Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. Fr. Raymond

On the Night Office this morning, the Abbot, read the Gospel of the Solemnity of Christ the King, the words resounded, "Jesus answered, "My kingdom does not belong to this world." (John 18 33b-37).
Later, we will listen to the Homily of the Mass by Fr. Raymond.
. . .

---- Forwarded Message -----
From: Raymond . . .
Sent: Sunday, 25 November 2012, 10:10
Subject: Kingship of Christ

Kingship of Christ

• Jesus is for us, principally, the Son of God incarnate.  But Scripture and tradition give us three other great titles for him:  we call him PRIEST and we call him PROPHET and we call him KING.......Priest, Prophet and King.
  
• Two of these titles are specifically religious: Priest and Prophet.
• The Priest offers to God, on behalf of his fellow men, their prayers and their sacrifices.
  
• The Prophet offers to men the word that comes to them from God.
  
• But the third title is, in itself, a purely human term.  It prescinds from religion altogether.   A man is a king among his people even if neither he nor his people believe in God.
  
• So, to understand best what is meant by the Kingship of Christ we have first to forget, for a moment, the fact that he is God.  Indeed, we might say that, of itself, his Divinity makes it impossible for us to consider him as merely our King.
  
• When Jesus said to Pilate: “Yes indeed I am a King, but my Kingdom is not of this world”,  he had to say that because it was the only description of his Kingdom that would allay Pilate’s fears of political trouble.  But for us, the Kingdom of Christ is indeed also very much “of this world”.  Because it is not as God that he is our King.   God is “God” and can never be a mere “King” except by a figure of speech.  It is only by his incarnation that Christ is really our King.  It is only because he is one of us and we are his brothers and sisters that he can live among us and truly call himself our King.
  
• In the Old Testament times there was something prophetic in Israel’s plea for a king from among themselves to lead them like other nations.  Yet God wasn’t pleased by it although they didn’t mean to reject him as their God.  It was just that they wanted a visible tangible King on earth.  They were not to realise yet that the Messiah to come would be at once their God and their visible tangible King on earth.

• 

  Feast of Christ the King painting

•   By his incarnation, by his stepping down into his creation, Christ is not only king of his people he is King of the whole universe, King of all creation, men and angels.  All were created through and by him and FOR him.

Christ the King OP Link on occasion

SundayesourceTTT  The Sunday Preacher’s Resource brings together various texts related to the lectionary readings for each sunday of the three year cycle, such as patristic and contemporary commentaries, exegetical notes, and recent magisterial usage. PDFs are available for most Sundays. To see more preaching resources, click here.

Sunday Preacher's Resource

The Order of Preachers

http://www.ordopraedicatorum.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/spr_b_11_christ_the_king.pdf

