December 2006 Archives

Caesar van Everdingen painted this magnificent Holy Family in 1660. Saint Joseph, with the open book of the Scriptures on his lap, appears absorbed by the immensity of the mystery entrusted to him. If you look closely you will see that he holds his reading glasses in his right hand. This Joseph is in the prime of life; he is manly and strong. The Virgin Mother and the Infant Christ gaze straight ahead at us.

The Living Bread Entrusted to Saint Joseph

The feast of the Holy Family invites us to confess a God who comes close, a God who comes down, a God who disappears into what is human to reveal therein what is divine, a God who assumes all that is human to confer what is divine. All the shadows and figures of the Old Testament converge in Christ the Sacrament of God, the Child of the Virgin Mary, born in Bethlehem. the “House of Bread,” and entrusted to Joseph.

Joseph Most Obedient

Look closely at the obedience of Saint Joseph, his obedience in the dark night of faith. Joseph’s obedience allows the whole mystery of Israel — the going down into Egypt and the back up — to be revealed and completed in Christ. In some way the “Do this in memory of me” (Lk 22:19) of the Last Supper is made possible by Joseph’s obedience to the commandments delivered to him in the night.

Twice Saint Joseph obeys the word of the angel who visits him by night. Twice Saint Matthew uses the very same formula to evoke the obedience of Saint Joseph: “And Joseph rose and too the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt” (Mt 2:14); and again, “And he rose and took the child and his mother and went into the land of Israel” (Mt 2:21).

Where is the source of Saint Joseph’s obedience? Is it in the word of the Angel? The Angel appears in a dream. Is anything more fleeting than a dream? If we remember our dreams at all in the morning, we do so in a vague and hazy way. Rarely do we find in our dreams the strength to make great changes in our lives. Dreams may sow suggestions in the imagination; rarely do we translate them into action, especially when they ask of us what Saint Benedict calls “things that are hard and repugnant to nature in the way to God” (RB 58:8).

The Viaticum of Saint Joseph

Saint Joseph finds the strength to obey in the Infant Christ, his Viaticum. He finds it in the presence of “the living bread which came down from heaven” (Jn 6:51). He gazes upon the Child held against the breast of the Virgin, and from that contemplation draws the strength and the courage to pass from dreams to action — to obey. The Infant Christ was the Viaticum of Saint Joseph: his food for the journey.

A Priest's Prayer to Saint Joseph

Saint Joseph,
I take you this day as my advocate and defender,
my counselor and my friend.
Open your heart to me
as you opened your home to the Virgin Mother
in her hour of need.
Protect my holy priesthood
as you protected the life of the Infant Christ
threatened by cruel Herod.
In darkness bring me light;
in weakness, strength,
and in fear the peace that passes understanding.
For the sake of the tender love that bound you
to the Virgin Mary and the Infant Christ,
be for me, Saint Joseph, a constant intercessor
and a shield against every danger of body, mind, and soul
so that, in spite of my weaknesses and sins,
my priesthood may bring glory to Christ
and serve to increase the beauty of holiness
in his bride the Church.
Amen.

Some years ago I received the inspiration for these prayers to Saint Joseph. It was at a time of darkness and discouragement for many priests. Saint Joseph is the champion and protector of the weak, the vulnerable, and the poor. He is close to priests in their most intimate struggles, frailities, and fears. Go to Joseph.

Is it not significant that in this painting by Juan Simon Gutiérrez (1643–1718) the heads of the Child Jesus and Saint Joseph are touching? Note that the little Jesus and Saint Joseph together hold the fragile branch of lilies, the sign of chastity, in their hands. In most paintings of the Holy Family the most tender intimacy is between the Virgin Mother and her Child; here it is between Saint Joseph and the Child Jesus. The Virgin Mother understands the bonding that must take place between Saint Joseph and her Child; she holds the mystery of it in her Immaculate Heart.

Prayer to Saint Joseph for Priests

O glorious Saint Joseph,
who, on the word of the angel
speaking to you in the night,
put fear aside to take your Virgin Bride into your home,
show yourself today the advocate and protector of priests.
Protector of the Infant Christ,
defend them against every attack of the enemy,
preserve them from the dangers that surround them
on every side.
Remember Herod's threats against the Child,
the anguish of the flight into Egypt by night,
and the hardships of your exile.
Stand by the accused;
stretch out your hand to those who have fallen;
comfort the fearful;
forsake not the weak;
and visit the lonely.
Let all priests know that in you
God has given them a model
of faith in the night, obedience in adversity,
chastity in tenderness, and hope in uncertainty.
You are the terror of demons
and the healer of those wounded in spiritual combat.
Come to the defence of every priest in need;
overcome evil with good.
Where there are curses, put blessings,
where harm has been done, do good.
Let there be joy for the priests of the Church,
and peace for all under your gracious protection.
Amen.

Who is this beautiful child with the golden ringlets and winning smile? It is my Dad. The photo must be 77 years old. Today is Dad's 80th birthday.

Daniel Bernard Kirby was born at home, 148 Grafton Street in Fair Haven, Connecticut on December 30, 1926. His father was Daniel J. Kirby and his mother Margaret Mary Kirby, née Gilbride. Dr. E. T. Falsey delivered the baby boy, the first of six. Little Danny was baptized in Saint Francis of Assisi Church in Fair Haven and attended Saint Francis School.

As a teenager he fell head–over–heels in love with the sweetest girl in the world, Emma Rose Barbato, my wonderful Mom. It was love at first sight. An Irish boy smitten by an Italian girl! Dad served in the U. S. Army during World War II. He married Emma Rose in Saint Francis Church on October 9, 1948. Together they had five children, all of whom were baptized in the same Saint Francis Church. Dad retired as a Battalion Chief from the New Haven Fire Department in 1986.

Dad is up early every morning and out the door to Mass, either in Saint Joseph's Church or in his parish church, Saint Mary's on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven. At 80 he remains very active and is always ready to lend a hand, to run an errand, to visit the sick, and to do whatever needs to be done. Mom takes good care of him and he takes good care of her. A couple more devoted to each other you will not find!

Family and friends are gathering this afternoon at my sister Donna's home in Woodbridge, Connecticut. If you cannot be there, please leave a Happy Birthday message for Dad here. And offer a prayer for him.

It is customary in many places to devote the last day of the year to adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Tomorrow, at the Monastery of the Glorious Cross, I will expose the Blessed Sacrament after the 11:00 a.m. Mass and the nuns and their friends will keep watch before the Eucharistic Face of the Lord until Vespers. How I desire to see this practice spread, especially to parish churches! If people only knew the Gift of God and Who it is Who waits for them in the Sacrament of the Altar, our churches would not be big enough to contain them all. Read what Pope Benedict XVI says about Eucharistic adoration:

Eucharistic adoration is an essential way of being with the Lord. . . .
The Church's true treasure [is]the permanent presence of the Lord in His Sacrament.
In one of his parables the Lord speaks of a treasure hidden in the field;
whoever finds it sells all he has in order to buy that field,
because the hidden treasure is more valuable than anything else.

Let us love being with the Lord!
There we can speak with him about everything.
We can offer him our petitions, our concerns,
our troubles, our joys,
our gratitude, our disappointments,
our needs and our aspirations.

Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Year C
Sunday Within the Octave of Christmas

1 Samuel 1:20-22. 24-28
Psalm 83
1 John 3:1-2. 21-24
Luke 2:41-52

The Hearts of Grandmothers

The life of families, like that of the Church, is, more often than not, carried in the arms of women and held against their hearts. In Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, during the years of Soviet Communist repression, faith and family were held together by a silent but formidable army of church-going little grandmothers, poor women content to pour out their hearts for their husbands, their children, and their grandchildren, weeping and groaning before the holy icons in their temples.

Hannah’s Oblation

Holy Hannah in today’s first reading is the prototype of all the women who weep and pray in the temples of the world, saving it from annihilation. Hannah is familiar to us; we sing her canticle at Lauds in the Divine Office. Humiliated by her childlessness, the dreaded curse of all women in the Old Testament, Hannah went on pilgrimage to Shiloh. There, “deeply distressed,” she prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly and loudly, disturbing even the priest Eli (1 Sam 1:10-18). God heard her plea and, counting her tears, gave her a son, Samuel. Hannah vowed to give back to God the child received from God “that he may appear in the presence of the Lord and abide there forever” (1 Sam 1:22). And so it is, that Samuel, God’s gift to Hannah, becomes Hannah’s offering to God. “I have made him over to the Lord," she declares, "for as long as he lives” (1 Sam 1:28).

Samuel

Little Samuel, “appearing in the presence of the Lord and abiding there forever” (1 Sam 1:22) is a figure of Christ who ministers “in the sanctuary and the true tent which is set up not by man but by the Lord” (Heb 8:2). Hannah is a figure of the Virgin Mother Mary, a figure of the Church, a figure of every one who, with faith and hope, sheds bitter tears in the presence of the Lord.

Praise

The Responsorial Psalm emphasizes that praise is the outstanding characteristic of those who dwell in the house of the Lord. “Blessed are they who dwell in your house! Continually they praise you” (Ps 83:4). This is true of the house of Nazareth in which the Praise of the Father dwelt in the flesh. It is true of the Church. It is also true of the monastery in which Christ dwells. Uninterrupted praise is a sign of the abiding presence of Christ in our midst. If praise is to flourish among us we cannot go around locked in introspection, moaning over ourselves and grumbling about others; we have to seek Christ in the eyes of those whom God has given us to love. Every human relationship, every friendship, every situation of life together, is potentially sacramental, that is, charged with grace, and where grace abounds, praise flourishes irrepressible.

The Household of God

In the Second Lesson, Saint John tells us that the Father has given us His love; we are His children (1 Jn 3:1), the cherished members of His household, the family of God. Saint Benedict sets up the monastery as the household of God; the perfection of life together in the monastery is liberation from fear. We don’t always get that piece of the Benedictine paradigm quite right. Fear causes one to lie or at least to dissimulate what one is really thinking. Fear is at the root of the scheming and whispering, the possesiveness and unwillingness to change that so often poison life together. In monastic communities, as in marriages and friendships, fear is the silent killer. Saint Benedict is clear: if we persevere in climbing the ladder of humility in the context of life together, we will arrive, through the Holy Spirit, at “the love of God which, being perfect, drives out all fear” (RB 7:67-68).

December 30
Sixth Day of the Octave of Christmas

1 John 2:12-17
Luke 2:36-40

Holy Anna

The sacred liturgy treats the holy prophetess Anna, daughter of Phanuel, with a particular sympathy. It is worthy of note that the Lectionary separates the account of her meeting with the Holy Family from that of Simeon, by whom she is often overshadowed. Holy Anna, in her own right, is deserving of more than just a passing consideration. December 30th is her day.

Miriam

Saint Luke introduces the prophetess Anna as the worthy representative of all the prophetesses of the Old Testament. First among these is Myriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron. After the crossing of the Red Sea and the spectacular defeat of the Egyptians by the mighty hand of God, Myriam, “the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and dancing. And Miriam sang to them: ‘Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider He has thrown into the sea’” (Ex 15:20-21). Miriam’s ecstatic singing and dancing roused the Israelites to the heights of an impassioned devotion; thus did she bear witness to the immanence of the Spirit of God.

Deborah

In the Book of Judges we encounter Deborah, prophetess, judge, and “mother in Israel” (Judg 5:7). “She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel, in the hill country of Ephraim, and the people of Israel came to her for judgment” (Judg 4:4-5). In many ways, Deborah, the heroine of Israel, bears a resemblance to Joan of Arc. When Deborah directs Barak to go to war against Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, Barak replies, “If you go with me, I will go, but if you will not go with me, I will not go” (Judg 4:8). Sisera is put to death at the hands of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite. Deborah, learning of the demise of the enemy, intones, together with Barak, a rather blood-curdling hymn of victory.

December 29
The Fifth Day in the Octave of Christmas

1 John 2:3-11
Luke 2:22-35

Victim, Priest, and Temple

The very first sentence of today’s holy gospel evokes a profound sense of the sacred. “When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord” (Lk 2:22). The verb to present is part of the ritual vocabulary of the Temple. It denotes a liturgical action, a priestly function. Concerning the Jewish priest, we read in the book of Deuteronomy that “the Lord your God has chosen him out of all your tribes, to present himself and minister before the Lord” (Dt 18:5). The same verb is used to designate the offering, the presentation of the victim made over to God. Saint Paul, for example, writes, “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom 12:1). Christ comes to the Temple as both victim and priest and, by His coming, He fulfills that word of the prophet Malachi so gloriously interpreted by Handel in The Messiah: “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His Temple” (Mal 3:1).

The Four Righteous Elders

Simeon, coming upon the scene, reveals the hidden meaning of this presentation just as, in every sacrament and liturgical rite, the Word discloses the meaning of the sacred action. Simeon is one of four elders who, in the bright iconography of Saint Luke’s infancy narrative, surround the Infant Christ. Elizabeth, Zachary, Simeon, and Anna — all four, righteous and devout — are the venerable and last representatives of the old covenant. In their person, as Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote in his well-known Eucharistic hymn, “the former, ancient rites give way to the new.”

The Consoler

Saint Luke describes Simeon as “looking for the consolation of Israel” (Lk 2:25). Consolation is the meaning of the name of Noah, the first saviour of the human race at the time of the flood. At the birth of Noah, Lamech, his father, prophesied, saying, “This one shall console us in our sorrows and in the toil of our hands” (Gen 5:29). Noah, the consoler and saviour, is a type, a figure of Christ. The true Consoler, the true Saviour is God himself, even as He spoke through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah: “I, I am He that comforts you” (Is 51:12).

New York Again

Yesterday I returned to the Italian Consulate in New York City to pick up my visa. The magnificent Church of Saint Jean–Baptiste at Lexington and 76th Street is just a short walk from the Consulate. Sister Barbara Ann, A.S.C.J. and I were there for the 12:15 p.m. Mass. I concelebrated with Father Bernard Camiré, S.S.S., and Deacon Richard Russo assisted. The late John Cardinal O'Connor described Saint Jean–Baptiste as "quite possibly the most beautiful church in New York."

Church of Saint Jean–Baptiste

The beauty of Saint Jean's is more than the effect of its architecture and gorgeous appointments. The church has a spiritual beauty that is the radiance of holiness: the effect of nearly a century of daily adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament exposed. The church is staffed by the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament, spiritual sons of Saint Peter Julian Eymard.

Saint Peter Julian Eymard (1811–1868)

After Mass there was a prayer to Saint Peter Julian Eymard and the veneration of his relic by the faithful. Last August 2nd, on his liturgical memorial, I preached on this saint who has become for me an intercessor, a model, and a friend.

Saint Peter Julian’s Eucharistic vocation unfolded amidst sufferings of the heart and painful detachments. God called him out of the religious family he loved — the Marist Fathers — to begin a new work, a Cenacle entirely devoted to the Blessed Sacrament. From the beginning this new Eucharistic work comprised priests, consecrated women, and laity. He challenged his little family of adorers to set souls ablaze with Eucharistic fire.

In the Blessed Sacrament Saint Peter Julian Eymard recognized “the treasure hidden in the field” (Mt 13:44) and “the pearl of great price” (Mt 13:46). He gave up all that he had to possess the mystery of the Eucharist and to be possessed by it. Peter Julian Eymard is a saint for the Church today: a Church called to rediscover Eucharistic adoration and to live “from the altar and for the altar”; a Church that will be incomplete so long as so many of the baptized are not receiving the Sacred Body and Precious Blood of Christ; a Church suffering in priests who broken and wounded with no one to care for their souls. Saint Peter Julian, share with us your passion for the Eucharist, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ!

