Saint Catherine of Siena (+ 1380), Doctor of the Church, was a Dominican, stiqmatist, and papal counsellor.

Friday, 08 November 2013

Friday of the Thirty-first week in Ordinary Time

Gospel: Saint Luke 16:1-8.

 "The children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. (v. 8)

Catherine of Siena (Saint)

 

A Prudent Approach to Apathy

To make holy desire grow in you and not flag, I want you to open your mind's eye and come to know God's unspeakable love for you. In love he gave you his only-begotten Son, and that Son gave his life for you in such blazing love that it should melt the hardness of any hard heart.

Here focus your mind's eye, considering and pondering the price [paid for you], God's Son. In his blood wash your soul's face.

Wake up and rouse yourselves from the slumber of apathy! And once you've washed, be sure you put on the white of purity and the colour of blazing charity, both of which you will find in the blood of the Lamb. I want you to consider ... that you cannot have this purity of mind and body if you are ... setting your love and desire on ... created things apart from God's will. Nor is it compatible with selfish love or physical self indulgence. No, it is won with very earnest watching and prayer, and with continual remembrance of your Creator and constant acknowledgement of God's unspeakable love for you.

After you have acquired purity in the way I've described, you will see that there is no service you can do for God, and so you will extend your love to your neighbours, doing for them the service you cannot do for God. You will visit the sick, help the poor, and console those who are troubled. You will weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. I mean you will weep with those who are grieving in deadly sin by being compassionate and by offering continual prayers for them in God's presence. And you will rejoice with those who are glad because they are true servants of Jesus Christ crucified, always happy to be in their company.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA

________________________________________________________________________

Catherine of Siena (Saint)

From The Letters of St. Catherint of Siena. Vol. II, Suzanne Noffkc, O.P. Tr. MRTS Vol. 203 (Tempe, AZ. 2001). Copyright Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University, Used with permission.

 St. Catherine of Siena is a saint, mystic, and doctor of the Church. Here are 8 things about her to know and share.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/8-things-to-know-and-share-about-st.-catherine-of-siena#ixzz2k5gmRrjA

John Duns Scotus, the "Subtle Doctor," was beatified in 1993 by Pope John Paul II at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Friday, o8 November 2013

Our Lady Immaculate & St Margaret's - Duns

 Blessed John Duns Scotus

Beato_Giovanni_Duns_Scoto

Franciscan Theologian
(c. 1266 - 1308)

        Blessed John (Johannes) Duns Scotus was one of the more important theologians and philosophers of the High Middle Ages. Born at Duns in the county of Berwick, Scotland around 1266, John was descended from a wealthy farming family. John received the habit of the Friars Minor at Dumfries, where his uncle Elias Duns was superior. After novitiate he studied at Oxford and Paris and was ordained to the priesthood on 17 March 1291.

        He was nicknamed Doctor Subtilis (the "Subtle Doctor") for his penetrating and subtle manner of thought and he was remembered mostly for his defense of the doctrine of Immaculate Conception. During the night of Christmas, 1299 at the Oxford Convent, Bl. John, immersed in his contemplation of the adorable mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, was rapt in ecstasy. The Blessed Mother appeared to him and placed on his arms the Child Jesus who kissed and embraced him fondly.

        He died in 1308 and he is buried in the Franciscan church near the famous Cologne cathedral.

        Drawing on the work of John Duns Scotus, Pope Pius IX solemnly defined the Immaculate Conception of Mary in 1854. On March 20, 1993 John Duns Scotus, the "Subtle Doctor," was beatified in 1993 by Pope John Paul II at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

        Bl. John Duns Scotus, "The minstrel of the Word Incarnate" and "Defender of Mary's Immaculate Conception" was presented by Pope John Paul II to our age "wealthy of human, scientific and technological resources, but in which many have lost the sense of faith and lead lives distant from Christ and His Gospel," as "a Teacher of thought and life." For the Church, he is "an example of fidelity to the revealed truth, of effective, priestly, and serious dialogue in search for unity."

Jerome, In Jeremiam VI, xxx: PL. 24 904-905

COMMENT: st-jerome-of-stridonium; the not familiar title of Jerome surfaced from the Blogspot,
http://logismoitouaaron.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/ignorance-of-scripture-is-ignorance-of.html.
The Link opens up to brilliant commentary on Saint Jerome, beautifully significant.
Thank you, Aaron Taylor.

AARON TAYLOR

I am a Deacon in the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad

++++++++++++

Jerome: Christ, the Temple and the ChurchThursday, Oct 31 2013 

Jerome and PATRISTIC Christ, church, redemption, Sacred Heart, temple, Trinity Mark Armitage8:32 am

On Jeremiah 30:18-31:9

The Lord says this: I will restore the tents of Jacob and have compassion on his dwellings, and the city shall be rebuilt on its hill.

