words of his mouth in the bosom of our heart when we hear his commandments not in a passing way but to fulfil them in practice. Thus, of the Virgin Mother herself it is written, But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Even when the same words come forth to be practised, they are still said to lie hidden in the recesses of the heart if by what is done outwardly the mind of the doer is not lifted up within. When the word conceived is carried on to the deed, human praise is aimed within, for the word of God is assuredly not hidden in the bosom of the mind. Why then, blessed man, do you examine yourself with so much earnestness, and why do you take yourself to task with so much anxiety?

St Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 16.36-37, 39-44; ACC 6 (2006) tr. Simonetti & Conti.

Season of the Year | Week 17

Sunday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF ST AUGUSTINE

You are great, Lord, and highly to be praised: great is your power and your wisdom is immeasurable. Man, a little piece of your creation, desires to praise you, a human being bearing his mortality with him, carrying with him the witness of his sin and the witness that you resist the proud. Nevertheless, to praise you is the desire of man, a little piece of your creation. You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Grant me Lord to know and understand which comes first, to call upon you or to praise you, and whether knowing you precedes calling upon you. But who calls upon you when he does not know you? For an ignorant person might call upon someone else instead of the right one. But surely you may be called upon in prayer that you may be known. Yet how shall they call upon him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe without a preacher? They will praise the Lord who seek for him.

In seeking him they find him, and in finding they will praise him. Lord, I would seek you, calling upon you—and calling upon you is an act of believing in you. You have been preached to us. My faith, Lord, calls upon you. It is your gift to me. You breathed it into me by the humanity of your Son, by the ministry of your preacher.

How shall I call upon my God, my God and Lord? Surely when I call on him, I am calling on him to come into me. But what place is there in me where my God can enter into me? God made heaven and earth. Where may he come to me? Lord my God, is there any room in me which can contain you? Can heaven and earth, which you have made and in which you have made me, contain you? Without you, whatever exists would not exist. Then can what exists contain you? I also have being. So why do I request you to come to me when, unless you were within me, I would have no being at all? I am not now possessed by Hades; yet even there are you: for even if I were to go down to Hades, you would be present. Accordingly, my God, I would have no being, I would not have any existence, unless you were in me. Or rather, I would have no being if I were not in you of whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things. Even so, Lord, even so. How can I call on you to come if I am already in you? Or where can you come from so as to be in me? Can I move outside heaven and earth so that my God may come to me from there? For God has said, I fill heaven and earth.

Who will enable me to find rest in you? Who will grant me that you come to my heart and intoxicate it, so that I forget my evils and embrace my one and only good, yourself? What are you to me? Have mercy so that I may find words. Speak to me so that I may hear. See the ears of my heart are before you, Lord. Open them and say to my soul, I am your salvation.

St Augustine, Confessions, 1.1-2.2, 5.5; The Divine Office I.

Monday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE INSTRUCTIONS OF ST DOROTHEUS OF GAZA

Let us see, my brothers, why it is that sometimes when a person hears words that hurt him he can let them pass by without any bother as if he had not heard them, whilst at other times, as soon as he hears them he is troubled and upset. My question is – what is the cause of this difference? Is there one reason for this or are there many? I think there are several, but there is one in particular which is the source of all the others, as the saying goes: it results from the state of mind the person is in at that particular time.

For example, when someone is caught as he comes from prayer or contemplation, he is then in the best of dispositions and is able to put up with his brother and remain undisturbed. It may be that he has great affection for the other and so, out of love, puts up patiently with everything. But it can also happen that he despises the one who wants to upset him, regarding him as the lowest of men and not worth even a reply. Nor would he even consider mentioning his slights and insults to someone else.

Hence, as I said, it can be that a man is not disturbed or upset because he has only contempt for the things that are said to him and ignores them. The brother who insults us may upset us either because we are not at that moment in the right mood or because we dislike him intensely. There are many other reasons as well which are described in different ways. But, if we examine the matter closely, we can say that the reason for all disturbance is that no one blames himself.

This is the reason for every taking of offence and upset. This is why at times it is impossible to find peace of soul. Nor should we be surprised at this, since it is the teaching of spiritual men that there is no other way of peace for us. This we can see to be true in so many people. And yet we hope for peace but do not follow their teaching. Or, we believe that we are on the right path while we are irritated by everything and cannot bear to take any blame upon ourselves.

That is the way things are. A man may indeed accomplish innumerable good deeds, but if he does not master this he will never attain peace. Instead, he will always oppress himself and oppress others and his labours will go for nothing.

St Dorotheus of Gaza, Instructions, 7.1-2; The Divine Office I.

Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE MORALIA ON JOB OF ST GREGORY THE GREAT

After revealing his sublime feats of heroism the saintly Job seeks a helper, knowing as he does that his own merits are not enough for him to reach the highest peak. And on whom indeed does he rest his gaze but the only-begotten Son of God, who took a human nature, labouring in mortality, and in so doing brought nature his saving help? For he it was who, once he was made man, brought his help to us men so that, since the way back to God did not lie open to man left to himself, it might be opened through God-made-man. We are a long way from being just and immortal, unjust and mortal as we are. But between him who is immortal and just, and us who are neither the one nor the other, the Mediator of God and man has appeared: and he is both mortal and just, having death in common with men and justice with God. And because through our baseness we are far from the heights he occupies, he joins in his own person the lowest with the highest, to make a way for us back to God.

The blessed Job, then, seeks this Mediator, speaking as it were for the whole Church, when having said: Who will grant me a helper? he aptly goes on, that the Almighty one may hear my petition. For he knew that men’s prayers for the repose of eternal freedom can only be heard through their advocate. Of him, we are told through John the Apostle that: If anyone has sinned we have Christ the just man as advocate with the Father; and he is the propitiation for our sins, not for ours alone but also for those of the whole world. And Paul the Apostle speaks of him as: The Christ who died for us, and indeed who rose again, who is at the right hand of God, and who intercedes for us. It is for the only-begotten Son of God to intercede with his co-eternal Father, presenting himself as man; and then his having made intercession on behalf of human nature amounts to taking up that nature to the level of his own divine nature.

The Lord intercedes for us not in words, but in mercy; for what he did not wish to see condemned or lost in his chosen ones, that he set free by taking it on himself. A helper is therefore sought, that our petition might be heard: for unless some mediator intercedes for us our prayers would undoubtedly remain as if unspoken, in the ears of Almighty God.

St Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 22.17 (PL 76:237-238); Word in Season VII.

Wednesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE MORALIA ON JOB OF ST GREGORY THE GREAT

Job, I ask you for a hearing; now it is my turn to tell you what I know. It is a characteristic of arrogant teachers that they are unable to present their teaching modestly, that they fail to serve as they should the truths which they hold. They make it plain by their words that when they are teaching they fancy themselves seated on some lofty place of eminence and they look down on their hearers standing far below them, on the lowest level, as persons who scarcely merit their domination, not to say their concern.

The words of the Lord through the Prophet are well directed at them: With force and harshness you have ruled them. For men rule with force and harshness when they are concerned not to correct those under them by calm reasoning but to bend them by harsh domination.

Sound teaching, on the other hand, measures its earnestness in avoiding this sin of pride in thought by its eagerness to attack with its words the teacher of pride himself. It takes care not to proclaim him by an arrogant manner while it attacks him with pious words in the hearts of the hearers. It strives to preach in what it says and manifest in what it does, humility, the mistress and mother of all virtues, in order to commend this more by conduct than by words to those who are seeking the truth.

This is why Paul speaks as if he had forgotten the dignity of his own apostleship in his words to the Thessalonians: We were babes among you. Similarly the Apostle Peter says: Always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, and he adds, to emphasise that our teaching must be presented in the proper way: Yet do it with gentleness and reverence; and keep your conscience clear.

When Paul says to Titus: Command these things, teach them with all authority, he is not recommending the domination of power but the force of his disciple’s life. A man teaches with authority what he first practises himself before preaching to others, for when conscience is an obstacle to speech, what is taught is more difficult to accept. So then Paul is not recommending the power of haughty words but the trustworthiness which comes from good conduct. Our Lord too, we are told, taught as one who had authority, and not as the scribes and the Pharisees. He alone spoke with a unique authority because he had committed no sin from weakness. It was from the power of his divinity that he possessed that which he bestowed on us through the sinlessness of his humanity.

St Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 23.23-24; The Divine Office III.

Thursday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE MORALIA ON JOB OF ST GREGORY THE GREAT

After the loss of his goods, the death of his children, the wounds of his body, the words of his wife inciting him to evil, the insulting language of his comforters and the spear thrusts of so many sorrows bravely received, Job ought to have been praised by his judge for the strength of his constancy – but Job is not now going to be called out of this world. He is about to receive back twofold, he is about to be restored to his former health, to enjoy his restored possessions longer, so Almighty God is obliged to reprove him whom he preserves with strict justice in case Job’s very victory should lay him low with the sword of pride.

There is nothing, is there, that so commonly slays people than consciousness of their own virtue. It puffs them up with self-satisfaction and at the same time empties them of the truth; it suggests that they are sufficient unto themselves to achieve their rewards and at the same time diverts them from the will to amend. Job, then, was just before his scourges, but he remained more so after them; before them he was praised by the mouth of God; after them and because of them he grew in stature. As a pipe of ductile metal is lengthened by hammering, so Job rose in God’s esteem the more he was chastised. But he who stood so firm in virtue when struck down needed to be humbled. He needed to be humbled so that the arrows of pride should not pierce that sturdy breast which the wounds already received had certainly failed to pierce. It was necessary to search out someone who surpassed Job – but what about God’s words: Have you seen my servant Job, that there is no one like him in all the earth? How then could Job be humbled by comparison with another when God himself had attested that there was no one like him? What, then, was left but for the Lord himself to describe his own accomplishments? So he asks: Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? And again: Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Or: Have you commanded the morning ever since your days began and caused the dawn to know its place?

Who can do these things but the Lord? Yet a human being is asked so that he may learn that he is unable to do these things, so that a man who has grown limitless in virtue and is surpassed by no other man may know he is surpassed by God and so avoid elation. But how highly is he exalted who is so sublimely humbled! How great is the victory of the man who has been brought low by comparison with God! How much greater than a man is he who is shown by the witness of creation to be less than God! He is very mighty who is proved by such questioning to be not at all mighty.

St Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 27 Praefatio (PL 76:445-6); Word in Season VII.

Friday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON THE TRINITY BY ST HILARY OF POITIERS

There are many instances from everyday life where the cause itself is unknown, but the effect decidedly not so. And there is need for faith truly in the religious, supernatural sense wherever there is the ignorance due to my nature itself. For when I raise to your heaven those weak eyes that are my light I believe myself to see nothing other than your heaven. When surveying those circles and spheres carrying the stars, the yearly returns and vigils, the north star, the morning star, all these being given their differing tasks to perform, I perceive you to be at work in matters of which my perception is even so very incomplete. When I see the wonderful rise and fall of the sea, it is not the origin of the waters alone nor yet the motion of this vast swirling mass that I pursue and ponder, but rather, on apprehending the ground for belief in the cause which I cannot even so observe, that I am mindful, in things my mind does not grasp, of you also.

When I turn my mind’s eye to the earth, what is sown by hidden forces breaks free of what it had received, springs to life, multiplies and flourishes. There is really nothing here that I could understand properly by the light of nature; but then my ignorance itself contributes to my dim understanding of you, as long as I understand clearly that, being unfamiliar and baffled by the nature that serves me, I understand, as I say, that you alone can properly be of advantage or benefit to me. Not knowing or understanding myself either, I feel that all the more for that I am in awe of the fact that I am even a mystery to myself. For aware of, yet not comprehending, the movement of my mind in the act of passing judgement, or its way of functioning, or its life, I am in your debt for the awareness, for your communicating that awareness of nature delighting me, beyond the perception of natural origins.

And when I come to understand you, albeit in ignorance of myself, may I respect you with my understanding and not lose hold of my faith in your omnipotence at the thought of my ignorance of your ways: that my mind may be taken up with the origin of your only-begotten and so have something left over of itself, that I may further strive after my Creator and my God.

St Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, 12 (PL 10:467-8); Word in Season VII.

Saturday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE MORALIA ON JOB OF ST GREGORY THE GREAT

Among the wonderful works of divine dispensation it is pleasing to note how every star in turn appears on the face of heaven to illuminate the night of this present life, until at the end of that night there rises like a true morning star the Redeemer of the human race. For the interval of night, lit up by the rising and setting of the stars in their courses, is shot through with the great beauty of heaven. Then so that the light of the stars should shine out in turn, each in its own time, to pierce the darkness of our night, Abel came to represent innocence; Enoch, to teach moral purity; Noah, the patience to work in hope; Abraham, to show obedience; Isaac, chastity in marriage; Jacob, to teach us to endure toil; Joseph, to repay evil with good; Moses, to represent gentleness; Joshua, to teach us confidence in adversity; Job, to show us patience in the midst of misfortune. Those are the stars we see shining in the heavens, to light our steps on our laborious way through the darkness of our night. for the divine dispensation presented to the mind of man as many examples of righteousness as if sending so many stars into the dark sky above sinners, until the true morning star rose, to announce the eternal dawn to us, and because of his divine nature shining more brilliantly than the other stars.

All the elect who lived a holy life before the Lord foretold his coming in prophetic words and deeds. Not one of the righteous failed to announce him symbolically. It was obviously right that all should represent the good, by which all were good, and which they knew was useful to all. The Lord had to be foretold without cease, since he was given to us to be received without measure and possessed without end: so that all the ages might say together what the end of the ages showed in the universal redemption. That is why it was also inevitable that even blessed Job, who revealed so great a mystery as the Lord’s incarnation, should symbolise in his own life the one whom he described in words, and through his own suffering show what the Lord would suffer, foretelling the sacrament of his passion all the more truly because he prophesied it not only in words but in actual suffering.

St Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, Praefatio 13 (SC 32 b i s:135-6); Word in Season VII.

Season of the Year | Week 18

Sunday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE GNOSTIC CHAPTERS OF ST MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR

The meaning of Holy Scripture reveals itself gradually to the higher senses of the more discerning mind when the mind has put off the complex bodily form of the words which are formed in it. This revelation is like a still small voice. Through a supreme abandonment of its natural activities, such a mind has been able to perceive the meaning only in a simplicity which reveals the divine Word. This is the way that the great Elijah was granted the vision in the cave at Horeb.

For ‘Horeb’ means ‘newness’, which is our virtuous condition in the new spirit of grace. The cave is the hiddenness of spiritual wisdom in which the one who enters will mystically experience the knowledge which goes beyond the senses. This is the knowledge in which God is found. Therefore anyone who truly seeks God, as did the great Elijah, will come upon him not only on Horeb; that is, as an ascetic in the practice of the virtues. He will also encounter him in the cave of Horeb, that is as a contemplative in the hidden place of wisdom which can exist only in the habit of the virtues.

When the mind shakes off the many distractions about things which are pressing on it, then the clear meaning of truth appears and gives it pledges of genuine knowledge. These are given after it has driven off its recent preoccupations which were like scales on the eyes, just as in the case of the great and holy Apostle Paul. For thoughts about the mere letter of Scripture and the consideration of those visible things that hinder understanding are indeed scales which cling to the clear-sighted part of the soul and hinder the passage to the pure meaning of truth

St Maximus the Confessor, Gnostic Chapters 74-75; CWS (1985) tr. Berthold.

Sunday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CITY OF GOD BY ST AUGUSTINE

Obadiah is the shortest of all the Prophets in respect of his writings. He holds forth against Edom, that is the race of Esau, the elder of the twin sons of Isaac, grandsons of Abraham, the one who was rejected. Now if we take Edom as standing for the Gentiles, by the figure of speech called ‘the part for the whole’, we can recognise a prophecy of Christ in the place where Obadiah says, among other things, Now on Mount Sion there will be salvation and there will be a holy place. And a little later, at the end of this prophecy, he adds, And those who have been saved will go up from Mount Sion, to defend Mount Esau; and the kingdom will be the Lord’s.

It is quite obvious that this was fulfilled when those saved from Mount Sion – that is, those from Judaea who believed in Christ, and in particular those recognised as Apostles – went up to defend Mount Esau. How were they to defend it, except by bringing salvation, through the preaching of the gospel, to those who became believers, so that they should be rescued from the power of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of God? This is expressed by the addition of the next words: And the kingdom will be the Lord’s. For Mount Sion signifies Judaea, where it was predicted that there would be salvation and a holy place, which is Christ Jesus. Whereas Mount Esau is Edom, by which is signified the Church of the Gentiles; and, as I have explained, the saved from Mount Sion defended it, so that it should be a kingdom for the Lord. This was obscure before the event: but what believer could fail to recognise it after the event?

St Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 18.31; tr. Bettenson (1972).

Monday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE ORATIONS OF ST GREGORY NAZIANZEN

How terrible is an unfruitful season and the loss of the crops. It could not be otherwise, when men are already rejoicing in their hopes and counting on their all but harvested stores. Terrible again is an unseasonable harvest, when the farmers labour with heavy hearts, sitting as it were beside the grave of their crops, which the gentle rain nourished, but the wild storm has rooted up. Wretched indeed is the sight of the ground devastated, cleared, and shorn of its ornaments, over which the blessed Joel wails in his most tragic description of the desolation of the land and the scourge of famine; while another Prophet wails, as he contrasts with its former beauty its final disorder, and thus discourses on the anger of the Lord when he strikes the land: before him is the garden of Eden, behind him a desolate wilderness.

You are angry, and we have sinned, says one of old, making confession; and it is now time for me to say the opposite: We have sinned, and you are angry: therefore we have become a reproach to our neighbours. You turned your face from us, and we were filled with dishonour. But we are your people, O Lord, the rod of your inheritance; therefore correct us, but in goodness and not in your anger, lest you bring us to nothingness and contempt among all that dwell on the earth. With these words I invoke mercy: and if it were possible to propitiate his wrath with whole burnt offerings or sacrifices, I would not even have spared these. You yourselves also imitate your trembling priest, my beloved children. Possess your souls in tears, and stay his wrath by amending your way of life. Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, as blessed Joel with us charges you. I know also what he enjoins both upon me, the minister of God, and upon you, that we should enter his house in sackcloth and lament night and day between the porch and the altar, in piteous array, and with more piteous voices, crying aloud without ceasing on behalf of ourselves and the people, sparing nothing, either toil or word, which may propitiate God: saying, Spare, O Lord, Your people, and do not give Your heritage to reproach.

Come then, all of you, my brethren, let us worship and fall down, and weep before the Lord our Maker; let us appoint a public mourning, in our various ages and families, let us raise the voice of supplication; and let this, instead of the cry which he hates, enter into the ears of the Lord of Hosts. Let us anticipate his anger by confession; who knows if he will turn and repent, and leave a blessing behind him? This I know certainly, I the sponsor of the loving-kindness of God, that when he has laid aside that which is unnatural to him, his anger, he will turn to that which is natural, his mercy. To the one he is forced by us, to the other he is inclined. And if he is forced to strike, surely he will refrain, according to his nature. Only let us have mercy on ourselves, and open up a road for our Father’s righteous affections.

St Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 16, 6.12-14; NPNF27 (1883) tr. Browne & Swallow.

Tuesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON JOEL BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

It is customary with the holy prophetic authors to give the text an overall and general meaning on the basis of its details. This happens in the light of the coming of Christ. Here in this passage the sense emerges before us in this way: when is the earth to have confidence, and when likewise has the Lord increased productivity? Is it not when the Word, who is God, became man so as to shower the earth under heaven with good things from on high and prove to be for those who believe in him like a river of peace, like a torrent of enjoyment, like early and late rain, and a giver of complete spiritual fruitfulness? Then it was, in fact, that even for the most uncomprehending, who are called cattle of the countryside, a kind of spiritual fodder grew up, instruction by teachers; then it was that the countryside in the wilderness blossomed. By wilderness he refers to the Church according to the Prophet’s words about the Church: Rejoice, thirsty wilderness, that the wilderness exult and blossom like a lily. Countryside, on the other hand, would be the leaders of peoples, skilled in guiding them, whose minds are, as it were, teeming and beautifully blooming with divine charisms from heaven, producing sweet odours from the flowers of teaching, and producing fresh fodder. They nourish the minds of those who have become like cattle so that they may advance to the state of mind proper to men.

He said also that a tree bore its fruit, and vine and fig tree showed their vigour. In my view this means the solid message of the teachers in which there is sweetness and, in addition, the means of making us glad, just as in the case of the fruit of fig and vine. Now, it would be very fitting to offer to people of a more materialistic attitude, those who share the sloth typical of cattle, an instruction that is more earthy, that is in form and content a natural fodder. To the mature, however, there should be given an understanding which has already received from on high, a fruit springing from lovely trees – namely, the doctrine of the holy and consubstantial Trinity, or moral teaching of an elevated level. The former people the Prophet refers to as cattle, but the more mature he calls children of Zion, whom he bids exalt in the Lord their God. Our total satisfaction is Christ and from him and through him comes complete fullness of good things and an abundant supply of heavenly graces to those who love him, which are understood as the early and late fruit and as the grain filling the threshing floors, vats of wine brimming over, and oil overflowing.

Now, it should be understood that the reality of this promise also comes in the form of sacramental fulfilment; the living water of holy baptism is given to us as rain, the bread of life as grain, and the blood as wine. The use of oil is also applied in bringing those justified in Christ to maturity through holy Baptism.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Comm. in Joelem 2; FoC 115 (2007) tr. Hill.

Wednesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON JOEL BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

And it will be after this that I shall pour out my Spirit on all people. Here God clearly promises to give the grace of the Holy Spirit, that is, his abundant help, not to one or two perhaps chosen to be prophets, but to absolutely all who are worthy to receive the Spirit. We say that this was indeed fulfilled after Christ had risen from the dead and had destroyed the power of death.

For the Spirit was given to Adam originally but did not remain in human nature, because humanity turned towards error and slipped into sin. But when God’s only Son, though rich, chose to become poor, and being among us as a man received his own Spirit as if acquired, the Spirit remained in him. As the evangelist John told us, this was so that the Spirit remained in him. As the evangelist John also told us, this was so that the Spirit might dwell in us too from then on, since this time the Spirit remained in the second first-fruit of our human race, that is, Christ, who for that reason was also called the second Adam.

Therefore we must reform to become incomparably better, and to gain complete regeneration through the Spirit. This is not the same as our original birth, I mean by earthly descent, leading us to corruption and sin (for the mind ruled by the body is death), but a second birth from above, from God through the Spirit; since it is truly said: And they were born, not of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. Therefore those ranked among the children of God had to possess the grace of the Holy Spirit in abundance. But Christ effected this also in us, as Peter’s words were to confirm: Being therefore exalted at the right hand of the Father, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you see and hear.

For as man he receives from the Father what is in himself by nature. But he pours out the Spirit richly upon us, because he is God by nature, and became man. But he also pours out the Spirit on all people. And this means not only on the Jews but on absolutely everyone called by faith, whether small or great, slave or free, non-Greek or Scythian. For the grace of salvation in Christ is set before people all over the world, because he is the expectation of nations.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Comm. in Joelem 25 (PG 71:376-380); Word in Season VIII.

Thursday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON JOEL BY ABBOT RUPERT OF DEUTZ

And then there will be the heavenly Jerusalem, says St Paul, presented as a beautiful bride, free from blemish, unmarred by any defect. It is that bride of whom St John writes in the Apocalypse: I saw a new Jerusalem coming down from heaven, made ready by God, like a bride for her husband. In those days, Scripture says, the mountains will give forth fragrance and the hills flow with milk, and water shall run through all the rivers of Judah.

The mountains of that country are the Prophets and the Apostles; the hills are the other Saints, whose teaching ordinary people have humbly taken in and for that reason received a share of their glory, drinking in at the sight of them the sweetness of the divine love with which they are imbued, and on which indeed they draw by their daily contact; for they will behold God’s glory more fully in those people from whom they have come to know God’s teaching. The psalmist conveys this thought succinctly when he says: They will be taken aback – inebriated – by the largesse, the abundance, of your presence; and you will give them to drink of the overwhelming bountifulness of your good cheer; for you are the very source of life, and in your light they shall see the light. The mountains shall exude fragrance and the hills flow with milk; and through all the rivers of Judah – that is to say, through the hearts of the faithful confessing Christ – shall waters gush to life eternal; yet of the same fragrance, of the same milk, of the same waters the one spring shall lead forth through the mountains and the hills, and through all the rivers from the Lord’s house. So Scripture says. The house is rightly understood to be Christ’s body: for that in itself is the house which wisdom has built for itself, or for herself. And so we read that: the spring shall lead forth from the Lord’s house, and shall water a bed thick with thorns: the source of all life and the torrent of joy welling up and leading forth from the Lord’s house shall indeed swell a river, a torrent running over thorns: that really means, the realm of God’s chosen ones. There shall be what before there was not, from East to West amongst the thorns of tribulation and sin; what is now a torrent of delights, abounding with the plenty of eternal good cheer.

Of this, we read in the Apocalypse: And he showed me a river of running water, clear as crystal, flowing from the seat of God and the Lamb, amidst a city plain. And from both sides of the river the tree of life, bearing twelve fruits, each month yielding its own. We should note that this is the spring, the river, of the Holy Spirit, who says, speaking through the Prophet: Behold, I flow down and run through them like a river of peace and tranquillity, like a gushing torrent, for the glory of the people. This river of peace, I say, this torrent of glory, this river of rejoicing, this torrent of pleasure, this abundance of God’s house – this is the Holy Spirit. For he is the love of bride and groom, whereby what was a mass of thorns is irrigated, enlivened, healed, and refreshed, to become a torrent of delights. That is our human condition: mortal and wretched as it was, now become immortal and blessed.

Abbot Rupert of Deutz, Comm. In Joelem (PL 168:254-255); Word in Season VIII.

Friday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE ORTHODOX FAITH BY ST JOHN OF DAMASCUS

The bread and wine are not a figure of the body and blood of Christ – God forbid! – But the actual deified body of the Lord, because the Lord himself said: This is my body; not ‘a figure of my body’ but my body, and not ‘a figure of my blood’ but my blood. Even before this he had said to the Jews: except you eat of the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. For my flesh is food indeed; and my blood is drink indeed. And again: He that eats me, shall live.

Therefore, in all fear and with a pure conscience and undoubting faith let us approach, and it will be to us just as we believe and do not doubt. And let us honour it with all purity of body and soul, for it is twofold. Let us approach it with burning desire, and with our hands folded in the form of a cross let us receive the body of the Crucified.

It was with bread and wine that Melchisedech, the priest of the most high God, received from Abraham, when he was returning from the slaughter of the foreign tribes. That altar prefigured this mystical altar, even as that priest was a type and figure of the true Archpriest who is Christ. For you, he says, are a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech. This bread was prefigured by the loaves of proposition. This is quite plainly the pure and unbloody sacrifice which the Lord, through the mouth of the Prophet, said was to be offered to him from the rising of the sun even to its going down.

It is Christ’s body and blood entering into the composition of our soul and body without being consumed, without being corrupted, - but into our substance for our sustenance, a bulwark against every sort of harm and a purifier from all uncleanliness.

It is called participation because through it we participate in the divinity of Jesus. It is also called communion, and truly is so, because of our having communion through it with Christ and partaking both of his flesh and his divinity, and because through it we have communion with and are united to one another. For, since we partake of one bread, we all become one body of Christ and one blood and members of one another and are accounted of the same body with Christ.

St John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith, 4.13; FoC 37 (1958) tr. Chase.

Saturday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CITY OF GOD BY ST AUGUSTINE

Look, I am going to send my messenger, and he will survey the road in front of me; and the Lord you are looking for will suddenly come into his temple, and the angel of the covenant whom you wish for. See, he is coming, says the Lord Almighty; and who will withstand the day of his coming in? And who will stand up to face his gaze?

In this passage the Prophet Malachi predicts both the first and the second coming of Christ: the first, obviously, when he says, He will suddenly come into his temple, that is, into his physical body, to which he referred in the Gospel when he said, Destroy this temple, and I shall raise it up again in three days; and the second in saying, See, he is coming, says the Lord Almighty; and who will withstand the day of his coming in? And who will stand up to face his gaze? While as for the words the Lord you are looking for, and the angel of the covenant, whom you wish for, the Prophet here undoubtedly indicates that even the Jews look for and wish for Christ – the Messiah – in accordance with the Scriptures which they read. But many of them have not recognized that he whom they looked for and wished for has come, because they are blinded in their hearts by their previous merits.

The Prophet is emphatic in his reference to a ‘covenant’. He says above, My covenant was with him, and again, in this passage, he calls Christ the angel of the covenant. Now we must undoubtedly take this to be the new covenant, in which eternal blessings are promised, not the old covenant which offered merely temporal rewards. Now the majority of mankind put a high value on such goods, and in their weakness they serve the true God for the sake of such temporal recompense; and so they are upset when they see the irreligious enjoying them in abundance. It is for this reason that the Prophet is concerned to distinguish the eternal blessedness of the new covenant, which will be bestowed only on the good, from the worldly felicity of the old, which is often granted to the wicked also; and with that aim in view he says:

You have spoken harsh words about me, says the Lord. You ask: ‘What have we said in your disparagement?’ You have said: ‘Anyone who serves God is wasting his time. What good have we got from observing his instructions, and from walking as suppliants before the face of Almighty God? And now we call the aliens happy, and all the evil-doers are restored; they have opposed God, and yet they have been preserved.’ Such were the reproaches uttered by those who feared the Lord, each one to his neighbour. And the Lord noticed it and listened; and he wrote a book of remembrance in his presence for those who fear the Lord and reverence his name.

That ‘book of remembrance’ means the New Testament.

St Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 18.35; tr. Bettenson (1972).

Season of the Year | Week 19

Sunday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 43 BY ST AMBROSE OF MILAN

See for yourselves the differences there are between the gospel narrative and what we read about Jonah; he lying asleep in the interior of the ship, in which he prefigured a type of the Lord in his passion. For just as Jonah was plunged into a deep sleep within the ship, without a thought of being woken up, so did our Lord Jesus Christ, who in the mystery of his death provided the antitype of that Old Testament figure, sleep soundly during his lifetime, as the gospel tells us, in a boat. And just as Jonah passed three days and nights in the belly of a whale, so did the Son of Man spend three days in the heart of the earth after his death. But after he had raised himself from the dead and roused his body from its sleep for the salvation of all, he visited his disciples.

Christ, then, is the true Jonah, who gave his life for our redemption. For this reason he was taken up on deck and cast overboard into the sea in order to be swallowed up by the whale. Job had this to say about the whale: He holds in captivity a huge sea monster. And what kind of beast is this meant to be? You will know when you read that our Lord Jesus Christ took captivity captive. Once our adversary and bitter enemy had been subdued, we, who had been under his dominion, began to enjoy our liberty, thanks to Christ.

The prayer itself of holy Jonah throws some light upon the mystery of the Lord’s passion, for he said, I have cried out to the Lord in my affliction, and my voice has reached him from the depths of Sheol – not, you will notice, from the depths of the whale’s belly. For it was into Hades that the Lord went down, not in any whale, so that he might loose those who were detained there from their everlasting bonds.

Now, who was it that offered to the Lord God his sacrifice with praise and thanksgiving if not our great High Priest himself, who made his vows and paid them on behalf of all of us? For he alone could make his sacrifice effective. Just as Jonah, by being cast into the sea, was able to allay its fury, so did our Lord Jesus Christ, by coming into the world, win it for himself, and through his blood he established it everywhere – in heaven and on earth. By his coming he redeemed all men and women, and by his deeds he brought them all to love and worship God; he raised the dead and healed the sick, implanting in people’s souls a reverence for God. He it was who offered to the Father a sacrifice of atonement on our behalf, presenting God with an oblation capable of justifying us. He it was who slept and woke again.

St Ambrose, In Ps. 43, 83-85 (PL 14:1183-1184, 1129-1139); Word in Season VIII.

Monday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON JONAH BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

And God saw what they did, and how they abandoned their wicked ways. The Lord is quick to show mercy and will save the penitent, immediately absolving them from their former guilt; so that if men give up their sinful habits God ceases to be angry, and His attitude toward them changes to one of kindness. Because he sees that they have turned their minds toward good, he is led to be gentle, and no longer thinks of destroying them. His own words show the truth of this: Why should you die, you men of Israel? said the Lord. I do not desire any man’s death, but his repentance and life. Do not think that the Lord’s reproaches are spoken with malevolence or in hurtful anger; for our God who loves virtue is no worker of evil.

What incomparable kindness, beyond our understanding! What words of ours could suffice to praise him? What thanksgiving can we sing to celebrate his compassion and goodness? For he separates our offences from us, as the psalmist says. See how, in the case of Jonah, God shows him plunged in grief at the wrong time and for the wrong reason, just when as a holy man he ought to have been loud in praise of the Lord. If you are sad, God said to him, or rather if you are in the depths of despair because you have lost the shade of your gourd, a plant that grew up in a single night and perished in the same way, am I to care nothing about a populous city, with more than a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants not of an age to tell the difference between their right and left hands? By this he means they were still infants, and because they were innocent they above all naturally deserved mercy. For how should a babe who cannot yet tell right hand from left be involved in sin? But the Lord names even cattle as worthy of pity, and here too he shows his goodness of heart. For if a righteous man has a humane regard for his animals, and this too is considered praiseworthy, it is no wonder that the very God of all things should grant mercy and pity even to the beasts of the field.

