I am leaving this afternoon for the Monastery of Our Lady of the Annunciation at Clear Creek to preach the monastic community's annual retreat. I will be away from the computer and the telephone until the afternoon of November 21st, feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
I humbly beg for the prayers of all the readers of Vultus Christi, that Our Lord may open fountains of living water in my own heart and in the hearts of those to whom I will be preaching.
The title of today's entry is from the Magnificat Antiphon: "O how blessed a bishop was he! His inmost heart of hearts yearned on the King Christ, and he had no dread for the power of the Empire! O how holy a soul was his, which passed not away by the sword of the persecutor, and yet lost not the palm of martyrdom."
This wonderful painting, so rich in liturgical details -- look at the gorgeous chasuble -- depicts a famous episode in Saint Martin's life. One day, as he prepared to offer the Holy Sacrifice, Bishop Martin caught sight of a poor beggar in need of clothing. Immediately, he ordered his attending deacon to provide the beggar with a suitable garment. Seeing that the deacon was in no hurry to obey his order, Martin removed his tunic and gave it to the beggar. Later, at Holy Mass, a globe of fire appeared above his head. At the elevation of the Sacred Host, the sleeves of Bishop Martin's alb fell back baring his arms. Straightaway two angels appeared and, with a precious cloth, covered the prelate's arms for the duration of the elevation. The beggar (in the foreground, clothed in Martin's black tunic) and the other faithful looked on in wonder.
The Soldier Announces the Advent of the King
Today's Holy Gospel, focusing on judgment and on the arrival of the Bridegroom-King in glory with all his angels, is perfectly adapted to the eschatological impetus given to the liturgy between All Saints Day (November 1st) and the First Sunday of Advent. In other parts of the Catholic world, a six-week Advent begins on the Sunday following the feast of Saint Martin. This is the tradition of the Church of Milan, for example. The arrival of Martin the soldier announces the arrival of Christ, the true King, the Lord of glory.
The Confession of Saint Martin
Saint Martin of Tours was the first non-martyr to be honoured with a liturgical cult, the first of a long line of "confessors" to make their way into the Church's calendar. The Invitatory Antiphon refers to today's feast as "Saint Martin's confession." Confession here refers both to the saint's profession of the Catholic faith unto death, and to his praise of God. The Magnificat Antiphon will have us sing: "Though he did not die a martyr's death, this holy confessor won the martyr's palm." The magnificent hymn Iste Confessor, sung today at Matins and Vespers, was composed for the feast of Saint Martin.
Benedictines have a tradition of devotion to Saint Martin: Holy Father Benedict dedicated a chapel to Saint Martin at Monte Cassino. Franciscan liturgists of the Middle Ages borrowed from the Office of Saint Martin in composing the liturgy for the feast of Saint Francis, in many cases simply changing Martinus to Franciscus.
The Holy Ghost guided Saint Martin through a succession of states of life. There is Martin the soldier, Martin the catechumen, Martin the monk, and finally, Martin the bishop. this may account for his astonishing popularity. While in North America, Saint Martin is often forgotten, in France, over five hundred villages and over four thousand parishes bear his name and witness to the enthusiastic piety stirred up by his memory. In France and in Italy, Martin (the name of Saint Thérèse), and Martino (my grandmother's name), are common surnames.
Martin the Merciful
The lesson from the prophet Isaiah presents Saint Martin as one filled with the Holy Spirit, as one anointed and sent to bring good news to the poor. Martin binds up broken hearts, comforts those who mourn. He puts praise in the mouths and hearts of the despondent. The Life of Saint Martin by Sulpicius Severus recounts Martin's miracles of compassion, conversion, generosity, and healing. Together with Saint Athanasius' Life of Saint Antony, the Life of Saint Martin became the standard reference for the biographers of holy men.
The Poor Christ
Saint Paul had his blinding light on the road to Damascus; Saint Martin encountered Christ in the person of a poor beggar. Drawing his sword, Martin cut his ample military cloak in two and covered the beggar with half of it. The following night he was rewarded with an apparition of Our Lord, clothed in the same half- cloak.
