Showing posts with label Comments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Comments. Show all posts

Thursday 3 April 2014

Comment: Benediction photograsph

In Choir

 
Fw: Benediction photograph. 


On Wednesday, 2 April 2014,  Bob ...> wrote:

Dear Father Donald,
 
I have just logged on to your blog.
May I say the picture of Father Nivard is beautiful! 
Another one for my Nunraw collection. 
O how I wish a web cam was installed in the Church. 
I follow the Benedictines in County Down on their web cam Divine Office and Mass. It works well.
I hope you received my card. 
Please pray for me and I for you keep up the great work.
God Bless. 
 Robert.

Monday 24 March 2014

COMMENT: Lent 2nd Week Life of Moses

Bush identities.  
Left: Amelanchier

In the rectory, the bush was brightened in sunshine and name was suggested Japanese Lilac. 
I had to ask our garden helper,and he was able to put us right on the identity of the flowering shrub, Amelanchier Canadensis.
Later the story continued.
In fact, Fr. M. of horticultural experience, named the flowering shrub as the Japanese Cherry.
We learn more. It is from the Church window that the Amelanchier is showing in the spring development. It is seen to the left in the cemetery view.

Friday, 21 March 2014

Lent 2nd Week Life of Moses by St Gregory of Nyssa

   Patristic Lectionary,    
   Midday
We enjoy Bright sunshine and windy nights.
Beautiful views in all directions.
The Japanese Lilac tree is radiant in full bloom, especially from my refectory window.             

to correct - Japanese Cherry








Friday of the Second Week in Lent Year II

A READING FROM THE BOOK OF EXODUS

(Promise of the covenant and appearance of the Lord on Sinai: Exodus 19:1-19; 20:1 2nd Week 8-21)
On the third new moon after the people of Israel had gone forth out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. And when they set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, they encamped in the wilderness; and there Israel encamped before the mountain. And Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’


Monday 28 October 2013

Grateful to Saint Jude

Saint Jude Thaddeus
COMMENT:

Fano%20Catthedrale%20SC.jpg

Fifth Monday of Paschaltide

Acts 14:5–18
Psalm 113B:1–2, 3–4, 15–16 (R.1ab)
John 14:21–26

Grateful to Saint Jude
We are grateful to the Apostle Saint Jude for the marvelous dialogue recounted in today’s Gospel. Our Lord reveals what it means to love Him and to be loved by Him. He declares that anyone who loves Him will be loved by the Father. He promises to love the one who loves him and to manifest Himself to him. “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (Jn 14:21).
The Way of Love
Saint Jude doesn’t immediately grasp what Our Lord is saying. He cannot conceive of a way of knowing Christ apart from the obvious way given to all. Jude seems to think that it is enough to observe Jesus: something that everyone can do. That there should be a higher way of knowing, a more intimate way, the way of love, completely eludes him. “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” (Jn 14:22).
The Divine Indwelling
Our Lord explains that the manifestation of Himself to His disciples will be inseparable from His Father’s love for them. He promises a mysterious indwelling: “We will come to him and make our home with him” (Jn 14:23). He declares that anyone who loves Him will hold fast to His words. Those who let go of his words, those who fail to store them up in their hearts, will not enjoy the manifestation reserved to His friends. They will remain strangers to the joy of the indwelling of the Father and the Son.
Friends of the Sacred Heart
How can we not relate this Gospel to the tender love Our Lord revealed in manifesting Himself to the friends of His Sacred Heart over the centuries. To each one of them He said in a unique way, “Behold, I love you and manifest Myself to you, even as I promised.”
I am thinking above all of the Virgin Mother beneath whose own Pure Heart His Sacred Heart of flesh first began to beat. I am thinking of Saint John the Beloved Disciple who, inflamed by his experience of the Heart of Jesus, was compelled to write: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it” (1 Jn1:1–2).
I am thinking of Saint Bernard, Saint Gertrude, Saint Mechthilde, Saint Lutgarde, and Saint Bonaventure. I am thinking of Saint Margaret Mary and of Saint Claude la Colombière, of Mother Marie Adèle Garnier of Tyburn, Mother Clelia Merloni, and Blessed Marie de Jésus Deluil–Martiny; of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, and of Blessed Marie–Joseph Cassant. For each one of these men and women Our Lord fulfilled the promise he makes in today’s Gospel: “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (Jn 14:21).
A Gift Without Price
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, before being a gift of ours offered to Christ is a gift that He offers us. “If you but knew the gift of God!” (Jn 4:10). This is the clear teaching of Pope Pius XII in Haurietis Aquas: “We are perfectly justified in seeing in this same devotion . . . a gift without price which our divine Saviour . . . imparted to the Church, His mystical Spouse in recent centuries when she had to endure such trials and surmount so many difficulties” (HA, art. 2).
The Holy Spirit, First Gift of the Heart of Christ
For Pope Pius XII, the Holy Spirit is the first Gift from the Heart of the risen Christ. This too is announced in today’s Gospel: “The Counselor, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (Jn 14:26). The work of the Holy Spirit is threefold. (1) The Holy Spirit is our Advocate with the Father, “interceding for us with sighs too deeps for words” because “we do not know how to pray as we ought” (Rom 8:26). (2) The Holy Spirit is sent to teach us all things, that is, to make clear for us “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:8). (3) The Holy Spirit is sent to quicken the memory of the Church, to bring to remembrance all that Christ said, lest any word of His be neglected or forgotten.
Advocate, Teacher, and Prompter
The Holy Spirit is our Advocate, our Teacher, and our Prompter. As Advocate, the Holy Spirit aligns us with the prayer of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the Father; “the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom 8:27), that is, according to the Heart of Christ. As Teacher, the Holy Spirit gives us “the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:18); in a word, the Holy Spirit teaches us the Heart of Christ. As Prompter, the Holy Spirit calls to mind the words by which Christ communicates to us all “the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3) hidden in His Sacred Heart.
Thank you, Dom M
http://vultus.stblogs.org/sacred-heart-of-jesus/2007/05/
St. Jude statue

Thursday 1 August 2013

COMMENT: Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe

Portiuncula Hospital - areal
Talking about Portiuncula,
Br. Seamus surprised me to learn that he and his brothers and sisters were born in Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe.
Seamus added that Ballinasloe is the largest TOWN in Ireland.

History[edit]

The Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood opened a nursing home at "Mount Pleasant" in 1943, and John Dignan, the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Clonfert, invited them to found a hospital, which opened on 9 April 1945.[2] The nuns named their hospital after Portiuncula in Italy, the place where Franciscanism began.

Monday 1 April 2013

Good Friday The Garden of Gethsemane Prayer

  http://www.jesusiam.com/agony.html   



John 8:28 So Jesus said, 
"When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am he.

Passiontide awakes every response to Jesus. Many believed in Jesus and some openly mocked him when he warned them about their sin of unbelief.
Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit that we may have power to be his witnesses of Christ's Cross.
Moving quickly from controversy, on the Mount of Olives Jesus suffers his agony for all souls.
This Prayer speaks in the language of the Sacred Heart. (Imprimatur: local Bishop. 1963. San Giovanni Rotondo 1965, may suggest St. Padre Pio source).

PRAYER TO JESUS, AGONISING ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES

My soul is sorrowful even unto death. Stay here and watch. (St. Mark XIV-34).

