PENTECOST Night Office (Selection fitting for this 9th centenary year of Aelred) From a sermon by Saint Aelred of Rievaulx (Talbot 1, 112-114) This reading shows the cosmic dimensions of the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit was active at the beginning of creation; since Pentecost he has been active in the work of recreation in the waters of baptism.
Responsory John 3:24; Sirach 1:9-10 All who keep God's commandments live in God
—We know that he dwells in us, by the Spirit he has given us, alleluia. In his holy Spirit God created wisdom,
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Sunday 23 May 2010
PENTECOST 2
Saturday 22 May 2010
Pentecost
The Descent of the Holy Spirit
The Spirit comes to the community and through the community. The Spirit creates in us the bond of love which establishes the Church.
Mary, the Mother of the Church, holds her hands in prayer and leads the apostles in prayer. Many of the apostles are confused and perhaps even frightened by the descent of the Holy Spirit. But Mary is calm, prayerful and open, and her conduct comforts them and reminds them of her Son. She reminds them - and us - to pray.
There is an old man in the centre of the icon. Surrounded by Mary and the apostles, he symbolizes the world. He is there to remind us that we do not pray for ourselves alone, but for the entire world. The Holy Spirit descends on the apostles, and on us in Chrismation (Confirmation), so that we can carry the Spirit into the world. Our prayer helps to transform not only ourselves, but also our friends, our neighbours, our world. M. Tataryn.
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Friday 21 May 2010
Saint Aelred workshop Mt St Bernard abbey
900th Anniversary of the Birth of
St. Ailred by Fr. Michael Casey Monday 26th April- Saturday 1st May 2010 Mount St. Bemard Abbey | Guest Participants 1. Fr. Michael Casey Tarrawara 2. Sr. Elizabeth Whitland 3. Sr. Jo Whitland 4. Br. Benedict Caldey 5. Br. Luca Caldey 6. Sr. Elizabeth M. Brownshill 7. Sr. M. Phillipa Brownshill 8. Sr. M Stephen Brownshill 9. Fr. Aelred Portglenone 10. Fr. Nivard Bamenda/Nunraw 11. Fr. Hugh Nunraw 12. Sr. Denise Glencaim 13. Sr. Maria Hyning 14. Sr. M. Anthony Hyning 15. Sr. M Colette Hyning 16. Sr. Michaela Hyning 17. Br. Brian 18. Sr. Theresa Ware 19. Sr-. Zoe Ware 20. Sr. Ruth Ware Two nuns from Rempstone each day |
From Nunraw two of the community attended the St. Aelred of Rievaulx 'Workshop' at Mount Saint Bernerard, Fr. Hugh and Fr. Nivard.
On the return home, Fr. Hugh gave at talk about the event in the Chapter. He has now produced his 'report' as below.
The photgraphs appended were taken by Fr. Nivard.
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9th. CENTENARY OF ST. AELRED's BIRTH
SEMINAR ON ST. AELRED AT MT. ST. BERNARD’s
by Fr Michael Casey. April 26th May 1st.
Mount St. Bernards invited members of the Order, Bernardines and Carmelites from Ware to attend this Seminar. Twenty of us came and were joined by members of the Mt. St. Bernards Community. Fr Michael gave some eight conferences during the week with group discussions twice a day. We also had informal discussions about current problems facing Cistercian life in these islands which were quite lively.
Fr Michael began by giving us a realistic picture of St. Aelred considerably different from the popular impression given by Walter Daniel's biography which describes a community which was ideal without much in the way of difficulties. Aelred himself was accused of wanting the Abbot's job and scheming to get it. WaIter Daniel says that this is nonsense and was the work of evil spirits, In any case St. Aelred did not find the Abbot's job congenial. He says in his little book On Jesus When He was Twelve Years Old, that before he was Abbot the reading of the Gospel used to arouse fervent sentiments in his own soul - it isn't like that any longer now ties of worldly cares and secular business have drawn me from these delights(Ch. I).
