eve of Eve of Christmas

December 23rd, 2008
Mary Haynes Kuhlman Theology Department Creighton University
Fourth Tuesday in Advent
Malachi 3:1-4, 23-24Psalm 25:4-5ab, 8-9, 10 and 14Luke 1:57-66

The eve before the Eve of Christmas this is an interesting reflection from this Blog. It is a relay of writers regularly.

Luke 1:57-66 Already in this first chapter, we have read of the Visitation, when, newly pregnant, Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth, whose somewhat earlier pregnancy is a sign of God’s power. Elizabeth and her unborn child recognize that Mary’s baby is the Lord. From these Gospel details Christians have liked to infer a friendship between the babies. Thus we have those many medieval and Renaissance paintings of the Madonna with two chubby little boys, with the child John reverencing the infant Jesus. Our Joslyn Art Museum here in Omaha has one particularly fine painting of this image. Its colors and composition are beautiful; the sweet-faced Mother is lovely, but the two children are, frankly, not handsome. While admiring the painting as a whole, my husband and I have amused ourselves by giving it our own title: “Baby Jesus and His Cousin John Prophesy that Neither Will Win the Prettiest Baby Prize.”

Lorenzo di Credi (1456/9-1537), Italian; Florentine Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John and Two Angels,
This panel exemplifies Florentine Renaissance painting with its brilliant colors and lively sense of human interaction. Characteristically, it contains a number of standard symbolic elements - the Madonna's blue cloak (alluding to her role as Queen of Heaven), St. John's staff, and a rich array of flowers. Daisies represent innocence, violets humility, white roses stand for purity, red roses for martyrdom. Embedded in a multitude of references to spiritual virtues, the figures are separated from the secular world, which is represented by a view of Florence in the far distance. (Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha)

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Fourth Monday in Advent

22 December - Fourth Monday in Advent

Joyful Expectation of the Messiah - Luke 1,46-56.

«Mary gave thanks to the Lord»

Mary's Magnificat—a portrait, so to speak, of her soul—is entirely woven from threads of Holy Scripture, threads drawn from the Word of God. Here we see how completely at home Mary is with the Word of God, with ease she moves in and out of it.
She speaks and thinks with the Word of God; the Word of God becomes her word, and her word issues from the Word of God. Here we see how her thoughts are attuned to the thoughts of God, how her will is one with the will of God. Since Mary is completely imbued with the Word of God, she is able to become the Mother of the Word Incarnate.

Finally, Mary is a woman who loves. How could it be otherwise? As a believer who in faith thinks with God's thoughts and wills with God's will, she cannot fail to be a woman who loves. We sense this in her quiet gestures, as recounted by the infancy narratives in the Gospel. We see it in the delicacy with which she recognizes the need of the spouses at Cana and makes it known to Jesus. We see it in the humility with which she recedes into the background during Jesus' public life, knowing that the Son must establish a new family and that the Mother's hour will come only with the Cross... At the hour of Pentecost, it will be the disciples who gather around her as they wait for the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14).

Pope Benedict XVI «Deus Caritas Est», §41

Christmas Greeting

Christmas Greeting

May the wonders of His love
fill your heart with joy
this Christmas and
all through the year.

Nunraw; Our Lady of the Isles.

Statuette three hands high. The Sculptor, Hew Lorimer, made several maquett plaster versions of the granite Madonna and Child which looks out across the sea from the hillside above Rueval on South Uist.

God highly exalted him and gave him the Name that is above every Name, so that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bend. Phi 2:9,10

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Advent - Gaudete Sunday

3rd Sunday - Advent - Gaudete Sunday

Abbot Raymond - HOMILY

Mass Is61:1-2,1--11. 1Thess5:16-24. Jn1:6-8,19-28

THE WITNESS OF THE BAPTIST

John was a man sent from God to bear witness to the Light.

But surely Jesus was much better qualified to bear witness to himself than even John was. What need had he of the witness of John? Who knew better than himself exactly who he was? Who was better able to explain to men exactly who he was? John himself recognised this and when Jesus came, he immediately stepped back, and he said: “Now he must increase and I must decrease”. But the big difference between John’s witness and that of Christ, was precisely that John’s witness also had the nature of a foregoing preparation; a preliminary moulding and shaping and purifying of the minds and hearts of men to recognise and receive the Christ when he would appear.

This is what links the mission of the Baptist to the mission of all the prophets who had gone before him from the very beginning. There were thousands of years of preparation for the coming of the Messiah. And the great lesson for us all in this is that it makes us realise that just as time is an essential element the preparation of the whole human race for the coming of Christ, so also it must be an essential element in each individual human soul’s response to him. Even our very spirituality, our holiness itself, is made of time. We are creatures of time and space, and so our souls, as well as our bodies need time and space to grow to spiritual maturity.