A New Shoot On An Old Tree

About twenty years after the death of Saint Peter Julian Eymard. one of his disciples, Père Bernard Maréchal, Assistant General of the Congregation, sought to have the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament adopt the Rule of Saint Benedict so as to become "The Congregation of Cistercian Adorers of the Most Blessed Sacrament." When Maréchal's proposal was refused by the General Chapter of 1887, he left the Blessed Sacrament Fathers to pursue his aspirations.

In 1891 Dom Maréchal founded the Cistercian Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament at Pont–Colbert in France. The Congregation joined perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament to the traditional Benedictine observance. From France it spread to Holland and to North America. Dom Maréchal's Congregation was weakened greatly by the First and Second World Wars. By 1950 its remaining houses had, for various reasons, abandoned their specifically Eucharistic characteristics.

Monasteries of Adoration Today?

Since that time, especially in the wake of Pope John Paul II's Year of the Eucharist, there has been a revival of interest in Dom Maréchal's project. While there are many monasteries of adoration for women — I am thinking of the Tyburn Benedictines and of the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration — there are very few for men. The Monastery of Santa Cruz in Guadalajara, Mexico, a foundation of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome, has, in fact, made Eucharistic adoration a defining characteristic of its identity. Will other monasteries of Eucharistic adoration sprout from the ancient Benedictine–Cistercian tree? "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches" (Ap 2:29).

December 28
Feast of the Holy Innocents

1 John 1:5-2:2
Matthew 2:13-18

The Child in Egypt

The name Egypt occurs three times in today’s gospel. “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt” (Mt 2:13). “And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt” (Mt 2:14). And finally, Saint Matthew cites the prophet Hosea, “Out of Egypt have I called my son” (Mt 2:15; Hos 11:1). As with so many proper names of persons and places in Sacred Scripture, Egypt enfolds and discloses a deeper mystery.

Egypt is a name and a place charged with ambivalence. On the one hand, it is the land of abundance, a refuge in time of famine (Gen 12:10; 42:1-3), a safe place for the political refugee (1 K 11:40; Jr 26:21). On the other hand, Egypt symbolizes the servitude and genocide out of which the Lord delivered his people. Hear the words of the Lord, speaking to Moses out of the burning bush: “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Ex 3:7-8).

The descent of the Infant Christ into Egypt and his return is a fundamental points of correspondence between the Old Testament and the New. The Infant Christ is the new Joseph in Egypt. In Christ, the words spoken concerning Joseph are fulfilled: “The Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord was upon all that he had, in house and field” (Gen 39:5). Like the innocent Joseph, the innocent Christ is a guest in Egypt, receiving Egyptian hospitality, finding in Egypt a place of safety, a refuge from the murderous threats born of jealousy.

The Blood of Jesus

Christ is the new Moses and Christ is the Paschal Lamb in Egypt slain. His blood marks the souls of the faithful as once the blood of the immolated lamb marked the doorposts and lintels of the houses of the Jews in Egypt (cf. Ex 12:7). This is the very blood of which Saint John speaks in today’s first reading, saying, “the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7).

Tu scendi dalle stelle
O Re del Cielo
E vieni in una grotta
Al freddo al gelo

O Bambino mio Divino
Io ti vedo qui a tremar,
O Dio Beato
Ah, quanti ti costo
L'avermi amato

The splendid Poor Ladies of Ty Mam Duw Monastery in Wales sent me this photo of their Bambino Gesù. Seeing it made me want to sing Tu scendi dalle stelle!

I like this painting by the Dominican Fra Bartolomeo (1473–1517), a disciple of Savonarola, because it shows our Holy Father Saint Bernard together with Saint John the Evangelist and our Holy Father Saint Benedict. The Virgin Mother is looking at the Bambino Gesù while the Bambino looks at Saint Bernard. An angel holds the open book of the Scriptures before Bernard, but Bernard is not reading the text. His eyes are raised to contemplate the Infant Christ. Bernard has passed from the written word to the Word made flesh. Saint John the Evangelist, pointing to his heart, looks on; he recognizes that Bernard is of his spiritual family. Saint Benedict, full of gravity and peace, remains in the background with his hands crossed over his breast, an expression of humility.

December 27
Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist

1 John 1:1-4
Psalm 97:1-2, 5-6, 11-12
John 20:2-8

A Liturgical Theology of the Trinity

On Christmas Day, our eyes were fixed on the Light, the Word made flesh, the Son eternally begotten of the Father. Yesterday, the feast of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr drew our attention to the Holy Spirit indwelling and overshadowing the Body of Christ. Today, Saint John the Beloved Disciple, venerated in the East as Saint John the Theologian (or John the Divine), draws our hearts to the mystery of the Eternal Father. We have, in these first three days of Christmastide, a liturgical theology of the Trinity.

The Gospel of the Father

The Gospel of Saint John has been called the Gospel of the Father and rightly so, for it is the particular charism of Saint John to lead us through the Word made flesh, and by the Word made flesh, and with the Word made flesh, into the bosom of the Father. The magnificent First Preface of Christmas wonderfully expresses the essential movement of Saint John’s Gospel. “By the mystery of your Word made flesh, a new and radiant light floods our spiritual eyes so that, even as we know God in what is visible, we are ravished (rapiamur) unto the love of things invisible.” This sentence of the Christmas Preface is a distillation of the mystical theology of Saint John. Proceeding from what is revealed, we are drawn into what is concealed. Holding fast to what is shown, we are held in the embrace of what is hidden.

Communion

This is the joy of Saint John. “The eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us — that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn 1:3). The English word fellowship translates here the Greek koinonia and the Latin communio. Saint John is saying, “Our communion is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” Now, communion simply means “union with.” “Our communion is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” But communion is also used in the New Testament to designate the presence and the effect of the Holy Spirit. We have communion — union with — the Father and with the Son by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. This is why Saint John writes in the same epistle, “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because he has given us of His own Spirit” (1 Jn 4:13).

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON

This is John
who reclined on the breast of the Lord at supper:
Blessed the Apostle unto whom were made known
the secret things of heaven;
to the ends of the earth he has spread the words of life.

COLLECT

O God who,
through the blessed apostle John,
unlocked for us the hidden secrets of your Word,
grant, we beseech you,
that we may grasp with fuller understanding
what he so wondrously proclaimed.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God forever and ever.

BLESSING OF WINE ON THE FEAST OF SAINT JOHN, APOSTLE AND EVANGELIST

On the Feast of Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist, at the end of the principal Mass, that is, after the last Gospel, the priest, retaining all his vestments except the maniple, in the following manner blesses wine brought by the people in memory and in honor of Saint John, who drank poison without harm:

V. Our help is in the name of the Lord.
R. Who has made heaven and earth.

V. The Lord be with you.
R. And with your spirit.

Let us pray.

Be so kind as to bless and consecrate with Your right hand, Lord, this cup of wine, and every drink. Grant that by the merits of Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist, all who believe in You and drink of this cup may be blessed and protected. Blessed John drank poison from the cup, and was in no way harmed. So, too, may all who this day drink from this cup in honor of blessed John, by his merits, be freed from every sickness by poisoning and from any harms whatever. And, when they have offered themselves in both soul and body, may they be freed, too, from every fault, through Christ our Lord.
R. Amen.

Bless, Lord, this beverage which You have made. May it be a healthful refreshment to all who drink of it. And grant by the invocation of Your holy name that whoever tastes of it may, by Your generosity receive health of both soul and body, through Christ our Lord.
R. Amen

And may the blessing of almighty God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, descend upon this wine which He has made, and upon every drink, and remain always.
R. Amen.

And it is sprinkled with Holy Water. If this blessing is given outside of Mass, the priest performs it in the manner described above, but with surplice and stole.

This Saint John the Evangelist was painted by Francesco Furini sometime in the 1630s. Today it hangs in the Musée des Beaux–Arts of Lyon.

December 27
Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist

1 John 1:1-4
Psalm 96: 1-2. 5-6. 11-12. R. v.12
John 20: 2-8

The Logic of the Liturgy

The liturgy has a marvelous logic all its own. On this second day of the Christmas octave, Mother Church gives us an Easter Gospel! While we are yet at the manger, the liturgy compels us to run to the empty tomb! John, the disciple whom Jesus loved is there before us. His virginal love gave wings to his feet. “Draw me in your footsteps, says the bride of the Canticle, let us run” (Ct 1:4). John is the first of those who “hasten with swift pace and light step and unstumbling feet,” arriving even before Peter, and yet deferring to him.

Peter and John

Hans Urs von Balthasar speaks of a double authority in the Church, a double ministry: the Petrine and Johannine. The Petrine authority is firmly established by Christ on the solid rock of Peter; it continues in the Church through the ministry of Peter’s successors, teaching, reproving, testing, correcting, forgiving and calling together in unity. The Johannine authority speaks with the voice of love, with the inimitable accents of direct experience. It is the authority of the saints and mystics, the authority of holiness, the authority of the greatly loved and of the great lovers. “ I belong to my love, and my love to me” (Ct 6:3).

What We Have Seen and Heard

The Church has need of both voices. She needs the strong, unwavering voice of Peter; she also needs the many-voiced Johannine chorus of those who sing: “Something which has existed since the beginning, that we have heard, and we have seen with our own eyes; that we have contemplated and touched with our own hands: the Word who is life—this is our theme. That life was made visible; we saw it and are giving our testimony. . . . We declare to you what we have seen and heard, so that you too may share our life” (1 Jn 1:1-3).

Love of Things Invisible

The Johannine chorus speaks with the unmistakable authority of those who have gone into the wine-cellar and rested beneath the banner of love (cf. Ct 2:4-5). Their breath is fragrant with honey and with the honeycomb, of wine and of milk: that is with the imperishable sweetness of the Holy Spirit, with the Blood of the Lamb and with the pure milk of the living Word of God. These are the ones who have eaten and drunk, drunk deeply (cf. Ct 5:1) of the streams of living water that flow ever fresh from the pierced Heart of the Bridegroom (cf. Jn 7:37-38). These are the descendants of Saint John the Beloved, those to whom the Father has given the eagle’s vision, those who are little enough and poor enough to be borne aloft and carried away into the “love of things invisible,” as the Christmas Preface puts it.

Before I go to bed, I want to say, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! After Mass at the Glorious Cross, I joined my family (Mom and Dad) at the home of my sister Donna, her husband Wayne, and their children Sean and Lauren for Christmas dinner. Lauren's hidden talents are beginning to emerge: she is quite the decorator, the hostess, and the cook. Martha Stewart, watch out!

Tomorrow I begin a week of trying to get ready for my departure for Rome on 3 January. I have a lot of packing to do, especially of books. I will be returning to my monastery of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme in Rome for six months. If there are any Roman readers of Vultus Christi, do make yourselves known! Ci vediamo. I will continue Vultus Christi from the Eternal City, but will need a few days to recover from jet lag and to organize myself at Santa Croce. I should be back to regular posting from Rome by the Epiphany.

This painting by Bernardino Luini (1480–1532) shows Saint Katherine of Alexandria and Saint Barbara, Virgin Martyrs, in the company of the Infant Christ and His Virgin Mother. The little Jesus is opening the pages of the Scripures. This He does for all who seek His Face. "No man hath seen God at any time: the only–begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him (Jn 1:18)

Be sure to visit my friend Terry at Abbey–Roads. His post on devotion to the Child Jesus is wonderful. Those graced with a special love for Our Lord in the mysteries of His infancy and childhood can attest to the healing power of this devotion. There is nothing sentimental about it: it takes one to the very heart of the Gospel and opens one's eyes to the glory of God shining on the Face of His Incarnate Word.

This is an extraordinary painting of the Nativity, principally because of the crucifix on the rustic shelf inside the stable. It is the work of Lorenzo Lotto (1480–1556). The nakedness of the Child in the manger presages His nakedness on the cross. His arms are outstretched in the manger as on the cross. In Bethlehem, the Virgin Mother and Saint Joseph contemplate Him; on Calvary the Virgin Mother and Saint John will look upon Him pierced.

According to an ancient monastic tradition, there is no homily at the Mass of Christmas Day. The Prologue of Saint John — the mystery of the Word out of silence — calls for an adoring silence. In some monasteries the Prologue of Saint John is sung to an exquisite First Mode melody. The Prologue is a Gospel that simply has to be sung. And after it, there has to be silence. After the Word — no other words. Tacere et adorare.

Saint John the Theologian presents us with the ineffable mystery of the Word: the Word facing the Father from all eternity; the Word made flesh, pitching his tent among us, that we might see his glory. Before the glory of the Word, all other words fall silent. In the presence of the Word, human discourse stammers and fails. Silence alone is worthy of the mystery.

The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Mass During the Night

Isaiah 9:2-4, 6-7
Psalm 95: 1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13
Titus 2: 11-14
Luke 2:10-11

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shined” (Is 9:2).
Following the ancient tradition of the Church
you prepared your encounter with the Light
by means of a night vigil of psalmody and reading.
The Word heard became the Word held;
the Word held became the Word offered;
and the Word offered becomes, in this nocturnal Eucharist,
a Light, no longer beheld from without, but blazing within.
“Did not our hearts burn within us
while he talked to us on the road?” (Lk 24:32).

Cistercians and Franciscans — and yes, Carmelites too! — have this in common: a tender love for the mystery of the Word made flesh and a holy delight in the little Child of Bethlehem. Some of the most beautiful Christ–masses of my life were spent at Bethlehem Monastery of the Poor Clares, first in Newport News Virginia and then in Barhamsville. Imagine my delight when I found Bernardino Fasolo's painting (1526) of the Nativity depicting Our Lady and Saint Joseph, Saint Elizabeth and Saint Zechariah, Saint John the Baptist (the little boy kneeling with folded hands), Saint John the Evangelist, Saint Francis holding the cross, and Saint Clare holding the monstrance! All eyes are fixed on the Bambino Gesù. And He, with His little hand grasps His cousin's staff, fashioned in the form of the cross, as if to say: "For this, have I come: to be the Lamb of God."

Vesperal Mass of the Vigil of the Nativity of the Lord

Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 88: 3-4, 15-16, 26 and 28
Acts 13: 16-17, 22-25
Matthew 1:1-25

All the World Desires to Behold His Face

“The King of peace is greatly glorified, and all the world desires to behold His face” (First Antiphon of Vespers). This evening, the inexpressible and inarticulate groanings of the cosmos, the desire of the everlasting hills, the hope of the patriarchs, and the promises of the prophets all come to flower on the lips of the Church. She enters more deeply into the mystery of the Advent of the Lord with a heart dilated by the immensity of her desire. The Church, in whom all the peoples of the earth are gathered, beholds the glory of God shining in the human face of His Christ (2 Cor 4:6). Tranfixed, she drinks deeply from the human eyes of God as from great pools of living water.

The King of peace has come to strengthen the bars of her gates, to bless the children within her, to establish peace in her borders, to feed her with finest wheat (Ps 147:2-3). The Word is sent forth from the silence of the Father (Ps 147:4); running swiftly He comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills (Ct 2:8), melting all that is frozen, causing streams to flow at the breath of His mouth (Ps 147:11-12).