Last Sunday in Ordinary Time,
the Solemnity of Christ the King, Cycle B 

November 22, 2009 
Scripture Readings 
First : Daniel 7:13-14 
Second : Revelation 1:5-8 
Gospel:  John 18:33b-37  
Prepared by:  Fr. Stephen Dominic Hayes, OP 
1.  Subject Matter
• The fundamental message of John's Gospel emphasizes that Jesus' kingdom is not of this 
world; that is, not all of this universe of time and space, extent and duration, that is, 
something belonged to a world of limits and changeability.  Rather, is kingdom is founded in 
his Sonship with his Father; something belonging to the life of the eternal Trinity, and 
therefore is founded on personal relationship, knowledge, and love.  Jesus Kingship in its 
proper not to a physical realm, but to the world of shared life which is that of the uncreated 
Trinity, and those elect creatures who are admitted to the Kingdom of the Father through the 
Son. 
2.  Exegetical Notes 
• In the first reading, the prophet Daniel is granted a vision of the end of days and of universal 
judgment.  Chapter 9 describes in bestial figures four empires;  in terms of the time of 
editorship of the cup and of Daniel, this would be  interpreted as that of Babylon, Media, 
Persia, and the Greek Macedonian and Selucid empires, who are judged and destroyed by 
the justice of God.  This vision is succeeded by the advent of the "Son of Man", a figure 
representing the kingdom of God's holy ones “on the clouds of heaven: (that is, from God.’ 
His reign, being celestial and divine, is radically different from that of the earthly powers who 
have been judged.  In an original literary form, this human figure is symbolical of the superior 
form of the heavenly kingdom, contrasted with the bestial kingdoms of the earth.  In late 
Jewish apocalyptic thought thought, however, the notion of kingdom tends to be merged with 
that of the king himself.   This image, interpreted by the Church to Jesus in the second 
reading, is used repeatedly by the Lord himself in his application of the notion of the Kingdom 
of God being conjoined to that of Christ's own person and our relationship to him, a pattern 
we see again and again in both the Synoptics and the Johannine material.  
• The second reading shows the early Church applying the prophecy of Daniel directly to the 
Lord Jesus Christ.  It is he who is to receive universal dominion and power, precisely 
because of the blood he shed upon the cross.  In him will be fulfilled all the messianic 
prophecies of the Scriptures; and the judgment he ushers in puts into condemnation not only those who condemned them in life (“ those who pierced him”) but also “all the nations” in the 
sense of those who irredeemably choose a life apart  from that of the people of God forming 
now in personal relationship to God's Son and King, Jesus Christ. The symbolic language of 
beginning and end (derived from Greek, not Hebrew usage) finds application to Christ as 
beginning and end, cause and purpose for all that is. ( Interestingly enough, the ancient 
Hebrew form of the alphabet called Ketav Ivri or  Paleo-Hebrew, based on Phoenician 
forms, has as its first letter the  silent letter Aleph and as its last letter Tav, which in this 
early form has the shape of a cross.  This is the mark made on the foreheads of God is 
faithful ones in the book of Ezekiel (9:4).
• The Gospel of this Sunday, in Cycle B, focuses on the Lord's conversation with Pilate.  In this 
moment, the earthly representative of Leviathan confronts the messenger of God's grace - 
and the only-begotten and eternal Son of the Father, and engagement which reveals the 
absolute difference between an earthly understanding of power and dominion, and that 
desire for communion which flows from the heart of  God. The conversation is set in the 
context of Pilate's acting as the judicial representative of the Roman Empire in hearing the 
Jewish leadership's complaint that Jesus is setting himself up as King against Caesar;- the  
only way in which the Roman authority would take seriously the claims against the Lord.  In 
this moment, paradoxically, he who would act as an  earthly judge finds himself before a 
Word of judgment from God Most High. 
• In vv.34-35, Jesus asked Pilate how he has come to formulate the charge against him; was it 
his idea were someone else's that Jesus is "King of the Jews"? This question enables is 
Pilate the chance to take a personal stance with regard to Jesus and his mission instead of 
being merely the current conduit for the world's rage against the Son of God made man.  
Pilot responds by vehemently denying any interest in Jewish religious concerns. 
• At verse 36, the Lord is able to state the source of his authority, is lack of interest in the 
power games that the worldly delight in playing, and shows the absolute lack of political 
connection of his kingship to the affairs which are the whole life of Pilate and the Emperor 
whom he serves.  When Pilate persists in asking whether or not Jesus is a King, the Lord 
responds by emphasize that the essence of his kingly and messianic mission is as a witness 
to the truth, that which is the truth of God Most High, and the kingdom for he will make 
testimony by his own martyrdom ; a kingdom which will be founded upon his Blood, in a way 
familiar to Pilate and imperfectly foreshadowed in the city of Rome's own foundation on the 
blood of Romulus' murdered brother Remus.  It is this truth, identical with Jesus own person, 
which Pilate will treat with contempt in the Gospel’s next Line  “What is Truth?”  The Lord has 
already given that answer in John 14:6: Ego sum via et veritas et vita.  The kingdom of God 
breaks in the personal relationship of Jesus Christ with those whom he calls to be his 
followers.  As the Lord has pointed out, these do not fight to establish an earthly kingdom for 
him, this is a kingdom not of this world, with its  limited powers and internecine combats 
concerning the limits of borders and possession of passing wealth, but has asked its heart 
the rule of God over souls willing to enter into a relationship with the Son who possesses all 
dominion in heaven and on earth.  Christ’s is a lordship of hearts, not of earthly rule. 
3.  References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church• CCC 680:   Christ the Lord already reigns through the Church, but all the things of this world 
are not yet subjected to him.  The triumph of Christ's kingdom will not come about without 
one last assault by the powers of evil.  