O Jesus, through the abundance of Thy love, and in order to overcome our hardheartedness, Thou pourest out torrents of Thy graces over those who reflect on Thy most Sacred Sorrow in the Garden ofGethsemane, and who spread devotion to it. I pray Thee, move my soul and my heart to think often, at least once a day, of Thy most bitter Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, in order to communicate with Thee and to be united with Thee as closely as possible.
O Blessed Jesus, Thou, who carried the immense burden of our sins that night, and atoned for them fully; grant me the most perfect gift of complete repentant love over my numerous sins, for which Thou didst sweat blood.
O Blessed Jesus, for the sake of Thy most bitter struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane, grant me final victory over all temptations, especially over those to which I am most subjected.
O suffering Jesus, for the sake of Thy inscrutable and indescribable agonies, during that night of betrayal, and of Thy bitterest anguish of mind, enlighten me, so that I may recognise and fulfil Thy will; grant that I may ponder continually on Thy heart-wrenching struggle on how Thou didst emerge victoriously, in order to fulfil, not Thy will, but the will of Thy Father.
Be Thou blessed, O Jesus, for all Thy sighs on that holy night; and for the tears which Thou didst shed for us.
Be Thou blessed, O Jesus, for Thy sweat of blood and the terrible agony, which Thou dist suffer lovingly in coldest abandonment and in inscrutable loneliness.
Be Thou blessed, O sweetest Jesus, filled with immeasurable bitterness, for the prayer which flowed in trembling agony from Thy Heart, so truly human and divine.
Eternal Father, I offer Thee all the past, present, and future Masses together with the blood of Christ shed in agony in the Garden of Sorrow at Gethsemane.
Most Holy Trinity, grant that the knowledge and thereby the love, of the agony of Jesus on the Mount of Olives will spread throughout the whole world.
Grant, O Jesus, that all who look lovingly at Thee on the Cross, will also remember Thy immense Suffering on the Mount of Olives, that they will follow Thy example, learn to pray devoutly and fight victoriously, so that, one day, they may be able to Glorify Thee eternally in Heaven. Amen.

PROMISES TO DEVOTEES OF 
THE AGONY OF JESUS ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES

Again and again calls of My Love flow from My Heart. They fill the souls in which the fire of love lights up and sometimes even sets ablaze the heart. It is this, the voice of My Heart, which travels and also reaches those who do not want to hear Me, and who, therefore, do not notice Me. However, inside of them I speak to all, and My Voice will speak to all, because I love them all.
He, who knows the Commandment of Love is not surprised that I cannot help knocking at the door of those who resist Me, and forced me, so to speak, by their rejection, to repeat My loving invitation to them.
Why, what else can My calls be, full of flowing love, than the will of love of a loving God. Who wants to save His Creatures? However, I know very well, that not many wish to follow My generous invitation, and that even the few who do accept, must strive hard to receive Me.
Well then! I shall show even more, generosity (as if I had not been generous enough up to now), and I shall do this by giving all of you a precious Gem of My Love. I have decided to open a dam, in order to let flow the torrent of My Graces, which My Heart can no longer hold back.
Look what I have to offer you in return for a little love from you:
1. To all those who remember My Agony, with love and devotion, at least once a day; forgiveness of all sins and the certainty of salvation for their souls in the hour of their death.
2. Total and everlasting repentance to those who will have a Mass celebrated in honour of My AgonisingSuffering in the Garden of Gethsemane.
3. Success in spiritual matters to all those, who impress on others, love and devotion to My Agonies on the Mount of Olives.
4. Finally, and in order to prove to you that I want to break open a dam of My Heart so as to let flow a flood of My Graces, I promise those who spread this devotion to My agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, the following three graces:
a Total and final victory over the worst temptation to which they are subjected;
b. Direct power to save poor souls from purgatory;
c. Great enlightenment and strength to fulfil My Will.
All of these, My precious gifts, I will definitely give to those who carry what I had said, and who, therefore, remember and venerate with love and sympathy. My great, incomprehensible Agony on the Mount of Olives.
_______________________________
On following years, a Guest has attended Nunraw Retreat in Lent, and loved to obtain and distribute copies of this Prayer Leaflet.







Wednesday 21 November 2012

COMMENTS: Books

Hi, William,
You didn't dream! Vision in reality!
And there exactly I looked, five times. It must be my blind spot.
Fr. Thomas followed your directions. Immediately found the precious volume.
Many thanks.

The Carlisle Bookcase, the vast theological section already gives the browsing for pleasure. The Online progress will make it even instant service. You could well lend one of your full hands.

Thank you for the Thomas Merton window on to the 'Imitation'.

Two PC Monitors are giving problems. Maybe I can visit Comet tomorrow.

www.clearance-comet.co.uk/ 
Browse through our great deals on Comet Clearance Auction site, including great prices on
Washing Machines, Dishwashers, Laptops and TVs. Buy direct from Comet.

