October 2007 Archives

O my beloved Jesus,
true Friend of my heart,
Priest of the Father,
Anointed of the Holy Spirit,
Immaculate Victim upon the altar of the Cross
and upon the altars of the Church, Thy Spouse,
I adore Thee.

Tell me how Thou wouldst have me live this Thursday in Thy presence.
Thou wouldst have me watch before Thy Eucharistic Face;
Thou desirest that I should abide close, very close, to Thy Open Heart.
Thou callest me near to Thee,
that I might remain there in the name of all priests,
and in their place.

Thou wouldst heal the priests of Thy Church.
Thou wouldst purify them.
Thou desirest to make them shine with holiness.

I can offer Thee only what Thou hast asked of me:
to give Thee all the Thursdays of my life
and to spend them, insofar as possible,
with Thee in the Sacrament of Thy Love,
so as to receive there all the graces destined for Thy priests.

It must have been forty years ago -- or more -- that I opened the Latin-English missal published by the Abbey of Saint-André-de Bruges and found a stunning woodcut of a chalice turned upside down with the Precious Blood of Christ falling like a gentle rain into purgatory to bring refreshment and deliverance to the Holy Souls.

The offering of the Precious Blood of Christ for the Holy Souls is a mighty form of intercession on their behalf. Given that I am a firm believer in the value of repetitive prayer, of simple invocations repeated over and over again in the form of a chaplet or rosary, I began to pray for the Holy Souls in this way. Readers of Vultus Christi may want to make this prayer their own during the month of November, even on a daily basis. It is prayed on an ordinary rosary.

On the large beads:

V. Eternal Father,
I offer Thee the Precious Blood of Thy Beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Lamb without blemish or spot (1 P 1:19) --
R. For the refreshment and deliverance of the souls in Purgatory.

(One can add here, especially those of my family, or of my ancestry, or of priests. The Holy Spirit sometimes moves one to pray for particular groups of Holy Souls.)

Ten times on the small beads:

V. By Thy Precious Blood, O Jesus --
R. Purify and deliver their souls.

After having said five decades, one concludes with:

V. Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord.
R. And let perpetual light shine upon them.
V. May they rest in peace.
R. Amen.

Another photo taken at Saint-Loup-sur-Aujon. Autumn has been gentle here in northeastern France. The village of Nans-sous-Sainte-Anne, where I am at present, is a marvel of natural beauty. The Jura mountains surround the village, and between the mountain heights are woodlands with brooks that sing, and green pastures. What a gift I have been given in coming here!

I drove several kilometers this morning to connect to the DSL installation in the home of Jean-Baptiste and Thérèse. This evening, and every Wednesday evening, a group of people from the area, including Jean-Baptiste and Thérèse, come to the monastery to pray the rosary and to sing Compline with the community. For the past few weeks I have been giving them a talk as well. Tonight's subject? Purgatory!

The couples who attend will be bringing their children along this evening. French schools are closed this week for the All Saints vacation. All Saints Day remains a national holiday here.

In the monastery, First Vespers of All Saints Day will be marked by the exposition of the treasury of relics of the saints. The holy relics will be placed on a table covered with an embroidered cloth in the middle of the choir. Visibly, the Divine Office will be laus eius in ecclesia sanctorum: the praise of God in the church of the saints! The veneration of the relics of the saints brings with it streams of graces. God is greatly glorified therein, and the intercession of "so great a cloud of witnesses" (Heb 12:1) is a boon for the whole Church.

Surely there are lay faithful and religious who will hear the call to make the Thursdays in Adoration and Reparation for Priests. Are you willing to commit yourself to one hour of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament every Thursday in intercession and reparation for priests? The hour may be made before the tabernacle or before the Blessed Sacrament exposed. Should it be impossible to make it before the Blessed Sacrament, one can, from any place, offer it in spirit before the tabernacle in the world where Our Lord is most forsaken, neglected, and forgotten.

Priests who desire to join me in this commitment are warmly invited to contact me for further information.

O my beloved Jesus,
I give and consecrate to Thee this Thursday and all the Thursdays of my life,
in praise of the adorable Mystery of Thy Body and Blood,
and in thanksgiving for that of the Priesthood.

Moved by Thy Holy Spirit,
and full of confidence in the help of Thy Most Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary,
Mother of Priests,
I resolve to live each Thursday for the rest of my days here below
in adoration and in reparation for priests
and, especially, for those who do not adore Thee,
for those who are most wounded in their souls,
and for those who are exposed to the attacks of the powers of darkness.
I want to remain before Thy Eucharistic Face for them and in their place;
I want to draw near, in their name, to Thy open Heart,
ever-flowing with the Blood and the Water that purify,
heal, and sanctify all souls,
but, first of all, those of Thy priests.