Nový Dvůr Abbey OCSO (Nový Dvůr means literally "the New Yard")

Novy Dvur OCSO - 99
Website: www.novydvur.cz  

File:Klášter Nový Dvůr - okres Karlovy Vary - Karlovarský kraj - Česká republika.jpg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia   

Nový Dvůr Monastery

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Monastery of Nový Dvůr

The Monastery of Nový Dvůr is the only monastery of the Trappist Order in the Czech Republic, located near Toužim in the Karlovy Vary Region, close to the Premonstratensian monastery of Teplá.

The monastery originated from a dilapidated Baroque farm (Nový Dvůr means literally "the New Yard"), that was partially reconstructed and mostly replaced by a modern construction according to a project of British architect John Pawson. It was established in August 2002 as a daughter house of the Sept-Fons Abbey, France. In September 2004 the monastery church was dedicated to Our Lady.^[1]

As of 2009, the monastery is a home of about twenty monks, who manufacture several products: face cream "Crème Réparatrice" with an extract of corn sprouts, linden and orange tree with ECOCERT certification; four sorts of mustard (two are produced via organic farming), which are sold next to Czech Republic also in France, Germany, Austria and Hungary. The recipes of both products were created by monks in Nový Dvůr and the other products of Nový Dvůr such as jam, coffee and dietary supplements originate from their home monastery Sept-Fons Abbey in France.^[1]

 ----- Forwarded Message -----

From: Klášter Nový Dvůr <email@novydvur.cz>
To: nunrawdonald@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, 23 November 2012, 12:34
Subject: News from the Abbey of Nový Dvůr

News from the Abbey of Nový Dvůr A few weeks before Christmas 2012 Dear Friends, Christmas can be the time of widening our horizons, instead of closing them in as we usually do. There is the story of a Russian Christian, who complained that the number of believers had greatly diminished. Someone asked him, “How many are there?” The other person responded – with a small number – and his interlocutor said, “That’s enough!” How many monks and Christians are we? During the course of the last century, the world changed. Christendom, from which missionaries went to carry the Good News, disappeared. From now on, we are in the midst of the mission land. The two Cities, Christian and non-Christian, are entangled, one with the other. It is a new situation that requires new attitudes and a new faithfulness. Today, like yesterday, Christians and monks serve the Lord through those who live around them. And since the world is small, since it is enough to just get in an airplane to catch up to the path of the sun, who are those who are the closest to us? All of humanity. When we pray, the Lord leans over everyone. Without this conviction of faith, would there really be young people to commit themselves to the monastic life today? This Christmas and the New Year, you will not receive a calendar. The newsletter that celebrated the tenth anniversary of the foundation of Novy Dvur will have to take its place. We do not let events such as this one break the banal rhythm and the ordinary rhythm of our lives. For that very banality can hide a precious fidelity. Isn’t it pretty much the same among our families? That said, let us try to gather some special events. First of all, the construction work. At Novy Dvur, the construction on the workshop buildings is progressing normally. Since the number and the volume of our monastic products are increasing, these new areas will be welcome, theoretically in spring 2014 . And so it is time to start thinking about the construction of the Stella Matutina chapel, which we have been talking about for such a long time. It will be an easily accessible place where our visitors will be able to pray during the day. At Sept-Fons, we have been talking for a long time about restoring the common areas (washroom, cloister, dormitory). If God wills it… Let us avoid making any estimates of the date of the beginning of the works, however necessary they may be. As you know, Sept-Fons also helps other monastic communities. Recently, I had the chance, for a few days, to share the daily life of one of these communities that possessed nothing that it should have been able to legitimately claim: neither liberty of movement, nor comfort, nor sufficient resources, nor any of the necessary means of giving a solid formation to its young members, nor personalities powerful enough to confront this exceptional situation, nor out-of-the ordinary virtues! And yet, in that community, which is to all appearances very poor, the brothers pray, develop, persevere, and welcome younger members who join. The work of divine grace is perceptible. Upon my return, a brother asked me: “Did this visit change the way you look at Novy Dvur?” – “Yes,” I said, “I understand better the role of grace; I am less afraid of my own shortcomings and the shortcomings of the brothers.” We will finish this letter with an anecdote. Last spring, one of our brothers whose family came to visit told me, in the evening, what he had heard: a comet was going to smash into planet Earth and destroy it. There wasn’t anybody who wasn’t talking about it… The end of the world would be set for this autumn! I had a good laugh. A brother of Sept-Fons, to whom I told that tale over the telephone, said to me, “What luck!” Autumn has passed, with neither comet nor end of the world on the horizon… Should we say “alas”? Some competent friends, professionals in several domains, help our community with their advice. One of them, in Prague, organised a symposium in Japan last October on the subject: Putting an end to catastrophism. No one from our ranks participated, obviously. But I promised myself to offer to our two cellarers, that of Sept-Fons and that of Novy Dvur, the results of that meeting: The world is not going as badly as we might think! With these optimistic reflections, I wish you a joyful Christmas and a Happy New Year 2013.

