Bridegroom and the soul the Bride. Hosea. THE SPOUSE OF THE WORD, St. Bernard 'the Canticle of Canticles'

   COMMENT:  

'the Canticle of Canticle' sculpture donated at Nunraw Abbey 1970s.

Monastic Lectionary of the Divine Office, 

      

Night Office

Readings for the Liturgy of the Hours.

Augustinian Press 1995

 23^rd Week Ord. Time

Thursday 10 September.

        First Reading --- Hosea 2:4-25

Second Reading

From Pathways in Scripture by Damasus Winzen

Sponsa Verbi - Spouse of the Word

It is significant that the prophet who actually witnessed the downfall of the Northern Kingdom is called Hosea, which means salvation, and that his message is one of pardoning love and of hope. In the midst of the dark clouds of God's wrath appears the glowing heart of divine love. Hosea sees God as "the great lover," whose secret he discovers in his own heart as in a mirror. The love of the bridegroom for his bride and the love of the father for his son are the flowers of love in the heart of a man; in both Hosea was deeply disappointed, for his wife was unfaithful, and his son disobedient. His love, however, was too deep to be extinguished. It bent down to the harlot and was kindled in compassion for the prodigal son.

This personal experience revealed to him the secret of God's heart: It is too deep to be given to wrath forever. The denuncia­tion of Israel's faithlessness is, therefore, followed by the solemn promise: And I will betroth you to myself forever; I will betroth you to myself in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. And I will betroth you to myself in truth. God's complaint over the disobedience of his son ends in his moving confession: How can I give you up, Ephraim? How hand you over, Israel? My heart is turned within me, my compassion is kindled like a blaze. I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I again destroy Ephraim. For I am God and not man, the Holy One in the midst of you, and I will not destroy.

These words represent a climax in the self-revelation of God in the Old Testament. The difference between God and man is not seen so much in terms of power and perfection; selfless love, "agape," which triumphs over wrath, is the very core of Chris­tian revelation: God is love.

The revelation of his love through Hosea is God's answer to the state-supported "harlotry" of Israel with the "baalim," gods of vitality, fertility and procreation. They are the lords of luck and prosperity. In order to free the people from the worship of the gods of prosperity, God will strip Israel of all earthly power and lead her into the desert of the exile to speak to her heart.  

 Hosea's message is fulfilled in Jesus.

 This experience will renew in the heart of the people the true love of God, in which she will call God my husband and not my master (baal). Thus the valley of desolation will become a door of hope. The course of history shows, however, that the exile was not the final "baptism" which turned the wrath of God into love and gave a new heart to God's people. God's wrath was overcome only when the Father sent the Son of his love into the valley of the passion to redeem those against whom his wrath was kindled. Hosea's message is fulfilled in Jesus.

Responsorv     1 In 4:9.16b; In 3:16

God's love for us was revealed when he sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. + God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in God and God lives in him.

V. God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. + God is love ...

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26. Speaking directly to nuns, as St. Bernard formerly to his monks, Dom Marmion naturally limited the teaching of the Abbot of Clairvaux to consecrated nuns; this is why he more than once quotes texts from the Pontifical for the consecration of virgins.  As a matter of fact, however, in its essential points this doctrine applies to every soul vowed to Christ. - EDITOR’S NOTE.

   http://www.liturgialatina.org/benedictine/sponsa.htm  

     II. THE HUMAN NATURE IN CHRIST, THE SPOUSE OF THE WORD.

SUMMARY. - In Christ the human nature perfectly realises those characteristics which St. Bernard demands for a Spouse of the Word - The human nature in Christ is devoid of personality - It is given up entirely to the Word - It lives only for Him - In entire dependence on Him - The wonderful fruitfulness of this divine union - This union is the model of the union of the Soul with the Word.

The fathers of the Church saw primarily in the "Canticle of Canticles," the symbol of that marvellous union which exists in Christ between the Word and the human nature.  

