August 2016 – Communio

St Aidan

I doubt many people know much about Saint Aidan except surface level stuff. The name “Aidan” is a beautiful name and it carries with it the beauty of the best of Catholicism in Ireland and parts of England and Wales. Saint Aidan was seeking someone great –he was truly seeking God. This seeking is the principle, the grammar by which we truly live the Faith.

“Monastic founder, bishop, and miracle worker known for his kindness to animals. Known as Edan, Modoc, and Maedoc in some records, Saint Aidan was born in Connaught, Ireland. His birth was heralded by signs and omens, and he showed evidence of piety as a small child. Educated at Leinster, Saint Aidan went to Saint David monastery in Wales. He remained there for several years, studying Scriptures, and his presence saved Saint David from disaster. Saxon war parties attacked the monastery during Saint Aidan’s stay, and he repelled them miraculously. In time, Saint Aidan returned to Ireland, founding a monastery in Ferns, in Wexford. He became the bishop of the region as well. His miracles brought many to the Church. Saint Aidan is represented in religious art with a stag. He made a beautiful stag invisible to save it from hounds.”

Saint Aidan, pray for Us!

Sts Margaret Ward, Margaret Clitherow, Anne Line, and Blessed John Roche

One of the liturgical memorials we observe today is that of the collective of Saints Margaret Clitherow, Anne Line, and Margaret Ward. All are martyrs. These three are also sometimes lumped with 284 other canonized or beatified martyrs of the English Reformation on 4 May but some of the canonized are recalled today. The liturgical calendars for England and Wales are particular.

Margaret Clitherow died at age 30 on March 25, 1586, her last words being, “Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, have mercy on me!” She was canonized in 1970 with 39 others. As a group they are known as the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales. These martyred men and women were killed between 1535 and 1679.

A few words on Saint Margaret Ward and her servant, Blessed John Roche.

They were arrested for helping Father Richard Watson escape from Bridewell Prison smuggling him a rope and helping him once he was outside. She can be said to be an apostle of the works of mercy, especially visiting the imprisoned.

Her captors wanted her to give up Father Watson and convert to the new Church of England. Ward refused. Thereafter, Ward was imprisoned, flogged, and tortured; hanged, drawn, and quartered on 30 August 1588 at Tyburn, London, England

The personal servant of Saint Margaret Ward, John Roche, helped Father Richard Watson, escape by meeting him outside the prison with a boat, then changing clothes to throw off the witch hunt. It was a crime to aid a priest. Like Ward, he was offered freedom if he asked the Queen’s pardon and promised to worship in the Church of England; he replied he did nothing against Queen and that he could not attend a non-Catholic Church. Roche was hanged 1588 at Tyburn, London, England.

Blessed Ildefonso Schuster –man of God, man of holiness

We commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the death of the Blessed Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, Archbishop of Milan.

Cardinal Schuster was born in Rome in 1880 to German parents, entered the Benedictine Abbey of St Paul’s Outside-the-Walls. After ordination to the priesthood of Jesus Christ, he served his community as master of novices and prior before being elected abbot and appointed procurator general of the Cassinese Congregation of Benedictines (now the Subiaco-Cassinese Congregation. He is also served as president of the Pontifical Oriental Institute. In 1929, Pius XI named him to See of Milan, the same episcopal See as Saint Ambrose and St Charles Borromeo. Schuster had a rapid rise in the Church structure by being created a Cardinal less than a month after his appointment to Milan; he was consecrated bishop by the Pope in the Sistine Chapel.

Schuster had several difficult years as the Shepherd of Milan with rise of Fascism and then advent of WWII. What is keenly recalled of Schuster as bishop is his solicitude of the people having visited every parish of the diocese five times, holding several diocesan synods, writing several pastoral letters and founding a seminary in Venegono. Monk or not, he was a true apostle for the good of the Church’s holiness and engagement in the world.

The funeral Mass was offered by the Cardinal Roncalli, now St. John XXIII. In 1985, the cardinal’s his tomb was opened and his mortal remains were found to be intact; the monk-bishop-cardinal-man of God was beatified by Saint John Paul II on May 12, 1996. The relics were given for the veneration of the faithful in one of the side-altars of the Duomo.