How precious a thing then time is for us on our way to God! It’s not sufficient for us to avoid using it sinfully. St Paul speaks of “redeeming time”, that is, of appreciating it for what it is; of using it wisely and fruitfully; of not wasting and squandering it uselessly. Let us remember then that time is something precious; something that has a spiritual value. Time is something out which our eternity itself will be made.

How then do we set about “redeeming time”; using it fruitfully? Basically and fundamentally it is not so much a question of what to do with time, as of realising and believing in it; of believing that each moment comes to us from God and is a source of grace in any one of a thousand ways. It comes at us, it flows over us, precisely as something sanctifying and bearing grace, whether in the people we encounter on each day’s journey or in the things that are demanded of us by each moment’s requirements; time forces grace upon us in spite of ourselves. In short, it is the attitude of faith that makes it sanctifying.

“Whether you eat or whether you drink, or whatever you do, let it all be for the glory of God"

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Br. Dominic-Maria died Dec 2

Caldey – Br. Dominic Maria RIP

Caldey Abbey – Br. Dominic Maria RIP
The OCSO (Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance) Necrology page announced:
December 2, 2008 : Brother Dominic Maria Morgan was born in 1922 in New York (USA). He entered Caldey in 1990 and made his solemn profession in 1995. Brother was 86 years old and had been in monastic vows for 16 years when the Lord called him.

I came to know the colourful character of Br. Dominic-Maria in the course of visiting the community of Caldey in the 1999s. The island abbey is a place of extraordinary interest. The sea and rugged surroundings are no less unique than the personalities of the monks who have come from such varied members.
Happily, Br. Dominic-Maria was free about telling me the story of his life, his discovery of Caldey and finding of his vocation as a monk.
The annals of the St Benedict Centre Still River, Massachusetts keep the account of one of the Single Brothers called Temple Morgan (Br. Dominic Maria)
“Temple Emmett Morgan was a member of the exclusive Porcelian Club at Harvard. He had been a B-19 pilot in WWII. He was converted to the Catholic Faith by Father Feeney while at Harvard. He realized the incompatibility of his Faith with all that Harvard stood for and therefore declined to accept his degree when he graduated. Predictably this caused a stir and drew the attention of the powers that be to the number of converts that Father Feeney was making among the Harvard students. At the Centre, he excelled in bookselling. He was also a barber and a cobbler and a good friend of Eddie Cunningham who was his partner in these activities. Br. Dominic Maria was one of the three brothers assigned to speak every week on Boston Common. After the move to Still River he was very active on the farm. In 1987 he left St. Benedict Centre as they were preparing to become Benedictine. After short stays at several Abbeys he entered the Trappist Monastery of Our Lady on Caldey Island off the coast of Wales where he remains”.

His name, Dominic-Maria, was rooted in his early formation in the theology of St Louis- Marie Grignon de Montfort, naming themselves Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Dominic-Maria cherished his memories with the association of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in which he was rooted in the spirit of Louis-Marie Grignon.
His greatest passion was to live out the Cistercian vocation and all the community witnessed his heartfelt devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus.
In all Brother Dominic was able to express his love manifested itself in his work in and especially around the Abbey. Near the last he still served that kind service to the Brothers as the untiring faithful barber.
“His master said to him, 'Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master's joy”. (Mat 25:21)

His name, Dominic-Maria, was rooted in his early formation in the theology of St Louis- Marie Grignon de Montfort, naming themselves Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Dominic-Maria cherished his memories with the association of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in which he was rooted in the spirit of Louis-Marie Grignon.
His greatest passion was to live out the Cistercian vocation and all the community witnessed his heartfelt devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus.
In all Brother Dominic was able to express his love manifested itself in his work in and especially around the Abbey. Near the last he still served that kind service to the Brothers as the untiring faithful barber.
“His master said to him, 'Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master's joy”. (Mat 25:21)

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Immaculate Conception BVM

IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY 2008.

It is a pity that there is not a Gospel written by a woman. We could have expected a unique view of the mystery of Christ. The obvious candidate for such a gospel is Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary is in the background in the gospels but a look at the occasions on which she does appear shows up something curious: every time Mary is mentioned it is in association with relatives. Her Son, of course, but also her husband, her cousin, her cousin’s son, her sister, her father in law, her nephews, her nieces and her relations in general are all mentioned in the same breath as her. Could this be a reflection of a typically female interest and concern for family? At any rate, today’s feast places Mary at the heart of her own family by bringing her parents into the picture.

There is another side to Mary, what Dom Bernardo Olivera, former Abbot General, has called the solitude of Mary. This is a purely positive solitude. It is the great monastic principle of being separated from all in order to be united with all operating in Mary’s life. We see this solitude of Mary in the infrequency, already alluded to, with which she appears in the Gospels. We see it at the Annunciation when the angel Gabriel finds her alone. We see it in the ‘nothingness’ of the Magnificat and we see it at the foot of the cross in the solitude of her grief, no matter who or how many others stand by her. It is the inner face of the face she turns outwards to her relatives and others. Mary could have this balance between inner and outer only because she was without sin. Sin causes an imbalance on one side or the other. Today’s society, at least in this country, has the odd distinction of being imbalanced on both sides. Latest figures show that never have so many people lived on their own and yet society has surely never been so utterly obsessed with relationships.

