The course of our Annual Retreat is focused on the Rule of St Benedict and Cistercian Community and Contemplative Life. One talk reminded me of St. Peter Damian's, "Eleventh Treatise entitled, The Book of 'The Lord be with you'. See excerpt below ...
St. Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church (1007-1072)
Maybe because he was orphaned and had been treated shabbily by one of his brothers, Peter Damian was very good to the poor. It was the ordinary thing for him to have a poor person or two with him at table and he liked to minister personally to their needs.
Peter escaped poverty and the neglect of his own brother when his other brother, who was archpriest of Ravenna, took him under his wing. His brother sent him to good schools and Peter became a professor.
Already in those days Peter was very strict with himself. He wore a hair shirt under his clothes, fasted rigorously and spent many hours in prayer. Soon, he decided to leave his teaching and give himself completely to prayer with the Benedictines of the reform of St. Romuald at Fonte Avellana. They lived two monks to a hermitage. Peter was so eager to pray and slept so little that he soon suffered from severe insomnia. He found he had to use some prudence in taking care of himself. When he was not praying, he studied the Bible.
The abbot commanded that when he died Peter should succeed him. Abbot Peter founded five other hermitages. He encouraged his brothers in a life of prayer and solitude and wanted nothing more for himself. The Holy See periodically called on him, however, to be a peacemaker or troubleshooter, between two abbeys in dispute or a cleric or government official in some disagreement with Rome.
Finally, Pope Stephen IX made Peter the cardinal-bishop of Ostia. He worked hard to wipe out simony, and encouraged his priests to observe celibacy and urged even the diocesan clergy to live together and maintain scheduled prayer and religious observance. He wished to restore primitive discipline among religious and priests, warning against needless travel, violations of poverty and too comfortable living. He even wrote to the bishop of Besancon, complaining that the canons there sat down when they were singing the psalms in the Divine Office.
He wrote many letters. Some 170 are extant. We also have 53 of his sermons and seven lives, or biographies, that he wrote. He preferred examples and stories rather than theory in his writings. The liturgical offices he wrote are evidence of his talent as a stylist in Latin.
He asked often to be allowed to retire as cardinal-bishop of Ostia, and finally Alexander II consented. Peter was happy to become once again just a monk, but he was still called to serve as a papal legate. When returning from such an assignment in Ravenna, he was overcome by a fever. With the monks gathered around him saying the Divine Office, he died on February 22, 1072.
In 1828 he was declared a Doctor of the Church
+ + +
THE ELEVENTH TREATISE OF ST. PETER DAMIAN
The Book of ‘The Lord Be With You'
Many of the brethren, followers of the eremitic life, have asked me whether, since they live alone in their cells, it is right for them to say Dominus vobiscum, Jube, domne, benedicere, and the like; and whether, despite the fact that they are by themselves, they should say the responses, as the custom of the Church demands. Some of them argue the matter within themselves in this way: 'Are we to ask a blessing of the stones and furnishings of our cells, or say to them, "The Lord be with you?" , Others fear that if they depart in any way from the prescribed order of the Church they are guilty of sin, in so far as they are diminishing their duty of divine service. …
Chapter Three
The phrase Dominus vobiscum is the priest’s greeting to the people; he prays that the Lord may be with them, in accordance with the words spoken by the Prophet: 'I shall dwell within them', and with those spoken by our Saviour to His disciples and all the faithful: 'Behold, I am with you.' This form of greeting, then, is no mere innovation instituted by human authority; it has the sanction of the ancient authority of the Scriptures. Anyone who examines the holy writings carefully will find many examples of its use, both in the singular and the plural. Did not the angel say to the blessed Mother of God: 'The Lord is with thee'? And to Gideon likewise: 'The Lord is with thee, thou mightiest of men'? In the book of Ruth, too, we read that Boaz greeted his harvesters with the words: 'The Lord be with you.' And in the Book of Chronicles we find that the prophet sent by God hailed Asa King of Juda and his army as they were returning in triumph from battle with these words: 'The Lord be with you, for you were with the Lord.'
When the Church receives the salutary greeting of the priest, she greets him in return, and in doing so prays that, as he has desired that the Lord may be with them, so He may deign to be with him. 'And with thy spirit', she replies, meaning: 'May almighty God be with your soul, so that you may worthily pray to Him for our salvation.' Notice that she says not 'with thee', but 'with thy spirit'; this is to remind us that ail things concerned with the services of the Church must be performed in a spiritual manner. And certainly God must prefer to be with a man's spirit, for it is the soul of a reasonable man that is made in God's image and likeness; it alone is capable of receiving divine grace and illumination.
And the greeting which the bishop gives his people: 'Peace be with you' or 'Peace to you', also has its roots in the authority of Holy Writ, and is not just the product of man's mind. For we read in the Old Testament that the angel said to Daniel 'Peace be to you'; and in the New Testament the Lord almost always greets His disciples with the words 'Peace to you.' And He commended the same form of greeting to His disciples, saying: 'Into whatsoever house you shall enter, salute it, saying: …
No comments:
Post a Comment