As God was physically formed in Mary, so he wills to be spiritually formed in you. If you knew he was seeing through your eyes, you would see in everyone a child of God. If you knew that he worked through your hands, they would bless all the day through …. If you knew that he wants to use your mind, your will, your fingers, and your heart, how different you would be. If half the world did this, there would be no war!
How to find Christmas Peace
What Christ did in his own human nature in Galilee, he is doing today … in every city and hamlet of the world where souls are vivified by his Spirit. He is still being born in other Bethlehems of the world, still coming into his own and his won receiving him not, still instructing the learned doctors of the law and answering their questions, still labouring at a carpenter’s bench, still “[going] about doing good” (cf. Acts 10:34-43), still preaching, governing, sanctifying, climbing other Calvaries, and entering into the glory of his Father.
In the Fullness of Time
It makes no difference what you do here on earth; what matters is the love with which you do it. The street cleaner who accepts in God’s name a cross arising from his state of life, such a person is the scorn of his peers; the mother who pronounces her fiat to the Divine Will as she raises a family for the kingdom of God; the afflicted in hospitals who say fiat to their cross of suffering are the uncanonised saints, for what is sanctity but fixation in goodness by abandonment to God’s Holy Will?
Seven words of Jesus and Mary
We do not always know why such things as sickness and setbacks happen to us, for our minds are too puny to grasp God’s plan. A person is like a little mouse in a piano, which cannot understand why it must be disturbed by someone playing Chopin and forcing it to move off the piano wires.
From the Angles’ Blackboard
God does not love us because we are loveable of and by ourselves, but because he has put his own love into us. He does not even wait for us to love; his own love perfects us. Letting it do this, with no resistance, no holding back for fear of what our egotism must give up, is the one way to the peace that the world can neither give nor take away
Lift up your Heart
Once our helplessness is rendered up to the power of God, life changes and we become less and less the victims of our moods. Instead of letting the world determine our state of mind, we determine the state of our soul with which the world is to be faced. The earth carries around its atmosphere with it as it revolves about the sun; so can the soul carry the atmosphere of God with it in disregard of turbulent events in the world outside.
Lift up your Heart
Many people nowadays want God, but on their terms not on his, They insist that their wishes shall determine the kind of religion that is true, rather than letting God reveal his truth to them. So their dissatisfaction continues and grows. But God finds us loveable, even in our rebellion against him.
Lift up your Heart
We always make the fatal mistake of thinking that it is what we do that matters, when really what matters is what we let God do to us. God sent the angel to Mary, not to ask her to do something, but to let something be done. Since God is a better artisan than you, the more you abandon yourself to him, the happier he can make you.
Seven Words of Jesus and Mary
Ours is a world characterised by noise, and by chatter. It’s hard to escape it’s everywhere, we even have social media to pursue us relentlessly, so that it feels like there is no escape. We long for more silence in our lives, in which case we had better do something about it. It is not for nothing that the first word of the Rule of S. Benedict is Ausculta ‘Listen’. One cannot listen if one is talking, one needs to be silent, to be attentive, to concentrate on one thing, and the præcepta Magistri the words of the Master are simply a means to end, that we focus upon and listen to God, hence the large amount of quotation from Scripture in general and the Psalms in particular contained in the Rule, so that we are attentive to the Word of God, that’s the point of the Opus Dei, to help us to listen to what God says to us. Listening too lies at the heart of Obœdentia: being obedient, subject to another, listening – one cannot obey if one has not first listened.
De zelo bono quod debent monachi habere
Sicut est zelus amaritudinis malus qui separat a Deo et ducit ad infernum, ita est zelus bonus qui separat a vitia et ducit ad Deum et ad vitam æternam. Hunc ergo zelum ferventissimo amore exerceant monachi, id est ut honore se invicem præveniant, infirmitates suas sive corporum sive morum patientissime tolerent, obœdientiam sibi certatim inpendant: nullus quod sibi utile iudicat sequatur, sed quod magis alio; caritatem fraternitatis caste inpendant. Amore Deum timeant. Abbatem suum sincera et humili caritate diligant. Christo omnimo nihil præponant, qui nos pariter ad vitam æternam perducat.
Concerning the good zeal which monks ought to have.