At the Crucifixion, Mary’s family expanded to include all disciples of Christ and indeed all the human race: ‘Behold thy mother’. That was said to the Beloved Disciple. He took her into his home. What was it like to have a sinless one in the house? To live with such a one for years? For a start she surely was the main influence behind the gospel he would write. The house of the Beloved Disciple with Mary living there was the engine room of the early Church or like a spiritual nuclear reactor.

But here is a description someone has given of Mary’s daily life: ‘looking after a very humble household, preparing the meals, grinding the corn, kneading the flour, baking the bread, going to draw water, bringing it home with pitcher on head’. That is what it is like to have one without sin around and that is why those who say that the Church’s dogmas about Mary remove her from ordinary woman and even from the human race are quite wrong. In the tombs and cemeteries of Ancient Egypt are often found small, wooden models of people doing ordinary things – eating, digging, carrying, fishing, marrying, playing. The same sort of scenes are painted on the walls of the bigger tombs. This shows that thousands of years Before Christ people sensed that their everyday tasks were of eternal worth until the time came when the preaching of Jesus and the life of Mary would confirm it.

At one and the same time, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception reveals the simple humanity of Mary- conceived of parents like every other human being and highlights her altogether special place within the human family – without sin from the moment of her conception.

She had all this influence because she was ‘full of grace’. These words are the scriptural basis for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. From the point of view of time, she is at the beginning of Redemption but as one writer points out it is better to think of it as a mysterious circle. The circle runs from the Immaculate Conception of Mary through the Annunciation and the Birth of the Redeemer to the Cross and from the Cross it returns to the perfect act of Redemption, the Immaculate Conception – Mary’s ‘anticipated Redemption’.

It was of course, our local hero, Blessed John Duns Scotus, who had this crucial insight into the truth of the Immaculate Conception and it found its way into the definition of the dogma in the phrase ‘ in view of the merits of Christ Jesus’. It is an honour for Nunraw to be the nearest religious community to the birthplace of THE champion of the Immaculate Conception, beating the Poor Clares of Humbie to that honour by a good four miles.

Br. Barry

Sermon of Solemnity

Community Chapter

2nd Sunday of Advent

2nd Sunday of Advent
Is. 40: 1-5, 9-11. Peter 3:8-14. Mk 1:1-8

Abbot Raymond - Community Chapter Homily

“With the Lord, ‘a day’ can mean a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord is not slow to carry out his promises, as anybody else might be called slow”.
These words from today’s 2nd Reading remind us that we can’t judge God by our own human standards. Obviously the Church means to teach is today that the fulfilment of the hopes and promises of the Advent Season can only be understand by using God’s standards and not our own. Advent promises us one who is to come, whose “rule will be from sea to sea; from the great river to earth’s bounds”; “He will rule over the House of David”; “his reign will have no end” and so on. But the history of the Church since then just doesn’t seem to live up to those promises. Even to this present day the Kingdom of Christ seems a long way off. It still seems very far from being universal in its power or universal in its extent.
From the perspective of men, the Church, the Kingdom which Jesus came to establish on earth, can only be seen, here and now, as a struggling remnant, persecuted on all sides. It is constantly swimming against the tide of evil; swimming against the powerful currents of secular society. But this impression comes from a lack of appreciation of the past history of God’s People and from a lack of understanding of the future destiny of God’s People. All this is so well described for us in the New Catechism:
“The Kingdom will be fulfilled, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the last judgement after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.”
Meanwhile, from the perspective of God, the Advent claims and promises are all fulfilled in our lives hidden with Christ. It is in the minds and hearts of those who receive him; of those who welcome him, of those who believe in him and trust in him, that is where the kingdom of the Messiah is well and truly established here and now.

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Christ the King

Abbot Raymond – Community Mass. 23rd Nov. 2008

The Kingship of Christ

“Are you a King then? Pilate asked Jesus. And Jesus reply was in no uncertain terms: “You have said it! For this was I born and for this I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth.”
Christ’s Kingship is indeed well attested to in both the old and the new Testaments. In his own life he displayed his power and authority over nature and even over life and death itself: He healed the sick; he raised the dead; he calmed the wind and the waves. There is no problem in understanding the reality of the power of Christ’s Kingship. But when it comes to understanding the exercise of his authority things are not so simple and obvious. When he gave power and authority to his Apostles he warned them not to use it as did the great ones of the earth. “They like to wield their authority and make it felt.” He told them. But their power authority were to be more in the order of service.