The whole liturgy today evokes the cloak divided by a sword and given to Christ. A wondrous exchange! Saint Martin clothes the poor Christ with his cloak; Christ clothes the poor Martin with glory. "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich" (2 Cor 8:9). The words of the holy gospel: "I was naked and you clothed me" become "You, Martin, were naked and I clothed you." We celebrate Martin, clothed with grace and with glory by the humble beggar, Christ, whom he had clothed by cutting his prestigious Roman military cloak in half with his sword: the sacrifice of his pride.
Divinely Disproportionate
The naked Christ is all around us waiting to be clothed in whatever remnants our pride will yield to the sword of sacrificial love. In the absence of a sword, a mere pin will do! The paradox is that in clothing the Beggar, we become the beggar, and the Beggar becomes the one who clothes us in a mantle of justice, of grace and of glory. Is not the teaching of that other Martin, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face? The smallest gesture of sacrificial love on our part unleashes a torrent of transforming love on the part of God. There is no equality here; there cannot be. Fair exchange is utterly foreign to the Kingdom of God. "If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly scorned" (Ct 8:7). The divine response is always magnificently disproportionate to the tiny human gesture.
The Holy Sacrifice
Nowhere is this truer than in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Mass of the Catechumens (Liturgy of the Word) stirs us to respond in some way to God, Who, in speaking, already gives Himself, and communicates to us His life, His love, and His light. Is this not the prayer of the priest before receiving the Precious Blood: "What shall I render to the Lord for all His bounty to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord" (Ps 115:12-13)?
Suscipe Me
How do we respond? What do we bring to the altar? A little bread, a little wine, a drop of water: poor and humble symbols of ourselves, our life, our work, our joys, and our sufferings, but especially of our desire to, as Blessed Michael Iwene Tansi put it, "to belong entirely to God." What is the bread on the paten, the wine mixed with water in the chalice, if not a silent cry to the living God: Take me! Suscipe me? I surrender to the priestly hands of the Son; I yield to the mysterious action of the Paraclete. I offer myself to the two hands of the Father -- the Son and the Holy Spirit -- that by them, my poverty might become an oblation pleasing in the Father's sight.
The Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
Cross the threshold of the Lateran Basilica, enter the nave, stand in the midst of it and, with eyes wide open to things visible, contemplate the invisible: the mystery of the Church, Bride of Christ and Mother of His faithful. To do this, one need not take oneself off to Rome. It is enough, and more than enough, to enter into the wealth of antiphons, responsories, readings, hymns, and prayers that make up the splendour of today's liturgy.
God is in His Holy Place
The liturgy summons us to make a pilgrimage of the heart. It is full of mysterious archetypes: thresholds and doors, stones and ladders, pillars and gates, fires and storms, trumpet blasts and mountains, water and blood. All of these resonate to the great central affirmation of the liturgy of the Dedication of a Church: "God is in his holy place" (Ps 67:6).
When we cross the threshold of a dedicated church, we pass into a mystic enclosure containing the uncontainable. We pass over into the space and time of God: a space filled by Him whom the heavens themselves cannot encompass, a time transcending the mean measurements of clocks and calendars.
House of God and Gate of Heaven
Our God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of David and of Solomon, the God of Jesus Christ is not the distant God of a remote "there and then"; He is the God of "here and now." This is the wondrous realization that, dawning upon Jacob, caused him to cry out, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven" (Gen 28:17).
The Temple of His Body
Today the Church professes the abiding and objective presence of God in the new and indestructible Temple, which is the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord challenges his critics, saying: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up"; Saint John, ever the theologian, takes great care to add for our sakes, "But he spoke of the temple of his body" (Jn 2:19-21).
The Body of Christ is our Temple. To be in the Temple is to be in Christ. There we are certain of finding the Father; there we are certain of being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. There are we surrounded by "innumerable angels in festal gathering" and by "the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven" (Heb 12:22-23). To dwell in the Temple is to share in the mystery of Our Lord's priesthood, a priesthood which, like the Temple of his risen and ascended Body, endures forever. Baptized into Christ, we have crossed the threshold of the Temple. Even more, we are that Temple.
