CORPUS CHRISTI 'The food of love' John Tauler

Night Office Readings

22/06/2014 Year II

CORPUS CHRISTI
(Body and Blood of Christ)

First Reading

Exodus 24:1-11

Responsory   Jn 6:48-52

I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate manna in the desert, and they died. + This is the bread that comes down from heaven: anyone who eats this bread will never die.

V. I am the living bread come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever. + This is the ...

Second Reading

From the writings of John Tauler
(La vie spiriiuelle 105 (1961), 634-634)

The food of love

It is impossible for us to describe in words the ineffable dignity of the soul, and we cannot in any way comprehend it. If we had here with us a human being in his primal nobility, pure as Adam in paradise, in his natural state apart from grace, his simple nature unadorned - that person would be so luminous and pure, so ravishing and richly favoured by God that no one would be able to comprehend his purity, nor with his reason conceive of it. How then can reason possibly grasp that immensity beyond all being where the precious food of the Eucharist is, in some marvellous way, made one with us, drawing us wholly to itself and changing us into itself? It is a union more intimate than any that the human mind can conceive, totally unlike any other change; a union more complete than that of a tiny drop of water losing itself in the wine-vat and becoming one with the wine, or that of the rays of the sun made one with the sun's splendour; or the soul with the body, the two together making but one person, one being. In this union the soul is lifted above the infirmity of its natural state, its own insufficiency, and there it is purified, transfigured, and raised above its own powers, its human operations, and its very self. Both being and activities are penetrated through and through by God; formed and transformed interiorly in a divine manner, the soul's new birth is accomplished in truth, and the spirit, losing all its native incompatibility, flows into divine union.

It is something like fire working on wood; the heat draws out all the moisture, the greenness, and the heaviness. It grows warm, begins to glow, becomes more like the fire itself. As the wood slowly attains the likeness of fire, the dissimilarity between the two grows less until finally, in a rapid movement, the fire takes from the wood its own substance; the wood becomes fire and loses at the same time its separateness and inequality, since it has become fire. No longer merely like fire, it has be­come one substance with the fire. Likeness is lost in union.

In the same way this food of love draws the soul above dis­tinction or difference, beyond resemblance, to divine unity. This is what happens to the transfigured spirit. When the divine heat of love has drawn out all moisture, heaviness, unfit­ness, then this holy food plunges such a one into the life of God. As our Lord himself said to Saint Augustine: "I am the food of the strong; believe and feast on me. You will not change me into yourself; rather you will be changed into me."

Responsory

See in this bread Christ's body that hung on the cross, see in this cup the blood that flowed from his side. Then take and eat the body of Christ: take and drink his blood, + and you will become his members.

V. Eat the food that unites you to Christ so that you may never be separated from him. Drink the blood that is the price of your redemption, so that you may never count yourselves worthless, + and you will ...

Christ Mandylion Novgorod 1500

COMMENT:
Christ Mandylion Novgorod 1500. Icon rescued from rubbish tip. The icon may have from an outside Market. The image was scarred and evident the the candle wax was used in front of prayer. The effort is to restore the lovely Mandylion.   

TWO YEAR PATRISTIC VIGILS LECTIONARY

Ordinary Time Year 2 Weeks 1 – 17  

 

Friday 11 Zec. 1:1-2:4 St Gregory the Great, Hom. 2 in Ez. 1.5 W. S. 7

Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time Year 2

A READING FROM THE HOMILIES ON EZEKIEL

BY ST GREGORY THE GREAT

It is precisely because the vision of inward peace is made up of a community of saints as its citizens that the heavenly Jerusalem is built as a city. Even while, in this earthly life, its citizens are lashed by whips and subjected to oppression, its stones are being quarried every day.

It is also the city, namely, the holy Church, which is to reign in heaven but is still toiling on earth. It is to its citizens that Peter says: And you are being built up like living stones. Paul also says: You are God’s land, God’s building. Clearly the city already has its great building here on earth in the lives of the saints. In a building, of course, one stone supports another, since they are placed one on top of another, and one supporting another is itself supported by another. So in the same way, in the holy Church, every member both supports and is supported by the other. For neighbours give each other mutual support, so that the building of love may rise through them. Hence too Paul’s instruction to us: Bear each other’s burdens, and in that way you will fulfil the law of Christ; and he claims the virtue of this law, saying: It is love which fulfils the law.

For if I neglect to support you in the way you live, and you pay little attention to supporting me in mine, how will the building of love rise among us? He alone who supports the whole fabric of the holy Church supports us in our good ways and our faults as well. But in a building, as we have said, the supporting stone is itself supported. For just as I already support the ways of those whose behaviour in the matter of good works is still unformed, so I too am supported by those who have surpassed me in the fear of the Lord, and yet have supported me, so that I myself should learn to support through being supported. But they have also been supported by their predecessors.