There was already a symbol of these things in the time of Zerubbabel and Ezra, when the people returned to Jerusalem and the city began to be rebuilt on its hill and the law of the Temple observed, and so on as related in the book of Ezra.

But the prophecy was more fully and perfectly fulfilled in the time of our Lord and Saviour, and of the Apostles, when that city of which it is written: A city built on a hill cannot be hidden was built on its hill.

Moreover, the Temple was established with its rites and ceremonies, so that whatever was done outwardly among the people of the past might be fulfilled spiritually in the Church.

Then songs of thanksgiving will come from them, for all the Apostles said: Grace and peace to you. It will be the sound of people dancing, not like those who ate and drank and rose up to dance, but as David danced before the ark of the Lord.

And they will increase and not diminish, so that the whole world may believe in God the Saviour. They will be honoured, so that what was written may be fulfilled: Glorious things are told of you, city of God.

And its sons, that is, the Apostles, will be like the men of old, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who founded the Israelite race. At that time the Lord will punish all the hostile powers that oppressed God’s people.

And their leader will be one of themselves – undoubtedly our Lord and Saviour who was born an Israelite; their ruler will come from their own number.

The Father placed him near himself, and he came so close to him that his Son could declare: I am in the Father, and the Father is in me; for no one can place his heart so near the Lord, nor be as closely united to him as the Son is to the Father.

And the words: You shall be my people and I will be your God we see partly fulfilled in Israel and completely in all the nations of the world.

Jerome (347-420): Commentary on Jeremiah, 6.30 (24:904-905); from the Monastic Office of Vigils, Wednesday of Week 31 in Ordinary Time, Year 1

Logismoi

'A Refuge for the Weary and the Oppressed, and a Treasury of Good Counsel and Wise Lore'

'Ignorance of Scripture Is Ignorance of Christ'—St Jerome of Stridonium

Apart from St Augustine, Vidovdan (meaning not only the Martyr Vitus, but St Lazar of Serbia and the Battle of Kosovo), and (in ROCOR) the Saints of North America, today is also the feastday of St Jerome of Stridonium (347-420), the translator of the Latin Vulgate which became the Bible of the West for centuries. Fr John McGuckin calls St Jerome (his full name wasEusebius Sophronius Hieronymus) ‘perhaps the most important biblical scholar of the early Western church’ (The SCM A-Z of Patristic Theology [London: SCM, 2005], p. 187). St John Cassian, in his treatise Against Nestorius, calls him ‘Jerome, the Teacher of the Catholics, whose writings shine like divine lamps throughout the whole world’ (Against Nestorius, 7.26). Here is the brief account of St Jerome’s life in Bulgakov’sHandbook:

He was born in 330 in the city of Strido within the territory of Dalmatia and Pannonia of pious and wealthy parents. Seeking an education, he visited Rome (having studied classical wisdom here), Gaul and other place. Having experienced the shallowness of secular life, he went to the east in 373 and in Antioch he accepted the vocation of a priest and began the labor of translation and explanation of Holy Scripture, while leading herewith the strict life of a hermit. During a visit to Constantinople, he heard St Gregory the Theologian and translated the Commentaries of Origen on the books of the Prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Having returned to Rome in 382, through his labors and asceticism he acquired a group of admirers and through his teaching contributed much to the correction of the morals of effeminate Rome. Having again settled in Palestine in 385, in a nearby cave in Bethlehem, he completed his translation of Holy Scripture into Latin and wrote his commentary on the New Testament, having studied the Hebrew and Chaldean [Aramaic] languages for this purpose. He died on September 30, 420. In 642 his relics were transferred from Bethlehem to Rome and placed in the Santa Maria Maggiore Church. It is not known where these relics are now. His honorable hand is in the church of his name in Rome.

It is interesting to me to note the enormous popularity of St Jerome among Renaissance and Counter-Reformation artists (for evidence, do a Google image search for ‘Saint Jerome’, check out this small gallery, or see the many images accompanying the Wikipedia article ‘Jerome’). Two items of note are, first, the anachronism of the cardinal’s hat and robes, and second, the presence of the lion, which, as Derwas Chitty points out, Jerome ‘was to filch from [St Gerasimus] through the ignorance of Latin pilgrims many centuries after they were both dead’ (The Desert a City [Crestwood, NY: SVS, p. 90; see my post on St Gerasimus where I discuss this here). It’s also true generally, that, as Megan Hale Williams points out, ‘No more can we imagine Jerome at work by thinking of a medieval author-portrait, the frontispiece of a Gospel for example, than we can by calling to mind an Attic funerary stele or a fresco from Pompeii advertising the culture of its wealthy subject. Jerome’s literary monasticism was a thoroughly late antique phenomenon’ (The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship [Chicago: U of Chicago, 2006], p. 169). But keeping all this in mind, I can’t help but rather enjoy many of these portraits of the ascetic-scholar in a study or cave, producing those works and translations for which he is so justly renowned.  