Nevertheless, authority is authority, and from one point of view we might almost say that Christ’s own authority, paramount as it is, is a kind of embarrassment to him. If He has to exercise it over us it seems to make his mission a failure. He seems to compromise the fruit of all that he strove to win from us. Because he came, above all, to win our love, and where authority has to be invoked, love has failed. Love, by its very nature, must be free, it cannot be forced. Any of this worlds leaders may have thousands at their beck and call, thousands who must obey them, but do they have any who love them freely?

The powers of this world can say to their subjects: “Do this, Do that”, and they must do it. They can say: “Come here. Go there.” And their servants must obey. But Jesus cannot speak like that or his mission fails. The only word that can come from the lips of Jesus is “Please!” It is the only request that befits love. In our conformity to the will of Jesus there is always something of a Nuptial Assent.

In this is the true glory of his Authority, the true meaning of his Kingship.

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The Feast of Christ the King

23.11.08 Community Sermon of Feast – Br. Philip

The Feast of Christ the King

In his encyclical of Dec. 11, 1925, Pope Pius XI instituted a new feast, the Feast of the Christ of King, which is to be celebrated on the last Sunday of the Liturgical Year.

Why did the Holy Father want to commemorate, by a special feast, a doctrine so uncontroversial? Why was the moment ripe, did he suppose, for that particular lesson? Perhaps it is easier to understand that if you understand who the Holy Father was.

He did not belong to the ordinary tradition of ecclesiastical Rome. Until he was sixty, he was known as a librarian and a scholar; he lived in an international and interdenominational world of scholarship. He was the only Pope since the Reformation and long before it, who had visited Oxford. He was librarian of the Ambrosian library at Milan. Quite suddenly at the age of sixty, he was sent as Nuncio to Poland, that is to all that there was of Poland, when the Russian Revolution had already happened and the war was not yet over. The story is that he was chosen for the post, because he was thought capable of learning Polish in a fortnight. His position lasted on after the war; and he was in Warsaw at what was probably the most thrilling moment of history since Versailles; the moment at which the Red Armies swept through Polish territory and were at the very gates of the capital, which seemed doomed to fall. The Government was preparing to leave; it was suggested to the embassies that they should leave too. Mgr. Ratti insisted on staying; the American, Italian and Danish envoys, - no other – remained to follow his example and share his fate. But he saw onthe Feast of the Assumption, the Polish Army roll back the Bolshevists from the gates of Warsaw in defeat.

Almost immediately he was recalled to Italy and was made Archbishop of Milan. It was under his very eyes that the early struggles between the Italian Communists and the growing strength of the Fascists took place, within the walls of his own cathedral city. He had not held the position for a year when he was summoned to Rome for the conclave following the death of Benedict XV; and from the conclave he never returned.

In the course of that providential career he had seen more than it is given to most Popes to see. His background is a background of European culture; and circumstances had suddenly thrust under his eyes, after his sixtieth year, vivid impressions of that great struggle between two great forces in Europe, national and international socialism, which the rest of the world hardly suspected as yet. When he was crowned Pope, he insisted on giving his blessing to the world from the balcony of St. Peter’s, a thing no Pope had done since the loss of its temporal power. Even so early, he had made up his mind that the Papacy must come out of its retirement, and make itself felt as a moral force in the world. And he introduced this feast of the Kingship of Christ with the same ideal in view. He saw that the minds of men, of young men especially, all over Europe, would be caught by a wave of conflicting loyalties which would drown the voice of conscience and produce everywhere unscrupulous wars between nations. To save the world, if he could, from the frenzy of reckless idealism, he would recall it to the contemplation of a simple truth. The claim that the claim of Christ comes first, before claims of nationality. Peace and justice were duties to God more than any duties to his fellow men. And all that before the conflict between the Church and Fascism, before the revolution in Spain, before the name of Hitler had ever been set up in the type-room of a foreign newspaper.

The institution of this feast was not a gesture of clericalism against anti-clericalism, still less a gesture of authoritarianism against democracy. It was a gesture of Christian truth against a world which was on the point of going mad with political propaganda; it was to say to the world that the claim of the divine law upon the human conscience comes before anything else.

The prophet Daniel describing his vision says of Christ:

‘To him was given dominion, and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his Kingdom one that shall not be destroyed’.

St. Mechtilde

St. Mechtilde of Hackeborn

Menology November 19
St Mechtilde of Hackeborn 1241-1298
Of a noble family, when she was seven, her parents placed her in the convent of Rossdorf where her sister, Gertrude, was soon elected abbess. The community moved to Helfta in 1258, and the five-year old St Gertrude was placed in Mechtilde's care. They became close friends and mutually influenced and helped each other. It was Gertrude who first wrote down Mechtilde's mystical experiences in what became The Book of Special Grace, a book whose "every page is alive with color and splendid with light and sound."
Mechtilde, who possessed a beautiful voice, was for many years chantress and chant-mistress at Helfta. (MBS, p. 303; Peaceweavers, CS 72, p. 213)
"What best pleases God in members of religious orders is purity of heart, holy desires, gentle kindness in conversation, and works of charity."

