COMMENT:
The Night Office this morning gave us the First Reading from Rabanus Maurus. The commentary on Jeremiah has six weighty paragraphs in our Lectionary. The Internet version has a more helpful layout of sentences, i.e. §1-19.
The Website 'Enlarging the Heart' is a Link to some of the Readings from the 'Monastic Office Vigils', a resource of Patristic authors.
The Website 'Enlarging the Heart' is a Link to some of the Readings from the 'Monastic Office Vigils', a resource of Patristic authors.
- ... and he wrote on it at Jeremiah's dictation all ... gave it to Neriah's son Baruchthe scribe. He ... the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burnt ...biblehub.com/jeremiah/36-32.htm - Cached
Rabanus Maurus (c.780-856): Commentary on Jeremiah, 13 (PL 111:1073-75); from the Monastic Office of Vigils, Tuesday of Week 30 in Ordinary Time, Year 1
Rabanus Maurus: No One Learns Anything through Speech
unless the Mind is Anointed with the Spirit
Monday, Nov 7 2011
Early Latin Monks and MONASTIC and PATRISTIC and Rabanus Maurus grace, heart, Holy Spirit, interior life, mind, scripture 8:55 am
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| Rabanus Maurus (c 780 – 856) (left), supported by Alcuin (c 735–804) (middle), presents his work to Otgar of Mainz, from a Carolingian Manuscript, c840. |
(On Jeremiah 36)
In the Gospel he who is Truth himself says to his disciples:
1. When you stand before kings and princes, do not think how you are to speak, or what you are to say; what you are to say will be given you at the time, for it is not you who will be speaking but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
2. We must realise that the grace of the Holy Spirit is necessary not only for those who teach but also for those who are taught.
3. Unless the Spirit is present in the heart of the listener, the teacher is wasting his breath.
4. Unless there is a teacher within us, the teacher without works in a vacuum.
5. In Church we all hear the same voice speaking, but all do not understand it in the same way.
6. Since there is no difference in what is said, why is there a difference in our understanding of it, unless there is an interior teacher giving certain people special instruction through their understanding of words of admonition addressed to all?
7. Concerning this grace of the Holy Spirit, John says: His anointing will teach you everything.
8. No one learns anything through speech, therefore, unless the mind is anointed with the Spirit.
9. Because King Jehoiachim and his servants were not inwardly illumined by the grace of the Holy Spirit who inspired the Prophet, their bodily ears could hear the words of God, but the ears of the heart were deaf to them.
10. It is this interior listening which our Lord demands in the Gospel when he says: Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
11. One has to marvel at the blindness of the human mind and the wickedness of the hardened heart.
12. Those whom salutary admonitions should have filled with compunction and sorrow for their sins were at pains to burn the scroll containing the words of the Lord.
13. They also took every opportunity to insult the Prophet whom they ought to have honoured for his inspired teaching and admonitions.
14. And why did they do this? Was it not because there was in them the sort of wicked spirit that always resists grace – a spirit that contrived to produce in their hearts not subtle obedience but intractable obduracy so that they should not be saved by believing and doing penance?
15. Yet human pride is impotent when it sets itself to resist divine sovereignty.
16. An earthly King gave orders for the Prophet and his scribe to be arrested and sent to prison;
17. the King of heaven shielded his blameless saints from human malice so that they came to no harm.
18. Jeremiah took another scroll and gave to the scribe Baruch, son of Neriah, and he wrote on it at Jeremiah’s dictation all the words of the book that Jehoiakim King of Judah had burnt in the fire; and much more was added.
19. Why was this done if not because, when Judah was ejected by reason of its infidelity, the books of the law and the prophets were preserved for the salvation of the Gentiles, to whom on Christ’s coming passed the whole glory of the Old Testament; for all these things that happened to them were symbolic and they were written down as a warning to us, upon whom the end of the age has come.
Rabanus Maurus (c.780-856): Commentary on Jeremiah, 13 (PL 111:1073-75); from the Monastic Office of Vigils, Tuesday of Week 30 in Ordinary Time, Year 1
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