P.S. To avoid overloading my e-mail mailbox, please do not acknowledge receipt of this message. However, please do not hesitate to forward it to your friends. If this is the first time you are receiving a mailing from us, and this information interests you, write tofr.frederic@novydvur.cz, and give us your postal address. This will allow us to mail you a brochure (in English) about Nový Dvur and Sept-Fons. To send this message to a friend, click here To make a donation, click here If you do not wish to continue to receive news from us by e-mail, click here

Cecilia 'Praise the Lord with the lyre, make melody to him with the harp of ten strings! Sing to him a new song.'

Night Office.

Rather than the Monastic Lectionary, we listened to the Reading from the Breviary (Universalis).

The words from Augustine ring through the melodies.

Thursday 22 November 2012  

Saint Cecilia, Virgin, Martyr
 (Thursday of week 33 of the year)

www.universalis.com  

---

Reading	A commentary of St Augustine on Psalm 32
Sing to God in jubilation

Praise the Lord with the lyre, make melody to him with the harp of ten strings! Sing to him a new song. Rid yourself of what is old and worn out, for you know a new song. A new man, a new covenant; a new song. This new song does not belong to the old man. Only the new man learns it: the man restored from his fallen condition through the grace of God, and now sharing in the new covenant, that is, the kingdom of heaven. To it all our love now aspires and sings a new song. Let us sing a new song not with our lips but with our lives.

  Sing to him a new song, sing to him with joyful melody. Every one of us tries to discover how to sing to God. You must sing to him, but you must sing well. He does not want your voice to come harshly to his ears, so sing well, brothers!

  If you were asked, “Sing to please this musician,” you would not like to do so without having taken some instruction in music, because you would not like to offend an expert in the art. An untrained listener does not notice the faults a musician would point out to you. Who, then, will offer to sing well for God, the great artist whose discrimination is faultless, whose attention is on the minutest detail, whose ear nothing escapes? When will you be able to offer him a perfect performance that you will in no way displease such a supremely discerning listener?

  See how he himself provides you with a way of singing. Do not search for words, as if you could find a lyric which would give God pleasure. Sing to him “with songs of joy.” This is singing well to God, just singing with songs of joy.

  But how is this done? You must first understand that words cannot express the things that are sung by the heart. Take the case of people singing while harvesting in the fields or in the vineyards or when any other strenuous work is in progress. Although they begin by giving expression to their happiness in sung words, yet shortly there is a change. As if so happy that words can no longer express what they feel, they discard the restricting syllables. They burst out into a simple sound of joy, of jubilation. Such a cry of joy is a sound signifying that the heart is bringing to birth what it cannot utter in words.

  Now, who is more worthy of such a cry of jubilation than God himself, whom all words fail to describe? If words will not serve, and yet you must not remain silent, what else can you do but cry out for joy? Your heart must rejoice beyond words, soaring into an immensity of gladness, unrestrained by syllabic bonds. Sing to him with jubilation.

Responsory

My lips speak your praise, your glory all the day long. When I sing to you, my lips shall rejoice.

I will rejoice in you and be glad, and sing psalms to your name, O Most High. When I sing to you, my lips shall rejoice.

---

Let us pray.

Lord God, in your mercy listen to our prayers,

  which we offer you under the patronage of Saint Cecilia.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

  who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

  one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

COMMENTS: Books

Hi, William,
You didn't dream! Vision in reality!
And there exactly I looked, five times. It must be my blind spot.
Fr. Thomas followed your directions. Immediately found the precious volume.
Many thanks.

