| FIFTH WEEK OF LENT Saturday First From the book of Numbers (24:1-19) Second From a homily by Saint Gregory Nazianzen (Oratio 45, 23-24: PG 36, 653-656) Saint Gregory was at his best in his homilies, forty-five of which are still extant. Most of them may be dated between 379 and 381, when he was bishop of
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Sunday, 28 March 2010
Gregory Nazianzen
Saturday, 27 March 2010
Jesus' Last Retreat
| Sat. pre-Passion Week Sat27. March
Abbot Mark. Introd. Mass – Sat 5th Week Lent The have decided that Jesus must be die. The raising of Lazarus from the dead was for them the last straw. People were believing in Jesus and the religious authorities concluded that if too many people followed Him the Romans would send in the army and destroy their privileges. Caiaphas’ statement a man dying for the people was prophetic – though he probably didn’t realize it himself. It reflected a hardness of that was more the product of him considerations than divine inspiration. He was a man whose mind was not enlightened by the Spirit of God. Caiaphs did not grasp that the words of Jesus and the deeds he performed were signs showing that he was the Christ. We, too, need to have our eyes opened, to be moved in heart, if we are to know the truth of Jesus and let him live in our lives. Penitential Rite.
Prayer of the Faithfull. God our Father, we ask you to hear us as we pray for these and all our needs, Through Christ our Lord. ____________________________________________________________
Scripture Bulletin goes online
The Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britain has just launched a website in time for Easter.
To visit the website see: www.cbagb.org.uk - - - Immediately after the Second Vatican Council, the association made history by producing a Catholic edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, published by the Catholic Truth Society in 1966. _______________________________________________________________
Jesus' Last Retreat – Ephraim Taybeh 35m from
Interest in Ephraim Jn. 11.54 did never arise to me until visiting the Holy Land 2003-4. In the pre-Passion Week of 2004, the Biblical Course first brought the references alive but, as the part of the awakening experience of the holy places, my visit to Ephraim-Taybey was of even more lasting love of the pathways ways of Jesus. RSV John 11:53 So from that day on they took counsel how to put him to death. John 11:54 Jesus therefore no longer went about openly among the Jews, but went from there to the country near the wilderness, to a town called E'phraim; and there he stayed with the disciples. John 11:55 Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and many went up from the country to John 11:56 They were looking for Jesus and saying to one another as they stood in the temple, "What do you think? That he will not come to the feast?" John 11:57 Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if any one knew where he was, he should let them know, so that they might arrest him.
Ephaim Taybeh Jn 21 Lk 17 12
http://www.taybeh.info/en/histoire.php II. Taybeh, from the Pentecost to Today
III. Legend of Taybeh-Ephraim - - - see more from the ORAL TRADITION
The amazing history is to be found in the stunning Website of the: Taybeh’s Latin Parish. http://www.taybeh.info/en/histoire.php The Website opens the whole story,
Holy Land Chronicle 13 Passion Week 2004 In my end is my beginning. (Four Quartets) What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. (Little Gidding. T. S. Eliot) Ephraim, ‘last retreat’ last Fri-Sat of Lent; Jn 12,32 Transjordan where Baptist had begun, earlier Jn 11,45-57 Jesus town of Ephraim Jn 11, 54 Ephraim (2) (2) The town near the wilderness to which Jesus retired after the raising of Lazarus (Joh_11:54). This probably corresponds to Ephrem of Eusebius, Onomasticon (s.v. “Afra”) 5 Roman miles East of Bethel. This may be the place named along with Ephraim-TAYBEH TWO BOOKS: The Christian Heritage in the Patterns of the Past, Prospects for the Future, ISBN 1 901764 10 9, 1999, Ed. Hummel etc, see J Murphy O’Connaer, “Bringing to Light the Original Holy Sepulchre Church pp. 69-84. It is no wonder that Ecole Biblique is NOT the full name for the Dominican centre in Note in the former book, a picture of the Holy Sepulchre Palm Sunday Procession c.1899, fig 8. Our Palm Sunday procession, more appropriately was from Bethphage to (the I have to hurry if I am to get through any account of Palm Sunday Chronicle before the Easter celebrations are upon us. There is so much to observe, and a rather resistant sponge of the mind can only absorb so much – no wonder we speak of ‘absorbing’ interest. – “Old men ought to be explorers Here or there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For a further union, a deeper communion Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning”. (TS Eliot)  |