Saint Ambrose, Commentary on Saint Luke's Gospel, 7, 200-203 ; SC 52

Tuesday, 05 November 2013  

 

Tuesday of the Thirty-first week in Ordinary Time

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 14:15-24.

 ....

and make people come in that my home may be filled. (v. 23)
For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.'" 

Commentary of the

Saint Ambrose (c.340-397), Bishop of Milan and Doctor of the Church. Commentary on Saint Luke's Gospel, 7, 200-203 ; SC 52

"Make people come in that my home may be filled"

The guests excuse themselves, whereas the Kingdom is closed to no one who does not exclude himself by his own decision. Our Lord kindly invites everyone in but it is our own laziness or distraction that keeps us out. Someone who prefers buying a farm has no place in the Kingdom! In Noah's day, buyers and sellers were engulfed by the flood (Lk 17,26-28),... and so it is for anyone who excuses himself because he has just married, since it is written: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother and wife... cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14,26)...

And so, following the proud disdain of the wealthy Christ turned to the pagans. He brought in good and wicked that the good might be made greater and the inclinations of the wicked improve... He invited the poor, the sick, the blind, thus demonstrating that physical handicap keeps no one out of the Kingdom..., or rather, that the infirmity of sin is healed by the mercy of the Lord...

Then he sends people out seeking at intersections in the roads, for “Wisdom cries aloud in the streets” (Prv 1,20). He sends them out to the crossroads that sinners might be told to abandon broad ways and meet up on the narrow way that leads to life (Mt 7,13). He sends them out along roads and hedgerows because people who are hastening towards the blessings to come without being held back by present blessings, who are committed to the way of good will, will attain the Kingdom of Heaven just like people who are able to make a distinction between good and evil as fields are divided by a hedge: that is to say, those who set up the rampart of faith against the temptations of sin.

'Pray for the gift of love', Our Lady

COMMENT:

Month of Rosary marker...

 "All the month of the rosary, call My mother 'Our Lady of Love' and say, 'Our Lady of Love, give me love."  

 

For all Our Lady's messages

On Sunday, 3 November 2013, 17:44, Sr Maria ...  <co.uk> wrote:

The Medjugorje Web

November 02, 2013 Message to Mirjana

"Dear children; anew, in a motherly way, I am calling you to love, to
continually pray for the gift of love, to love the Heavenly Father above
everything. When you love Him you will love yourself and your neighbor. This
cannot be separated. The Heavenly Father is in each person. He loves each
person and calls each person by name. Therefore, my children, through prayer
hearken to the will of the Heavenly Father. Converse with Him. Have a
personal relationship with the Father, which will deepen even more your
relationship as a community of my children - my apostles. As a mother I
desire that through the love for the Heavenly Father, you may be raised
above earthly vanities, and may help others to gradually come to know, and
come closer to the Heavenly Father. My children, pray, pray, pray for the
gift of love because 'love' is my Son. Pray for your shepherds that they may
always have love for you as my Son had, and showed by giving His life for
your salvation. Thank you."

For all Our Lady's messages: http://www.medjugorje.org/messagesall.htm
For our 2013/2014 Pilgrimages to Medjugorje:
http://www.medjugorje.org/medjugorje-pilgrimages.htm
For items from Medjugorje: http://www.medjugorje.org/ccart/index.php
To Help Support our Ministry: http://www.medjugorje.org/donations.htm

Monastic life at Nunraw Abbey 3 - Abbot Mark

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 1 2013

SCOTTISH CATHOLIC OBSERVER

REFLECTION

Stay on the right path in your search for God.

In the latest in our series on spirituality, a monk from NUNRAWABBEY speaks about the importance of seeking God in our lives.

Nunraw Abbey - morning sun through the cloister windows

Seeking God

As a salmon makes its way back to where it came from, so we by our nature turn back to God as we seek out our vocation in life.   Unlike the salmon, we might get lost or distracted on the way.  But, when we do get back on stream, our homing instinct draws us onwards to God.  The well-known quotation of St Augustine comes to mind, ‘God has made us for himself and our hearts are restless until they rest in him.’

To seek God is part of every Christian’s vocation.  It’s not surprising therefore that St Benedict in his Rule for monks says that anyone coming to enter the monastery must be tested to see if he is truly seeking God.