So Christ saved all men, giving himself as a ransom for both small and great, wise and foolish, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile.

St Cyril of Alexandria, In Ionam 3.23; 4.29 (PG 71:631-638); Word in Season VIII.

Tuesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE SERMONS OF ST ANDREW OF CRETE

Let us join in the words of the gospel and say to Christ: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel. Let us wave before him like palm branches his dying words on the cross. Let us greet him, not with olive branches, but with the good deeds of mercy shown to one another. Let us strew beneath his feet like garments the desires of our hearts, that he may walk in us and dwell wholly in us, that he may reveal us whole in himself and himself in us. Let us greet Zion with the words of the Prophet: Rejoice O daughter of Zion, do not fear: Lo, your king comes to you, gentle, and riding on an ass, the foal of an ass.

He is coming, he who is present in every place and fills all things, that in you he may bring about the salvation of all men. He is coming, who came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance, that he may recall those wandering in sin. Therefore do not be afraid, God is in the midst of you, you will not be moved.

Receive in your upturned hands the God who adorned your walls and set them in his own hands. Receive him who laid your foundations in the palms of his hands. Receive him who took upon himself all our nature apart from sin to pay all our debts from his treasures. Rejoice, city of Zion, our mother, do not be afraid. Keep your feasts. Glorify for his mercy him who has come to us in you. Rejoice very greatly, daughter of Jerusalem, sing and dance. Arise, shine – we greet you with the sound of the sacred trumpet, as Isaiah said – for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

What is that light? Was it not the light which enlightens every man who comes into the world, the eternal light, I mean, the timeless light revealed in time, the light revealed in the flesh and hidden by nature, the light which shone around the shepherds and led the wise men on their way? It was the light which was in the world from the beginning, through which the world was made, and yet the world knew it not. It was the light that came to its own home and its own people received it not.

What does the glory of the Lord mean? For sure it is the cross on which Christ was glorified, Christ the brightness of the Father’s glory, as he himself said when he came to his passion. Now is the Son of man glorified, and in him God is glorified and God will glorify him at once, meaning here by ‘glory’ his being lifted up on the cross. The glory of Christ is the cross and his being lifted up, for he says: And I, when I am lifted up, will draw all men to myself.

St Andrew of Crete, Oratio 9 In Psalmos; The Divine Office III.

Wednesday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ZECHARIAH BY DIDYMUS THE BLIND

After being angry, the Lord God, almighty as he is, will heal to their advantage those fallen victim to his wrath. The Lord God, almighty as he is, will attend to his flock; of him it is said also in Micah, He shall stand and see, and shall shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, who is Saviour. Now, the only-begotten Son of God is the Lord God almighty since the Trinity is of one being, and the one who is generated is of one being with the one who generated him, the Saviour is Lord God almighty from Lord God almighty. After all, how is the one who was in the beginning with God not Lord God? And just as it was through him that all things were made, so, too, he controls and reigns over them, and so is in this respect almighty.

This person, recognized as God, therefore, came on earth to find and save the human race, the one sheep that had gone astray from the hundred rational ones; as an excellent shepherd he laid down his life for the sheep he came to save, and thus attended to his very own flock. They are the house of Judah, of whom it is said, Judah, your brothers will praise you. And since the transformation of those given this favour is swift, he will draw up those constituting his flock to be like a single handsome horse; this benefit occurred when those with a longing for his coming sent a delegation and said, Mount the horses, and your riding will be salvation.

From this house of Judah, from a flock turned into a handsome horse, he looked down and drew from it a bow, from which he discharges arrows, the words of punishment and threat. In reference to them the one who drew the bow said, I shall make my arrows drunk with blood, and again, My arrows will put paid to them. After these achievements the Lord their God will be on their side to fight for them, and so they will say in gratitude, The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our protector, and again, With God we shall exercise power, and he himself will reduce our oppressors to naught.

Having God with them, they will confidently be deployed against those on whom they wage battle and war, so that each of them says in thanksgiving, The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life: whom shall I dread? With the same boldness the singer of the third psalm also had the confidence to say, I shall not fear countless numbers of people encircling me. To those prepared for battle in this way Scripture says encouragingly, One of you will pursue thousands, and two will put to flight myriads, not only human adversaries but unseen ones as well; in their contest with them the soldiers of Christ are clad in his armour, and say, Our contest is not with flesh and blood, but with the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic forces of this present darkness, and the spiritual forces of evil.

Didymus the Blind, In Zach. 10; FoC 111 (2006) tr. Hill.

Thursday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON THE SONG OF SONGS BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

Where do you pasture your flock, O good shepherd, you who take on your shoulders the whole flock, for the whole of human nature which you take on your shoulders forms one sheep? Show me the place of green pastures and the restful waters, lead me to the grass which nourishes, call me by name, so that I who am your sheep may hear your voice. Give me by your voice eternal life. Speak to me, you whom my soul loves.

This is how I name you, for your name is above every name and cannot be uttered or comprehended by any rational nature. Your name which reveals your goodness is the love my soul has for you. How can I not love you who loved me, even though I was black, so much that you laid down your life for the sheep whose shepherd you are? Greater love than this cannot be conceived, that you should purchase my salvation with your life.

Show me then, she says, where you pasture your flock that I may find the pasture of salvation and be satisfied with heavenly food, that food which a man must eat to enter into eternal life. I shall run to you, the fountain, I shall drink the heavenly draught which you pour forth for those who thirst, pouring water out of your side like a fountain when the veins were opened with the spear. If any man tastes of this he becomes a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

If you feed me with these things you will make me lie down at noon, when, sleeping in peace, I shall rest in light that knows no shade. For everywhere at noon there is no shade when the sun shines over the peak upon which you make to lie down those whom you pasture, when you take your children with you into bed. None is thought worthy of this noonday rest unless he has become the son of light and of the day. He who has placed himself at an equal distance from the shadows of the dawn and of nightfall, that is from the beginning and the conclusion of evil, that man is made to lie down to rest at midday by the sun of righteousness.

Show me then, she says, how I must sleep and what is the way to the noontide rest, that I may not lose your good and guiding hand and be brought by ignorance of truth to join the flock of sheep who are strangers to your flock.

This she said when she was anxious about the beauty which she had been given by God, when she wished to learn how her loveliness might remain for ever.

St Gregory of Nyssa, In Cant., 2; The Divine Office III.

Friday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE SERMONS OF BY ST AUGUSTINE

While our Lord Jesus Christ can be seen, as far as his divinity is concerned, by the eyes of the heart that are pure, perfect and full of God, he was, nonetheless, also seen in the body, according to what is written, After this she appeared on earth and spent time among men. So how do I know in what sense it said, All flesh shall see the salvation of God? That it will see Christ has been said, nobody should have any doubts about that.

But whether the Lord Christ in the body, or as he was in the beginning, the Word: and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, that’s what we are enquiring about. Don’t just press one piece of evidence on me; I’m quite ready to admit, All flesh shall see the salvation of God. They say this means, ‘All flesh shall see the Christ of God.’ But Christ was also seen in the flesh; that indeed the mortal flesh, if that spiritual transfiguration is still to be called flesh; because he did say himself after the resurrection, to those who could see and touch him, Feel and see that a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you can see that I have. He will be seen like that too; not only has been seen but also will be.

And perhaps it is then that the words all flesh will be more perfectly fulfilled. Now, I mean to say, flesh has seen him, but not all flesh. Then however, at the judgement, as he comes with his angels to judge the living and the dead, when all who are in the tombs hear his voice and come forth, some to the resurrection of life, others to the resurrection of the judgement, it is not only the just, but also the wicked who shall see him. Then both those on the right and these on the left will see that form which he was pleased to take on for us. Even those who killed him will look on the one whom they have pierced. So all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Body will be seen by body; because he will come to judge in his real body.

The just Simeon saw him with his heart, because he recognized the infant; and he saw him with his eyes, because he took the infant in his arms. Seeing him in both ways, recognising the Son of God, and holding the one begotten of the virgin, he said, Now, Lord, you are letting your servant go in peace, since my eyes have seen your salvation. Notice what he said. You see, he was being kept until he should see with his eyes what he already perceived with faith. How do you know that isn’t the way in which all flesh is going to see the salvation of God?

When he was carried up to heaven before the very eyes of his disciples, and they were watching him, they heard the angels say, Men of Galilee, why are you standing, gazing up into heaven? This Jesus who has been taken from you, will come in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven. He will come, visible, to judgement, because he departed, visible, into heaven. If he departed visible and comes invisible, how will he come in the same way? But if he comes in the same way, he will come visible; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

St Augustine, Sermon 277.16-17; WSA (1994) tr. Hill.

Saturday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ZECHARIAH BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half to the eastern sea and half to the western, in summer as in winter. And the Lord will be king over the whole earth.

The Prophet again tells us symbolically that the most abundant outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the faithful will be assigned to that time above all at which they are restored to holy and everlasting life, I mean, life as in the world to come. For now we are enriched by the first fruits of the Holy Spirit as by way of a pledge through faith in Christ. But after the resurrection of the dead, when sin has been altogether destroyed, we shall possess the divine Spirit within us no longer in the likeness and measure of a pledge but richly and abundantly, and then our delight in the gifts we receive through Christ will be complete.

So it is indeed the Spirit that the Prophet calls living water, when he tells us it will flow out even from the Jerusalem above. For since holy Scripture has said that the God of the universe dwells in heaven, though he is everywhere and fills the universe, it is in that way then that the Prophet says that the life-giving Spirit will flow even from heaven. But the divine Spirit is often compared to water in holy Scripture, as the giver of the Spirit, that is, the Son, will himself confirm, saying: Those who believe in me, as Scripture has said: streams of living water will flow from their hearts. And the holy evangelist goes on to interpret these words and make them clear, telling us: He said this about the Spirit, whom those who believe in him were going to receive. For since the Spirit is life-giving it is quite rightly compared in this way to water, which is life-giving to our bodies.

But to indicate how richly it is given to those considered worthy of holy life to share in the gift of the Holy Spirit and be filled as with life-giving water, the Prophet tells us: of the water expected to flow from Jerusalem at the appointed time, half will flow to the eastern sea and half to the western. But what exactly does this mean? Holy Scripture often likens the many nations of humanity and their countless multitudes to seas and waters. And through one of the holy Prophets we are told somewhere: For the whole earth is full of knowledge of the Lord, as much water will cover the seas. Then it is the fact that God will distribute the grace of the Spirit in equal measure to believers of both Jewish and Gentile origin that the Prophet indicates when he tells us about the life-giving water. And we are not saying by any means that the Holy Spirit is divided, and will be imperfect in both because of the word ‘half’. Far from it. Instead we shall believe that the Prophet wishes to imply by this word that the distribution will be assigned with equal grace to both. For the entire world will be full of the gifts that come through Christ, but the gift will dwell wholly in those who have received it. Then indeed, the Lord will be king over the whole earth.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Comm. In Zachariam (PG 72:252-256); Word in Season VIII.

Season of the Year | Week 20

Sunday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE FOUR CENTURIES ON LOVE BY ST MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR

Love is a good disposition of the soul, according to which one prefers no creature to the knowledge of God. It is impossible to attain a lasting possession of this love if one has any attachment to earthly things.

He who loves God prefers knowledge of him to all things made by him; and by desire ceaselessly devotes himself to it.

If all things have been made by God and for God, he is nobler than all the things made by him; he who deserts God, the incomparably nobler, and devotes himself to inferior things shows that he prefers before God the things made by him.

He that loves me, says the Lord, will keep my commandments; and this is my commandment that you love one another. He therefore who does not love his neighbour does not keep the commandment. Nor is he that does not keep the commandment able to love the Lord.

Happy the man who is able to love all men equally.

He that loves God most certainly also loves his neighbour. Such a man cannot keep money, but, God-like, distributes it, giving to each one in need.

He that in imitation of God does almsdeeds knows no difference between evil and good, just and unjust, in regard to the needs of the body, but distributes equally to all according to their need, even though for his good intention he prefers the virtuous to the bad.

Not only by the distribution of money is a charitable intention made manifest; no, far rather by the distribution of the word of God and physical service of others.

He that genuinely renounces worldly affairs and unfeignedly serves his neighbour out of love, quickly is freed from every passion and is made partaker of divine love and knowledge.

He that has made divine love his possession has no labour in following after the Lord his God, as Jeremiah says; rather, he bears nobly every hardship, every rebuke and insult, thinking no evil at all of anyone.

Do not say – so Jeremiah – that you are the Lord’s temple. Nor say: Mere faith in our lord Jesus Christ can save me. For this is ineffective unless you also possess love for him through good works. As to mere believing: the devils also believe and tremble. The work of love is the intentional doing of good to one’s neighbour and long-suffering and patience; also the use of things in due measure.

St Maximus the Confessor, Centuries on Love 1.1, 4-5;16-17;23-24;26-28;39-40; The Divine Office I.

Monday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON ECCLESIASTES BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

Solomon condemns pleasures as futile. For he says, I said in my heart, ‘Come hither, I will test you in pleasure and also in good, and this too is vanity. For he did not give himself to this kind of experience straight away or slide into partaking of pleasures without having tasted the austere and more devout life. Rather, after training himself in austerity and achieving in his character the severity and determination through which the lessons of wisdom come most readily, he then descends to things considered agreeable to the senses. He does this not because he is drawn down to them by passion but in order to investigate whether sensual experience makes any contribution to our knowledge of the Good.

That is why he makes his own what he had originally regarded as alien, laughter. He calls laughter dizziness, which is equivalent in meaning to ‘frenzy’ or ‘madness’: for what else would anyone properly call laughter? It is neither speech nor activity directed to any end but an unseemly loss of bodily control.

But I, he says, sought the true Good, which is equally good at any age and every time of life, and which never reaches fullness. Appetite for it and enjoying it are exactly matched, and longing flourishes together with enjoyment and is not limited by the attainment of what is desired. The more it delights in the Good, the more desire flames up with delight: the delight matches the desire, and at each stage of life it is always a delight to those who partake of it.

This, as I understand it, is the true Good, the thing Solomon sought to see, it is none other than the work of faith. This is the good work, which I pray may be done in us too, in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Solomon therefore teaches what human wisdom is, which you also calls counsel. But the real wisdom and counsel, on my reckoning, is none other than the Wisdom that is conceived of as before the universe. It is that wisdom by which God made all things, as the Prophet says, by wisdom you made all things and Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, by which all things came to be and were set in order.

St Gregory of Nyssa, In Eccles. 2, 5; ACC (2005) tr. Hall.

Tuesday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON ECCLESIASTES OF ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

Ecclesiastes says: There is a time to be born and a time to die. Right from the beginning he fittingly compressed this necessary etymological relation, bringing together death and procreation. For death necessarily follows upon birth and every birth ends in destruction.

There is a time, he says, to be born and a time to die. May we also receive the grace to be born at the right time and die at the opportune moment. For no one could assert that Ecclesiastes is here presenting this procreation as involuntary and death as spontaneous, as if such were the ordinary process of virtue. Neither the act of giving birth takes place by the will of the woman, nor is death subject to the free choice of those who must die. What does not depend on us cannot be reckoned as virtue or vice by anyone. Hence, it is necessary to inquire about what is the birth that happens at a right time and what is the death that comes at an opportune moment.

I believe that a birth is right and not out of its time when – as Isaiah says – someone has conceived out of the fear of God and through the travails of the soul in birth generates his own salvation. For we are in a certain sense our own parents, when through the good disposition of our soul and complete freedom of our will we form and generate and bring ourselves to the light.

We do this by the fact that we bring God into ourselves, having become children of God, children of virtue, and children of the Most High. On the other hand, we bring ourselves into the world out of due time and form ourselves in an imperfect and immature manner when there has not been formed in us the image of Christ, to use the words of the Apostle. For it is necessary that the man of God be without reproach and perfect.

If the manner in which we are born at the right time is evident, equally clear to all is the way we die at the opportune moment and the way every moment was in the eyes of Saint Paul opportune for a good death. For he cries out in his writing, pronouncing in a certain way an oath when he says: For your sake we are being slain all the day long. And we bear within our very selves the sentence of death.

Furthermore, the manner in which Paul dies each day is not obscure; he never lives in sin; he always mortifies the members of the flesh and ever bears within him the mortification of the body of Christ, for he is always crucified with Christ and never lives for himself but ever has Christ living in him. This in my opinion was the favourable death which was leading to true life.

In fact, he says: I will put to death and give life; in order that he may persuade others that it is really a gift of God to be dead to sin and to be alive in the Spirit. The divine word – precisely because he has put to death – promises to give life.

St Gregory of Nyssa, In Eccl. 6 (PG 44:701-703); Word in Season VIII.

Wednesday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ECCLESIASTES BY ST JEROME

Any man to whom God gives riches and property, and grants power to partake of them, so that he receives his lot and finds joy in the fruits of his toil, has a gift from God. For he will hardly dwell on the shortness of his life, because God lets him busy himself with the joy of his heart. In comparison with the man who feeds himself on a diet of dark preoccupations and with notable tedium for life brings with him wherever he goes things which will lead to ruin, Ecclesiastes affirms that that man is better who uses the things before him. For the use of the latter will impart a little delight; whereas there is only great anguish in the concern for the former. And he lists the reasons for which it is a gift of God to be able to enjoy riches. For he will hardly dwell on the shortness of his life.

God will certainly distract him in the joy of his heart: he will not be in sadness, he will not be tormented by apprehension, distracted as he is by present joy and pleasure. But according to the Apostle it is better to understand the spiritual food and drink given by God to discern the good in every work of one’s own, because it is by means of a very great labour and application that we can contemplate the true goods. And our reward is to be able to rejoice in our study and our work. That which can also be good is not completely good, however, until Christ has been manifested in our life.

All man’s toil is for his mouth, yet his desire is not fulfilled. For what advantage has a wise man over the fool, or what advantage has the poor man in knowing how to conduct himself in life? Everything that men produce by working in this world is consumed by the mouth and, after being chewed by the teeth, is consigned to the stomach to be digested. And after giving delight to the throat for a while, it appears to give greater pleasure to the extent that it is held in the jaws.

And after all this, the soul of the person who eats is not satisfied: either because he desires once again what he has eaten, and without food neither the wise man nor the fool can live, and the poor man does not seek anything else but how he can feed his little stomach so that he may not die of starvation; or because the soul receives nothing useful from the restoration of the body, since food is common both to the wise man and to the fool, and the poor man goes wherever he sees resources.

It is better instead to take this as the thought of Ecclesiastes, namely, that the person who is learned in the heavenly Scriptures does every work for his mouth, yet his desire is not fulfilled insofar as he continuously seeks to learn. And in this the wise man has an advantage over the fool: because when he discovers that he is poor - that poor man who is declared blest by the gospel - he hastens to acquire those goods that form part of life and to tread the straight and narrow path that leads to life, and he is poor in evil deeds, and knows where Christ, who is life, resides.

St Jerome, In Eccl. (PL 23:1057-1059); Word in Season VIII.

Thursday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ECCLESIASTES BY DIDYMUS THE BLIND

Whoever does not focus attention on perishable goods and does not think highly of them but knows that it is better to be with Christ after death thinks that the day of death is better than the day of birth. The latter is the beginning of many evils; the former, however, the end and termination of evil.

Where there is mourning, there is no moral superficiality. Happiness and laughter are avoided; the calamity prohibits it. Sometimes we refrain from appearing happy out of regard for those who mourn and for those who experience harm. In the house of feasting, however, the opposite happens: Dances and songs bring reproof, since they indicate a disorderly life. The ‘house’, however, signifies a condition or an attitude, not a location. The one who goes to the house of mourning knows that everyone dies in the end. Once he knows that he has to die, he will not think about and dedicate his effort to owning something if it is a possession that is lost in death such as wealth, reputation and honour.

One can understand ‘the living’ in the following way: one who lives according to God’s will. Those people are Abraham and his descendants. God has created human beings straightforward, that is, morally perfect without anything crooked or oblique. But they themselves produce many thoughts. Evil, thus, is manifold. There is only one single human form that makes a person like God, but there are many into which he can transform himself. If he is cunning, he has the face of a fox; if he shows a poisonous, dangerous face, he has the face of a snake; if he looks wild, he has the face of a lion; if his face is ungovernable, flattering and desiring pleasures, he has the face of a dog. Generally out of one human being and one form emerge a whole plurality of characters and forms. Thus it is the goal to get rid of all forms – even if some people do not share this opinion – in order to show that he has the face that God created.

God knows the reasons for everything that came into being, and he knows why they are hidden. In no way do you have sufficient knowledge of God’s creations. If you take offence at them, this is because you are not reasonable. Watch God’s creatures! What for others is a reason for offence will be for you knowledge of the Creator and of the created.

Didymus the Blind, In Eccl. 197.14 – 198.22, 209.26, 231.13; ACC (2005) tr. Wright.

Friday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ECCLESIASTES BY ST GREGORY OF AGRIGENTO

Go, eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart, because it is now that God favours your works.

If we want to explain this sentence in an obvious and ordinary way, we rightly assert that it appears as a just exhortation by which the Preacher admonishes us to embrace a simple rule of life dedicated to sincere faith in God and joyfully eat bread and drink wine in peace of mind; not to slip into evil conversations, nor wander into roundabout paths; but rather to dwell always on good things and, insofar as we can, benevolently and kindly come to the aid of the poor and needy. We must abandon ourselves precisely to those sentiments and actions in which God himself takes delight.

However, the anagogical explanation brings us to a higher knowledge and teaches us to consider the celestial and mystical bread which has come down from heaven and brought life to the world; and with a right heart to drink the spiritual wine, namely, that which issued from the side of the true vine immediately at the moment of his saving passion. Concerning these, the gospel of our salvation says: Taking bread and giving thanks, Jesus said to his disciples and Apostles: Take this and eat it: this is my body, which is sacrificed for you in remission of sins. Similarly, he took the cup and said: All of you must drink from it, for this is my blood, the blood of the covenant, to be poured out on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins. Hence, those who eat this bread and drink this mystical wine really rejoice and exult and can exclaim in a loud voice: You put gladness into my heart.

Furthermore, I believe that even in the Book of Proverbs the Wisdom of God subsisting in himself, namely, Christ our Saviour, referred to this bread and wine when he said: Come, eat of my food, and drink of the wine I have mixed, indicating the mystical participation in the Word. Indeed, those to whom these words are to be applied, because of their merits, at all times present their vestments as works of light no less resplendent than the light itself, as the Lord says in the gospels: Your light must shine before all so that they may see goodness in your acts and give praise to your heavenly Father. In this way, oil may perpetually be poured out over their heads, that is, the Spirit of truth, who protects and preserves them from any sinful offence.

St Gregory of Agrigento, In Eccles. VIII, 6 (PG 98:1071-1074); Word in Season VIII.

Saturday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ECCLESIASTES BY ST GREGORY AGRIGENTO

Light, says the Preacher, is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to behold the sun. For if the light were taken away the world would be unadorned and life would be lifeless. Which is why Moses, who saw God, said, And God saw the light and said it was good. Here it is fitting for us to think of that great, true, eternal light that enlightens every man coming into this world, namely Christ our Saviour, the Redeemer of the world, who was made man and came to the last extremity of the human condition. Of him the Prophet David says, Sing to God, sing praises to his name; lift up a song to him who rides upon the clouds; his name is the Lord, exult before him.

He, too, called the light sweet and foretold that it would be good to see with the eyes the sun of glory, he who in the time of his divine incarnation said, I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. And again, This is judgement, that the light has come into the world. In this way, by means of the light of the sun which we see with our bodily eyes, he foretold the spiritual Sun of justice. That was indeed most sweet for those who were found worthy to be taught by him and to see him with their own eyes as any man, living and dealing with men, even though he was not just any man. He was indeed the true God and hence brought it about that the blind saw, the lame walked, the deaf heard, he cleansed those afflicted with leprosy, and by a single command called the dead back to life.

But now it is most sweet to gaze on him with the eyes of the spirit and to contemplate and ponder over his divine beauty that it is not possible for man to see. Then, by means of this communion and mutual sharing, to be enlightened and adorned; to be filled with the sweetness of the spirit and clothed in sanctity; to attain to understanding and finally to be filled with divine exultation which lasts all the days of this present life. The wise Preacher made this point when he said, For if a man live many years, let him rejoice in them all. Clearly, for those who gaze on him, the Sun of justice is the source of all joy. Of him David the Prophet said, Let them exult before God; let them be jubilant with joy!; and again, Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous! Praise befits the upright.

St Gregory Agrigento, In Eccles. 10.2; The Divine Office I.

Season of the Year | Week 21

Sunday of the Twenty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON TITUS BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

The whole life of men in ancient times was one of action and contention; ours on the contrary is a life of indolence. They knew that they were brought into the world for this purpose, that they might labour according to the will of him will brought them into it; but we, as if we had been placed here but to eat and drink, and lead a life of pleasure, we pay no regard to spiritual things. I speak not only of the Apostles, but of those that followed them. You see them accordingly traversing all places, and pursuing this as their only business, living altogether as in a foreign land, as those who had no city upon earth. Here therefore what the blessed Apostle says, This is why I left you in Crete. As if the whole world had been one house, they divided it among themselves, administering its affairs everywhere, each taking care of his several portion of it.

Appoint elders in every city, here he is speaking of Bishops, as I directed you. If any man is blameless, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of being profligate or insubordinate. Why does he bring forward such a one? To stop the mouths of those heretics, who condemned marriage, showing that it is not an unholy thing in itself, but so far honourable, that a married man might ascend the holy throne; and at the same time reproving the wanton, and not permitting their admission into this high office who contracted a second marriage. For he who retains no kind regard for her who is departed, how shall he be a good president? And what accusation would he not incur? For you all know, that though it is not forbidden by the laws to enter into a second marriage, yet it is a thing leading to many problems.

There is also the danger of love of power. How then shall we subdue it? By looking up to heaven, by setting God before our eyes, by entertaining thoughts superior to earthly things. Lift up your thoughts to the theatre above. When in doing any good you consider that it ought to be displayed to men, and you seek for some spectators of the action, reflect that God beholds you, and all that desire will be extinguished. Retire from the earth, and look to that theatre that is in Heaven.

Nothing is more worthless than the glory of men. It is for this reason called vainglory. Do you see the masks worn by stage players? How beautiful and splendid they are, fashioned to the extreme height of elegance. Can you show me any such real countenance? No. What then? Did you ever fall in love with them? No. Why? Because they are empty, imitating beauty, but not being really beautiful. Thus human glory is empty, and an imitation of glory: it is not true glory. The only true beauty is that which is natural, which is within, is lasting. That which is put on externally often conceals deformity, conceals it from men till the evening. But when the theatre breaks up, and the masks are taken off, each appears what he really is

Let us then pursue truth, and not be as if we were on the stage and acting a part.

St John Chrysostom, In Titum 2.

Monday of the Twenty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE EXHORTATION TO THE GREEKS OF ST CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

We should live reasonable, honest, and devout lives in this present age, as we wait for the manifestation of the glory of our great God

The Lord has mercy on us, trains, exhorts and warns, preserves and guards us. He rewards us for our learning more than we could deserve with his promise of the kingdom of heaven, his sole return from us being our salvation. For while evil lives on the destruction of mankind, truth, like the bee, harms nothing in nature, and glories only in the salvation of men.

So you have the Lord’s promise and his love for man; it is yours to partake of that grace. And you need not imagine that my song of salvation is something new, like a new piece of furniture or a new house, for as Scripture says: He was before the morning star; and: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Our own existence dates from before the foundation of the world; because of our future destiny our being began in God himself. It is to the Word of God that we owe our creation as rational beings, and through him that we belong to eternity, because: In the beginning was the Word. So in respect of his eternal nature the Word was and is the divine beginning of all things; but because he has now taken the name of Christ, a name consecrated long ago and worthy of his kingly power, for that reason I call my song new.

This Word then, the Christ, is he to whom we owe our life from of old, and the goodness of that life, by the fact that he appeared himself to men. This Word, who alone is both God and man, in teaching us to live rightly on earth conveys us to eternal life. For in the words of that holy Apostle of the Lord: The saving grace of God has appeared to all, training us to renounce irreligion and worldly desires, and to live reasonable, honest, and devout lives in this present age, as we wait for our blessed hope, the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

This is the new song of the Word, who was in the beginning, and who has now appeared on earth, our pre-existent Saviour. The Word who was with God, and by whom all things were made, has appeared as our Teacher. The Word, who, as Creator, made us in the beginning and gave us life, taught us how to live rightly when he came as our teacher, so that later as God he might grant us immortal life.

St Clement of Alexandria, Cohortatio ad Gentes 1 (PG 8:59-63); Word in Season VIII.

Tuesday of the Twenty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON LEVITICUS BY ORIGEN

Everyone who touches the holy flesh will be sanctified. Let us suppose that now the whole of the Jews’ Temple was still standing, that offerings were being presented, sacrifices were being consumed. Imagine someone wicked, unclean and impure entered the Temple, found the meat from the sacrifice, and touched it. Will he immediately be pronounced sanctified? Certainly not. Therefore, we must return to the evangelical and apostolic exposition to understand this teaching of the Law. For unless the gospel takes the veil from the face of Moses, his face cannot be seen nor can his meaning be understood. See, therefore how, in the Church of the Apostles, the disciples stand by these things which Moses wrote and defend them because they are now fulfilled and were written according to the divine reason.

Therefore, the one and perfect sacrifice, which all these sacrifices had anticipated in type and figure, is Christ sacrificed. If anyone should touch the flesh of this sacrifice, immediately, he is sanctified. If he is unclean, he is healed. So we can say that she who was suffering from a flow of blood understood that Christ was this flesh of the sacrifice, the flesh of the most holy. And indeed, she is not bold enough to touch this holy flesh, for she had not yet been made pure and did not apprehend what is perfect, but she touched the hem of his robe with which the holy flesh was covered; she drew out the power from the flesh by the touch of faith which cleansed her from uncleanness and healed her of the injury that she was suffering. Does it not seem to you that it is better in this sense to be able to preserve the words of Moses, in which he says Everyone who touches the holy flesh will be sanctified?

For, as we have taught, all of the Gentiles who believed touched this flesh. And the holy Apostle also touched it who said, For we ourselves were once foolish, unbelievers, going astray, enslaved to various desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hating one another. But when the kindness and humanity of God our Saviour illumined us, he saved us through the bath of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit. For if anyone touches the flesh of Jesus in the way we explained above, with complete faith, and comes to Jesus just as to the Word made flesh, with all obedience, he has touched the flesh of the sacrifice and is sanctified.

Moreover, he also touches the flesh of the Word about whom the Apostle says, Solid food is for the perfect, who, by their ability to receive it, have trained the senses for distinguishing good and evil. Therefore, the one who examines the inner realities and can explain the secret mysteries of the Law also touches the Word of God. If we could teach the Church in such a way that nothing which was read remained ambiguous, nothing was left obscure, perhaps it could also be said about us that we had touched the holy flesh of the Word of God and were sanctified.

Origen, In Lev. 4: 7, 3 - 8, 3; FoC 83 (1990) tr. Barkley.

Wednesday of the Twenty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE WRITINGS OF ST AUGUSTINE

Speak that by hearing those whom you address may believe, and that belief may give them hope, and hope inspire them to love

In everything we say we should bear in mind that the purpose of our instruction is to arouse the love that comes from a pure heart, and clear conscience, and a genuine faith. This is the end to which we should relate all our words, and toward which we should also move and direct the thoughts of those for whose instruction we are speaking.

The chief reason for Christ’s coming was so that we should know how much God loves us, and knowing this be on fire with love for him who loved us first, and for our neighbour at the bidding and after the example of him who became our neighbour by loving us when we were not his neighbours, but had wandered far from him. Moreover, all inspired Scripture written before the Lord’s coming was written to foretell that coming, and all that was later -committed to writing and ratified by divine authority speaks of Christ and teaches us to love. It is clear therefore that upon these two commandments, love of God and of our neighbour, depend not only the whole of the Law and the Prophets, which was all that made up holy Scripture when the Lord spoke these words, but also all the divinely inspired books which were later written for our salvation and handed down to us.

In the Old Testament, then, the New is concealed, and in the New the Old is revealed. Insofar as the New Testament is concealed, worldly people, who interpret Scripture in a worldly way, are now as in the past subject to the fear of punishment. But insofar as the Old Testament has been revealed, spiritual people, who interpret Scripture spiritually, are set free by the gift of love; that is to say, both those of old to whose devout knocking hidden things were made known, and those of today who seek without pride, for fear that even what is manifest may be hidden from them.

And so, since nothing is more contrary to love than envy, and the mother of envy is pride, to cure our boundless conceit by a more powerful antidote, the Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, became both the proof of God’s love for us, and the example of humility among us. Great is the misery of human pride, but even greater is the mercy of divine humility.

With this love before you, then, you have something to which you may relate everything you say; so speak that by hearing those whom you address may believe, and that belief may give them hope, and hope inspire them to love.

St Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus I, 6-8 (CCL 46:124, 126-128); Word in Season VIII.

