Patristic Readings, "this Spirit is blended with the soul and united to the shaped clay, the result, thanks to the outpouring of the Spirit, is a spiritual and complete man." Iraenaeus

Saint Irenaeus.

Seeing the daunting, Adversus Haereses.

A prayer in the deep theology waves, with thanks from Cardinal Mercier;

Cardinal Mercier's Prayer to the Holy Spirit - Christian Forums

www.christianforums.com › ... › The Chapel - Catholic‎

 Cardinal Mercier's Prayer to the Holy Spirit

O Holy Spirit, Soul of my soul, I adore You.
Enlighten, guide, strengthen and console me.
Tell me what I ought to do and command me to do it.
I promise to be submissive in everything that You permit to happen to me,
Only show me what is Your will. Amen

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2nd reading, Monday of the 1st Week in Ordinary Time Year II

A READING FROM AGAINST HERESIES BY ST IRENAEUS

The heretics do not accept the Incarnation and so they remain in Adam who was conquered and cast out of Paradise. They fail to see that, just as when we were formed in Adam the breath of life was added to make a rational animal, so, at the end, the Word of the Father and the Spirit of God were united to the same ancient substance of Adam. This made man truly alive and perfect, capable of knowing the perfect Father. It was done so that, as in the ‘animal man’ we all die, so in the ‘spiritual man’ we might all be made alive. Adam at no time escaped the hands of God, the Son and the Spirit, to whom the Father said, Let us make man in our image and likeness. That is why, at the end, not by the will of the flesh or the will of a man, but by the good pleasure of the Father, these hands of God made the living Man, so that Adam might come at last into the image and likeness of God.

 

 

The soul and the spirit may be part of man, but they are certainly not the complete man. The complete man is a mixture and a union: the soul, which has received the Spirit of the Father, mixed with the flesh fashioned in the image of God. If you take away the substance of the flesh, the shaped clay, and consider just the naked spirit, what you are left with is not ‘the spiritual man’, but merely ‘the spirit of a man’ or ‘the Spirit of God’. However, when this Spirit is blended with the soul and united to the shaped clay, the result, thanks to the outpouring of the Spirit, is a spiritual and complete man. It is this, the complete man, who is made in the image and likeness of God. Thus the Apostle, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, explains that the redeemed man is this complete and spiritual man: May the God of peace sanctify you completely, and may your whole being, spirit and soul and body, be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The truth of all this was shown when the Word of God became man. He assimilated himself to man and man to himself, so that man, by his resemblance to the Son, might become precious to the Father. For in times past it was merely said that man was made in the image of God, but not shown, because the Word, in whose image man was made, was still invisible. That is why man lost the likeness so easily. But when the Word of God was made flesh, he confirmed both things: he showed the true image, when he himself became what his image was; and he restored the likeness, making man like the invisible Father through the visible Word.

St Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 5.1.3, 6.1, 16.2; tr. Pluscarden.
Posted by Michael Demers at 14:15 

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St Aelred of Rievaulx, 12 January, 2nd Patron of Sancta Maria Abbey, Nunraw

Solemnity. Community Sermon.

Archive: aptly named, Visual Theology.  

St Aelred of Rievaulx: celebrating 900 years
http://visualtheology.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/st-aelred-of-rievaulx-celebrating-900.html

The 19th May was the 900th anniversary of the birth of St Aelred of Rievaulx. Today the Cistercian monastery of Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire of which he was abbot lies in ruins. Back in the twelfth century it was part of the vibrant expansion of ‘freshly expressed’ monasticism across western Europe.  Aelred’s ministry as abbot may only have lasted for twenty years but his wisdom and spiritual insight have enriched the practice of Christianity for the succeeding eight centuries.

His writings on Spiritual Friendship provide a timeless lens through which we see our deepest human needs for secure and safe intimacy put into a wholly Christian perspective. Perhaps it is for the following extract from his ‘Mirror of Charity’ that Aelred is most fondly remembered:

It is no mean consolation in this life to have someone with whom you can be united by an intimate attachment and the embrace of very holy love, to have someone in whom your spirit may rest, to whom you can pour out your soul; to whose gracious conversation you may flee for refuge amid sadness, as to consoling songs; or to the most generous bosom of whose friendship you may approach in safety amid the many troubles of this world; to whose most loving breast you may without hesitation confide all your inmost thoughts, as to yourself....someone you can let into the secret chamber of your mind by bonds of love

(St. Aelred of Rievaulx, from Mirror of Charity)