Fire Upon the Earth

In this Vesperal Mass of the great vigil, the Church reads one of her Advent prophet’s most lyrical and jubilant pages. Isaiah stands irrepressible upon the heights, guiding us through the portals of First Vespers into the mystery of the holy night. “For Zions’s sake, I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest” (Is 62:1). Now her vindication goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch. Zion is vindicated. The Church is vindicated. All who have waited, and believed, and wept, and hoped against hope are vindicated. Healing comes as a burning torch to purify, to cleanse, to ignite a fire upon the earth, and to warm hearts long grown cold. “I have come,” He says, “to cast fire upon the earth, and would that it were already kindled” (Lk 12:49).

Today is Our Lady’s Sunday in Advent.
Pope Paul VI, influenced, no doubt, by the ancient practice
of the venerable Church of Milan,
desired that the Fourth Sunday of Advent
should become a veritable festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
He wanted to envelop the Christmas mystery
in the gentle presence of the Virgin Mother.

By designating the Fourth Sunday of Advent our Lady’s Sunday
and by restoring to January 1st
its ancient title of the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God,
Pope Paul VI sought to give us the Infant Christ, the Redeemer of the world,
circled round by the tenderness of the Blessed Virgin.

The liturgy celebrates the Virgin Mother
before Christmas Day and again eight days after it.
This is the Church’s way of teaching us
that the Blessed Virgin Mary is indispensable to every advent of Christ.
If you would welcome Christ, welcome Mary.
If you would receive Christ, seek Mary.
If you would know Christ, know Mary.
If you would love Christ, love Mary.

The Blessed Virgin is present in every part of today’s Mass.
The Introit, for example, is her song before it is ours.
It can only be ours because it was first hers.
“Send down dew from above, you heavens,
and let the skies pour down upon us the rain we long for, Him, the Just One:
may He, the Saviour, spring from the closed womb of the earth” (Is 45:8).
There is no prayer that does not begin
in an intense longing for the dew from above.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for holiness;
they shall have their fill” (Mt 5:6).

The Collect is familiar and worn like a thing much loved
because it is the prayer that, three times each day,
concludes the Little Office of the Incarnation
that we call the Angelus.
It sums up the whole economy of our salvation:
the message of an angel to the Virgin;
the immensity of her “Yes”;
the bitter Passion and the Blood outpoured;
the Cross, the Tomb, and the triumph of the Prince of Life.
Of all these mysteries, Mary is the mystical portress
and the keeper of the gate.
This is why the saints teach that love for Mary
is a sure sign of predestination.
Understand this aphorism as the saints did:
one who loves Mary
is destined to imitate her “Yes”
and to follow her through the passion and cross of her Son
into the glory of His resurrection.

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON

MR
Drop down dew, you heavens, from above,
and let the clouds rain down the Just One:
let the earth be opened and bud forth a Saviour (Is 45:8).

COLLECT

Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord,
Thy grace into our hearts,
that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ Thy Son,
was made known by the message of an angel,
may by His passion and cross
be brought to the glory of His resurrection.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son,
who with Thee lives and reigns
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God forever and ever.

Almighty and ever-living God,
seeing that the birth of Thy Son according to the flesh
is drawing near,
we beseech Thee that Thy Word
may grant mercy to us, Thy unworthy servants,
for He deigned to become flesh of the Virgin Mary
and to dwell among us.

The Realism of the Liturgy

You may have noticed that the Collects of Advent, as well as the Prayers Over the Offerings and the Postcommunions, make frequent mention of sin. Like heavy chains bound to our feet, sin impedes our going forward to meet the Lord. This is the realism of the liturgy. The Church never pretends that we are not engaged at every moment in spiritual combat. The joy of Advent is not about denying the things that keep us from God; it is the acknowledgement of those things and, then, their surrender to the all-powerful mercy of the Word made flesh.

Saved for Joy

Today’s Collect looks to tomorrow and the next day.

Almighty and ever-living God,
seeing that the birth of Thy Son according to the flesh is drawing near. . . .

The words of this first phrase of the Collect are those that we will hear solemnly proclaimed tomorrow in the Martyrology: Nativitas Domini nostri Iesu Christi secundum carnem, “the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.” It is the custom in some Benedictine monasteries for the Cantor to don a rose-coloured cope to sing the Announcement of Christmas, the dawn of our salvation.

Our liberation from sin is a liberation for joy. Christ comes not only to save us from sin, but also to save us for joy. “I will not leave you desolate,” says the Lord, “I will come to you” (Jn 14:18); and again, “Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (Jn 16:24).

The Word Became Flesh

Here is the petition of today’s Collect:

We beseech Thee that Thy Word may grant mercy to us, Thy unworthy servants,
for He deigned to become flesh of the Virgin Mary and to dwell among us.

The Church speaks of the Word; she uses the language of the sublime Prologue of Saint John, the very Gospel that we will hear at the Mass of Christmas Day. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1). “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14).

Murillo's painting of the Infant Christ distributing bread to pilgrims is an invitation to consider the mystery of the Eucharist, God–With–Us, the Child of Bethlehem, the House of Bread. An Angel assists the Infant Christ. Behind Him (not visible in this detail) is His Mother, her body forming a kind of Eucharistic throne, a variation on the Sedes Sapientiae motif. Perhaps the sequence of the Mass of Corpus Christi provided a subtext for this painting:

Ecce, panis Angelorum,
Factus cibus viatorum:
Vere panis filiorum.

Behold, the Bread of Angels sent
For pilgrims in their banishment,
The Bread for God's true children meant.

O Emmanuel (Is 7:14; 8:8),
our King and Lawgiver (Is 33:22),
the expectation of the nations and their Saviour (Gen 49:10):
Come and save us, O Lord our God.

The Last of the O Antiphons

On December 23rd we come today to the last of the Great O Antiphons. We are accustomed to seven, but, in other times and places, and even now, there are nine or even as many as twelve.

O Virgo Virginum

O Virgo Virginum, the last of the Great O Antiphons in the old English liturgy of Sarum , occurs on December 23rd. Its structure is quite different from all the other Great O Antiphons. The first part is a question addressed to the Virgin Mary; in the second part she replies with another question, and then, gives her answer.

“O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be?
For neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after.
Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me?
That which ye behold is a divine mystery.”

It is touching that the Anglican Church, despite all the vicissitudes of her history, remains attached to this lovely Great O addressed to Our Lady.

O Emmanuel

In today’s Roman liturgy the O Antiphon is, like the six that preceded it, addressed to our Lord Jesus Christ. It seems to me that, with each succeeding day, the O of our invocation, and the Veni of our supplication has grown more confident, more intense and, in a sense, more urgent.

Afraid Never Again

Mother Marie des Douleurs, writing in 1964, offers us a somewhat anguished meditation on today’s Great O. It appears to come out of an experience of weakness, fear, and uncertainty. Some would dismiss it as deeply pessimistic and too gloomy for Advent. I sense something else in it: the prayer of woman wrestling with her inner demons, as we all do, and confident nonetheless in the mystery of God-with-us. This is what she wrote:

The mystery of the Vultus Christi, the adorable Face of Christ, recurs frequently in the discourses of Pope Benedict XVI. In his December 21st address to the children of the Italian Catholic Action Movement the Holy Father said:

Nel volto del piccolo Gesù
contempliamo il volto di Dio
che non si rivela nella forza o nella potenza,
ma nella debolezza e nella fragile costituzione di un bambino.

"In the face of the little Jesus
we contemplate the face of God,
which is not revealed through force or power,
but in weakness and the fragile constitution of a child."

The Bambino clasping His Mamma's hand is by Michelangelo. Already, I see in this something of the Pietà.

December 22

1 Samuel 1:24-28
1 Samuel 2:1, 4-5, 6-7, 8abcd
Luke 1:46-56

Preaching on the Propers

Some of you have asked why I so often preach on the Collect of the Mass. There are several reasons for this. First, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal recommends that priests preach not only on the Gospel of the day or on the other readings, but also on the Proper and Ordinary of the Mass, that is, on the other parts of the Mass, both those that change according to the season and day, and those common to every celebration.

Devotion to the Collect

The Collect of the Mass is a privileged element of the sacred liturgy. It instructs us in the mysteries of our faith and articulates the prayer of the whole Church, a prayer that that is the fruit of the Word of God heard (lectio) and repeated in antiphons and responsories (meditatio). In the great seasons of the Church Year and on feasts, the same Collect is repeated at Mass and at all the Hours of the Divine Office, except Compline. This repetition of the Collect is intended to anchor it our hearts. Dom Guéranger, the restorer of Benedictine life in nineteenth France, once told a novice bewildered by the vast variety of pious devotions, that a single one was indispensable and sufficient: devotion to the Collect of the day.

An Inspired Prayer

The Collect of the day is a distillation of the Church’s own reflection on the Word of God. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Collect rises in the soul of the Church. At Mass and the Divine Office, it comes to flower on the lips of her children to bear fruit in their lives.

Unspeakable Groanings

None of us know how to pray rightly. Often in our prayer we ask for things according to our own dim lights. We ask God for the things we think we need or for the things we think we want. But our needing and our wanting are, more often than not, obscure and flawed. This is the “infirmity” of our prayer. Saint Paul says: “The Spirit also helpeth our infirmity. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings. And he that searcheth the hearts, knoweth what the Spirit desireth; because he asketh for the saints according to God” (Rom 8:26-27). The Collect articulates for us the unspeakable groanings of the Spirit. When we pray the Collect, making it our own, we are asking according to God, and not according to our own dim and limited perceptions.

O King of the Gentiles,
and the Desired of all nations(Hag 2:8),
you are the cornerstone (Is 28:16)
that binds two into one (Eph 2:14).
Come, and bring wholeness to man
whom you fashioned out of clay (Gen 2:7).

The Desired of All Nations

Today we lift our voices to Christ, calling Him King of the Gentiles and the Desired of all nations. The O Antiphon draws upon the second chapter of the prophet Haggai. With the temple still in ruins after the Babylonian exile and the project of rebuilding it daunting, Haggai speaks a word of comfort to Zerubbabel, the governor; to Joshua, the high priest; and to all the remnant of the people.

“Take courage, O Zerubbabel, says the Lord;
take courage, O Joshua, son of Jehozodak, the high priest;
take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord;
work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts,
according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt.
My Spirit abides among you; fear not.
For thus says the Lord of hosts:
Once again in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth
and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations
and the Desired of all nations shall come;
and I will fill this house with splendour, says the Lord of hosts” (Hag 2:4-8).

The O Antiphon uses but one phrase from this passage: the Christological title “Desired of All Nations.” In order to grasp the significance of the title we must listen to Haggai’s message of comfort and hope in its entirety, repeating it and praying it over it until it inhabits us.

The Beauty of the Infant Christ

The “Desired of all nations” will indeed come to the temple to fill it with His splendour. Simeon, recognizing the beauty of the Infant Christ, will call Him “a light of revelation to the gentiles and the glory of God’s people Israel” (Lk 2:32). The prophetess Anna will “give thanks to God and speak of the Child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Lk 2:38). The arrival of the Infant Christ in the temple is the long-awaited arrival of “the desire of the everlasting hills” (Gen 49:26).

Aspirations Toward Christ

By calling the Messiah the “Desired of all nations,” Scripture and the liturgy recognize the aspirations of every nation and culture toward the good, the true, and the beautiful, as aspirations toward Christ. Every time a human being seeks the splendour of the truth, the radiance of beauty, the purity of goodness, he seeks Christ, the “Desired of all nations.”

O DAYSPRING (Zech 6:12; Lk 1:78),
Splendor of Eternal Light (Heb 1:3),
and Sun of Justice (Mal 4:2):
Come, and enlighten those that sit in darkness,
and in the shadow of death (Is 9:2; Lk 1:78-79).

The Orient From On High

O Oriens! Oriens: the word is familiar to those who chant the Benedictus in Latin every morning. “Per viscera misericordiae Dei nostri — literally, through the inmost heart, the secret places of the mercy of our God — in quibus visitavit nos Oriens ex alto — in which the Orient from on high has visited us” (Lk 1:79).

Oriens was the name of the ancient Roman sun god, the source of warmth, energy, and light. At the same time, Oriens means the rising sun, the victory of light over the shadows of the night.

Ad Orientem

From the earliest times, Christians at prayer have turned towards the East. Christ is the Dayspring, the rising sun who dawns upon us from high “to give light to those in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Luke 1:9). The eastward orientation of churches and altars is a way of expressing the great cry of every Eucharist: “Let our hearts be lifted high. We hold them towards the Lord.” When, in the celebration of the liturgy, the priest faces east, he is “guiding the people in pilgrimage towards the Kingdom” and with them, keeping watch for the return of the Lord. “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

The Eastern Churches follow to this day (and the Western Church is in the process of recovering) the apostolic tradition of celebrating the Eucharist towards the East in anticipation of the return of the Lord in glory. A powerful witness is given in the prayer of a priest and people who stand together facing eastward and giving voice to the same hope. “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come’” (Ap 22:17).

Our King and Our Priest

The prophet Zechariah is another source of the antiphon. The Vulgate gives a shimmering image of Christ, the Orient who is our King and our Priest. “Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, saying: Behold a Man, the Orient is his name. . . . Yea, he shall build a temple to the Lord: and he shall bear the glory, and he shall sit, and rule upon his throne: and he shall be a priest upon his throne” (Zech 6:12-13).

Sun of Justice

“Splendor of eternal light” comes from the Letter to the Hebrews. Christ is called “the brightness of the glory of God, and the figure of his substance” (Heb 1:3). “Sun of Justice” comes from the prophet Malachi. “For you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall” (Mal 4:2).

Veni!

Today’s O Antiphon is carefully constructed; after three invocations of Christ the Light, the petition begins. But — surprise! Today’s Great O departs from the familiar pattern: the Veni coming, as it were, out of the depths: do-fa-mi. Today, our Veni has a certitude, a note of triumph, the beginning of a jubilation. It is as if the first rays of the Dayspring are already illuminating our eyes and warming our faces. Today, our cry Veni is sung on la-sol, right after the musical summit of the whole antiphon. Picture this: you have climbed to a mountain peak before sunrise and there, as you survey the dark horizon, you catch the first rosy glimmers of the dawn. From your mountain height you give voice to the cry of your heart: Veni! But the cry comes from one who already sees the light.

Just look at this tabernacle! It is found in the monastic church of the Recluses Missionnaires, a Canadian community, inspired by Montréal's saintly recluse Jeanne Le Ber (1662–1714), and dedicated to adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Although my own taste goes more to the baroque, I love the underlying inspiration of this tabernacle: it illustrates the teaching of the Servant of God Pope John Paul II in Ecclesia de Eucharistia:

In a certain sense Mary lived her Eucharistic faith even before the institution of the Eucharist, by the very fact that she offered her virginal womb for the Incarnation of God's Word. The Eucharist, while commemorating the passion and resurrection, is also in continuity with the incarnation. At the Annunciation Mary conceived the Son of God in the physical reality of his body and blood, thus anticipating within herself what to some degree happens sacramentally in every believer who receives, under the signs of bread and wine, the Lord's body and blood.

As a result, there is a profound analogy between the Fiat which Mary said in reply to the angel, and the Amen which every believer says when receiving the body of the Lord. Mary was asked to believe that the One whom she conceived “through the Holy Spirit” was “the Son of God” ( Lk 1:30-35). In continuity with the Virgin's faith, in the Eucharistic mystery we are asked to believe that the same Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary, becomes present in his full humanity and divinity under the signs of bread and wine.