Thursday of the Twenty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

Those who have not yet received the Gospel are related in various ways to the People of God. In the first place we must recall the people to whom the Covenant and the promises were given and from whom Christ was born according to the flesh. On account of their fathers this people remains most dear to God, for God does not repent of the gifts he makes nor of the calls he issues.

But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, adore along with us the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind. Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is he who gives to all men life and breath and all things, and as Saviour wills that all men be saved.

Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do his will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with his grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel. She knows that it is given by him who enlightens all men so that they may finally have life.

But often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator. Or some there are who, living and dying in this world without God, are exposed to final despair. Wherefore to promote the glory of God and procure the salvation of all of these, and mindful of the command of the Lord, Preach the Gospel to every creature, the Church fosters the missions with care and attention.

Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 16.

Friday of the Twenty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LETTER TO THE TRALLIANS BY ST IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH

From Ignatius, whose other name is Theophorus, to the Church at Tralles in Asia; beloved of God the Father of Jesus Christ, elect and godly, endowed with peace of body and soul by the passion of Jesus Christ, who, through our rising again to him, is our hope.

In apostolic fashion, I send the Church my greeting in all the fullness of God, and wish her every happiness.

They tell me that your character is beyond all praise, and never falters in its endurance; and that this is not just a habit you have acquired, but your own natural disposition. I had that from your bishop Polybius, when the will of God and Jesus Christ brought him here to me in Smyrna. He was so full of joy with me in my bonds in Christ Jesus, that in him I had a vision of your whole congregation; and when I received from his hands the token of your goodwill under God for me, I gave glory for finding that you were as truly imitators of God as I had been assured.

Your obedience to your bishop, as though he were Jesus Christ, shows me plainly enough that yours is no worldly manner of life, but that of Jesus Christ himself, who gave his life for us that faith in his death might save you from death. At the same time, however, essential as it is that you should never act independently of the bishop – as evidently you do not - you must also be no less submissive to your clergy, and regard them as apostles of Jesus Christ our hope, in whom we shall one day be found, if our lives are lived in him. The deacons too, who serve the mysteries of Jesus Christ, must be men universally approved in every way; since they are not mere dispensers of meat and drink, but servants of the Church of God, and therefore under obligation to guard themselves against any slur or imputation as strictly as they would against fire itself.

Equally, it is for the rest of you to hold the deacons in as great respect as Jesus Christ; just as you should also look on the bishop as a type of the Father, and the clergy as the apostolic circle forming his council; for without these three orders no Church has any right to the name. I am sure these are your own feelings too, for I have had with me, and still have, an example of your affection and the person of your bishop himself, whose grave demeanour is a notable lesson in itself, and whose very gentleness is power.

And so I entreat you (not I, though, but the love of Jesus Christ) not to nourish yourselves on anything but Christian fare, and have no truck with the alien herbs of heresy. You will be safe enough so long as you do not let pride go to your head and break away from Jesus Christ and your bishop and the apostolic institutions. To be inside the sanctuary is to be clean; to be outside it, unclean. In other words, nobody’s conscience can be clean if he is acting without the authority of his bishop, clergy, and deacons.

St Ignatius of Antioch, Ep. ad Trall. 1.1-3.2; 4.1-2; 6.1; 7.1-8.1 (from The Divine Office III)

Saturday of the Twenty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 39 BY ST AUGUSTINE

The just shall see and be afraid, and hope in the Lord.

Those who already have their feet firmly fixed on the rock should be a model for the faithful: As St Paul says, become a model for the faithful. The faithful themselves are just. They take notice of those who outstrip them in goodness, they imitate and follow them. How do they follow them? The just shall see, and be afraid. They shall see, and be afraid to follow the wicked ways when they see that some better people have already chosen good ways. They say in their heart, in the same way as travellers are accustomed to, when they notice others walking on the road with supreme confidence while they themselves are still unsure of the road, and in two minds about which way they should go. They are not going this way without good reason, when they are going to the place where they want to go. And why are they going this way with such confidence other than because it is dangerous to go that way? Therefore the just shall see, and be afraid. They see a narrow road on the one side, they see a wide road on the other. On the one they see only a handful, on the other quite a crowd. But if you are just, do not simply count them, but weigh them up. Bring a well-balanced pair of scales, not one you have adjusted, because the name you yourself bear is ‘the just one’.

The just shall see, and be afraid – this refers to you. Do not spend your time, then, counting the hordes of men and women who take the wide roads, filling tomorrow’s circus, celebrating the city’s birthday with their shouting, while at the same time befouling the city with their evil living. Do not follow them, then! There are many of them, and who could possibly count them? But there are only a few who take the narrow road. I am telling you, produce a pair of scales, weigh them. Compare the amount of chaff it takes to balance a few grains. This is what the faithful just who are following should do.

The just shall see, and be afraid, and hope in the Lord. It is like what there is in another psalm: I have lifted up my eyes to the hills. By hills we understand the spiritual elite of the Church, significant and outstanding figures, outstanding for their solidity rather than by their pride. It is through them that all Scripture has been dispensed to us. These are the Prophets, the evangelists, the sound teachers. That is the place to which I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from which help will come to me. And in case you think that this help is human, the psalmist goes on to say: My help is from the Lord who has made heaven and earth. The just shall see, and be afraid, and hope in the Lord.

St Augustine, Ennar. In Ps. 39, 6 (CCL 38:428-429); Word in Season VIII.

Season of the Year | Week 22

Sunday of the Twenty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION EVANGELICA TESTIFICATIO OF POPE PAUL VI

From the beginning, the tradition of the Church presents us with the privileged witness of a constant seeking for God, of an undivided love for Christ alone, and of an absolute dedication to the growth of his kingdom. Without this concrete sign there would be a danger that the charity which animates the entire Church would grow cold, that the salvific paradox of the gospel would be blunted, and that the ‘salt’ of faith would lose its savour in a world undergoing secularisation.

From the first centuries, the Holy Spirit has stirred up, side by side with the heroic confession of the martyrs, the wonderful strength of disciples and virgins, of hermits and anchorites. Religious life already existed in germ, and progressively it felt the growing need of developing and of taking on different forms of community or solitary life, in order to respond to the pressing invitation of Christ: There is no one who has left house, wife, brothers, parents, or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not be given repayment many times over in this present time, and in the world to come, eternal life.

Some of you have been called to the life which is termed ‘contemplative’. An irresistible attraction draws you to the Lord. Held in God’s grasp, you abandon yourselves to his sovereign action, which draws you toward him and transforms you into him, as it prepares you for that eternal contemplation which is the common vocation of us all. How could you advance along this road and be faithful to the grace which animates you if you did not respond with all your being, through a dynamism whose driving force is love, to that call which directs you unswervingly toward God? Consider, therefore, every other immediate activity to which you must devote yourselves – fraternal relationships, disinterested or remunerative work, necessary recreation – as a witness rendered to the Lord of your intimate communion with him, so that he may grant you that unifying purity of intention which is so necessary for encountering him in prayer itself. In this way you will contribute to the building up of the kingdom of God by the witness of your lives and with a ‘hidden apostolic fruitfulness’.

Today more than ever, in you the world needs to see men and women who have believed in the Word of the Lord, in his resurrection and in eternal life, even to the point of dedicating their lives to witnessing to the reality of that love, which is offered to all men. Is not this grace, for the individual of today, a refreshing breeze coming from infinity itself, and foreshadowing man’s liberation in eternal and absolute joy? Open yourselves to this divine joy, live generously the demands of your vocation, renewing the affirmation of the realities of faith and in its light interpreting in a Christian way the needs of the world.

Pope Paul VI, Evangelica Testificatio 3, 8, 53 (from Word in Season VIII)

Monday of the Twenty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMONITORIUM OF ST VINCENT OF LERINS

Is there to be no development of doctrine in Christ’s Church? Certainly there should be great development. Who could be so grudging towards his fellow men and so hostile to God as to try to prevent it? But care should be taken to ensure that it really is development of the faith and not alteration. Development implies that each point of doctrine is expanded within itself, while alteration suggests that a thing has been changed from what it was into something different.

It is desirable then that development should take place, and that there should be a great and vigorous growth in the understanding, knowledge and wisdom of every individual as well as of all the people, on the part of each member as well as of the whole Church, gradually over the generations and ages. But it must be growth within the limits of its own nature, that is to say within the framework of the same dogma and of the same meaning.

Let religion, which is of the spirit, imitate the processes of the body. For, although bodies develop over the years and their individual parts evolve, they do not change into something different. It is true that there is a great gap between the prime of youth and the maturity of later years, but the people who reach these later years are the same people who once were adolescents. So, although the size and outward appearance of any individual may change, it is still the same person, and the nature remains the same.

The limbs of infants are tiny, while those of young men are large, but they are the same limbs. The man has no more parts to his body than the little child; and if there are parts that appear with age and greater maturity they are already present earlier in embryo. As a result, it can be said that nothing new is produced in old men that was not already present in an undeveloped form when they were boys.

There is no doubt, then, that this is the correct and legitimate rule for development and the best and most striking order of growth, if the passage of years sees those parts evolve in the adult, which the Creator in his wisdom had prepared in him beforehand when he was a child.

But if the human form is changed into some shape that is not of its own kind, or at least if something is added or taken away from the full compliment of its members, than the whole body must perish or become a monster or at least be weakened in some way. It is fitting, then, that Christian doctrine too should follow these laws of development, so that with the passage of years it may be strengthened, with time it may make progress and with age it may achieve greater profundity.

Long ago our ancestors sowed the seeds of the faith in the field of the Church. It would be quite incongruous and wrong if their descendants were to reap the weeds of error in place of the harvest of truth.

St Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium, 1, 23; The Divine Office III.

Tuesday of the Twenty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON THE GOSPELS BY ST GREGORY THE GREAT

Let us listen to what our Lord has to say when he sends his disciples out to preach the gospel: The harvest is great, but the labourers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. It grieves us to have to say that the labourers for this great harvest are few, because there are not enough people to preach the good news, although there are people waiting to hear it. We see around us a world full of priests, but it is very rare to find a labourer in God’s harvest, because we are not doing the work demanded by our priesthood, although we accepted this office.

Consider carefully, my dear brethren, what our Lord says: Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. You should pray for us to be given the strength to do the work that you deserve, that we should not be slow to exhort. If we do this, then we shall not find that we have accepted the office of preachers only to stand condemned in the sight of the just judge by our own reluctance to speak. For preachers are often prevented from speaking because of their own wickedness; on the other hand it is also often the fault of those in their care that leaders are deprived of the opportunity to preach. It is not easy, then, to judge whose fault it is that the preacher is reduced to silence. But we do know for certain that the silence of the preacher, while sometimes damaging to himself, is always damaging to those in his care.

There is another thing, my dear brethren, that causes me great grief and it concerns the sort of life led by some pastors. But, for fear that what I have to say should seem to give offence to anybody, I accuse myself at the same time. Compelled as I am by the necessity of this barbaric age, it is with great reluctance that I find myself in this position. The fact is that we have allowed ourselves to become involved in external affairs, and the contrast between the honour we have received and the way in which we carry out the duties of our office is very great. We give up the ministry of preaching, and, to our discredit, as I see it, we are called bishops but enjoy this honour in name only, and not in practice. For the people entrusted to our care are abandoning God and we remain silent. They have fallen into wicked ways and we do not utter a word of reproach.

But we shall never be in a position to correct the lives of others as long as we neglect our own. We are wrapped up in the cares of this world, and the more we seem to busy ourselves with external affairs the more spiritually insensitive we become. Holy Church, then, expresses it well when she says of her weak members: They have placed me on guard in the vineyards and I have not guarded my own vineyard. We have been put in charge of the vineyards and we are not even looking after our own, because we are neglecting our own proper ministry, as long as we remain wrapped up in external affairs.

St Gregory the Great, Hom. in Ev. 17, 3, 14; The Divine Office III.

Wednesday of the Twenty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS BY ST CLEMENT OF ROME

All these things are plain to us who have scanned the depths of Sacred Scripture. It is clear that there ought to be a strict order and method in our performance of the acts prescribed by the Master for certain times and seasons. Now, it was his command that the offering of gifts and liturgies should not be haphazard or irregular, but should take place at fixed times and hours. Moreover, in the exercise of his supreme will he has himself declared in what place and by what persons he desires this to be done, if it is all to be devoutly performed in accordance with his wishes. Consequently, those who present their offerings at such appointed times are accepted and blessed, since the care with which they observe the Master’s laws clears them of all offence. The High Priest, for example, has his own proper liturgies assigned to him, the priesthood has its own place, there are particular ministries laid down for the Levites, and the layman is bound by regulations affecting the laity.

In the same way, my brothers, when we offer our own Eucharist to God, each one of us should keep to his own degree. His conscience must be clear, he must not infringe the rules prescribed for his ministering, and he is to bear himself with reverence. The continual daily sacrifices, peace-offerings, sin-offerings and trespass-offerings are by no means offered in every place, brothers, but at the altar in front of the Temple; and then only after a careful scrutiny of the offering by the High Priest and the other ministers aforesaid. Anything done otherwise than in conformity with God’s will is punishable with death. Take note from this, my brothers, that since we ourselves have been given so much fuller knowledge, the peril that we incur is correspondingly graver.

Now, the Gospel was given to the Apostles for us by the Lord Jesus Christ; and Jesus the Christ was sent from God. That is to say, Christ received his commission from God, and the Apostles theirs from Christ. The order of these two events was in accordance with the will of God. So thereafter, when the Apostles had been given their instructions, and all their doubts had been set at rest by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, they set out in the full assurance of the Holy Spirit to proclaim the coming of God’s kingdom. And as they went through the territories and towns preaching, they appointed their first converts – after testing them by the Spirit – to be bishops and deacons for the believers of the future. This was in no way an innovation, for bishops and deacons had already been spoken of in Scripture long before that; there is a text that says, I will confirm their bishops in righteousness, and their deacons in faith.

St Clement of Rome, Ep. Ad Cor. 40-42; (1968) tr. Staniforth.

Thursday of the Twenty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE IMITATION OF CHRIST BY ST THOMAS À KEMPIS

To many this seems a hard saying: ‘Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus.’ But to hear these last words of all will be much harder: Go away from me, you accursed people, into eternal fire. For those who are willing to hear the message of the cross, and to follow it now, will not be afraid of hearing their eternal damnation at the end. This sign of the cross will be in heaven when the Lord comes to judge. Then all the servants of the cross, who modelled their lives on that of the crucified Lord, will approach Christ the judge with great confidence.

So why are you afraid to take up the cross, which gains you entry to the kingdom? In the cross is salvation, in the cross life, in the cross protection from our enemies: in the cross is an instilling of celestial sweetness, in the cross strength of mind, in the cross the joy of the spirit: in the cross is supreme virtue, in the cross perfect sanctity. There is no salvation for the soul nor hope of eternal life except in the cross. So take up the cross and follow Jesus to go towards eternal life. If you die on the cross together with him, you will also live together with him, and if you share his suffering you will also share his glory.

So you see that everything rests on the cross, and there is no other way to life and true spiritual peace except the way of the holy cross and daily mortification. Go wherever you like, look for whatever you want, you will find no higher way above or safer below, except the way of the holy cross. You may arrange and order all things according to your wish and what seems right to you, but whether you want to or not you will find there is always something you have to suffer, and so you will always find the cross. For you will either have physical pain, or spiritual torment in your soul.

Sometimes God will abandon you, sometimes you will be troubled by your neighbour, and what is worse you will often be weighed down by your own sorrows. Yet no remedy or consolation be able to free or help you; on the contrary you will have to bear with your situation as long as God wishes it. For God wants you to learn to suffer torment without consolation, and subject yourself totally to him and become more humble through torment. No one feels Christ’s passion so profoundly as one to whose lot falls to suffer something similar. Therefore the cross is always ready, and waits for you everywhere. Wherever you run you cannot escape it, because wherever you go you take yourself with you, and will always find yourself. Run away above or below, outside or inside, and at every point you will find the cross, and everywhere you must be patient if you want to have spiritual peace and be worthy of an everlasting crown. For it is through many torments that we have to enter the kingdom of God. Amen.

Thomas à Kempis, De imitatione Christi, II, 12; Word in Season VIII.

Friday of the Twenty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON DIVINE REVELATION OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and presented in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles, holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which he wanted.

Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation. Therefore, all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind.

However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.

To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to ‘literary forms’. For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another.

But since Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the same spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out. The living Tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between elements of the faith. It is the task of exegetes to work according to these rules toward a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture, so that through preparatory study the judgment of the Church may mature. For all of what has been said about the way of interpreting Scripture is subject finally to the judgment of the Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the Word of God.

Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum 11-12 (abridged).

Saturday of the Twenty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LETTERS OF ST BASIL THE GREAT

May God be blessed, for in every generation he singles out those who are acceptable to him, and makes his chosen instruments known so that he can use them in the service of the saints. So now he has caught you in the inescapable nets of his grace, even though you were fleeing, as you admit, not from me but from the vocation you suspected would come through me. And he is bringing you to central Pisidia, so that you may capture men alive for the Lord, drawing from the depths into the light people whom the devil has trapped into doing his will.

Since all who have put their hope in Christ form a single people, and all who belong to him are one Church, even though he be invoked from different places, your homeland delightedly rejoices in the Lord’s dispensations, deeming herself not to have been impoverished by the loss of one man but rather through one man to have made a profit of the whole Church. May the Lord grant me to see if I am present, and hear about if absent, the progress you make in the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the Churches.

Play the man, then, be strong, and lead the people whom the Most High has entrusted to your guiding hand. Take care that your ship does not sink in the briny and bitter waves of error; like a skilful pilot assuming command you must ride out every storm raised by the winds of heresy, and wait for the calm which the Lord will create when a voice is found worthy to arouse him for the rebuking of the winds and the sea.

The weight of your burden? Do not complain of its being beyond your strength. For if you yourself were the one who is to carry this load, it would not be merely heavy: it would be quite unbearable. But if the Lord is carrying it with you to the end, then Cast your care upon the Lord, and he will take charge. Only heed my advice to watch carefully in all circumstances that you be not yourself involved in reprehensible conduct, but through the wisdom God has granted you turn evil tendencies into something useful. For Christ has sent you not to fall in with other people, but to lead those who are on the way to salvation.

St Basil the Great, Epist. 161.1-2 (PG 32:630-631); Word in Season VIII.

Season of the Year | Week 23

Sunday of the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON 2 PETER BY ST BEDE

First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter for private interpretation. This verse follows from what he had previously said, You do well to pay attention to this. For those who pay attention to the words of the Prophets certainly do well, that by means of these words they may be able to have the light of knowledge. They ought to understand this first of all, that none of the holy Prophets preached the teachings of life to the people using his own interpretation, but they handed on what they had learned from the Lord to their hearers to be put into practice by them. And they passed on the hidden heavenly mysteries which they had comprehended in secret to the people of God simply, either by speaking or by writing and not like the diviners of the gentiles who gave to the crowds they deceived what they pretended to be decisions of the divine oracle but had in fact fabricated in their own heart. Therefore, just as the Prophets wrote not their own but God’s words, so also the reader of them cannot use his own private interpretation, lest he deviate from the true meaning. The reader ought to pay careful attention to how the writer wished his words to be understood.

Never at any time was a prophecy brought forth by the will of man, but the holy men of God spoke when inspired by the Holy Spirit. Just as it was not in the power of those who prophesied always to have the Holy Spirit, always to be able to predict the future, because the Spirit filled their hearts when he willed; so also it was not within their power to teach whatever they wished, but they spoke only those things which they had learned when enlightened by the Spirit. These things are said for this reason, that no one may dare to expound the Scriptures according to his own wishes.

A certain person has interpreted these words of blessed Peter absurdly, saying that just as a reed-pipe receives the breadth of the human mouth to make a sound but nonetheless cannot itself understand the sound which it provides because by nature it is insensible, so the Prophets, inspired by the Spirit of God, might bring forward in speech those things which the same Spirit wished but they themselves could not understand them. This is according to Virgil’s words, It gives forth a sound without meaning. It is clearly evident that this is a most ridiculous error, for how could they give their hearers such wise counsels about living if they themselves did not know what they were saying? Why are the Prophets called seers? For what reason was it written, The word which Isaiah or some other Prophet saw, except that they perceived in secret with the clearest grasp of the mind the hidden mysteries of heavenly visions. They then made known these mysteries outwardly and clearly to their hearers and in whatever words they wished.

St Bede, In 2 Pet. 1:20-1:21; CS82 (1985), tr. Hurst.

Monday of the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ST JOHN BY ST AUGUSTINE

Notice that lamps can be witnesses to the day because of our weakness, since we cannot bear to look at the pure light of the day. For even we Christians are already light in comparison with unbelievers. Hence the Apostle says: Once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord, and you must live like children of the light. And elsewhere he said: Night has passed and now day is near, so we must cast off the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light. We must live properly, as in the daylight. Yet because, in comparison with that light toward which we must go, even the day in which we live is still night, listen to the Apostle Peter telling us of the words which came to the Lord Christ from the supreme power: You are my beloved Son, with whom I am pleased. We ourselves, he adds, heard those words that came from heaven, as we were with him on the holy mountain.

But because we were not there and did not hear the words that came from heaven then, Peter tells us: We also have the more certain words of the Prophets. You did not hear the words that came from heaven, but you have the more certain words of the Prophets. For the Lord Jesus Christ foresaw that there would be some wicked people who would slander his miracles, ascribing them to magic arts, and so he sent the Prophets first. For if he was a magician and used magic arts to ensure that he was worshiped even after his death, would he not have been a magician before he was born? Listen to the Prophets, you dead people, with your slanderous raging, listen to the Prophets; listen, as I read, to those who came before the Lord. We have, says the Apostle Peter, more certain prophetic words, which you will do well to pay attention to. They shine like a lamp in a dark place, until day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

So when our Lord Jesus Christ comes and, as the Apostle Paul also says, brings to light what is hidden in darkness and reveals our inward motives, so that God may give each one of us our due, then in the presence of such daylight, lamps will no longer be necessary. We shall no longer read the Prophets, nor open the Apostle's book, nor require John’s witness, nor even need the gospel. Therefore all the Scriptures will be put away, which shone for us like lanterns in the night of this world, to prevent us being left in darkness. With all these withdrawn from us, what shall we see? How will our minds be fed? What will give us that joy which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no human heart has felt? I seriously ask you to love with me, to hurry and believe with me; let us long for our celestial home, sigh for our celestial fatherland, and realise that here on earth we are pilgrims. What shall we see then? Let the gospel now speak out: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

St Augustine, Tract. In Joh. 35, 8 (CCL 36:321-322); Word in Season VIII.

Tuesday of the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE MACARIAN HOMILIES

As once God was angry with the Jews and gave Jerusalem over for a spectacle to its enemies, and as those who hated them ruled over them and there was no longer there any feast or sacrifice, so, being angry with the soul for its transgression of his command, God handed it over to its enemies, who seduced it and utterly deformed it.

Just as a house which has no master dwelling in it is dark, neglected and despised, and is filled with dirt and filth, so a soul which does not have its Lord feasting in it with his angels is filled with the darkness of sin, the shame of passions and every sort of disgrace.

Alas for the street in which no one walks, in which the voice of man is not heard; it is a lurking place for wild beasts. Alas for the soul in which the Lord does not walk and put to flight by his voice the spiritual beasts of wickedness. Alas for the house in which its master does not dwell. Alas for the land which has no farmer to till it. Alas for the ship which has been abandoned by its steersman: it is tossed about by the winds and waves of the ocean, and perishes. Alas for the soul which does not have its true steersman Christ in it: it lives in the bitter darkness of the sea and is tossed by the waves of passions. It is buffeted by the wicked spirits as by winter tempests, and finally comes to destruction.

Alas for the soul which is without Christ to cultivate it so that it will bring forth the fruits of the Spirit. When it is deserted it becomes full of thorns and thistles, and finally, its harvest is not one of fruit but of destruction by fire. Alas for the soul which has not Christ for its Lord dwelling in it, for when it is deserted and filled with the stench of passions it becomes a den of vice.

When a farmer sets out to till the ground he has to take proper tools and clothing for work in the fields; so when Christ, the heavenly king and the true husbandman, came to humanity laid waste by sin, he clothed himself in a body and carried the cross as his implement and cultivated the deserted soul. He pulled up the thorns and thistles of evil spirits and tore up the weeds of sin. With fire he burnt up all the harvest of its sins. When thus he had tilled the ground of the soul with the wooden plough of his cross, he planted in it a lovely garden of the Spirit; a garden which brings forth for God as its master the sweetest and most delightful fruits of every sort.

Macarian Homilies, 28; The Divine Office III.

Wednesday of the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON ST MATTHEW’S GOSPEL BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

So long as we continue to behave as sheep, we are victorious. Even if ten thousand wolves surround us, we conquer and are victorious. But the moment we become wolves, we are conquered, for we lose the help of the shepherd. He is the shepherd of sheep, not of wolves. If he leaves you and goes away, it is because you do not allow him to show his power.

These are his words: Do not be troubled that I send you out in the midst of wolves and tell you to be like sheep and like doves. I could have done just the opposite, and not have allowed you to suffer any hurt. I could have prevented you being the victims of wolves and made you fiercer than lions. But I chose a better way. My way makes you more glorious and proclaims my power. These were his words to Paul: My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. That is the way I made you. When he says: I send you out as sheep, he implies: Do not despair, for I know very well that in this way you will be invincible against all your enemies.

Next he wants them too to make some contribution of their own, so that everything will not seem to come from grace. He does not want it thought that their crown was not earned, and so he says: So be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves. What power, he asks, does our wisdom have in such perils? How can we have wisdom at all when we are deluged by such billows? However wise the sheep may be when in the midst of wolves, and the wolves are as numerous as they are, what more will wisdom be able to achieve? However innocent the dove may be, what advantage will its innocence be when it is beset by so many hawks? So long as you are talking about irrational beasts, of course, the answer is none, but when you are dealing with men like you, the answer is, the greatest possible advantage.

But let us see what sort of wisdom he then demands. The serpent abandons everything, even if its body has to be cut off, and does not resist much, provided only it can save its head. In the same way, he says, abandon everything except your faith, even if it means giving up your wealth, your body, your life itself. Your faith is your head and your roots. If you preserve that, you will get everything back again with greater glory. Therefore he commanded that a man should be not only simple and honest, not only wise, but he combined the two qualities to form together virtue. The man should have the wisdom of the serpent, so as not to receive mortal wounds. He should have the innocence of a dove, so as not to take vengeance on those who do him injury, nor bear a grudge against those who plot against him. Wisdom is no use by itself unless there is innocence as well.

No one should think that these commands are impossible to fulfil. More than anyone else he knows the nature of things. Violence he knows is not overcome by violence, but by forbearance.

St John Chrysostom, In Matt. 33, 1-2; The Divine Office III.

Thursday of the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE SERMON ON MORTALITY BY ST CYPRIAN

We must remember that we ought to do what God wills, not what we will, in accordance with the prayer that the Lord ordered us to use daily. Since we pray that God’s will be done, how foolish and how perverse it is not to obey immediately the command of his will when he calls us and summons us from this world. We struggle and fight, and, like obstinate slaves, we are brought before the Lord grieving and sad, and we leave this world in the chains of necessity, rather than in willing obedience. We want to be honoured with the rewards of heaven by the God to whom we come against our will. Why then do we pray and ask that the kingdom of heaven should come, if captivity on earth delights us? Why do we pray, and pray continually, that the day of that kingdom should come quickly, if our longings and desires are stronger and greater for bondage to the devil here than for reigning with Christ?

Since the world hates the Christian, why do you love that which hates you, and why do not rather follow Christ who redeemed you and loved you? In his Epistle John cries out and exhorts us not to pursue the lusts of the flesh and love the world. Do not love the world, he says, or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. And the world will pass away and the lust of it, but he who does the will of God abides for ever. Rather, my dear brothers, let us be ready for all that God’s will may bring, with an undivided heart, firm faith and rugged strength. Let us shut out any fear of death, and keep our mind on the immortality that follows death. Let us show that this is what we believe.

My dear brothers, we must consider and ponder again and again how we have renounced the world and now live here in the meantime as strangers and aliens. Let us welcome that day which allots to each man his final home, which snatches us from the world, frees us from the bonds which bind us to this age, and restores us to paradise and to God’s kingdom. What man who lives in a foreign country would not hurry to return home? We reckon paradise to be our home. A great throng awaits us there of those dear to us; parents, brothers, sons. A packed and numerous throng longs for us, of those already free from anxiety for their own salvation, who are still concerned for our salvation. There is the glorious company of the Apostles, there the fellowship of the prophets rejoicing. There is the innumerable army of martyrs, crowned for their glorious victory in their suffering and strife. There in triumphant procession are the virgins who have subdued the lusts of the flesh with the strength of chastity. My dear brothers, let us hurry forward to meet these with eager longing. Let God see these thoughts in us, that Christ may discern in us this intention of our mind and faith, Christ who will give greater rewards to those whose longing for him has been greater.

St Cyprian, On Mortality 18.24.26; The Divine Office III.

Friday of the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH IN THE MODERN WORLD OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

God's Word, through whom all things were made, was himself made flesh and dwelt on the earth of men. Thus he entered the world’s history as a perfect man, taking that history up into himself and summarizing it. He himself revealed to us that God is love and at the same time taught us that the new command of love was the basic law of human perfection and hence of the world’s transformation. Undergoing death itself for all of us sinners, he taught us by example that we too must shoulder that cross which the world and the flesh inflict upon those who search after peace and justice. Appointed Lord by his resurrection and given plenary power in heaven and on earth, Christ is now at work in the hearts of men through the energy of his Holy Spirit, arousing not only a desire for the age to come, but by that very fact animating, purifying and strengthening those noble longings too by which the human family makes its life more human and strives to render the whole earth submissive to this goal.

Now, the gifts of the Spirit are diverse; while he calls some to give clear witness to the desire for a heavenly home and to keep that desire green among the human family, he summons others to dedicate themselves to the earthly service of men and to make ready the material of the celestial realm by this ministry of theirs. Yet he frees all of them so that by putting aside love of self and bringing all earthly resources into the service of human life, they can devote themselves to that future when humanity itself will become an offering accepted by God .

The Lord left behind a pledge of this hope and strength for life’s journey in that sacrament of faith where natural elements refined by man are changed into his glorified Body and Blood, providing a meal of brotherly solidarity and a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

We do not know the time for the consummation of the earth and of humanity, nor do we know how all things will be transformed. As deformed by sin, the shape of this world will pass away; but we are taught that God is preparing a new dwelling place and a new earth where justice will abide and whose blessedness will answer and surpass all the longings for peace which spring up in the human heart. Then, with death overcome, the sons of God will be raised up in Christ, and what was sown in weakness and corruption will be invested with incorruptibility. Enduring with charity and its fruits, all that creation which God made on man’s account will be unchained from the bondage of vanity. Therefore, while we are warned that it profits a man nothing if he gain the whole world and lose himself, the expectation of a new earth must not weaken but rather stimulate our concern for cultivating this one. For here grows the body of a new human family, a body which even now is able to give some kind of foreshadowing of the new age.

Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes 38-39 (abridged).

Saturday of the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON JUDE BY ST BEDE

But I wish to remind you who once knew all things, namely, knew all the hidden mysteries of faith, and had no need to hear novelties from new teachers as if they were more holy, that Jesus saved the people from the land of Egypt and afterward destroyed those who did not believe. He is referring not to Jesus the son of Nun but to our Lord, showing first that he did not have his beginning at his birth from the holy virgin, as the heretics have wished to assert, but existed as the eternal God for the salvation of all believers, according to the mystery of his name. For in Egypt he first so saved the humble who cried out to him from their affliction that he might afterward bring low the proud who murmured against him in the desert. He stresses this so much that we may remember even now that he so saves believers through the waters of baptism, which the Red Sea foreshadowed, that he demands a humble life of us even after baptism. He demands from us a life separated from the filth of vices, as was rightly foreshadowed by the hidden way of life of the desert. If anyone actually profane this life either by departing from the faith or by acting evilly, being turned away in heart to Egypt, he will deserve not to reach the promised fatherland of the kingdom but to perish among the ungodly.

But you, dearly beloved, build yourselves on your most holy faith, pray in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God. We pray in the Holy Spirit when pierced by divine inspiration we request help from on high to receive the good things which we are unable to acquire of ourselves. Blessed Jude, therefore, advises us so to build ourselves up on the foundation of our holy faith, so as to join ourselves as living stones to the house of God which is the Church. We must never presume on our own strength but must hope in the help of divine protection, lest anyone, according to the teaching of Pelagius, declare that he can be saved on his own.

Hating even that stained garment which is fleshly. He calls our body our fleshly garment. We ought not, however, to hate our body but we ought to hate it in every way it is stained and see to it, as far as we are able, that we render it stainless, so that from being fleshly it may deserve to be made spiritual.

St Bede, In Iudam 5, 20-24; CS 82 (1985), tr. Hurst.