Let each Thursday find me close to the Sacrament of Thy Body and Blood,
in adoration and reparation for the sake of all Thy priests.
Make me an entirely Eucharistic soul,
according to the desires of Thy Sacred Heart
and the designs of Thy merciful goodness upon my life.
I desire nothing else.
I want to love Thee more each day;
I want to be the faithful adorer of Thy Eucharistic Face
and the consoling friend of Thy Sacred Heart
hidden in the tabernacles of the world,
where it beats, wounded by love, forgotten, forsaken,
and waiting for the adoration and for the love of even one priest.
Amen.

Dear readers of Vultus Christi,

After a long hiatus, I am able today to connect to the internet and give you some news. I am writing from the home of Jean-Baptiste and Thérèse Garnier, friends of the Monastère Saint–Benoît in Nans-sous-Sainte-Anne. Jean–Baptiste and Thérèse have DSL, and were kind enough to invite me to their home to update Vultus Christi.

I have been in France since 12 September, the feast of the Holy Name of Mary. For the first few weeks I stayed at the Monastère Saint-Benoît in Nans-sous-Sainte-Anne. After giving a conference at the General Chapter of the Benedictines of Jesus Crucified at Brou-sur-Chantereine on Saturday, 29 September, I went to Subiaco, a dependence of the Monastère de l'Incarnation in Saint-Loup-sur-Aujon.

On Wednesday 3 October, the feast of Blessed Columba Marmion, I arrived at the monastery of the Benedictines du Saint-Sacrement in Craon (Mayenne) to make a personal retreat of adoration and discernment. The monastery of Craon, steeped in adoration of the Most Holy Eucharist, is a blessed place indeed. My retreat there was life-changing.

The day before leaving for my retreat I received a book in the mail. I had not solicited this book, but the librarian of a certain Benedictine monastery, knowing "the interests of my heart" sent it without knowing that I was about to begin a retreat of adoration and discernment. The book, published in 1930, was La Sainte Messe, échelle de la sainteté, by Dom Eugène Vandeur (1875-1967). The evening before my retreat I opened the book at random and read:

Let me be wholly and entirely thy priest, like John, thy beloved disciple, standing at the foot of the Cross, the Tree of Life.

I was astonished. This one sentence sums up my personal vocation and the thrust of my life for the past thirty years. There was still more. At the end of the book, I read:

O Mary, Virgin and Mother of priests,
I will place myself close to thee, today and all the days of my life,
there, in the very place where stood Saint John, the disciple whom Jesus loved,
the preferred Priest of His love;
I will remain there, with thee, facing the cross, and I will gaze upon Him,
this Jesus Crucified, the only science that a priest need know, love, and preach.
"To know only Jesus and Him crucified" (1 Cor 2:29). . . .

Thou dost answer me, O Mother,
saying that I will learn this at the holy altar,
the mountain of myrrh and the hill of incense (Ct 4:6),
that, each morning, I will ascend with thee
to enter into the wounds of Jesus Crucified.

There is much more that I could share about this retreat, but my time is limited. The signal grace of the retreat was a call to live in adoration and reparation for all my brother priests, and to allow my soul to be "johannized," that is to say, to consent to become, by the merciful goodness of Christ and the action of the Holy Spirit, another Saint John, a beloved disciple for His Heart and for the Heart of His Mother.

The desire of the Heart of Jesus is that there should be priest adorers and reparators: priests who will adore for those who do not adore, priests who will make reparation for those who do not. Our Lord asks me — and will ask other priests as well — to remain in adoration before His Eucharistic Face, offering all the priests of the Church to His Open Heart present in the Sacrament of His Love.

Our Lord asked me to consecrate every Thursday (day of the Eucharist and of the Priesthood) to this particular mission of adoration and reparation for priests.

Let each Thursday find me close to the Sacrament of Thy Body and Blood,
deep in adoration, and offering Thee the reparation Thou askest of me
in the name of all Thy priests.
Make me an entirely Eucharistic priest,
according to the desires of Thy Sacred Heart
and the designs of Thy merciful goodness upon my life.
I desire nothing else.
I want to love Thee more each day;
I want to be the faithful adorer of Thy Eucharistic Face
and the consoling friend of Thy Sacred Heart
hidden in the tabernacles of the world,
where it beats, wounded by love, forgotten, forsaken,
and waiting for the adoration and for the love of even one priest.