“Blessed is she who believed” ( Lk 1:45). Mary also anticipated, in the mystery of the incarnation, the Church's Eucharistic faith. When, at the Visitation, she bore in her womb the Word made flesh, she became in some way a “tabernacle” – the first “tabernacle” in history – in which the Son of God, still invisible to our human gaze, allowed himself to be adored by Elizabeth, radiating his light as it were through the eyes and the voice of Mary. And is not the enraptured gaze of Mary as she contemplated the face of the newborn Christ and cradled him in her arms that unparalleled model of love which should inspire us every time we receive Eucharistic communion?

Deus, aeterna maestas. cuius ineffabile Verbum,
Angelo nuntiante, Virgo immaculata suscepit,
et, domus divinitatis effecta, Sanctus Spiritus luce repletur,
quaesumus, ut nos, eius exemplo,
voluntati tuae humiliter adhaerere valeamus.

O God, Eternal Majesty,
at the announcement of the angel,
the immaculate Virgin received your ineffable Word within herself
and, having become the dwelling of the divinity,
was filled with the light of the Holy Spirit;
we beseech you, that following her example,
we may be able to adhere humbly to your will.

If we are to profit fully from today’s Collect, we have to listen to it with the ears of the heart and look closely at the images it sets before us. In addition to the Father and the Son evoked in every Collect, in today’s there are the same three persons present in Saint Luke’s account of the Annunciation: the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit, and the Archangel Gabriel.

Aeterna maiestas

Today’s prayer addresses God, as Eternal Majesty. This form of divine address is very rare in the liturgy. Why does the Church use it in her prayer today? It sets the opening of the prayer in the heights of heaven. One can only think of Isaiah’s vision in the temple: “In the year that King Ozias died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and elevated: and his train filled the temple” (Is 6:1).

The painting of the Annunciation by the Florentine Dominican Fra Bartolomeo (1472–1517), a convert of Savonarola, shows us the Father of Eternal Majesty blessing with His right hand while, with the other, He sends the Holy Spirit, under the form of a dove, into the house of the Virgin at Nazareth.

There can be nothing brashly familiar in our approach to the mystery. We begin the Collect today in holy amazement, in the fear of God that is a mixture of face-in-the-dust adoration and speechless awe. We describe God as we experience him: aeterna maiestas, eternal majesty. The eternal majesty of God in heaven penetrates the little house of Nazareth to reach the Virgin, ravishing in her humility.

A glowing radiance surrounds the Mass of December 20th. During the Middle Ages, the Mass of the Missus Est — the first words of the Gospel of the Annunciation — on the Ember Wednesday of Advent was celebrated very solemnly as a kind of festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The stational church in Rome is the Basilica of Saint Mary Major; this choice signifies that today’s Mass is equal to that of the greatest feasts of the Mother God. It was called the Missa Aurea, the “Golden Mass.” In manuscripts of the Middle Ages, the capital letters of the text of the Annunciation Gospel were written in gold. The letters of gold were but a sign of the secret grace hidden within the words of the Angel Gabriel and within the response of the Virgin Mary.

Then too there is the tradition of celebrating today’s Mass in the glow of candlelight. The “Golden Mass” was especially popular throughout Europe where the faithful hastened to their churches before dawn, bearing lanterns, confident of obtaining on this day whatever special grace they asked through the intercession of the Virgin of the Annunciation.

The Gospel is sung today to a particular melody: the same ancient melody used to sing the Gospel of Pentecost. The Annunciation is the Proto-Pentecost. The Virgin Mother, overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, is the living image of the Church overshadowed by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

To illustrate the antiphon O Clavis David, I chose Bartolomeo Bermejo’s magnificent painting of the Harrowing of Hell. It depicts the Risen Christ descending into the dreary dungeon of Hades where Adam and Eve, Methuselah, Solomon, and the Queen of Shebah await Him. The Risen Christ descends into the darkness, radiant in the light of his glory. Psalm 106 expresses the mystery of the moment: “Then they cried to the Lord in their need and he rescued them from their distress. He led them forth from darkness and gloom and broke their chains to pieces” (Ps 106:13-14).

O Key of David
and Sceptre of the House of Israel ,
who opens and no one can shut,
who shuts and no one can open (Is 22:22; Rev 3:7):
Come and bring the prisoners forth from the prison cell,
those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death (Is 42:7; Ps 106:13-14; Lk 1:9).

The Yes to Love

On December 20th we stand in the doorway of the humble dwelling where the Blessed Virgin Mary receives the Angel’s message. We are all ears, all eyes . . . listening, looking, and trying to take in something of the mystery that unfolds before us. The mystery of the Annunciation is, in essence, the Virgin’s utterly simple “Yes” to Love; through her “Yes” l’amore che move ‘l sol e anche le stelle, the light that moves the stars and even the sun, encloses itself in her womb. We enter the mystery of the Annunciation, not by any effort of the imagination, but by an utterly simple and penetrating act of faith, by the “Yes” to Love.

Love Conceived, Love Crucified, Love Risen

One does not approach the Virgin of the Annunciation without discovering the Mother of Sorrows. The joyful “Yes” to Love conceived beneath the Virgin’s heart flowers into the sorrowful “Yes” to Love crucified, and the glorious “Yes” to Love risen from the tomb. Standing in the doorway of the Holy House of Nazareth, listening and looking, we have only to believe in Love, in the Love to whom “nothing is impossible” (Lk 1:37).

Annunciation

Today’s O Antiphon is closely tied to the Annunciation Gospel. “He will be great,” said the Angel Gabriel, “and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to Him the throne of his father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end” (Lk 1:32-33). We lift our voices to Christ, calling him “Key of David and Sceptre of the House of Israel.”

The Key of the House of David

The antiphon draws its invocation from the twenty–second chapter of Isaiah. The Lord says to Shebna, the master of the household of King Hezekiah, “And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will call my servant Eliakim the son of Helkias, and I will clothe him with thy robe, and will strengthen him with thy girdle, and will give thy power into his hand: and he shall be as a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Juda. And I will lay the key of the house of David upon his shoulder: and he shall open, and none shall shut: and he shall shut and none shall open. And I will fasten him as a peg in a sure place, and he shall be for a throne of glory to the house of his father” (Is 22:20–23).

A Key Borne on the Shoulder

Eliakim, whose name means, “God has raised up,” is a figure of Christ. Christ is Lord and Master over the household of the Father. On the shoulder of Christ was placed the key of the Cross, the key that opens what no mortal can open, and that closes what no mortal can close. In the image of the great key placed on the shoulder we recognize a figure of the Cross placed on the shoulder of Christ, the key by which heaven is opened and hell vanquished.

I could have chosen one of the many medieval images of the Tree of Jesse to illustrate this O Antiphon, but instead I chose this 18th century Gesù Bambino from Southern Italy. Now, this may be because I have a not so secret affinity for all things Neapolitan, but it is also because there is something in this Gesù Bambino that goes to the heart of the O Antiphon I am meditating. The Child Christ is holding a little wooden cross. He is gazing at it intently and there is a mysterious sorrow in his eyes. He is also offering the cross to anyone willing to receive it from His hands. This is the Child before Whom kings shall shut their mouths and Whom the nations shall seek. "Lifted up from the earth, He will draw all things to Himself" (cf. Jn 12:32).

O Root of Jesse (Ac 13:22-23),
standing as a sign to the peoples (Is 11:10),
before whom kings shall shut their mouths (Is 52:15),
and whom the nations shall seek (1 K 10:24; 2 Chr 9:23):
Come and deliver us and do not delay (Hab 2:3; Rev 22:20).

O Root of Jesse

The image of the Root of Jesse comes from the eleventh chapter of Isaiah where he says, “And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of His root” (Is 11:1). It is the passage that enumerates the gifts of the Holy Spirit; from the Vulgate, the Catholic tradition counts seven gifts. “And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him: the spirit of wisdom, and of understanding, the spirit of counsel, and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge, and of godliness. And He shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord” (Is 11:2-3). This means that when we cry out, “Come,” to the Root of Jesse who is Christ, we are, in the same prayer, invoking the Holy Spirit who, in His sevenfold gift, comes to us with the Son.

The Tree of the Cross

Isaiah goes on to say in the tenth verse of the same chapter: “On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of Him.” The Root of Jesse is given, not only to Israel, but as a signal to the nations, a standard around which all peoples will rally. In fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, Jesus says of himself, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (Jn 12:32). The Root of Jesse is already the profile of the Cross: a figure of the glorious standard of the King, the Vexilla Regis of which we sing in the Vespers hymn of September 14th. Today’s O Antiphon opens onto the paschal mystery: the Root of Jesse announces that the advent of the Son is ordered to the mission of redemption that He will accomplish on the Tree of the Cross.

Like a Root Out of Dry Ground

The mystery of the Cross is brought into focus more clearly in the next line: “before whom kings shall shut their mouths.” The text, taken from Isaiah 52, leads directly into the Song of the Suffering Servant. “So He shall startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of Him” (Is 52:10). This silence of the kings of the earth expresses numbed astonishment. They are dumbstruck by the humble Root of Jesse gloriously exalted, all the more because, “He grew up before the Lord like a young plant a like a root out of dry ground; He had no form or comeliness that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces” (Is 53:2-3).

The Verbum Crucis

The silence of the kings of the earth is their amazement before the triumph of the Cross. The verbum Crucis, the “word of the Cross” (1 Cor 1:18) shuts the mouth of every earthly king. The psalm given us for the Introit of the Christmas Mass During the Night will describe the machinations of earthly powers against the Christ of God: “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and His anointed” (Ps 2:2). But already, in today’s O Antiphon, we see them judged from the Cross; they have no judgments to give, no verdicts, and no decrees, “for the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor 1:25).

Did anyone else notice the discrepancy in today's First Lesson between the Latin lectionary and the English lectionaries currently in use? The Latin text contained this wonderful phrase: "Gaudebit super te in laetitia, silebit in dilectione sua, exsultabit super te in laude" (Soph 3:17) — "He will rejoice over thee with gladness, he will be silent in his love, he will be joyful over thee in praise."

In none of the current lectionaries is the phrase, silebit in dilectione sua, translated with a reference to silence. This, however, is the text given in the editio typica of the lectionary, and it rather left me breathless. "He will be silent in his love." Ponder it. I did allude to the phrase today in my homily on the Introit Gaudete (see below).

This is the central panel of a triptych painted by Nicolas Froment in 1476. It depicts Moses awestruck before the Burning Bush and the appearance of the Angel of the Lord. The Burning Bush — here a rose bush all ablaze with radiating flames — surrounds the Virgin Mother holding her Divine Son. The Child Christ holds a mirror in his hand in which both of them are reflected. The painting illustrates a mystical antiphon of the Office of January 1st to which I refer below.

A Precarious Note

Again today the great cry goes up, a cry wrung from the depths of our being, a cry framed between two expressive words: O and Veni. The musical treatment of both words is the same: do-fa-mi. The interval do-fa is a stretching heavenward. We hardly reach the dominant fa of our confidence when we fall to the precarious mi, an unstable note in the second mode, one that suggests just how fragile we are. The mi is suspended: we have cast our prayer upward into the heavens. The uncertainty of the mi obliges us to hope against hope, to believe without seeing, to abandon our prayer once we have thrown it into the heavens, trusting that the hand of God will receive it and take it to heart.

ADONAI

Yesterday we called to the Christ, naming Him Wisdom, Sapientia; today we call Him ADONAI, Sacred Lord, Master of All, Majesty. Today we have the most Jewish of the O Antiphons: ADONAI, Moses, and Sinai — the Lord God, the man of God, and the mountain of God are named in a single brief prayer. ADONAI is used frequently in the Hebrew scriptures. The Jews use it in place of the holy and unutterable name, the name that it is forbidden to pronounce. You see, then, the significance of this name given to Christ. Christ is the “angel of God” who appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush (cf. Ex 3:2). “And, lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, ‘I will turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt’” (Ex 3:2-3).

Apparuisti

The center and summit of today’s antiphon is the appearance of God to Moses in the burning bush. The most important word of the antiphon is apparuisti – “thou who didst appear.” It is on this word that the melody soars to the heights of “Horeb, the mountain of God” (Ex 3:1), giving to its last syllable the astonishing treatment of a double torculus: six notes in all!

The Virgin Mother of God

Flash ahead, for a moment, to today’s gospel. When Saint Joseph was confronted with the inexplicable mystery of Mary, his betrothed, being found with child, he was very much like Moses before the burning bush. “Lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed” (Ex 3:2). An antiphon of January 1st makes exactly this comparison: “In the bush which Moses saw burning and yet not burnt, we recognize your virginity gloriously preserved. O Mother of God, intercede for us.” Man before the mystery. “I will turn aside and see” (Ex 3:3)

The Call of God

Moses’ experience before the burning bush is a paradigm of all prayer. God drew Moses out of himself, and captured his attention by means of the burning bush. “And when the Lord saw that he went forward to see, he called to him out of the midst of the bush, and said: ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here am I!’ (Ex 3:4). Just when we think that prayer is about our calling to God, we discover that it is really about God calling to us. Just when we think we have put our whole heart into saying, “Come!” to God, we discover that ceaselessly God puts His whole heart into saying “Come!” to us.

Adoration

God wants us close, very close to himself, but in the intimacy of adoration, in a wondering awareness of the Mystery. Adoration carries us into the infinity of God, into depths where our senses and our reason cannot go. And this is the reason why Moses is ordered to remove the shoes from his feet. “Do not come near; put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Ex 3:5). Only then does God reveal Himself as the Maker of covenants (Gen 17:1-8), the Giver of Blessings (Gen 26:12), the Mysterious Wrestler in the night (cf. Gen 32:24-30). “And He said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Ex 3:6).

Third Sunday of Advent C

Luke 3:10-18
Philippians 4:4-7
Isaiah 12:2-6 (Responsorial Psalm)
Zephaniah 3:14-18

A Prophet All Ablaze

Today’s gospel begins rather abruptly. John the Baptist has been preaching a message of repentance to the multitudes. He is no ordinary preacher. John burns; he is all aflame with the fire of the Word of God. He aims his words like blazing arrows to pierce the most hardened hearts. John is not intimidated by his hearers. He is not diplomatic. The Baptist is not impressed by the rich and the powerful. He doesn’t seek to please the influential, nor to flatter the pious. He doesn’t court the favour of the establishment.

The Sword of the Word

When it comes to sin, John is absolutely lucid; he knows well just how twisted and hardened the human heart can become. Jeremiah had said it before him: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9). John knows only one remedy for the corruption and deceit of the human heart: the Word of God, “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12).

The Malignant Growths of Sin

To be wounded by the Word is the first stage of healing. Not only is the Word blazing arrow and two-edged sword; it is a scalpel as well. The Word is the scalpel by which the Holy Spirit removes from our hearts the malignant growths of sin.

There are some who come to the sacred liturgy or go to lectio divina armed against the Word, wearing helmets and clutching shields. It is, in fact, possible to go through the motions of worship clothed in an invisible armour protected by the hard shells of routine piety, self-sufficiency, and habitual inattention to the proclamation of the Word. It is even possible to listen to the Word of God, holding all the while a shield in front of our hearts, lest we be struck by the Word, and wounded.

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON

GR
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer let your petitions be made known to God (Phil 4:4-6).

COLLECT

O God, who hast set Thine eyes upon Thy people
as they await in faith the festival of the birth of the Lord;
grant, we beseech Thee,
that we may arrive at the joys of so great a salvation
to celebrate them with solemn worship
and an ever lively gladness.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son,
who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, forever and ever.

The image of Saint John's vision in the Apocalypse (1360–1390) is by Jacobello Alberegno. I chose it because the Eternal Father is vested in a lovely rosy pink garment. Gaudete Sunday in heaven?