Season of the Year | Week 24

Sunday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A RETREAT FOR PRIESTS BY RONALD KNOX

From other incidents in the Old Testament, however crude their atmosphere, however primitive their setting, it may be possible for us to derive moral exhortation. But these intrigues of the harem, these tales of plot and counterplot in the corrupt politics of an oriental despotism –what message have they for us, what instruction can they convey? I am only choosing this story out of a dozen others I might have chosen, to illustrate the principle, familiar to Christian piety, that there is a mystical significance in the Old Testament everywhere, and that, above all, the history of the Jewish people foreshadows and typifies the glories of Our Blessed Lady.

The Old Testament is, largely, the record of barbarian times; blood flows freely in its chronicles, and there is treachery, and violence, and lust, and crafty revenge; there are dull passages, too, long lists of names, and prescriptions about ceremonial ordinances which have ceased to have any interest for us; there are interminable moral precepts, and prophecies baffling in their obscurity. But through this tangled skein runs a single golden thread; between these soiled pages lies, now and again, a pressed flower that has lost neither its colour nor its sweetness. That thread, that flower, is the mention, by type and analogue, of her whom all generations of Christendom have called blessed, the Virgin of Virgins, the Queen of Heaven, the holy Mother of God.

We value, then, this story of Mordecai and Esther because we find in it a type of Our Lady's position in the economy of grace. How often a face or a scene arrests us, only because it bears some resemblance to a face or a scene we love! So it is with these Old Testament figures; they borrow their interest from the future. Like the people of the Jews, the Church of God has its enemies and its detractors; its peace is continually threatened by the world’s hatred for its strictness of principle. And, when times of trouble come upon us, we, too, would win a royal audience; we would ask redress from our grievances from the King of kings. As the Jews could plead on their own behalf the loyal act of Mordecai, so we would plead before God, our one hope of pardon, the all-sufficient sacrifice of his Son. But who will plead it for us? It is not that we distrust his goodness; but, conscious of our need and of our own unworthiness, we would find some advocate who has a better claim on his attention than ourselves. Who has a better right to stand in God’s royal presence than Our Blessed Lady? The law which included us all under the curse of original sin was a law made for all others, but not for her. Who else dare touch the sceptre that sways a universe? We say to her, as Mordecai said to Esther, Remember the days of your low estate; and speak to the king for us, and deliver us from death.

Ronald Knox, A Retreat for Priests, 169-170, 174-175; Word in Season VIII.

Monday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE DECLARATION OF THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

Christ’s Church acknowledges that all Christian believers, as children of Abraham in faith, are included in the patriarch’s invitation, and the salvation of the Church is prefigured mystically in the exodus of the chosen people from the land of bondage. Wherefore the Church cannot forget that she received the Old Testament through the chosen people, with whom in his unspeakable mercy God made the old covenant; and that she is nourished from the root of the good olive, to which the branches of the wild olive were grafted. For the Church believes that Christ our peace has reconciled by his cross Jew with Gentile, Gentile with Jew, and made of the two olives one single tree in himself.

As sacred Scripture bears witness, Jerusalem failed to perceive the time of his visitation, and in great part the Jews did not accept the gospel: indeed, not a few of them opposed its spread. Nevertheless the Apostle tells us that because of the patriarchs the Jews still remain most dear to God, who does not repent of his gifts or of his calling. Together with the Prophets and the Apostle himself, the Church awaits the day known only to God when all people will call upon the Lord with one voice and will serve him with one common effort.

Although the Jewish authorities with their followers encompassed Christ’s death, the misdeeds perpetrated during his sacred passion cannot even so be imputed to all Jews then alive, indifferently, nor yet to modern Jewry at all. And though the Church is the new people of God, yet the Jews themselves should not be deemed as cast off or accursed by God, as if this were something which can be drawn from sacred Scripture. Let all be mindful, therefore, lest they teach anything, through their catechetics or their preaching of God’s word, which is not in harmony with evangelical truth and the spirit of Christ.

Moreover, the Church condemns all persecution, no matter of whom, being mindful of its common patrimony with the Jews. It deplores all the hatred, persecution, and demonstrative anti-semitism there has ever been at any time, from any quarter, against the Jews: and this is not said out of political motivations, but those merely of evangelical charity.

Again, the Church has always held, and still holds even now, that Christ underwent his passion and death with immeasurable love, willingly and for the sins of all men, that all might come to be saved. It is therefore for the preaching Church to declare Christ's cross to be the sign of God’s universal love and the source of all grace.

We cannot call on God the Father of all if we refuse to behave in a brotherly way towards people created in God's image. Man's attitudes to God the Father and to his brethren and fellow human beings are so conjoined that Scripture says: he who does not love does not know God.

Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate 4-5; Word in Season VIII.

Tuesday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ESTHER BY BLESSED RABANUS MAURUS

Mordecai, hearing that the death of the Jews was planned by imperial decree, put on mourning and, in bitterness of soul and cries of anguish, went to the entrance of the palace. When the leaders of the Church hear of the persecution which the rulers of this world plan to bring upon the innocent servants of Christ, they display to heaven with tears and compunction of heart their pressing needs, that is, they spread them before the divine judge – so that, by the worth and prayers of the true queen, that is holy Church, which is partly still wandering in this world, and partly already reigning with the Lord in heaven, they may be found worthy to be heard by the king of all ages.

Now, should someone ask how it can be reconciled with being the most just of kings that he should inflict trials upon the innocent, let him know that this is not out of a wish to do evil, but the consequence of some supreme purpose. For the wisdom of God which overcomes all evil, and reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other and orders all things well, does all that it wills in heaven and on earth, in the sea and in the deep. By a just decision it comes about that his faithful servants are given into the hands of their persecutors, either to expiate their sins, or reform their way of living, or even to increase their merits and double their reward. For, as the Prophet bears witness: The Lord is just in all his ways and kind in all his doings. He is near to all who call upon him. In truth, he fulfils the desire of those who fear him, and he hears their cry and saves them. For, when Satan asked it, the Lord did not give Job into his hands that he might perish but that, with his help, he might conquer this most wicked enemy, and so win for himself the palm of victory, and leave a just punishment to his enemy for his malice. The Apostle Paul was given a thorn in his flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass him, that power might be made perfect in weakness. Nor should we pass over in silence the fact that it is said that Mordecai could not enter the king’s palace wearing sackcloth, but merely came to the entrance to the palace. For no one can enter the palace of the heavenly kingdom in the corruption of this present life. But, in the meanwhile, everyone before the actual day of his death should knock at the gate of the kingdom by bodily mortification and compunction of heart, and thus at the hour of death enter the Lord’s paradise in joy.

Mordecai with the Jews prayed for Esther, the queen, and the queen herself prayed for Mordecai and the Jews. For the master ought to pour forth his prayers to God for his disciples, and the disciples for their master, that the entire body of the faithful, that is, the members of the whole body, may be preserved from harm by the kindness of heaven. Hence too, in the Acts of the Apostles, it is written that, when Peter was in prison, ceaseless prayer was made to God for him by the Church.

Bd Rabanus Maurus, Expositio in lib. Esther 7 (PL 109:654); Word in Season VIII.

Wednesday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM AGAINST TWO LETTERS OF THE PELAGIANS BY ST AUGUSTINE

How many enemies of Christ are today suddenly and secretly drawn to Christ by grace? Our Lord cries out: None can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. He did not, after all, say ‘guides’ so that we might by it somehow understand that the will goes first. Are any people drawn, if they are already willing? And yet, none come unless they are willing. They are drawn, then, in marvellous ways to will by the one who knows how to work interiorly in the hearts of men, not so that men believe unwillingly – that is impossible – but so that they become men willing to believe from men who were unwilling.

It is not by some human conjecture that we come to suspect that this is true; rather, we discover that it is true by the perfectly clear authority of the divine Scriptures. Why did Queen Esther pray, Place in my mouth a pleasing speech, and make my words glorious in the sight of the lion, and turn his heart to hatred of the one who is attacking us? Why does she say this prayer to God if God does not produce the will in the hearts of human beings? But perhaps this woman prayed in a foolish way. Let us, then, see whether she foolishly expressed her desire in prayer without obtaining results from the one who heard her prayer.

See, Esther enters the presence of the king and, because she was not entering in her proper turn, since she was driven by great need, he looked at her, as Scripture says, like a bull in the heat of his wrath. The queen was frightened, and she turned pale out of consternation and leaned upon the hand of the maid who preceded her. And God turned and transformed his wrath into gentleness. What need is there to recall the rest of the passage? In it the divine Scripture testifies that God fulfilled her request by producing in the king’s heart nothing other than the will by which he gave the command and the queen's request was carried out. In order for this to come about, God had already heard her. Before the king had heard the woman's words of petition, God changed and transformed the heart of the king by his most hidden and efficacious power from wrath to gentleness, that is, from the will to do harm to the will to grant favours. As the Apostle says: God produces in you even the will.

Did the men of God who wrote these things, or rather did the very Spirit of God under whose authorship they wrote these things, attack the free choice of human beings? Heaven forbid! If we belong among the vessels of honour because of grace, let us not be ungrateful and attribute to ourselves what we have received. For what do we have that we have not received?

St Augustine, Contra duas eps. Pelagianorum, 1.19-20 (PL 44:168-169); Word in Season VIII.

Thursday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ESTHER BY BLESSED RABANUS MAURUS

What does it mean that Esther falls at the king’s feet, and begs him to spare her people, but that holy Church humbly begs almighty God daily for the deliverance of her children, through her faith in the incarnation of the only-begotten Son of God, since by the grace of that mystery the boldness of her enemies is restrained, and the innocence of the faithful is delivered from their hands? The heavenly king extends his golden sceptre over the prostrate queen, for he powerfully bestows the mercy of his faithful love upon her. She begs that the former letters of the most wicked Haman may be exchanged for newly-written ones. For it is the preoccupation of the true queen that every pocket of error and all the destructive devices which the ancient enemy, through his servants, contrives for the annihilation of the people of God shall be thrown back and destroyed by the saving witness of the gospel. These letters, written in the king’s name, are sealed with his signet ring, for the gospel teaching which is fully proclaimed throughout the world is everywhere confirmed by the seal of the Holy Spirit. By his gift, the preachers themselves, filled with abiding strength, seem to everyone to be unanswerable, and stand as glorious victors over their enemies.

How does it come to be said that Ahasuerus is king over the whole earth and makes all the islands in the sea his tributaries? For the historical king of the Medes and Persians did not have the whole world in his gift, nor could he have made all the islands in the sea his tributaries. For even the knowledge of his name could not have reached those islands or many parts of the earth. But this belief more genuinely refers to Christ, our king and lord, whose power is in heaven and earth, in the sea and in all the depths. In the gospel he calls himself the door, for through him we gain entrance to eternal life, as the psalmist bears witness: And all kings bow down before him, all nations serve him! The kings of Tarshish and of the isles render him tribute, the kings of Arabia and Seba bring him gifts. How the true Mordacai – that is to say, the company of the holy teachers of the Church – exalts the power of this king and his authority, dignity, and sublimity is testified to the whole Christian people by the words and writings not only of the one people of Judea, but of every nation in the world. For, from the beginning, he has exalted his chosen ones by the gift of his grace, and made them renowned and honoured before all peoples.

Bd Rabanus Maurus, Expositio in lib. Esther 13.14 (PL 109:662.670); Word in Season VIII.

Friday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST FULGENTIUS OF RUSPE

I shall show you, mortal man, what is good and what it is that the Lord requires of you. But for now, use your judgement and act righteously; love mercy and be careful as you conduct your life in the Lord’s sight.

First, then, as to what it might mean, to use one’s judgement, at the blessed Prophet’s first injunction. Judgement is said to be an agreement, or decision, reached over the accusation against and defence of some person; so what is required is for the accused to be sent down when guilty, or else victoriously acquitted. So turn your thoughts to yourself, to your own state, mortal man. Look for the accusation against you yourself: then for the defence; and then, what about the judgement itself? For now, you alone are accuser, defender, and judge. Enter the secret recesses of your mind and heart, where the eyes of the Lord alone can see you. Accuse yourself there, that you may be defended of the charge. Try yourself there, that you may carry off the victory. Condemn yourself there, in your own mind, that you may merit absolution. Do not treat yourself as a special case when criticising your own conduct. Instead, take apart and analyse your misdeeds with rigour; be strict in condemning the sins you acknowledge as yours; and in condemning them as your own, do them to death as well.

Do them to death: that means, not to yield in the slightest, ever after, to sinful urges. Not being one who commits sin, you will then be one who has killed it off. And if you are a sound judge of your own sin you will go free of God’s just judgement. But that you may rejoice in a just judgement delivered on yourself, take note of St Paul’s counsel, teaching what actions of ours we need to mortify so as to arrive at the true life. For he says this: Mortify your own bodies as they walk the earth; as for fornication and all impurity, evil desires and prurience, avarice and slavery to the idols of materialism, all these call down the wrath of God on the children of disbelief. That tells us, then, what is objectionable in ourselves, what we should condemn there, what needs mortifying. Make the judgement on yourself – and you will not be judged. So condemn – and you will not be condemned. Mortify yourself – and you will not be finally mortified, with the death of the soul. Here and now be the strictest judge, a veritable butcher in cutting out defects in the flesh. Take careful thought and be abject in mortification. For if you have properly weighed your sins you have made the judgement; then by casting them off, you have killed them. To defend yourself, then, self-accusation has to come first; to secure your pardon, judgement and self-criticism; so as to conduct your cause victoriously, examination of conscience. Acknowledge your iniquity, mortify your base desires, mend your ways – and so by judging aright you shall set free your mind and heart, your very soul.

St Fulgentius of Ruspe, Sermo 10.2-3 (CCL 91A:938-939); Word in Season VIII.

Saturday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM AGAINST THOSE UNWILLING TO CONFESS THE THEOTOKOS BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

Jeremiah expressly cries out, this is our God, and no other shall be compared with him; he found in every way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob this child and to Israel his beloved; and after these things, he appeared on earth and lived among men. David the hymn-writer also sings, Mother Zion will say: and a man was born in her, and the Most High himself established her.

What else could this mean but that he exists as God and man? For David confessed the same one to be man and the Most High and the Founder. And in another psalm, we find him preserving no less the principle of the indivisibility of the union and attributing again the things, which are proper to the humanity of the very Logos of God. This is not the result of confusion of their essences, but rather of clearly perceiving the reason of the union of the essences. For he speaks in this way in the forty-fourth psalm, ‘Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the sceptre of your kingdom is a sceptre of righteousness; you have loved righteousness and hated injustice; therefore, God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your fellows.’ Do you see how he spoke of the Logos as God, confessed him to be God and King, but did not divide him, nor introduce another person in addition to him? Do you see how he spoke of the anointing? Let them then explain this saying. How was the Logos, being God, anointed except by virtue of the fact that he put on the form of the servant, which would be appropriate to the reception of anointing? But, if they say that the anointing is spoken of the person of the Logos because of his indwelling in the man, as they are deceived into saying, let them learn that indwelling is not said with reference to Christ, but with reference to the prophets and the saints, and so, the saying in the psalm greatly surpasses the terms of the indwelling. For, while God dwells in all the saints, and they are consequently sanctified and anointed, he is not himself said to be sanctified and anointed. If, then, they apply the indwelling to him in a similar manner as in the saints, their blasphemy will be obvious to everyone, and it will be clear that their teaching is entirely alien to the apostolic teaching.

St Cyril of Alexandria, Against those unwilling to confess the Theotokos 7.

Season of the Year | Week 25

Sunday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON TOBIT BY ST BEDE

The book of the holy father Tobit is clearly of saving benefit to its readers even in its superficial meaning inasmuch as it abounds in both the noblest examples and the noblest counsels for moral conduct, and anyone who knows how to interpret it historically and allegorically can see that its inner meaning excels the mere letter as much as the fruit excels the leaves. For if it is understood in the spiritual sense it is found to contain within it the greatest mysteries of Christ and the Church.

Indeed Tobit was taken captive in the days of Shalmaneser king of the Assyrians but when he was in captivity he did not forsake the way of truth. This captivity of the hands of the king of the Assyrians denotes the captivity of the human race whereby, through the king of all the perverse, that is, the devil, it was banished from the abode of its heavenly homeland and deported to its sojourn in this exile.

When Tobit became a man he took as his wife Anna from his own tribe. And this people, after they had grown up and increased in Egypt, espoused the Synagogue which had been established by Moses with legal ceremonies. By her he begot a son and gave him his own name because he learnt that Christ was to be born of his own kin as Moses had said: Your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from among your brethren; to him you shall listen; and the Lord said to David: One of the fruit of your womb I will set upon my throne. Then he gave him his own name believing and confessing what the Father says of him: And I will make him the first-born, as he says of the people themselves, Israel is my first-born son.

He taught him from his infancy to fear God and refrain from all sin, believing and confessing that he would commit no sin and that no deceit would be found on his lips but that the spirit of the fear of the Lord would fill him. To Gabael his fellow-kinsman who was in need, Tobit gave ten silver talents in trust. And the people of God entrusted to the Gentiles through the seventy translators the knowledge of the divine law which is contained in the decalogue in order thereby to free them from the indigence of unbelief; but they gave it in trust, that is, on condition that it be repaid after the themselves got wealthy or the one who had given it asked it back.

On the other hand, the Gentiles received the word of God from the people of Israel through the medium of translation because now after the Lord’s incarnation they also understand it spiritually and work at acquiring the riches of the virtues; but they pay back the creditor when they receive into the unity of the Church Jews who believe at the end of the world; and, as well as entrusting to them the mysteries of Christ for their salvation, the also unlock for them the secrets of the Scriptures.

St Bede, Comm. in Tob. 1-3; (1997), tr. S. Connolly.

Monday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE SERMONS OF ST MAXIMUS OF TURIN

If you paid close attention to the section of the Gospel that was read, that section would have moved your feelings deeply. For the Lord, as Scripture says, upon having been told by someone that he would follow him wherever he went for the sake of religious service, says instead to another person: Follow me. And, having spurned and disdained the one, he chooses the other in his place – a person who expected nothing and was silent, although a voluntary offering is usually more acceptable, and service is more pleasing when it is spontaneously rendered and not commanded.

Why is the one rejected, then? Why is he refused as if he were unworthy? For the Lord says to him: The foxes have holes and the birds of heaven have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. This is the first thing that we must consider, therefore – that the Lord is not an accepter of persons, for he is a just and even-handed judge, but that he gives love in repayment of virtuous deeds and does not choose the one who is quick with words and slow in devotion but the one whose tongue is silent and whose mind is devout. About such a one the Prophet says: If you practise silence you will appear to be wise, but with regard to the one who speaks at every occasion Scripture has it: not everyone who says to me: Lord, Lord, but the one who does my will. From this we learn, then, that the Lord ought not to be cried out to so much from the mouth as from the heart.

Therefore he takes the one who is silent and who expects nothing. His tongue was silent, to be sure, but he spoke in spirit. For we understand how devoted he was who, as he himself maintained, left his dead father so as to lay hold of the Lord of life. For he says: First permit me to go and bury my father. The one who he had left behind as dead he begs that he might return and bury. Sorrow did not hold him nor death detain him, because he was hastening to life. He had not yet closed the eyes of the dead man, nor yet buried the stiff limbs, But as soon as he learned that the Lord had come he forgot the feeling of filial piety, believing that there was a greater piety in loving Christ more than one’s parents. Perhaps he had read the prophetic passage that says: Forget your people and your father’s house. So he forgot his father and remembered his Saviour. Perhaps he had also heard the Lord’s Gospel words: The one loves his father or mother more is not worthy of me. Thus, as Tobit is justified because he abandons his meal for the sake of a burial, this man is approved because he abandons the burial of his father for the sake of Christ. For the one is not afraid to pass over his meal because some earthly work intervenes, while the other fears lest some delay cause him to omit the eating of heavenly bread. Hence, although in consideration of Christ we owe burial to everyone, this man forsook his father’s burial out of love for Christ.

St Maximus of Turin, Sermon 41, 1-2; ACW 50 (1989) tr. Ramsey.

Tuesday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON PRAYER BY ORIGEN

In prayer you must not repeat meaningless words, nor ask for what is unimportant, nor pray for earthly things, nor come to your prayers in an angry mood or a state of mental confusion. But you cannot achieve the peace of mind which prayer requires without purity; nor when you pray can you obtain remission of your sins unless you have wholeheartedly forgiven whoever asks forgiveness from you for some offence.

I can think of many things that will help you when you pray correctly or try to do so to the best of your ability. The most helpful of all is to pray with intensity, and by means of that same intensity imagine yourselves to be in the presence of God, speaking directly to him as if he were there in person observing you.

For when we recall an object to mind it sometimes happens that certain other impressions linked with that object in memory reappear with it in our recollection corrupting our thoughts. In the same way we must believe that the remembrance of God’s presence is beneficial to us. God perceives the inmost emotions of the soul; and the soul composes itself to please him who examines our hearts and searches our thoughts as if he were really there watching over us, coming to every mind. For even if you received no further help after preparing your minds for prayer, you must realise you obtain no ordinary result from having so devoutly composed yourselves during your time of prayer. And if this happens often, those who devote themselves to unceasing prayer know by experience how many sins it preserves them from, and how many good deeds it leads them towards.

For they know how the memory and recollection of a good and wise man can rouse our admiration and often hinder our impulse to evil. Then how much greater is the help we receive from the memory of God the Father of all, joined with our prayers to him; for we believe ourselves to be in his presence, speaking to God who is there in person and hears us.

Origen, De Oratione, 8-11 (PG 11:442-448); Word in Season VIII.

Wednesday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF ST AUGUSTINE

O Light, Tobit saw you when despite the blindness of his carnal eyes he pointed out the path of life to his son, and strode unerringly ahead, borne by the feet of charity. Isaac saw you, though his bodily eyes were dimmed and closed by age, when true insight was granted him in blessing his sons, notwithstanding his inability to tell one from the other as he uttered his blessing. Jacob saw you when, likewise blinded by advanced age, he beheld by the radiant vision of his heart the tribes of the people that were to be, prefigured in his sons; and when, stretching out crossed hands in a gesture full of mystery, he laid them on his grandsons, Joseph’s children, not in the way indicated by their father, who saw only the externals, but as he himself judged to be right by the vision that guided him within. All these enjoyed the same Light, the Light that is one in itself and unites all who see and love it.

The case is different with earthly light, of which I was speaking. This imparts to the life of this world a seductive zest, dangerous to those whose love for it is blind. Yet once they have learned to praise you for light as well as for your other gifts, Creator God, O Lord of all, they take it up in a hymn to your glory, instead of being sapped by it in somnolence of spirit, and this is how I would wish to act. I resist alluring sights lest my feet, those feet with which I walk in your way, become entangled, and to you I lift the invisible eyes of my spirit that you may pluck my feet from the snare. I know that you will pluck them free again and again, for enmeshed they often are. I am repeatedly caught in the traps scattered on every side, but you will never fail to free me, for you neither grow drowsy nor fall asleep, who guard Israel.

How many things craftsmen have made, things without number, employing their manifold skills and ingenuity on apparel, footwear, pottery, and artefacts of every conceivable kind, on pictures too, and various images; and how far they have in these matters exceeded what is reasonably necessary or useful, or serves some pious purpose! All of them increase the temptations to which our eyes are subject. People pursue outside themselves what they are making, but forsake the One within by whom they were made, and so destroy what they were made to be by driving it out of doors.

O my God, for me you are loveliness itself; yet for all these things too I sing a hymn and offer a sacrifice of praise to you who sanctify me, because the beautiful designs that are born in our minds and find expression through clever hands derive from that Beauty which transcends all minds, the Beauty to which my own mind aspires day and night.

St Augustine, Confessiones, 10.34 (CSEL 34:265-267); Word in Season VIII.

Thursday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE ORATIONS OF ST GREGORY NAZIANZEN

The fortunes of this world are uncertain and transient; they are tossed from hand to hand, as in a game with pebbles, and are always changing. Not one of this world’s blessings belongs to its owner securely enough to prevent time destroying it, or envy transferring it elsewhere. But the rewards of heaven are fixed and abiding; they neither disappear nor change, and can never deceive the hopes of those who trust in them.

Now in my opinion there is a very good reason why people can find nothing reliable or lasting in the good things of this world. The Word, who is the architect of our destiny in this as in all things, and the Wisdom that transcends all mortal thought, have together well contrived it that we should be misled by everything we see in the constantly shifting world around us, where in the midst of this whirling to and fro we are always in pursuit of something that is forever flying from our grasp. Once we have observed the restlessness and distortion of this mortal life, we shall hasten to change our course toward the life to come. Indeed what should we have done if our prosperity here have been secure, when even in all its uncertainty we are so bound to this world, and its pleasures and allurements have so enslaved us, that we cannot imagine anything better or higher than our present life? And this, despite the fact that we are told and believe that we are created in the image of God, that image which is above and draws us to itself.

St Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio 37, 19.1-12 (PG 36:286-291); Word in Season VIII.

Friday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST BEDE

The fact that our Lord and Saviour when invited to a wedding reception not only agreed to attend it but also condescended to work a miracle at it in order to give pleasure to the assembled guests confirms the faith of any genuine believer even if understood in its literal sense alone, and without searching it for deeper spiritual meanings.

But perhaps we may experience a more sublime joy from contemplating the deeper spiritual meaning of this event. It was as he was about to begin his miracle-working on earth that the Son of God attended a wedding, to make it clear to all that it was really he whom the psalmist had symbolised in the Sun, of which he sang: He came out like a bridegroom from his bridal chamber, exulting like a strong man to run his course; his rising is at one end of the heavens, and his course takes him to the other end.

Somewhere in the gospel Christ says of himself and his disciples, Can the wedding guests be sad while the bridegroom is with them? A time will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.

Now from the moment our Saviour’s incarnation was first promised to the patriarchs, its realisation was awaited with sighs and tears by generation after generation of holy people. In much the same way, ever since his ascension to heaven after his resurrection all the hopes of the faithful have been centred on him in return. It was only during the short period of his sojourn among men that they were excepted from the need to weep and mourn, for then they had him among them also in the flesh whom they loved spiritually. Christ, then, is the bridegroom and the Church his bride; the wedding guests are the individual believers. The wedding celebrations celebrate the time when Christ united the holy Church to himself through the mystery of the Incarnation.

So it was not by chance but in order to reveal a definite mystery that the Lord came to that wedding breakfast. It was held to celebrate the physical union of a couple in everyday life on earth; but Christ had come down from heaven to earth to join his Church to himself in a bond of spiritual love. His bridal chamber was the womb of his Virgin Mother, in which our human nature was wedded to its God, and from which he came out like a bridegroom to unite with himself his Church. It was in Judea that this wedding first took place, for it was there that the Son of God assumed human nature, and later deigned to hallow the Church by allowing it to partake of his body, and where too he graciously confirmed it in faith by the pledge of his Spirit; but after he had called all nations to embrace that faith, the rejoicing attendant on his wedding celebrations spread abroad to every corner of the globe.

St Bede, Homily 14 (CCL 122:95-96); Word in Season VIII.

Saturday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST MAXIMUS OF TURIN

A Christian worthy of the name will be intent on praising his Lord and Father throughout the whole day and on doing all things to his greater glory, in accordance with these words of the Apostle, Whether you eat or drink, in fact whatever you do, let all of it be offered for God’s glory. This gives you some idea of what St Paul thought a Christian's meal should be like: Christian faith ought to be served up at it rather than a profusion of food; a man’s spirit should be nourished at it by frequent invocations of the Lord’s name rather than his body by a sequence of elaborate and over-laden dishes; piety rather than satiety should appease his hunger. Above all, says the Apostle, let all be done for the sake of God’s glory. Christ wants our every act to be carried out in his own presence as companion and witness, and for this reason: that his personal inspiration may influence us for good, while his constant partnership may cause us to refrain from evil.

Let us, then, give thanks to Christ on rising, and throughout the day let us begin our every deed with the Saviour’s sign. Why, even as Gentiles, you used to look for signs, and with scrupulous care you searched for such as might portend a profitable outcome to whatever business you had in hand! But now let us make no mistake as to the number of these signs. For you must realize that Christ's one sign alone will guarantee the total success of every enterprise. And whoever makes that sign at the sowing of his seed will reap the harvest of eternal life, whilst he who makes it at the outset of his journey will travel all the way to heaven. Thus in Christ’s sign and name must all our actions be performed, and to it all life’s ups and downs must be referred, for has not the Apostle told us, in him we live and move and have our being?

But when evening’s shadows lengthen, we must sing to him in the psalmist’s words and declare his praises in melodious chants, for in having overcome our labours and our struggles we, like conquerors, have deserved our rest and the oblivion of sleep as the reward of our toil. Who, then, possessing human intelligence, would not be ashamed to end the day with no repetition of the psalms, when even the birds pour out their own sweet psalms in gratitude and with no exultant hymns sung to the glory of him whom the birds praise in melodious song? Therefore, my brothers and sisters, imitate the tiniest birds by giving thanks to the Creator in the early morning and at evening; and if you are specially devout imitate the nightingale, for whom the day alone is not enough to fill with praise, and so it sings the whole night through as well! You also, then, as you vanquish the day with your songs of praise, must add a nightly round to your office, and with a sequence of psalms console your sleepless diligence in the work which you have undertaken!

St Maximus of Turin, Sermo 73.3-5 (CCL 23:305-307); Word in Season VIII.

Season of the Year | Week 26

Sunday of the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON PRAYER BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

Prayer is the height of our blessings and communion with God; for it is both companionship and unity with God. Just as the eyes of the body are enlightened when they look upon light, so a soul intent on God is illumined and enlightened by his inexpressible light. It is not indeed formal prayer that I refer to, but prayer offered from the heart, and so not confined to suitable times and fixed intervals, but continuing in action without cease day and night. For we do not only have to withdraw to pray, and suddenly turn our minds towards God. No, even while we are busy among the needy, either with the care of the poor or with other concerns, or useful good works – into their very midst we should also bring our desire for and remembrance of God, so that seasoned, as it were, with the love of God they may provide a most acceptable offering for the Lord of all men. If we devote most of our time to prayer, the delight we can gain from it will last us the whole of our lives.

Prayer is illumination of the soul and true knowledge of God. It mediates between God and men; it heals suffering and counteracts disease. It calms the soul and guides it to heaven, for prayer has no earthly life, but follows a path leading to the very heights of heaven. It transcends the created world, and in the spirit cuts through and soars above the air; it passes beyond the circle of stars, opens the gates of heaven, and taking precedence over the angels enters the very presence of the unapproachable Trinity. There it worships the deity, and is held worthy to be the companion of the king of heaven. The soul, raised by it high into heaven, embraces the Lord in an ineffable embrace, and cries out tearfully like a child to its mother, begging for the heavenly milk. It seeks its own desires, and receives gifts surpassing all that belongs to the world of nature.

Now in speaking of prayer, you must not imagine that I mean words. I mean desire for God, unutterable love, which men cannot offer of themselves but by the inspiration of divine grace. Of this the Apostle says: We do not know how we ought to pray, but in our wordless sighs the Spirit himself intercedes for us. If the Lord grants to anyone prayer of this kind; it is wealth that will never be taken away, and heavenly food that satisfies the soul; he who tastes it is possessed with an eternal longing for the Lord, which sets his heart ablaze as with a mighty fire.

St John Chrysostom, De Precatione 6 (PG 64:462.466); Word in Season VIII.

Monday of the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE ORATIONS ON EASTER BY ST GREGORY NAZIANZEN

Then comes the sacred night, the anniversary of the confused darkness of the present life, into which the primeval darkness is dissolved, and all things come in to life and rank and form, and that which was chaos is reduced to order. Then we flee from Egypt, that is from sullen persecuting sin; and from Pharaoh the unseen tyrant, and the bitter taskmasters, changing our quarters to the world above. We are delivered from the clay and from making bricks, and from the husks and dangers of this fleshly condition.

Then the Lamb is slain, and act and word are sealed with the Precious Blood; that is, habit and action, the side-posts of our doors; I mean, of course, of the movements of mind and opinion, which are rightly opened and closed by contemplation, since there is a limit even to thoughts. Then comes the last and gravest plague upon the persecutors, truly worthy of the night; and Egypt mourns the first-born of her own thoughts and actions, which are also called in the Scripture the children of Babylon who are dashed against the rocks and destroyed. The whole air is full of the cry and clamour of the Egyptians, and then the Destroyer of them shall withdraw from us in reverence for the anointing. Then comes the removal of leaven; that is, of the old and sour wickedness, not of that which is quickening and makes bread. This happens for seven days, a number which is of all the most mystical and is that of this present world, that we may not lay in provision of any Egyptian dough, or relic of Pharisaic or ungodly teaching.

So, let them lament - we will feed on the Lamb toward evening – for Christ’s Passion was at the completion of the ages. We will do so because too he communicated his disciples in the evening with his Sacrament, destroying the darkness of sin. And let us be aided by the good coals, kindling and purifying our minds from him who comes to send fire on the earth, the fire that shall destroy all evil habits. Everything that is solid and nourishing in the Word shall be eaten with the inward parts and hidden things of the mind, and shall be consumed and given up to spiritual digestion; yes, from head to foot, that is, from the first contemplations of Godhead to the very last thoughts about the Incarnation. Neither let us carry any of it abroad, nor leave it till the morning; because most of our Mysteries may not be carried out to them that are outside, nor is there beyond this night any further purification. For just as it is good and well-pleasing to God not to let anger last through the day, but to get rid of it before sunset, whether you take this of time or in a mystical sense, so too we ought not to let such food remain all night, nor to put it off till tomorrow.