On top of this Aelred had chronic ill health - kidney trouble and arthritis amongst other things which confined him in a sick room. Then there was the political situation. The Scots fought against the English at the battle of Northalteton and Aelred had friends on both sides. The Normans who had invaded England in 1066 laid waste the country between the Humber and the Tyne when the people of the North rebelled against them. Aelred as a Saxon was a member of a conquered race and he had both Normans and Saxons in his community. One would have expected racial animosity and Fr Michael referred to this, but interesting enough there doesn't seem to be any reference to this in his writings, although he talks about plenty of other things which were wrong.
Our Cistercian Fathers never thought of themselves as living in a golden age of Monasticism or in a great age of the Faith. Aelred refers to the fervour of the early monks, Antony , Macarius and Hilarion and then goes on to say that the monks of his day are materialistic, contentious and quarrelsome. (P.L. 195 Col 404).
In regard to the Church in general he says that money and ambition play a greater part in promotion to office than virtue and good repute. (Synodo de Pastore p155).
What are we to make of the often referred to, of Aelred's practice of admitting everybody and dismissing nobody. It was the custom in Medieval biography to describe an ideal rather than give factual account of what happened. If Walter Daniel did this, as he admits elsewhere in his Life of St. Aelred, not all of what he writes should be taken too literally.
St. Aelred's teaching can be best summed up in his own words: "What is more useful for you to know than how you should love your God, your Creator, your redeemer? Without doubt, brothers nothing is so useful, nothing so necessary" (Discourse 80).
In his book the Mirror of Charity Aelred calls love "The hearts palate which sees that you are sweet the hearts eye which sees that you are good. And it is the place capable of receiving you, great as you are. Someone who loves you grasps you. The more one loves, the more one grasps, because you yourself are love, for you are charity" ( Para 2)
"Capable of receiving you". In Latin "Capax Dei” words difficult to translate sufficiently poignantly in English but much used by our Cistercian Fathers. It was always a truth much beloved and emphasised by the early Cistercians in their efforts to establish a School of Divine Charity.
Aelred stands out as a man who was kind and sympathetic, a good judge of human nature, someone who loved and enjoyed friendship who enjoyed his monastic life and wanted others to share that joy in spite of all the very real trials of his times.
On the fourth day of the Seminar we had a very enjoyable outing to Rievaulx, Ampleforth and New Stanbrook where we were given a tour of this beautiful and striking modern building.
Finally many thinks for everything to Fr. Michael and the Mount St. Bernards Community for this excellent Seminar and for their hospitality.
Fr. Hugh.
Nunraw.
Thursday 20 May 2010
Algerian Martyrs - “Sacrament of Encounter”
Subject: Fw: Blog Atlas Martyrs anniversary 21 May 2010
Date: Thursday, 20 May, 2010, 16:19
Dear, William,
Thank you for the loving commemoration of the Atlas Martyrs.
Within the hour, the beautiful memorial card and seven red roses were delivered by mail from the florist.
The flowers and words (made up of pure extracts from Fr Martin McGee's book, drawn together and ordered for presentation), you have sent, powerfully express the continuing presence of the Cistercian Monks of Tibhirine.
We will be united in the Mass tomorrow morning for memory of our Brothers of Atlas; Fr. Christian de Chergé, Br. Luc Dochier, Fr. Christophe Lebreton, Br. Paul Favre-Miville, Br. Michel Fleury, Fr. Bruno Lemarchand, and Fr. Célestin Ringeard.
…
Donald.
THE ATLAS MARTYRS
The Algerian Martyrs and the “Sacrament of Encounter”
To commemorate the deaths of the Seven Atlas Martyrs, this series of extracts from the exceptional book by Fr. Martin McGee, OSB, “Christian Martyrs for a Muslim People”, presents a short reflection on the issues that faced the brothers of Tibhirine and how the sacrifice of their lives and those of the other martyrs brought new meaning to the mission of the Church of Algeria. (Published 2008 Paulist Press ISBN 978-0-8091-4539-3)
Martyrdom of love
The witness of the nineteen Algerian martyrs in the 1990s is so powerful because it speaks of nineteen lives given for others out of love. These martyrs, all members of religious orders, knowingly assumed martyrdom out of love for their Muslim brothers and sisters, out of solidarity with them in their suffering. The Vatican II Church sent out martyrs to serve a non-Christian people, and these priests and religious felt bound by the same fidelity as if their people were Christian. The immense family of God’s children for whom one can lay down one’s life goes beyond all confessional, cultural, or ethnic barriers.