Third Sunday of Advent
A Homily on the Introit

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer let your petitions be made known to God (Phil 4:4-6).

Rejoice in the Lord Always

We began Advent on the crest of a surging wave, an immense welling up of hope that lifted us out of ourselves and carried us Godward: “All my heart goes out to you, my God; I trust in you” (Ps 24:1). Last Sunday, the Introit did not address God at all; it was a clarion call, a trumpet blast to wake us up, to shake us up, a summons to open our hearts to the joy of the glorious voice of the Lord (Is 30:30). Next Sunday, the Introit will again become pure prayer, a cry wrenched from the depths of human experience, a plea for the dew from heaven, the dew that refreshes and makes fruitful. “Send down dew from above you heavens, and let the skies pour down upon us the rain we long for, Him, the Just One” (Is 45:8).

Today’s Introit is one of the few drawn from Saint Paul. It is an exhortation to joy, but its mood is quiet and reflective. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer let your petitions be made known to God” (Phil 4:4-6).

Grace, and Loveliness, and Joy

What the Latin gives as, “gaudete,” and the English as “rejoice,” is astonishingly rich in Saint Paul’s Greek. Any one translation would be inadequate. Paul says, “chaírete.” It is the very same word used by the angel Gabriel to greet the Virgin of Nazareth. “Chaire, kecharitoménè!” “Joy to you, O full of grace!” (Lk 1:28). The word is untranslatable. Just when we think we have seized its meaning once and for all, another door opens inside it. “Chaírete” was the ordinary greeting of the Greeks. It embraces health, salvation, loveliness, grace, and joy, all at once. In the mouth and in the ear of Christians, the taste of the word is indescribable. “Grace to you, and loveliness, and joy in the Lord; again I wish you grace, and loveliness, and joy” (Phil 4:4). Paul’s greeting is not so much an imperative — a command to be joyful — as it is the imparting of a gift in the Lord. “What I wish for you, what I send you, what I give you in the Lord is grace, and loveliness, and joy.”

The Lord is at Hand

The second sentence becomes more intelligible in the light of the first. Paul says, “Let your gentleness — or your modesty, your courtesy, your forbearance, your serenity, your meekness — be known to everyone” (Phil 4:5). In other words, give evidence around you of the gift you have received: grace, and loveliness, and joy in the Lord. Show each other faces that are serene and peaceful, radiant with joy, faces that reflect the loveliness of God. And he adds, “the Lord is at hand” (Phil 4:5). This is the great central affirmation of the liturgy today, and every day. “The Lord is at hand” (Phil 4:5).

It was one year ago today that I began standing before the altar versus apsidem from the Offertory until the Communion of the Mass at the monastery where I serve as chaplain. I prepared this change with a careful pastoral catechesis. For guests coming to Mass at the monastery, I posted a notice in the narthex. Here is the text of the notice:

Pastoral Note

Let us then welcome a change in our routine during these last days of Advent, not for the sake of change, but in order to advance together toward the Lord who came, who comes, and who is to come.

On the whole, the change was received well. Some wondered if, in fact, it was permitted. One woman complained about it and stopped coming to Mass at the monastery. Two or three nuns out of about twenty were uncomfortable with the practice at first, but seem to have adjusted to it. Several said that they preferred it and were relieved not to have to look at the face of the priest through the whole Eucharistic Prayer!

After a year of celebrating the Holy Mysteries ad apsidem, what are my own conclusions? The entire celebration of Holy Mass has gained immensely in recollection, in reverence and, most importantly, in God–centredness. There has been a marked increase in what Pope John Paul II desired the fruit of the Year of the Eucharist to be: Eucharistic amazement. There is a new awareness of the mystery of the Holy Sacrifice offered to God with the priest and people together standing in the presence of the Divine Majesty.

I am absolutely convinced that the ad apsidem position is essential to the recovery of the sacred. It goes a long way in restoring a certain rightness to the practice of an Ordo Missae that for too long has had so much wrong with it. Reverend and dear brother priests, take heart, and fear not!

How delightful to see in this painting both little Johns, the Baptist and the Theologian, together with the Incarnate Word, Holy Wisdom. Note that the little Evangelist is already writing the opening words of the Prologue of his Gospel.

Beginning today, I will offer reflections on each of the Great O Antiphons. At the Monastery of the Glorious Cross where I serve as chaplain, the Great O's are sung not only at Vespers each day, their traditional place, but also during the Gospel procession of the Mass as the Alleluia Verse.

The Arrival of Holy Wisdom

We know that in the reform of the Lectionary, the O Antiphons, formerly sung only at Vespers, were also given a place within the Mass itself, becoming the verse of the Alleluia before the Gospel. The General Instruction on the Roman Missal emphasizes the importance of the procession with the Book of the Gospels. It is a kind of parousia, the glorious appearing of the Lord “amid cries of gladness and thanksgiving, the throng wild with joy” (Ps 41:5). It is the arrival of the Bridegroom; His advent is greeted with jubilant alleluias and with lighted lamps. It is the descent of the all-powerful Word from the royal throne “into the midst of the land that was doomed” (Wis 18:15). The Alleluia is the Church’s ecstatic cry of welcome; it is an eschatological song. The arrival of Christ in the sacramental Word anticipates His arrival in glory upon the clouds of heaven (cf., Mt 24:30).

Make Known to Us Your Ways

“O Wisdom coming forth from the mouth of the Most High God, Your lordship is over all that is, stretching from the beginning to the end, You who order all things with might and with sweetness, come teach us the path of prudence. Make known to us Your ways.” You see how, in the context of the Gospel procession, the age-old text shines with a new and immediate meaning.

Prudence

We acclaim Christ the Logos in His appearing as Holy Wisdom, the eternal Wisdom of the Father, and we make a very specific petition: “Come, teach us the way of prudence.” What is prudence? It is the habit of using our reason, in every circumstance, to discern what is our true good and of choosing the means to achieve it. Saint Thomas calls prudence “right reason in action.” Prudence is an austere virtue because it means that we will not allow our decisions, our course of action, or our reactions to be determined by our emotions.

When we allow our choices to be determined by fear — fear of loss, fear of rejection, fear of making a mistake, fear of failure, fear of the future, or any other fear — we are not being prudent. When we allow our choices to be determined by an unwise love, a disordered love — we are not being prudent. When we choose impulsively, we are not being prudent. When we delay choosing and put off acting, we are not being prudent. Prudence has to do with choosing wisely so as to act wisely. And so today, we cry out to Wisdom, begging to be taught the way of prudence.

"And Elijah the prophet stood up, as a fire, and his word burnt like a torch" (Sir 48:1). The prophet Elijah figures prominently in today's Mass, making me think of all my dear Carmelite friends — you know who you are.

Las Posadas, the Christmas Novena to the Infant Christ, a devotion that Carmelites cherish, begins today, not only in Carmel, but also among Mexican Catholics everywhere. Humble contemplation of the Infant Christ is the best remedy against sins of arrogance, self–sufficiency, and intellectual pride.

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON

MR
Come, Lord, you who are enthroned upon the cherubim,
show us your face
and we shall be saved (Ps 79:4, 2).

COLLECT

Almighty God,
let the splendour of your glory, we beseech you,
rise like the dayspring in our hearts
to dispel every darkness of the night;
that the advent of your only-begotten Son,
may reveal us to be children of the light.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, forever and ever.

Second Saturday of Advent

Sirach 48:1-4, 9-11
Psalm 79: 80:2ac and 3b, 15-16, 18-19
Matthew 17:9a, 10-13

The Splendour of Your Glory in the Face of Christ

Almighty God,
let the splendour of your glory, we pray,
rise like the dayspring in our hearts
to dispel every darkness of the night;
that the advent of your only-begotten Son,
may reveal us to be children of the light.

Today’s collect is the fruit of a long contemplation of the light that shines from the Scriptures: another example of the oratio — prayer — that is the fruit of lectio —hearing the Word — and of meditatio — repeating it. The splendour of the Father’s glory that rises like the dawn in our hearts is Christ, “the reflection of the glory of God” (Heb 1:3). “It is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the Face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6).

O Dayspring

The Jews of old expected the advent of the Messiah in the radiance of a rising sun. Isaiah cries, “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you” (Is 60:1). Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist blesses God, saying, “The Orient shall dawn upon us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death” (Lk 1:78-79). The Church, on December 21st, will sing, “O Dayspring, brightness of eternal Light and Sun of Justice: come and enlighten them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.”

The Light of Bethlehem

Christ’s first advent in the cave of Bethlehem, marked by the rising of a star in the night, was a mystery of light. “In Him was life,” says Saint John, “and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:4-5).

If you haven't given it any thought yet, today you might look into getting pink (or rose) flowers for Gaudete Sunday. Rose–coloured roses may be your first choice, but I like carnations — one single huge bouquet — for Gaudete Sunday.

It is always distressing to see flowers dispersed about the sanctuary in multiple little bouquets. It is even worse when such bouquets are placed in glass vases from the jumble sale and balanced on odd little tables and metal stands. Why do people do such things? A dozen or more flowers arranged in a single bouquet offer an intensity of colour that is lost when one attempts to use them in multiple arrangements.

After the Second Vespers of Sunday when the sanctuary returns to its Advent austerity, consider offering the Gaudete bouquet to the Blessed Virgin at your Lady Altar or, at least, keep the flowers until 20 December for the lovely Golden Mass of the Missus Est. It is fitting to flower the principal image of Our Lady during Advent, especially when it is located in a Lady Chapel or outside the sanctuary proper.

Also, remember to prepare your rose–coloured vestments for Sunday Mass and Vespers.
I always found it exhilarating when the Hebdomadarius would intone the Deus in adjutorium at First Vespers of Gaudete Sunday, resplendent in a rose–coloured cope. My heart would respond with little leap of joy. La vie en rose n'est pas toujours réaliste, mais un dimanche en rose — que ça fait du bien!

A leitmotif of today's Mass is the advent of the Bridegroom Christ. The Collect alludes to Matthew 25:1–13, the parable of the bridegroom coming at midnight. The Gospel presents both John the Baptist, the "friend of the Bridegroom" and Christ, the Bridegroom Himself (cf. Jn 3:29). Both meet with resistance and rejection. In the end, Wisdom will be justified by her children, the saints of every age. Albrecht Dürer's drawing of Christ at the age of twelve (1506) suggests the mystery of the Divine Wisdom come in the flesh.

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON

MR
Behold, the Lord will come, descending with splendour,
to visit his people in peace
and establish over them life everlasting.

COLLECT

Grant, we beseech you, Almighty God
that your people may await
the advent of your only-begotten Son
with the utmost vigilance,
so that, as he himself, the Author of our salvation taught us,
keeping watch, we may go forth to meet him
with our lamps burning.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, forever and ever.

Not a Caravaggio, although it could be taken for one! This painting of Saint John the Baptist is by the Spaniard Bartolomé González y Serrano (1564–1627). The Baptist looks pensive, perhaps even discouraged. He came, "neither eating nor drinking", and they said, "He hath a devil" (Mt 11:18). Does the Forerunner see already that the Lamb of God, the Bridegroom Himself, will be treated dismissively as "a glutton and wine drinker, a friend of publicans and sinners" (Mt 11:19)?

Friday of the Second Week of Advent

Isaiah 48:17-19
Psalm 1: 1-2, 3, 4, 6
Matthew 11:16-19a

The Utmost Vigilance

The Collect given us by the Church today makes us ask for the grace of the utmost vigilance. Cum summa vigilantia, says the text. “Grant, we beseech you, Almighty God, that Your people may await the advent of Your Only-begotten Son with the utmost vigilance.” The prayer goes on to make reference to the teaching of Our Lord in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins: “ . . . so that as He Himself, the Author of our salvation taught us, we may keep watch with lamps burning, and go forth to meet Him when He comes.” “At midnight there was a cry, ‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him’” (Mt 25:6). A heart held in readiness for the Bridegroom listens for the faintest sound of His footsteps falling in the night. There are times when prayer is nothing more than this: a waiting in the night, a straining to listen, a readiness to respond to the first sign of His advent.

The Listening Which Changes Life

The prayer of vigilance obliges one to listen closely to the Word, and listening leads to change. “Thus saith the Lord thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord thy God that teach thee profitable things, that govern thee in the way that thou walkest” (Is 48:17). Recall what Pope John Paul II wrote eleven years ago in Orientale Lumen: “When a person is touched by the Word obedience is born, that is, the listening which changes life” (OL, art. 10). I think that in writing this, Pope John Paul II gave us the most profound definition of monastic obedience ever formulated.

The Refusal to Listen

If one’s life is not changing, might it not be because one is not listening? If one is not listening, might it not be because one refuses to be touched by the Word? We must, all of us, be vigilant lest we grow hardened in an attitude of resistance to the listening which changes life. It is paradoxical that those who, two generations ago, were the most eager to embrace radical changes in the Church are the very ones who today are the most resistant to reform. In today’s Gospel, Our Lord reproaches those who, having ears, refuse to listen: “But whereunto shall I esteem this generation to be like? It is like to children sitting in the market place. Who crying to their companions say: We have piped to you, and you have not danced: we have lamented, and you have not mourned” (Mt 11:16–17).

Soeur Bénédicte's Closet

When, on the occasion of her twenty-fifth anniversary of profession, Sister Bénédicte–Marie de la Croix asked to make her retreat with us, we prepared a room for her and, knowing her Carmelite love of silence and solitude, whitewashed a large closet to serve as her hermitage. In it we placed two things: an icon of Saint John of the Cross and a Bible. Sister Bénédicte was deeply moved. She lived that retreat in the company of Saint John of the Cross. Before coming to know our Sister Bénédicte, I used to be afraid of Saint John of the Cross. He seemed so extreme, so forbidding, so unbearably absolute. It was in contemplating Sister Bénédicte’s icon of Saint John of the Cross; then, in reading him, that he became a friend, a brother, a teacher.

John of the Cross: A Saint for Advent

Saint John of the Cross comes to us in the middle of Advent; he comes to us just one week before the longest night of the year. He comes to us today when, by a wonderful coincidence, God speaks to us through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah, saying: “I am the Lord, there is no other; I form the light, and create the darkness” (Is 24:6). Saint John comes to guide us through the night; he is familiar with all its secrets.

Blest night of wandering
In secret, where by none might I be spied,
Nor I see anything;
Without a light to guide,
Save that which in my heart burnt in my side.

(In an Obscure Night, trans. by Arthur Symons)

Poetry, the best poetry, is born of suffering and forged in the crucible of life. Though I find in the poems of Saint John of the Cross a fire that unfailingly warms and illumines, I have, over the years, come to rely more and more on his Precautions, an incomparable guide for the terrible quotidian, wise rules for coping with the struggles and stress of living with oneself and others.

Advent is marked by two saints of the Cross. At the beginning of Advent there is Saint Andrew (30 November) who greets the mystery of the Cross in the light of faith, and right in the middle of Advent, there is Saint John of the Cross (14 December) who embraces the mystery of the Cross in the obscurity of a dark night. The advent of Christ is marked by the sign of the Cross. Let us receive its imprint humbly, knowing that by it we are healed and set free.

Let us pray today that those called to seek God in Carmel
may remain, like Saint John of the Cross,
faithful to the meditation of the Word and to prayer
by day and by night,
until their consummation in the Living Flame of Love.

O God,
who endowed your priest, Saint John,
with a spirit of utter self-denial
and a surpassing love of the Cross;
grant that, by ever holding fast to his example,
we may attain to the contemplation of your everlasting glory.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, forever and ever.