The Baptism of the Lord

Night Office Readings,

January 12, Feast of the Baptism of Christ Today we celebrate the baptism of Christ in the Jordan. This is the second epiphany, or manifestation, of the Lord. The past, the present, and the future are made manifest in this epiphany. The most holy one placed Himself among us, the unclean and sinners. The Son of God freely humbled Himself at the hand of the Baptist. By His baptism in the Jordan, Christ manifests His humility and dedicates Himself to the redemption of man. He takes upon Himself the sins of the whole world and buries them in the waters of the Jordan. — The Light of the World by Benedict Baur, O.S.B. Catholic Culture

2nd reading, The Baptism of the Lord Year II

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST CHROMATIUS OF AQUILEIA

    Since Jesus was to give a new baptism for the salvation of the human race and the forgiveness of sin, he deigned to be himself baptized first, not in order to put off sins, since he alone had not sinned, but in order to sanctify the waters of baptism that these might wash away the sins of believers. For the waters of baptism could never have cleansed believers of their sins, unless they had first been sanctified by contact with the Lord’s body. He was baptized, therefore, so that we might be washed clean of sins. He was immersed in the water so that we might be cleansed of the filth of sin. He accepted the bath of rebirth so that we might be reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, for as he himself says elsewhere: Unless reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, no one shall enter the kingdom of heaven.
    While John did indeed baptize our Lord and Saviour, in a deeper sense he was baptized by Christ, for Christ sanctified the waters, John was sanctified by them; Christ bestowed grace, John received it; John laid aside his sins, Christ forgave them. The reason? John was a man, Christ was God. For it is God’s prerogative to forgive sins, as it is written: Who can forgive sins, except God alone? This is why John says to Christ: I ought to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? For John needed baptism, since he could not be without sin; Christ, however, did not need a baptism, since he had committed no sin.
    In this baptism, then, our Lord and Saviour washed away the sins first of John and then of the entire world. It is for this reason that he says: Allow it to be so now. For it is fitting that we should fulfil all justice. The grace of his baptism had been mystically prefigured long ago, when the people were led across the river Jordan into the promised land. Just as at that time a way was opened for the people through the Jordan, with the Lord going on before, so now through the same waters of the river Jordan access has for the first time been given to the heavenly path by which we are led to that blessed land of promise, that is, to possession of the kingdom of heaven. For the people long ago Joshua, son of Nun, was their leader through the Jordan; our leader through baptism to eternal salvation is Jesus Christ the Lord, the only-begotten Son of God, who is blessed forever and ever. Amen

St Chromatius of Aquileia, Tractatus XII In Math. III, 13-15 (CCL 9A, 244-246), from Word in Season 2 [Edition 1981]

iBreviary

Sunday, 12 January 2014

John the Baptist site in Jordan

The Baptism of the Lord

Type: Lively - Time: ordinary

Office of Readings

SECOND READING

From a Sermon by Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, bishop
(Oratio 39 in Sancta Lumina, 14-16, 20: PG 36, 350-351, 354, 358-359)

The baptism of Christ

Christ is bathed in light; let us also be bathed in light. Christ is baptized; let us also go down with him, and rise with him.
 

St. Odilo of Cluny, Monastic Office of Vigils

The Cluny emblazon

Odilo of Cluny (c.962-1048): thoughts, from the Monastic Office of Vigils, gave the more light thoughts on the Reading.

The versatility of Odilo is a good Circus juggler of happy turns of words,'both the prophetic oracles and the apostolic preaching are in accord.'.

 Saturday of Epiphany

Night Office from the Word of the Season edition 2001, and here Downloaded from the Edition 1981.

First Reading    Baruch 4:30 – 5:9.

Second Reading

A READING FROM A SERMON BY ST ODILO OF CLUNY 

From a Sermon by St Odilo of Cluny, Sermo 1 in nativitate Domini (PL 142, 993-994).   

With these sacred words of the evangelist both the prophetic oracles

and the apostolic preaching are in accord.   

Know that I am with you every day until the end of the world. If our Lord has promised to be with his faithful people every day, we can expect him to be even closer to us on the day of his birth; the greater our eagerness to serve him, the more we shall perceive his presence among us. Yes, he who spoke through Solomon, saying: I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, as the firstborn of all creation, and again; The Lord possessed me when his purpose first unfolded, before the earliest of his works; from everlasting I was firmly established; he who said through Isaiah: Do I not fill heaven and earth? – he it is who, in the mysterious plan of his own providence, is born on earth and laid in a manger.