The Word, the eternal Wisdom, is the Bridegroom; He chooses for Himself a spouse: a human nature.  The immaculate and virginal womb of Mary is the nuptial chamber where this marvellous union was fashioned, a union so wonderful, so elevated, that it needed as artisan none other than the Holy Ghost Himself, so intimate that it is ratified by substantial Love.  But if we carefully observe the sacred Humanity in this union with the Word, we shall see that it marvellously and most fully realises those characteristics that St. Bernard wished to see in a spouse of the Word.

It can be said that the human nature in Jesus is absolutely free from self-seeking and any attachment to creatures:relictis omnibus.    

September Community Monthly Memorial of the Dead

Night Office Readings:
2nd September 2015, Monthly Memorial, 
Night Office

Second Reading

A Reading about the Resurrection of the Dead

(From a Sermon by St. Augustine.)

If you take away faith in the resurrection of the dead, all Christian teaching falls to the ground. But even should our faith be founded on the resurrection of the dead, the Christian soul is not then secure, unless we distinguish between the life that is to come and that which passes away.

But you are sorrowful because of your dear one who is buried; because you do not now hear his voice. He lived; he died. He ate, he does not now eat. He felt and saw; now he feels nothing. The joys and pleasures of the living are now nothing to him.

But, do you mourn for the seed when you plough the earth? Let us suppose there was someone so ignorant of things, that when he bore the seed to the fie1d and cast it upon the earth and buried it in the broken soil; suppose there was someone so ignorant of the way of nature, even of things close at hand, that, thinking of the departed summer, he mourns for the wheat, saying to himself: 'This wheat, now buried in the earth, with what toil was it harvested, and carried from the field, threshed upon the harvest floor, winnowed, stored in the barn! We saw its beauty, and rejoiced and gave thanks. Now it is taken from our eyes. I see the ploughed 1 and; but the wheat I see neither here nor in the barn!” Sorrowfully he would mourn the wheat as dead and buried; he would weep freely, his thoughts on the field, on the earth, but seeing no more the harvest.

And what would they say to him, those who were not ignorant of these matters? Supposing had wept in this way they would say to him: 'Do not grieve. What we buried in the earth is indeed no longer in the barn, no longer in our hands. But soon we shall go again to the field, and you will be happy in the beauty of the growing corn, where now you weep over the nakedness of ploughed earth. And he who now 1 earns what s ha 11 come from the sown wheat, he too will rejoice in the p1oughing and the sowing. He who had been unbelieving, or rather, who had been foolish and without experience, may perhaps have mourned before, but believing those who have experienced, he will go away comforted, and wait in hope for the harvest to come.

Community Monthly Memorial of the Dead

Night Office Reading. 

Thursday 18/06/2015 

 

Community Monthly Memorial of the Dead

..."the Church and Our Anticipated Victory over Death," 

Mass Intro: Today we celebrate the Monthly Mass for our dead;

Our brothers and sisters in the Order among our relatives and friends and benefactors have all gone before us. We pray for them and that we may in our turn and that we may in our turn join them in the joy of heaven.

OFFICE OF THE DEAD - 9

A Reading;
about the Church and Our Anticipated Victory over Death,
from a Book 13y Fro-Alexander Schmemann *..

THE liturgy of Christian death does not begin when a man has come to the inescapable end and his corpse lies in church for the last rites while we stand around, the sad yet resigned witnesses of the dignified removal of a man from the world of the living. It begins every day as the Church ascending in to heaven, "puts aside all earthly care"; it begins every feast day; it begins especially in the joy of Easter. The whole life of the Church is in a way the sacrament of our death, because all of it is the proclamation of the Lord's death the confession of his resurrection.  