Night Office
Reading from St Bernard on his Mystical Experiences
I confess that the Word has visited me, and even very often. But, although he has frequently entered into my soul, I have never at any time known the time of his coming. I have felt that he was present; I remember that he has been with me; I have sometimes even been able to have a presentiment that he would come; but never felt his coming or his departure. It is not by the eyes that he enters, for he is without colour; nor by the ears, for his coming is without sound; nor by the nostrils, for it is not with the air but with the mind that he is blended; nor again does he enter by the mouth, not being of a nature to be eaten or drunk; nor lastly is he capable of being traced by the touch, for he is intangible.
You will ask, then, how is it that if the ways of his coming cannot be traced I could know that he was present? He is living and full of energy: as soon as he entered me he quickened my sleeping soul; he aroused, softened and goaded my heart which had been in a state of torpor and was hard as stone. He began to pick up and destroy, to plant and to build and to water the dry places. He illuminated the darkness within me and threw open those places which were closed; he warmed my coldness, straightened my crooked paths and made my rough places smooth. And he did all this so that I might bless the Lord and all that is within me praise his name.
Thus, though he has several times entered into me, he has never made his coming apparent to my sight, hearing or touch. It was not by his actions that I recognized him. Nor could I tell by any of my senses that he had penetrated into the depths of my being. It was, as I have said, only by the movement of my heart that I could recognize his presence. I knew the might of his power by the sudden departure of my vices and the strong restraint put upon all carnal affections. From the discovery and conviction of my secret faults I have good reason to admire the depths of his wisdom. His goodness and kindness have become known in the amendment of my life, whatever that may amount to. And, in the renewal of the spirit of my mind, that is, of my inward man, I have seen in some degree the loveliness of his beauty and been filled with amazement at his greatness.

Adapted from The Spear of Gold (B & 0, London, 1947), pp. 261-261.

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Abbot Eugene Boylan Reading

This READING is found in today's Missalette.
MEDITATION OF THE DAY
(Magnificat Vol. 10, No. 9)
Monday 17 November 2008


Abbot Eugene Boylan (+1963) was a monk of the Cistercian Abbey of Mount Saint Joseph Roscrea, Ireland.

Love of The Faith That Saves

God ... is the essential principle of the spiritual life; without it everything else is useless. But man is a rational being; one cannot love the unknown. So knowledge must precede love. And if that love is going to mean a complete abandonment of one's own self, a losing of one's own life, to find a new self, a new life - to find one's all, in fact, in membership of Christ, it is still more urgent to have a sure and certain knowledge of Christ and his love. But in this world, the only way one can know God supernatu­rally is by faith. Reason can give us a certain, but natural, knowledge of his existence and of some of his attributes; but faith alone can tell us of the wonders of his love and his plans for us. Faith alone can put us in vital contact with him, for when we believe in God, we share his knowledge, we lean on him, and draw our strength from him ... The Church insists that reason authorizes faith, and so far from asking us to deny our reason, she teaches that faith insists on being founded on reason. Once, however, the rea­sonableness of believing our authority is established, that authority may ask us to go beyond our reason, but never to go against it. .. "Faith," as Prat points out, "is not a pure intuition, a mystical tendency towards an object more suspected than known; it presupposes preaching; it is the yielding of the mind to divine testimony. Faith is opposed to sight, both as regards the object known and the manner of knowing; one is immediate and intuitive, the other takes place though an interactive agent. Nevertheless, faith is not blind: it is ready to give a reason for itself and aspires always to move to more clearness.”

Dom M. Eugene Boylan O.C.S.O.

A monk of Roscrea Abbey in his native Ireland, Eugene Boylan (1904-1963) served as superior of Caldey Abbey in Wales, then Tarrawarra, Australia, and finally as abbot of Roscrea before his untimely death. From his experience as confessor and spiritual director, he wrote two classic books: This Tremendous Lover and Difficulties in Mental Prayer. About 1958, Thomas Merton commented on Abbot Eugene Boylan,"This is the best retreat we ever had at Gethsemani,"

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Abbot Raymond

Abbot Raymond has returned home from Assisi where the General Chapter of the Cistercain Order of Strict Observer took place September 2nd - 23rd, 2008.

We have just these photos.