Just as there is an evil zeal of bitterness which separates from God and leads to hell, so there is a good zeal which separates from vices and leads to God and to life everlasting. This zeal, therefore, the monks should practice with the most fervent love. Thus they should anticipate one another in honour (Rom. 12:10); most patiently endure one another’s infirmities, whether of body or of character; vie in paying obedience one to another — no one following what he considers useful for himself, but rather what benefits another; may they cherish fraternal charity chastely; fear God in love; love their Abbot with a sincere and humble charity; and prefer nothing whatever to Christ. And may He bring us all together to life everlasting!
The Chapter above, Chapter 72, lies at the heart of, and is the culmination of the Rule, and it is serious wonderful stuff. I know from personal experience that it is all to easy to fall into the evil zeal of bitterness, and it eats up your soul: you become suspicious, cynical, and while you try to kid yourself that such behaviour is in fact justified, borne out by the facts, all we are doing is trying to excuse the inexcusable, to salve our conscience, to save ourselves the difficult and hard task of loving those whom we would rather not. Thus, in the Gospels, Our Lord calls us to love our enemies (Mt 5:44, Lk 6:27-36) which is no small ask, if it were he would not ask it of us, it goes against our deepest nature, we want to hate those who hate and persecute us, we forget their humanity, and are wrapped up in our own pain. It is something which the world around us finds very hard, social media is full of it, it can feed off fear and jealousy, it is corrosive, it damages us, and those around us, and its consequences are toxic, and sinful, that’s what hell and being separated from God means, and its what Christ comes to save us from, from ourselves.
Love then is the key, it is the heart of the Gospel and the Rule: love God, and love one another as I have loved you, with that same costly love. Only then can we truly prefer nothing to Christ, which is the way to life everlasting: believing in Him, following Him, trusting Him, and letting Him guide our thoughts, our words and our actions. So that we may proclaim in word and deed that saving love which was born in Bethlehem, to a world which longs for healing, for love, and for peace.
Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?…
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.
Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
The words of the Introit at Mass and the Epistle, set to music by Mr Henry Purcell:
As we prepare the way of the Lord may peace and joy reign in our hearts and in our lives.
Ours is a sick world, which longs for healing, which longs for the reconciliation which Christ alone can bring. As we prepare to welcome the Saviour, let us remember why He came among us, and why He is the Balm of Gilead which heals the sin-sick soul. Come Lord Jesus!
Here’s Sam Cooke saying more with music than I can just with words:
We revere with due admiration the most blessed sufferings of those who, as we have heard and believe (through the good service of the fame that reports the information), have been sanctified by a happy martyrdom. We honor with vigils, hymns and even solemn sacraments those days on which they were crowned with [God’s] gift after victory, striving as they bore witness to the name of the Lord, and by their blessed death being reborn in the heavenly realms of the same Lord, who helped them with his own power in their struggle—[and we do this] so that we may ask for their protection and support before the Lord by praying, and deserve it by honoring [them]. With what solemnity, then, shall we revere, with what joy shall we observe that day, on which the most blessed Saturninus, bishop of the city of Toulouse and martyr, earned in that same city a double crown (as God is my witness)—the rank of bishop and the honor of martyrdom—so that his suffering sanctified one whose life had already made him worthy of reverence!
At that time (after the bodily coming of the Savior) the true Sun of Righteousness had risen in the darkness and had begun to illuminate the Western districts—for gradually, little by little, the sound of the Gospels went out into the whole world, and the preaching of the Apostles in its slow advance shone forth in our regions. A few churches were being built in some cities, through the devotion of a small number of Christians, while numerous temples in all places were sending up the disgusting smoke [of sacrifices], through the lamentable error of the pagans. Then (truly quite a long time ago, that is, during the consulship of Decius and Gratus, as the faithful report tells), the city of Toulouse had received Saturninus as its first and supreme priest of Christ. By his faith and virtue, the oracles of those demons who were worshiped in this same city began to cease; their fabrications were laid bare; their machinations uncovered; all their power among the pagans, all their deceit, began to decrease, as the faith of the Christians increased. Since the aforementioned bishop, in his going to and from the church, which was quite small at that time, often went past the Capitol, which was between his house and the house of God, the deceitful crowd of demons was not able to stand the holy man’s presence; and the statues (mute as they were), overshadowed by no apparitions, remained in silence [as their only response] to the impious worship and the customary prayers of those who came to consult them.