The Church is the entrance into the risen life of Christ, communion in life eternal, "joy and peace in the Holy Spirit." And it is the expectation of the "day without evening" of the Kingdom; not of any "other world," but of the fulfilment of all things and all life in Christ. In him death itself has become an act of life, for he has filled it with himself, with his love and light, In him "all things are yours; whether the world" or life, or death, or things present , or things to come; all are yours; and you are Christ's; and Christ is God’s" (1 Cor 3 21-23). And if I make this new life mine, mine this hunger and thirst of the Kingdom, mine this expectation of Christ, mine the certitude that Christ is Life, my very death will be an act of communion with Life, For neither Life nor death can separate us from the love of Christ. I do not know when and how the fulfilment will cameo I do not know when all things will be consummated in Christ. I know nothing about the "whens" and "hows." But I know that in Christ this great Passage , the Pascha of the world has begun , that the light of the “world to come" comes to us in the joy and peace of the Holy Spirit , for Christ is risen and Life reigns.

________________________* Sacraments and Orthodoxy, New York 1965, 130-133

Baldwin Dom Donald's Blog: Baldwin of Ford (?-c.1190), Cistercian abbot, then...

 Night Office Readings, (Augustinian Press 2001).

COMMENT: 

Need explanation of Baldwin's explanation of "the two Resurrections"

  Statue of Baldwin of Forde from the exterior of Canterbury Cathedral 



      Dom Donald's Blog: Baldwin of Ford (?-c.1190), Cistercian abbot, then...: Statue of Baldwin of Forde from the exterior of  Canterbury Cathedral              Tuesday, 20 January 2015 Tuesday of the...  

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FOURTH WEEK OF EASTER

THURSDAY  Year I

30 April 2015

First Reading

Revelation 19:11-20:15

Responsory          1 Cor 15:25-26; see Rv 20:13-14

Christ must reign until God has put all his enemies under his feet.

+ And the last enemy to be destroyed is death, alleluia.

V. Then death and Sheol will give up their dead, and will be cast into the fiery lake. + And the last ...

Second
Reading

From a treatise by Baldwin
of Canterbury (Tract.4: PL 204, 429-431.441-442)

 

   

The two resurrections

Our Lord's glorious resurrection teaches us that the fruits of obedience are resurrection and
life. These were the fruit of the obedience practiced by Christ who is the
resurrection and the life personified.

However, Christ died only once, and rose again only
once. A single resurrection
answered to a single
death. But for us who have been dragged
down to the depths by the burden of a twofold mortality, one resurrection cannot
suffice. Because we
have fallen so low, a single resurrection is not enough to bring us to the blessed life of heaven. We need two.

Nevertheless,
the resurrection of Christ is the cause and
ex­emplar, the model and
the effective sign of both our resurrections, first and second
alike. It is by our faith in   and our
sacramental imitation of the resurrection of Christ that we are re-created,
justified, sanctified, and raised from death. This is our first resurrection,
the resurrection of our soul, through which we are now dead to sin and live for
holiness, walking in newness of life as we wait for that redemption of our
bodies, which will mean that we have at last fully realized our adoption as
God's children. That will take place at the second resurrection, when Christ
will refashion these wretched bodies of ours and make them like his own
glorious body.

Our first resurrection begins when we first
show obedience to God, and is brought to completion by our perseverance in
doing his will. Our second resurrection begins with our glorification and
endures for all eternity. If we continue in obedience till the end of our
lives, then we shall also abide in a glory that knows no end.

The first resurrection has a glory of its own,
a glory of both body and soul. Let us see what the apostle says about this twofold
glory. Of bodily glory here below he says: Far be it from me to glory in anything
but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. As for the soul's glory, he explains that our glory is in the hope of adoption
as God's children.  

But the glory belonging to the second resurrection
will be the glory of the soul that sees God in the glory of his divinity, and
the glory of the body in its state of incorruptibility, when this perishable
nature of ours puts on imperishability and this mortal nature puts  on immortality. In that future life the saints
will be doubly clad. Robed in white and holding lyre and harp, they will sing
and play in their glory, praising God together for all eternity. Their mouths
will be filled with songs of rejoicing and their lips with hymns of gladness,
as they praise and honour our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God enthroned over all,
blessed forevermore. Amen.

            Responsory          Rom 6:3.8; Rv 20:6

All of
us who were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death. + If we have died with Christ we shall also
live with him, alleluia.

v. Blessed and holy are
they who share in the first resurrection. The second death will have no power
over them; they shall be priests of God and of Christ.+ If we have ...