Universal dialogue of salvation
The Archbishop of Algiers, Msgr. Teissier reflects: “The love of God is universal. There is therefore a dialogue of salvation to be undertaken with all the peoples of the earth. This “universal dialogue of salvation” is necessary for the Church herself, who would be unfaithful to her mission if she wasn’t its servant”. He points out that what was peculiar to these Algerian martyrs was that they had sacrificed their lives “not so as to avoid renouncing directly their faith, nor to defend a Christian community, but through fidelity to a Muslim people.” They were martyrs of charity.
The influence of Tibhirine
As well as wishing to show solidarity with the villagers, a second reason for the monks of Tibhirine to stay was their wish to show solidarity with the beleaguered Christian Church in Algeria . “Nine hundred thousand Christians who suddenly disappear is an apocalype for the church. If Tibhirine remains, the Church is saved.” These words were spoken by Cardinal Duval in Rome in 1963 when closure of Notre-Dame de l’Atlas was under consideration. He knew that the Christian Church in Algeria would lose heart without the inspiration that a contemplative community like Tibhirine provided, a community whose raison d’être was not apostolic work but prayer and community life. Not only is a monastic community essential for the well-being of the Christian Church, but it is also a way of life that Muslims instinctively understand and respect.
The faithfulness of Tibhirine
The monastic life, with its emphasis on the Opus Dei, is a witness easily understood by Islam, a religion that stresses the transcendence of God and our duty of worshipping him. In the faithfulness of the Tibhirine monks to worship, their neighbours could recognize a strong link with their own communal practice of praying five times a day. Since the start of the civil war in 1992, the relationship between the monastery and its Muslim neighbours had grown closer than ever. This relationship was a powerful example of the Christian-Muslim dialogue of daily life. Through living in prayer, silence, and friendship, side by side with their Muslim brothers and sisters, they had overcome the barriers of hate and mistrust between Christian and Muslim.
Sacredness of human life
All foreigners in Algeria had been put under sentence of death in 1993 by the GIA, an Islamic armed group, with the real prospect of assassination by the fundamentalists. If the monks were to leave Tibhirine in the face of the threat to their lives, would it not be to allow violence and intimidation to have the final word? Msgr. Teissier was himself well placed to meditate on this difficult question of prudence versus evangelical solidarity. In a reflection he writes that we need to respect the sacredness of human life and not risk it for ideological reasons: “But how can one renounce risking one’s life for people with whom one is in solidarity? It is so much in harmony with what we meet in the life of Jesus and with what we celebrate in the Eucharist… We are all placed in an exceptional situation where it is necessary to run the risk of dying on account of the ties which God has given us with brothers and sisters with whom we have drawn close on account of the Gospel. All our Algerian friends run the same risk. Many other Christians worldwide also live in similar circumstances. What is perhaps special to our case is that our ties of fidelity have been established with Muslims. Now that is precisely the special vocation of our Algerian Church .”
Sacrament of encounter
They were facing the difficult question that keeps coming up in the contemporary Church in Algeria and which was equally alive for Charles de Foucauld in his time: How does a Christian live out his beliefs in a Muslim Society? What does the Gospel have to say to a Muslim culture? And perhaps the new issue that Msgr. Teissier and others are grappling with, namely, the structural powerlessness of the Church. The mission of the Church in Algeria is less a matter of having big institutions and more a matter of being with the people. As Msgr. Teissier puts it: “Thus gradually we all grew in the conviction that the Algerian Church was the Church of Algeria, that is to say a reality in a relationship with a Muslim society and finding its raison d’être in this relationship. The Church wasn’t an end in itself as would be the case of a Chaplaincy serving only its own members. But Christians were united in a specific vocation of establishing an evangelical relationship with a Muslim people”. This new approach or emphasis on encounter, what the Church in Algeria calls the “sacrament of encounter”, is much more demanding of the missionary, as the quality of his own life becomes the key to the proclamation of the Gospel. The effectiveness of this sacrament depends on the transparency of Christ’s presence and love in the individual Christian and in his community.