While Solomon’s words teach us that Christ was eternally in existence before the world began, Isaiah’s declare that there is no place in the whole of creation from which he is absent. And if he exists always and everywhere, he cannot be absent from ourselves. The testimony of the ancient prophets to Christ’s eternal being and his boundless divine presence is indeed trustworthy. Our Saviour himself tells the Jews in the Gospel: Before Abraham ever existed, I am. With God the Father from all eternity, before Abraham existed (more accurately, before anything existed) he had his eternal being; and yet he chose to be born in time from the stock of Abraham – Abraham who was told by God the Father: In your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

The blessed patriarch David was also granted privilege of a similar promise. Revealing to him hidden secrets of his wisdom, God the Father told him: The fruit of your body I will set upon your throne. These two received the promise of the Saviour’s coming more plainly than any of our other fathers, and so they deserved to be given the first and most important place in the records of our Lord’s ancestry according to the evangelist Matthew, the opening words of whose Gospel are: The genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. With these sacred words of the evangelist both the prophetic oracles and the apostolic preaching are in accord.

The man in the Gospel who was freed from the darkness of ignorance and enlightened by faith addressed God’s Son as Son of David. Not only did he receive spiritual insight, but he also deserved to have his bodily sight restored. Christ the Lord desires to be called by this name, knowing that there is no other name by which the world can be saved. And if we ourselves wish to be saved by him who is the one and only Saviour, each of us must also say to him: Lord, son of David, have mercy on us. Amen.

St Odilo of Cluny (962-1049), Sermo 1 in nativitate Domini (PL 142, 993-994), from Word in Season 1

St. Odilo of Cluny (c.962-1048/1049): Sermo 1 In Nativitate Domini (PL 142, 993-994), from the Monastic Office of Vigils, December 21^st in Advent Year I.

Friday of Epiphany, Saint Edith Stein, Night Office Reading

Stein, Edith (1891-1942), born at Breslau, Germany, of Jewish parentage, studied at Gottingen and at Freiburg/Breisgau under Husserl, the leading phenomenologist. She was received into the Catholic Church in 1922, and in the following year entered the Carmelite convent in Cologne where she received the name Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. At the end of 1938 she moved to the convent at Echt on account of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, but during the German occupation of Holland she was arrested, transported to Poland, and killed at Auschwitz. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987 and canonized by him in 2000.

Friday after Epiphany           Year II

Friday, 10 January 2014

First Reading      Baruch 4:5-29.   

          Responsoru           Bar 4:27.29; Ps 96:3

Take courage, my children, and cry out to the Lord; he who has brought this upon you will remember you. + He will give you everlasting joy and salvation.

V. Proclaim to the nations the glory of the Lord and to all peoples his marvellous deeds. t He will give ...

Second Reading

From the writings of Saint Edith Stein (Le Mystere de Noel, 51-60). A Word In Season, 2001edition.

Christ has not left us orphans

God has come to redeem us, to unite us to himself and to each other, to conform our will to his. He knows our nature. He reckons with it, and has therefore given us every help necessary to reach our goal.

The divine child has become a teacher and has told us what to do. In order to penetrate a whole human life with the divine life it is not enough to kneel once a year before the crib and let ourselves be captivated by the charm of the holy night. To achieve this, we must be in daily contact with God, listening to the words he has spoken and which have been transmitted to us, and obeying them. We must, above all, pray as the saviour himself has taught us so insistently. Ask and it shall be given to you. This is the certain promise of being heard. And if we pray every day with all our heart: "Lord, your will be done" we may well trust that we shall not fail to do God's will even when we no longer have subjective certainty.

Christ has not left us orphans. He has sent his Spirit, who teaches us all truth. He has founded his Church which is guided by his Spirit, and has ordained in it his representatives by whose mouth his Spirit speaks to us in human words. In his Church he has united the faithful into one community and wants them to support each other. Thus we are not alone, and if confidence in our own understanding and even in our own prayer fails us, the power of obedience and intercession will assist us.

And the word was made flesh. This became reality in the stable of Bethlehem. But it has also been fulfilled in another form. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. The Saviour, knowing that we are and remain people who daily have to struggle with our weaknesses, aids our humanity in a manner truly divine. Just as our earthly body needs its daily bread, so the divine life in us must be constantly fed. This is the living bread that came down from heaven. If we make it truly our daily bread, the mystery of Christmas, the incarnation of the Word, will daily be re-enacted in us. And this, it seems, is the surest way to remain in constant union with God, and to grow every day more securely and more deeply into the mystical body of Christ.