   

Lambeth Palace  built on land bought by Baldwin of Forde

       

Meditation by Saint Therese of Lisieux 27/01/2015

Night Office Readings, 
THIRD WEEK IN ORDINAIY TIME

TUESDAY

First Reading

Romans 9:1-18

Responsory   Rom 9:7; Gal 3:29; 4:28

Not all are children of Abraharn because they are his descendants.

+ If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. 

V. We, like Isaac, are children of the promise.+ If you are Christ's ...

Second Reading

From a meditation by Saint Therese of Lisieux

When he had gone up the hill, Jesus called those he wanted; and they came to him. Jesus does not call those who are worthy to be called, but those he wants, or as Saint Paul says, God takes pity on whomever he wishes, and has mercy on whomever he pleases. So what counts is not what we will or try to do, but the mercy of God.

For a long time I wondered why the good God had preferences, why every soul did not receive grace in equal measure. I was amazed to see him lavishing extraordinary favors on saints who had offended him, like Saint Paul and Saint Augustine, and whom he practically forced to accept his graces. Or else, when I read the lives of saints whom our Lord was pleased to cherish from the cradle to the grave, allowing no obstacle to stand in their way that would have prevented them from rising toward him, and visiting them with such graces that it was impossible for them to tarnish the immaculate brightness of their baptismal robe, I wondered why, for instance, poor people were dying in great numbers before they had even heard God's name. Jesus kindly explained this mystery to me. He placed the book of nature before my eyes, and I understood that all the flowers he has created are beautiful, that the splendour of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent or the daisy of its delightful simplicity. I understood that if all the little flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose its spring adornment, and the fields would no longer be spangled with flowerets.

It is the same in the world of souls which is the garden of Jesus.

He wanted to create the great saints who may be compared with lilies and roses; but he also created smaller ones, and these must be content to be daisies or violets destined to gladden the eyes of the good God when he looks down at his feet. Perfection consists in doing his will, in being what he wants us to be.

I understood too that the love of our Lord is revealed in the simplest soul who offers no resistance to his grace as well as in the most sublime soul. In fact, since the essence of love is humility, if all souls were like those of the learned saints who have illuminated the Church by the light of their teaching, it would seem as if God would not have very far to descend in coming to their hearts. But he has created the baby who knows nothing and whose only utterance is a feeble cry; he has created people who have only the law of nature to guide them; and it is their hearts that he deigns to come down to, those are his flowers of the field whose simplicity delights him. In coming down in that way the good God proves his infinite greatness. Just as the sun shines at the same time on cedar trees and on each little flower as if it was the only one on earth, so our Lord takes special care of each soul as if it was his only care.Responsory   Wis 6:7; Ps 113:13

The Lord made both small and great, and t he takes thought for all alike.

V. The Lord will bless those who fear him, both high and low. +He takes ...

G.K. Chesterton 'Many notes at Christmas'. Part 2 of "The God in the Cave"

  Night Office Readings,  

Comment: 
"I do not know what Confucius would have done with the Bambino, had it come to life in his arms as it did in the arms of St. Francis." GKC 

Monday, 05 January 2015

Monday after Epiphany

First Reading

Isaiah 61:1-11

Responsory          Is 61:1; In 8:42

The Spirit of God rests upon me, for the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the poor, + to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim that captivity is now ended and prisoners are set free.

V. I have come forth from God and have come into the world. I did not come of myself; the Father has sent me. + To heal the ...

Second Reading

From the writings of G.K. Chesterton
(The Everlasting Man Part II, chapter 1)

Many notes at Christmas

It is still a strange story, though an old one, how the wise men came out of orient lands, crowned with the majesty of kings and clothed with something of the mystery of magicians. That truth that is tradition has wisely remembered them almost as unknown quantities, as mysterious as their mysterious and melodious names: Melchior, Caspar, Balthazar. But there came with them all that world of wisdom that had watched the stars in Chaldea and the sun in Persia; and we shall not be wrong if we see in them the same curiosity that-moves all the sages. They would stand for the same human ideal if their names had really been Confucius or Pythagoras or Plato. They were those who sought not tales but the truth of things; and since their thirst for truth was itself a thirst for God, they also have had their reward. But even in order to understand that reward, we must understand that for philosophy as much as mythology, that reward was the completion of the incomplete.