However the stones placed at the top of the building to finish it off, though supported of course by others, have no one to support in turn. For those, too, who are born at the Church’s end, that is, at the end of the world, will certainly be supported by their prede­cessors, to dispose them to behave in a way that leads to good works; but when they have none to follow them who could profit by them, they have no more stones to support for the building of the faithful above them. So for the time being they are supported by us, and we are supported by others. However it is the founda­tion that carries the entire weight of the building, because our Redeemer alone supports the lives of all of us together. As Paul says of him: For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid, which is Christ Jesus. The foundation supports the stones and is not supported by the stones, because our Redeemer supports us in all our troubles, but in himself there was no evil demanding support.

St Gregory the Great, Hom. in Ez., 2.1.5 (CCL 142:210-212); Word in Season VII.

 

The Holy Mandylion (Napkin) of Christ (Not-made-by-hands)

St Romuald Mass Thursday 11th Week Ord Time

Night Office Saints,

  http://www.monasterodicamaldoli.it/  

St Romuald       June 19.

Portrait St. Romuald (FaceBook)

Christ is a gentle leader, but he calls us to total holiness. Now and then men and women are raised up to challenge us by the absoluteness of their dedication, the vigour of their spirit, the depths of their conversion. The fact that we cannot duplicate their lives does not change the call to us to be totally open to God in our own particular circumstances. St Romuald was such a person. He became an important figure among those eleventh­century monks who sought to reform contemporary monasticism in the direction of greater solitude. The semi-eremitical monastery at Camaldoli became, after his death, the head

of an organized group of houses; these hermit monks sti II exist as a small independent order of Benedictines. St Romuald died in 1027.

A Reading from Thomas Merton.

One of the most venerable and ancient shoots of the primitive Benedictine stock is the Order of Camaldoli. This Order explicitly takes upon itself the task of providing a refuge for the pure contemplative life, in solitude. Born of the intense revival of monastic fervour that swept Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries, Camaldoli was founded in a high valley of the Apennines, beyond Arezzo, by St Romuald in 1012. Entirely unique in Western monasticism of the present day, the Camaldoli hermitage presents the aspect of an ancient laura-a village of detached cells, clustered around the church. Unlike the typical Charterhouse, whose cells are all next to one another and open out 0!l a common cloister, Camaldoli jealousy insists on the fact that the cells must be separate from one another at least by a distance of twenty or thirty feet. The hermits live, read, work, eat, sleep and meditate in their cells, but gather for the canonical hours in the church. Silence and solitude, essential to the true life of contemplation, are here not a question of "spirit" and of "ideal" but also belong to the letter of the rule. For Camaldoli, like the Chartreuse, realizes that "interior silence" and "interior solitude" do not suffice, by themselves, to guarantee a purely contemplative life. Interior silence may well be the refuge of the monk engaged in a more or less active life, who seeks God in moments of recollection. But the best way to foster interior silence is to preserve exterior silence, and the best way to have interior solitude is not to be alone in a crowd but to be simply and purely alone. The purpose of this solitude is to enable the monk to l ive alone with God in an atmosphere which is most propitious for deep interior prayer. Corporate and liturgical prayer are important in the life of the Church and of the monk but they do not of themselves satisfy the deep need for intimate contact with God in solitary prayer, a need which constitutes the peculiar vocation of the contemplative soul. Liturgical prayer remotely disposes for the grace of contemplation. And this gift

of God, like all his other gifts, is granted to souls as an outpouring of the infinite riches he gives us, in Christ, and in the Mass. But the true fruition of this special gift is not usually possible unless our Eucharistic Communion is somehow prolonged in silent adoration. The hermit's whole life is a life of silent adoration.

_________________________

Adapted from Saint of the Day by Leonard Foley, OFM, 197L~, p l39;. Penguin Dictionary of the Saints by D. Attwater; – The Silent Life by T. Merton (B & O, London, 1957) pp112-3.

   http://www.abbazie.com/camaldoli/visita_it.html  

Time passes and eternity approaches

View in Camaldoli

The Hermitage

What to see in the hermitage? Surely the old cell of St. Romuald, now incorporated in the building of the library.

In the oratory of the hermitage you can see the altarpiece "Madonna and Child with Saints", a masterpiece in terracotta by Andrea della Robbia. 

Fascinating is totally frescoed the vault.