One of the things I treasure of Blessed Schuster is his scholarship in the Liber Sacramentorum, known in its English translation as The Sacramentary. It was written while he was Benedictine monk with the supreme reverence for tradition, adoration and intellect. With some things the volumes are dated yet the work remains an invaluble reference point for liturgical scholarship today.

To the seminarians of Milan he taught in a characteristically Benedictine manner of the futility of ministry without personal holiness:

I have no memento to give you apart from an invitation to holiness. It would seem that people are no longer convinced by our preaching; but faced with holiness, they still believe, they still fall to their knees and pray. People seem to live ignorant of supernatural realities, indifferent to the problems of salvation. But when an authentic saint, living or dead passes by, all run to be there. Do not forget that the devil is not afraid of our [parish] sports fields and of our movie halls: he is afraid, on the other hand, of our holiness.

With the Church we pray,

Almighty God, through your grace, Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, by his exemplary virtue, built up the flock entrusted to him. Grant that we, under the guidance of the Gospel, may follow his teaching and walk in sureness of life, until we come to see you face to face in your eternal kingdom.

Blessed Ildefonso Schuster, pray for us!

Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist

The Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist (cf. Mark 6:17-29) is liturgically recalled today. For centuries, St. John the Baptist served as the principal model for those in religious life and as a model for Christian manhood. I always find John the Baptist a figure that convicts my Christian life.

There was a time when images of sainted founders of religious orders and other holy personages were painted with an image of the Baptist to remind the viewer many Christian virtues: the pursuit of and willingness to die for the truth, the discipleship needed to be a proclaimer of the Gospel, to build a relationship with the Messiah, to be in pursuit of the virtue of perseverance of the seeker, living the ascetic ideal, and the like.

We have to attend to St. John the Baptist not only because he was a cousin of Our Savior, but he also presents to us a method of how to live in relation to Him from whom we have eternal life. The Church gives us a rare example of holiness to contemplate that is not given to other saints: a feast of birth and death.

On the score of what the Baptist faced with passion, that is, the categorical rejection of sugar-coating the truth, and the refusal to be politically correct, the saint is images the correspondence of faith and reason. The high degree of intercourse with reality is something we don’t much appreciate today and much less desire to walk in the same footsteps. We too often lack courage –the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The enduring importance of St. John the Baptist’s example, hence, is the important call to each of us to ask the Holy Spirit to give us the gifts we need to be disciples of the Lord and missionaries in the world today. We can’t be faithful to God’s holy word with Divine Help, the same help St. John the Baptist relied upon.

St Augustine

Today, though Sunday, is the liturgical feast day of the great saint of Hippo, Augustine. While his point in some areas of out theological life are germane today, his work requires us to wrestle with his ideas and spiritual journey. The Church prays for this grace through Saint Augustine’s intercession which I think is some for all of us to ponder a little more: we are looking for the Mystical Body of Christ on earth to be renewed in the same spirit given Augustine –that we may thirst for God,
the sole fount of true wisdom, and seek God, the author of heavenly love.

Do we seek the face of God –Father, Son and Holy Spirit?

In the Confessions we read:

O Eternal truth, true love and beloved eternity. You are my God. To you do I sigh day and night. When I first came to know you, you drew me to yourself so that I might see that there were things for me to see, but that I myself was not yet ready to see them. Meanwhile you overcame the weakness of my vision, sending forth most strongly the beams of your light, and I trembled at once with love and dread. I learned that I was in a region unlike yours and far distant from you, and I thought I heard your voice from on high: “I am the food of grown men; grow then, and you will feed on me. Nor will you change me into yourself like bodily food, but you will be changed into me.”

I sought a way to gain the strength which I needed to enjoy you. But I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who is above all, God blessed for ever. He was calling me and saying: I am the way of truth, I am the life. He was offering the food which I lacked the strength to take, the food he had mingled with our flesh. For the Word became flesh, that your wisdom, by which you created all things, might provide milk for us children.