Such learned men would doubtless have come, as these learned men did come, to find themselves confirmed in much that was true in their own traditions and right in their own reasoning. Confucius would have found a new foundation for the family in the very reversal of the Holy Family; Buddha would have looked upon a new renunciation, of stars rather than jewels and divinity than royalty. These learned men would still have the right to say, or rather a new right to say, that there was truth in their old teaching. But, after all, these learned men would have come to learn. They would have come to complete their conception with something they had not yet conceived; even to balance their imperfect universe with something they might once have contradicted. Buddha would have come from his impersonal paradise to worship a person. Confucius would have come from his temples of ancestor-worship to worship a child.

The magi, who stand for mysticism and philosophy, are truly conceived as seeking something new and even as finding something unexpected. That tense sense of crisis which still tingles in the Christmas story accentuates the idea of a search and a discovery. For the other mystical figures in the miracle play, for the angel and the mother, the shepherds and the soldiers of Herod, there may be aspects both simpler and more supernatural, more elemental and more emotional. But the wise men must be seeking wisdom; and for them there must be a light also in the intellect. For it is the paradox of that group in the cave, that while our emotions about it are of childish simplicity, our thoughts about it can branch with a neverending complexity.

The unique note of Christmas is the simultaneous striking of many notes: of humility, of gaiety, of gratitude, of mystical fear, but also of vigilance and of drama. By the very nature of the story the rejoicings in the cavern were rejoicings in a fortress or an outlaw's den; properly understood it is not unduly flippant to say they were rejoicings in a dugout. It is not only true that such a subterranean chamber was a hiding-place from enemies, and that the enemies were already scouring the stony plain that lay above it like a sky. It is not only true that the very horse-hoofs of Herod might have passed like thunder over the sunken head of Christ. It is also that there is in that image a true idea of an outpost, of a piercing through the rock and an entrance into enemy territory. There is in this buried divinity an idea of undermining the world, of shaking the towers and palaces from below, even as Herod the great king felt that earth­quake under him and swayed with his swaying palace.

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http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features/chesterton_godinthecave2.asp

   

Part 2 of "The God in the Cave"
We all know that the popular presentation of this popular story, in so many miracle plays and carols, has given to the shepherds the costume, the language, and the landscape of the separate English and European countryside. We all know that one shepherd will talk in a Somerset dialect or another talk of driving his sheep from Conway towards the Clyde. Most of us know by this time bow true is that error, how wise, how artistic, how intensely Christian and Catholic is that anachronism. But some who have seen it in these scenes of medieval rusticity have perhaps not seen it in another sort of poetry, which it is sometimes the fashion to call artificial rather than artistic. 

I fear that many modem critics Will see only a faded classicism in the fact that men like Crashaw and Herrick conceived the shepherds of Bethlehem under the form of the shepherds of Virgil. Yet they were profoundly right; and in turning their Bethlehem play into a Latin Eclogue they took up one of the most important links in human history. Virgil, as we have already seen, does stand for all that saner heathenism that had overthrown the insane heathenism of human sacrifice; but the very fact that even the Virgilian virtues and the sane heathenism were in incurable decay is the whole problem to which the revelation to the shepherds is the solution.

 

John, the instrument of the Holy Spirit, I John 1:1_23

Night Office Readings.

Cuthbert Hedley O.S.B.

CHRISTMAS SEASON

          27 DECEMBER   

First Reading

27 DECEMBER

JOHN, APOSTLE AND EVANGELIST

1 John 1:1 - 2:3

Year I Feast

          Responsory See 1 In 2:4;20:31

We proclaim to you the etemal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us. + We are writing this that you may rejoice and that your joy may be complete.

V. These things have been written that you may believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and believing you may have life in his name. + We are writing ...

