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  

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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

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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

Email  Print

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

St Margaret of Scotland -Blogspot

Blogspot: Thank you  ....    
http://onceiwasacleverboy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/st-margaret-of-scotland.html

WEDNESDAY, 16 NOVEMBER 2011

St Margaret of Scotland

In addition to what I published in my post last year about St Margaret [Below] which I linked to in the last article readers may be interested in these links and points of interest.

The Life of St Margaret by her former spiritual advisor Turgot, later Prior of Durham, and dedicated to her daughter, Queen Matilda, who was the wife of King Henry I, can be read in translation here.

The modern biography by G.W.S. Barrow in the Oxford DNB is available here, and there are other accounts of her life here and here.

In 1887 the Bodleian Library bought a manuscript subsequently identified as being St Margaret's Gospel book, and which bears evidence of water damage from when the book, having been dropped in a river, was subsequently retrieved with the text undamaged.

The beginning of St Mark's Gospel from St Margaret's Gospel Book

Image: Medieval Musings

There is a recent study of the Gospel book by Rebecca Rushfurth Queen Margaret's Gospel Book: The favourite book of an Eleventh Century Queen of Scots published by the Bodleian.

TUESDAY, 16 NOVEMBER 2010 

    http://onceiwasacleverboy.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Margaret    

St Margaret of Scotland and St Edmund of Abingdon

Today is the feast of both St Margaret of Scotland and of St Edmund of Abingdon, both of whose relics are now preserved on the continent. I have based this post in part on John Dillon's post on the Medieval Church History discussion group site.

Margaret of Scotland was the eldest daughter of the English prince Edward Aetheling, the son of King Edmund II, who fled following his father's death in 1016. Margaret was born during her father's exile in Hungary. A book which covers this period of his life and that of his family in a way which combines scholarship with an enthusiastic pursuit of a hitherto unexamined topic is Gabriel Ronay's The Lost King of England.

In 1057 Edward returned to England, bringing his family with them, but died before he could meet his half-uncle Edward the Confessor. His son Edgar Aetheling was involved in the Anglo-Saxon resistance to the Norman Conquest and in 1068 he fled with Margaret and with other members of the family fromNorthumbria and ended up in Scotland, where Margaret soon married king Malcolm III. Their marriage took place in Dunfermline at the church of the Holy Trinity at which Margaret soon established a priory (it became an abbey in 1128) and in which she was buried opposite the altar. The abbey website is here , the history section of which brings out the abbey's role as a centre of royal devotion and burial down to the early fifteenth century and beyond. The twelfth century nave of the abbey survives and shows very much the influence of the cathedral at Durham, as can be seen here.It is a reminder of a medieval Catholic Scotland of which so little survives.

A forceful and pious woman, St Margaret sought to bring Scottish church practices into line with those she had experienced elsewhere.

There is a fuller biography, which brings out her impact on Scottish cultural life, here with useful links from it to other biographies on the same site, and a picture of the chapel she is aid to have built at Edinburgh castle - it was the one building not destroyed on the castle site by the Scots when they dismantled the fortress during the War of Independence against Edward I of England.

She died on this day in 1093, shortly after hearing of King Malcolm's death in battle against the English. Amongst her eight children were four Kings of Scots, Edmund, Edgar, Alexander I and David I, who continued her policy of regenerating the Scottish church with his series of monastic foundations in the lowlands, and Maud or Matilda who married Henry I of England, thus uniting in their daughter Matilda and her son Henry II the Anglo-Saxon and Norman houses

Margaret's early twelfth-century Vita by Turgot, prior of Durham (BHL 5325) ascribes to her various miracles. By then her feast was already being celebrated today. A translation of her relics within the new church which had been consecrated in 1147 occurred in 1180 and in 1250 they were translated again to a shrine in a newly built chapel at the east end. Her undocumented canonization is thought to have occurred either in 1250 or in 1251. Margaret's shrine there was very popular in the later Middle Ages. Miracles at it are reported in a collection in Robert Bartlett( ed) The Miracles of Saint Ebbe of Coldingham and Saint Margaret of Scotland(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); a brief description of the shrine occurs in a hymn to Margaret. by the poet James Foullis of Edinburgh (d. 1549). The abbey was sacked in 1560; what is believed to be the base of her shrine survives in the churchyard. St Margaret's relics are now said to be in the Escorial.