Very busy getting back to book storage in a great kip. Like the Knox Commentary catalogued in the 70s, I am discovering books in the dump were stamped and shelved. Vandals have since been in the cloister??????.
 Yours
Donald
+ + +



----- Forwarded Message -----
From: William - - -
To: Donald - - -
Sent: Wednesday, 21 November 2012, 16:04
Subject: Re: DE IMITATIONE CHRISTI Book's title page

Dear Father Donald,
 
I do hope that the Knox commentaries 'compendium' reveals itself! I'm sure I didn't dream it...
 
Thank you for your concern re the edition of the Imitation coming to me from Ireland. It was the only copy 'anywhere' with the full title which I copied down from your pocket gem, to include "to which are added Practical Reflections and a Prayer at the end of each chapter" - Talbot Press". I should dearly love to knowwho wrote the Sacramental Meditations that so attract me! It is so kind of you to suggest the availability of a possible second copy. I will let you know when the edition arrives - extraordinary delivery projection 10-45 days (21st Jan)!
 
The Carlisle 'Bookcase' will really struggle to put their vast theological section online (goodness, but I should love to help!)
 
The references to the Imitation are truly boundless! I followed through that blog article which spoke of Thomas Merton's attraction to it - Journal Vol 1, page 338-340. He quotes a passage and makes a very meaningful comment regarding the 'process' of elucidation. Totally separate to these remarks follows an entry which indeed I can appreciate: " The life in this abbey is not understandable unless you begin the day with the monks, with Matins... the whole business of the day is really prayer, culminating in [as opposed to starting with] High Mass."
 
It is a great joy for me to share in your endeavours .... indeed, there is so much in which to desire to immerse oneself!
 
With my love in Our Lord,
William 
  



Donald


Monday 30 July 2012

COMMENT Eckhart 'Paradox versus Dialectics'

The sheep that belong to me
listen to my voice,
there will be only one flock
and one shepherd.

Shepherd House Lammermuir Hills -
a drive for family visitors.
Dear William,
A great challenge, thank you!
You have primed hosing down library shelves. I am thrilled to find the massive resources on Meister Eckhart - not least half a dozen Issues of the Oxford Eckhart Review 1999-2004.
But we do not have @The Rhineland Mystics' and so delighted by your enlightening Email, so Posted on Blog.  
Yours 
fr. Donald   
PS. COMMENT of further "Paradox versus Dialectics" refernces. D.  
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: William W- - -
To: Donald - - -
Sent: Sunday, 29 July 2012, 0:10
Subject: Re: [Blog] Meister Eckhart's 'paradox style'

Dear Father Donald,
 Thank you! ....
 You know my fascination with seeking to 'uncover' Eckhart's mysticism for myself! Just very recently I have been reading a book 'The Rhineland Mystics', by Oliver Davies, and in his introduction, he summarises the 'style' of Eckhart so very succinctly - it seems rather long as I type it out in order to delight in sharing it with you, but it is gripping stuff:
 
Meister Eckhart's entire system ... can be summed up as the attempt to expound in terms of an advanced metaphysics the profoundly God-centred experience of the highest mystical union. Eckhart is, and never ceases to be, a mystical theologian... Whereas other famous mystics proclaim their 'nothingness' in the face of the Creator, Meister Eckhart constucts an entire ontology, or philosophy of Being, around the principle that all that exists lacks substantial essence: 'God alone truly exists' and the creature is 'pure nothingness'. A second element emerges at this stage, which is also a result of his experiential grounding: the dynamic character of his thinking.This leads to apparent inconsistencies which, in reality, are simply the deepening of his thought, its gathering momentum, as Eckhart's mind penetrates further into the realities he is exploring.
 