Abbot Raymond - Morning Chapter
19 October [29th Sunday Ordinary time]

WE KNOW THAT GOD LOVES US
St Paul tells the Thessalonians (1:1-5) that he knows that God loves them and the proof he offers is that they responded to his preaching with utter conviction as to a word that came with the power of the Spirit. And we too all know that God loves us, and we have many proofs of the workings of God’s grace in our lives – our Baptism into the life of Grace; our call to the monastic life, and there must be many more personal signs in the private lives of each and every one of us. Above all, of course, we have the revelation that God so loved the world that he gave his Only Son to be born into this world for us, to suffer and die for us. What more proofs do we need.
Yet there is such a thing as a belief that God loves us without a vivid personal knowledge of that love. For example, when we come before God in prayer, what is our fundamental attitude of soul? A lot will depend, of course, on circumstances. If we have recently offended him, then our attitude will have something of shame and sorrow – like Peter when he said “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (Luke 5:1-11) We will be standing before God, but we won’t be looking at him; not in the face anyway. Our heads will be hanging in shame. And how often do we hang our heads before God, if not in shame, at least in humility! That, no doubt is a good thing, a very good thing. But if we are always hanging our heads in shame or in humility, then we will never really know the love God has for us.
It is only when we learn to lift up our heads and look God fully in the face that we can see that love shining on us. Only when we look up at him as a child does to its Father; as a lover does to the one he loves; only then can we really see, and know, and taste that love that is always reaching out to us. One of the most wonderful experiences in life is surely to know and feel that someone loves us; that we are precious to someone; that someone is drawn irresistibly towards us; that someone rejoices in us and desires us greatly.
It is our fundamental attitude to God, our fundamental approach to God then that brings us this wonderful awareness of just how much we mean to him and just how very truly he is drawn to us by love. I remember once speaking here about the virtue of “Spiritual Coyness”. We call a beautiful young lady “coy” when she is very conscious of her beauty and attractiveness and she revels in it.
There must be something of this “spiritual coyness” in our approach to God. Noblesse oblige. God’s grace in our souls is a reality. A wonderful, beautiful, irresistible reality. Let us remember that when we approach our God in prayer.

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The Assumption BVM

The Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (August 15. 2008)

Abbot Raymond - Abbey Mass

If we compare Mary’s title as Mother of God with the privilege of her bodily Assumption into heaven then it is obvious that it is a greater thing to be Mother of God than to be bodily assumed into heaven. There can be no comparison. To be Mother of the Word incarnate is, in an absolute way, greater than any of the other graces with which Mary was favoured. All her other privileges were either a preparation for this or a consequence of this.

However, one thing can be greater than another in one way and yet less than another in another way. For instance one thing can be more beautiful than another yet less useful; more flexible than another yet less strong, and so on. So there is a point of view from which Mary’s Assumption has its own pre-eminence in her destiny. Mary’s bodily Assumption into heaven was the climax, the rounding off, the completion of her earthly existence; the icing on the cake, as it were.

In saying that we are considering the Assumption as a personal privilege of Mary, but there is another viewpoint of Mary’s Assumption into heaven. We can look on it not just as something personal to Mary but also as something which is intimately connected with the destiny of us all. Not that we can all hope for a bodily assumption into heaven after we die, but Mary’s bodily assumption, like the ascension of Christ himself, is a kind of pledge and guarantee of the ultimate destiny of our own body of flesh and blood. Christ, the New Adam, has entered the New Paradise, of which the Old Paradise was just a foreshadowing, and Mary, the New Eve, has been given to him as his first companion in the fullness of her humanity.

When the doctrine of the Assumption was first defined, our separated brethren asked, “Where is this in Scripture? We can’t believe what is not in Scripture”. But we can answer that this wonderful event in the history of God’s dealings with his children is well prepared for in Holy Scripture. The mind of faith is prepared for it by such events as the lifting up of Elijah from this earth in the fiery chariot. We are prepared for it by the disappearance from this earth of the bodies of Enoch and Moses for example. But by far the most important foreshadowing of Mary’s Assumption takes place in the very first chapters of Genesis where it is said of the first Adam: “It is not good for Man to be alone”. There were plenty of other living creatures around, but none “like unto himself” to share his life with him on a fully human level. So too surely it must be with the New Adam in the new Paradise. There are plenty of angels and spirits of the just there too but, for the fullness and perfection of all that beauty and truth, he needs one by his side who can share his life in the fullness of his human nature, body as well as spirit. Yes even for the New Adam in the New Paradise “It is not good for Man to be alone”.

ALL FOR JESUS THRO MARY WITH A SMILE

ALL FOR JESUS
THRO MARY
WITH A SMILE

Birthday 13^th August

Email from William:
“What a delight sharing Thomas Merton's journal!
At the office my successor is on and off the internet between jobs, . . .and extends his meanderings to me, he looks up anything he can get me to talk about... one being Thomas Merton. He copied down for me the photo (below) of the flyleaf of a first edition of "No Man is an Island", signed by the author and the Abbot of Gethsemane. Can you make out the words on the rubber stamp?
I have printed it as a bookmark for my 'Sign of Jonas'! (William).”

Reply to William:

Your fascinating flyleaf from ‘No Man Is An Island’ and the stamp of Abbot James Fox, "All for Jesus -Thro Mary - With a Smile" reminded me of Abbot Malachy and his Pectoral Cross. I thought he used the same text but I have found Ab. Malachy's Cross and you will see from the photographs that it is a variation of the same theme. “ + Per Jesum ad Mariam.”