If we take part in the daily sacrifice, we shall be drawn quite without effort into the liturgical life. Within the cycle of the Church's year, the prayers and rites of the services present to us the story of our salvation again and again and cause us to penetrate ever more deeply into their meaning. The sacrifice of the Mass impresses on us time and again the central mystery of our faith, the pivot of the world's history, the mystery of the incarnation and redemption.

The Christian mysteries are an indivisible whole. If we become immersed in one, we are led to all the others. Thus the way from Bethlehem leads inevitably to Golgotha, from the crib to the cross. The way of the incarnate Son of God leads through the cross and passion to the glory of the resurrection. In his company the way of everyone of us, indeed of all the human race, leads through suffering and death to this same glorious goal.

          Responsorq           Ti 2:11-12

Begotten before the daystar and before all ages, + our Lord and Saviour has appeared in the world today.

V. The grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all, schooling us to reject all impiety and worldly desires, and to live sober, up­right, and godly lives in this world.+ Our Lord and ...

HE AND i 'Call it a rendezvous of love'.

It was the 10^th of January, reading Gabrielle Bossis.

It is a reminder of a ‘rendezous’ of love.
The Christmas greetings make a large collection to the community. After Epiphany we find some, 12 or so, crib card feature the Magi, as the one attached

Natlia Hantuik, Zaranytra, Studite

December 31  -   After Communion. "The keynote for 1948

, Lord?" 

"Very close. "

(An invitation to union)

1948

January - 10 - 1948 Holy hour.

 "Don't you love this hour when we come close to one another in such intimacy that My thoughts seem to be yours?

It's as though our souls were one inside the other

And how can My joy be described?

The joy of your Christ who yearns so much for oneness with His children that He invented the Eucharist in order to merge with them

Oh, new Spirit, freeing God's people from the old yoke of fear! Because I came to earth, everything has been changed

Because I died, you have received life

And life is love

There is no other life, my little girl

Simplify everything in love

Let love be the mainspring of all your actions

Believe and hope with your heart

You will comfort Me for all the hatred

And the more you love, the more you will want to love

Set aside a quarter of an hour a day for love, for nothing else but love

When you were little you did exercises in French

Now that you are big, give yourself to divine exercises, either during the day in the secret of your heart, or at night, if you wake and seek Me

Wake up loving Me

Hunt for Me, and I'll let Myself be caught

You will win, and we'll begin the game again and again until, tired out, you remain asleep on My heart

It will be another way for Me to keep you 'very close'

You remember the keynote for this year?"

Thomas Merton, The Mystery of Christmas

The mystery of Christmas therefore lays upon us all a debt and an obligation to the rest of the human race and to the whole created universe. We who have seen the light of Christ are obliged by the greatness of the grace that has been given us to make known the presence of the Savior to the ends of the earth. This we will do not only by preaching the glad tidings of his coming, but above all by revealing him in our lives. Christ is born to us in order that he may appear to the whole world through us. This one day is the day of his birth, but every day of our mortal lives must be his manifestation, his divine epiphany, in the world which he has created and redeemed.

Thomas Merton

Seasons of Celebration by Thomas Merton OCS

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18 hours ago - From the writings of Thomas Merton, O.CS.O. (Seasons of Celebration 111-112). Answer to the prayers of all. If we wish to see Christ in his ...

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Thomas Merton ..... Bernard invited William to the Mass which he celebrated in the Church of La Couldre. At the ..... 2007); Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons for Lent and the Easter Season, edited by John Leinenweber and Mark Scott, OCSO.

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ON RETREAT WITH THOMAS MERTON, Pennington, Basil M,OCSO, Pennington ..... SEASONS OF CELEBRATION,Merton, Thomas; Foreword by William H.

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A meditation on the season of Advent based on Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Merton. B y F r . J a m e s C o n n e r ,OCSO. For Bernard of Clairvaux and his  ...  

 Thomas Merton Quotes

The writings of Thomas Merton are gilded with truth, light and life. They have been deeply instrumental and inspirational to me in my journey towards experiencing and knowing God in deeper ways. This will be a continually evolving page as I add more and more quotes from his material. I'm going to have the quotes segmented in sections under the headings of the titles of his works in which I've found these awesome insights and reflections. They are handpicked and plucked right out of his works and not the general ones you might find on some of the very helpful, yet limited quotation websites.

Enjoy, and may you be blessed by them.