O God,
who by Thy living flame of love,
didst sustain Saint John of the Cross even in the darkness:
shed Thou Thy light, we beseech Thee,
on all who love Thee though it be night
and give them to drink their fill of that deathless spring
that in the living Bread lies hidden.
Through Christ our Lord.

Almighty God who command us to prepare
the way for Christ the Lord,
mercifully grant that we may not grow weary in our infirmities
as we wait for the consoling presence of the heavenly Physician.

No Quietism

Advent is about waiting, but in this waiting there is nothing passive, nothing of the quietism that would have one sit like an inert lump without passion, energy, or desire. Advent has been called the Lent of Winter, and with good reason. The very qualities that characterize the Lent of Spring, should characterize Advent. Does not Saint Benedict say that “a monk’s life ought at all times to bear a Lenten character” (RB 49:1)? What is the essence of this Lenten character? Saint Benedict, after inviting us to a spontaneous generosity in prayer, in self-denial, and in silence, sums it all up by saying, “and so with the joy of spiritual desire, look forward to holy Pascha” (RB 49:7). The “joy of spiritual desire” is the key to “preparing the way of the Lord” (Is 40:3).

Roman Realism

The second part of today’s Collect is another example of the realism and confidence found everywhere in the Roman liturgy: “mercifully grant that we may not grow weary in our infirmities as we wait for the consoling presence of the heavenly Physician.” The prayer does not deny that we are beset with infirmities. It makes us admit our weakness. It does not minimize the temptation we all have to weariness, to the classic monastic complaint of accedia: a loss of energy, a kind of “throwing in the towel,” a giving in to the dullness and inertia of routine.

Christ the Physician

We are waiting for the “consoling presence of the heavenly Physician.” Christ, the Physician of our souls and bodies is sent to minister to us in our infirmity. This is the thrilling message of the first reading: “It is he that giveth strength to the weary, and increaseth force and might to them that are not. Youths shall faint, and labour, and young men shall fall by infirmity. But they that hope in the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall take wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint” (Is 40:29-31). We are waiting for the consoling presence of Him who says, “Come to Me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you” (Mt 11:28).

The “heavenly Physician” of the Collect comes to us today in the mystery of His Eucharistic Advent: the sacrament of our healing, the remedy for every infirmity. Approach then the Holy Mysteries with Saint Benedict’s, “joy of spiritual desire” (RB 49:7). The heavenly Physician “stands at the door and knocks” (Rev 3:20).

I am late in posting this homily from today's Mass of Saint Lucy. I want to include this painting of the Last Holy Communion of Saint Lucy (1747–1748) by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Saint Lucy is kneeling before the priest to receive the Holy Sacrament. In the Eastern fashion, her arms are crossed on her breast. Her half–closed eyes denote her profound recollection. Her whole posture indicates that, as she receives the Body of Christ, she is surrendering herself entirely to Him. Spectators are looking on from a shining white balcony high above; so too are angels, eager to welcome Lucy into glory. In the foreground we already see the bloody awl, and Saint Lucy's eyes, gouged out and placed on a platter.

Second Wednesday of Advent
December 13
Commemoration of Saint Lucy, Virgin and Martyr

Isaiah 40:25-31
Psalm 102: 1-2, 3-4, 8 & 10
Matthew 11: 28-30

With Eyes Open to the Deifying Light

The Second Wednesday of Advent coincides with the radiant memorial of Saint Lucy, one of the stars shining in the Church’s winter constellation of virgins and women martyrs. Saint Lucy invites us to grow radiant in the transfiguring light of Christ. She intercedes for us today that our eyes may be opened to the deifying light that first shone for us in the humble advent of Christ in the flesh. That same light shines for us now in His Eucharistic Advent. It will blaze over the whole world in His glorious Advent at the end of time.

The Sacrament of Christ's Eucharistic Advent

Yesterday while in New York I had the opportunity to visit one of The City’s most beautiful churches: Saint Jean–Baptiste on Lexington Avenue and 76th Street. Adorers come and go there at all hours to be still in the presence of “the Lord, the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth” (Is 40:21), hidden in the pure white Host, in the sacrament of His Eucharistic advent among us.

As I pondered Isaiah’s message in today’s First Lesson, I saw it illumined by the Eucharistic advent of Christ among us. The mystery of His Eucharistic advent, coming between His first advent in the flesh and His final advent in glory, forms one single coherent adorable mystery. One cannot be drawn to one of these without, at the same time, confessing the others.

I made a day trip into New York City today. Thanks to Deacon Richard Russo, Father Jacob Restrick, O.P. and I were able to visit the magnificent Church of Saint Jean–Baptiste on Lexington Avenue at 76th Street. The Church, completed in 1913, is served by the Blessed Sacrament Fathers, sons of Saint Peter Julian Eymard.

I have long nourished a special devotion to Saint Peter Julian Eymard, an impassioned lover of the Most Holy Eucharist. Today's visit to Saint Jean–Baptiste Church was, in some way, a pilgrimage to Saint Peter Julian.

"Have a great love for Jesus in his divine Sacrament of Love; that is the divine oasis of the desert. It is the heavenly manna of the traveller. It is the Holy Ark. It is the life and Paradise of love on earth." (Saint Peter Julian Eymard to the Children of Mary, November 21, 1851)

The principal splendour of the church is a three–storey altar crowned by an immense golden monstrance for exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. Curiously, although the monstrance is the architectural focus of the whole church, it is empty. The Blessed Sacrament is exposed in a modest, much smaller monstrance set directly on the altar where Mass is now celebrated versus populum.

In entering the church the eye is drawn immediately to the empty monstrance enthroned above the high altar; only after a few moments of careful observation does one notice the discrete monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament on the versus populum altar. The current arrangement attests to the all too familiar hermeneutic of discontinuity — or even, of rupture — that, for the past forty years, has so marked the renovation of churches.

There were three adorers present in the church when we visited. Everything in me wanted to linger in adoration. How extraordinary to find oneself, all of a sudden, before the Eucharistic Face of Christ shining with redeeming love through the veil of the sacred species, before the immolated and glorious Lamb in whose presence one wants only to be silent and adore!

To the left of the sanctuary is a spectacular preaching pulpit adorned with gilt symbols of the Holy Eucharist. Every detail in this church proclaims and celebrates the Blessed Sacrament. We stopped for a moment of prayer at the altar of Saint Peter Julian Eymard. Beneath an exquisite marble statue of the saint holding a monstrance there is a reliquary containing a bone of his. The veneration of holy relics is very much a part of my piety. Caro cardo salutis. The grace of the saving Flesh of Christ suffuses the bodily remains of His saints with a mysterious attraction that compels one to pray. I have experienced this more than once.

The Lady Altar of the church is dedicated to Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament. She is depicted holding the Christ Child in her arms; He, in turn, holds the Sacred Host, radiating light. The whole effect is one of — what shall I call it? — supernatural enchantment!

"Be the apostle of the divine Eucharist, like a flame which enlightens and warms, like the Angel of his heart who will go to proclaim him to those who don’t know him and will encourage those who love him and are suffering." (Saint Peter Julian Eymard to Mme Antoinette de Grandville, July 4, 1859)

I consider today's "pilgrimage" an Advent grace. The mystery of Christ's Eucharistic advent, coming between His first advent in the flesh and His final advent in glory, forms one single coherent adorable mystery. One cannot be drawn to one of these without, at the same time, confessing the others.

Hail to Thee! true Body sprung
From the Virgin Mary's womb!
The same that on the cross was hung
And bore for man the bitter doom.
Thou Whose side was pierced and flowed
Both with water and with blood;
Suffer us to taste of Thee
In our life's last agony.
O sweet Jesu!
O loving Jesu!
O Jesu, Son of Mary!

I have wanted for some time to write again about the grace of the prayer of repetition. Today a God–seeking soul shared with me that she used to think of the prayer of repetition as second rate. Her ideal was to remain perfectly still, empty, and receptive before God. Unable to do attain her ideal, she fell to the humble prayer of repetition, and now has come to recognize its value. She often prays the Chaplet of the Eucharistic Face of Christ. Like others, she has found that this humble prayer of seeking, desire, supplication, and praise anchors her in the presence of Our Lord. The repetition of its invocations (like the prayers of the Rosary) binds her gently, but effectively, to God.

This soul's experience corresponds to my own. The prayer of repetition is pleasing to God because it is intrinsically humble. One accepts one's inability to be perfectly still, entirely receptive, and totally absorbed in adoration, and then one accepts to make use of the poor man's prayer: the same well–loved phrases burnished by repetition. As the heart is enkindled by the Holy Spirit, each repeated prayer becomes like a grain of incense thrown on an incandescent charcoal. Its fragrance is for God alone.

Folks who see themselves as theologically sophisticated and enlightened often disdain what I call les petits moyens, "the little means." They sniff condescendingly at people who pray rosaries, chaplets, and litanies. Better to pray that way, I say, than to abandon prayer altogether.

The humble prayer of repetition bears sweet fruits. One fine day — or in the middle of the night — one wakes to discover that the heart is praying by itself. Deep within, a spring has begun to flow, irrigating one's secret parts. Thus does the grace of Christ begin to heal what is wounded, to refresh what is weary, to make new what is old.

In this 17th century Mexican painting, the Virgin of Guadalupe intercedes for the soul depicted under the form of little child. Saved by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and helped by her guardian angel, the soul escapes the clutches of Satan, and flies directly to the wound in the side of Jesus. There she is embraced by Jesus who detaches one arm from the cross to draw her to Himself. To Satan's rage, the soul is purified in the Blood and Water that flow from the Heart of the Crucified.

Entrance Antiphon

A great sign appeared in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun,
and the moon under feet,
and on her head a crown of twelve stars (Rev 12:1).

Collect

God of power and mercy,
who blessed the Americas at Tepeyac
with the presence of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Guadalupe;
grant, we beseech you, through her intercession,
that we may accept one another in Christ
and through the outpouring of your justice into our hearts ,
come to rejoice in the gift of your peace.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God forever and ever.

December 12
Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Guadalupe

Zechariah 2:14-17
Judith 13:18bcde, 19
Luke 1:39-47

A Visitation

Four-hundred-seventy–five years ago, on December 9, 1531, the Blessed Virgin Mary “set out and traveled to the hill country” (Lk 1:39) this time not of Judah, but of Mexico. Her visitation was not to her kinswoman Elizabeth but to Juan Diego. “How does this happen to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Lk 1:43).

The Music of Silence

The first accounts of Juan Diego’s experience relate that when he was called to the heights of Mount Tepeyac, he felt something compelling within, an urgent summons. He experienced it as a kind of heavenly music, the music of silence, strange and beautiful all at once. “Silence, all mankind, in the presence of the Lord! For he stirs forth from his holy dwelling” (Za 2:17). Juan Diego’s music of silence is not at all unlike the “still small voice” (1 K 19:12) that Elijah heard on Horeb. By following the sound of his inner music, Juan Diego was led to the vision of “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child” (Rev 12:1). What was this if not a kind of heavenly inbreaking, a theophany, a momentary pulling back of the veil? “God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the Ark of the Covenant could be seen in the temple” (Rev 11:19).

At the beginning of time,
before the world was,
I was created,
and to all eternity
I shall not cease to be (Ecclus 24:14).

How I love this sixeenth century Mexican depiction of the Eternal Father painting the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Immaculate Conception! The Eternal Father is deep in conversation with His Son; between them flutters the Holy Spirit, the living bond and perfection of their love. Note the way the artist sought to show he wings of the dove in movement.

The Eternal Father Himself, the Divine Artist, is holding His palette; the palette bears the roses that He is applying to the Virgin's robe. The gaze of the Son, with an ineffable tenderness, is fixed on the Face of the Father. "I was with Him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before Him at all times" (Pr 8:30).

In the bottom left hand corner of the painting is the Angel of the stars and moon. In the image of the Mother of God he contemplates the stars and the moon that he has given at the Father's bidding. All around the painting are cherubs, happy to participate in the Divine project.

The presence of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the liturgy of Advent is like the fragrance of roses in December. Mary is everywhere, drawing us after her into the mystery of Christ. The monastic tradition signifies her presence by singing the Missus Est Angelus, a Solemn Responsory at First Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent: “The Angel Gabriel was sent to Mary.” The Alma Redemptoris Mater invites us every evening to look to Mary even as, falling in our weakness, we seek to rise again through grace. December 8th shone for us with the brightness of the Immaculate Conception of Mary full of grace. On the 9th Saint Juan Diego called us to the contemplation of Mary in poverty of spirit. On December 12th, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Mother of our Lord visits us again and we, like Elizabeth, are filled with wonder.

On December 20th, we will celebrate Advent’s Golden Mass and hear again the solemn singing of the Missus Est, the Gospel of the Annunciation. Finally, on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, the Virgin Mary will emerge from the sacred texts as the Cause of Our Joy. In 1974 Pope Paul VI, of blessed memory, called Advent “a season singularly suited to offering veneration to the Mother of God” (Marialis Cultus, art. 4).

The outward expressions of a childlike and tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin are many. It is always possible, even in Advent, to flower the images of the Mother of God in our churches and to burn candles in her honour. Apart from the many allusions to the Blessed Virgin in the sacred liturgy, there are other forms of prayer particularly suited to the stillness and longing of the Advent heart: first among these is the Rosary which can always been enriched by meditating the ten mysteries of the Blessed Virgin's own life and of the Divine Infancy:

— the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the womb of her mother, Saint Anne;
— the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary;
— the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Temple;
— the Betrothal of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Saint Joseph;
— the Annunciation of the Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
— the Visitation and Expectancy of the Blessed Virgin Mary
— the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ
— the Circumcision and Naming of Our Lord
— the Adoration of the Magi
— the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple

There is also the Little Crown of the Immaculate Conception, a simple prayer dear to many saints. The Mother of Christ is sensitive to smallest expressions of our love for her. Her response to them is magnificently disproportionate. For a very little thing, she gives great graces in return or, as Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort put it, "pour un oeuf elle donne un boeuf — for an egg, she gives a whole cow."

The Communion Antiphon of today's Mass merits close attention. The text is borrowed from the Divine Office where it serves as the Magnificat Antiphon at First Vespers of the Second Sunday of Advent. Today we repeat it as, one by one, we approach the Holy Mysteries. Addressing herself to Christ in His Eucharistic advent, we sing, "Come, O Lord, and visit us with peace, that we may joy before you in tranquility of heart." Veni, Domine, visitare nos in pace, ut laetemur coram te corde perfecto.

The Latin text speaks of "a perfect heart," meaning a heart made whole. Christ, by the forgiveness of sins, restores wholeness and tranquility to the broken and troubled heart. By His word of forgiveness, He restores the heart's capacity for joy in His presence. "Who can forgive sins, but God alone?" (Lk 5:21).

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON

MR
Hear the word of the Lord, O nations,
and declare it to the ends of the earth;
Behold our Saviour comes,
and will not delay (cf. Jer31:10; Is 35:4).

COLLECT

May our prayer of petition rise before you, O Lord,
so that, when we celebrate
the great mystery of the Incarnation of your Only-Begotten Son,
the service of our worship may be spotless and pure.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, forever and ever.

My dear friend Terry over at Abbey–Roads wrote two posts today that warmed my heart. The first was about the importance of making a thanksgiving after Holy Communion. Do read it. Wonderful. The second was about today's feast of The Holy House of Loreto. In tribute to Terry's love for the Holy House I decided to post Caravaggio's Madonna of Loreto, an extraordinarily moving painting. Just look at it! (Click to enlarge it.)