Oliver Davies continues with a fine analysis:
 
Thus the original starting point for his ontology was the view that we possess Being whereas God is Being. From this, as we have seen, he progressed to the view that only God truly exists, and the final stage is reached when Eckhart defines God as puritas essendi, the 'purity' or 'essence' of Being. If God is the cause of Being, Eckhart argues, then he cannot be Being itself; rather he must transcend Being. And so the true nature of God finally becomes intelligere ('to think', 'to know', or 'to understand'), for understanding or knowledge, with the unity that this implies, is the ultimate primacy.The nature of God then for Eckhart is rationality in the sense of self-understanding and self-knowing...
 
His analysis then becomes an explanation:
 
 But what of man, made in God's image? If the nature of God is rationality, then rationality, too, is our own essential nature, since we were created in his image. And this is what Eckhart believes. Our rational nature is not only God-given; it is an immediate reflection of the Divine Nature itself. It participates mysteriously and essentially in the self-reflexive activity of the Godhead. Of course, when Eckhart speaks of 'intellect', he does not mean that faculty which allows us to work out sums or read difficult books; he means rather our own self-reflexive nature as conscious beings, our capacity to understand, to be aware: consciousness itself.
 
Oliver Davies takes us further into Eckhart's system:
 
The root, or source, of that consciousness Eckhart calls the 'ground of the soul', and it is to that innermost space that we must retreat from the world and its images. There human consciousness transcends itself and participates directly in the activity of the Divine Intellect, a unitive process which Eckhart calls the 'the birth of God in the soul'. This potentiality for self-transcendence and union with the Divine Mind which resides within human consciousness Eckhart calls the 'spark of the soul', and it becomes the point of orientation for the spiritual journey which is both a journey within, into our innermost essence, and a journey into the Other, who is God.The manner of this journey in terms of our daily living is 'detachment'. By this Eckhart means a self-freeing from all that is created, not only from the appetites which bind us to created things, but also from the images of created things, as we approach the point of our own self-transcendence where the world, our created and temporal selves fall away to reveal our own bare essence, united to and unified with the Divine essence to the point of its virtual extinction.
 
Oliver Davies hints at the difficulties such a system might have created: "While Eckhart's belief in the immediacy of our union with God is one of his most attractive features as a mystical theologian, the immense weight which he lays upon the absorption of the self into God in the unitive experience was one major reason for the difficulties he experienced with the Church authorities, Christian orthodoxy requiring that a distinction always be preserved between the Creator and the created, even within the context of mystical union".

When I first read this sleep-dispelling explanation, I could only nod at my reflection in the dark window pane but as dawn broke, I began very gadually to be able to see through the glass, albeit darkly! This synopsis is helping me to draw a circle of understanding with the two points of paradox of Eckhart's compass.
 
With my love in Our Lord,
William
 

 COMMENT from Donald     

Excerpt from: http://www.reviewsinculture.com/index.php

The Meaning of Christ and the Meaning of Hegel: Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank’s (A)symmetrical Response to Capitalist Nihilism
by MITCHELL M. HARRIS
 November 15, 2011

... John Milbank’s response to Žižek, “The Double Glory, or Paradox Versus Dialectics: On Not Quite Agreeing with Slavoj Žižek,” directly addresses what he determines to be one of the key components (and flaws) of Žižek’s materialist theology. “My case is that there is a different, latent Žižek,” he argues, “a Žižek who does not see Chesterton as sub-Hegel, but Hegel as sub-Chesterton. A Žižek therefore who has remained with paradox, or rather moved back into paradox from dialectic” (113). Such a Žižek, he claims, would be “able fully to endorse a transcendent God” (113). In order to make this case, however, Milbank necessarily must reject the metanarrative that Žižek embraces regarding the inevitable and undeniable movement of Christianity from Orthodoxy to Catholicism to (ultimately) Protestantism. In rejecting this metanarrative, Milbank realizes the possibility of another modernity that would “persist with the alternative dynamism of paradox and not pass over into the hypocritical sterility of dialectics” (116). ...