A Life in Letters: The Essential Collection

Edited by: William H. Shannon and

Christine M. Bochen

"It is true that when I came to this monastery where I am, I came in revolt against the meaningless confusion of a life in which there was so much activity, so much movement, so much useless talk, so much superficial and needless stimulation, that I could not remember who I was. But the fact remains that my flight from this world is not a reproach to you who remain in the world, and I have no right to repudiate the world in a purely negative faction, because if I do that my flight will have taken me not to truth and to God but to a private, though doubtless pious, illusion."

"I have been summoned to explore a desert area of man's heart in which explanations no longer suffice, and in which one learns that only exprience counts."

   

Seasons of Celebration Thomas Merton OCSO

Mass and Night Office,  

Mosaic-St.-Mark-Evangelist-
Basilica-Saint-Peter-Vatican-Rome-Italy

  

The Mass Introduction had the illuminating commentary on the Gospel. Mark 6:45-52, "And having seen that they were troubled and tormented in [their] rowing, for the wind was against them, about the fourth watch of the night [between 3:00-6:00 a.m.]" Verse 48, AMP. Mark had his writing of the Gospel in Rome  and was aware of the persecution of Christians at the time. He recalled the occasion of Jesus coming to his disciples, 'troubled and tormented' in the boat out in the middle of the lake.

A Two Year Patristic Lectionary for the Divine Office 

Edited by Stephen Mark Holmes

University of Edinburgh School of Divinity

For Pluscarden Abbey, Scotland

At the Night Office, following the surprise from yesterday, we are able to use the  Reading from the Patristic Lectionary.

Oops! The wrong horse. This is the 1981 Edition of  'A WORD IN SEASON'.
What I am looking forward is the Night Office Reading by Thomas Merton, obviously the 2001 Edition of the Patristic Lectionary, before. 

A Word in Season

Advent to Christmas

Edition 2001

Epiphany to Baptism Year II

Wednesday 08 January 2014

First Reading Isaiah 56: 1-8

Second Reading

From the writings of Thomas Merton, O.CS.O.
(Seasons of Celebration 111-112)

Answer to the prayers of all

If we wish to see Christ in his glory, we must recognize him now in his humility. If we wish his light to shine on our darkness and his immortality ty to clothe our mortality, we must suffer with him on earth in order to be crowned with him in paradise. If we desire his love to transform us from glory to glory into his perfect likeness, we must love one another as he has loved us, and we must take our places at that blessed table where he him­self becomes our food, setting before us the living bread, the manna which is sent to us from heaven, this day, to be the life of the world.

Jesus, who has come to nourish our spirit with his own body and blood, does so not to be transformed into us, but in order to transform us into himself. He has given himself to us in order that we may belong to him. For the centre of this great mystery is the eternal Father's design to re-establish all things in Christ. This, says Saint Paul, is the mystery of his will ... in the dispensa­tion of the fullness of time, to reestablish all things in Christ that are in heaven and on earth.

This child and redeemer who comes amid the songs 'of angels to answer the prayers of all the patriarchs and prophets, and to satisfy the unrecognized longings of the whole lineage of Adam exiled from paradise, comes also to quiet the groanings of all creation. For the whole world has been in labour and in mourning since the fall of the human race. The whole created universe, with all its manifold beauty and splendour, has travailed in disorder, longing for the birth of a saviour. Every creature groans and travails in pain even until now ... for the expectation of the creature waits for the revelation of the children of God.

The patriarchs and prophets prayed for the coming of Christ in Bethlehem, bu t this first coming did not silence the groanings of creation. For, according to the words of the apostle which we have just heard, while men and women waited for the birth of  Jesus in Judea, the rest of the universe still waits for the revelation of Christ in his Church.

The mystery of Christmas therefore lays upon us all a debt and an obligation to the rest of the human race and to the whole created universe. We who have seen the light of Christ are obliged by the greatness of the grace that has been given us to make known the presence of the Savior to the ends of the earth. This we will do not only by preaching the glad tidings of his coming, but above all by revealing him in our lives. Christ is born to us in order that he may appear to the whole world through us. This one day is the day of his birth, but every day of our mortal lives must be his manifestation, his divine epiphany, in the world which he has created and redeemed.

Responsory Is 66:18-19; In 17:6.18

Behold I come to bring together all nations and tongues. + They shall come and see my glory and proclaim it to the far-off lands.

V. I have revealed your name to those you have given me out of the world. As you have sent me, so now I send them.+ They shall come ...