Joseph-Marie Cassant, Beatified 2004

The beatification was celebrated on October 3, 2004, Saint Peter's Square, Rome.
(Fr. Raymond) 

Prayer Beatification,   

O Lord. Glory of the lowly,

who inspired a burning love

for the Eucharist in Blessed Joseph Mary,

and led him into the desert

through the Heart of Jesus;

grant, we beseech you,

that by his intercession and example

we may prefer nothing to Christ,

that he may bring us to life everlasting.

Who lives and reigns...
 

COMMENT: Fr. Raymond introduced   the Memorial Mass of Bl. Joesph-Marie Cassant. He said it was a poignant occasion that he and Abbot Kevin (Roscrea) were at the beatification October 2004, St. Peter's Square, Rome. They were attending the General Chapter and all the members had been given the first class Relic of the Cistcercian Monk from the monastery of Desert Abbey.

Today, I will be placing the Relic on the altar, praying with Bl. Joseph_Marie for voccations.      

         

Friday, 17 June 2011

Letter of Blessed Joseph-Marie Cassant to his parents

Letter of Blessed Joseph-Marie Cassant to his parents

23 December 1902 / 24 May 1903).

Everything for the Heart of Jesus!

My dear Parents,

Christmas is here, like dawn of the new year; let us not let it pass without examining our thoughts. First, it must be said that this year has been a year of graces for the whole family: on 22 February the diaconate opened the door to the priesthood and on 12 October we saw the fulfillment of all our longings.We would be most ungrateful if we didn't see in all this the special protection of the Heart of Jesus.

For such a long time we hoped against hope to be able to have the whole family together after my ordination so as to share the joy of being present and receiving communion together at my first Mass. The good Lord heard our deepest wishes. It now remains to us to thank him and to enter more and more deeply into the greatness of the priesthood. Let us never dare to equate the Sacrifice of the Mass with earthly things.

So I wish you all a good, happy and holy New Year, in every way. No more worries! You all know that I am a priest now and will never forget you.

Let us be resolved to take advantage of the time given us in this life, which can be compared to water which flows away, to a puff of smoke which the smallest breath scatters, or to a flash of lightning which splits the clouds and then vanishes. Nevertheless, this brief time on earth must be well spent. To this purpose, we must do all out of love, being one with the Heart of Jesus, and rejecting any useless worries.

The best thing I can hope for is that you ever abide as one in the Heart of Jesus. Thank you for your letter, written by your very heart!

I have just received the beautiful photos, and I thank you. They will make a fine family memento. May the Heart of Jesus be praised in all this. I want you always to revere this Heart, which is enshrined in your house. Let us be one in the Heart of Jesus as we beg his protection.

As for my health, it is always problematic. I am very well cared for. I am not going to any of the community exercises, but still, with the heat, my breathing is somewhat difficult. I also have a cold which is making me cough. All for the Heart of Jesus!

I end with the wish that we always be one in the Heart of Jesus, on earth as in Heaven.

Website:  abbayedudesert.com

I think of the Novice Master, Fr. Andrew Hart, at Nunraw.

Andrew would lend the Novices the manuscripts of one Andre Malet’s writings.

Fr. Andrew has succeeded keeping awake after the Night Office by translating Malet’s La Vie Surnaturelle 1933. Hopefully I will find the whole of the lost copy.

P.S. In fact, we find Fr. Andrew's translation writen the Second part of 'The Spirutal Life''.

  
The first chapters indicate pages in ascetical theology.

 The teachers exercise book, including graph pages, is impressive manuscript.
At 238 Mary may bring to Mystical Theology.

Joseph-Marie Cassant (1878-1903), biography

1. www.vatican.va/news_services/.../ns_lit_doc_20041003_cassant_en.html
   

   
   

   3 Oct 2004 - Official Vatican biography of the beatified Trappist priest, with a photo and a link to Pope John Paul II's homily upon Blessed Joseph-Marie's ...

     The Cistercian Soul of
          Joseph Marie
(for after his unpublished notes) 

Author: Cheneviere, PME 

Dear William,

It gives the greatest reassurance in the Blog surfing in the sundry seas and varied visibilities. No doubt, my Pole Star is identifiable in my hemisphere-life?

Thank you for the help and joy of sharing.

Yours ...

Donald

P.S. Your Comments make irreplaceable compendium, recapitulation. The safety store looks for pursuit of explore.  .

 Fw: Much Delight in your Blog

On Saturday, 14 June 2014,
William wrote:

Dear Father Donald,

I am so pleased that the spiral-bound copy of Nouwen's book on the four icons arrived safely. I was so pleased to discover them!