All the priests of impious superstition, disturbed by the novelty of such a great thing, began to ask themselves whence this muteness (not usual for such a long time) had suddenly come upon their gods, and who had shut their ever-babbling mouths, so that they, not moved by the prayers of those who called upon them, nor charmed by the shed blood of bulls and so many sacrifices, refused to give any response to those who consulted them—[were they] angry or absent? They heard from a certain enemy of our religion that some sect hostile to pagan superstition had arisen, which was called Christian, and that it was striving to destroy their gods; also, the bishop of this faith was Saturninus, who passed by the Capitol frequently—it was at the sight of this man that the mouths of their gods were terrified and fell silent; they could not easily be re-opened unless an accelerated death took that bishop away.
Oh unhappy error and blind madness! They heard that the man was a terror to their own gods, and that the demons went into exile from their temples and their habitations when he passed by. Not only did they hear—they also understood! And they would prefer to kill this man, who was terrifying to the idols they worshiped even without making any threats, rather than to honor him. Miserable people—who did not consider that they ought to worship no one more than him whose servant had given orders to their own divinities! For what is more foolish than to fear those who are afraid, and not to fear that one who rules over the rulers?
In the midst of this eager questioning and astonishment, as little by little a great multitude of people had gathered and they were all eagerly wanting to find out something certain regarding all this talk, and (a bull having been prepared as a victim) they were desiring either to bring their gods back or propitiate them, by the sacrifice of such a tremendous victim—see! the holy Saturninus himself, coming to a solemn service, was recognized by one of that malicious crowd, who said: “Look! the adversary of our worship himself, the standard-bearer of the new religion, who preaches the destruction of temples, who despises our gods by calling them demons, whose constant presence, finally, prevents us from obtaining oracles! And so, since the end he deserves has presented the very man to us at the opportune time, let us take vengeance for the injury to ourselves and to our gods at the same time! And now, through our compulsion, may he either be pleasing to them, by sacrificing, or make them joyful, by dying!”
With the urging of such an impious voice, the whole crowd of lunatics surrounded the holy man and, once a priest and two deacons who had accompanied him had fallen away in flight, he was brought alone to the Capitol. As they were trying to force him to sacrifice to the demons, he bore witness in a clear voice: “I know only one God, the true God. I will offer to him the sacrifice of praise. I know that your gods are demons; and you honor them (in vain) not so much by the sacrifice of cattle as by the deaths of your own souls. Now, how is it that you want me to fear those by whom, as I hear, you say I am feared?”
At these words of the holy bishop, the whole boisterous, impious multitude was inflamed, and used that bull, which had been prepared as a sacrificial victim, in the service of their savagery, tying a rope around its flanks and leaving it loose in back: they bound the holy man’s feet with the end of the rope that was hanging down behind the bull, and drove the bull with rather sharp blows to rush down from the upper part of the Capitol onto the plain. Without delay, during the first part of the descent of that slope, his head having been dashed [against the rocks], his brain having been scattered, and his body having been mangled in every part, his soul, worthy of God, was received by Christ—so that after the victory he [i.e., Christ] might crown with his own laurels [the soul] that pagan fury had wrenched out with torments while he was fighting faithfully for Christ’s name.
The dead body, however, now exposed to no one’s affronts, was led by the bull in its frenzy to that place where, the rope having snapped in two, it received burial in a mound at that time. For since at that time the Christians themselves were afraid to bury the body of the holy man, on account of the pagans’ agitation, only two women, overcoming the weakness of their sex by the power of their faith, braver than all the men, and encouraged by the example of their bishop, I believe, to endure martyrdom, put the body of the blessed man into a wooden coffin and, after making deep trenches, placed it as far underground as possible. And so, they seemed not so much to be burying the sacred remains (so worthy of reverence in their eyes) as to be hiding them, for fear that people of impious mind, perchance, if they saw any honors being paid to the buried body’s grave, might immediately dig up the body and tear it to pieces, and even take away the modest tomb. But the Lord took up his martyr in peace—to him belong honor and glory, power and might for ever and ever. Amen.
The death of Our Lord on the Cross reveals that we are meant to be perpetually dissatisfied here below. If earth were meant to be a Paradise, then He Who made it would never have taken leave of it on Good Friday. The commending of the Spirit to the Father was at the same time the refusal to commend it to earth. The completion or fulfilment of life is in heaven, not on earth.