Divine Hospitality
The Temple of Christ's Body is not the stage of great spectacle. It is the home of the little and of the poor. There, beggar and priest, harlot and levite, mingle and touch, held in the embrace of the Divine Gospitality. The sound that fills the living Temple is the immense symphony of the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind (Lk 14:13), all clothed in their wedding garments -- garments royal and priestly -- woven by the Holy Spirit to adorn the Body of Christ in the presence of the Father. Here, the sacred is familiar, and the familiar, sacred. "Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at thy altars, O Lord of hosts" (Ps 84:3-4).
The Gate of Heaven Upon Earth
Listen to Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914), a son of the Archbishop of Canterbury and celebrated convert to Catholic Church. He describes the Church I love: the Church he came to love:
Her arms are as open to those who would serve God in silence and seclusion, as to those who dance before him with all their might. . . . There is nothing to fear for those who stand where we stand; there are no precipices to be climbed any more and no torrents to be crossed; God has made all easy for those He has admitted through the Gate of Heaven that he has built upon the earth; the very River of Death itself is no more than a dwindled stream, bridged and protected on every side; the shadow of death is little more than twilight for those who look on it in the light of the Lamb.
On the Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost and the ferial days following it, we pray:
Absolve, quaesumus Domine,
tuorum delicta populorum:
ut a peccatorum nexibus,
quae pro nostra fragilitate contraximus,
tua benignitate liberemur.
Absolve, Thy people from their transgressions,
we beseech Thee, O Lord,
so that through Thy goodness,
we may be set free from the entanglements of those sins
which in our weakness we have committed.
The verb, absolvo, can mean to loosen. The verb, contraho, can mean, among other things, to draw together tightly. Understood in this way, the Collect presents an astute psychology of sin. Sin is a knotty business, leading to hopelessly complex entanglements.
One better understands the old German devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Looser of Knots (Maria Knotenlöserin) in the light of the Church's prayer. There are, I think, in every life, sinful entanglements that only the patient and gentle hands of the Immaculate Virgin Mary can loosen.
At no time and in no place does the particular vocation of our little monastery come into focus more clearly than on Thursdays when we succeed each other in adoration and reparation before Our Lord's Eucharistic Face, repeating at the beginning of our watch:
Lord Jesus Christ, Priest and Victim,
behold, I kneel before Thy Eucharistic Face
on behalf of all Thy priests:
(Fathers N. and N.)
and especially those priests of Thine,
who at this moment are most in need
of Thy grace.
For them and in their place,
allow me to remain,
adoring and full of confidence,
close to Thy Open Heart,
hidden in this, the Sacrament of Thy Love.
Through the Sorrowful and Immaculate
Heart of Mary,
our Advocate and the Mediatrix of All Graces,
pour forth upon all the priests of Thy Church
that torrent of mercy that ever flows
from Thy pierced side:
to purify and heal them,
to refresh and sanctify them,
and, at the hour of their death,
to make them worthy of joining Thee
before the Father in the heavenly sanctuary
beyond the veil (Hb 6:19)
where Thou art always living
to make intercession
for us (Hb 7:25). Amen.
An adorer of the Eucharistic Face of Jesus is happy to take his place before the altar. He makes his own the psalmist's inspired words:
My heart hath said to thee: My face hath sought thee:
thy face, O Lord, will I still seek.
Turn not away thy face from me.
(Psalm 26: 8-9)
Behold, O God our protector: and look on the face of thy Christ.
For better is one day in thy courts above thousands.
(Psalm 83:9-10)
I am always with thee.
Thou hast held me by my right hand;
and by thy will thou hast conducted me, and with thy glory thou hast received me.
For what have I in heaven? and besides thee what do I desire upon earth?
For thee my flesh and my heart hath fainted away:
thou art the God of my heart, and the God that is my portion for ever.
For behold they that go far from thee shall perish:
thou hast destroyed all them that are disloyal to thee.
But it is good for me to adhere to my God, to put my hope in the Lord God:
That I may declare all thy praises, in the gates of the daughter of Sion.