There must be a story to the Gethsemani version – my guess is that it originated with Abbot Frederick Dunn from a memorable Annual Retreat given to the community. It is now listed among ‘merton-artifacts.com’.

It was my birthday today, 13the August.

Yesterday I was away for a cousin’s funeral. At 74, one of our helpers wryly commented that I have many cousins’ funerals and have now run out of Grannies. . .!!

A Birthday is a time to make a new resolution. And already to hand was William’s question about the rubber stamp of Abbot James at Gethsemani.

So what better birthday resolution than, "All for Jesus -Thro Mary - With a Smile".

There were five young children and their parents and their Grannie among those at the Mass this morning. So I will try to speak “with a smile” and not with a glum face.

Also a Birthday is a good time for a change of gear, and that was presented to me in the Gospel commentary by Saint Cyprian on Mt.18,15-20
«I am there in the midst of them»
There is a telling little phrase in the Eucharistic Prayer,
"Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church." St. Cyprian’s words seem to lift the whole perspective from both a mercenary view of answer to prayers and an individualist outlook. If ‘the two or three are united in prayer’, they are the Church. Look not on our sins but on the FAITH, the prayer, the love of the Church.

As St. Bernard believed when he was counselling a monk who said that he had lost his Faith, he said that the Faith of the community, of the Church, makes up for the darkness of the monk tempted to unbelief..

St. Cyprian's are the words of a Saint who had that great perspective of the living Church. Hence my quote below:

"The Lord said: "If two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."

These words prove that much is given not to the mere number but to the unanimity of those who pray. "If two of you agree on earth," he says, putting unanimity and peaceful concord first, teaching us to agree firmly and loyally. But how can one man agree with another when he disagrees with the body of the Church itself, with the whole brotherhood?... The Lord's words were spoken about his own Church and addressed to members of the Church. If they are agreed, if, as he commanded, but two or three are gathered together and pray with one mind, then, although they are but two or three, they can obtain from the divine majesty what they ask.

"Where two or three are gathered, I (he said) am with them." That means, of course, with the single-hearted and peaceable, with those who fear God and keep his commandments. With these, though but two or three, he declared his presence, as he was present also with the Three Children in the fiery furnace, and, because they continued single-hearted and of one mind, refreshed them with the breath of dew as the flames surrounded them (Dn 3,50); or as he was present with the two apostles in prison, because they were single-hearted and of one mind, and himself opened the prison gates (Acts 25,25)... So when Christ lays down with authority: "Where two or three are gathered, I am with them," he is not separating men from the Church which he founded and created. But he rebukes the faithless for their discord and with his own voice commends peace to the faithful".

Later, Abbot Raymond was commenting on the effects of the annoyances and resentments we project on to the distasteful or objectionable actions of others. Even the suppressed tendency to curse or swear against a situation has its baneful influence. The effects have a BOOMERANG effect on ourselves, he said. It is echoed here again in Mt.18,15-20, “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Sign of Jonah Retreat Sunday

The monthly Retreat Sunday found me again, dipping into “The Sign of Jonas”. (10th Aug 2008)

If I am supposed to be keeping a kind of Chronicle of the community, I can hardly find a better template than The sign of Jonas, ‘The Journal of Thomas Merton – day experiences and meditations’, as the blurb of the first Edition has it. The hard-back cover is now a collector’s piece so I have laminated it before it gets any tattier.

The Sign of Jonas.

The monastic life is by its very nature "ordinary." Its ordinariness is one of its greatest blessings. The exterior monotony of regular observance delivers us from useless concern with the details of daily life, absolves us from the tedious necessity of making plans and of coming to many personal decisions. It sets us free to pray all day, and to live alone with God.

But for me, the vow of stability has been the belly of the whale. I have always felt a great attraction to the life of perfect solitude. It is an attraction I shall probably never entirely lose. During my years as a student at Gethsemani, I often wondered if this attraction was not a genuine vocation to some other religious Order. It took me several years to find out that all con­templative Orders have much the same problems. Every man called to contemplation is called to some degree of solitude. God knows well enough how much each one needs. We need faith to let Him decide how much we are to obtain. My own solution of this problem is the main theme of the present book. Like the prophet Jonas, whom God ordered to go to Nineveh, I found myself with an almost uncontrollable desire, to go in the opposite direction. God pointed one way and all my "ideals" pointed in the other. It was when Jonas was travelling as fast as he could away from Nineveh, toward Tharsis, that he was thrown overboard, and swallowed by a whale who took him where God wanted him to go.

A monk can always legitimately and significantly compare himself to a prophet, because the monks are the heirs of the prophets. The prophet is a man whose whole life is a living witness of the providential action of God in the world. Every prophet is a sign and a witness of Christ. Every monk, in whom Christ lives, and in whom all the prophecies are therefore ful­filled, is a witness and a sign of the Kingdom of God. Even our mistakes are eloquent, more than we know.