. . . For example, at one point, Milbank suggests that Kierkegaard, like Meister Eckhart and G. K. Chesterton (the theologians Žižek most frequently cites in the first chapter), was “radically orthodox” in that he tended to highlight the “aporetic features” of the overall logic of Christian belief “and come to terms with” those features “by suggesting that this overall logic is a paradoxical logic” (177). While the line of reasoning is intelligible in its own right, there can be no doubt that comparing Kierkegaard to Eckhart and Chesterton would give pause even to some of the most conservative theologians and philosophers who, like Milbank, would openly reject altogether Žižek’s metanarrative that sees Hegel as the telos of the Orthodox-Catholic-Protestant trajectory. In short, it is hard to believe that Kierkegaard finds equal company amongst Eckhart and Chesterton. Moreover, Milbank’s reading of Eckhart pushes Western Catholicism to its farthest ends. Yes, one can claim that in Eckhart one finds something that is characteristically Thomistic in nature, but the consistent apologies Milbank must make in aligning Eckhart with Aquinas seems to reveal a special sort of pleading that draws attention to itself.
Despite these criticisms of Milbank’s efforts to call Žižek back to the land of paradox, it is undeniable that Milbank probes, challenges, and provokes Žižek’s “materialist theology” in ways that have not been accomplished before. This is to say that in Milbank, Žižek has clearly met his intellectual match. Nowhere is this more discernable than in Žižek’s response to Milbank, “Dialectical Clarity Versus the Misty Conceit of Paradox.” Here one must note the asymmetry of the collection: Žižek is given the benefit of the last word. And one is tempted to suggest that the asymmetry is unfair. Žižek is given ample opportunity to rebut Milbank, but, here, the asymmetry breaks down. Despite the opportunity for rebuttal, we realize that Žižek is merely shadowboxing, which, in a way, proves Davis’s point that the Žižek/Milbank debate might just be the only debate truly capable of moving beyond the deadlock that prevents the discursive intercourse of rationalism and fideism (7). For after Žižek outlines his points of rebuttal, he quickly leaves them behind, turning instead to a matter “more dark and awful,” quoting Chesterton. Here, Žižek reveals that his philosophical and theological opponent(s) is not Milbank, but rather figures like Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, John Caputo, and Gianni Vattimo. Perhaps no statement is more telling of this true opposition than one he makes while discussing Caputo’s On Religion. “Caputo professes his love for Kierkegaard—but where here,” he asks, “is the central insight of Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments, his insistence on the central paradox of Christianity: eternity is accessible only through time, through the belief in Christ’s Incarnation as a temporal event?” (258; my emphasis). ...
QUOTE
If you pray ONE 'Holy Mary' in the true spirit,
you may say a hundred Psalters to little avail.
Meister Eckhart - remember from Browse
  

Friday 20 April 2012

COMMENT DGO gem. 7 Responses to WDTPRS

Hi, William,
How is your DGO crossword?
At the moment I am labouring to scan pictures a Nunraw-An Album History Lecture.
Meanwhile a quick check with WDTPRS
  . . . as below.
Donald

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: William Wardle
To: Dom Donald.Nunraw
Sent: Sunday, 15 April 2012, 9:10
Subject: DGO gem

Dear Father Donald,
There is a true gem on the Daily Gospel Org today, the commentary from St. Basil of Seleucia on the reaction of Thomas to the news of Christ's resurrection: "The Lord appeared again and dispelled both the sadness and the doubt of his disciple. What am I saying? He did not dispel his doubts, he fulfilled his expectation. He entered, all the doors being shut."
Some people I know spend the best part of a day puzzling over a clue in the crossword. I shall spend the day pondering upon this thought, wondering if I will truly appreciate its meaning for myself by nightfall! 
With my love in Our Lord,
William
+ + +
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2012/04/wdtprs-low-sunday-quasimodo-sunday-sunday-in-albis/    

WDTPRS “Low” Sunday, “Quasimodo” Sunday, Sunday “in albis”