[A note came from Fr. Mark in France today; he hasn't been able to post to the blog, but he did send this homily which he preached for today's Mass, a Saturday in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Fr. Mark presented the homily in French, of course, and the original text is on-line at Le Blog du Greg. I'm taking the liberty to make a translation and post it here. Some of Fr.'s beautiful prose style will be lost in the process, alas. --RC]

Monastère de l’Incarnation
Saint-Loup-sur-Aujon
Homily for October 20, 2007

Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary
28th Saturday of Year One
Romans 4: 13:18
Luke 12: 8-12

A fruitful faith

The first reading speaks to us of the faith of our father Abraham. What are the characteristics of that faith? Faith is the principle of fruitfulness. It is by faith that Abraham became the father "of a great number of peoples", the father of all the faithful, and finally the father of the Virgin Mary, who carried his faith to perfection.

A life-giving faith

The faith of Abraham is, at the same time, a fountain where life springs forth. Where faith is weak, life also weakens. That is why the Lord says, "It is by faith that the just man shall live." (Heb 10:38). Again, the life-giving faith of Abraham reaches its summit in the Virgin Mary. Elizabeth, impelled by the Holy Spirit, declares her blessed because she has believed what God had said to her. (Lk 1, 45).

A faith molded by hope

Finally, the faith of Abraham is shaped by hope. Faith brings us to the edge of mystery, but it is by hope that we cast the bridge across, which lets us pass even into the Kingdom.

The faith of the Holy Virgin

The faith of Abraham, great as it is, cannot compare to that of Mary, that of the Virgin Mother of Holy Saturday. It is because of this indefectible hope which rose like a flame in the heart of the Virgin, on the day of the great Sabbath after the death of her Son, that the Church gives her all the Saturdays until the end of time. The Church marks them in the holy liturgy with this beautiful Office and Mass "De Beata", of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which become for those who celebrate them the means of passing from hope to hope, even amid trials.

In the unity of the Holy Spirit

The Gospel contains two references to the Holy Spirit. The verse before the Gospel had us pray: "Grant us, Lord, the Spirit of truth, that He may bear witness in our hearts" (Jn 15: 26-27). Within the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is He who seals the communion of the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is He who achieves the unity of the Three Persons, being substantially the Love which proceeds from the Father to the Son, and from the Son to the Father. This is why the Church has us say in her prayers, "in unitate Spiritus Sancti — in the unity of the Holy Spirit"

The sin against the Holy Spirit

Where the Spirit of God reigns, there is the unity described in the Acts of the Apostles: "They all, being of one mind, were devoted to prayer, along with several women, among whom was Mary, the Mother of Jesus" (Ac 1: 14). It is only by the grace of the Holy Spirit that one can say, "Jesus is Lord". (1 Cor 12: 3). This is why he who rejects the Holy Spirit places himself outside of the grace of God. Whoever resists the Holy Spirit becomes blind and without sense before the Face of Christ and in the presence of His open Heart. He who resists the Holy Spirit closes his own ears to the word of Christ who pardons, who invites to communion, who calls from death to life. This is why the sin against the Holy Spirit is so grave: it prevents us from walking in the WAY, from adhering to the TRUTH, from opening ourselves to the LIFE.

Receiving Mary

Yet there is a very sure way to never fall into this sin against the Holy Spirit. It is to open oneself to the Virgin Mary. Whoever receives Mary receives the Holy Spirit. Is this not what we see in Saint Joseph at the beginning of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, and again in Saint John at the end of the fourth gospel?

If in our lives there is little evidence of the Holy Spirit at work, the source of all fruitfulness, it is because we give too little place for Mary. All sin against the Holy Spirit contains at its root, a refusal of the mystery of the Virgin Mary, and every refusal of the mystery of the Virgin Mary contains at its root the sin against the Holy Spirit.

Where Mary is

In his discourse on monastic life, the Holy Father said it well: "Where Mary is, one finds the pentecostal breath of the Holy Spirit, one finds vigor and authentic renewal." Have we heard him? Shall we let ourselves be addressed by this prophetic word, or will it be ranked among thousands of sterile good thoughts that remain untouched the day after tomorrow, like rose blooms that never give their scent?

It is moving to see when one goes to the Benedictines of the Holy Sacrament that the Virgin Mary occupies the place of the abbess, in all her regular positions. Among those sisters, the abbess is always Mary. Where Mary is truly abbess, the Holy Spirit reigns. At its basis, this is very evangelical. It is a matter of imitating the gesture of the beloved disciple who, obeying the word of Jesus crucified, "took her into his home". (Jn 19: 27).

All our resistances to the Holy Spirit, everything that prevents us from experiencing the full fruitfulness of the faith of Abraham, everything in us and around us that drives away "vigor and authentic renewal" would disappear as the fog disappeared in the sun this morning, if, if we were to open our hearts to Mary.

The Holy Spirit will teach you

The future of the monasteries of the Congregation depends on the reception we will give to the Holy Spirit, and that reception always happens through the mystery of Mary. Then we will be able to say in all confidence, "Do not worry about how you will defend yourself or how to speak; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you are to say." (Lk 12, 11-12).