The sign Jesus promised to the generation that did not understand Him was the "sign of Jonas the prophet" - that is, the sign of His own resurrection. The life of every monk, of every priest, of every Christian is signed with the sign of Jonas, because we all live by the power of Christ's resurrection. But I feel that my own life is especially sealed with this great sign, which baptism and monastic profession and priestly ordination have burned into the roots of my being, because like Jonas himself I find myself travelling toward my destiny in the belly of a paradox. (Prologue - concluding paragraphs)

. . .

The blessings of my Cistercian vocation are poured out on me in Scripture and I live again in the lineage of Bernard and I see that if I had been deeper in Scriptures all my past temptations to rune to some Order would have more quickly lost their meaning, for contemplation is found in faith, not in geography: you can dig for it in Scripture, but you will never find it by crossing the seas. (Aug. 8 1949).

It is a pity that Merton never had the chance of staying in the Holy Land. Bernard’s antipathy to monks going to the Holy Land seems to have rubbed off on Cistercians. Merton shared Bernard’s literary eloquence in the description of the Biblical sites but neither can claim asense of the physicality of the land trod by Chris. Bernard and Pope Eugene were to regret their mobilization of military forces for the Crusades but not the monks to serve in the lands of the Bible. By way of some compensation the monks at Latroun in Israel today preserve a precarious foothold of that Cistercian presence.

. . .

There is no reason why a monk should not have a definite attitude towards the place which, in relation to his monastery, is “town.” I do not think that being a monk means being living on the moon. (Nov 11, 1950)

In ‘Fire Watch’ Epilogue Merton reproaches himself first for failing in silence and then for filling that emptiness with talk about it.

Have men of our age acquired a Midas touch of their own, so that as soon as they succeed, everything they touch becomes crowded with people. (Epilogue ‘Fire Watch’)

Was Merton a monk? Was Merton a hermit? Or was he a full time browser? Very soon he would have become a star Blogger. Or would his Abbot been after him in the manner of a very recent headline, “Priestly Blogging – Has it Got Out of Hand”, (Catholic Herald Auf 1, 2008).

I had never heard of FILLION, nor I am sure had Merton but his ‘POST’ on the subject is a gem from the blogosphere of his day.

. . .

Fillion, a Scripture scholar whom I am appointed to read, encourages young priests to study Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Itala, Arabic, Syriac, Assyrian, Ethiopean, Coptic, Armenian, Persian, Slavonic, Gothic, and the three main Egyptian dialects, namely Salidic (spoken at Thebes), Fayoumic, (spoken in the oasis of Faymoum), and Memphic (spoken at Memphis. Besides being grounded in oriental archaeology and ethnography, the young priest should also possess a smattering of botany, zoology, geology, and have more than a nodding acquaintance with the Talmud. Also he says one ought to read a few Yiddish novels, by way of recreation.

When you have mastered all this you will be able to elucidate the ivy passage in Jonas, for instance, and you will come to the conclusion that Jonas in Nineveh sat down under a castor oil plant (ivy) and became attached to its shade.
On the whole, I think Saint Teresa's interpretation of Jonas's ivy is more interesting, and she didn't know one word of Egyptian either.
Yet on the other hand, at Mass this morning, I was momentarily distracted with a mild fit of compunction over the Little Flower's statement that if she were a priest she would learn Hebrew and Greek in order to read the revealed word of God in the original languages.

From Fillion, The Study of the Bible, p. 220:
"One day Cardinal Fillion, Archbishop of Lyons, said to me: 'Why is the cat, that charming animal, not mentioned in the Bible?' (Is it so charming after all?-Fillion's comment.)

"I answered: 'Your Eminence, it is mentioned in the Book of Baruch or to be more exact in the letter of Jeremias at the end of that book; the prophet shows it walking over the heads and bodies of the Babylonian idols.' "

So I rush to the Book of Baruch (6:20-21) and find:
"Their faces are black with the smoke that is made in the house.
Owls and swallows and other birds fly upon their bodies and upon their heads, and cats in like manner."
It is the first time I have read the sixth chapter of Baruch and it is a wonderful chapter, written by Jeremias to the Jews going to Babylon, into captivity, to preserve them against temptations to idolatry. "For as a scarecrow in a garden of cucumbers keepeth nothing, so are their gods of wood and of silver, laid over with gold. They are not better than a white thorn in a garden upon which every bird sitteth ... ." .(Aug 19, 1949)

. . .

Daniel delivered Susanna by a judgement inspired by the Holy Spirit and Christ came down to the Temple from the Mount of Olives to deliver the adulteress with the grace of counsel. The Mount of Olives is the mount of chrism, of anointing, of inspiration and counsel and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. (March 18 1950).

I walked the Mount of Olives as often as I could and it became my special place in Jerusalem. By paradox, even if Merton never set foot in the Holy Places, his few words on the Mount of Olives seem to resonate beautifully.

Monthly Retreat:
To be continued: Simon bar Jonah - more on the sign of Jonah.