I cannot resist sharing the texts of the Proper Mass of The Holy House of Loreto, one of those lovely Masses celebrated by special grant in certain places.

Introit

This is a fearsome place:
it is the house of God, the gate of heaven;
it shall be named the palace of God (Gen 28:17).
V. O Lord of hosts, how I love thy dwelling–place!
For the courts of the Lord's house, my souls faints with longing (Ps 83:2–3).

Collect

O God, who in thy mercy didst sanctify the Blessed Virgin Mary's house
by the mystery of the Word made flesh,
and didst miraculously place it in the heart of thy Church,
grant that we may shun the abodes of sinners
and become worthy to dwell in thy own holy house.
Through the same Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord
who is God living and reigning with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
forever and ever.

On this Second Sunday of Advent, the liturgy focuses on Jerusalem, the mystery represented by the ancient Roman stational church. Stational churches are those churches in Rome designated on given days during Advent and Lent, and on the great festivals of the year, as the destination of a solemn procession and the place of the Pope’s solemn Mass. On the day of a stational Mass the faithful would assemble in one church — that of the collecta or gathering — and then go in procession, singing the Litanies of the Saints, antiphons, and psalms, to the church where the Bishop of Rome, surrounded by his clergy and throngs of the faithful, would celebrate the Holy Mysteries.

These stational Masses were, in fact, the great manifestations of the Eucharistic unity of the City and of the world, Urbis et Orbis. In recent years there has been a revival of interest in the stational churches, and this for two reasons. First: one cannot really understand the choice of the antiphons and other texts of a given Mass without referring to the particular context, the stational church, that inspired them. The texts of these Masses form an organic whole with their native context, the stational church in Rome. Second: we are Roman Catholics. Rome is our mother Church. From the Holy Roman Church we receive our liturgy, the expression of all that we believe and hold dear.

Station at the Roman Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem

Today's stational church is the home of my own monastic community, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Santa Croce is Jerusalem–in–Rome: the image of the ancient Jerusalem that is the Mother Church; of the Catholic Church that is the Jerusalem open to all peoples; of the interior Jerusalem of the soul; and of the heavenly Jerusalem, the object of all our longings.

GR
People of Sion, behold the Lord shall come for the saving of the nations; and the Lord shall make heard the glory of His voice in the joy of your heart (Is 30: 19, 30). V. O shepherd of Israel, hear us; You Who lead Joseph like a flock (Ps 79:2).

COLLECT

Almighty and merciful God,
let no works of worldly impulse
impede those who are hastening to meet Your Son,
but rather, may the teachings of heavenly wisdom
make us the companions of Him Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever.

The painting of Saint John the Baptist (1513–1516) is by Leonardo da Vinci. The Holy Foreunner is youthful; his smile reveals a secret joy. The raised finger illustrates the incipit of the Introit: "People of Sion, behold!"

Second Sunday of Advent

People of Sion, Behold

People of Sion, behold the Lord shall come for the saving of the nations; and the Lord shall make heard the glory of his voice in the joy of your heart (Is 30: 19, 30). The first thing that struck me about today’s Mass is that the Introit is addressed not to God, as was last Sunday’s, but to us. Last Sunday we prayed, “To you, my God, I lift up my soul” (Ps 24). Today’s Introit is taken not from the Psalter but from the prophet Isaiah, and straightaway it engages us: “People of Sion, behold the Lord shall come for the saving of the nations” (Is 30:19).

Inhabitants of the City of God

Who is speaking in today’s Introit? The text is borrowed from the prophet Isaiah but the voice is that of “one crying in the wilderness” (Mt 3:3): John the Baptist. “People of Sion!” he thunders. We are the people of Sion, sons and daughters of the Church, inhabitants of the City of God. The Letter to the Hebrews says: “You have come to Mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, and the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb 12:22).

Behold

Again, there is that little compelling little word, ecce, behold. It is one of Saint John the Baptist’s favorite words. He who saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29), today says, “Behold, the Lord shall come!” Try to hear all that he puts into his behold: “Stand up straight, open wide your eyes! Look, and looking see! You cannot afford to be sleepy, unaware, or preoccupied with other things.” The Lord shall come and indeed is coming already for the saving of the nations. He comes to rescue. He comes to give peace. He comes to make whole all that is broken. He comes to assemble what has been scattered.

Saturday of the First week of Advent
December 9
Commemoration of Saint Juan Diego, Hermit

Isaiah 30:19–21, 23–26
Psalm 146:1–2, 3–4, 5–6 (R. Is 30:18)
Matthew 9:35—!0:1, 5a, 6–8

475 Years Ago Today

It was on December 9th, 1531, exactly 475 years ago today, that while Saint Juan Diego was on his way to Mass, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to him and spoke to him on Tepeyac Hill. This is what she said:

Know for certain, littlest of my sons,
that I am the perfect and perpetual Virgin Mary,
Mother of the true God through whom everything lives,
the Lord of all things near and far,
the Master of Heaven and Earth.
I wish and intensely desire that in this place my sanctuary be erected.
Here I will demonstrate, I will exhibit,
I will give all my love, my compassion,
my help and my protection to the people.
I am your merciful Mother,
the merciful Mother of all of you who live united in this land,
and of all mankind, of all those who love me,
of those who cry to me,
those who seek me,
of those who have confidence in me.

Here I will hear their weeping, their sorrow,
and will remedy and alleviate all their multiple sufferings,
necessities and misfortunes.
In order that my wish may be fulfilled,
you must go to Mexico City, to the house of the Bishop
and tell him that I sent you,
that it is my desire to have a house built for me here,
that my Temple be raised on the plain.
Tell him what you have seen and heard
and be sure that I shall be grateful to you for doing what I ask.
I shall make you happy
and reward you for the service which you render to me.
And you will have great merit, for I will compensate your weariness,
your work in procuring that for which I have sent you as messenger.
You have heard, my least son, my desires, my work;
go and do your part.”

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON

MR
Come, Lord, You who are enthroned upon the cherubim,
show us Your face and we shall be saved (Ps 79:4, 2).

COLLECT

O God, Who, for the liberation of the human race
from its ancient sinfulness,
sent Your Only–Begotten Son into this world,
grant to those who wait for Him with all their hearts
the grace of Your lovingkindness from above,
that they may at length attain the prize of true freedom.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, forever and ever.

"Hear and let it penetrate into your heart, my dear little son: let nothing discourage you, nothing depress you: let nothing alter your heart or your countenance. Also do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else that you need?" (Words of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Juan Diego)

Saint Juan Diego whom we remember on the day after the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception is listed in the Martyrology not as a visionary but as a hermit. Graced with seeing the holy Mother of God in all her radiance, Juan Diego’s vocation unfolded in a life of solitude, ceaseless prayer, and watchfulness.

The holiness of Saint Juan Diego was more in waiting than in seeing. In this, he is a model for all of us. Saint Juan Diego is an Advent saint. The Church sets him before us as a model of vigilance. To those who remain close to her, the Virgin Mother teaches perseverance in the prayer of watching and waiting. I think that this is why she so loves the Rosary and asks us to pray it.

The Rosary is the perfect Advent prayer, especially with the additional mysteries of Our Lady's life, all of which are either found in Sacred Scripture or celebrated in the Church's liturgical tradition: 1) The Immaculate Conception, 2) The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 3) Her Presentation in the Temple, 4) Her Betrothal to Saint Joseph, 5) The Annunciation, 6) The Visitation, 7) The Blessed Expectancy of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 8) The Nativity of Jesus, 9) The Presentation in the Temple, 10) The Finding of Jesus in the Temple.

December 8
The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Genesis 3:9-15, 20
Psalm 97: 1, 2-3ab, 3cdd-4
Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12
Luke 1:26-38

A Song From the Womb

“Rejoicing, I will rejoice in the Lord, and my soul shall be joyful in my God. He has clothed me with the garment of salvation, and with the robe of justice He has wrapped me about, as a bride adorned with her jewels” (Is 61:10). A song intoned from the womb! The Church takes the jubilant words of the prophet Isaiah and places them in the mouth of the Immaculate Conception, the Child full of grace just conceived in the womb of Saint Anne.

Prelude to the Magnificat

“Gaudens, gaudebo in Domino.” “Rejoicing, I will rejoice in the Lord.” If you would understand the text, you must sing it as the Church sings it today. The exegesis of the text is in its ravishing third mode melody; it soars pure as crystal in a kind of ecstatic cry of undiluted joy in God.

Mary herself intones the first chant of the Mass today: a kind of prelude to her Magnificat. Already — just conceived — the Child Mary begins to sing, and with her the whole Church. On no other feast of the year does the liturgy allow the Virgin Mary to open the Mass by singing in the first person singular. “Rejoicing, I will rejoice” (Is 61:10). Mary’s message, from the first instant of her Immaculate Conception, is one of joy in God.

The Tree

The joy of the Immaculate Conception springs from the mystery of the Cross. The Collect says that Mary was “preserved from all stain” in foresight of the death of Christ on the Cross. Here enters the figure of the tree glimpsed in today’s First Lesson from Genesis. The tree of Eve’s mourning and weeping becomes for Mary the tree of “an unutterable and exalted joy” (1 P 1:8). Mary is the first to taste of the sweet fruit of the Tree of Life; Mary is the first to sing of the joy of the Cross. There is an extraordinary medieval painting that shows the Tree of Life with Mary on one side and Eve on the other. Eve, completely naked, is giving the bitter fruit of her sin to her own communicants in evil. From her side of the tree a skull looks out, grimacing in death. On the other side of the tree is Mary, crowned and clothed in grace and beauty. She takes pure white hosts from among the branches of the tree and, like a priest distributing Holy Communion, places them in the mouths of her own communicants in eternal life. In the branches of Mary’s side of the tree there is a crucifix. The Face of the Crucified is turned toward those who partake of the fruit of the Cross.

Mary of Great Beauty

Some weeks ago, I stopped to browse at Cutler’s on Broadway, New Haven’s best and biggest record shop. For me, a visit to Cutler’s is as exhilarating as a visit to the library or the art gallery. So much to learn. So much to discover. Among the display of bestselling new releases what did see? A CD by the women known as The Anonymous 4 entitled: “La bele Marie,” — The Beautiful Mary. The cover features a 14th century Virgin and Child in limestone. The Virgin has a radiant smile; so too does the Child Jesus who, incidentally, appears to be holding a pet squirrel on a leash. The smiles of the Mother and Child are ravishing. The beauty of holiness radiates from them. Opening the the performance notes, my eyes went immediately to the epigraph: “Shining star, moon without darkness, sun giving great light, Mary of great beauty.” I was stunned. With young Yale students bustling all about me, with something quite secular playing from the loudspeakers, with the noises of Broadway in the background, there was a moment of Marian grace. “Mary of great beauty.” So long as there is room for Mary in the world, there will be room for beauty — and room for beauty means space for grace.

Back to Creation’s Dawn

The mystery we celebrate today takes us back to creation’s dawn, to a moment of pure beauty in which all things, untouched by sin, sang the glory of God, praising in a perfect harmony. The nostalgia of it still haunts the human heart. Every human experience knows moments—as fleeting as they are precious—in which we seem to perceive something of heaven shining through the things of earth, glimpses and bits of another time and of another place.

The Nostalgia of Paradise

The nostalgia of paradise is painful and sweet: a longing for something remembered, strains of a symphony heard long ago and not quite forgotten. There are moments of silence in which it seems to come back to us: in a child’s laugh, in a fragrance, in the palate’s recognition of an unmistakable taste. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good” (Gen 1:31).

A Royal Couple Clothed in Glory

Presiding over this cosmic liturgy, and fully themselves at its heart, were man and woman fully alive, a royal couple clothed in grace and glory, vested for their priesthood in light as in a robe. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them“ (Gen 1:27). God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man (Gen 2:21) and, from his side, drew a helper fit for him,“bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh” (Gen 2:23), and she was called woman. “The man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25) for they were clothed in garments woven by the hand of God.

This seventeenth century Spanish painting is remarkable in that it depicts Saint Joachim and Saint Anne together with the Immaculate Conception, their daughter full of grace. It is likely that this painting was made for a Carthusian monastery. It is now in the National Gallery of Scotland.

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON

MR
I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
and my soul shall be joyful in my God;
for he has clothed me with the garment of salvation,
and with the robe of justice he has covered me,
as a bride adorned with her jewels (Is 61:10).

COLLECT

O God, who by the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin
prepared a worthy dwelling for your Son
and, foreseeing his death on the Cross,
preserved her from all stain;
grant that we too, by her intercession,
may come into your presence with pure hearts.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, forever and ever.

Today is the anniversary of the death of Monsieur le Chanoine Louis François CROSET. Born at Annecy–le–Vieux in 1914, he was ordained to the priesthood in the Cathedral of Annecy on 7 June 1941. He exercised the sacred ministry in the diocese of Annecy from 1941 until 1952, and in the diocese of Bayonne from 1952–1990. He died on the Vigil of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, 7 December 1990.

Père Croset's priestly life was marked by great suffering, by an extraordinary love for the Blessed Virgin Mary, and by a wonderful spiritual fruitfulness. I was privileged to be numbered among the many souls touched by his priesthood. At the end of his life Père Croset lived in a residence for elderly priests in Pau, not far from Lourdes. A number of years ago he drove me to Lourdes where, together in the February rain, we stood before the grotto and prayed this Act of Abandonment to the Blessed Virgin. Père Croset composed it in 1952 in a moment of intense moral suffering and darkness.

O Marie, ma Reine et ma Mère,
reçois en tes mains mon Acte d'Abandon
à la volonté du Père de notre Seigneur Jésus–Christ,
afin qu'à l'exemple de son Fils bien aimé
et par le secours de ta Tendresse,
je laisse conduire ma vie par l'Esprit–Saint
selon les mysterieux desseins de la Trinité.

O Mary, my Queen and my Mother,
receive into your hands
my Act of Abandonment
to the will of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
so that, following the example of His beloved Son
and with the help of your tenderness,
I may let my life be directed by the Holy Spirit
according to the mysterious designs of the Trinity.

Aide–moi à livrer sans réserve tout mon être à Dieu
dans la clarté obscure de la foi,
l'élan austère de l'Espérance
et l'étreinte crucifiante de l'Amour.

Help me to surrender without reserve
my whole being to God
in the dark brightness of Faith,
the austere élan of Hope,
and the crucifying embrace of Love.

Je veux m'enfoncer en ton Coeur Immaculé
pour y devenir l'hostie que tu donneras à Jésus,
afin qu'en son sacrifice
Il me consacre à la gloire de son Père
et à la fécondité de l'Eglise son Épouse.
Amen.

I want to hide myself within your Immaculate Heart
to become there the host
that you will give to Jesus,
so that He may consecrate me in His sacrifice
to the glory of His Father
and to the fecundity of His Bride the Church.
Amen.

Wednesday of the First Week of Advent
December 6
Commemoration of Saint Nicholas, Bishop

Isaiah 25:6–10a
Psalm 22:1–2, 3–4, 5, 6 (R. 6cd)
Matthew 15:29–37

The Eucharist

The liturgy of the Wednesday of the First Week of Advent is entirely illumined by the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist. Even before the readings, the Church alludes to the mystery of the Eucharist in the Collect. We pray that, “at the coming of Christ . . . we may be found worthy of the banquet of eternal life, and ready to receive the food of heaven from His hand.” This refers not only to the “hidden manna” (Ap 2:17) of heaven, but also to the Bread of Life given us from the altar by the hand of the priest who, in feeding us, is an icon of Christ “nourishing and cherishing” (Eph 5:29) His Body the Church.

