Monks of OUR LADY OF ATLAS

----- Forwarded Message -----

Atlas Monks
memorial seat

From: William ...
To: Donald ...
Sent: Friday, 10 May 2013, 19:28
Subject: Re: Monks of Our Lady of Tibhirine

Dear Father Donald,

...

It is such a delight to see the daffodils surmounting the scene of the Atlas memorial seat. On Monday I will be ordering the Seven Red Roses (always allowing a week for Erica's to order in the blooms, delivery on 20th), and my card for the commemoration is ready to hand to you! I was intending to email the images of the card when I returned, but my heart quickens at the sight of your photos from the memorial garden! Please see attachments ('front' and 'inside'). I hope you may approve of the text I have chosen, rather thoughtful, and challenging, from a tractate by St Augustine on St John's Gospel (Tractate LXXXIV. Chapter XV.13, which captured me during the Office of Readings for Wednesday in Holy Week). ....

William

 PS.

Your quotation from Wordsworth's poem has me smiling happily - and into my mind, following your lovely welcome, the poem by Shelley so aptly entitled

 "The Invitation"... "Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs — To the silent wilderness  Where the soul need not repress    Its music lest it should not find An echo in another's mind

 for Atlas monks 7 red roses

             IN LOVING

            COMMEMORATION

            OF THE MARTYRS OF

            OUR LADY OF ATLAS

The Fullness of Love

 In so far as the martyrs shed their blood for their brothers, what they showed was such as they received from the Lord’s table.

 St. Augustine

 Dearly beloved, that fullness of love with which we must love one another, the Lord defined when he said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”.

Doubtless this is what one reads in the Proverbs of Solomon: “If you sit down to eat at a ruler’s table, observe carefully what is before you; and know that you must prepare a similar meal.” For what is the ruler’s table, if not where there is taken the body and blood of him who laid down his life for us? And what is ‘to sit at’, if not to approach humbly? What is ‘to observe carefully what is before you’, if not to ponder so great a favour? What does it mean ‘know that you must prepare a similar meal,’ if not that as Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for our brethren.   

In the words of the apostle Peter: ‘Christ suffered for us, leaving an example, that we should follow in his steps.’ This is ‘to prepare a similar meal’. This the blessed martyrs did with burning love. If our celebration of their memory is not an empty one, and if we approach the Lord’s table in the banquet in which they too ate and had their fill, then as they prepared such a meal, so should we also.

So in fact at this table we do not commemorate them in the same way as we commemorate others who rest in peace, in order to pray for them also. We commemorate them rather so that they may pray for us, that we may follow closely in their footsteps; for they have reached the fullness of that love than which the Lord said there could be none greater. What they showed to their brothers was such as they equally received from the Lord’s table.   

(St. Augustine - Tractate LXXXIV. Chapter XV. 13.)