This Sunday has many nicknames.  In the post-Conciliar calendar it is the “Second Sunday of Easter (or of Divine Mercy)”.  It is also called “Thomas Sunday” (because of the Gospel reading about the doubting Apostle), and “Quasimodo Sunday” (from the first word of the Introit), and “Low Sunday”.
This is also the conclusion of the Octave of Easter, during which we halted our liturgical clocks and contemplated the mysteries we celebrated from different points of view.
Since ancient times this Sunday has been called “Dominica in albis” or “in albis depositis”, the Sunday of the “white robes having been taken off.”  1 Peter 2:2-3 says:
“Like (Quasimodo – from a Latin Scripture translation that pre-dated the Vulgate by St Jerome) newborn babes (infantes), long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation; for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.”
Holy Mass on “Low Sunday” begins with an exhortation of the newly baptized, who were called infantes.  The infantes wore their white baptismal robes for the “octave” period following Easter during which they received special instruction from the bishop about the sacred mysteries and about the Christian life.  Today they put off their robes and, in some places, left them in the cathedral treasury as a perpetual witness to their baptismal vows.
Today’s Collect, based on a prayer in the Missale Gothicum, begins by calling God merciful:
Deus misericordiae sempiternae, qui in ipso paschalis festi recursu fidem sacratae tibi plebis accendis, auge gratiam quam dedisti, ut digna omnes intellegentia comprehendant, quo lavacro abluti, quo spiritu regenerati, quo sanguine sunt redempti.
Those clauses with quo, having no conjunctions (a trope called asyndeton) gives this prayer a forceful feeling, as do those abluti…regenerati…redempti with the single sunt.
Accendo means “to kindle anything above so that it burns downward” and also “to illuminate, to inflame a person or thing”.  It recalls the fiery liturgical imagery of the Vigil.  Comprehendo, a vast verb, is “to lay hold of something on all sides.” Think of “comprehensive”. It concerns grasping something with the mind in a thorough way (on all sides).  A lavacrum is “a bath”.  In Titus 3:5 we read, “He saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy (misericordiam), by the washing of regeneration (lavacrum regenerationis)…”.  Abluo, “to wash off, wash away, cleanse, purify”, is used by Cicero (d 43 BC) to describe a calming of the passions through a religious rite of washing away sin (Tusc 4, 28, 60) and also by the poet philosopher Lucretius (d AD 55) to describe the removal of darkness by the bringing in of light (De rerum natura 4, 378).  Early Latin speaking Christians adapted and “baptized” existing religious vocabulary to express their faith as it grew over time with new theological insights.  Abluo was ready made to be adapted to describe the effects of baptism.
CURRENT ICEL (2011):
God of everlasting mercy, who in the very recurrence of the paschal feast kindle the faith of the people you have made your own, increase, we pray, the grace you have bestowed, that all may grasp and rightly understand in what font they have been washed, by whose Spirit they have been reborn, by whose Blood they have been redeemed.
The priest prays that, by the recurring sacred mysteries we veteran Christians and neophytes, together as a people, will be always renewed and that our grasp of how we have been redeemed and our comprehension of the effects of that redemption will continually deepen.
We who were once set on fire with the indwelling of the Spirit, should each day ask God to rekindle us, burn us up again from above.  We should pray daily for an increase of a faith that seeks to grasp, comprehend, understand ever more fully who Our Lord is and who we have become in Him.  Grace and faith precede and prepare our fuller comprehension.  On our own we can grasp only so much.  Faith brings to completion what reason begins to explore. As the ancient adage goes: “Nisi credideritis non intellegetis… Unless you will have first believed, you will not understand.”
St. Augustine of Hippo (+430) preached to his infantes with the imagery of spring, and compared the newly baptized to little birds trying to fly from the nest while the parent bird (Augustine himself) flapped around them chirping noisily to encourage them (s. 376a).  Then they were then out of the nest of the bishop, as it were, on their own in living their Catholic lives.
Holy Church wants us to comprehend these mysteries in a way that makes a concrete difference.  The infantes had to get to the business of living as Catholics after they put off their white robes.  Those of us who were baptized long ago must remember always to continue wearing our baptismal garments in our hearts and to live outwardly the Catholic faith we put on within.