St Gregory Nazianzen, 2nd Oration on Easter 15-16; NPNF2 7 (1893) tr. Browne & Swallow.

Tuesday of the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH IN THE MODERN WORLD OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

Peace is not merely the absence of war, nor can it be reduced solely to the maintenance of a balance of power between enemies, nor is it brought about by dictatorship. Instead, it is rightly and appropriately called an enterprise of justice. Peace results from that order structured into human society by its divine Founder, and actualised by men as they thirst after ever greater justice. The common good of humanity finds its ultimate meaning in the eternal law. But since the concrete demands of this common good are constantly changing as time goes on, peace is never attained once and for all, but must be built up ceaselessly. Moreover, since the human will is unsteady and wounded by sin, the achievement of peace requires a constant mastering of passions and the vigilance of lawful authority.

But this is not enough. This peace on earth cannot be obtained unless personal well-being is safeguarded and men freely and trustingly share with one another the riches of their inner spirits and their talents. A firm determination to respect other men and peoples and their dignity, as well as the studied practice of brotherhood, are absolutely necessary for the establishment of peace. Hence, peace is likewise the fruit of love, which goes beyond what justice can provide.

That earthly peace which arises from love of neighbour symbolises and results from the peace of Christ which radiates from God the Father. For by the cross the incarnate Son, the prince of peace, reconciled all men with God. By thus restoring all men to the unity of one people and one body, he slew hatred in his own flesh, and after being lifted on high by his resurrection, he poured forth the spirit of love into the hearts of men.

For this reason, all Christians are urgently summoned to do in love what the truth requires, and to join with all true peacemakers in pleading for peace and bringing it about.

Motivated by this same spirit, we cannot fail to praise those who renounce the use of violence in the vindication of their rights and who resort to methods of defence which are otherwise available to weaker parties too, provided this can be done without injury to the rights and duties of others or of the community itself.

Insofar as men are sinful, the threat of war hangs over them, and hang over them it will until the return of Christ. But insofar as men vanquish sin by a union of love, they will vanquish violence as well and make these words come true: They shall turn their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into sickles. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.

Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, 78.

Wednesday of the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON THE HOLY SPIRIT BY ST BASIL THE GREAT

Every kind of help comes to our souls through Christ, and an appropriate title has been devised for each particular kind of care. When he presents a blameless soul to himself, a soul which like a pure virgin has neither spot nor wrinkle, he is called Bridegroom, but when he receives someone paralysed by the devil’s evil strokes, and heals the heavy burden of his sins, he is called Physician. Because he cares for us, will this make us think less of him? Or will we not be struck with amazement at our Saviour’s mighty power and love for mankind, who patiently endured to suffer our infirmities with us, and condescended to our weakness?

No heaven, or earth, or the great oceans, or all creatures living in the waters and on dry land, or plants, stars, air, and seasons, or the vast expanse of the universe, can illustrate the surpassing greatness of God’s might so well as he has himself. The infinite God, remaining changeless, assumed flesh and fought with death, freeing us from suffering by his own suffering! Even when the Apostle says that in all these things (tribulations and sufferings) we are more than conquerors through him who loved us, in a phrase of this kind there is no suggestion of any lowly and subordinate ministry, but rather it speaks of the good he has accomplished in the strength of his might. He himself has bound the strong man and plundered his goods – that is, us, who had been abased in every manner of evil – and made us into vessels fit for the Master’s use, the use of our free will being made ready for any good work. Thus through him we have our approach to the Father, who has transferred us from the dominion of darkness to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

Our next task is to discuss the treasury of blessings which come from the Father through the Son to us. All created nature, whether visible or spiritual, is held together by God’s care: he who is the creating Word, the only-begotten God. He bestows help on every creature according to its need. He shepherds, he enlightens, he nourishes, he leads, he heals, he raises up. He calls all things from non-existence into being; once things are created he keeps them in existence. Thus God’s blessings reach us through the Son, who works in each case with greater speed than words can describe. Neither lightning, or the speed of light racing through the air, or a blink of the eyes, for the movement of our thoughts, is as swift as the Son’s working. Divine energy surpasses everything in speed; it is faster than birds, or the wind, or the revolution of the heavenly bodies, or our very thoughts. It makes living creatures appear sluggish. What passage of time is needed by him who upholds the universe by his word of power? He does not work by bodily strength, nor does he need the use of hands in order to fashion things, but all created things follow him, offering him their willing cooperation. As Judith says, The things you have foreordained present themselves and say, ‘We are here!’

St Basil the Great, De Spiritu Sancto, 18-19; (1980) tr. Anderson.

Thursday of the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LETTERS OF ST FULGENTIUS OF RUSPE

Behold a wisdom, famous in family, wealthy in goods, young in age, marvellous in appearance, who despised riches, repudiated delights, trampled on the attractions of the flesh, and, putting on virtue from on high, did not seek to be entangled in a second marriage. So, by the witness of so brilliant a deed, it is apparent how beloved of God is a widow's continence. Then when Holofernes besieged Bethulia in force with an army and all the power of the Israelites, shaken, grew weak, chastity went forth to assault lasciviousness and holy humility proceeded to the destruction of pride. He fought with armies, she with fasts; he with drunkenness, she with prayer. Therefore, what the entire people of the Israelites was unable to do, the holy widow accomplished by the virtue of chastity. For one woman cut off the head of the leader of so great an army and restored to the people of God an unhoped for freedom.

Let us also see in the New Testament how the way of life of Saint Anna is revealed to us. Concerning her, Saint Luke speaks as follows: There was also a Prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped night and day with fasting and prayer.

These two widows, although they lived in different periods, still both served the mystery of the one faith; because Christ, whom Anna knew as born in the flesh, Judith had known as one who was going to be born. How God showed in each widow that continence pleases him greatly! For Judith, girded with spiritual weapons, cut off the head of the lustful brigand. But Anna, filled with the Holy Spirit, knew the very head of the Church. The death of Holofernes was given to Judith; to Anna was revealed the coming of the Saviour. To the former, God gave it to drive away a plague from the people; to the latter, he gave it to recognise the remedy of the human race. And because the continence of the widow follows after virginal holiness as a lower degree, therefore, after the Son of God was born of a virgin, he deigned to be proclaimed by the office of the widow’s tongue. Still it was not a widow given over to pleasure who spoke about him, one who is dead while she lives, but one who never left the temple but worshipped night and day with fasting and prayer.

St Fulgentius of Ruspe, Ep. II ad Gallami, 29-20 (CCL 91:207-208); Word in Season VIII.

Friday of the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM CONCERNING WIDOWS BY ST AMBROSE

Bravery is usually not wanting to a good widow. For true bravery can pass the bound of nature and the weakness of the sex by the devotion of the mind. Such bravery was found in her who was named Judith, who of herself alone was able to rouse up her nation from utter prostration and defend from the enemy men broken down by the siege, smitten with fear, and pining with hunger.

From the time when her husband died she laid aside the garments of mirth, and took those of mourning. Every day she was intent on fasting except on the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day and the times of holy days, not as yielding to desire of refreshment, but out of respect for religion, as it is said: Whether you eat or drink, all is to be done in the name of Jesus Christ. But in order to accomplish her stratagem she put on that robe of mirth, with which in her husband’s life time she was accustomed to be clothed, as though she would give pleasure to her husband if she freed her country. But she also saw another man whom she was seeking to please, even him, of whom it is said: After me comes a man who is preferred before me.

Why relate the sequel? How she, amongst thousands of enemies, remained chaste. Why speak of her wisdom, in that she designed such a scheme? She reserved the merit of abstinence and the grace of chastity. For unpolluted, as we read, either by foot or by adultery, she gained no less a triumph over the enemy by preserving her chastity than by delivering her country.

And this was not so much a work of her hands, as much more a trophy of her wisdom. For having overcome Holofernes by her hand alone, she overcame the whole army of the enemies by her wisdom. For hanging up the head of Holofernes, a deed which the wisdom of the men had been unable to plan, she raised the courage of their countrymen and broke down that of the enemy. She stirred up her own friends by her modesty, and struck terror into the enemy so that they were put to flight and slain. And so the temperance and sobriety of one widow not only subdued her own nature, but, which is far more, even made men more brave.

And yet she was not so elated by this success, though she might well rejoice and exult by right of her victory, as to give up the exercises of her widowhood, but refusing all who desired to wed her she laid aside her garments of mirth and took again those of her widowhood, not caring for the adornments of her triumph, thinking those things better whereby vices of the body are subdued than those whereby the weapons of an enemy are overcome.

St Ambrose, Concerning Widows, 7; NPNF210 (1989) tr. de Romesty.

Saturday of the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A HOMILY BY ST ANDREW OF CRETE

Rejoice, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. May you rejoice, instrument of joy, through whom the condemnation of a curse has been annulled and replaced by the justification of joy.

Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And you are rightly blessed. For God blessed you as his own dwelling, when in a way beyond our understanding you bore within you one supremely filled with the glory of the Father, the human Christ Jesus and the same God, in the perfection of the two natures of and in which he was formed. Most blessed are you among women, who without constriction received that heavenly treasure in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden within the inviolate inner room of your virginity. You are truly blessed whose womb gathered a sheaf for the threshing floor, because without seed or husbandry you brought Christ to perfection, the fruit of blessing, the ear of corn of immortality, and led an abundant harvest, ten-thousand fold, thousands of joyful people to the husbandman of our salvation.

You are really blessed, since you alone without human husband bore within you one who expanded the heavens and, in a marvellous way, made the earth of your virginity heaven. Most blessed are you among women, since you alone inherited the blessing which God promised to the Gentiles through Abraham. You are truly blessed, since you alone were the mother of the blessed child Jesus Christ and our Saviour. It was because of you that the Gentiles cried out: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; and: Blessed be his glorious name forever; and let the whole earth be filled with his glory; Amen, Amen.

Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Blessed is the fruit which blossomed like a marvellously ripened dark grape from the undefiled shoot of your virgin womb. Blessed is the fruit from which flows streams of water welling up for eternal life. It is from this fruit that the bread of life, the Lord’s body is offered, and the chalice of immortality, the drink bringing salvation is presented. Blessed is the fruit which every tongue glorifies in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, thus including the Lord, as being of the same essence, in the threefold formation of the sanctifying Deity in the Trinity, but as a person assigning him individuality in the basic unity of the subsistent entities. Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

St Andrew of Crete, Hom. in annunciatione B. Mariae (PG 97:893.897-901); Word in Season VIII.

Season of the Year | Week 27

Sunday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON ECCLESIASTICUS BY BLESSED RABANUS MAURUS

All wisdom is from the Lord and it is his own forever. The beginning of this book, then, speaks of the eternal Wisdom of God which was with the Father before all ages. So also St John’s Gospel which opens thus: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All wisdom is from the Lord because Christ, who is the source of life and the light which illumines every man coming into this world, was born of God the Father; and all things were made through him and without him was made nothing that was made. But whoever lacks the light of this wisdom is walking in the dark, not knowing where he is going because the darkness has dimmed his sight. Whatever opposes this wisdom should be dubbed ‘folly’. So St Paul says, The wisdom of this world is folly with God. And again, To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the wisdom of the flesh is at enmity with God since it is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be.

The sand of the sea and the raindrops and the days of eternity, who can assess them? The height of the sky and the breadth of the earth and the depth of the abyss, who has measured them? Before all other things wisdom was created; who can probe her? Ecclesiasticus draws the comparison between material and spiritual things, so that by reference to what is most difficult in nature such a comparison might be justly assessed -but this is altogether impossible. If nobody can count the sand of the sea or the raindrops or the days of eternity, or measure the height of the sky or the breadth of the earth or the depth of the abyss – and yet these were established by their Creator according to number, measure, and weight – how can anyone probe the wisdom of God which exists without beginning and without end and abides forever, at once indescribable and immeasurable? For the power of God and the wisdom of God – Christ, that is – was always with the Father and, as the Father is without beginning, so is the Son without beginning.

Before all things wisdom was created and shrewd understanding is everlasting. The Fathers understand this text, as well as the one from Proverbs, The Lord created me at the beginning of his ways, as referring to the Lord’s incarnation. Just as the Son in his divine nature was born of the Father before all ages, so before all ages he was predestined in the plan of the Father to become incarnate in time for the salvation of the human race. The word ‘created’ refers to his human not his divine nature, although, because of the unity of person, the Son is sometimes said to be generated, sometimes created. He is therefore the beginning of God’s ways (he himself said, I am the way) who rose from the dead and made a pathway for the Church to the kingdom of God and eternal life.

Bd Rabanus Maurus, Comm. In Ecclesiasticum, 1, 1-2 (PL 109:765-766); Word in Season VIII.

Monday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

Let us put our trust in God, my brethren. This is the first commandment, the first principle of religion and of our life: to have our heart anchored in faith and thus to live uprightly, to hold ourselves aloof from mere pleasure, to endure temporal misfortune. What is it that we hear in the canticle? My son, if you aspire to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for an ordeal. Be sincere of heart, be steadfast. Cling to him and do not leave him, so that your life may abound at the latter day. How ‘abound’? That you may abound eternally, I think. Certainly not now! Our human life is on the wane now, rather than otherwise. A man is born into the world. God allots him seventy years, say. As he grows up, we say that life is before him. But is it? Is his life increasing or decreasing? When he has lived sixty of his seventy years, ten years only remain. His span is diminished, and the longer he lives the less remains to him. While we live, then, life is not increasing but rather ebbing away. So hold fast to what God has promised you, that you may abound at the latter day.

Whatever happens to you, accept it, and in changes that humble you be patient, for gold is tested in the fire, and chosen men in the furnace of humiliation. The way may seem hard, but would you not lose an indefectible good by defecting from it? There are many who endure great hardship in order to acquire perishable wealth, and would you not suffer for the sake of an imperishable life? You have taken on the yoke of wisdom. Is it going to be difficult? Yes, surely, but look up towards your goal, towards your reward. He who has promised is faithful. He has not shown it to you, because it is not yet time. Nevertheless, he has already shown you a great deal. He promised the Messiah, and he sent him; he promised he would rise again, and he did; he promised the gospel, and he gave it; he promised that the Church would spread throughout the world, and it has. Why do you not believe that he will keep his other promises?

Beloved brethren, let us cleanse our hearts and not lose the will to endure. Let us keep wisdom before us and hold fast to self-discipline. Our striving lasts for but an instant, rest awaits us. Empty enjoyments pass away, but the good, longed for by the man of faith, the good to which every pilgrim in the world aspires, is at hand: the good country, the heavenly country, the country where we shall see the angels, where no citizen dies, no enemy finds admittance, where you shall fear no foe but have God forever as your friend.

St Augustine, Sermon 38, 5.11 (CCL 41:5-6.11); Word in Season VIII.

Tuesday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

How precious is the wisdom by which we know God and despise the world! The one who has found it is indeed blessed, if he holds fast to it. What will he give to possess it? Give obedience as its price, and you will receive wisdom in return. Scripture tells us: Do you desire wisdom? Keep the commandments and God will give it to you. If you want to be wise, be obedient. Obedience has no will of its own: it is at the service of another's will, subject to another's command. Embrace it, then, with all the yearning of your heart, with all the effort of your body. Embrace, I repeat, the blessing of obedience, drawing near by obedience to the light of wisdom. Scripture says: Draw near to him and be enlightened. Draw near, that is, by means of obedience, for there is no approach more direct or secure, and be enlightened by wisdom.

The man who does not know God does not know where he is going, but walks in darkness and dashes his foot against a stone. Wisdom is light, the true light that shines on every person coming into this world, not the one who is wise with the wisdom of this world, but the one who is not of the world though in the world. This is the new self of one who has turned away from the sinful and slothful ways of his former self, and strives to walk in newness of life, knowing that damnation is not for those who walk in the way of the Spirit, but in the way of sinful nature.

As long as you follow your own will, you cannot escape turmoil within you, even though at times you seem to escape turmoil outside you. This turmoil of self-will cannot end until the desires of your sinful nature are changed, and God becomes for you a source of delight. Sinners enlightened by wisdom are said to be freed from turmoil because, once they taste the goodness of the Lord, they are freed from their sin: from that time they worship the Creator, not the creature, and when they leave self-will behind they are freed from their feverish turmoil.

While at last they get rid of the turmoil of desires and the discord of thoughts, they experience peace in their inmost heart, and God takes up his dwelling within them: his dwelling-place is in peace. Where God is, there is joy; where God is, there is calm; where God is, there is happiness.

St Bernard, Sermo in epiphania 7 (Opera Omnia VI, 1. 26-27); Word in Season VIII.

Wednesday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE EXHORTATION TO HUMILITY OF MARTIN OF BRAGA

The greater you are, so Solomon said, humble yourself that much more. Though you govern many, you have not perfection if – and this is most important – you alone resist the person whom you cannot govern. You will truly be in charge of others when you are first in charge of yourself. I am not now saying this to wicked people, but most especially to the good. For if you consider God’s teaching, God’s precepts are not only for sinners, but also for the holy. The word of truth is spoken to them also, not to make them good, which they are, but to prevent them from becoming wicked, which they are not. In fact, I believe the good are more pleased with what is pure and what is free from blame. For our God is placated not so much by the pleasant prayers of those who praise him as by innocence and simplicity; God inclines his ear more to those who offer him a mind pure and free from guilt than to those who bring him the sweet blandishments of their prayers.

When I speak of vainglory or pride, there is none to whom I could more suitably address my words than to you who are in charge of many; for, even though you do not pay attention, they all heap compliments upon you, they all flatter, they all extol; and there is not one who offers something which is pleasant and, at the same time, far removed from danger. I am not surprised that they are all eager to do this, for just as there is not much work in praising a ruler, so is there not much cause for fear.

I had to offer you these methods of obtaining humility and even to add something on how to moderate your regimen, even though it may be unnecessary, since you may possess it already: for the wind of vanity is always stronger when the position of honour is stronger. Accordingly, I desire you to walk always with a humble heart in the sight of God, ‘to whom’, as Augustine says, ‘the depths of human consciousness are fully revealed’. For it is written: Upon whom does my Spirit rest, says the Lord, but on the lowly one who trembles at my words?

It is only humility of the heart, therefore, that by declaring itself weak can do all things, that achieves everything good by ascribing it always to God, not to itself. If one ascends in humility, he does not have room to fall. All the other virtues can summon us to perfection through high and difficult courses. Humility alone is on the level ground and, even though it seems lowly to others, it is actually higher than heaven, for it brings a person to its kingdom by descending rather than ascending.

Martin of Braga, Exhortatio ad humilitatem, 4-7 (PL 72:40-42); Word in Season VIII.

Thursday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON PERFECTION OF LIFE BY ST BONAVENTURE

Two motives may be suggested capable of impelling not merely a religious, but even a lay person, to a love of poverty. The first is the irreproachable example of our Divine Lord. The second is the priceless divine promise.

Let us take the first motive. The love and the example of our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, ought to excite in you a love of poverty. Christ was born poor, lived poor, and died poor. Realise and bear in mind that Christ gave you this wonderful example of poverty in order to induce you to become a friend of poverty.

It was meditation on this poverty of Christ that roused the heart of St Paul and caused him to exclaim: You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that being rich he became poor for our sakes, that through his poverty we might be rich. St Bernard, speaking of this same poverty, says: ‘An eternal and copious abundance of riches existed in heaven. Poverty, however, was not to be found there. It abounded and was superabundant on earth. Alas! human beings did not know its worth. The Son of God, though, loved poverty, and desired it, and came down from heaven and took it as his own possession in order to make it precious in our eyes.’

All his life long, Jesus Christ our Lord was an example of poverty. Let me tell you how poor the Son of God and King of Angels was while he lived in this world. He was so poor that oftentimes he did not know which way to turn for a lodging. St Matthew writes: The foxes have holes and the birds of the air nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

O blessed servant of God, recall the poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ, poor for our sake! Cleave to poverty and practice it zealously and courageously. Keep your heart free from love of honours, temporal things, and riches. The advantage, the security, the delight of life and the act of perfect virtue is neither to possess riches nor to have any fondness for riches. Therefore, our Lord’s example and counsel ought to prompt and excite every Christian to love poverty.

O blessed poverty, which makes those who love it beloved of God and secure even in this world! ‘For those who have nothing in the world on which their heart is set, there exists nothing of the world to fear,’ St Gregory says.

The second motive to inspire a love of poverty is the promise, the priceless promise of Christ. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven, O my Lord Jesus Christ, is nothing else than you yourself, who are ‘the King of kings and Lord of lords’. As reward, as the price of their labour, as a complete and perfect joy, you will give to your voluntary poor even the possession of yourself. They will rejoice in possessing you. They will find delight in you. They will, at last, find complete satiety in you. For the poor shall eat and shall be filled; and they shall praise the Lord that seek him; their hearts shall live forever and ever. Amen.

St Bonaventure, De perfectione vitae ad sorores (unpubl. ms); Word in Season VIII.

Friday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON SPIRITUAL FRIENDSHIP BY ST AELRED OF RIEVAULX

I do not presume the power to explain the dignity of so great a matter; for in all the affairs of mankind nothing more sacred is aimed at, nothing more profitable is sought, nothing is more difficult to find, nothing is sweeter to experience, nothing is more fruitful to retain than friendship, for it bears fruit both in this life and in the next. It flowers all the virtues with its sweetness; it chokes the vices by its power; it tempers adversity and brings settled prosperity; indeed without a friend almost nothing can be pleasant among humans. A man should be likened to an animal if he has no one to rejoice with him in prosperity and to lament with him in sadness; no one to whom he can relieve his mind if it is filled with some unpleasant thought and with whom he can share any unusually lofty or brilliant idea. Woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. He is indeed alone who has no friend.

But what happiness it is, what freedom from care, what pleasure to have one to whom you dare to speak as freely as to yourself; to whom you are not afraid to confess if you have done any wrong; to whom you do not hesitate to reveal any advance you may have made in spiritual things; to whom you may entrust all the secrets of your heart and commit your plans!

What then is more pleasant than to write mind to mind in such a way that the two become one, no boasting need be feared, no suspicion dreaded, so that no rebuke of the one by the other cause pain, nor praise be taken as the ground for a charge of flattery? A friend, says the wise man, is an elixir of life. That indeed is a very great truth. For there is no healing treatment that is stronger, more effective, or more remarkable for our wounds in all temporal affairs than to have someone to come to our help in every misfortune, to congratulate us at any good fortune, as the Apostle says, Bear one another's burdens, shoulder to shoulder, unless perhaps each man finds his own burden lighter to bear than that of his friend. Friendship then makes prosperity even more brilliant, dividing adversity and sharing the lighter burdens. The best elixir of life then is a friend; just as it was the pleasure even of pagans, we do not make as universal use of water or fire as of a friend. In every action, in every pursuit, whether we are in doubt or certain, in any event, in any fortune, publicly or privately, in every discussion, at home or away from home, friendship is everywhere welcome, a friend is needful, kindness is always found useful.

Moreover, what is more important than all these, friendship is a sort of step closely approaching to perfection, which consists of the love and recognition of God; so that a man from being a man's friend may become a friend of God, as our Saviour says in the Gospel. No longer do I call you servants, but my friends.

St Aelred, De Spiritali Amicitia, II, 9-14 (CCCM I:303-305); Word in Season VIII.

Saturday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE ORATIONS OF ST GREGORY NAZIANZEN

The fortunes of this world are uncertain and transient; they are tossed from hand to hand, as in a game with pebbles, and are always changing. Not one of this world's blessings belongs to its owner securely enough to prevent time destroying it, or envy transferring it elsewhere. But the rewards of heaven are fixed and abiding; they neither disappear nor change, and can never deceive the hopes of those who trust in them.

Now in my opinion there is a very good reason why people can find nothing reliable or lasting in the good things of this world. The Word, who is the architect of our destiny in this as in all things, and the Wisdom that transcends all mortal thought, have together well contrived it that we should be misled by everything we see in the constantly shifting world around us, where in the midst of this whirling to and fro we are always in pursuit of something that is forever flying from our grasp. Once we have observed the restlessness and disorder of this mortal life, we shall hasten to change our course toward the life to come. Indeed what should we have done if our prosperity here had been secure, when even in all its uncertainty we are so bound to this world, and its pleasures and allurements have so enslaved us, that we cannot imagine anything better or higher that our present life? And this, despite the fact that we are told and believe that we are created in the image of God, that image which is above and draws us to itself.

Who is wise enough to understand these things? Who will abandon the things that pass away, and devote himself to those that last? Who will think of the present as something that is always moving away? Happy indeed is he who has such powers of discernment, and who uses the keen edge of the Word to separate the better from the worse. His heart is set on the journey upward, as holy David was inspired to say in one of the psalms; and so he flies with all speed from this valley of weeping, and seeks the realms above. Crucified to the world with Christ, he takes his stand beside Christ and ascends in the company of Christ, an heir to a life that henceforth is neither changing nor deceptive, and where he will no longer find a serpent waiting on the road to bite his heel, while he watches out for its head.

Therefore without delay let us follow the Word, seek our rest in the world beyond, and throw away the riches of this world. Let us profit by them in the only good way we can, that is, let us gain possession of our souls by giving alms, and share our earthly goods with the poor so as to enrich ourselves with the wealth of heaven.

St Gregory Nazianzen, Oratio, 14, 20-22, De pauperum amore (PG 35: 882-886); Word in Season VIII.

Season of the Year | Week 28

Sunday of the Twenty-Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CHRISTIAN WAY OF LIFE BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

If a man refuses to love God with his whole heart and his whole mind, how can he honestly and faithfully care about loving his brethren, since he withholds love from him for whose sake he is concerned to love them? A man in this state, who has neither given his whole soul to God nor has any fellowship in the love of God, is defenceless in the face of the expert in evil, who easily trips him up and subdues him with his dangerous arguments. At one moment he makes the commandments of Scripture seem harsh and service of the brethren a grievous burden, at another he incites a man to arrogance and pride on account of that very service to his fellow servants, persuading him that he has fulfilled the Lord’s commands and will be great in heaven.

There is no small offence here. For the good and zealous servant must leave it to his master to judge his service, and not take his master’s place in judging and applauding his own behaviour. For if he usurps the office of the true judge, he will get no reward from his own self-satisfied praise with which he presumes to replace his master’s judgement. For it is necessary, according to the saying of Paul, for the Spirit of Good to unite with our spirit in bearing witness, but we ourselves must not judge our actions to be good. For Paul says: It is not the one who commends himself that is accepted, but the one whom the Lord commends. He who cannot wait for the Lord’s praise, but anticipates his judgement, is forced to take refuge in the glory of his fellow men.

In thus seeking to win honour from his brethren by his own labours he behaves like an unbeliever, for it is only an unbeliever who would rather pursue the honours of this world than those of heaven. As the Lord himself says: How can you have faith, who take praise from one another but do not seek the praise which comes from God alone?

Such people seem to me like those who clean the outside of the cup and the dish, while inside they are full of every kind of evil. Take care then not to be like that yourselves. Offer your souls to God, with the one thought of pleasing the Lord, and never lose your awareness of heavenly things. Do not accept the honours of this life; run in such a way as to hide, but keep silent about your struggles for virtue, so as to give no opportunities to the one who tempts you with earthly honours and who, having distracted your minds from thinking of what is real, might lead into vanity and error. But if he finds no such chance, or opportunity, and his way securely barred to the enticement of those whose souls are devoted to the things of heaven, he is destroyed and lies dead; for it is death to the devil when his efforts to use his evil power are unsuccessful. So with the love of God present among you, all other good is bound to follow: brotherly love, gentleness, guilelessness, zeal, and perseverance in prayer, and indeed every virtue.

St Gregory of Nyssa, The Christian Way of Life (Jaeger VIII, 72-74); Word in Season VIII.

Monday of the Twenty-Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONFERENCES OF ST JOHN CASSIAN

Germanus asked Abba Theodore, “Is our mind able to hold on to one state constantly and to remain always in the same condition?”

He replied, “As the Apostle says, it is necessary for one who is renewed in the spirit of his mind to make progress every day, always reaching out to what is ahead. The alternative is that the neglectful person reverses himself and falls back into a worse state. We confess that God alone is unchanging. Him alone does the prayer of the holy Prophet address in this way: You yourself are the same. And he says of himself: I am God, and I do not change. For only he to whom nothing can ever be added and from whom nothing can ever be taken away is by nature always good, always complete, and always perfect. Therefore we must always push ourselves with unceasing care and concern to attain the virtues, lest our progress suddenly cease and regression occur. For, as we have said, the mind cannot remain in one and the same condition – that is, so that it does not either increase or decrease in virtue. Not to have gained is to have lost, because when the desire of making progress ceases, the danger of falling back will appear.

“Therefore one must abide constantly in one’s cell. For as often as a person has wandered out of it and has returned to it like a novice who is only starting to live there, he will waver and be disturbed. The person who stays in his cell has acquired an intensity of mind that, once let go slack, he will not be able to recover again without effort and pain.

“But that even the heavenly powers, as we have said, are subject to change is proclaimed by those of their number who fell because of the sinfulness of their corrupt will. Therefore we should not think of those who have persevered in the blessedness in which they were created as possessing an unchanging nature because they did not likewise behave wickedly. For it is one thing to possess an unchanging nature and another not to be changed because of zeal for virtue and perseverance in the good, which is due to the grace of an immutable God. Whatever is acquired and maintained through diligence can also be lost through negligence. Consequently it is said: You should not call a person blessed before his death, because whoever is still involved in this struggle, even though he usually overcomes and obtains the palm of victory, still cannot be free of fear and of concern about an uncertain result.

“God alone, then, is said to be unchangeable and good – he who possesses goodness not because of laborious effort but by nature, and who cannot be anything other than good. Therefore no virtue can be possessed unwaveringly by a man, but for it to be firmly maintained once it has been acquired it must always be preserved with the same concern and effort with which it was obtained.”

St John Cassian, Conferences 6, 13-16; ACW 57 (1997) tr. Ramsey.

Tuesday of the Twenty-Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CHRISTIAN WAY OF LIFE BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

For those who love God, practising his commandments is an easy and enjoyable task, since our love for him lightens the struggle and makes it welcome. It is for that reason that the devil strives by every means to drive out the fear of the Lord from our souls, and to destroy our love for him with unlawful pleasure and treacherous delights. It is why he does his best to catch the soul off its guard and without its spiritual armour, and so to destroy our labours, offering us earthly in place of heavenly glory, and confusing our vision of true beauty with its deceptive image. For if he finds the guards careless, he is quick to seize the opportunity to appear to the field of virtue, and amidst the growing corn to sow his own weeds, that is, slander, arrogance, vainglory, desire for honour, quarrelling, and all the other products of evil. Therefore we must be vigilant and keep watch for our enemy on all sides, so that whatever shameless device he uses against us we may drive him off before he lays hands on our souls.

You must often remember that story of how Abel and Cain offered sacrifice to the Lord, Abel with some of his firstborn sheep and their fat, Cain with fruits of the earth, but no first fruits. And God observed Abel’s sacrifice, as Scripture tells us, but the gifts of Cain he ignored. What then is the moral of the story? It teaches us that God accepts whatever we offer him in fear and faith, but has no use for the costliest gift offered without love. The very reason why Abraham received Melchizedek’s blessing is that he offered the priest of God the first fruits and the richest spoils. Now the richest spoils and the first fruits that we ourselves possess are our souls and minds; and thus we are commanded to make no trivial sacrifice of praise and prayer to God, nor to offer the Lord any chance gift but what is best in our souls, or rather to dedicate to God our entire souls with all possible love and desire. So continually nourished by the grace of the Spirit and taking to ourselves the power that comes from Christ, we shall run with ease the race of salvation and make the struggle for righteousness carefree and joyous. For God himself will help us to toil with zeal, and will accomplish his righteous works through us.

St Gregory of Nyssa, The Christian Way of Life (Jaeger VIII:75-77); Word in Season VIII.

Wednesday of the Twenty-Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW BY ST PASCHASIUS RADBERTUS

Your will be done. – There is no one who can obstruct or frustrate the fulfilment of God’s will. Especially as it is written that The Lord accomplished in heaven and on earth all the things that he wills. But we make this prayer in order to unite our free will, by his grace, with his will also, so that he who lives, lives no longer to himself, but that God's free will may be fulfilled in all things. And to that will indeed St Paul testifies when he says: God’s will is your sanctification, that you distance yourselves from sensual desire. And elsewhere the Lord himself says: This is the will of my Father who sent me – that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life. Hence it is that we devoutly make this prayer, not for the Lord's advantage but for our own.

When, therefore, we say Your will be done we need to think about the faith and the charity which is ours, in speaking the words: for no one who hesitates about the Father’s will is praying aright. Whence our great faith, great devotion, and our feeling of entire security, which come from knowing about his never-ending kindness, his wishing no evil. As St Paul says: His will is that all should be saved and come to recognise the truth. And so no one could have said those things with all his heart unless he believed for sure that all things visible and invisible, whether for our temporal prosperity or otherwise, are ordained by God for our profit and advantage. For one must believe with unquestioning faith that he is more shrewd a judge and caring a provider than we ourselves ever could be, ceaselessly watching for what can work our salvation. For his will is the salvation of all. This indeed was known to the one and only Son of God, teacher of the truth, who said: Father, that this chalice might pass from me, but – but not my will but yours be done. And, in another passage: I have not come to do my will, but the will of him that sent me, the Father.