Isaiah’s Prophecy

In the First Lesson Isaiah prophesies that the day will come when God Himself will be “a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress; a refuge from the whirlwind, a shadow from the heat” (Is 25:4). And on that day “the Lord of hosts shall make unto all people . . . a feast of fat things, a feast of wine” (Is 25:6). In the Responsorial Psalm, the Lord “prepares a table” (Ps 22:5), opening to us the hospitality of His house “unto length of days” (Ps 22:6).

The New Adam

Caravaggio's Madonna dei Palafrenieri, first exhibited in Saint Peter's Basilica in 1606, is wonderfully disturbing. While Grandmother Saint Anne looks on, the Virgin Mother Mary allows the Child Jesus to place His little foot on top of hers; together the Mother and the Child crush the head of the serpent under their feet. The nakedness of the Child Jesus suggests that He is indeed the New Adam who, by His innocence, inaugurates a new creation: the Kingdom of God where only little children are allowed to enter.

Sexual Abuse: The Dark Sin

The darkness of this painting, so typical of Caravaggio, and the sinister writhing of the serpent combine with the purity of the Infant Christ to speak poignantly to the tragic drama of the sexual abuse of children. Adults who were sexually abused as children never really recover from the serpent's venomous bite. The poison has a delayed release. Its effects are experienced over time, triggering emotional chaos, spiritual distress, and even chronic physical illness. The serpent, moreover, hides in the darkness, biding its time in anticipation of new attacks.

Therapy

While therapy or some form of counseling is certainly helpful in dealing with the long–term effects of the serpent's bite, it is not sufficient. Rarely is a complete healing possible through therapy alone. In my experience, most persons struggling with the effects of sexual abuse will suffer recurrent crises, although with time these may become less frequent and less debilitating. The benefit of therapy is in helping the individual to identify what things trigger crises, what things feed into the chaos, and what strategies are effective in countering recurrent difficulties.

Supernatural Means

Ultimately, one is obliged to confront the evil, in its origin and in its effects, on spiritual ground and with supernatural means. This is where the adult living with the effects of sexual abuse as a child finds it necessary to identify with the Infant Christ in entrusting himself entirely to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Lord God said unto the serpent, I will put enmity between Thee and the Woman, and between thy seed and her Seed, which same shall bruise thy head, alleluia. (Antiphon at the Benedictus on December 8th, Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception)

Consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary

Consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary leads one to place one's own foot on hers in total confidence. So long as the serpent's head remains under the foot of the Immaculate Virgin and one's own foot rests on hers, the effects of the abuse are held in check. The serpent may writhe and hiss, but ultimately the All–Holy Mother of God and her Seed, that is the Infant Christ and those who belong to Him, will crush its head.

The Immaculate Conception

The coming Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary is of all days the most favourable to make or to renew a personal consecration to the Immaculate Mother of God, especially if one struggles with the long–term effects of sexual abuse. The renewal of one's consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary opens again and again the floodgates of the graces given her by God for distribution to the weakest and most wounded of her children.

The Rosary: Where Hope Flowers

One will also find in the humble prayer of the Rosary an indispensable protection and a source of inner healing. The mysteries of the infancy and childhood of Christ are supremely effective in countering the effects of a childhood marred by abuse. In the presence of the Immaculate Virgin and her Child there flowers the hope of a serene and fruitful life. "Give glory to the Lord for thy good things, and bless the God eternal, that He may rebuild His tabernacle in thee" (Tobias 13:12).

Tuesday of the First Week of Advent

Isaiah 11:1–10
Psalm 71:1–2, 7–8, 12–13, 17 (R. 7)
Luke 10:21–24

Grace Upon Grace

Saint John, in his Prologue, declares us that we have all received of the fullness of the Word made flesh, “and grace upon grace” (Jn 1:16). The prophet Isaiah tells us today just what this fullness of grace is: “And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him: the spirit of wisdom, and of understanding, the spirit of counsel, and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge, and of godliness. And He shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord” (Is 11:2–3). There are seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, seven graces, or seven “spirits” as the prophet calls them. The number seven, as you know, signifies a superabundant fullness. It is of this fullness that “we have all received, and grace upon grace” (Jn 1:16).

The Same Spirit

All who belong to Christ are given a share in the Spirit of Christ. As the psalmist says, the anointing of the Head runs down upon the beard, the beard of Aaron, and reaches even to the hem of his garment (cf. Ps 132:2). Saint Paul says, “Now there are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but the same God, who worketh all in all. And the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man unto profit. To one indeed, by the Spirit, is given the word of wisdom: and to another, the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit; to another, faith in the same Spirit; to another the grace of healing . . . but all of these things one and the same Spirit worketh, dividing to every one according as He will” (1 Cor 12:4–11).

The Order of Holiness

Isaiah goes on to describe the effects of this anointing with the Spirit of the Lord. A new order appears: one characterized by justice, by equity for the meek of the earth, and by fidelity. In a word, the new order is the order of holiness: participation in the very life of God. What are the signs of this new order? “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb: and the leopard shall lie down with the kid: the calf and the lion, and the sheep shall abide together” (Is 11:6). (This is an apt description of most monasteries.)

First Tuesday of Advent

Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 71: 1-2, 7-8, 12-13, 17
Luke 10:21-24

The photograph is of the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the altar of the church of Bethlehem Monastery of the Poor Clares in Barhamsville, Virginia.

The Advent Collects

The Collects of the Advent liturgy merit our close attention. Crafted under the influence of the Holy Spirit, they are a distillation of life-giving doctrine. Our own personal prayer derives from the prayer of the Church and flows back into it.

What the Church asks for all her children in the Collect of the Mass and Divine Office, I must learn to ask for myself and for those recommended to my prayer. It is through the sacred liturgy and, in a particular way, through the daily Collect, that the Holy Spirit “helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought” (Rom 8:26).

Today’s Prayer

Today’s Collect comes from the rotulus or scroll of Ravenna and, according to some scholars, could date from as early as the fifth century:

Lord God,
be gracious to our supplications
and in tribulation grant us, we pray,
the help of your strong and tender love;
that being consoled by the presence of your Son who is to come,
we may be untainted, even now, by the contagion of our old ways.

The Collect makes two requests of God. The first is, “be gracious to our supplications and in tribulation, grant us we pray the help of your pietas, your strong, fatherly love.” The tone of the prayer is humble and full of confidence. We ask God to be gracious to our supplications. Supplication comes from the Latin verb supplico, meaning to kneel down or to bend low. We approach God humbly, making ourselves close to the dust of the earth from which we were created (cf. Gen 2:7).

Pietatis Auxilium

The first request is for the help of God’s pietas, his strong, faithful, fatherly devotedness, in our tribulation. Tribulation means affliction, oppression, distress, or trouble. No one of us is entirely free from tribulation. Each of us has his troubles or, as Julien Green says, “each man has his night.” Today’s Collect teaches us that in the midst of trouble we can and must kneel in the dust, beseeching God to grant us his pietatis auxilium, the help of his fatherly love.

Monday of the First Week of Advent

Isaiah 2:1–5
Psalm 121:1–2, 3–4ab, 4cd–5, 6–7, 8–9
Matthew 8:5–11

Saints in Advent

We celebrate the Holy Mysteries today in the company of two saints, both of them lights from the East: Saint Barbara, Virgin and Martyr, and Saint John Damascene, Priest and Doctor of the Church. Saint Barbara, according to the legend, was enclosed in a tower (some accounts say it was a bathhouse) by her pagan father. There were two windows in this improvised prison cell.

Three Windows

Taking advantage of her father's temporary absence, Barbara instructed the servants to make a third window in honour of the Most Holy Trinity. The light poured into Barbara's cell from three windows; her soul, meanwhile, was flooded by what Saint Benedict calls "the deifying light" of the Three Divine Persons. Thus was Saint Barbara found, as today's Collect puts it, "vigilant in prayer and joyful in singing His praises," at the hour of her martyrdom.

God is Light

In this, Saint Barbara speaks to all who feel hemmed in and imprisoned by the circumstances of life. To all who feel shut in and imprisoned, to all who live behind walls, Saint Barbara says, "Lift your eyes to the light of the Most Holy Trinity. Let the glorious radiance of the Three Divine Persons shine in your solitude." Her message is that of Saint Paul who says, "Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth. For you are dead; and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you shall appear with Him in glory" (Col 3:2–4). Her message is that of the Apostle John: "God is light, and in Him there is no darkness" (1 Jn 1:5).

I am mindful today of the dear friends named Barbara whom God has sent into my life. According to tradition, Saint Barbara was confined to solitude in a tower with two windows. She had a third window added in honour of the Most Holy Trinity. Thus did the deifying light of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit shine in her solitude and in her soul. It is noteworthy too that Saint Barbara lived and died in Turkey, recently visited by the Holy Father. I very much like this painting of Saint Barbara lifting high the adorable Mysteries of Christ's Body and Blood. It is reminiscent of certain depictions of Saint Clare of Assisi. Both saints shine with a eucharistic light.

At Holy Mass today there will be an intercession in honour of Saint Barbara;

For those called to a life of solitude,
that through the intercession of Saint Barbara, virgin and martyr,
they may persevere in adoration of the Most Holy Trinity
and be strengthened in the virtue of hope,
let us pray in silence — for the Lord is near.

This hymn belongs at the Hour of Sext during Advent. The text, though inspired by something written by a friend many years ago, is my own. The image is a detail from a fresco in the choir of the monastery of Santa Maria di Monteluce in Perugia; it depicts Christ and Mary, that is, Christ the Bridegroom and His Bride the Church.

Come, Bridegroom Christ, outdazzle day:
Come, clear our clouded sight to see
Your living Word in every seed,
In labour’s fruit, eternity.

Come, nurture what your hand has made;
Come, bring to birth what you have sown:
In each day’s labour, Christ, be seen,
Seed, Blossom, Fruit, of all we own.

Come, now descend from mountain heights,
Come, leaping, seeking, calling still.
Your birth to heaven wedded earth;
Let heaven’s praise the earth now fill.

Come, Bridegroom Christ, the Father’s joy,
Come, mark your own with Kiss of Fire.
Your bride still dark, yet lovely, waits;
Unshadowed shines her one desire. Amen.

Here is my rendering of the Advent hymn for Lauds. Like the Vespers hymn below, it may be sung to the corresponding tune in the Liber Hymnarius. I would be happy to know if any Vultus Christi readers decide to sing these texts.

In desert wastes, the Baptist’s voice
Like thunder pealing from the sky,
Denounces sin, announces Fire,
Unmasking darkness where it lies.

Now let the fearful soul arise,
Lest poisoned by the viper’s sting,
The hour of grace should pass her by:
The advent of the Lamb, the King.

Into death’s cold and shadowed vale
Descends the Lamb from heaven’s height.
And those who wait in silent hope
Are stirred from slumber at the sight.

When in the sky his Cross appears,
The triumph of the Lamb will shine.
And all who wait in joyful hope
Will rise to greet the glorious sign.

To God the Father, ceaseless praise
And to the Lamb who shares his throne,
And to the Spirit in the Church,
the Bride whom Christ yet calls his own. Amen.

This is my translation of Conditor Alme Siderum. When Advent rolls round and I sing this hymn, I see in my mind's eye Van Gogh's Starry Night. In the little church with the tall steeple at the bottom of the painting there must be a lingering scent of incense. Advent Vespers will have been sung. The Creator of the Starry Night is glorified.

O Light unconquered, Source of Light,
Whose radiance kindles stars and sun,
Shine tenderly on us this night;
Creation groans until you come.

Immense your grief to see our plight:
When sin had shrouded all, you came.
True Dayspring bursting death’s dark bands,
Emmanuel, your saving name!

Night weighed upon a weary world
When silently you pitched your tent,
Enclosed within the Virgin’s womb
True man, true God from heaven sent.

So to the darkened world in need,
Eternal Word, you came as man.
You came as Bridegroom, swift and strong,
To claim the prize the course you ran.

Until your glory fills the skies,
Until the stars in welcome sing,
Until you judge both small and great,
From sin, protect us, Sovereign King.

To God the Father, God the Son,
To God the Spirit ever be
Glad songs of praise throughout the night
While faith adores the mystery. Amen.

In the Cistercian liturgy the center piece of First Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent is Missus est Gabriel Angelus, a magnificent Great Responsory in the seventh mode. It places all of Advent under the sign of the Virgin who conceives and brings forth a Son.

The angel Gabriel was sent to Mary, a virgin espoused to Joseph,
to bring unto her the word of the Lord:
and when the Virgin saw the light she was afraid.
Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with the Lord.
Behold, thou shalt conceive and bring forth a son,
and He shall be called the Son of the Highest.
V. The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David,
and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever.

All my heart goes out to thee;
my God, I trust in thee, do not belie my trust.
Let not my enemies boast of my downfall.
Who ever waited for thy help,
and waited in vain?
V. Lord, let me know thy ways,
teach me thy paths (Ps 24:1–3).

A Going Forth

Ad te levavi animam meam; Deus meus, in te confido (Ps 24:1). On this First Sunday of Advent, the Church intones Psalm 24. She clothes it in a melody that carries the text and us with it upward and outward into the mystery of the God who comes. This is more than the Introit of today’s Mass; it is the chant by which the Church crosses the threshold into Advent; it is the chant by which she begins a new Year of Grace. Ronald Knox translates it for us: “All my heart goes out to thee, my God, I trust in thee, do not belie my trust” (Ps 24:1-3). How are we to hear this Advent psalm? How are we to sing it? How are we to repeat it and hold it in our hearts until, at length, it becomes our own prayer, a movement of the soul upward and outward, a going forth with nothing to hold us back?

Today, being the First Friday of the month, we had exposition and adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament at the monastery. Saint Gaetano Catanoso used to say: "If we wish to adore the real Face of Jesus, we can find it in the divine Eucharist, where with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the Face of Our Lord is hidden under the white veil of the Host".

As evidenced by the bannerhead, the mission of this blog is to invite its readers to the contemplation of the Holy Face of Christ and, most especially, to the contemplation of His Face hidden in the Eucharist. Eucharistic adoration is a simple form of prayer; simple, however, does not mean easy. If you are like me, you may find yourself at times looking for some simple formula to anchor your heart during adoration.

The following prayer, in the form of a chaplet said on ordinary rosary beads, was inspired by the teachings of Pope John Paul II during the Year of the Eucharist and is based on Sacred Scripture and the Liturgy. For some people this Chaplet of the Eucharistic Face of Christ has become the preferred way of anchoring the heart in the silence of adoration. I would be grateful to know if you find it helpful.

+
O sacred banquet in which Christ is received,
the memory of His passion is renewed,
the soul is filled with grace,
and a pledge of future glory is given us, (alleluia).

Before each decade:

My soul is thirsting for God, the strong and living God;
when shall I enter and see the Face of God? (Ps 41:3)

On the Hail Mary beads:

It is Thy Eucharistic Face, O Lord, that I seek;
hide not Thy Face from me. (cf. Ps 26:8-9).

On the Glory be to the Father beads:

Behold, O God our protector,
and look upon the Face of Thy Christ. (Ps 83:10)

In conclusion, three times:

Father, glorify the Eucharistic Face of Thy Son,
that Thy Son may glorify Thee (cf. Jn 17:1).

The chaplet may be concluded with the Salve Regina, thereby entering into Pope John Paul II’s desire that we should contemplate the Face of Christ with Mary.