Friday, 26 March 2010
Saint John of Egypt
| Saturday, 27 March 2010 (+ 394) Till he was twenty-five, John worked as a carpenter with his father. Then feeling a call from God, he left the world and committed himself to a holy solitary in the desert. His master tried his spirit by many unreasonable commands, bidding him roll the hard rocks, tend dead trees, and the like. John obeyed in all things with the simplicity of a child. After a careful training of sixteen years he withdrew to the top of a steep cliff to think only of God and his soul. The more he knew of himself, the more he distrusted himself. For the last fifty years, therefore, he never saw women, and seldom men. The result of this vigilance and purity was threefold: a holy joy and cheerfulness which consoled all who conversed with him; perfect obedience to superiors; and, in return for this, authority over creatures, whom he had forsaken for the Creator. St. Augustine tells us of his appearing in a vision to a holy woman, whose sight he had restored, to avoid seeing her face to face. Devils assailed him continually, but John never ceased his prayer. From his long communings with God, he turned to men with gifts of healing and prophecy. Twice each week he spoke through a window with those who came to him, blessing oil for their sick and predicting things to come. A deacon came to him in disguise, and he reverently kissed his hand. To the Emperor Theodosius he foretold his future victories and the time of his death. The three last days of his life John gave wholly to God: on the third he was found on his knees as if in prayer, bud his soul was with the blessed. He died in 394. Lives of the Saints, by Alban |
Saturday of the Fifth week of Lent |
Thursday, 25 March 2010
Marie des Douleurs - Benedictines of Jesus Crucified
Refer to:
MONDAY, 26 APRIL 2010
After some searching we found book: Joy Out of Sorrow, by Mother Marie des Douleurs, The Sisters of Jesus Crucified,
(Now moved to USA, see Website - benedictinesjc.org) 
In the Introductory Note, Mother marie writes,
“Profound and grand is the life which develops the Sisters and make them live in vivid and full reality their axiom:”Amen, Alleluia!”.
Simplicity, joy and courage are theirs – never better seen than at the moment of death.” (Dec 7, 1957).
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
pre-Passion Week
Mass
Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent 24 March 2010
- In the Hymn we sang the words:
- The King of Kings, and Lord of Lords,
- and heaven’s eternal light.
- The Days of Holy Week are well mapped out for each days of Palm Sunday to Easter.
- The pre-Passion Week days, the Fifth Week of Lent, are also mapped out clearly, the movements of Jesus located between Mt. Olives and the Temple, and the hours named in Chapter 8 of St. John’s Gospel.
- Sunday, Jn. 8:1, the Mount of Olives, but early in the morning in the temple areas. (The Woman taken in Adultery, 1-11).
- Monday, Jn. 8:12’Jesus spoke to then again, saying “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me …. Will have the light of life”. (The Light of the World 12-59).
- The tone is set in the Preface of the Weekday Mass of the Fifth Week of Lent
- The suffering and death of your Son
- brought life to the whole world,
- moving our hearts to praise your glory.
- The power of the cross reveals your judgment on this world
- and the kingship of Christ crucified.
For the Penitential Rite we sing the special Lent invocation:
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
When you lift up the Son of Man
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Gospel: Saint John 8:21-30.