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

Our Lady of Czestochowa

Prayer to Our Lady of Czestochowa

Our Lady of Czestochowa, Queen of Poland, pray for us Holy Mother of Czestochowa, you are full of grace, goodness and mercy. I consecrate to you all my thoughts, words and actions – my soul and body. I beseech your blessings and especially prayers for my salvation.

Today I consecrate myself to you, good Mother, totally – with body and soul amid joy and sufferings, to obtain for myself and others your blessings on this earth and eternal life in heaven. Amen

Our Lady of Czestochowa, Queen of Poland, pray for us.

Queenship of Mary

Today is the octave day of the Solemnity of the Assumption and we honor Mary in her Queenship.

There are a few times during the liturgical year that the Church uses royal titles for the God and the Mother of God. There may be a slight disconnect for some with the use of titles that denote royalty but what we understand to be regal, majestic, and powerful in this world with kings and queens, it is not at all the same for God and the Mother of God. Indeed, the world’s royals have had, and continue to have a certain amount of power and privilege. What we attribute to the world’s elite is not what we attribute to the Divine. Our theology says that we understand on this plain is far exceeded when speaking of God. For example fatherhood is not the same as Divine Fatherhood; biological father is imperfect but the perfection we have in God is utterly different.

So, what do we say about Mary’s Queenship? Mary is the sinless Virgin who humbly accepted God’s will for her; as a mother she experience a life of great suffering with the death of her Son; Mary’s Queenship exists in the sense that her motherly love and concern for all of us is total and majestic. It is with a special concern for our salvation wrought through her Son’s saving Paschal Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection finds a place in our devotion. Her is a key point: Mary has a queenship, in fact, Queen Mother, because her Son is King. Without this connection to Jesus, the title falls away.

Called a queen does not replace Mary’s essential role as mother. As John Paul said, “her queenship remains a corollary of her particular maternal mission and simply expresses the power conferred on her to carry out that mission.” She is not exclusive in her concern for all of the Father’s creation: her particular mission is for all humanity.

Mary’s mission is recognized as St Germanus preached about Her: “You [Mary] dwell spiritually with us and the greatness of your vigilance over us makes your communion of life with us stand out” (Horn. 1, PG 98, 344).

Vatican II spoke of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in “body and soul into heavenly glory,” and also teaches Mary was “exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords (cf. Rv 19:16) and conqueror of sin and death” (Lumen gentium, n. 59).

Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of the Queenship of Mary to be celebrated on May 31st, the last day of the month dedicated to Our Lady. The Second Vatican Council liturgical reform moved the feast to today, the octave day of the Assumption.

Father Franz Reinisch

On this date in 1942, Father Franz Reinisch was beheaded in Brandenburg, Berlin. He was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest and member of the Schoenstatt Movement.

A staunch critic of the Nazis, he refused to take the oath allegiance of Adolf Hitler and believed he was the personification of the Antichrist. He was arrested, tried, and convicted by a military court. He was sentenced to death. Father Reinisch made Holy Confession and received Holy Communion.

Father Reinisch is currently in the process of Canonization by the Catholic Church.

St Pius X

With Saint Pius X we have an example of a man who was given the mission “to safeguard the Catholic faith and to restore all things in Christ,” based on “heavenly wisdom and apostolic fortitude.” This is what we need to attend to. From the Office of Readings given today for the liturgical memorial of Saint Pius X comes from the 1911 apostolic constitution Divino Afflatu written by himself:

The collection of psalms found in Scripture, composed as it was under divine inspiration, has, from the very beginnings of the Church, shown a wonderful power of fostering devotion among Christians as they offer to God a continuous sacrifice of praise, the harvest of lips blessing his name. Following a custom already established in the Old Law, the psalms have played a conspicuous part in the sacred liturgy itself, and in the divine office. Thus was born what Basil calls the voice of the Church, that singing of psalms, which is the daughter of that hymn of praise (to use the words of our predecessor, Urban VIII) which goes up unceasingly before the throne of God and of the Lamb, and which teaches those especially charged with the duty of divine worship, as Athanasius says, the way to praise God, and the fitting words in which to bless him. Augustine expresses this well when he says: God praised himself so that man might give him fitting praise; because God chose to praise himself man found the way in which to bless God.

