Showing posts with label Solemnity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Solemnity. Show all posts

Monday 8 December 2014

Fr. Raymond, 8th December - Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (2)

Solemnity Community Mass, 
Monday 8 December 2014
Fr. Raymond. Mass Homily


IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
OF MARY

St Bonaventure has a book entitled "The Glories of Mar," and among these glories we should surely count her great Privilege of being conceived immaculate. She never was touched by that original sin that infected the rest of us lesser mortals when we first entered this world. I wonder how many of us, when we first gave some thought to this doctrine, thought it a bit unfair in a way. We could so easily be tempted to think - it's alright for her! She never knew the temptations of the flesh the way we all do. - It's alright for her! She never was stirred by feelings of pride or lust, or envy or impatience or whatever!

But these thoughts are far from doing justice to Mary. Consider for a moment our first parents Adam and Eve. Just like Mary, they too were created immaculate, pure and spotless. It was only when they were put to the test and failed that they fell under the burden of original sin. Would any of us dare to think that, in their circumstances, we might have done better? It's also far from justice to Mary that we should think that she was never put to the test; that life was just a bed of roses for her; that she never had to undergo the every-day troubles and trials of life that the rest of us have to put up with. It's not just because she stood beneath the Cross of her dying Son that she deserves the name of Mother of Sorrows.

We need only think how from the very first moment of the conception of Jesus her trials multiplied. There was, from that very first moment, the agonizing problem of confronting Joseph with the news of her pregnancy. Can anyone imagine a situation more stressful for a young engaged woman than to tell her fiance that she is with child and that the child was not his? Then there followed the edict of Caesar and the forced journey to Bethlehem when her time was near to giving birth. The sheer physical stress of such a situation must have added greatly to the inevitable mental stress. Then there was the desperate search for a decent place for her to give birth; and all this climaxed in her having to give birth in a stable, of all places. You and I can now see what a wonderful and meaningful thing that was. But how did it seem to Mary and Joseph at the  time? Only their great faith and trust in Divine Providence could have saved them from sinking into despair.

Then their joy at the birth of the child was soon overshadowed by the threat to the child's life from Herod; then there was the panic of the flight into Egypt. Then there was the life in exile there, so far from family and friends, and especially with no loving grandparents nearby to dote over the child.

But besides all these great and rather dramatic trials there were the ordinary trials of village life in Nazareth when they eventually did manage to return. She was spared none of them. We can be sure that the devil saw to that! There would be the difficulty of awkward neighbours; the bullying of Jesus by older village boys perhaps. There would be the constant call upon Mary's time and energy by those who recognised a willing spirit. Here was someone unable to say no to any reasonable or even unreasonable request, someone unable to refuse help to anyone in need; not to mention her own spontaneous generosity. She would always be the first to offer her services without even being asked.

Mary's immaculate conception then was no mere honour and sinecure without any responsibilities. Noblesse Oblige, and we can be sure that Mary lived up to and fulfilled that dictum more than any other human being apart from her Son.

Sunday 8 June 2014

Feast of Pentecost, "Ask the Holy Spirit for this when He descends into you"

Email:  
Benediction of Blessed Sacrament on Feast of Pentecost
 FW: Happy and Blessed Feast of Pentecost
On Sunday, 8 June 2014, 
Nivard ...> wrote: 
Dearest Jo, 
 Many, many Thanks for Pentecostal Greetings. I will say Masses for the Sisters you named. 
...wish you and all; Showers of Blessings from the Holy Spirit, the Forgotten Paraclete. 
On June 13th, three of our Sisters celebrate their Diamond Jubilees:...
I was about to send you the attachment when I saw your email.. 
See bottom of page 122 of Bossis. 
I've been pondering it the last few days not realising Pentecost was on top of me!  
... wishes      
Nivard.      
 Time for Lunch...! 

ONLINE HE AND i Gabrielle Bossis.  
1941 May30   -   I was giving Him a sacrifice and I said: "It's a flower that I'm pinning to your robe."
 "Give Me these flowers often.
(The Voice seemed to smile).
It's as though you added to My beauty. You see, when you become more beautiful, I become more beautiful. Oh, My little girl, how one we are! From the time of your morning Communion, right to your night's sleep, let us be one. And again when you are fast asleep  -  one. Forever oneness... Would you like that? Then tell Me that you long for it. Keep it always before the eyes of your soul. Remember how all the tapestries in the abbey at Beaune featured a single word  -  alone  -  to express the bereavement of the inconsolable widow. Let the tapestries of the temple of your soul be the weaving of a single word  -  one  -  to express our undividedness.  Child of God, shouldn't you imitate the union of the three divine persons in one?