For the humanity of God-made-man took on more of the Father than of himself, so as to show us all how much trust and what kind of trust we should place in his will. No one need be in doubt, according to what St John writes: May he who does God’s will live for all eternity. On this thought let our minds expand and our hearts enlarge, as we realise what we are praying; for whatever the heavenly teacher has taught by word or example, it is the will of the Father that it should all be accomplished. It is for this purpose that those things are written or done, that we work out our salvation faithfully through our deeds. So let each of us look to what he is about, what he intends, what he encompasses in his heart. But if he should see his will to differ in aught from God’s will, let him correct his error, lest what he pray with his words he frustrate with his outward behaviour.

Paschasius Radbertus, Expositio in Matt. IV, VI: PL 120, 286-287 (from Word in Season VIII)

Thursday of the Twenty-Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON GENESIS BY ORIGEN

God made man; he made him in his own image. We must understand what this image of God means and ask in whose likeness it is that man is made. For it is not said that ‘God made man in his image or likeness’, but that he made him in the image of God. So what is the other, this distinct image of God, in whose likeness man is made, except our Saviour who is the firstborn of all creatures, he of whom it is said that he is the splendour of the eternal light and the imprint of God’s substance, he who said of himself: I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and he who has seen me has seen the Father? For just as he who has seen someone’s picture has seen him also whose picture it is, so likewise through the incarnate Word of God, which is the picture, the image of God, one sees God himself. And so we can see the truth of what was said: He who has seen me has seen the Father.

In the likeness of this image, then, was man made and for that very reason our Saviour, who is himself the image of God, was moved by pity for man. For man had been made in his likeness; and yet he was seen to put off that likeness and put on instead the image of evil. And so, moved by pity, our Saviour came to him, assuming the likeness of man, as the Apostle testifies, saying: When he was still in the likeness of God he was not possessive or self-assertive about being equal to God, but emptied himself out, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of man; and man he was found to be, through and through, as he humbled himself even unto death.

We who come to him, then, and strive to be made sharers in his image as we can understand it, are by our endeavour and our progress renewed inwardly each day in the image of him who made us; so that we may be made like the body of his radiance, his glory, each of us according to his capacity. The Apostles remade themselves in his likeness; so much so, that he said of them: I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. For he had prayed to the Father for his disciples, that the original likeness might be restored to them, when he said: Father, grant that just as you and I are one, so they also may be one in us.

Let us therefore contemplate this likeness of God, that we may be remade on that pattern. For if man, having been made in God’s image, can be made, against his nature, to resemble the devil merely by looking on him, how much more, by looking on the likeness of God, in whose image he is made, will he receive through the incarnate Word both the virtue and the likeness, already given him by his nature. Let no one despair on seeing that he is more like the devil than God: for he is yet able to recover even so his likeness to God. Our Saviour came to call, not the just, but sinners to repentance. Matthew was a publican and indeed resembled the devil; but by coming as he did to the incarnate image of God, our Lord and Saviour, and following him, he has been transformed in the likeness of God.

Origen, In Gen., 1, 13 (SC 7bis, 60-64); Word in Season VIII.

Friday of the Twenty-Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE OF JULIAN OF NORWICH

Our good Lord showed me the enmity of the fiend, from which I gathered that everything opposed to love and peace comes from the fiend and his set. Inevitably we fall because of our weakness and stupidity – and just as surely we get up with even greater joy because of the mercy and grace of the Holy Spirit. Even if our enemy gains something from us when we fall (this is what he likes!), he loses very much more because of our love and humility when we get up again. This glorious rising up gives him such sorrow and pain (he hates our soul so much) that he burns and burns with envy. The very sorrow he would impose on us turns back upon himself. Which was the reason why our Lord spurned him – and the reason, too, why I laughed so much.

The remedy is to be aware of our wretchedness, and to fly to our Lord. The greater our need, the more important it is to draw near to him. Let our meaning be, ‘I am well aware that my suffering is deserved. Our Lord is almighty, and may punish me mightily; he is all-wise, and can punish me wisely; and he is all-good, and loves me most tenderly.’ And with the sight of this we have got to stay. The humility of a sinful soul is a lovely thing, and is a work of the Spirit’s mercy and grace, when we consciously and gladly accept the scourge and punishment given by our Lord himself. It even becomes gentle and bearable when we are really content with him and with what he does. What penance a man should impose upon himself was not revealed to me - not specifically at any rate. But this was shown, with particular and loving emphasis, that we are to accept and endure humbly whatever penance God himself gives us, with his blessed passion ever in mind. When in pitying love we recall his blessed passion we suffer with him, as did his friends who actually saw it.

Our Lord is with us, protecting us and leading us into fullness of joy. For it is an unending source of joy to us that our Lord should intend that he, our protector here, is to be our bliss there – our way and our heaven is true love and sure trust! This is the message of all the revelations, and particularly in that of his passion where he made me wholeheartedly choose him to be my heaven.

Flee to our Lord, and we shall be strengthened. Touch him, and we shall be cleansed. Cling to him, and we shall be safe and sound from every danger. For it is the will of our courteous Lord that we should be as much at home with him as heart may think or soul desire. But we must be careful not to accept this privilege so casually that we forget our own courtesy. For our Lord himself is supremely friendly, and he is as courteous as he is friendly: he is very courteous.

Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, 77; Word in Season VIII.

Saturday of the Twenty-Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON THE TRINITY BY ST AUGUSTINE

Why is it that Scripture hardly ever mentions wisdom, except to point out that it has been either begotten or made by God? That is to say, it was begotten, through which all things were made; but it was created or made, as in men, when they turn to and are enlightened by that wisdom, which was not created or made but begotten. Then something is brought about in them which may be called their wisdom, which the Scriptures foretell and describe when they say: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. For Christ became our wisdom in this way when he became man.

Is it for this reason, then, that wisdom does not speak in those books, or say anything about itself, except to show that it was born or made by God, although the Father himself is also wisdom, because wisdom was to be commended to and indicated by us, since we ourselves were to be formed by imitating it?

The Son, who is wisdom, is from the Father, who is wisdom, light from light and God from God. And the Father singly is light and the Son singly is light; the Father singly is God and the Son singly is God. Consequently, the Father singly is wisdom and the Son singly is wisdom. And as both together are one light and one God, so both together are one wisdom. But the Son has been made for us wisdom from God, and justice and sanctification, because we turn ourselves to him temporally, that is, from some particular time, in order to remain with him eternally. For he himself at a certain moment of time was the Word made flesh that dwelt among us.

Therefore, when anything concerning wisdom is said or recorded in the Scriptures, whether wisdom itself speaks or anything is said of it, then the Son is particularly meant. And with the example of this image before us, let us also not depart from God. For we are, likewise, the image of God, not indeed an equal image, since it was made by the Father through the Son, not born of the Father as that is. And we are so, because we are enlightened by the light, but he is the light that enlightens. And, therefore, this image is an example for us without itself having an example. For he does not imitate anyone who comes before him in respect to the Father, from whom he is wholly inseparable, since he has the same essence with him from whom he is. But by our striving we imitate him who remains and follow him who stands; when we walk in him, we tend towards him, because by his humility he has been made a road for us in time, in order that by his divinity he might be for us a mansion in eternity.

St Augustine, De Trinitate, 7.3; FoC 45 (1963) tr. McKenna.

Season of the Year | Week 29

Sunday of the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION FAMILARIS CONSORTIO OF POPE JOHN PAUL II

God created man in his own image and likeness: calling him to existence through love, he called him at the same time for love. God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image and continually keeping it in being, God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion. Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.

As an incarnate spirit, that is a soul which expresses itself in a body and a body informed by an immortal spirit, man is called to love in his unified totality. Love includes the human body, and the body is made a sharer in spiritual love. Christian revelation recognizes two specific ways of realising the vocation of the human person in its entirety, to love: marriage and virginity or celibacy. Either one is, in its own proper form, an actuation of the most profound truth of man, of his being created in the image of God.

The communion of love between God and people, a fundamental part of the revelation and faith experience of Israel, finds a meaningful expression in the marriage covenant which is established between a man and a woman. For this reason the central word of revelation, ‘God loves his people’, is likewise proclaimed through the living and concrete word whereby a man and a woman express their conjugal love. Their bond of love becomes the image and the symbol of the covenant which unites God and his people. And the same sin which can harm the conjugal covenant becomes an image of the infidelity of the people to their God: idolatry is prostitution, infidelity is adultery, disobedience to the law is abandonment of the spousal love of the Lord. But the infidelity of Israel does not destroy the eternal fidelity of the Lord, and therefore the ever faithful love of God is put forward as the model of the relations of faithful love which should exist between spouses.

The communion between God and his people finds its definitive fulfilment in Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom who loves and gives himself as the Saviour of humanity, uniting it to himself as his body. he reveals the original truth of marriage, the truth of the ‘beginning’, and, freeing man from his hardness of heart, he makes man capable of realising this truth in its entirety. This revelation reaches its definitive fullness in the gift of love which the Word of God makes to humanity in assuming a human nature, and in the sacrifice which Jesus Christ makes of himself on the Cross for his bride, the Church. In this sacrifice there is entirely revealed that plan which God has imprinted on the humanity of man and woman since their creation; the marriage of baptized persons thus becomes a real symbol of that new and eternal covenant sanctioned in the blood of Christ.

St John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, 11-13.

Monday of the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON MATTHEW BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

Two things are required of us, here and now: to acknowledge our sins and to forgive others; the first, so that the second may become easier. For someone properly aware of his own behaviour and its shortcomings will be the more forgiving to his fellow humans. And that does not mean, forgiveness in words merely, but from the heart, lest in our resentment we turn the sword on ourselves. For is the harm done to you comparable to that which you do yourself when you renew your anger and draw down on yourself God’s condemnation? If you are vigilant and wise the misdeed will fall to his account and he will suffer for it; but if you persevere in your resentment and anger it will be you who gets hurt – and not from him but from yourself. Do not say: He has insulted me and slandered me, he has done me great wrong; for the more you protest, the more you put him in the right. For he has given you an opportunity for casting off your sinful character. So the more he has injured you, the greater the forgiveness of your own sin, in consequence.

Let us take care that we hate no one, so that God may still love us; so that even though we may be owing him a thousand talents he may yet be generous and merciful to us. Has someone offended you? Be merciful to him, then; do not hate him. Weep and lament for him, but do not show aversion. For it is not you who have offended God, but he; you will do well to put up with it. Recall how Christ was content to be crucified – and yet shed tears over those who did it. That must be your disposition also: the more you are wronged, the more you must lament for the wrongdoers. For it is we who profit from this – and greatly – but not they.

Or is it that you have received injury from those you treated kindly? For that very reason you should wail and lament over them, being content that therein you resemble the Lord himself, who makes the sun to rise on the unjust as also on the just. If it seems beyond you so to imitate God, be assured otherwise: it is not a difficult task to a man of vigilance. But if it still seems a greater burden than you can bear, think of others we could mention: Joseph, who endured so much from his brethren and was kind to them nevertheless; Moses, praying for those who had vexed him so much; the blessed Paul, whose sufferings were beyond his reckoning, and yet he would still have been anathema on account of those who had caused them; or Stephen, praying for the forgiveness of his very malefactors, even as they stoned him. With all that in mind, cast off your anger so that God may forgive you all your transgressions, by the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be glory, power, honour, now and always, forever and ever. Amen.

St John Chrysostom, Hom. LXI in Matth. (Bareille XII, 506-509); Word in Season VIII.

Tuesday of the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON WORKS AND ALMSGIVING BY ST CYPRIAN OF CARTHAGE

Truly I tell you, that whatever you did for one of the least of these my brothers or sisters, you did for me. What greater command could Christ have given us? How could he have given us greater incitement toward works of our own mercy and justice, than by saying that anything we gave to the poor and needy we gave to him, and that we offended him if we gave them nothing? It was in the hope that one who is unmoved by the thought of his brother in the Church would at least be moved at the thought of Christ, and one who has no consideration for the distress and poverty of his fellow servant would at least have consideration for the Lord in the person of the one he despises.

And therefore, dearest brothers, you who are prepared to fear the Lord, and have already rejected and spurned the world, raised your minds to celestial and divine matters, and made yourselves deserving through complete faith, a devout mind, and continuous good works, let us offer our worship to God. Let us give Christ earthly clothes to receive celestial ones; let us give him earthly food and drink, to join Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the heavenly feast. Let us sow abundantly so that our harvest will not be small. Let us look to our eternal safety and well-being while there is time, as the Apostle Paul urges us to do, saying: Therefore while we have time let us do whatever is for the good of all, but especially for the members of the faith. But let us not grow weary of doing good; for in its own time we shall reap our reward.

And the glory and the joy of those who do good works, dearest brothers, will be very great, when the Lord begins to examine his people, and gives us the promised rewards for our merits and our good works, celestial rewards for earthly efforts, eternal for temporal, great for small. He will offer us to the Father to whom he has returned us by his own sanctification, and give us the eternity and immortality to which he returned us by his life-giving blood. He will bring us back to paradise again, and true to his promise he will open the kingdom of heaven to us!

To win this palm for good works, let us enter the contest gladly and promptly, and all run in the fight for justice, with God and Christ as spectators. And when we are already well ahead of the world, let no worldly desires slow us down. If the day of retribution or of persecution falls upon us while we are running freely and swiftly in this context of good works, the Lord will in no way fail to reward us for our merits. In time of peace he will give the victorious a white crown for their good works; in time of persecution it will be a double purple one for their suffering.

St Cyprian, De opera et eleemosynis, 23-24, 26 (PL 4:643-646); Word in Season VIII.

Wednesday of the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CHRISTIAN WAY OF LIFE BY ST GREGORY OF NYSSA

In speaking about the different virtues, we cannot say that one is better than the rest, or that we should pursue them in order of merit. For in fact they are of equal importance with one another, and linked together they lead those who practice them to the height of perfection. Sincerity leads to obedience, obedience in turn to faith, and faith to hope, hope to righteousness, righteousness to service, and service to humility. From humility we learn gentleness which leads to joy, as joy leads to love, and love to prayer. Thus bound to one another and binding their zealous follower, the virtues lead him to the very height of his desires, just as the various forms of wickedness lead those attached to them down the opposite way to the utmost depths of evil.

But we must above all devote ourselves to prayer; for prayer is like a choir-leader in the choir of virtues, by means of which we ask God for the virtues we still lack. Devotion to prayer unites the Christian to God in the communion of a mystic sanctity, in a spiritual possession and a disposition of the soul that no words can describe. With the Spirit then to guide and help him, his love for the Lord like a bright flame, he prays unceasingly in ardent desire, always burning with love for the divine good and refreshing his soul with renewed zeal. As Scripture says: Those who eat me will hunger for more, and those who drink me will thirst for more; and elsewhere: You have filled my heart with gladness; so too the Lord says: The kingdom of heaven is within you.

By the kingdom within us he certainly means that joy which the Spirit instils into our souls from above, as an image and a pledge, reflecting the eternal joy which the souls of the faithful possess in the life to come. So the Lord comforts us in all our afflictions through the working of the Spirit, to keep us safe and to grant us a share of spiritual gifts and of his own special grace. He comforts us in all our troubles, says the Apostle, so that we may be able to comfort others in their distress. And the psalmist says: My whole being cries out with joy to the living God; and: My soul is richly feasted, indicating in all such symbolic sayings the joy and comfort that come from the Spirit.

St Gregory of Nyssa, The Christian Way of Life, II (Jaeger VIII, 77-79); Word in Season VIII.

Thursday of the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LETTERS OF ST JEROME

Scripture says: I shall destroy the wisdom of the wise, and condemn the intelligence of the intelligent. True wisdom will destroy the false; and although preaching about the cross is foolishness, yet Paul speaks wisdom among the mature. Not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, who pass away; but he speaks the wisdom of God which was hidden in a mystery, and which God predestined from the beginning. The wisdom of God is Christ. For Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. This wisdom was hidden in a mystery, in which all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge were hidden, and he who was hidden in the mystery was predestined from the beginning. He was predestined and prefigured in the Law and the Prophets. That is why the Prophets were also called seers: for they saw him whom the rest did not see. Abraham saw his day and rejoiced. The heavens were opened to Ezekiel on behalf of a sinful people. Open my eyes, said David, so that 1 may gaze at the wonders of your law. For the law is spiritual and needs to be revealed to be understood, and so that we may contemplate the glory of God when his face is revealed.

In the Apocalypse there is shown a book sealed with seven seals. If you give it to a literate man to read, he will tell you: I cannot, because it is sealed. How many people today think they are literate, and are in possession of a sealed book which they cannot open unless he unlocks it who holds the key of David, and when he opens it no one can shut it, and when he shuts it no one can open it.

In the Acts of the Apostles there is a holy eunuch who was reading Isaiah, and when Philip asked him: Do you really understand what you are reading? he answered: How can I without a teacher? To speak of myself for a moment, I am neither holier nor more zealous than that eunuch, who came to the temple from Ethiopia, that is, from the ends of the earth, setting out from the royal palace. He loved the law and divine knowledge so much that even while sitting in his chariot he read the sacred writings. And yet all the time that he was holding the book, ruminating on the Lord's words, reading them fluently and out loud, he did not know whom he was unwittingly revering in the book. Then Philip came and showed him Jesus, who lay enclosed in the text in secret. The marvellous power of a teacher! In that same hour the eunuch believed, was baptized, was faithful and holy, and turned from a pupil into a master.

I have touched briefly on these matters, to make you understand that you cannot enter upon the holy Scriptures without someone to go before you and show you the way. I beg you, dearest brother, to live in the midst of these things, meditate on them, know nothing else, look for nothing – does that not seem to you to be a dwelling-place in the heavenly kingdom already here on earth?

St Jerome, Ep. LIII ad Paulinum (PL 22:544-549); Word in Season VIII.

Friday of the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 144 BY ST AUGUSTINE

The same God who has put everything in order is the God who made it. To some, he has given awareness and understanding and immortality, as he did to the angels; to others, awareness and understanding and mortality, as to us humans; to yet others, he gave bodily sense but not understanding nor immortality, like the beasts of the field; and to yet others still, neither awareness nor understanding nor immortality, like the plants, the trees, like stones. But even these, on their level, cannot fall short: so he has ordained creation at each step, from earth to sky, from visible to invisible, from mortal to immortal. This interweaving of creation, this most well-proportioned beauty and elegance, sealing the heights from the depths, plumbing the depths from the heights, never breaking off or going short indeed, yet ever harmonising the variety. Everything there is gives praise to God.

And yet, what do we mean when we say that? It really means this: when you consider it all and see how beautiful it all is, in so doing you yourself are praising God in it, or through it. For the speechless earth has yet a voice of its own, its eloquent beauty. Take stock of its beauty, its abundance and strength, the way the seed germinates, so much commonly being brought forth that never was planted. You examine it all, marvelling as you do so at the great strength, the great beauty of it, the potency you find in it, realising that all this could not have come of itself. And it strikes you, therefore, that it could only have got there from the Creator. What you have found there is the voice, just alluded to: this manifestation presenting itself in praise of the Creator. Does not the thought of all the beauty there is in the world lead you on to the point where the very beauty itself seems to proclaim with one voice: It was not I who made me, who put me here, but God?

Observe, then, the beauty of the world: the earth, the sea, the air, the sky, the stars! Does not all this overawe the beholder? Does not the beauty itself strike the gaze as if to suggest that naught else could be devised more beautiful? And yet, here amidst all this beauty and elegance well nigh unutterable, you have worms and mice and reptiles for company. How beautiful, then, that kingdom which you share but with the angels! It was little indeed to sing the praises of visual elegance, the beauty we can see. All that would apply to anything there is, in this world, the earth resplendent with forest and glade, or the sky aflame with celestial light. But those words, the great beauty of your kingdom, tell us of a sight which we have not seen and yet believe; not having seen, yet desire because we believe, bearing all things in the meantime for that desire. That is the measure of a beauty (one which does not fade): may it be loved before it can be seen, so that once seen it may be securely possessed.

St Augustine, Enarr. In Ps. 144, 13.15 (CCL 40:2098-2100); Word in Season VIII.

Saturday of the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 90 BY ST AUGUSTINE

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the protection of the Almighty. I commend these lines to you, so that none may place their hope in themselves, but put all their hope in him in whom our strength lies. We conquer by virtue of his shelter, not of our own presumption. Therefore the Almighty protects us if we say the next words to the Lord: He will say to the Lord: You are my helper and my refuge, my God, in whom 1 shall trust; for he will save me from the hunter’s trap and from the harsh word. I emphasise this; for in their fear of the harsh word many people fall into the hunter’s trap.

You are taunted for being a Christian, and are sorry you became a Christian, and because of a harsh word you fall into the devil’s trap. You are even taunted for living a better life than most Christians, and because you are afraid of the taunters and their harsh words you fall into the devil’s snares, so as not to be wheat on the threshing-floor but to follow the chaff. But one who trusts in God is saved from the hunter’s trap and the harsh word.

But how does God protect you? He will cover you between his shoulders; that is, he will hold you to his heart, to protect you with his wings; provided only that you acknowledge your weakness, so that you flee like a weak little chicken under the wings of your mother, to avoid being snatched away by the kite. For the powers of the air, the devil and his angels, are kites; they are bent on seizing our weakness. Let us flee under the wings of our mother Wisdom, for even Wisdom herself became weak for our sake; for the Word became flesh. Just as the hen becomes weak with her chickens, to protect them with her wings, so our Lord Jesus Christ, who, since he was in the form of God, did not think equality with God was something to be seized, to become weak with us and protect us with his wings, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in human likeness and found in human appearance. And you will find refuge under his wings.

St Augustine, Enarr. In Ps. 90, II.2 (CCL 39:1267); Word in Season VIII.

Season of the Year | Week 30

Sunday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH IN THE MODERN WORLD OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

Though made of body and soul, man is one. Through his bodily composition he gathers to himself the elements of the material world; thus they reach their crown through him and through him raise their voice in free praise of the Creator. For this reason man is not allowed to despise his bodily life; rather, he is obliged to regard his body as good and honourable since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day. Nevertheless, wounded by sin, man experiences rebellious stirrings in his body. But the very dignity of man postulates that man glorify God in his body and forbid it to serve the evil inclinations of his heart.

Now, man is not wrong when he regards himself as superior to bodily concerns, and as more than a speck of nature or a nameless constituent of the city of man. For by his interior qualities he outstrips the whole sum of mere things. He plunges into the depths of reality whenever he enters into his own heart; God, who probes the heart awaits him there; there he discerns his proper destiny beneath the eyes of God. Thus, when he recognises in himself a spiritual and immortal soul, he is not being mocked by a fantasy born only of physical or social influences, but is rather laying hold of the proper truth of the matter.

It is in the face of death that the riddle of human existence grows most acute. Not only is man tormented by pain and by the advancing deterioration of his body, but even more so by a dread of perpetual extinction. He rightly follows the intuition of his heart when he abhors and repudiates the utter ruin and total disappearance of his own person. He rebels against death because he bears in himself an eternal seed which cannot be reduced to sheer matter. All the endeavours of technology, though useful in the extreme, cannot calm his anxiety, for prolongation of biological life is unable to satisfy that desire for higher life which is inescapably lodged in his breast.

Although the mystery of death utterly beggars the imagination, the Church has been taught by divine revelation and firmly teaches that man has been created by God for a blissful purpose beyond the reach of earthly misery. In addition, that bodily death from which man would have been immune had he not sinned will be vanquished, according to the Christian faith, when man who was ruined by his own doing is restored to wholeness by an almighty and merciful Saviour. For God has called man and still calls him so that with his entire being he might be joined to him in an endless sharing of a divine life beyond all corruption. Christ won this victory when he rose to life, for by his death he freed man from death.

Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes 14-15, 18 (abridged).

Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON JOHN BY ST AUGUSTINE

Scripture says that death was not God’s doing, and that he takes no pleasure in the destruction of the living. To be – for this he created everything. How then does it continue? It was through the devil’s envy that death entered the world. The devil could not force upon man the death he held before his eyes; he had no power to determine the human will. All he had was his own cunning and persuasive skills. Without your consent, the devil could have done nothing to harm you; it was that consent which brought death upon you. Though born mortal of mortal flesh, it was from an immortal state that we were brought to mortality. Since Adam all human beings have been subject to death. Even Jesus, Son of God, Word of God through whom all things were made, the only Son equal to the Father, was made subject to death; for the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Because he accepted death, death itself was hung on the cross, while humankind was freed from death.

What took place symbolically in times of old was recalled by the Lord when he said: As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. A great mystery is here, as those who have read the Scriptures know. When the Israelites were in the desert, they were struck down by bites they received from serpents, and death claimed countless victims. This was the stroke of God, scourging and correcting them for their instruction. A great mystery, prefiguring something yet to come, was thus revealed, as the Lord himself testifies in this passage, ensuring that it should bear no interpretation other than the one he, the Truth, gives about himself. For the Lord had bidden Moses to fashion a bronze serpent, lift it up on a pole in the desert, and tell the Israelites that all who were bitten by a serpent should fix their eyes on the serpent raised up on the pole. What does this serpent lifted on high signify? The Lord’s death on the cross. Death came into being through a serpent, and so the figure of a serpent is its symbol. But whereas the serpent's bite was deadly, our Lord’s death is life-giving. Is not Christ life itself? And yet Christ died. But in the death of Christ, it was death that met its end: life by dying slew death, the fullness of life swallowed up death, in the body of Christ death was destroyed. This is what we shall proclaim at the resurrection when we sing in triumph, O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? But in the meantime, to find healing for our sins, let us fix our eyes on Christ crucified.

St Augustine, Tract. In Joh. 12, 10-11 (CCL 36:126-127); Word in Season VIII.

Tuesday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE ORTHODOX FAITH BY ST JOHN OF DAMASCUS

The saints must be honoured as friends of Christ and children and heirs of God, as John the Theologian and Evangelist says: But as many as received him, he gave them the power to be made the sons of God. Furthermore, if the Creator and Lord of all is called both King of kings and Lord of lords and God of gods, then most certainly the saints, too, are both gods and lords and kings. However, I say that they are gods, lords, and kings not by nature, but because they have ruled over and dominated sufferings, and because they have kept undebased the likeness of the divine image to which they were made – for the image of the king is also called a king, and, finally, because they have really been united to God and receiving him as a dweller within themselves have through association with him become by grace what he is by nature. How, then, should these not be honoured to have been accounted servants, friends, and sons of God? For the honour shown the more sensible of one’s fellow servants gives proof of one’s love for the common Master.

These are become repositories and pure dwelling places of God, for I will dwell in them and walk among them, says God, and I will be their God. So, indeed, sacred Scripture says that the souls of the just are in the hand of God: and death shall not touch them. For the death of the saints is rather sleep than death, since they have laboured unto eternity and shall live unto the end’, and ‘precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. What then is more precious than to be in the hand of God? For God is life and light, and they that are in the hand of God abide in life and light.

Moreover, because through their mind God has also dwelt in their bodies, the Apostle says: Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you? Now the Lord is in the Spirit; and again: If any man violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy. How, then, should they not be honoured, who are the living temples of God, the living tabernacles of God. These in life openly took their stand with God.

In the relics of the saints the Lord Christ has provided us with saving fountains which in many ways pour out benefactions and gush with fragrant ointment. And let no one disbelieve. For, if by the will of God water poured out of the precipitous living rock in the desert, and for the thirsty Sampson from the jawbone of an ass, is it unbelievable that fragrant ointment should flow from the relics of the martyrs? Certainly not, at least for such as know the power of God and the honour which the saints have from him.

St John of Damascus, The Orthodox Faith 4.15; FoC 37 (1958) tr. Chase.

Wednesday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 24 BY ST AUGUSTINE

Be my helper, do not abandon me; and do not despise me, God, my Saviour. For you help those you have created; you do not forsake them.

For my father and my mother have abandoned me. The psalmist made himself God’s child, he made God his father and God his mother. God is his father because he created him, because he calls, commands, and directs him; God is his mother because she cherishes, feeds, takes care of him, and keeps him safe. My father and my mother have abandoned me; but the Lord has taken me to himself, both to direct and nourish him. Mortal parents produce children, their children succeed them, mortal from mortal; and they were born to succeed them so that their parents might pass away. He who has created me will not pass away, nor shall I leave him. My father and my mother have abandoned me; but the Lord has taken me to himself. Even apart from those two parents to whom we owe our birth in the flesh, a male father and a female mother, Adam and Eve as it were, apart from those two parents we have another father and another mother on earth, or rather we have had. Our worldly father is the devil, and he was our father when we were unbelievers; for it was to unbelievers that the Lord said: Your father is the devil.

If he who is at work in the children of unbelief is the father of all the godless, who is their mother? It is a city called Babylon; that city is a community of all the lost from east to west; it has an earthly kingdom. There is a city like this one, called a republic, which you now see growing old and declining; this was our first mother, here we were born. We know a different father, God; we have left the devil. For does he ever dare to come near those whom he who surpasses all things has taken to himself? We know a different mother, the heavenly Jerusalem, which is the holy Church, part of which sojourns on earth; we have left Babylon. My father and my mother have abandoned me. They have nothing now to give me; for even when they seemed to give me a gift, it was yours, and I ascribed it to them.

For who, even in this world, gives us anything, if not God? Or who takes anything away from us, without the command or permission of him who gave it? So let our father and our mother abandon us, let the devil and the city of Babylon abandon us; let the Lord take us to himself, to comfort us with temporal things and bless us with eternal ones. For my father and my mother have abandoned me; but the Lord has taken me to himself.

St Augustine, Enarr. In Ps. 24, II, 17-19 (CCL 38:164-165); Word in Season VIII.

Thursday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

Your Saviour took flesh to himself, your Mediator took flesh to himself, and by taking flesh he took the Church to himself. He was the first to make a libation, as coming from the head, of what he would offer to God, a high priest for ever, and the propitiation for our sins. The Word took human nature to himself, and the two became one, as it is written, They shall be two in one flesh. This is a great sacrament, he says, but I mean in Christ and in the Church. The bridal chamber of this marriage was the womb of the virgin. And he, like a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, exulted like a giant to run the way. A giant because strong, overcoming weakness with weakness, annihilating death with death.

He was running the way himself in order to fulfil what had been foretold about him: He drinks from the torrent on the way; therefore he shall lift up the head. The torrent, you see, is this world. Waters which flow as a result of sudden storms or winter floods are called torrents – which are, of course, going to stop flowing just as quickly. That’s what all these affairs of time are like – a transient torrent, soon going to cease.

Today, New Year’s Day, those who are enjoying the excesses and vanities of the world don’t see that they are being swept along by the rushing force of the torrent. Let them summon back, if they can, this same day last year; let them at least call back yesterday. They don’t see that their enjoyments too pass like a torrent, so that they will find themselves saying later on, These are the ones whom at one time we held in derision and in the likeness of a reproach. We, fools that we were, reckoned their life madness and their end without honour. Now they are counted among the sons of God, and their lot is among the saints! So we strayed from the way of truth, and the light of justice did not shine on us, and the sun did not rise for us.

Which sun? Not this visible one, surely? This one rises for them daily. It is about this one, after all, that the Lord says, Who makes his sun rise up on the good and the bad. There is another sun who made this one, invisible and intelligible, the sun of justice, about which it says in another place, The sun of justice has risen for me. This is the sun that did not rise for them. And listen to their lament: What use to us was pride, and what did the boastfulness of riches confer upon us? All those things have passed like a shadow. It has all flowed away already like that torrent; but yet that other one who was born, who suffered, was crucified, was buried, has risen again. He drinks from this torrent on the way; that is why he has lifted up the head, which is to say, himself.

St Augustine, Sermo 198.43; WSA (1997) tr. Hill.

Friday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE DIVINE NAMES BY DENYS THE AREOPAGITE

Let us praise the good and eternal life as also wise and as absolute wisdom, or rather as essential to all wisdom, and surpassing all wisdom and understanding. For God is not only supremely full of wisdom, and his understanding is infinite, but he transcends all reason, mind, and wisdom. And this was marvellously understood by that truly holy man, that bright sun shared in common by ourselves and our teacher, who said: God’s foolishness is wiser than men. Not only because every human thought is astray compared with the firmness and constancy of the perfect thoughts of God, but because theologians are accustomed to speak of the nature of God in a contrary sense, in terms of privation. So they describe all-shining light as invisible; they call him who is praised for many qualities and under many names indescribable and not to be named; and they call him who is present to all and can be found by all infinite and unsearchable. Even in his time the holy Apostle is said to have praised the foolishness of God in the same way, making what seems to be unexpected and out of place in this a symbol of the ineffable truth which is beyond all understanding.

But, as I have said elsewhere, if in our familiar fashion we light on matters far above us, gripped by commonplace feelings and viewing the divine from our own angle, we cannot fail to go astray, since we pursue divine and ineffable reason with our eyes fixed on the world of appearances. We must recognise that our mind has the power to think, which enables it to examine mental objects, but the union by which it is united to what transcends it surpasses the nature of the human mind. Therefore, in accordance with this, we must think of God not in our own way but by abandoning ourselves completely and becoming wholly attached to God. It is better to belong to God than to ourselves, for knowledge of God can only be given to those who are with God.