The psalms have also a wonderful power to awaken in our hearts the desire for every virtue. Athanasius says: Though all Scripture, both old and new, is divinely inspired and has its use in teaching, as we read in Scripture itself, yet the Book of Psalms, like a garden enclosing the fruits of all the other books, produces its fruits in song, and in the process of singing brings forth its own special fruits to take their place beside them. In the same place Athanasius rightly adds: The psalms seem to me to be like a mirror, in which the person using them can see himself, and the stirrings of his own heart; he can recite them against the background of his own emotions. Augustine says in his Confessions: How I wept when I heard your hymns and canticles, being deeply moved by the sweet singing of your Church. Those voices flowed into my ears, truth filtered into my heart, and from my heart surged waves of devotion. Tears ran down, and I was happy in my tears.

Indeed, who could fail to be moved by those many passages in the psalms which set forth so profoundly the infinite majesty of God, his omnipotence, his justice and goodness and clemency, too deep for words, and all the other infinite qualities of his that deserve our praise? Who could fail to be roused to the same emotions by the prayers of thanksgiving to God for blessings received, by the petitions, so humble and confident, for blessings still awaited, by the cries of a soul in sorrow for sin committed? Who would not be fired with love as he looks on the likeness of Christ, the redeemer, here so lovingly foretold? His was the voice Augustine heard in every psalm, the voice of praise, of suffering, of joyful expectation, of present distress.

St Bernard of Clairvaux

I always look forward, for some reason, to the feast day of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Not sure why, but it may have something to do with marking the progress of the summer (just like the Transfiguration and the Assumption does) but also because his youthful calling to serve God in a profound way is a true inspiration.

Of the saint it is said:

You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.

The historians tell us that Bernard, at 22, together with his four brothers, and 25 friends, joined the relatively new abbey of Citeaux; we also know that his father and another brother joined him.

Early in his monastic life he was called upon to be an abbot founding the Abbey of Clairvaux. In time, his abbey had over 700 monks with 160 daughter houses. Bernard was the one to give the Cistercian reform of Benedictine monasticism its vitality.

His doctrine was clear and straight-forward. His sermons were of the highest quality. His pastoral work included fighting the Albigensian heresy, helping the Second Crusade, ending the schism of anti-Pope Anacletus II, and teaching monks among whom was the future Blessed Pope Eugene III. Bernard was an ardent lover of the Blessed Virgin Mary and called himself “Beatae Mariae cappellane” – the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Chaplain.

Pope Pius VIII called Bernard the “Mellifluous Doctor” for his eloquence and named him a Doctor of the Church

Here is a sermon:

I love because I love, I love that I may love

Love is sufficient of itself, it gives pleasure by itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself. Its profit lies in its practice. I love because I love, I love that I may love. Love is a great thing so long as it continually returns to its fountainhead, flows back to its source, always drawing from there the water which constantly replenishes it. Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be. For when God loves, all he desires is to be loved in return; the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made happy by their love of him.

The Bridegroom’s love, or rather the love which is the Bridegroom, asks in return nothing but faithful love. Let the beloved, then, love in return. Should not a bride love, and above all, Love’s bride? Could it be that Love not be loved?

Rightly then does she give up all other feelings and give herself wholly to love alone; in giving love back, all she can do is to respond to love. And when she has poured out her whole being in love, what is that in comparison with the unceasing torrent of that original source? Clearly, lover and Love, soul and Word, bride and Bridegroom, creature and Creator do not flow with the same volume; one might as well equate a thirsty man with the fountain.

What then of the bride’s hope, her aching desire, her passionate love, her confident assurance? Is all this to wilt just because she cannot match stride for stride with her giant, any more than she can vie with honey for sweetness, rival the lamb for gentleness, show herself as white as the lily, burn as bright as the sun, be equal in love with him who is Love? No. It is true that the creature loves less because she is less. But if she loves with her whole being, nothing is lacking where everything is given. To love so ardently then is to share the marriage bond; she cannot love so much and not be totally loved, and it is in the perfect union of two hearts that complete and total marriage consists. Or are we to doubt that the soul is loved by the Word first and with a greater love?