Ask the Holy Spirit for this when He descends into you tomorrow. Do you think He is inactive on the morning of Pentecost? He makes the earth new and each one of you, too, according to your readiness to receive. He is infinite. Abandon yourself to Him. He is a consuming fire. Abandon yourself. He is the Comforter. Freed from self, ask Him to comfort through you. Just sink out of sight into your nothingness and let God work." 
End of Pentecost - Paschal Candle
saved for Baptismsn Obsequies ... 

Saturday 23 November 2013

Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

iBreviary   

Sunday, 24 November 2013
Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

SECOND READING

From a notebook On Prayer by Origen, priest
(Cap. 25: PG 11, 495-499)

                      Your kingdom come    

The kingdom of God, in the words of our Lord and Savior, does not come for all to see; nor shall they say: Behold, here it is, or behold, there it is; but the kingdom of God is within us, for the word of God is very near, in our mouth and in our heart. Thus it is clear that he who prays for the coming of God’s kingdom prays rightly to have it within himself, that there it might grow and bear fruit and become perfect. For God reigns in each of his holy ones. Anyone who is holy obeys the spiritual laws of God, who dwells in him as in a well-ordered city. The Father is present in the perfect soul, and with him Christ reigns, according to the words: We shall come to him and make our home with him.

Thus the kingdom of God within us, as we continue to make progress, will reach its highest point when the Apostle’s words are fulfilled, and Christ, having subjected all his enemies to himself, will hand over his kingdom to God the Father, that God may be all in all. Therefore, let us pray unceasingly with that disposition of soul which the Word may make divine, saying to our Father who is in heaven: Hallowed be your name; your kingdom come.

Note this too about the kingdom of God. It is not a sharing of justice with iniquity, nor a society of light with darkness, nor a meeting of Christ with Belial. The kingdom of God cannot exist alongside the reign of sin.

Therefore, if we wish God to reign in us, in no way should sin reign in our mortal body; rather we should mortify our members which are upon the earth and bear fruit in the Spirit. There should be in us a kind of spiritual paradise where God may walk and be our sole ruler with his Christ. In us the Lord will sit at the right hand of that spiritual power which we wish to receive. And he will sit there until all his enemies who are within us become his footstool, and every principality, power and virtue in us is cast out.

All this can happen in each one of us, and the last enemy, death, can be destroyed; then Christ will say in us: O death, where is your sting? O hell, where is your victory? And so what is corruptible in us must be clothed with holiness and incorruptibility; and what is mortal must be clothed, now that death has been conquered, in the Father’s immortality. Then God will reign in us, and we shall enjoy even now the blessings of rebirth and resurrection.

RESPONSORY
Revelation 11:15; Psalm 22:28-29

The kingdom of this world belongs to our Lord and his Christ,
and he shall reign for ever and ever.

All the families of nations shall bow down before him,
for the Lord is our king.
And he shall reign for ever and ever.

If the Optional Vigil is not celebrated, the Office continues with the Te Deum.

Monday 24 June 2013

Solemnity of the Birth St. John the Baptist

Child Jesus with infant John the Baptist

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Nivard ...
To: Donald ...
Sent: Monday, 24 June 2013, 17:11
Subject: Happy Day


Dear Donald,

Happy Congrats on the fifty-fourth Anniversary of Ordination.

May the Lord continue to bless you in our wonderful vocation.

Love        Nivard 
+ + + 




12th Week Ord Time
Monday 24th  
On the Solemnity of the Birthday of St. John the Baptist, it is the 54th anniversary of Ordination of Priesthood. The 1959 souvenir cards long gone. The motto words of Psalm 26(27):4, remain at heart.
There is one thing I ask of the Lord
for this I long,
to live in the house of the Lord,
all the days of my life,
in the savour of the sweetness of the Lord,
to behold his temple. [Ps. 26:4, Grail 1963]

http://www.athanasius.com/psalms/psalms1.html#27 

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&




The most interesting subject for the Birthday of St. John of the Baptist in the Leonardo Charcoal Cartoon for the Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Infant St. John (Burlington House, London).