Many people feel attracted to different aspects of the monastic life.  Its appeal may be its distance from the hectic rush of everyday life in society, its atmosphere of silence, or perhaps its spirituality which has developed over the centuries.  Obviously not everyone can or will want to spend their lives in the monastery.  But it's’ healthy for us to see and learn from the positive values in other vocations different from our own.  Some laypeople have actually introduced some elements of the Rule of St Benedict into their family practice.  For example, they have set aside specific time for private prayer, or for praying the divine office together with family or friends.

Finding God is a treasure that will only be fully realised in heaven. Here on earth, however, we can keep the search alive by our openness and generosity.  In human friendships and in marriage people keep developing and changing, though that will normally be in slow and in imperceptive ways.  Our personalities keep growing and developing and this need, it will add to our underWe mightstanding of ourselves and of the world around us.  This makes our search for meaning and happiness all the more interesting. 

To Change

When we feel we need to do something more with, or in, our lives, that desire will stimulate growth and change.  We don’t necessarily have to leave home or country to do that.  Cardinal John Henry Newman said that “in a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often”.  Now that he has not long ago been declared Blessed by the Church may add more weight to his words.  But, whether we live in a monastery or outside it, we don’t remain static as if we have already found God and need go no further.  

Together with our seeking, we need the humbling awareness that we can never be one hundred per cent sure of what is in us and where we are going.  No matter how much we learn of, or know God; no matter how often we have experienced graces in prayer, we need Sister Humility to keep our two feet on the ground.  Self-awareness will teach us that, no matter how much we increase in knowledge of God, there will always be much more we will have yet to learn.  That may frustrate annoy us.  But love is a gift.  We can’t buy or earn it.  Even when it is freely given to us we can’t possess it or keep it safe.  Someone said recently that love only grows when it is given away. 

Real lives are never wrinkle-free or without spots.  There are always some imperfections in them, even in the holiest of lives.  Saintliness lies within, below the outer surface of things.  But the inner workings of the heart and the deep yearnings for God in them can sometimes give a certain tangible beauty in the lives of some holy people.  However, just like a garden, lives are never free of weeds for very long.  They will always reappear and need to be dealt with.  Isn’t it strange that when we do set about digging up the weeds we feel the better for it, even though it’s normally a tiring and tedious job?  Living is just like that.

God seeking us

Seeking God is the ultimate need in our lives.  Scripture tells us that we can love only because God has first loved us.  The same applies to our seeking of God.  In spite of our desire for God, it is so easy to be lured away from our search for him.  The prophets In the Old Testament kept chiding God’s chosen people for their wantonness, for their running after other gods.  This was God’s way of chastening them and bringing them back to him.  He never gave up on them but always sought to show that he still loved them.

‘The Hound of Heaven’ is a wonderfully atmospheric poem.   In it the author describes God relentlessly chasing after the wayward soul whose fear of being caught was not as bad as he was expecting.  Left to ourselves we can very easily find ourselves doing our ‘our thing’ and not God’s.  We should be all the more grateful then that in our seeking, God is himself very persistent in his seeking of us:

  

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

  I fled Him, down the arches of the  years;

  I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

 Of my own mind; . . .

Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest.    
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”

   Francis Thompson (1859-1907)

Nunraw view to Firth of Forth and King of Fife

All Souls Commemoration

All Souls: November a month to remember...

rint

2013-11-01 Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio ) 

On the afternoon of the 1st of November Pope Francis goes to one of Rome's cemeteries to preside over Holy Mass. He does so on the eve of the Feast of All Souls, a day dedicated in a special way to the memory of our loved ones who have passed away.  

COMMENT: Raphael fresco

Dear, William,  

disputation_of_the_holy_sacrament_(la_disputa)_[detail-_1a]-large

Thank you for discovering  the Raphael "Disputation of the Holy Sacrament (La Disputa).
I am glad you enjoy the 'journeys'.
Yours,
Donald

[Blog] November liturgy - familiar fresco

On Saturday, 2 November 2013, 7:02, William  wrote:

Dear Father Donald,

 

I have identified the fresco as :-  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disputation_of_the_Holy_Sacrament

 

A fascinating painting (see below).

 

The journeys you take me on!

William

 

The annotation from the World Gallery of Art

Disputation of the Holy Sacrament (La Disputa)

1510-11
Fresco, width at the base: 770 cm
Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican

The fresco can be seen as a portrayal of the Church

Militant below, and the Church Triumphant above. A change in content between a study and the final fresco shows that the Disputa and The School of Athens can be seen as having a common theme: the revealed truth of the origin of all things, in other words the Trinity. This cannot be apprehended by intellect alone (philosophy), but is made manifest in the Eucharist.