Witness in weakness and service
The Algerian Church has learned to live in weakness. From being the Church of a colonial power, she has become a Church of a faithful remnant, powerless and at the service of a Muslim country. The Church in Algeria and its nineteen martyrs have absorbed the teaching of Vatican II and its return to gospel values in our relationships with other religions. In the sacrament of encounter, a new realization of what unites Christians and Muslims has been discovered, a realization that through the power of the Spirit at work in our common humanity we can reach out to each other. The nineteen lives offered out of love for their Muslim neighbours witness to the depth of friendship and love that Christians and Muslims can have for each other. In this love lies a sure hope for the future.
Ronald Knox Lightning Meditations
On the lawn a Cock Pheasant strides in glory, croaks in alert and keeps guard on the hen and her clutch of chicks in the tree shelter.
Tuesday 18 May 2010
Atlas Martyrs anniversary
Gratefully, we have to hand a very timely article for the anniversary of the Cistercian monks who died in
The Sacred Heart MESSENGER May 2110
The Master’s Footsteps (63) In this series, Fr. John Murray, Parish Priest of St.Luke’s,
Fr. Christian de Chergé
The stories of the lives of the martyrs often fit into this category, of men and women who over the centuries have written the story of Christ in their blood. Most of us grew up hearing the stories of the early Church and the 'Christians being fed to the lions' - it is well documented even by pagan historians like Tacitus in the early second century. The persecution of the Church in Elizabethan times, during the French revolution and of course during our own Penal times are also well recorded. But many martyrs have died for the faith in the last century.
This month I want to remind ourselves of the silent witness of the Trappist (Cistercian) martyrs of
'If it were ever to happen ... that I should be the victim of the terrorism that seems to be engulfing all the foreigners now living in Algeria, I would like my community, my church, my family to remember that my life was given to God and to this country.' Fr. Christian de Chergé, prior of a Trappist monastery in
In 1958 when he was a young man of 21 he had served as a soldier fighting Algerian rebels in the brutal war of independence. One day, his party were ambushed and his life was saved by a friend who happened to be a devout Muslim. This man shielded him with his own body. This man's sacrifice, which Christian believed was prompted by religious faith, brought about his own conversion and eventually ordination to the priesthood and ultimately to the Trappist contemplative order.
Christian studied in The monks lived a traditional Trappist life of prayer and work, but they made a point of offering a place where Christians and Muslims could pray and talk together. A building in the monastery enclosure was offered for use as a mosque and so the 'sound of chapel bells mixed with the Muslim call to prayer.' This group was called 'Ribat el Salam' or the 'bond of peace'.
To many of their neighbours they were trusted and respected. But to others, the Trappists were foreign 'infidels' - as one dispatch put it 'they live with the people and draw them away from the divine path, inciting them to follow the Gospel.' By 1993 the country was on the verge of anarchy and an ultimatum was given to all foreigners to leave the country, but the monks decided to stay. They also declined any military protection which was offered. It was at this time that Fr. de Chergé wrote his last testament. The months progressed and several priests and women religious were killed. Still the monks remained.
'For us it is a journey of faith into the future and of sharing the present with our neighbours who have always been very closely bound to us. Now all that is left for us is to give our blood to follow Christ to the end.' That end came in 1996 on 21 May when rebels invaded the monastery compound and seized the monks and marched them into the mountains. A few weeks later a note was sent: 'We have slit the throats of the seven monks. Glory to God!' The heads were discovered the next day and they were buried in the small cemetery at the monastery.
De Chergé's family remembered his letter and opened it and discovered his prayer of forgiveness for his murderers: 'For me Islam and
He offered thanks for all his friends and family. But he reserved his final words for his murderer: 'You too, my last minute friend, you who know not what you do. Yes, for you too I wish this thank you, and this adieu which is of your planning. May we be granted to meet each other again, happy thieves, in paradise, should it please God, the Father of both of us. Amen! In sh'Allah!' |