(Psalm 72: 24-28)
An adorer of the Eucharistic Face of Jesus opens his inmost soul to the radiance of Our Lord's sacramental countenance. He exposes himself to the One who is exposed before his eyes, and asks to be wounded with the love of His Eucharistic Heart. Enboldened by the words of the Bridegroom in the Canticle, he dares to pray:
"Wound my heart with the love of the Eucharistic Heart.
Make me completely Thine.
Unite me to Thyself in the indestructible bond of Thy Divine Friendship.
Do for me, and in me, and through me,
all that Thou desirest to do for, and in, and through each one of Thy priests.
Let me offer myself to the Mercy which others refuse;
let me believe in the Love that others doubt;
let me accept the Friendship that others ignore
because I am a poor sinner amidst poor sinners,
and because I, even more than others,
have betrayed Thy Mercy, spurned Thy Love, and abused Thy Friendship.
My confidence is immense
because Thou art Love
and because Thou offerest the Friendship of Thy Heart
even to those sinners who have offended Thee most grievously.
Remove then from my soul every obstacle to Thy grace
and every resistance to Thy loving friendship,
until I am completely and forever Thine,
for Thy glory
and for the sake of Thy beloved priests.
Amen."
An adorer of the Eucharistic Face of Jesus prays as the Holy Spirit inspires him to pray: at times in an adoring silence, at times groaning and in tears, and at times in words as they are given him to utter.
Beloved Jesus,
Thou knowest all things and Thou searchest the hearts of men,
despising iniquity, and ready, at every moment,
to purify and heal tem
by a powerful and gentle infusion of Thy Mercy.
To all that Thou art and to all that Thou wouldst do in me,
I say "Yes."
I surrender entirely to the operations of Thy merciful Love
and to the action of the Holy Spirit.
I am all Thine,
and I abandon myself to Thy own burning desire to become my All.
Thou, O Jesus, art enough for me
for in Thee alone lies the happiness
for which Thou didst create me
and which Thou desirest to give me in this life
and in eternity. Amen."
A Mirror for Monks
I was fortunate to obtain for our monastic library a lovely used copy of A Mirror for Monks by Ludovicus Blosius. This particular edition, translated by Sir John Duke Coleridge, was published in London in 1872. Penciled inside the front cover is this note: "Non-Catholic translator, but recommended by Dr Newman."
I first came to know of Blosius when I began reading Blessed Abbot Marmion, who often quotes him. Many years ago I also read Blosius (Louis de Blois) in a French edition that was part of the wonderful "Collection Pax" produced by Maredsous at the beginning of the last century.
The following text is drawn from Chapter One:
First and foremost, therefore, I admonish you often and seriously to consider the end of your coming into your monastery; that being dead to the world and yourself, you may live to God. Strive therefore with might and main to accomplish that for which you came; learn strongly to despise all sensible things, and manfully to break, and no less wholesomely to forsake yourself. Make haste to mortify your passions and vicious affections that are in you.
Busy yourself in repressing the unstable wanderings of your heart;
strive to overcome weariness, idleness, and the irksomeness of your
infirm mind. Spend your daily labour in these things; let this be your
glorious contention and healthful affliction. Be not remiss; but arise,
watch, look about you, and expose yourself wholly, lest you be evilly
partial to yourself. God requireth thus much of you; so doth your
state.
You are called a Monk: see that you be truly what you are called. Do
the work of a Monk. Labour earnestly in beating down and casting forth
vice.
Be always armed against the frowardness of nature, against the
haughtiness of mind, against the pleasures of your flesh, and the
enticements of sensuality. Understand well what I say. If you permit
pride, boasting, vainglory, self-complacence, to domineer over your
reason, you are no Monk.
If you frowardly follow your own sense, and dare despise every humble
office, you are not what you are called--you are no Monk.
If as much as in you lieth you repel not envy, hatred, maliciousness,
indignation; if you reject not rash suspicions, childish complaints,
and wicked murmurings, you are no Monk.
If a contentious and earnest strife being risen between you and
another, you do not presently treat of a reconciliation, and what wrong
soever hath been done, you do not presently pardon sincerely, but seek
for revenge, and retain a voluntary private grudge, and not a true and
sincere affection in your heart, or show outwardly signs of
disaffection--nay, if when occasion and necessity requireth, you defer
to help him that hath injured you, you are no Monk, you are no
Christian, you are abominable before God.