The Carlisle Bookcase, the vast theological section already gives the browsing for pleasure. The Online progress will make it even instant service. You could well lend one of your full hands.

Thank you for the Thomas Merton window on to the 'Imitation'.

Two PC Monitors are giving problems. Maybe I can visit Comet tomorrow.

Comet's Clearance Auctions

www.clearance-comet.co.uk/ 
Browse through our great deals on Comet Clearance Auction site, including great prices on
Washing Machines, Dishwashers, Laptops and TVs. Buy direct from Comet.

Very busy getting back to book storage in a great kip. Like the Knox Commentary catalogued in the 70s, I am discovering books in the dump were stamped and shelved. Vandals have since been in the cloister??????.
 Yours
Donald

+ + +

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: William - - -
To: Donald - - -
Sent: Wednesday, 21 November 2012, 16:04
Subject: Re: DE IMITATIONE CHRISTI Book's title page

Dear Father Donald,

 

I do hope that the Knox commentaries 'compendium' reveals itself! I'm sure I didn't dream it...

 

Thank you for your concern re the edition of the Imitation coming to me from Ireland. It was the only copy 'anywhere' with the full title which I copied down from your pocket gem, to include "to which are added Practical Reflections and a Prayer at the end of each chapter" - Talbot Press". I should dearly love to knowwho wrote the Sacramental Meditations that so attract me! It is so kind of you to suggest the availability of a possible second copy. I will let you know when the edition arrives - extraordinary delivery projection 10-45 days (21st Jan)!

 

The Carlisle 'Bookcase' will really struggle to put their vast theological section online (goodness, but I should love to help!)

 

The references to the Imitation are truly boundless! I followed through that blog article which spoke of Thomas Merton's attraction to it - Journal Vol 1, page 338-340. He quotes a passage and makes a very meaningful comment regarding the 'process' of elucidation. Totally separate to these remarks follows an entry which indeed I can appreciate: " The life in this abbey is not understandable unless you begin the day with the monks, with Matins... the whole business of the day is really prayer, culminating in [as opposed to starting with] High Mass."

 

It is a great joy for me to share in your endeavours .... indeed, there is so much in which to desire to immerse oneself!

 

With my love in Our Lord,

William 

  

Donald

van Zeller SPIRITUAL WRITER’S CRAMP

Today a book came to hand in the unsorted library of Grace Watkins.
Grace, in her early days, aspired to be a journalist and later helped in Parish worked and act as Catechist with the children. Her books and diary show her love of writing. She left a note, shopping  list, in this book of Van Zeller. The Chapter, "Spiritual Writer's Cramp", recalls the interests of Grace.

Downside Abbey

Dom Hubert van Zeller (1905–1984) 
was born in Egypt and entered Downside Abbey at the age of nineteen. He briefly left Downside to try his vocation with the Carthusians. A talented sculptor as well as a writer, his artworks adorn churches in Britain (many works can be seen at Downside abbey) and the United States. He was a friend of the great Catholic writers Msgr. Ronald Knox and Evelyn Waugh, and is the author of Holiness: A Guide for Beginners, Holiness for Housewives, and Spirit of Penance, Path to God, We Sing While There’s Voice Left.  

Internet Archive

 

http://archive.org/

http://archive.org/stream/wesingwhilethere027921mbp/wesingwhilethere027921mbp_djvu.txt

We Sing While There’s Voice Left

by Dom Hubert Van Zeller 1950

SPIRITUAL WRITER’S  CRAMP pp.56-60

ONE OF the things which hinder a writer on spiritual subjects is the fact that he cannot get away from himself. His case-book is his own soul, his stock-pot is his own past, he is his own yard-stick. [1] It is a drawback to him for two reasons: first he is forced in upon himself, examining, weighing up, racking his memory, testing his good-faith the whole time and this is bad, because the spiritual life is meant to be as objective as possible; second, his wares are thrown out into the open market to be viewed by the curious and the critical as well as by those whom he is doing his best to benefit. He becomes like a poulterer who decides that the best way of satisfying his customers is to lay himself on the marble slab along with the pheasants and partridges. He is, in a true sense, "game". The customers, quite rightly, take advantage of this. Peering and prodding, the reviewers make comparisons. Deductions follow swiftly. It is, for the person on the slab, all very intimate and shaming. But then the price of having a public is the giving away, to a certain extent, of what is private; it is a price which any writer should be willing to pay. If he is sincere, an author is the servant of other people the vast majority of whom he is never likely to meet - and service is always a privilege for which one has to pay. All the same, it does rather cramp one's style —to know one is virtually a confession at Hyde Park Cornet.