So let us praise transcendentally this irrational, mindless, and foolish wisdom, declaring it to be the origin of all mind, reason, wisdom, and understanding, and that all counsel is in its power, all knowledge and understanding come from it, and that in it are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. For also in accordance with what has been said before, the supremely wise and all-wise origin is even the foundation of absolute wisdom, both universal and singular.

Denys the Areopagite, The Divine Names (PG 3:865-868); Word in Season VIII.

Saturday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE DIALOGUES OF ANSELM OF HAVELBERG

Let us consider how God’s Church is one in itself and by its own nature, and how it is manifold by the nature of its children, whom it has generated and continues to generate in different ways and ages, and has instructed and continues to instruct by different laws and institutions, from the descendants of righteous Abel to the last of the chosen. For in the words of the Bridegroom: My dove is one; she is her mother’s only child, her mother’s darling. The Church is one, with one faith, one love; one of one without stain of wicked faithlessness or wrinkly of perverse duplicity; and there is one generation of the good, of which it is written: The generation of the good will be blessed. And the body of the Church is one, which is given life and is ruled and governed by the Holy Spirit, to which the Holy Spirit is united, manifold, subtle, mobile, eloquent, undefiled, true, kind, loving the good, sagacious, whom nothing prevents from doing good, compassionate, gracious, steadfast, untroubled, all-powerful, taking care of everything, and permeating every spirit, wise and pure.

In other words, as the Apostle explains: In the Holy Spirit there are varieties of gifts, but the Spirit is the same. And: to each the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one, that is, words of wisdom are given by the Spirit; to another, words of learning according to the same Spirit; to one, faith by the same Spirit; to another, prophecy; to one the ability to distinguish between spirits; to another various kinds of language; to yet another the interpretation of languages. So all these gifts originate from one and the same Spirit, allotting them to each individually at will.

Thus it is manifestly clear that the one body of the Church is given life by the one Holy Spirit, which is both single in itself and manifold in the multiform distribution of its gifts. Yes, this body of the Church, given life by the Holy Spirit, divided and separated through the diversity of its members in different times and ages, began with the righteous Abel and will end with the last of the chosen, ever one with one faith, but distinguished by the manifold variety of its life.

Anselm of Havelberg, Dialogues 1, 2 (SC 118:41-44); Word in Season VIII.

Season of the Year | Week 31

Sunday of the Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A HOMILY BY ABBOT WILLIAM OF SAINT-THIERRY

It is to my crucified one that I turn. His cross is my glory: its mark is on my brow; it gives joy to my mind, direction to my life, love even for death itself. May they not despise me for this, O Lord, they who are worthy to behold you, seated as you are on your throne, the exaltation of your godhead, filling all the earth with your majesty. The mysteries of your dealings with men here and now fill the temple of every mind, great and small. May your holy angels have the honour that is their due in heaven: but may they sometimes also share their grace and favours with us here on earth. For he loves us to make progress in our lives: and their blessed perfection is sweet to him. As the Apostle says: God’s many-splendoured wisdom has been manifested to principalities and powers in heaven through his dealings with the Church. Wherefore may they pardon us, Lord, even if your love should sometimes so captivate us that we desire to see, with them, what with them we already love: with a full heart we felicitate them, as they behold what we are not yet worthy to behold.

May they blissfully contemplate your divine majesty residing in your eternal wisdom: those things to be, seen before this our mortal wayfaring and after it, everything that is, past and future, enfolding it all within his eternal present: it reaches in its power and strength from one extremity to another. But our temporal passage, belonging to your dealings with men as a whole, he has strewn with his charity, disposing all things in sweetness, for the sake of the daughters of Jerusalem, the devout but as yet infirm souls. They who have not thus far their elevated gaze fixed on contemplating the sublime would fain undergo hardship for your servants and be transformed so as to belong among their fellows. Among these, O Lord, may my spirit some day be taught to adore you, spirit as you are, in spirit and in truth, flesh no longer desiring what is contrary to the spirit, nor yet holding it back. But now that for the moment you are kept from boldly taking possession of what is to be yours, make a proper disposition of what is his, with what grace and harmony you best can, as befits him, the true owner. I have not yet risen above the rough-hewn figures of my earthly imagination: but may you indulge and be gracious to my feeble spirit, as it expresses its true nature in letting its fancy play on your more humble creatures. Behold! the meagre enfolding the newly born, the holy child being adored; the footprints of the crucified one being licked, as he hangs on the cross; his feet being held and kissed now that he is risen; the hand, put in the place where the nails went; and then the exclamation – My Lord and my God!

William of Saint-Thierry, Meditativae orationes X (PL 180:235); Word in Season VIII.

Monday of the Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH IN THE MODERN WORLD OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of him who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in him all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown.

He who is the image of the invisible God, is himself the perfect man. To the sons of Adam he restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward. Since human nature as he assumed it was not annulled, by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect, too. For by his Incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.

As an innocent lamb he merited life for us by the free shedding of his own blood. In him God reconciled us to himself and among ourselves; from bondage to the devil and sin he delivered us, so that each one of us can say with the Apostle: The Son of God loved me and gave himself up for me. By suffering for us he not only provided us with an example for our imitation, he blazed a trail, and if we follow it, life and death are made holy and take on a new meaning.

The Christian man, conformed to the likeness of that Son who is the firstborn of many brothers, received the first-fruits of the Spirit by which he becomes capable of discharging the new law of love. Through this Spirit, who is the pledge of our inheritance, the whole man is renewed from within, even to the achievement of the redemption of the body: If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the death dwells in you, then he who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also bring to life your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who dwells in you. Pressing upon the Christian, to be sure, are the need and the duty to battle against evil through manifold tribulations and even to suffer death. But, linked with the Paschal Mystery and patterned on the dying Christ, he will hasten forward to resurrection in the strength which comes from hope.

All this holds true not only for Christians, but for all men of good will in whose hearts grace works in an unseen way. For, since Christ died for all men, and since the ultimate vocation of man is in fact one and divine, we ought to believe that the Holy Spirit in a manner known only to God offers to every man the possibility of being associated with this Paschal Mystery.

Such is the mystery of man, and it is a great one, as seen by believers in the light of Christian revelation. Through Christ and in Christ, the riddles of sorrow and death grow meaningful. Apart from his Gospel, they overwhelm us. Christ has risen, destroying death by his death; he has lavished life upon us so that, as sons in the Son, we can cry out in the Spirit: Abba, Father.

Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes 22.

Tuesday of the Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON WISDOM BY BLESSED RABANUS MAURUS

God calls the Israelites an upright people, a race without reproach, descended from the seed of the patriarchs and ever a worshipper of the one true God, whether oppressed by the Egyptians and other nations, or freed from them by the leadership of Moses and Aaron; and raised aloft by the wonders of God, at the crossing of the Red Sea, a cloud covering them by day and a pillar of fire shining over them by night; and other miracles abundantly worked for them in the desert besides. The Lord mysteriously frees his chosen ones from the hands of their persecutors, terrifying their enemies by a blinding flash of miracles. He gives his servants wisdom of a kind not to be resisted or gainsaid by any adversary. Wherefore they stand fearless in the presence of the kings and potentates of this world, speaking the word of God with confidence; and through the sufferings of martyrs they attain to the rewards of the kingdom of heaven, where they sing praises forever to their king and saviour.

His wisdom has opened the mouths of the dumb and made eloquent tongues of babes. Clear it is that, apart from God’s gift of wisdom, the mind of man cannot think anything out aright, or speak to any great purpose. Wherefore from him alone is sound understanding to be sought, or the faculty of talking good sense; for from him, through him, and in him are all things.

He entrusted their concerns to the hands of his holy Prophet. They made their journey through the desert places where no man dwelt; and in the secret places did they find their lodging. The ancient people set out from Egypt led by Moses and went through the desert, pitching their tents in uninhabitable places, as the Pentateuch relates. So also nowadays the people follow – the Christians follow, that is to say – the lead of the prophecy, to make their way in the desert of this world, whereby they are to reach their homeland, in the heavenly kingdom, where Christ reigns. This is what Saint Peter the Apostle revealed, when he said: We have a surer prophetic utterance which you would do well to heed, as it were a lantern lit in a dark place till the day shall dawn and the morning star rise in your hearts.

Bd Rabanus Maurus, Comm. In Lib. Sapientiae, 2.7 (PL 109:718-719); Word in Season VIII.

Wednesday of the Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A HOMILY BY SEVERIAN OF GABALA

Creation, in its entirety and in its arrangement, proclaims the merciful love of God. For there is no visible reality that does not proclaim his goodness: heaven, earth, and sea, the visible world and the invisible universe. Everything owes its becoming, its being, and its conservation to the mercy of God. The heavens were produced by God’s goodness and not for his advantage. But before the heavens and before those endless centuries that had no beginning, God exists and existed. The word ‘existed’ must be understood as transcending every moment conceived by thought. The heavens, therefore, were not created for God’s use but are a work of his goodness. Thus the heavens proclaim not God’s neediness but his glory.

The heavens were undoubtedly created for the glory of God, but they were also created for our use, in order that the sun, along with the moon and stars, might give us its brightness. God did not need the sun; the creator of light had no need of a sensible light. For he, who alone is immortal, dwells in light inaccessible.

Everything, then, has been created both for God’s glory and for our advantage: the sun to give us light, the clouds to bring us rain, the earth for its abundant fruits, the sea for the convenience of trade. Everything is thus at the service of human beings or, rather, at the service of the images of God which human beings are. Creation does not honour the earthly vessel but reveres the heavenly image in us.

Everything, then, has been created not to meet a divine need but for our use and in order that we may glorify the goodness of God. Thus the wisdom of God bears witness to the divine mercy, saying: You have mercy on all, Lord, because you can do all things. In the beginning, it was God's love that created us, and now it is God’s goodness that governs us. If God were inspired by hatred, God would not have made the world; if God had hated human beings, God would not have created them; if God hated them now, God would not govern them by his providence. This is why Scripture says: you do not hate anything that you have made. If you had hated anything, you would not have made it.

Severian of Gabala, Homily: Revue des Études Byzantines 25 (1967) 230-232; Word in Season VIII.

Thursday of the Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE DIVINE NAMES BY DENYS THE AREOPAGITE

We must ask how we can know God, since he cannot be understood by our minds or perceived by our senses, and belongs in no way to the category of existent things. Perhaps it is true to say, then, that we do not know God from his own nature (for this is unknown and surpasses all our powers of thought and perception); but from the regulation of all existent things, since this emanates from himself and contains images and likenesses of the patterns of his own divine reality. Thus step by step to the best of our ability we rise to what surpasses all in the negation of all things and the supremacy over all things, and by the cause of all things.

Therefore God is known both in everything and apart from everything; and God is known through knowledge and through ignorance, and although there is thought and speech of him, and there is knowledge, contact, sense, opinion, imagination, naming and all the rest, he is also neither thought nor spoken of or named; nor is he anything existent, or known in anything existent; but he is all in all, and nothing in nothing, and known by all things to all people, and by nothing to no one; for indeed we say this rightly about God, and he is praised because of all existent things and the resemblance of all to their creator.

And again the most divine knowledge of God is that which is known through ignorance, by a union which transcends the mind, when the mind withdraws from all existent things and then lets go even of itself, and is made one with rays of transcendent light, where it is illuminated in the unfathomable depth of wisdom.

Yet, as I said, wisdom must also be known from all things; for according to Scripture wisdom is productive of all things and constantly joining all, and is the cause of the indestructible union and order of all things, and eternally uniting the ends of earlier things to the beginnings of later, and making a single beautiful concord and harmony of the whole.

Denys the Areopagite, The Divine Names (PG 3:867-872); Word in Season VIII.

Friday of the Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON JOHN BY ST AUGUSTINE

This is the bread which comes down from heaven. Manna signified this bread; the altar of God signified this bread. Those were mysteries; in signs they are different, in the thing which is signified they are alike. Hear the Apostle: He says, For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses, into the cloud and in the sea. And all ate the same spiritual food. The same spiritual food, of course; for corporeally it was another thing, because they ate manna, we something else, but they ate the spiritual food which we eat. But our fathers, not those men’s fathers, those to whom we are like, not those to whom they were like.

I am the living bread, who have come down from heaven. Living for the reason that I have come down from heaven. The manna also came down from heaven; but the manna was shadow, he is truth. If anyone eat of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world. When would flesh comprehend flesh – that which he said was bread? It is called flesh, that which flesh does not comprehend; and flesh does not comprehend it, therefore, all the more because it is called flesh. For they were horrified at this; they said that this was too much for them, they thought this could not be. It is my flesh, he said, for the life of the world. The faithful know the body of Christ if they should not neglect to be the body of Christ. Let them become the body of Christ, if they want to live from the Spirit of Christ. No thing lives from the Spirit of Christ except the body of Christ.

O mystery of true faith! O sign of unity! O bond of love! He who wishes to live has the place to live, has the means to live. Let him approach, let him believe, let him be embodied, that he may be given life. Let him not shrink back from the coalition of members, let him not be a rotten limb which deserves to be cut off, let him not be a deformed one on account of which there is embarrassment. Let him be a beautiful limb, let him be a fitting one, let him be a healthy one, let him adhere to the body, let him live for God from God. Let him now labour on earth that afterwards he may reign in heaven.

St Augustine, Tract. In Joh. 26.12; FoC 79 (1988) tr. Rettig.

Saturday of the Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON CONTEMPLATING GOD BY BLESSED WILLIAM OF SAINT-THIERRY

How is it we are saved by you, O Lord, from whom salvation comes and whose blessing is upon your people, if it is not to receive from you the gift of loving you and being loved by you? That, Lord, is why you willed that the Son of your right hand, the man whom you made strong for your own self, should be called Jesus, that is to say, Saviour, for he will save his people from their sins. There is no other in whom is salvation except him who taught us to love himself when he first loved us, even to death on the cross. By loving us and holding us so dear he stirred us up to love himself, who first had loved us to the end. This is the righteousness of the sons of men: ‘Love me, for I love you.’ One seldom meets a person who can say: ‘I love you, in order that you may love me!’ But, as the servant of your love proclaims and preaches, you who first loved us did this, precisely this. And that was not because you needed to be loved by us, but because we could not be what you created as to be, except by loving you.

Having then in many ways and on various occasions spoken to the fathers by the Prophets, now in these last days you have spoken to us in the Son, your Word, by whom the heavens were established, and all the power of them by the breath of his mouth. For you to speak thus in your Son was an open declaration, a ‘setting in the sun’, as it were, of how much and in what sort of way you loved us, in that you spared not your own Son, but delivered him up for us all. Yes, and he himself loved us and gave himself for us.

This, Lord, is your word to us this is your all-powerful message: he who, while all things kept silence (that is, were in the depths of error), came from the royal throne, the stern opponent of error and the gentle Apostle of love. And everything he did and everything he said on earth, even the insults, the spitting, the buffeting, the cross and the grave, all that was nothing but yourself speaking in the Son, appealing to us by your love, and stirring up our love for you.

For you, O God, our souls’ Creator, knew that this affection cannot be forced in the souls of the sons of men, but has to be evoked. And this is for the obvious reason that there is no freedom where there is compulsion, and, where freedom is lacking, so too is righteousness. But you, O righteous Lord, you who wish to save us, you never save or condemn anyone otherwise than justly. You are both the author of our judgement and the advocate of our cause. Sitting upon your throne and judging righteous judgement, you judge the righteousness that you yourself have made. Thus will every mouth be shut, and the whole world be made subject to God, when you have pity on him on whom you will have pity, and extend mercy to him to whom you will be merciful. We could not with justice have been saved, had we not loved you, nor could we have loved you, save by your gift.

Bd William of Saint-Thierry, On Contemplating God, 10; CF 3 (1970) tr. Sr Penelope.

Season of the Year | Week 32

Sunday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY THE VENERABLE JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

This world is a scene of conflict between good and evil. The evil not only avoids, but persecutes the good; the good cannot conquer, except by suffering. Good men seem to fail; their cause triumphs, but their own overthrow is the price paid for the success of their cause. When was it that this conflict, and this character and issue of it, have not been fulfilled? So it was in the beginning.

And from the way in which St Paul speaks on the subject we may infer that it is ever so to be: All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution: or, as he says, after referring to the history of Isaac and Ishmael, As then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now: and indeed we see this fulfilled in its measure before our eyes even at this day. Hence our Saviour, to console all who suffer for his sake, graciously says, Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

In many, very many ways you may be called upon to bear the ill-usage of the world, or to withstand its attempts to draw you from God; but you must be firm, and you must not be surprised that they should be made. You must consider that it is your very calling to bear and to withstand. This is what you offer to God, as a sort of return for his great mercies to you. Did not Christ go through much more for you than you can possibly be called upon to undergo for him? Did he bear the bitter cross who was sinless, and do you, who are at best so sinful, scruple to bear such poor trials and petty inconveniences?

When we are brought into temptation of any kind, we should lift up our hearts to God. We should say to him, ‘Good Lord, deliver us.’ Our Lord, when he was going away, promised to his disciples a comforter instead of himself; that was God the Holy Ghost, who is still among us (though we see him not), as Christ was with the Apostles. He has come in order to enlighten us, to guide us in the right way, and in the end to bring us to Christ in heaven. And he came down, as his name ‘comforter’ shows, especially to stand by, and comfort, and strengthen those who are in any trouble, particularly trouble from irreligious men. The disciples, when Christ went, had to go through much trouble, and therefore he comforted them by the coming of the holy and eternal Spirit, the third person in the Blessed Trinity. These things I have spoken to you, he says, that in me you might have peace; in the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.

Ven. J.H. Newman, Parochial & Plain Sermons VIII, 141-142.150-152; Word in Season VIII.

Monday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE DIALOGUE OF COMFORT AGAINST TRIBULATIONS OF ST THOMAS MORE

Our Saviour was himself taken prisoner for our sake, and prisoner was he carried, and prisoner was he kept to the end of his passion. The time of his imprisonment, I grant, was not long, but as for hard handling which our hearts most abhor, he had as much in that short time, as many men in a much longer time. And surely then if we consider of what estate he was, and therewith that he was prisoner in such wise for our sake, we shall I hope never shamefully play the unkind coward as for fear of imprisonment sinfully to forsake him, neither let us be so foolish as by forsaking him to give him the occasion to forsake us.

How can any faithful wise man dread death so sore out of fear of shame when his reason and his faith together may shortly make him perceive that herein there is no shame at all? For how can that death be shameful that is glorious? Or how can it be but glorious to die for the faith of Christ, if we die both for the faith and in the faith, joined with hope and charity, when Scripture so plainly says, Precious in the sight of God is the death of his saints? Now if the death of his saints be glorious in the sight of God, it can never be shameful in fact, however shameful it may seem here in the sight of men. For here we may see and be sure, that not at the death of Saint Stephen only, to whom he showed himself with heaven open over his head, but at the death also over every man that so dies for the faith, God with his heavenly company beholds his whole passion and verily looks on him.

This same short and momentary tribulation of ours that is in this present time works within us the weight of glory above measure on high. Now to this great glory can no man come headless. Our head is Christ and therefore to him must we be joined and as members of his must we follow him if he will come in before us, and he therefore that will enter in after, the same way that Christ walked, the same way must he walk too. And what was the way by which he walked into heaven? He himself shows what way it was that his Father had provided for him, when he said to the two disciples going toward Emmaus: Knew you not that Christ must suffer passion and by that way enter into his kingdom? Who can for very shame desire to enter into the kingdom of heaven with ease when Christ himself entered not into his own without pain?

St Thomas More, Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulations; Word in Season VIII.

Tuesday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LETTERS OF SAINT AMMONAS

I, your father, have endured temptations both openly and in secret; I proved strong in waiting and prayer, and my Lord has set me free. Now it is your turn, dearly beloved. You have experienced God’s blessing and now you must experience temptations too, until you have surmounted them. Then you will grow in stature; your dignity will increase and great joy will be given to you from heaven, a joy beyond your understanding.

What does it mean to surmount temptations, and what is the cure for them? The answer is this: you must never grow weary but pray to God with your whole heart, praising him and being patient in all circumstances; and then the temptation will leave you. Thus was Abraham tested, and he emerged victorious from the struggle. That is why Scripture says, Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but from them all the Lord delivers them. Again, James says in his letter, If anyone among you is sad, let him pray. You see then how all the righteous, on falling into temptation, have cried to God. It also stands written: God is faithful, and he does not allow you to be tried beyond your strength. So now God is at work in you because of the integrity of your hearts. If he did not love you, he would not bring temptations upon you; Scripture tells us that God disciplines those he loves, and chastises the children he accepts. Accordingly the faithful need temptations, for those who have not been through them are not of the elect. They wear a habit indeed, but fail to show the fortitude it demands. Our father Antony used to say to us, Without trials a person cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, and blessed Peter too wrote in his letter: Rejoice now, though you seem to be saddened by various temptations, that your faith may be tested and proved excellent, more so than gold which passes through fire.

With this in mind, then, you understand how it is in the spiritual life that the first fruits of the Holy Spirit give joy to those whose hearts he sees to be pure, and yet after bestowing this joy and sweetness on them the Spirit holds aloof and forsakes them. The explanation is this: he deals thus with those that seek him and fear God, withdrawing to a distance and leaving them to themselves until he knows whether they will seek him or not. There are some people who after he has abandoned them and gone away sit down overwhelmed by disgust, and remain immovably fixed in it. They do not pray to God, asking him to remove the disgust from them and cause the joy and sweetness they knew earlier to return, but through carelessness and self-will they become strangers to God's sweetness. If, however, they become aware of this disgust, so unaccustomed and alien to their former joy, they ought to pray to God with tears and fasting. Then he of his graciousness, seeing their heartfelt sincerity and knowing that they are praying to him with all their hearts and entirely renouncing their own will, would give them joy greater than they had before and make them even stronger. This is a sign of God’s work in any soul that seeks him.

St Ammonas the Hermit, Epist. 9.2-5 (PO 10:590-593); Word in Season VIII.

Wednesday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

When the astonishing martyrdom of the Maccabees is related, not merely do we hear the tale told, but we see it enacted, as it were, before us. It all happened before the incarnation, before the passion of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. In that ancient nation, where the Prophets lived their lives, there had been those who foretold what was now happening. Let no one think that before there was a Christian people there was no people dedicated to God either. For indeed, if one may speak as the truth dictates, rather than as ordinary language dictates, the people we are thinking about were even then a Christian people. For not even Christ himself began to have a people of his own until after his passion: but yet these people of his were descended from Abraham. Abraham longed to see my days; he saw them and rejoiced. This then is to be commended to your charity: that in your admiration for those martyrs you might think that they were not Christians; but Christians indeed they were, though the word ‘Christians’, current only later, must here be understood as preceding what was to happen later.

A Jew might object and say: How do you reckon these people of ours to be martyrs of yours? What an outrage for you to celebrate their memory! Take what they actually said and just see whether they confessed Christ! Well, what can we say to that? No, indeed, they did not confess Christ openly, or explicitly: for the mystery of Christ was still under a veil. The Old Testament is a veiled version of the New and the New Testament is the unveiled Old Testament. From it, Christ began to be preached most openly of all only after the resurrection. The prophetic sayings contained in it then began to be most manifestly fulfilled.

The Christian martyrs overtly confessed him whom the Maccabees have confessed covertly. Some martyrs died for the Christ revealed and unveiled in the gospels; but the Maccabees died for the name of the Christ still veiled in the old law. Christ has both kinds in his service, like some great general making a conquest with his army of subjects, some far ahead and some following on behind. And that you may clearly understand how it is that those who die for the law of Moses die for Christ, here are Christ’s own words: If you had believed Moses you would believe me also. The Maccabees, then, are martyrs for Christ. We venerate their memory, we keep hold of it: their sufferings have been imitated by thousands of holy martyrs throughout the world. So let no one hesitate, dear brethren, to imitate the Maccabees, thinking that he would not thereby be imitating Christians. Let the will to imitate them be fervent and strong in our hearts. Let husbands learn to die for the truth. Let wives learn from that mother's heroic patience, from that virtue beyond telling; for she knew well how she could have saved her sons. She knew how to keep them but feared not to lose them.

St Augustine, Sermon 300, 1-3.5-6 (PL 38:1377-1379); Word in Season VIII.

Thursday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A HOMILY BY ST VALERIAN OF CIMIEZ

Dearly beloved, our yearning for eternal life is fired with great hope if from time to time we recall the deeds of individual martyrs. As often as the mother of the Maccabees occurs to our memory, our soul bestirs itself with a joy somehow far greater to love God and win his favour. By the encouragement she gave, she on one day put the crown of martyrdom on seven sons. She was just as strong in faith as she was fruitful in offspring.

In her case there are as many proofs of her virtues as she had sons. For, on one day she gave to the almighty God as many martyrs as she had gained sons on separate occasions of motherhood. Blessed is she among mothers, and more fortunate still in her bereavement! Her faith brought her this great blessing: to migrate on one day with all her offspring to the glory of the heavenly kingdom.

Turn your attention from her to that passage in the Gospel which tells that we should prefer neither parents nor children to Christ. Let it be, perhaps, with some a glorious thing, to be explained with salutary examples, that they have offered one son as a victim to God. This mother has exceeded all the power and wishes of souls - so much so that in the grief of her fierce sufferings she did not let the affections of her motherly love keep back even one of her sons.

Furthermore, notice through how many degrees of virtue her precious faith grew. It is enough to acquiesce once. Yet, because of her love of the Lord, through her willing bereavement she did violence to her motherly love seven times. She was well aware of what she was about, since she knew that all her offspring were taking their place in that eternity of life, according to the scriptural statement: He who loves his life will lose it; and he who hates his life, keeps it to everlasting life.

O new and admirable example of virtue! A mother rejoices in her own bereavement, and her love gains profit from the same source which brought it loss. After she has sent ahead her youngest son whom she loved so tenderly, she herself enters the way of glorious death. Pained for a short while by innumerable tortures, she followed her sons in triumph. Despising this short-lived light, she extended her grasp toward heavenly and eternal goods. Therefore, dearly beloved, if any mother has loving anxiety for the children of her womb, let her imitate the numerous and brave examples this mother has left. Furthermore, let those who serve Christ imitate the struggles of those brave men. Proof that she loves her sons is given by that mother who has banished the error on which this world relies, and from the fruit of her womb she has given a victim to God, and offered willingly herself and those dear ones whom she was every day to immolate.

St Valerian of Cimiez, Hom. 18, 1.5 (PL 52:746.747-748); Word in Season VIII.

Friday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE ADMONITION TO ENGLISH CATHOLICS BY WILLIAM CARDINAL ALLEN

Our days cannot be many, because we are human: neither can it be either godly or worldly wisdom, for a remnant of three or four years and perchance not so many months, to hazard the loss of all eternity.

No martyrdoms of what length or torment whatsoever can be more grievous than a long sickness and a languishing death; and he that departs upon the pillow has as little ease as he that dies upon the gallows, or block, or under the butcher's knife. And our Master's death, both for pains and ignominy, passed both sorts, and all other kinds either of martyrs or malefactors. Let no tribulation then, no peril, no prison, no persecution, no life, no death separate us from the charity of God, and the society of our sweet Saviour’s passion, by and for whose love we shall have the victory in all these conflicts. Nevertheless, if God permits, for causes hidden unto us, any to shrink (which Christ forbid) for fear of death, torments, or tribulations, from the fellowship of your happy confession and crown prepared for the same, as in the time of St Cyprian, be not scandalized or troubled thereat, but use such with all lenity, taking compassion on their infirmity, considering that yourselves also, or any of us all, may be tempted and overthrown with Peter, and by God’s grace afterward repent and rise with him again, though it be perilous to presume thereon, many more following him in his fall and misery, than attaining to his martyrdom and mercy.

William Allen, Admonition to English Catholics; Word in Season VIII.

Saturday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON ON PSALM 123 BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

Blessed be the Lord for not having given us up as a prey to their teeth. Our life has escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler. Do you see how the psalmist describes the weakness of the Jews and the strength of their enemies? The latter, armed with native strength and fury, rush on their prey like wild beasts, ready to devour their flesh, while the Jews are weaker than any bird. For then are the wonders of God most plainly seen, when the weak overpower the strong.

Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Consider the strength, the power of their champion, who has frustrated the schemes and brought to nothing the machinations of their enemies. These words could be taken in a spiritual sense as referring to the devil and the human race. The psalmist shows how the Lord has delivered us, how he has released us from the snares of the devil.

This has been happening ever since Christ said to his disciples: You shall tread underfoot snakes and scorpions, and all the power of the enemy. It is no longer open warfare, then, no longer equal combat. The enemy has fallen headlong, whereas you are standing upright and can thrash him from above. He is exhausted, while you are fighting fit.

How then can we explain his frequent victories? They are due to our indolence, to the indifference of people who are half asleep. Anyone, however weak, can overpower someone who is sleeping. Disarmed and bound, the strong man has been rendered powerless, his dwelling broken into, his weapons taken away. Besides, are you not aware of the help you have at hand? Recall not only the weakness of your enemy but also the great assistance you are given. God has enabled you to rule your body; for arms he has given you the breastplate of integrity, the belt of truth, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit. He has given you the pledge of your inheritance, he feeds you with his body and gives you his blood to drink. He has put his cross into your hands to use as a spear, a spear that will never bend; finally, he has bound your enemy and hurled him to the ground. You would have no excuse, then, if you were defeated; you would have thrown away all chance of pardon, for you have many ways of winning the victory. The snare has been broken and we have escaped. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

St John Chrysostom, In Ps. 123 (Bareille IX, 483-485); Word in Season VIII.

Season of the Year | Week 33

Sunday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE LETTER TO THE PRELATES OF MAINZ BY ST HILDEGARD OF BINGEN

I heard a voice from the living light tell of the diverse kinds of praises, of which David says in the psalms: Praise him in the call of the trumpet, praise him on psaltery and lute, praise him on the tambour and in dancing, praise him on strings and on organ, praise him on resonant cymbals, praise him on cymbals of jubilation – let every spirit praise the Lord!

In these words outer realities teach us about inner ones – namely how, in accordance with the material composition and quality of instruments, we can best transform and shape the performance of our inner being toward praises of the Creator. If we strive for this lovingly, we recall how man sought the voice of the living spirit, which Adam lost through disobedience – he who, still innocent before his fault, had no little kinship with the sounds of the angels’ praises.

But in order that mankind should recall that divine sweetness and praise by which, with the angels, Adam was made jubilant in God before he fell, instead of recalling Adam in his banishment, and that mankind too might be stirred to that sweet praise, the holy Prophets - taught by the same spirit, which they had received - not only composed psalms and canticles, to be sung to kindle the devotion of listeners, but also they invented musical instruments of diverse kinds with this in view, by which the song could be expressed in multitudinous sounds, so that listeners, aroused and made adept outwardly, might be nurtured within by the forms and qualities of the instruments, as by the meaning of the words performed with them.

Eager and wise men imitated the holy Prophets, inventing human kinds of harmonised melody by their art, so that they could sing in the delight of their soul; and they adapted their singing to the notation indicated by the bending of the finger joints, as it were, recalling that Adam was formed by the finger of God, which is the Holy Spirit, and that in Adam’s voice before he fell there was the sound of every harmony and the sweetness of the whole art of music. And if Adam had remained in the condition in which he was formed, human frailty could never endure the power and the resonance of that voice. But when his deceiver, the devil, heard that man had begun to sing through divine inspiration, and that he would be transformed through this to remembering the sweetness of the songs in the heavenly land, seeing the machinations of his cunning going awry, he became so terrified that he has not ceased to trouble or destroy the affirmation and beauty and sweetness of divine praise and of the hymns of the spirit.

And because at times, when hearing some melody, a human being often sighs and moans, recalling the nature of the heavenly harmony, the Prophet David, subtly contemplating the profound nature of the spirit, and knowing that the human soul is symphonic, exhorts us in his psalm to proclaim the Lord on the lute and play for him on the ten-stringed psaltery.

St Hildegard of Bingen, To the prelates of Mainz; Word in Season VIII.

Monday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH OF THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

When the Lord comes in his majesty, and all the angels with him, death will be destroyed and all things will be subject to him. Meanwhile, some of his disciples are exiles on earth. Some have finished with this life and are being purified. Others are in glory, beholding clearly God himself, triune and one, as he is.

But in various ways and degrees we all partake in the same love of God and neighbour, and all sing the same hymn of glory to our God. For all who belong to Christ, having his Spirit, form one Church and cleave together in him. Therefore the union of the wayfarers with the brethren who have gone to sleep in the peace of Christ is not in the least interrupted. On the contrary, according to the perpetual faith of the Church it is strengthened through the exchange of spiritual goods.