          Second Reading          From a sermon by Bishop John Cuthbert Hedley (The Light of Life, 376, 380-383)

John, the instrument of the Holy Spirit

Saint John's picture of Jesus is, first of all, of one who desires, and takes the means, to be a familiar friend. The Word made flesh not only seeks people out and deals with them personally, but seems to interest himself in all the concerns that can be called human. He turns the water into wine to befriend a poor bridegroom. He cannot think of the men and women around him without seeing them as a harvest, white for the sickle of his apostolate. He loves Lazarus, John, Mary, Martha; he weeps at the grave of his friend, he is troubled at the treachery of Judas; he prays for his apostles, and for the flock of every age and country. He prophesies, with the vision of Calvary before his eyes, that he will draw all things to himself. Let us notice, again, how he rejoices at the good things which his holy coming, his precious blood, are to bring to his people. He announces that he is to give them life, light, holiness, and the Holy Spirit. His words are burning; his zeal is infectious; those who come near him feel that a new era, a new dispensation, is about to dawn.

It is in Saint John that we hear chiefly of the "life" that the Son of God is to bring; that we read of the new baptism; the new birth; the taking away of sin; the banishing of the darkness; the Eucharistic gift, life and antidote of the spirit. It is in Saint John's Revela tion that we read of God's servants overcoming spiritual fear, wearing white robes on earth, becoming as refined gold, living on a hidden manna of paradise, holding white counters on which are written new names that no one knew. And these things appear in the writings of this beloved disciple, not as les­sons or homilies, not as the proverbs of a sage or the didactics of a Solomon; but as the record of the earthly career of the God-man. He has taken upon himself human nature: and his human nature is not dead and silent, like a painted face upon the canvas; it lives, moves, acts with a warm and abundant life, in a long and varied career, from the manger to the cross, and even to the ascension. And everyone of its recorded manifestations is a manifestation of the inmost mind and heart -let the expression be pardoned - of the everlasting and eternal God. And to John the Evangelist it has been given above all other men to write these things down, and to leave them, for you and for me.

The best panegyric of Saint John is that he was the instrument of the Holy Spirit in thus enforcing on the Christian generations this true knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, whom he had sent. That which he heard, that which he saw with his eyes, that which he looked upon and touched - that he has declared to the Church. No - not only that; but also that he whom his senses thus took note of was the "Word of life, 11 the Word which was to reveal to men and women who and what their God was.

    Responsory

Blessed be the apostle to whom heavenly secrets were revealed t as he reclined next to Jesus at the Last Supper.

V. He drank from the streams of the living water flowing from the heart of the Lord t as he reclined ...

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John Hedley (bishop)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Catholicism portal

John Cuthbert Hedley (15 April 1837 – 11 November 1915) was a British Benedictine and writer who held high offices in the Roman Catholic Church.[1]

Born in Morpeth, Northumberland, he was educated at Ampleforth College.[2] He was professeda member of the Order of Saint Benedict in 1855 and ordained a priest of the order on 9 October 1862. He was appointed an auxiliary bishop of Newport and Menevia and Titular Bishop of Caesaropolis on 22 July 1873. His consecration to the Episcopate took place on 29 September 1873, the principal consecrator was Archbishop (later Cardinal) Henry Edward Manning of Westminster, with bishops Brown and Chadwick as co-consecrators. Hedley acted as editor of the Dublin Review, before appointed the Bishop of the Diocese of Newport and Menevia on 18 February 1881. His episcopal title was changed to Bishop of Newport in 1895.[1]

He published a number of works:

The Christian Inheritance: Set Forth in Sermons

Lex Levitarum: Or, Preparation for the cure of souls

Lex Levitarum with the Regula Pastoralis

The Light of Life: Set Forth in Sermons

Our Divine Saviour and other Discourses

A Retreat 33 Discourses with meditation for the Use of the Clergy, Religious, and Others

Bishop Hedley died in office on 11 November 1915, aged 78.[1] After his death, the see of Newport was elevated to an archdiocese and changed its name to Cardiff in 1916.