[1 Of course it works both, ways, because if he is fool enough to shy away from his own experience on the grounds of personal failure (or on any other grounds if it comes to that), he will show himself up pretty soon as an impostor. People know instinctively when he is drawing upon other men's findings. So it is safer in the long run to stick to what he knows from the inside from his inside.]

What has been said here not apply only to writers on the subject of spirituality: it applies to all writers, but particularly, in the secular sphere, to p0ets s novelists, and dramatists. In a lesser degree are historians and biographers involved, while clearly it has only the most accidental connection with political pamphleteers, economists, and students of sociology. Every craftsman however all the more so if he is a creative artist as well betrays his personality in Ms work He must do. It is to a large extent through his work that he expresses his own essential and individual self. A man may find means of fluent self-expression over a tankard in an inn or across a kitchen table when discussing household expenses with his wife, but if we are looking for the normal signs of a man's development, if we want to discover traces of the incommunicable ego, we must examine the kind of impress a man's character has left upon his work.

The question for the individual worker to decide is how much or how little of himself lie need or possibly must reveal. In order to make his work a true and finished realisation of what was originally conceived, he may not divorce the maker from the made. He not only may not, but cannot. He will expose himself somewhere. Certainly the history of literature has shown that whether authors have or have not consciously approached the question of self-revelation in their work, the question has in fact -though variously and according to the different natures involved been, decided. Some have obviously made up their minds to give away no more of themselves than they could help; others have gone the whole length and allowed the world to see them as, accurately or inaccurately, they have seen themselves. Others again, and let us hope that there are more of these than of any other, did not seem to mind what came to light about their interiors provided the main purpose of truth (or of art, or of politics, or of morality, or of whatever cause it was that they were trying to further) was served. Thus you get Dickens, for example, guarding the secrets of his own personal struggle, and putting people off the scent right and left. Not even Dickens could altogether cover up the frustrations which were his by circumstance and temperament. In another column you get such widely different writers as Tolstoi, Chesterton, Graham Greene, Dostoievski, Ibsen, Elizabeth Bowen, Mauriac, Virginia Woolf, Compton Mackenzie, Emlyn Williams, each in his or her contrasting way ready to reveal as much as anyone wants to know.

Their essential natures, though not necessarily their moral conflicts or unique spiritual aspirations, are open to the skies. Finally you get a smaller group of writers who quite deliberately investigate the nature of man by carefully studying their own. These are they who tell the time by the ticking of their own hearts. Other people's problems, whether fictional or actual, are seen as projections of their own. Given right principles such writers, on account of their first-hand approach and intuitive grasp, can be enormously helpful in the world. All too often, however, they go round and round in circles always coming back to themselves as the focus of interest. It is all right to start off from self, but it is a mistake to be so absorbed in the starting point as to be for ever returning to it. D. H. Lawrence, Stendhal, Proust, Flaubert, Joyce, Matthew Arnold are names which suggest themselves, but such a selection is entirely arbitrary and probably most unfair. At It is curious that among this last company, whether or not you happen to agree about the actual in the secular list, must be numbered most of the more widely read spiritual writers. This is not so curious when you consider two things: first, as already noted, that the of research is necessarily the soul of the person writing; and second that, in the effort to suppress what is wrong about his own geist or daemon, the spiritual writer is letting off steam. This last point is worth a final paragraph.