COLORPLATE 33
Painted 1499-1501
BURLINGTON HOUSE CARTOON (VIRGIN AND CHILD WITH ST. ANNE), detail
Charcoal heightened with white on brown paper
National Gallery, London

The face of the Virgin in the Burlington House Cartoon accords with the type Leonardo had established seventeen years before in the Virgin of the Madonna of the Rocks in the Louvre (colour plate 18), yet it betrays the deep changes these long years had wrought in his art and that the other Madonna of the Rocks, the London version, first began to reveal. Something of that sweet harmony and well-being have survived, but now the face is that of a mature woman and is suffused with feelings and compassion that arc the direct result of an emotional and human concern with the actions of the children. Realistic behaviour has replaced elusive ethereality. The Virgin's head is voluminous and its structure more systematically defined than in Leonardo's earlier work. Moreover, the slight incline of the head is no longer a convention, as it was in the Madonna of the Rocks, but the result of a conscious movement. However, she still has the force of an idealized and universal presence.

The contrast between St. Anne's strange face and the pleasantly candid one of the Virgin could not be more striking. The older woman's narrow, deep set eyes, her deliberately compressed lips, and her curious mannered smile give the face an animation and a seer-like wisdom befitting one who attempts to communicate to a contented Virgin the dreadful knowledge of her son's future sacrifice. Leonardo's persistent search into the realm of the inner mind has given him access to emotions and psychological states that have now a mystical substance, which acts to expand upon and enrich the mere human condition.
Professor Wasserman
Leonardo

Sunday 9 June 2013

St Columba - 1450th Anniversary of the arrival of St Columba on Iona

The Apostolic Nuncio in Great Britain,
Archbishop Antonio Mennini

St Columba 1450th Anniversary Celebrations


During the Year of Faith the Catholic Church in Scotland will celebrate the 1450th Anniversary of the arrival of St Columba on Iona. The celebration will include

Mass on the Solemnity of St. Columba
Sunday 9th June 2013
St. Columba’s Cathedral, Oban at 5pm

Pilgrimage to Iona
Monday 10th June 2013
led by
His Excellency
Archbishop Antonio Mennini
Apostolic Nuncio to Great Britain
Rt. Rev. Joseph Toal, (Bishop of Argyll & the Isles)
and the Bishops of Scotland
Iona Abbey.jpg
Iona


Friday 7 June 2013

The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus - Solemnity - Year C

Byzantine/Icon painting for the Sacred Heart Convent, Craiglockhart, Edinburgh - later a bequest to Nunraw Abbey. 
as from: Jesus Christ Pantocrator, Detail from deesis mosaic from Hagia Sophia Jesus-Christ-from-Hagia-Sophia
Friday, 07 June 2013

The Solemnity
Of the Sacred Heart
(Community evening Chapter Sermon by Fr. Hugh).

Although the Feast of the Sacred Heart is not an ancient feast, it was established in 1856, the significance of the heart in biblical thought is well established. The Jews conceived: the heart as the centre of a persons whole being, his deepest self, including his intellect, will and emotions. Our Lord himself said: "A man’s words flow out from what fills his heart" (Mt.12 v. 35) It is the preoccupations of the heart which determine one's attitude to God and to other people.
So in honouring the Sacred Heart we are contemplating Christ's deepest self the well-spring of all his redeeming activity. This could: be summed up in one word; love.

In some monasteries, a statue of the Sacred Heart is placed in the centre of the cloister garth, in the middle of the monastery. In this way it is seen as a symbol of the love of Christ which should keep the whole place ticking over. The stimulant of all a monastery’s activity and the feature which characterises its life. Although at Nunraw we have no statue in the cloister garth we have a large painting of the Sacred Heart in the cloister which could surely be seen as serving a similar purpose, portraying Christ's love as the driving force of the monastery and of each of its members.

This picture, painted in the Byzantine/Icon tradition was given to us when the Sacred Heart. Convent, Craiglockhart, Edinburgh, closed down some years ago. It was in fact specially painted for them in honour of their dedication to the Sacred Heart and hung in the entrance hall. Like most icons it is traditional rather than original and shows Christ as the Pantocrator, the Ruler of' the Universe. The only new feature is the discreet outline of the heart of Jesus in the centre of Christ's body.
The connection of Christ as Lord! and His; Sacred: Heart is surely significant. To the Jews; of Our Lord’s time the title ‘Lord’ indicated divinity and by implication blasphemous. 

The oldest known icon of Christ Pantocratorencaustic on panel (Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai). The two different facial expressions on either side may emphasize Christ's two natures as fully God and fully human.[4][5] Wikipedia

to continue....

Thursday 6 June 2013

Corpus Christi - Sr. Jo. Holyland Journal


Many thanks.
Looking to your possible Sacred Heart Solemnity,
before flight to home Mission.
domdonald.org.uk 

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Jo Mc...Sent: Sunday, 2 June 2013.
Subject: Corpus Christi

Dear all,
Happy  Feast  of  Corpus Christi!
It is great to know that you will soon be on your way. I leave for the airport at 3.30 am on Tues. and will arrive in Dublin at 4.35pm ( 3 hours stop over in Paris).