Fulton Sheen, Victory over Vice, 1939: 99
Today the Church celebrates the last Sunday before Advent as the Solemnity of Christ the King, as a feast it is both old and new, while a relatively recent addition to the calendar, what it represents is something ancient and profound: as Christians we recognise the sovereignty of God over the world, and we ask that Christ may rule in our hearts and lives, so that we may live lives of love, so that our faith is proclaimed by word and deed.
Before we start Advent, the beginning of the Church’s year, the season of preparation for our yearly remembrance of Our Lord’s birth in Bethlehem; we stop for a moment to ponder Christ’s majesty, His kingship, and what this means for us and for the world. As someone of the House of David, it is good to start by looking back. Just as the Lord said to David ‘You shall be shepherd of my people Israel’ (2Sam 5:2) this also looks forward to Christ who is the the Good Shepherd, the one who lays down His life for His sheep. In him we see the meaning of true kingship, and true sacrifice.
In this morning’s epistle, St Paul praises his Lord and Saviour as ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.’ (Col. 1: 15–20). It places Christ before and above everything, it sets the scene for our worship of him.
Jesus Christ shows the world His kingship when He reigns on the Cross. It bears the title ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’ it proclaims His kingship, but those who are standing by cannot understand – if he is the Messiah, who saved others, why isn’t he saving himself? His kingship is not marked by self-interest, he rules for the sake of others, or as St Paul puts it ‘making peace by the blood of his cross’. Thankfully in Luke’s Gospel the penitent thief can say to him ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom’ (Lk 23:42). The thief recognises Jesus’ kingly power, he acknowledges it, and puts himself under it. We need to be like him. We need to acknowledge Christ as our Lord and King; we need to recognise both who he is and what he does. We need to, the whole world needs to, acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.
Jesus’ kingship is not the ruthless exercise of power by a dictator; it is rather shown by sacrificial self-giving love, to reconcile God to all things. It is costly, and His Body still bears the wounds of love, which heal our wounds of sin and division. But He is also transfigured and glorious, so that we can have confidence in whom we worship. As He gives himself for us on the Cross, He gives himself to us under the forms of bread and wine; he feeds us with himself, so that our nature may transformed, and we may be given a foretaste of heaven.
So let us worship Him, let us adore Him, let us acknowledge His universal kingship, the Lord and Redeemer of all. What looks to the world like defeat is God’s triumph, it opens the gates of heaven, it inaugurates God’s kingdom of peace and love, into which all may enter. So let us enter, and encourage others to do so, so that the world is transformed one soul at a time, let us invite people to enter into the joy of the Lord, that they may believe and to sing the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Two works of mercy set a man free: forgive and you will be forgiven, and give and you will receive.
When you pray we are all beggars before God: we stand before the great householder bowed down and weeping, hoping to be given something, and that something is God himself.
What does a poor man beg of you? Bread. What do you beg from God? – Christ, who said, ‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven’.
Do you you really want to be forgiven? Then forgive. Do you want to receive something? Then give to another. And if you want your prayer to fly up to God, give it two wings, fasting and almsgiving.
But look carefully at what you do: don’t think it is enough to fast if it is only a penance for sin, and does not benefit someone else. You deprive yourself of something, but to whom do you give what you do without?
Fast in such a way that you rejoice to see that dinner is eaten by another; not grumbling and looking gloomy, giving rather because the beggar wearies you than because you are feeding the hungry.
If you are sad when you give alms, you lose both bread and merit, because ‘God loves a cheerful giver’.
The Pharisee
Shall a Christian go and live apart from the world, so that he may not be tried by false brethren? Shall he who has progressed in a righteous life separate himself so that he need not suffer from anyone? Perhaps people have suffered from before he was converted. Has no one anything to put up with from you? It would surprise me – but if it is so, then you are stronger and thus able to endure other people’s failings.
Do you propose to shut out bad men from good men’s company? if that is what you say, see if you can shut out all evil thoughts from your own heart. Every day we fight with out own heart.
You say you will go apart with a few good men and admit no wicked brother to your society. How do you recognise the man you wish to exclude? Do all come to you with their hearts bare? Those who wish to come do not know themselves, they cannot be proved unless they are tried.
Nowhere in this life are we secure, except in God’s promise – only when we have attained to it, when the gates of Jerusalem are shut behind us, shall we be perfectly safe.
Beloved, mark the apostle’s words: ‘Support one another in charity.’ You forsake the world of men and separate yourself from it. Whom will you profit? Would you have got so far if no one had profited you?