Commentary of the day :
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Monday, 22 March 2010
COMMENT to COMMENTARY to ‘Reflex’
COMMENT to COMMENTARY to ‘Reflex’
Page LAYOUT by Donald
----- Forwarded Message ----
From: William J
To: Donald
Sent: Sun, March 21, 2010 5:03:37 PM
Subject: Response: Passion of Mary 'O Lady Mary'
Dear Donald,
How very kind of you to ask of me a commentary on Francis' bewilderingly beautiful poem... I try below to express my thoughts that can never measure up to the vision of his mind.
_ _ _ _
I am delighting in Francis Thompson's exquisite poem "O, Lady Mary", as one who stands before a great canvas and loses oneself in the depth of meaning portrayed by the artist.
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3. 4. 5.
| It is the canvas of the Crucifixion, Our Lord suffering and dying upon the cross... and as I stand in awe before the scene portrayed, I find myself standing there in the darkness of Calvary at the death of Jesus, my eye drawn to Mary, O Mary...
The picture is filled with deep areas of darkness and intense light. The light which streams upon Jesus from within the storm clouds of heaven, distraught at the suffering of the Son, illuminates the face of his beloved Mother who becomes both the focus of the artist's eye, and of the scene itself as Our Saviour 'breaths his last'.
Mary bears the reflex of the summit of Jesus' agony, his crown of thorns, her face expressing all her pain and sorrow, illuminated by the light that the heavens pour down upon her dear Son, and her distress becomes the reflection of his own.
The agony of Jesus that is portrayed is deepened by the anguish shown by Mary, the rose that falls at her feet from his crown of thorns becomes of a deeper hue, coloured by his blooded agony and her weeping heart's wound.
The soldiers' lance fulfills its cruel deed thrice over, for as it pierces the "Heart of Hearts" of Jesus, it fulfills Simeon's prophecy in Mary of 'the sword that will pierce your own heart', and it pierces the heart of the beloved disciple [of us all who behold this scene], the one 'whom Jesus loved' as John stands devotedly beside the Mother of Jesus, John's face in the shadow of the cross.
At his death Jesus, I see, is released from his earthly torment, but the torment for Mary would live on in her heart, for such images of her suffering Son would never leave her; for whilst she will indeed rejoice on the day of Jesus' resurrection and in the salvation afforded to all, as long as she were to live she would always remember the agony of those hours. As Our Saviour knew, Mary's release from the bonds of mortality alone would bring her relief from her crucifying memory of the death of her dear Son, when she could absorb into her being the joy that overcomes all sorrow, in the embrace of her dear Son, as she is assumed into Heaven to stand before his throne before the lights of Heaven.
The key word for me in this exquisite poem is "reflex", which hold the meaning for me: if we now see a reflection as in a mirror, however darkly, we will one day see 'face to face'. In this poem, Mary is portrayed as the reflection of the agony of her dear Son, and if we may now see and live in that reflection, we too may with her see 'face to face' and reflect the glory of the Lord. William J. Wardle
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Sunday, 21 March 2010
Francis Thomptson
COMMENT
Monday, Mar. 16, 1953
FRANCIS THOMPSON & WILFRID MEYNELL (212 pp.)—Viola Meynell—Dutton ($4.50).
In the
So began an editor-writer relationship which lasted until Poet Thompson's death almost 20 years later. It is the theme of this double memoir by Meynell's daughter Viola, who draws two clear, contrasting portraits of two utterly different characters. Based largely on her father's private papers, her book provides not only a sheaf of new Thompson letters but also evidence that without steady, warmhearted Editor Meynell, Thompson, the poet, might never have existed.
A Wreck of 29. Francis Thompson was the son of a North-country doctor who did his best to give his boy a good start. But his son was one of those people who are too timid to say yes or no in any decision, who allow others to decide for them —and then surreptitiously slide out from under the decision. Dr. Thompson believed that his son was a happy medical student—until he found that Student Thompson never went near the lecture halls if he could help it. Not until a few years later did father Thompson discover that his son was a poet, and cry in anguish: "If the lad had but told me!"