For by reason of the fact that those in heaven are more closely united with Christ, they establish the whole Church more firmly in holiness, lend nobility to the worship which the Church offers here on earth to God, and in many ways contribute to its greater upbuilding. For after they have been received into their heavenly home and are present to the Lord, through him and with him and in him, they do not cease to intercede with the Father for us. Rather, they show forth the merits which they have won on earth through the one Mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus. There they served God in all things and filled up in their flesh whatever was lacking of the sufferings of Christ on behalf of his body which is the Church. Thus by their brotherly interest our weakness is greatly strengthened. Very much aware of the bonds linking the whole Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the pilgrim Church from the very first ages of the Christian religion has cultivated with great piety the memory of the dead. Because it is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins, she has also offered prayers for them. For as long as all of us, who are sons and daughters of God and comprise one family in Christ, remain in communion with one another in mutual charity and in one praise of the most holy Trinity, we are responding to the deepest vocation of the Church and partaking in a foretaste of the liturgy of consummate glory. For when Christ shall appear and the glorious resurrection of the dead takes place, the splendour of God will brighten the heavenly city and the Lamb will be the lamp thereof. Then in the supreme happiness of charity the whole Church of the saints will adore God and the Lamb who was slain, proclaiming with one voice: To him who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb blessing, and honour and glory and dominion forever and ever.

Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, 49-50, 51; Word in Season VIII.

Tuesday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON ON PSALM 18 BY ST AUGUSTINE

If my own secret sins and those of others shall have no dominion over me, then I shall be without spot and I shall be cleansed from the great sin. From what sin, are we to suppose? What is this great sin? Possibly it is not what I am going to say, yet I will not hide my opinion. This great sin, I consider, is pride. This is perhaps what he expresses in other terms by saying: And I shall be cleansed from the great sin. Do you ask how great that sin is which overthrew an angel, which changed an angel into a devil and closed the kingdom of heaven against him forever? A great sin it surely is, and the head and origin of all sins. For the Scripture tells us: Pride is the beginning of all sin; and for fear you should disregard this as a light matter, it adds: The beginning of the pride of man is to fall off from God. No, my brethren, this vice is no slight fault. Those high and mighty personages whom you see addicted to this vice find Christian humility distasteful. It is this vice which makes them scorn to bend their necks beneath the yoke of Christ, constrained though they are yet more tightly by the yoke of sin. Serve they must, yet serve they will not, even when it would be to their advantage. By refusing to serve they merely withdraw their service from a good Master without finding any escape from servitude, since anyone who will not serve love must needs become the slave of sin.

That vice, the source of all vices, since all the rest spring from it, has caused a falling off from God, when a soul, by a deplorable misuse of its free will, plunges into darkness and all other sins follow on. Thus the soul squanders its substance in living riotously with prostitutes, and the former companion of angels becomes through want a feeder of swine. It was because of this vice, because of this enormous sin of pride, that God came in humility. This enormous sin, this monstrous disease of souls, was the very thing which brought the almighty Physician down from heaven, humbled him even to taking the form of a slave, exposed him to ignominy, hung him upon the tree, that by the saving strength of so potent a remedy this tumour might be healed. And now finally let man blush to be proud, for whose sake God has become humble. So, says the Psalmist, I shall be cleansed from the great sin, because God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

St Augustine, Enarr. In Ps. 18, 11, 14-15 (CCL 38:112-113); Word in Season VIII.

Wednesday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE TREATISE ON THE BLESSING OF DEATH BY ST AMBROSE

The Apostle says: The world is crucified to me and I to the world. Then wishing to make it clear that the death to which he is referring is death in this life, and a happy death too, he bids us, carry round the death of Jesus in our bodies; for whoever has the death of Jesus in his body, will have the life of the Lord Jesus too in his body.

Death then must already be active in us if life too is to be active; and by life and happiness after death, we mean life and happiness after victory, when the battle is over, when the law of the flesh is no longer at variance with the law of the mind, when there is no longer a struggle between us and our mortal flesh, but victory over the body of this death, our fallen nature. I am not sure that this death is not a higher state than life, and we have the authority of the Apostle for this: Death works in us with life in you. Think of the vast number of people who owe their life to one man’s death. And so the Apostle teaches us that we must embrace Christ’s death while we are still alive in this world so that the splendour of his death may shine out in our body. This is the death which leads to happiness, by which our outer nature wastes away so that our inner nature may be renewed; our earthly habitation is pulled down so that the gates of our heavenly home may be unlocked.

Metaphorically a man dies when he breaks away from the thralldom of the flesh and casts off its bonds, of which the Lord says to us by the Prophet Isaiah: Loose every bond of wickedness, dissolve unjust contracts, let the oppressed go free, break all dishonesty.

The Lord allowed death to make its way into our world so that guilt should come to an end; but lest human nature should perish by death he ordained the resurrection of the dead. Thus by death guilt should have a end, by the resurrection human nature should endure forever.

Death in this sense is a pilgrimage, a lifetime’s pilgrimage which none must shirk, a pilgrimage from decay to imperishable life, from mortality to immortality, from anxiety to unruffled calm. Do not be afraid of the word death: rather rejoice in the blessings which follow a happy death. What is death after all but the burial of vice, the flowering of goodness? Hence the words of Scripture, Let my soul die with the souls of the just, that is, let it be buried with them and so slough off its own vice and be clothed in the grace of the saints who carry round the mortification of Christ in their own bodies and souls.

St Ambrose, De bono mortis, 3, 9; 4, 15; The Divine Office III.

Thursday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON THE TRINITY AND ITS WORKS BY ABBOT RUPERT OF DEUTZ

We shall now look at the book of Daniel. May Christ, whose mysteries we seek to find in it, open our eyes to the light. What is so arresting is the grandiose vision it contains. There, in the language of imagery, is described the single combat between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan, revealed under several different aspects to the captives in Babylon for the consolation of the citizens of God’s kingdom.

First, there is the single stone, hurtling from the mountain, which smote and shattered, without the aid of human hands, the mighty and frightening statue. Then, the fire which neither touched nor distressed the three children in the fiery furnace. Then, the strong and mighty king, marvelling at the Babylon he had built, who became demented by the voice which fell from heaven, was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox. It was after this experience that he acknowledged the most high God, who lives forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion. Then, the kingdom of Babylon itself is conquered by God our king and given to the Medes and Persians. There is Daniel himself, a man of prayer, who got the better of the calumnious men who criticized him to the king. Then there are the four competing winds of heaven and the four great beasts coming up out of the sea, and after that, there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. Finally, that the kingdom of sin is to be destroyed and to be succeeded by the reign of the kingdom of God is very clearly shown by this prophecy: Seventy weeks of years are decreed concerning your people and your holy city to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and Prophet and to anoint the Holy One.

But let us now remember Daniel. Daniel loved God, so he had to take a stand against the kingdom opposed to God – against sinful men who are the enemies of God’s kingdom. Born into the world, he knew that because of original sin, he was an exile; he heard the Gentiles say to the captive people of God, because of their actual sins, Where is your God? On the one hand, the tyranny of the evil; on the other, human arrogance. Daniel shunned intimacy with either, desirous as he was of the true glory of the one God. And he won his consolation in proportion to his zeal, for as the psalmist says, You will hear the desires of the meek. At the very beginning of the book Scripture shows Daniel’s zeal: Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's rich food. As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all letters and wisdom, but Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.

Abt Rupert of Deutz, De Trinitate et Operibus eius, XLII (PL 167:1499-1502); Word in Season VIII.

Friday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST AUGUSTINE

Daniel saw a vision. I saw, said Daniel, and beheld a stone cut from a mountain without hands. He did not mean that the stone was without hands, but that the stone was cut from the mountain without human action; no human hands came along to cut the stone from the mountain. Your honours will be aware that stones are not cut from mountains unless human hands come along to do it. But that one was cut from a mountain without hands, and it came and broke all the kingdoms of earth into pieces. I do not know if it conjures up before your eyes a picture of anything but Christ, of whom it is said, All the kings of the earth shall worship him. He is the one who broke all the kingdoms of the earth into pieces. A proud king will not have any other king ahead of him. Now all kings have Christ as their king. So he has broken into pieces all the kingdoms of the earth, that he himself may reign.

And what does it say? This stone grew, and became a great mountain, such that it filled the whole face of the earth. Now I imagine that you recognize Christ. You have heard about the land: Those who have given themselves to me shall possess the land. You have also heard about the mountain: And shall inhabit my holy mountain. Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves of every defilement of flesh and spirit.

Cut from a mountain, and it became a mountain by growing. But what sort of mountain? Not one like the mountain it was cut from. You see, about the mountain it was cut from it does not say, ‘It grew and filled the whole earth.’ So there are two mountains. The first mountain is the synagogue, the second the Church. The first is the Jewish people, the second mountain the Christian people. But in order that the Christian people might become a great mountain and fill the whole earth, a stone was cut from that other mountain, because Christ came from the Jews. So why without hands? Without human agency. Christ, you see, was born of a virgin, he was conceived apart from conjugal embrace.

So that is the mountain we have in Christ; we have the Church, let us love the Church. This mountain grew and filled the whole wide world. It is obvious that those who have formed a party are not in this mountain, and do not hold the whole earth with us.

So you there, love this mountain and make yourself ready to inhabit this mountain forever. And cleanse yourself from every defilement of flesh and spirit, having such promises. What promises? If you want to possess the land and inhabit the holy mountain, cleanse yourself from every defilement of flesh and spirit.

St Augustine, Sermo 45.6-8; Word in Season VIII.

Saturday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON DANIEL BY ST HIPPOLYTUS

Look well; behold three youths who have set an example for all. They were unafraid of the numerous satraps and of the words of the king: they did not tremble when they heard about the fiery flames of the furnace, but they spurned all and the whole world for they thought only of the fear of God.

You see how the Spirit of the Father teaches eloquence to the martyrs, consoling them and exhorting them to despise death in this world, to hasten their attainment of heavenly goods. But a person who is without the Holy Spirit is frightened of the struggle. He hides himself, takes precautions against a death that is only temporal, is afraid of the sword, falls into a panic at the thought of the torture. He no longer sees any other thing than the world here below, worries only about the present life, prefers his wife to everything else, is bothered only about love for his children, and seeks nothing but wealth.

Such a man, because he is not endowed with heavenly strength, is quickly lost. That is why anyone who desires to come near the Word listens to the behest of the King and Lord of heaven: Whoever does not bear his cross and follow me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not renounce all that he possesses cannot be my disciple.

Scripture tells us that after this those three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fell into the white-hot furnace and walked about in the flames, singing to God and blessing the Lord. The fire had no difficulty in devouring the fetters with which they had been bound by order of the king, but it did not touch their coats, hats, shoes and other garments. This miracle brought out the wonderful power of God.

But someone might say: ‘Why did God of old not rescue martyrs of our own day? For we see that blessed Daniel was cast twice into the den, and that he was not devoured by the beasts, just as the three youths were cast into the furnace and suffered not the least damage from the fire.’

Think it over, O man! At that time, God saved those he wanted, in order that the wonders of his works might be revealed to the whole world. But those whom he desired to undergo martyrdom, he crowned and let them come to him. If he drew the three youths out of their predicament, it was to show the emptiness and folly of Nebuchadnezzar’s boastfulness and prove at the same time that what is impossible to man is possible to God. Nebuchadnezzar had proudly declared: Who is the God that can deliver you out of my hands? God proved to him that he can free his servants when he wishes to do so. That is why it is improper for man to oppose the decisions of God. For if we live, we live for the Lord. And if we die, we die for the Lord. Whether we live or whether we die, we belong to the Lord.

St Hippolytus of Rome, Comm. in Dan. II, 18-37 (SC 14:150-184); Word in Season VIII.

Season of the Year | Week 34

Christ the King

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON JOHN BY ST CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the world was made. Notice that Christ does not ask for a new beginning in glory, but a restoration of the glory which he had of old, and also that he speaks these words as a man. Again, the fact that he became a man is the reason why all things are said to have been given to the Son. We who are eager for knowledge will gather wisdom from every source in seeking to understand this. But nothing will teach us better than that awe-inspiring vision of Daniel, in which the Prophet says he saw him whose days are without beginning seated in majesty, with thousands upon thousands and myriads upon myriads there to serve and attend him. He continues: And behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a man, who approached him whose days have no beginning and was presented to him. And to him was given the dominion and glory of the kingdom, so that all people, the nations of all tongues, should serve him.

Do you see how in these words we have an accurate portrayal of the whole mystery of the incarnation? In telling us how the Son received the kingdom from the Father, the Prophet refers not merely to the Son, but to one who appeared as a man. For he humbled himself, as it is written, by taking the form of a man for our sake, so that in ascending first to the kingdom he might open up the way for us to follow him to the kingdom of glory. And just as he is by nature life, so it was for our sake that he came down to die in the flesh for all humanity, to set us free from death and corruption. By his likeness to ourselves he could as it were mingle his own nature with ours, and make us to be partakers of eternal life. So although as God he is the Lord of glory, yet he takes on the form of our low estate in order to raise human nature also to royal honour.

For he came to take precedence in all things, as Paul says. He is the way, the door, the first fruits of our blessings; he leads us from death to life, from corruption to incorruption, from weakness to strength, from slavery to adoption as children of God, and from all the obscurity of our low estate to kingly honour and glory.

St Cyril of Alexandria, In Ioannis Evangelium II, 35 (PG 73:283-286); Word in Season VIII.

Monday of the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM ON DIVINE PROVIDENCE BY THEODORET OF CYRUS

When the people had lapsed into the depths of impiety, loot was sent to Babylon and the sacred vessels became the spoils of the enemy. Now Nebuchadnezzar, since they were sacred, removed them from profane use and brought them to the temples of those whom they cultivated as gods. His son, Belshazzar, however, had not learned his lesson sufficiently from his father’s disasters and did not calculate the penalty he should pay for such arrogance; having honoured, as he thought, these sacred vessels, he brought out the vessels once consecrated to God, drank from them – the wretch – and handed round the vessels that should not be touched to his fellow drinkers. While this was going on, the decision against the accursed wretch was produced and a hand of somebody invisible wrote on the wall the sentence of God. Belshazzar was held in doubt, unable to read or understand the import of what was written.

Then his mother brought into the court Daniel, who often solved such problems for his father. Daniel read and interpreted it, and told him the cause of the punishment, saying: ‘We have been made captives to pay the penalty for our sins. And God has given those vessels consecrated by us to our vanquisher to teach us that he suffered us to offer sacrifices which he did not need and accepted our offerings as long as we remained holy, because he wished to be of help to us. But when we drifted into impiety he rejected the gifts we offered. Your father, then, accepting the rebuke, worshipped as he thought best, withdrawing objects from profane use and offering them to his supposed gods. You have no use for such worship; you have fallen into the abyss of arrogance and have drunk from the sacred vessels. The reason the Lord gives you such a lesson to end your arrogance is not his care for inanimate objects, but his loving care for all, and he proposes your punishment as a lesson in discipline for many.’ So much he said, and that night Belshazzar paid the penalty.

Behold, then, how the Maker of the universe has always shown a loving care for mankind, not merely for the race of the descendants of Abraham, but for all the descendants of Adam; through one tribe he has led all tribes to a knowledge of himself. He used them for this purpose both when they were religious and when they were paying the penalty for their sins - for instance, Nebuchadnezzar, the arrogant tyrant, who raised up the golden image and called on all to adore it, saying: I will exalt my throne above the stars. I will ascend above the height of the clouds. I will be like the Most High. I will gather in my hand the whole earth as a nest, as eggs that lie abandoned will I gather it.

Theodoret of Cyrus, De Divina Providentia, 10, 52-54; Word in Season VIII.

Tuesday of the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON DANIEL BY ST HIPPOLYTUS

When Daniel became acquainted with the decree he sensed that there was a plot against him, but he was not afraid; he did not yield to fright, for he was ready to become the prey of beasts rather than submit to the decree of the king. He recalled the example of the three young men. Because they had refused to adore the statue of the king, they were saved from the fiery furnace. Having returned home, Daniel knelt in prayer in the upper chamber three times a day, with the windows open toward Jerusalem, as was his custom.

Let us contemplate the piety of blessed Daniel. Although he seemed to have much work to do for the king, he continued to be faithful to daily prayer, rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God what belongs to God.

Someone might object: Was it not possible for him to pray to God in the intimacy of his heart during the day, and then, during the night, remain secretly recollected in his home as he desired, and without endangering himself? Of course, he could have acted in that way, but he did not want that kind of conduct. For in such a case, the supervisors and the satraps might have said: What is the value of the fear of God, since he is afraid of the king’s edict and is submissive to his commands? And they would have been ready to accuse him of infidelity. Here we have the work of hypocrisy; but faith and the fear of God do not operate in that way. Hence, Daniel did not give his adversaries any ‘pretext’ for detraction, for whoever submits to a man is that man’s slave.

That is why the blessed Daniel, who had preferred the fear of God and delivered himself to death, was saved from the lions by the angel. If he had taken the edict into consideration and had remained quiet for thirty days, his faith would not have preserved its purity. No one can serve two masters. The wily devil exercises his wits to persecute, oppress, bring down the saints, and prevent them from raising their holy hands to God in their prayers.

The devil knows well that the prayer of the saints gives peace to the world and brings chastisements to the wicked, which makes us recall that when Moses in the desert raised his hands, Israel overcame, and when he lowered them, it was Amalek who had the upper hand. This still takes place for us today. When we stop praying, the adversary is victorious over us; and when we cling to prayer, the power and energy of the Evil One are fruitless.

How powerful are those who trust more in God than in men! Men extinguish all hope and deliver us to death, but God will not abandon his servants. That is why the psalmist teaches that it is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to trust in princes.

St Hippolytus of Rome, Comm. in Dan. III, 21-30 (SC 14:242-258); Word in Season VIII.

Wednesday of the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON DANIEL BY ST HIPPOLYTUS

All that Daniel had recounted in his first vision, he wished to describe a second time at length for the edification of believers. The ram that butted against the sea, and toward the north and the south, is Darius, the king of Persia, who was victorious over all the nations, for Daniel tells us: No beast could withstand it. The he-goat that came from the West is Alexander of Macedonia, the king of the Greeks. The he-goat approached the ram and struck its face. It crushed the ram, cast it down to earth and trampled on it. This means – and this truly happened – that after battling with Darius, Alexander overcame him, became the master of all Darius’ might, destroyed his army, and trampled it under foot.

Afterward, when the he-goat had risen, its great horn was shattered and in its place came up four others, facing the four winds of heaven. We know, in fact, that Alexander, after becoming the master and lord of all Persia, died after he had divided his empire into four principalities namely, those of Seleucus, Demetrius, Ptolemy, and Philip.

Out of one of them came a little horn which kept growing as far as the host of heaven. It removed the daily sacrifice. It cast truth to the ground. We find that indeed the race of Alexander gave birth to king Antiochus, surnamed Epiphanius, who reigned over Syria and subjected the whole army of Egypt to his power. Then he went up against Jerusalem, invaded the sanctuary and took away the treasures of the house and the golden candlestick, the table and the altar of sacrifices.

He massacred many in the land and uttered words of extreme pride. He prohibited sacrifice and oblation and constructed sacred shrines and idolatrous temples throughout the city. Pigs and unclean animals were immolated, thus accomplishing the words of the Prophet that because of him the sacrifice would be interrupted and the sanctuary and the army trampled underfoot until one evening and one morning: a thousand and three hundred days.

It is a historical fact also that during all that time, that is during three-and-a-half years, the sanctuary was abandoned. This makes a thousand and three hundred days until the appearance of Judas Maccabeus. After the death of his father, Judas rebelled against Antiochus, destroyed his armies, delivered the city, restored the sacred ceremonies, and renewed them by having all things done in accordance with the law.

All this, therefore, has been properly fulfilled according to Scripture.

St Hippolytus of Rome, Comm in Dan. IV, 26-27 (SC 14:316, 317); Word in Season VIII.

Thursday of the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE COMMENTARY ON DANIEL BY ST HIPPOLYTUS

The Holy of Holies is none other than the Son of God, who appeared and declared himself to be the Anointed of the Father, sent into the world, for he said: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind and release to prisoners, to announce a year of favour from the Lord.

All who believed in the heavenly Priest were purified by the Priest himself and received remission of their faults. But those who did not believe in him, paid no more attention to him than to any other man, and their sins remained ‘sealed’; they were indelible.

That is why Gabriel says: Seal the vision and the Prophet. We must note that fullness of the Law and the Prophets came ‘in person’ for the Law and the Prophets were in force till John - and for that reason their words had to be sealed in order that at the advent of the Lord everything would appear loosed and the things that were sealed and difficult to know would be known, and that which formerly was fettered would be unfettered from then on.

The Lord himself indicated as much to the princes of the people who were indignant because they saw him perform miracles on the Sabbath and cure all sickness and infirmity. He told them: O you hypocrites! Which of you does not let his ox or ass out of the stall on the Sabbath to water it? Should not this daughter of Abraham here who has been in the bondage of Satan for eighteen years have been released from her shackles on the Sabbath?

The Lord has come to release from the shackles of death all those who had been in the bondage of Satan, to shackle him who against everyone else had been the strong man, and liberate mankind, according to the words of Isaiah: Saying to the prisoners: Come out! To those in darkness, show yourselves!

Now, all that the Law and the Prophets had said of old to men was something sealed and unknown to them. This is what Isaiah illustrates: When the sealed scroll is handed to one who can read, with the request, ‘Read this’, he replies, ‘I cannot; it is sealed.’ It was necessary, then, that everything the prophets had said for the unbelieving Pharisees, who considered themselves to be learned in the law, should be sealed for them but open to believers.

We see, therefore, that everything which was formerly sealed is now open to the saints by the grace of the Lord. For he is the perfect seal, the key of David, who opens, and no one shuts; who shuts, and no one opens. He, then, has taken the book and loosed the seals so that what had been said about him in an obscure way, could now be announced unequivocally from the housetops. That is why the Angel said to Daniel: Seal up those words, for the vision refers to distant days. But to the Christ it was not said: ‘Seal’, but: ‘Loose what was formerly bound’ that his grace might make us know the will of the Father and we may believe in him whom the Father has sent for the salvation of men, Jesus Christ our Lord.

St Hippolytus of Rome, Comm. in Dan. IV, 38-39 (SC 14:340-343); Word in Season VIII.

Friday of the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM THE CONFERENCES OF ST JOHN CASSIAN

It is very clear that the evil spirits desire the onslaughts by which they attack men, even when these set them against one another. For, in similar fashion, they do not cease to incite discord and conflict on behalf of some peoples that they have befriended because of a kind of mutual wickedness. We see this very plainly depicted in the vision of the Prophet Daniel, when the angel Gabriel speaks as follows: Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day when you set your heart to understand that you should afflict yourself in the sight of your God your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. But the prince of the kingdom of the Persians resisted me for twenty-one days. And behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to my help, and I remained there next to the king of the Persians. But I have come to teach you what will befall your people in the last days.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the prince of the kingdom of the Persians was the adversary power that defended the Persian nation, which was hostile to the people of God. And he stood in the way of the benefit that he saw the archangel was going to procure in response to the request that the Prophet had made of the Lord. He was envious lest the angel’s consolation come to Daniel too quickly and lest he comfort the people of God who were protected by the archangel Gabriel. The latter said that he would have been unable to come to him even then because of the vehemence of his onslaught were it not that the archangel Michael helped him by resisting the prince of the kingdom of the Persians.

And shortly afterward it says: The angel said: Do you know why I came to you? And now I will return to fight against the prince of the Persians. For when I went out, the prince of the Greeks appeared coming. But I shall tell you what is set down in the writings of truth, and no one is my helper in all these things but Michael your prince. And again: At that time Michael, the great prince, who stands for the children of your people, shall arise. We read, then, that there is another who is called the prince of the Greeks, and he favoured the people subject to him while seeming to be opposed both to the people of Israel and to the nation of the Persians.

Hence it is quite clear that the discords and conflicts and animosity of peoples, which the adversary powers promote among themselves by these provocations, are also carried on against themselves. They either rejoice in their clients’ victory or are tormented by their defeat, and therefore they cannot be at peace among themselves as long as one of them is constantly struggling with aggressive rivalry against the leader of another people on behalf of those over whom he himself is set.

St John Cassian, Conferences, 8.13.1-3; ACW 57 (1997) tr. Ramsey.

Saturday of the Thirty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

A READING FROM A SERMON BY THE VENERABLE JOHN HENRY NEWMAN

Our present state is precious as revealing to us, amid shadows and figures, the existence and attributes of Almighty God and his elect people: it is precious, because it enables us to hold intercourse with immortal souls who are on their trial as we are. It is momentous, as being the scene and means of our trial; but beyond this it has no claims upon us. Vanity of vanities, says the preacher, all is vanity. We may be poor or rich, young or old, honoured or slighted, and it ought to affect us no more, neither to elate us nor depress us, than if we were actors in a play, who know that the characters they represent are not their own, and that though they may appear to be superior one to another, to be kings or to be peasants, they are in reality all on a level. The one desire which should move us should be, first of all, that of seeing him face to face, who is now hid from us; and next of enjoying eternal and direct communion, in and through him, with our friends around us, whom at present we know only through the medium of sense, by precarious and partial channels, which give us little insight into their hearts.

These are suitable feelings toward this attractive but deceitful world. What have we to do with its gifts and honours, who, having been already baptized into the world to come, are no longer citizens of this? Why should we be anxious for a long life, or wealth, or credit, or comfort, who know that the next world will be everything which our hearts can wish, and that not in appearance only, but truly and everlastingly? Why should we rest in this world, when it is the token and promise of another? Why should we be content with its surface, instead of appropriating what is stored beneath it?

To those who live by faith, everything they see speaks of that future world; the very glories of nature, the sun, moon, and stars, and the richness and the beauty of the earth, are as types and figures witnessing and teaching the invisible things of God. All that we see is destined one day to burst forth into a heavenly bloom, and to be transfigured into immortal glory. Heaven at present is out of sight, but in due time, as snow melts and discovers what it lay upon, so will this visible creation fade away before those greater splendours which are behind it, and on which at present it depends. In that day shadows will retire, and the substance show itself. The sun will grow pale and be lost in the sky, but it will be before the radiance of him whom it does but image, the Sun of Righteousness, with healing on his wings, who will come forth in visible form, as a bridegroom out of his chamber, while his perishable type decays. The stars which surround it will be replaced by saints and angels circling his throne. Above and below, the cloud of the air, the trees of the field, the waters of the great deep will be found impregnated with the forms of everlasting spirits, the servants of God which do his pleasure. And our own mortal bodies will then be found in like manner to contain within them an inner man, which will then receive its due proportions, as the soul’s harmonious organ, instead of that gross mass of flesh and blood which sight and touch are sensible of. For this glorious manifestation the whole creation is at present in travail, earnestly desiring that it may be accomplished in its season.

These are thoughts to make us eagerly and devoutly say, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, to end the time of waiting, of darkness, of turbulence, of disputing, of sorrow, of care.’

Ven. J.H. Newman, Parochial & Plain Sermons, IV, 222-224; Word in Season VIII.

Index

Advent 1 Sunday

Is. 1:1-18

St Cyril of Jerusalem: Cat. 15, 1-3

D.O. I

Advent 1 Monday

Is. 1:21-27; 2:1-5

St Aelred: The Liturgical Sermons 3, 7-13, (2001)

C. F. 58

Advent 1 Tuesday

Is. 2:6-22; 4:2-6

St Gregory Nazianzen: Oratio 45, 9, 22.26, 28

D.O. I

Advent 1 Wednesday

Is. 5:1-7

St Bernard: Sermon 5 in Adv. 1-3

D.O. I

Advent 1 Thursday

Is. 16:1-5; 17:4-8

St Ephrem: Commentary On the Diatessaron 18, 15-17

D.O. I

Advent 1 Friday

Is. 19:16-25

St Anselm: Prosologion 1

D.O. I

Advent 1 Saturday

Is. 21:6-12

St Cyprian: On the Advantage of Patience 13, 15

D.O. I

Advent 2 Sunday

Is. 22:8b-23

Eusebius of Caesarea: in Is. 40

D.O. I

Advent 2 Monday

Is. 24:1-18

Abbot P. Guéranger: The Liturgical Year, Advent 198-200

W.S. 2

Advent 2 Tuesday

Is. 24:19-25:5

Second Vatican Council: Lumen Gentium 48

D.O. I

Advent 2 Wednesday

Ruth 25:6-26:6

St Cyril of Alexandria: In Is. Lib. 3, t. 1 (PG 70, 563-566)

W.S. 1

Advent 2 Thursday

Ruth 26:7-21

St Peter Chrysologus: Sermon 147

D.O. I

Advent 2 Friday

Is. 27:1-13

St Cyril of Alexandria: In Is. Lib. 3, t.1 (PG 70, 598-599)

W.S. 1

Advent 2 Saturday

Is. 29:1-8

Bd Isaac of Stella: Sermon 51

D.O. I

Advent 3 Sunday

Is. 29:13-24

St Augustine: Sermon 293, 3

D.O. I

Advent 3 Monday

Is. 30:18-26

Abbot William of Thierry: Tr. On Contemplating God 9-11

D.O. I

Advent 3 Tuesday

Mic.30:27-33; 31:4-9

St Bernard: Sermo 1 de adventu Domini 7-8 (PL 183, 38-39)

W.S. 1

Advent 3 Wednesday

Mic. 31:1-3; 32:1-8

St Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. 4, 20, 4-5

D.O. I

Advent 3 Thursday

Mic. 32:15-33:6

Second Vatican Council: Dei Verbum 3-4

D.O. I

Advent 3 Friday

Mic. 33:7-24

St Augustine: En. in Ps. 37, 13-14

D.O. I

December 17

Is. 45:1-13

St Cyril of Alexandria: In Is. Lib. 4, oratio 2 (PG 70, 955-958)

W.S. 1

December 18

Is. 46:1-13

Epistle to Diognetus 8, 5-9, 6

D.O. I

December 19

Is. 47:1-15

St Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. 3, 20, 2-3

D.O. I

December 20

Is. 48:1-11

St John Chrysostom: In Ps. 49 1-2 (Bareille, t. 9, 286-288)

W.S. 1

December 21

Is.48:12-21;49:9b-13

St Ambrose: In Ev. Luc. 2, 19.22-23.26-27

D.O. I

December 22

Is. 49:14-50:1

St Bede: In Ev. Luc. 1, 46-55

D.O. I

December 23

Is. 51:1-11

St Hippolytus: Tr. Adv. Noetus 9-12

D.O. I

December 24

Is.51:17-23;52:2,7-10

St Augustine: Sermon 185

D.O. I

Christmas Day

Is. 11:1-10

St Augustine: Sermon 192, 1& 3.

Holy Family

Eph. 5:21-6:4

Pope Paul VI: Address 5 January 1964

D.O. I

December 26

St Stephen: From the Sanctoral

December 27

St John: From the Sanctoral

December 28

Holy Innocents: From the Sanctoral

December 29

(Sg 1:1-8)

St Thomas Becket: From the Sanctoral

December 30

Sg 5:2-6:2

St Bernard: Sermon 46 on the Song of Songs 1-2,4a,5a, (1976)

CF 7

December 31

Sg 2:8-3:5

St Greg. of Nyssa: Hom 5 on Song of Songs (Jaeg. 6, 140-159)

W.S. 1

Mary, Mother of God

Heb. 2:9-18

St Athanasius: Letter to Epictetus 5-9

D.O. I

January 2

Sg 4:1-5:1

St Bernard: Sermo 31, 8-10 (O.O. [1957] 224-226)

W.S. 1

January 3

Sg 5:2-6:2

St Greg. of Nyssa: Hom 11 (Jaeger, 6, 321-5)

W.S. 2

January 4

Sg 6:2-7:10

St Bernard: Sermo 27, 6-7 (PL 183, 916-917)

W.S. 1

January 5

Sg 7;11-8:7

Ab. John of Ford: Canticorum Serm., 110,13 (CCCM 18, 749)

W.S. 2

January 6

Is. 49:1-9

St Ambrose: In ps. 35, 4-5 (CCL 64, 52-54)

W.S. 1

January 7

Is. 54:1-17

St Hippolytus: Refut. of all heresies 10, 33-34 (PG 16:3452-3)

W.S. 1

The Epiphany

Is. 60:1-22

St Aelred: Sermo 3 in apparitione Domini (PL 195, 228-229)

W.S. 1

Mon. after Epiphany

Is. 54:1-17

St Leo: Sermon 34 6 Jan. 444, tr. Freeland & Conway (1996)

FoC 93

Tue. after Epiphany

Is. 55:1-13

St Augustine: Sermo 203 (PL 38, 1035-1037)

W.S. 2

Wed. after Epiphany

Is. 56:1-8

St Leo: Tract. 36, 1-2 (CCL 138, 195-196)

W.S. 1

Thurs. after Epiph.

Is. 59:15-21

St Odilo of Cluny: Sermo 9 in die pent. (PL 142:1015-1016)

W.S. 1

Fri. after Epiphany

Bar. 4:5-29

St Faustus of Riez: Sermo 5 de epiphania 2 (PLS 560-562)

W.S. 1

Sat. after Epiphany

Bar. 4:30-5:9

St Maximus of Turin: Sermo 45, 1-3 (CCL 23, 182-1830)

W.S. 1

Baptism of the Lord

Is. 42:1-9; 49:1-9

St Chromatius of Aq: Tract. XII in Math. III:13-15 (CCL 9A)

W.S. 2