It must be remembered that the writing of books is often for this kind of author the only outlet. Where another may find parallel or complementary forms of self-expression in rearing a family, in travel, in running a farm or an estate, in going to race meetings and the theatre, the ordinary writer of spiritual books must particularly if he has not the active care of souls and does not play the piano or paint work the creative urge out of his system somehow. The apostolic urge is only an aspect of the creative urge, and both find fulfilment of some sort in writing books about the spiritual life. If all this energy came forth in the form of fiction it would probably be an even greater release, as it was for instance in the case of Mgr. Benson, but it is probably true to say that when celibate writers take to telling stories out of their heads they tend to do so with more reference to their hearts than to their minds. Psychologists would tell us that where there has been no experience of passionate romance a good enough substitute may be found in writing about it. Rather than turn themselves into romantic novelists, authors with any sort of interest in the spiritual life are inclined, wisely, to walk on safer ground.

To conclude. Whatever we may feel about releasing tie incommunicable ego, and allowing for die drawbacks already mentioned in this essay, it does seem to be worth while for a man to exploit any inclination which he may have towards writing for the benefit of his fellow men. [1] It will mean that he has not only to test his subject by his knowledge of himself, but that he has also to test himself by the practice of his subject. And this is very good for him indeed. The same is the case with regard to preaching: the value of what is said is measured by the sincerity of its source, and the source is valued according to the sincerity of its purpose. There are dangers of course: the writer may become an exhibitionist, he may be more concerned with his powers of perception and exposition than with what he perceives and exposes, he may cheapen his vision or use it for ambitious and material ends. There is no knowing what a man may not do with the gifts God gives him. But assuming that the soul has a right intention and is not deliberately unfaithful to its call, the dangers will be to him drawbacks only and to be bracketed with the trivial little things which we considered at the start. It is always the same in the spiritual life: such dangers have power to cramp but not to crush. Does it so very much matter if our style is toned down and our freedom of expression is limited? So long as we set out to declare what we conceive to be God's word, and stand by that intention till the opportunity of doing so is removed, there is no great likelihood of spoiling the work either by exposing ourselves too readily or congratulating ourselves too soon. We have our critics to thank for this.

[1] The reflections expressed here are intended to counter the misgivings suggested on p. 41.

Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Wednesday, 21 November 2012

My Blog SEARCH seems misfired and, therfore, no NEWS of the Presentation of Our Lady.
We have the DGO Post, with thanks.

Wednesday, 21 November 2012 Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
THE PRESENTATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY         Religious parents never fail by devout prayer to consecrate their children to the divine service and love, both before and after their birth. Some amongst the Jews, not content with this general consecration of their children, offered them to God in their infancy, by the hands of the priests in the Temple, to be lodged in apartments belonging to the Temple, and brought up in attending the priests and Levites in the sacred ministry.         It is an ancient tradition that the Blessed Virgin Mary was thus solemnly offered to God in the Temple in her infancy. This festival of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin the Church celebrates this day.         The tender soul of Mary was then adorned with the most precious graces, an object of astonishment and praise to the angels, and of the highest complacence to the adorable Trinity; the Father looking upon her as his beloved daughter, the Son as one chosen and prepared to become his mother, and the Holy Spirit as his darling spouse. Mary was the first who set up the standard of virginity; and, by consecrating it by a perpetual vow to our Lord, she opened the way to all virgins who have since followed her example. Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894]  http://dailygospel.org/main.php?language=AM&module=saintfeast&localdate=20121121&id=143&fd=1

ICN. Thank you for the Links below.

Catechists resources for Advent and Christmas

Posted: Thursday, November 15, 2012 9:01 pm http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=21442

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The Institute for Christian Formation (ICF) in Cincinnati, Ohio, has created an online Advent/Christmas Calendar for each day of the Advent and Christmas Seasons for the 2013 Liturgical Year: December 2, 2012-January 13, 2013. This calendar is a go-to source for information and resources about Seasons and Saints, Scripture, Church Teaching, Prayer, Traditional Activities and Recipes, and much more! Geared to a wide-based audience, there is something for everyone: families, parishes, individuals, children, teens, adults, catechists and school teachers, colleges and youth ministry. Visit their website at: www.instituteforchristianformation.org and click on the Advent/Christmas Calendar link, or go directly to our Advent/Christmas Calendar page: http://www.instituteforchristianformation.org/AdventCalendarYOG2013/2013Calendar.html. And don’t forget to visit the other pages of their website for numerous resources for living faith at Home, at Church, and at School. Visit often – materials are added and updated weekly! See: www.instituteforchristianformation.org