St Edmund of Abingdon, Archbishop of Canterbury, often surnamed Rich, albeit apparently without medieval authority for this form of his name, was born at Abingdon circa 1175. His parents were named Reginald and Mabel and his father was given the sobriquet dives ('rich'). Raised ascetically by his mother, Edmund was schooled at Oxford and as a youth pledged himself to celibacy. As a token of that he is said to have placed a ring on the finger of the statue of Our Lady in St Mary's church in Oxford, and the ring could not thereafter be removed.

HE AND i, "The saints live for Me alone... among the All-joyous ones."

Blogspot: 

A Entry, below, from Gabrielle is a challenging thought, "It has to do with you and Me. It has to do with a reality to be lived."..........

The picture reminds us of her Holy Hour, so often in Adoration of Blessed Sacrament. Window reflection of Benediction.

HE AND i Gabrielle Bossis

1949

November 10 - Holy hour.

"Lord, there always seems to be a thick curtain between You and me, that hinders me from running to You." 

 "Fix it firmly in your mind that this presence of Me in you is not an allegory or a fantasy or a metaphor. It's not a story you listen to or something that might have happened to someone else. It has to do with you and Me. It has to do with a reality to be lived.

Then live with assurance and gladness. You will find so much happiness in this and you will give Me so much joy. Greet Me in you often in your own way, in all sorts of ways. I'll love you in everyone of these ways of yours.

Run after Me in you. Never give up the chase. Seek Me as Father, Bridegroom, Saviour. See Me looking at you. You know I'm waiting for you. Don't be heedless of the moments. Take a flying leap in your free thinking, just as you would if someone said, The gates of heaven are wide open. 'Heaven is Myself. And it is I who am in you. Do you thoroughly grasp this?

The saints live for Me alone. Get used to living now as you will later on among the All-joyous ones. Make an effort. Come out of your five senses. Seek fellowship with Me in your heart-centre. Submit every earthly tie to Me, since there is still time and since it would please Me. There are always two paths, one that goes down toward selfish distractions and one that goes up to Me, for Me. The choice is yours: either you or I. Ask the saints to help you to come very close to the One who loves you so much and to make your home in Him. You know of course that you can go in with out knocking? Aren't we both at home together?"

All Saints of the Benedictine Saints November 13

Saints Will Arise

Focusing on the Traditional Benedictine Office in accordance with the 1963 Benedictine calendar and rubrics, including the Farnborough edition of the Monastic Diurnal.

http://saintsshallarise.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/all-saints-and-all-souls-of-benedictine.html

All Saints and All Souls of the Benedictine Order (Nov.13&14)

Most of the major religious orders have a separate celebration for All Saints and All Souls of their Order. 

Being older than most, the Benedictine Order has rather more recognized saints than most - over 1500 according to the 1919 Catholic Encyclopaedia (and there have been quite a number added to the list since then years).  Nonetheless, on this day I always like to think not just of the formally recognized saints, but also of all those countless unrecognized monks, nuns and oblates who lived their lives quietly, faithful to their vocation, and received their reward.

Unfortunately, the monastic life is not a guarantee of either salvation or even instant sainthood, so remember too in your prayers those who have made it thus far only to purgatory...

Ordo

• November 2012
• December 2012

Reference sheets by day for the Diurnal

• Sunday
• Monday
• Tuesday
• Wednesday
• Thursday
• Friday
• Saturday

Learning the Office

• Part I - Finding your way around the Farnborough edition of the monastic diurnal
• Part II - The Hours of the Office
• Part IIIA - Calendars and Ordos
• Part IIIB - The liturgical seasons
• Part IIIC - The feasts of the saints
• Part IV: How the Office is performed
• Part VA - The Diverse parts of the Office
• Part VB - Parts of the Office, the conclusion of the Hours, Collects and Commemorations
• Part VC: Diverse parts of the Office continued
• Part VI: Compline
• Part VII: Prime
• Part VIII - Terce, Sext and None
• Part IX- Vespers
• Part XA - Introduction to Lauds
• Part XB - Lauds for Sundays and higher level feasts
• Part XC: Lauds during the week
• Part XI: The Office of Our Lady on Saturday
• Part XIIA: Calendars and Ordos revisited
• Part XIIB: Calendars and Ordos continued.
• Part XIII: Tackling the Latin
• Part XIVA: Singing the Office - overview
• Part XIVB: Singing the Office cont.

Notes on the Rubrics

• Rogation Days
• Ember Days
• Advent
• Lent Pt I - up to Passiontide
• Lent Pt 2 - First Passion Week
• Lent Pt 3 - Holy Week
• Eastertide
• Ascensiontide
• Liturgical status of the Traditional Office ***updated
• Are we praying liturgically? ***updated