The Lord gave me two feasts of Corpus Christi! 
On Thursday,
I participated in a Solemn High Mass at the Holy Sepulchre followed by a very impressive Procession with the Blessed Sacrament. The rest of the Churches celebrate it today.

This afternoon, Emmanuella, my guardian angel, and I will go to the OFM Church ad COENACULUM  for a special Mass at 3.30pm.

This will be followed by Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament 

The Chapel of St. Francis Ad Coenaculum 

until 7pm to allow people to make the Holy Hour requested by Pope Francis. 
The blessings continue and blessings received are blessings shared. Thanks be to God.
Three very kind people have shared their photos with me because they knew that I had no camera, so I now have an abundance! I can just here you saying, "Is she sleeping again or is she trying to be recollected as they prepare for Mass (in Pilgerhouse, Galilee )?
Love to all,
Jo. fmm
ps  Please let me know if the photos come through.

Saturday 1 June 2013

Solemnity - Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

  Sunday, 02 June 2013

After 1st Vespers

 
Websites

By recognizing Jesus in the “breaking of the bread,” (cf. Lk 24: 30-31), believers feel themselves urged on to announce his death and resurrection, and to become joyful and courageous witnesses of his Kingdom (cf. Lk 24:35).
Thanks to the Redemption, the communicative capacity of believers is healed and renewed. The encounter with Christ makes them new creatures, and permits them to become part of that people which he, dying on the Cross, has won through his blood, and introduces them into the intimate life of the Trinity, which is continuous and circular communication of perfect and infinite love among the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. (Excerpted from Rapid Development by John Paul II.)

·  Savior.org   

Tuesday 28 May 2013

Holy Trinity Sunday 2013 - Homily by Fr. A...

  
 Holy Trinity Sunday 2013, Benediction 

Sunday, 26 May 2013

The Most Holy Trinity – Solemnity – Year C 


Most Holy Trinity   May 2013 26
Prin. Celebrant, Fr. Aelred
Mass Introduction;
‘Most ancient of all mysteries, before your throne we lie; have mercy now most merciful, Most Holy Trinity.’
These words from a hymn for the feast of the Holy Trinity express very well what our sentiments should be for today’s celebration.


Homily
From Christmas to Pentecost the Church’s liturgy takes us through the major events in our Lord’s life His birth and ministry., His passion and crucifixion, His resurrection, ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit on the apostles During this time, but in a more subtle manner, the nature of the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is also being revealed to us. That is why the Church asks us on this one Sunday of the year to reflect on this central mystery of our faith, rather than a particular incident in the life of Jesus.

In the OT a popular theme with biblical authors was that of Wisdom. At an early stage, wisdom was largely a practical matter, counsels about how to succeeded in this life, or how to cope with suffering and loss. Then Israel realised that such qualities were a gift if God and could only come from him, and that these same qualities are in God to a supreme degree. It became common for wisdom to be personified. Today’s reading from Proverbs looks at the role of Lady Wisdom in creation. This speculation about wisdom can be seen as a groping towards the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity.
In the Gospels, many hints about the Holy Trinity are given us. Jesus is conceived of a Virgin through the Holy Spirit, or out-going love of God the Most High. The birth’s miraculous manner prompts us to call the Child the Son of God.
At the Baptism the Spirit is manifested descending on the Son, and and the Father’s voice is heard. And at the Last Supper in St. John’s gospel, we are given some of the most beautiful and profound chapters in the whole of the NT about the inner life of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

For St Paul Christian life is Trinitarian. Through our relationship with the Son, we have access to the Father, who sends us the Holy Spirit. We are caught up into the life of the Being who is beyond imagination, but whom Scripture tells us is love itself. And in Christ the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us.

So the Christian revelation gives us a glimpse into the heart of the Godhead itself. It shows us a life of interpersonal relationships spirit in outpouring love. A life of unimaginable richness. And it tells us that our own human fulfilment is found at the deepest level by entering into these loving interpersonal relationships, with God and with one another.

Although Christians share in the indwelling life of the Trinity, we must not think of the omnipresent God constantly watching us like the ubiquitous security camera. Rather, God watches over us, an altogether more lovely feeling. This awareness that the Triune God is watching over us comfort in times of sadness, strength in times of weakness, and hope in times of despair.

