Saint John Mary Vianney, priest. 4 August 2014

Ordinary Time: August 4th

Memorial of St. John Vianney, priest

SECOND READING

From the Catechetical Instructions by Saint John Mary Vianney, priest
(Catechisme sur la prière: A. Monnin, Esprit du Curé d’Ars, Parish 1899, pp. 87-89)

The glorious duty of man: to pray and to love

My little children, reflect on these words: the Christian’s treasure is not on earth but in heaven. Our thoughts, then ought to be directed to where our treasure is. This is the glorious duty of man: to pray and to love. If you pray and love, that is where a man’s happiness lies.

Prayer is nothing else but union with God. When one has a heart that is pure and united with God, he is given a kind of serenity and sweetness that makes him ecstatic, a light that surrounds him with marvelous brightness. In this intimate union, God and the soul are fused together like two bits of wax that no one can ever pull apart. This union of God with a tiny creature is a lovely thing. It is a happiness beyond understanding.

We had become unworthy to pray, but God in his goodness allowed us to speak with him. Our prayer is incense that gives him the greatest pleasure.

My little children, your hearts are small, but prayer stretches them and makes them capable of loving God. Through prayer we receive a foretaste of heaven and something of paradise comes down upon us. Prayer never leaves us without sweetness. It is honey that flows into the soul and makes all things sweet. When we pray properly, sorrows disappear like snow before the sun.

Prayer also makes time pass very quickly and with such great delight that one does not notice its length. Listen: Once when I was a purveyor in Bresse and most of my companions were ill, I had to make a long journey. I prayed to the good God, and believe me, the time did not seem long.

Some men immerse themselves as deeply in prayer as fish in water, because they give themselves totally to God. There is not division in their hearts. O, how I love these noble souls! Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Colette used to see our Lord and talk to him just as we talk to one another.

How unlike them we are! How often we come to church with no idea of what to do or what to ask for. And yet, whenever we go to any human being, we know well enough why we go. And still worse, there are some who seem to speak to the good God like this: “I will only say a couple of things to you, and then I will be rid of you.” I often think that when we come to adore the Lord, we would receive everything we ask for, if we would ask with living faith and with a pure heart.

ww.ibreviary.com/m/breviario.php?s=ufficio_delle_letture 

FEAST OF MICHAEL, GABRIEL AND RAPHAEL, ARCHANGELS- (2) The Song of Songs by Richard of Saint Victor

 29 September

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29



JOHN 1:47-51


FEAST OF MICHAEL, GABRIEL AND RAPHAEL, ARCHANGELS


Second Reading

From a commentary on the Song of Songs by Richard of Saint Victor (Cap 4 PL 196, 417-418)

God defends his chosen ones in the Church, in troubled times he is himself their shield, and through the watchful care of angels he protects them. He presents the angels to his own as servants and messengers, to further their salvation, to report their needs, and to carry their prayers. Even though he himself sees and understands the situation of each person, he still wishes to be told of it by his angels, in order to make known and show more clearly his love and consideration for humankind by his use of such worthy and beloved messengers.

Do we realize how much they desire our salvation and long to have us as their companions? Who can have any idea of the love and care with which they keep watch over those entrusted to them; how they stir up the listless and urge to greater zeal the fervent and attentive; how they make excuses for sins so as to bring only good deeds to God's notice? And when they see a soul burning with great desire and longing for God with pure intention, do we realize how they love that soul, rejoice with it, visit it, and hasten to and fro between that soul and God?

The angels are friends of the bridegroom, so they listen to the soul's words, and make them known to the bridegroom. The soul's words are its desires, which the friends, that is the angels, listen to and delight in. They make them known, and they invite the soul to come; they console it, and advise it to seek and knock, because anyone who seeks finds, and to anyone who knocks the door is opened.

Meanwhile, until the bridegroom comes, they frequently visit such a fervent soul, and by an increase of grace prepare it more fully for his arrival. They draw its thoughts toward a perception of their presence, and an awareness of their friend¬ship, so that through this knowledge it may advance to divine knowledge.

Thus the soul searching for God is found by the blessed angels, and after going round the city in its quest, deserves to be approached by them. It sees them coming to meet it and is taken in charge by them. In fact, they come before the bride¬groom, manifesting their presence and revealing themselves, for being angels of light they accompany the Light, and the soul, flooded with light, is both illuminated and moved, so that it perceives their coming and is conscious of their presence.  

A Word in Season, Monastic Lectionary pp. 185-6

RICHARD OF SAINT VICTOR (d.1173) was a Scottish or Irish canon known for his piety and zeal who became prior of Saint Victor at Paris under a lax and spendthrift English abbot. As the author of Benjamin minor and Benjamin major he was one of the great mystical writers of the middle ages, so that the originality of his treatise on the Trinity, which influenced Alexander of Hales, tends to be overlooked. The bulk of his writing was connected with contemplation and shows traces of Pseudo-Denis. He influenced Bonaventure and the Franciscan school.