Meantime, Francis Thompson made his home in the streets of
Meynell got more than he bargained for. Tormented by the struggle to break the opium habit, Thompson distracted himself by writing poems, essays and book reviews. He soon became well enough to return to
The Hound of Heaven. Much of his day he spent, half-comatose, in bed. When he went out of the house "a stranger figure . . . was not to be seen in
And yet Francis Thompson could be the author of one of the few unmistakably great odes in the English language, The Hound of Heaven, in which Thompson himself is the pursued and Christ the pursuer, in which the life-worn fugitive turns in ineffective flight to friendship, children, nature before he surrenders to the Hound of Heaven:
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; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasméd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbéd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me' . . .
A Degree of Agony. Unlike most Englishmen, Francis Thompson had not the least desire to travel, and never so much as crossed the Channel. If he ever felt sexual desire, it was lost in his belief that "all human love ... is a symbol of divine love," and should be treated accordingly. Not all the women he met understood this —particularly the mothers of unmarried daughters. Author Meynell prints the unconsciously funny letter of one anxious mother who feared that her daughter might succumb to Poet Thompson. "It is not in her nature to love you; but I see no reason why some other good woman should not."
When Thompson died at 48 (in 1907, of tuberculosis), his sole belongings were "a few old pipes and old pens lying in a tin lid" and a nondescript collection of clippings from the Daily Mail (e.g., "Mikado Airs on Japanese Warship—Amusing Scenes"; "The Milk Peril, What Hinders Reform"). But by then, thanks in good part to Editor Meynell (who lived on until 1948), he stood second only to William Butler Yeats as the foremost lyricist of his day.
It is hard not to see Thompson's life as a romantic symbol of poetic suffering and despair, but he himself believed that poets suffer less than other men. "The delicate nature," he wrote, "stops at a certain degree of agony, as the delicate piano at a certain strength of touch."
· Find this article at:
· http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,935883,00.html
Friday, 19 March 2010
St Joseph by Bernard of Clairvaux
| SAINT JOSEPH Solemnity 19 March 2010 Night Office - Second Reading Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary Homily by Saint Bernard (Hom. 2 super Missus est, 11.16: PL 183, 69-70) v Joseph's character and qualities can be deduced from the fact that God honoured him with the title of father, and, although his doing so was a mere matter of convenience, this was what he was known as and believed to be. Joseph's own name, which as you know means "increase”, supplies further indications. Call to mind the great patriarch of old who was sold into v His brothers' envy had caused the earlier Joseph to be sold and taken to v Joseph the patriarch stored up grain, not for himself but for all the people: our Joseph was given custody of the living bread from heaven to keep safe both for himself and the whole world. v There is no doubt that the Joseph to whom the Saviour’s mother was engaged was a good and faithful man.
v Added to all this, scripture tells us that he was of David's house. Joseph was obviously of David's house, a true descendant of the royal line, a man of noble birth and still nobler disposition. That he was David's son was seen from the fact that he in no way failed to maintain his standard: he was a true son of David not only as regards physical descent, but also in his faith, holiness, and devotion. In him the Lord found, as it were, a second David, a man after his own heart, to whom he could safely confide his most holy and secret design. To him as to another David he revealed the unfathomable, hidden depths of his wisdom, and granted him knowledge of that mystery which was known to none of the princes of this world. In a word, that which many kings and prophets had longed to see and had not seen, to hear and had not heard - that was granted to Joseph. He was all owed not only to see and hear him, but also to carry him, guide his steps, embrace and kiss him, cherish and protect him. v It is not only Joseph, however, but Mary as well whom we believe to be a descendant of David, for she would not have been engaged to a man of David's line unless she herself had been of that line. Both of them, then, belonged to David's family, but it was in Mary that the oath which the Lord had v Sworn to David was fulfilled, while Joseph was privy to the promise and witnessed its fulfilment. |
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