Prayers; conclusion;
Heavenly Father’s,
Guide our wayward hearts,
For we know that left to ourselves
we cannot do our will.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen



Saturday 25 May 2013

The Threeness of the Trinity. Fr. Edward O.P.



That the Threeness in the Divine Nature is not an abstract threeness

The Threeness of the Trinity is best remembered in John's reminiscence
of the Lord's Last Supper discourse:
that Father and Son are not two in divinity but One
to which the Spirit-Paraclete is added as Proceeding therefrom.
Look we, think we, them around ourselves
though we see them not,
only their vestiges,
whose images we unite with our revealed and instructed faith.
We believe in an unbreakable and exact continuity,
even with the shortfall in a variegated cosmic nature,
with the certainty of being enfolded
with our essentialist nature noetic and geistlich
accessible and abundantly desirable,
unitable through connaturality to our Source,
which is a Spiritual light in infinitude.
Here the Three are One inseparable yet Triadic
in whjch the Lord has full and divine knowledge of Himself,
permeating the sharpest and deepest knowledge in a human mode,
yet united as unmixed and substantially single;
knowing through the single divine nature
the Godhead of Father and Spirit with their self-knowledge.
He knew this as timelessly real and true
and himself as so divinely united.
Arius's neo-platonising rationalisation
was the echoing of material thingness as separating
with an improper overlapping.
So containing divinely everything in Godhead;
containing all created being and beings through participation,
and rejecting the imagination's productions with separateness of Persons
from a flash of geometry -
in a flash suppressed in the form of our knowing,
yet not in the reality of its single ousia (as unstufflike "stuff").
Our spiritual connatural knowing of this
is through an admission to the (to us) darkness of
what is in itself purest, spiritual light: as such metaphorical,
in the Divine essence's timeless self-knowing,
to which an occasional attrait-attraction
from the all-containing divinity encourges us onward
in discernable soul-surging
towards our material uncontainment- (not point-like) finality.
The way to and through divine darkness is a "night-like illumination"
producing a glancing grasp of "divine delights" (Ps 139,11).

Outgoing from the Persons to the Others is also
instantanious and total return to themselves,
with no trace of Arian loss -
the Trinity is self-coincident.
Yet it contains derivational processes as known,
not in the Triadic self and its selves,
but in the outgoing emanations
of spiritual and material ousia.
Nothing in the Godhead is held back against itself;
its creation responds immediately, seen in Itself, to divine willing and intentionality,
but for what is created it is responsive to willed and creative delaying.
That delay entails a return from creation
from its crowning, stewarding humanity.
The Jewish people sensed a need in all justice
to make that return to the Creative, Choosing and Protecting God
through collective Liturgy and individual prayer.
It was in part converted to the Word of God Incarnated through Mary,
but the greater part kept the primacy with articulated multiple law-giving
held as absolute, even with the prophets' repeated positing of a Messiah,
his life and dying foretold in detail and fulfilled.
John the Baptist preached the imminent fulfillment,
calling for conversion and to take the straight Way which he would show,
leading it to a new and spiritual Jerusalem,
with diamented and impregnable walls and open gates,
its inhabitants prayer-bound in sober ecstasy,
in its Temple whose light-source and the Temple are the Lamb.
John saw him, heard him in his Patmos vision:
"I am the Alpha and the Omega ...
who is, who was, and who is to come, the Almighty"
For him he wrote letters to the seven Churches of John's Greek-Asian mission,
filled with precise and up-to-date instruction.
Receiving the preaching and worshipping mandate,
Bishops and Priests and their successors
lead the response of humanity through the Church:
Triadic matching the Triadic origination of Triadic gifts,
as surrounding the redeeming sacrifice of the Lamb, and in the Church
recapitulating what he recapitulated on his deicidal Cross.
Eucharistically drawing out a New Creation realistically and kerygmatically
from Him as Altar, Priest, Offering and End,
for the Almighty Father and in unity with the Holy Spirit
what was accomplished once and for all at history's pivotal point
Triadically and with the Son:
"Through Him, and with Him, and in Him",
To which the whole Church associates itself with its "Amen".


Stykkishólmur
18 May 2013


Dear Fr. Edward,
Thank you.
Last week you kindly sent your lines for the Feast of Holy Trinity.
Geeetings and blessings.
Donald
domdonald.org.uk 

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: edward booth ...
Sent: Saturday, 18 May 2013, 23:13
Subject:
 More lines
 Dear Donald,
 A poem for tomorrow and a poem for next Sunday!
 Blessings from 
fr Edward
 -- 
Father Edward Booth O.P.
Iceland.