I was delighted to see the photos of Br S...'s great day, for himself and for the Community. I sent him a little souvenir, a pamphlet 'He is Risen' of a meditation by Thomas Merton, who will be a good companion for him throughout his life.

I have been for several days holding a three-tier ladder ...

Your presentation of PSALM 119 is so beautiful on your Blog - how proud I am to have been able to assist in that project!  I discovered for Jim a NAVARRE commentary on the Psalms to encourage him, and he has been taking delight in the Hebrew alphabet (he can recite the Lord's prayer in Aramaic!).

Your article of your Sister Mary's connection to Mother Joanna gave me much delight - I could SO relate to the description of folk on the London bus (even on an Edinburgh bus whenever I leave Nunraw), and to her own joy that is to be found in painting. Her mural is fabulous.

The icon of the Virgin of Kazan so put me in mind of the icon of Our Lady below the heraldic shield in your Church. Mother Joanna is right, "art is part of our reflective process". Thank you for introducing me into this 'reflective' world!

Your Blog is my best companion - thank you Father!

With my love in Our Lord,

William

Holy Trinity celebration, top-over trifle dessert

COMMENT: 

Cloudberry fruit & trinity leaves adorn the dessert

After the Mass, in the kitchen, on the trolley to serve lunch was the "top over" dessert. 
Brother S, cooking for the day, embellished the trifle with cloudberry fruit and leaves.

To my astonishment, the leaves beautifully symbolize the Trinity. See illustration. 

 Cloudberry displays the tri(nity) leaves
beside our hot house.  

Rubus rosifolius (rose-leaf bramble)  

+ + + 

Trinity: Three Persons, One Creative, Energizing Reality

 - St. Athanasius - Early Church Father

Used in the Roman office of Readings for Trinity Sunday, this is an excerpt
from St. Athanasius' first letter to Serapion
(Ep. 1 ad Serapionem 28-30: PG 26, 594-95. 599).  Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, in the 4th century and was one of the most important of the Early Church Fathers.  He is best known for his tirelessness proclamation of the full divinity of Christ during the troubled period of the Arian heresy, which denied Jesus' equality with the Father 

Light, radiance and grace are in the Trinity and from the Trinity

It will not be out of place to consider the ancient tradition, teaching and faith of the Catholic Church, which was revealed by the Lord, proclaimed by the apostles and guarded by the fathers. For upon this faith the Church is built, and if anyone were to lapse from it, he would no longer be a Christian either in fact or in name.

We acknowledge the Trinity, holy and perfect, to consist of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In this Trinity there is no intrusion of any alien element or of anything from outside, nor is the Trinity a blend of creative and created being. It is a wholly creative and energizing reality, self-consistent and undivided in its active power, for the Father makes all things through the Word and in the Holy Spirit, and in this way the unity of the holy Trinity is preserved. Accordingly, in the Church, one God is preached, one God who is above all things and through all things and in all things. God is above all things as Father, for he is principle and source; he is through all things through the Word; and he is in all things in the Holy Spirit.

Writing to the Corinthians about spiritual matters, Paul traces all reality back to one God, the Father, saying: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of service but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in everyone.

Even the gifts that the Spirit dispenses to individuals are given by the Father through the Word. For all that belongs to the Father belongs also to the Son, and so the graces given by the Son in the Spirit are true gifts of the Father. Similarly, when the Spirit dwells in us, the Word who bestows the Spirit is in us too, and the Father is present in the Word. This is the meaning of the text: My Father and I will come to him and make our home with him. For where the light is, there also is the radiance; and where the radiance is, there too are its power and its resplendent grace.

This is also Paul’s teaching in his second letter to the Corinthians (13:13): The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.For grace and the gift of the Trinity are given by the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Just as grace is given from the Father through the Son, so there could be no communication of the gift to us except in the Holy Spirit. But when we share in the Spirit, we posses the love of the Father, the grace of the Son and the fellowship of the Spirit himself.
   http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/123/Trinity_as_Three_Persons_One_Energizing_Reality_Athanasius.html  

For an overview of the Early Church Fathers, click here..

RESPONSORY  

 

Let us adore the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit;
– Let us praise and exalt God above all for ever.

Blessed be God in the firmament of heaven;
all praise, all glory to him for ever.
– Let us praise and exalt God above all for eve

Blessed Virgin Mary, Saturday memorial. St. Aelred of Rievaulx

Night Office Reading, 
Saturday memorials of the Blessed Virgin Mary

 

Virgin of Kazan
Valamo monastery

       
  The memorial is a remembrance of the maternal example and discipleship of the Blessed Virgin Mary who, strengthened by faith and hope, on that great Saturday on which Our Lord lay in the tomb, was the only one of the disciples to hold vigil in expectation of the Lord’s resurrection; it is a prelude and introduction to the celebration of Sunday, the weekly memorial of the Resurrection of Christ; and it is a sign that the “Virgin Mary is continuously present and operative in the life of the Church”.On Saturdays in Ordinary Time when there is no obligatory memorial, an optional memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary is allowed.