If having done amiss, you are ashamed regularly to accuse yourself and
freely to confess your fault; if being blamed, reproved, and corrected,
you be not patient and humble, you are no Monk.
If you neglect readily and faithfully to obey your ghostly Father, if
you refuse to reverence and sincerely to love him as God's vicar, you
are no Monk.
If you willingly withdraw yourself from the Divine Office and other
conventual acts, if you assist not watchfully and reverently in the
service of God, you are no Monk.
If, neglecting internal things, you take care only about the external,
and with a certain dry custom move your body but not your heart to the
works of religion, you are no Monk.
If you give not your mind to holy reading and other spiritual
exercises, if you have your mind so possessed with transitory matters
that you seldom lift yourself up to eternal, you are no Monk.
If you desire delicate and superfluous meats, and intemperately long
after the drinking of wine beyond the measure of a cup, especially if
you be in health, and have beer or other convenient drink sufficiently,
you are no Monk.
If foolishly you require precious apparel, soft beds, and other solaces
of the flesh which agree not with your state and profession; if, loving
corporal rest, you refuse to undergo labour and affliction for God's
sake, you are no Monk.
If you cannot endure solitude and silence, but are delighted with idle
speeches and inordinate laughter, you are no Monk.
If you love to be with seculars, if you desire to wander out of the
monastery through the villages and cities, you are no Monk.
If you presume to take any small matter, to send, receive, or keep any
things without the knowledge or permission of your Superior, you are no
Monk.
If you esteem not the ordinations of holy religion, though never so
little, and willingly do transgress them, you are no Monk. To conclude:
If you seek any other thing in the monastery but God, and with might
and main aspire not to perfection, you are no Monk.
As I have said, therefore, that you may truly be what you are called,
and may not wear the habit of a Monk in vain, do the work of a Monk.
Arm yourself against yourself, and as much as in you lieth overcome and
subdue yourself. If presently you find not the peace you desire; if, I
say, as yet you cannot be at rest, but are troubled and assailed by
brutish motions and turbulent passions: yea, if so be by God's
permission, for your own profit, throughout your whole life you shall
have to do with such enemies, despair not, be not effeminately
dejected, but, humbling yourself before God, stand and be steadfast in
your place, and skirmish stoutly; for even the vessel of election, St.
Paul, endured temptations all his lifetime, in which he was buffeted by
the angel of Satan. When he often beseeched our Lord to be freed from
this trouble he obtained it not, for that it was not expedient for him;
but our Lord answered his prayer, "My grace is sufficient for thee, for
strength is perfected in weakness." And so afterwards St. Paul did
gratefully endure the scourge of temptation.
Being comforted by the example of this most strong and invincible champion, faint not in temptation, but endure manfully, remaining fixed and immoveable in this holy purpose; for without doubt, this labour of yours is grateful to God, although the same seem hard and insufferable to you. Go through this spiritual martyrdom with an invincible mind. Doubt not, although you be a thousand times wounded, and as often trod under foot, if you stand to it, if you give not ground to your enemy and like a coward cast not away your weapons, you shall receive a crown.
Do according to your ability, and commend the rest to God's disposing, saying: As Thy will is in Heaven, so be it done. Let the divine will and ordination be your chief consolation. Which way soever you turn yourself, wheresoever you are, you shall find tribulations and temptations as long as this life lasteth; which, that you may patiently endure, you ought always to be prepared.
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.
His Excellency, Bishop Edward J. Slattery of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma has given
Father Mark a special mandate to live under the Rule of Saint Benedict in adoration before the Eucharistic Face of Jesus, offering thanksgiving, intercession, and reparation for all his
brothers in Holy Orders. In this way, Father is preparing the foundation of the new Diocesan Benedictine Monastery of Our Lady of the Cenacle. Father Mark is available to the
priests and deacons of the Diocese for spiritual and sacramental support in their pursuit of holiness. He is also charged with the spiritual formation of women who desire to dedicate themselves to spiritual motherhood in favour of priests.