7 Responses to WDTPRS “Low” Sunday, “Quasimodo” Sunday, Sunday “in albis”
1.       http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/5e0ddd4de7d16a93edad7b584663b522?s=40&d=http%3A%2F%2Fwdtprs.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-includes%2Fimages%2Fblank.gif&r=GRellis says:
And, to clear up any misconceptions which have been repeated on other blogs, the Collect for the OF has been this Collect since long before JP2 coined this “Divine Mercy Sunday.” Some are under the impression he changed the 1969 M.R. Collect in order to fit the new theme. He did not.
2.       http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/4104380b0cee8714678fe81ed6275855?s=40&d=http%3A%2F%2Fwdtprs.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-includes%2Fimages%2Fblank.gif&r=GDr. Eric says:
Perhaps if we kept some of those ancient traditions, we would have such a high rate of dropouts. The second largest “denomination” in America is former Catholics. We have a very high rate of converts who leave Holy Mother Church. Perhaps if this 8 day wearing of white robes- or shirts in today’s age- were restored, it might make more of an impression on our converts.
Whaddaya think?
3.       http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/05b76a2d8b2a1cbb195232e4152e8fa9?s=40&d=http%3A%2F%2Fwdtprs.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-includes%2Fimages%2Fblank.gif&r=GGeoffrey says:
This Sunday must hold the record for the most monikers of any liturgical day of the whole year!
What a beautiful collect! I am shuddering to think how my pastor will alter it to make it more “user-friendly”…
It is interesting to note that the Gospel reading for this Sunday in the Ordinary Form is the same in the Extraordinary Form, recounting both “doubting” Thomas and the institution of the Sacrament of Mercy: Penance and Reconciliation (“confession”).
4.       http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/d242e646f8b85a299f91c03d576fa46d?s=40&d=http%3A%2F%2Fwdtprs.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-includes%2Fimages%2Fblank.gif&r=Gasperges says:
I have managed to get to Mass twice in the week: Monday (Dominican rite) and today EF. The Masses are quite striking and today’s starts that epistle of St Peter about the “geniti infantes” which is picked up in tomorrow’s introit. The collects are similar in theme also. All week, the Victimae Paschali sequence has been recited and the Credo as well as the Gloria even in weekday masses. Haec Dies gradual of Easter Sunday is repeated with different endings too all week as well as the ‘Ite .. alleluia, alleluia’ which stops today (though not in the NO). From tomorrow, double alleluias come in and continue until the end of Paschaltide. So very moving and striking, these liturgical niceties.
[BTW: Divine Mercy seems better to sit within Lent than on today - perhaps the now 'vacant' 1st Sunday of the Passion would be a better spot for it.]
5.       http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/dc19b71ab57601bb81e2fe5ac4cf2809?s=40&d=http%3A%2F%2Fwdtprs.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-includes%2Fimages%2Fblank.gif&r=Gpoohbear says:
[BTW: Divine Mercy seems better to sit within Lent than on today - perhaps the now 'vacant' 1st Sunday of the Passion would be a better spot for it.]
Jesus Himself asked St Faustina for the Divine Mercy feast to be the Sunday after Easter. I wouldn’t mess with it.
6.       http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/268840b7cf9d59606467a8457c7424ef?s=40&d=http%3A%2F%2Fwdtprs.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-includes%2Fimages%2Fblank.gif&r=GKathleen10 says:
Beautiful words, thank you.
After having intended and tried to, for multiple years, I am planning to go to Stockbridge, Massachusetts for the Divine Mercy Sunday celebration. Every year it was SOMETHING, flu, snowstorm (about five years ago) etc. Tomorrow is my pilgrimage, and I am thrilled. I am asking the Lord for a posthumous Plenary Indulgence for my Mom, who passed last August. I think this is ok, and I feel strongly the Good Lord will grant it, even if it is not technically “ok”.
I can’t wait to go!
7.       http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/fa4da19fe11c6024fec741b7c7261cf5?s=40&d=http%3A%2F%2Fwdtprs.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-includes%2Fimages%2Fblank.gif&r=GBea says:
How beautiful.
Words that lift up the heart and fortifies our Catholicism.
A “blood transfusion” for the soul.
We hunger for words like these in our parishes.
Thank you Fr. Z