Alternative           Sermon 20    (Breviary)

A reading from the sermons of  St. Aelred of Rievaulx

Mary, our Mother

Let us come to his. bride, let us come to his - mother, let us come to the best of his handmaidens. All of these descriptions fit Blessed Mary.

But what are we to do for her.? What sort of gifts shall we offer her? O that we might at least repay to her the debt we owe her ! We owe her honour, we owe her devotion, we owe her love, we owe her praise. We owe her honour because she is the Mother of our Lord. He, who does not honour the mother, will without doubt dishonour the son. Besides, scripture says: 'Honour your- father and your mother.'

What then shall we say, brethren? Is she not our mother? Certainly, brethren, she is in truth our mother. Through her we are born, not to the world but to God.

We all, as you believe and know, were in death, in the infirmity of old age, in darkness, in misery. In death because we had lost the Lord; in the infirmity of old age, because we were in corruption; in darkness because we had lost the light of wisdom, and so we -had altogether perished.

But through Blessed Mary we all underwent a much better .birth than through Eve, inasmuch as Christ was born of Mary. Instead of the infirmity of age we have regained youth, instead of corruption incorruption, instead of darkness light.

She is our mother, mother of our life, of our incorruption, of our light. The Apostle says of our Lord, ‘Whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification and redemption.

She therefore who. -is the mother of Christ is the mother of our wisdom, mother of our righteousness, mother of our sanctification, mother of our redemption. Therefore she is more our mother than the mother of our flesh. Better therefore is our birth which we derive from Mary, for from her is our holiness, our wisdom; our righteousness, our sanctification, our redemption.

Scripture says, 'Praise the Lord in his saints'. If our Lord is to be praised in those saints through whom he performs mighty works and miracles, how much more should he be praised in her in whom he fashioned himself, he who is wonderful beyond all wonder.

RESPONSORY

R/ Blessed is the holy Virgin Mary, and most worthy of all praise; * through her has risen the Sun of, Justice, Christ our God, by whom we are saved and redeemed.

V/ Let us joyfully celebrate this feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary.* Through her has risen ...

G.K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

Saturday 14 June 2014.

At the Community Mass – this morning, we prayed on...

G.K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

On this day in 1936 died G.K. Chesterton, writer and journalist. His writings – stories, essays, poems, books, journalism – are infused with an unequalled joy and love of truth.

  In youth, he went through a crisis of nihilistic pessimism and it was his recovery from this that led him to God and ultimately to conversion. “The Devil made me a Catholic,” he said – meaning that it was the experience of evil and nothingness that convinced him of the goodness and sanity of the world and his creator. His poem “The Ballade of a Suicide” celebrates the salvific value of ordinary things; his novel, “The Man who was Thursday,” narrates the fight for sanity in an insane world and ponders the paradox of God; and “Orthodoxy” (downloadable here)*S, written long before he became a Catholic, highlights orthodoxy not as a dead and static thing but as the only possible point of equilibrium between crazy heresies any one of which would drive us mad.

  He took part in all the major controversies of his age, and was a lifelong adversary and friend of socialists and atheists such as George Bernard Shaw. These controversies were conducted with passion but with unfailing charity: he never sought to defeat his opponents, only to defeat their ideas. He would never cheat to score a point: and his love for the people he fought against is something that all controversialists should imitate, however hard it may be.

  Read him, and pray for him.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

English essayist and poet    

  * http://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton  

Biography

Source: Wikipedia

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in London, England on the 29th of May, 1874. Though he considered himself a mere "rollicking journalist," he was actually a prolific and gifted writer in virtually every area of literature. A man of strong opinions and enormously talented at defending them, his exuberant personality nevertheless allowed him to maintain warm friendships with people--such as George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells--with whom he vehemently disagreed. ....

Publications and Influence of Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Works Published By Gilbert Keith Chesterton  ?

Works Published About Gilbert Keith Chesterton  ?

People Influenced by Gilbert Keith Chesterton  ?

Summary Biography Quotes Works By Works About Publications and Influence   + + +

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2011/chesterton_manalivech1_feb2011.asp

How the Great Wind Came to Beacon House | G. K. Chesterton | Chapter One of Manalive | Ignatius Insight