Corpus Christi

From an 1864 homily by Cardinal Manning:

Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster

“Corpus Christi is a second Feast of the Nativity; a Christmas festival in the summer-tide, when the snows are gone, and flowers cover the earth. And whence comes all this joy but from the divine fact which St. John declares: “The Word was made Flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory”? Morning by morning, in the holy Mass, the Church recites this great charter of its incorporation and of its existence. Morning by morning it bears witness to the divine, permanent, and immutable presence of Jesus in the fulness of grace and truth. The Blessed Sacrament is the Incarnation perpetually present, manifested to faith, and I may say, under a veil, to sense, and applied to us by the same divine power by which it was accomplished.”

Feast of Christ the High Priest

Today, the Thursday between Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, June 9th, is the Feast of Christ the High Priest. It’s a feast reminding us of the priestly work (office) of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and that every ordained priest in the Catholic Church acts in persona Christi capitis. Read Hebrews 2 and 7.

While approved in several places, sadly the US bishops have not asked for the feast here in the USA.

Let us pray that all priest be faithful servants of Christ and of the Church, the People of God.

I also pray for my friends in the clergy, high and low, and in particular those recently ordained priest.

St Ephrem

That today on the Latin liturgical calendar St Ephrem is commemorated. Many don’t have a clue about St Ephrem and his theological force of influence. Here is selection from a sermon of St Ephrem for our edification. Happy feast.

The divine ordering of the world is an image of the spiritual world

O Lord, drive away the darkness from our minds with the light of your wisdom, so that enlightened in this way we may serve you with renewed purity.

The beginning of the sun’s passage through the sky marks the beginning of the working day for us mortals: we ask you, Lord, to prepare in our minds a place where the day that knows no end may give its light. Grant that we may have within us this light, the life of the resurrection, and that nothing may take away our delight in you. Mark us with the sign of that day that does not begin with the movement and the course of the sun, by keeping our minds fixed on you.In your sacraments we welcome you every day and receive you in our bodies.

Make us worthy to experience within us the resurrection for which we hope. By the grace of baptism we conceal within our bodies the treasure of your divine life. This treasure increases as we eat at the table of your sacraments. Let us rejoice in your grace. We have within us, Lord, a memorial of you, which we receive at your spiritual table; may we possess the full reality in the life to come.

Let us appreciate the great beauty that is ours through the spiritual beauty that your immortal will arouses in our mortal nature.Your crucifixion, Lord, was the end of your bodily life: help us to crucify our will to give birth to the spiritual life. May your resurrection, Jesus, fill our spirits with greatness: may we see in your sacraments a mirror in which we may be able to recognise the resurrection.

Your divine ordering of the world, O Saviour, is the image of the spiritual world: let us live in it as truly spiritual men. Do not take away from our minds, Lord, the signs of your spiritual presence and do not withdraw from our bodies the warmth and delight of your presence. The mortal nature of our bodies is a source of corruption within us: let the outpouring of the spirit of your love wipe away the effect of mortality from our hearts.

Grant, Lord, that we may hasten to our true home, and, like Moses on the mountain-top, let us have a glimpse of it.

Fr Ragheed Ganni

Iraqi priest Fr Ragheed Ganni, and 3 subdeacons, were killed by terrorists on this day in 2007 in Mosul. He was martyred for refusing to close his church. His cause for canonization was introduced in 2018.

Servant of God Fr Ragheed Ganni, pray for us.

Fortunato Frezza becomes cardinal

On Sunday, May 29, Pope Francis announced his intention to create 21 new Cardinals at a Consistory on Saturday, 27 August. One of the 21 is Reverend Monsignor Fortunato Frezza, canon of Saint Peter’s Basilica and Master of Ceremonies and Spiritual Assistant of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, will be created Cardinal by the Pope. Frezza work for several years at the Secretariat General for the Synod of the Bishops.

The Order of the Holy Sepulchre has provided us with a brief tribute to the Cardinal-designate here by Leonardo Visconti di Modrone, Governor General of the Order.

Photo of cardinals with Pope on May 3, 2021. (Credit: CNS photo/Vatican Media)

St Philip Neri: an apostle for the universal call to holiness

The Church’s liturgical calendar has us celebrating the 40th day following the Resurrection of Jesus. Ascension Thursday is a point in our Catholic faith and one that is re-affirmed in the Creed.

Also on today’s liturgical calendar of the Latin Church is the feast day of our father among the saints, Philip Neri. The USA has several Oratories.

St. Philip, also known affectionately as “Pippo buono,” or “good little Phil,” wanted to be a missionary, but found that his mission territory was the City of Rome in the early 1500s during the Counter Reformation. He was a contemporary of several saints and founders of religious order. Philip founded the Congregation of the Priests of the Oratory and died in 1595.

Neri was known for his good cheer and extraordinary sense of humor. He was ordained priest in 1551 and exercised his priesthood notably in the confessional and preaching. And this became the hallmark of the Congregation of the Oratory.

Moreover, Neri placed significant emphasis the role of the laity in the Church thus believing that holiness was attainable for the laity –not just for the professional Catholics –monks, nuns, priests. While other religious order had third order laity groups, e.g., the Franciscans, Dominicans, oblates, and the like, the laity connected to the Oratorians were not treated as a third order, but as a first order. The Oratory existed to serve the needs of the laity. In some ways, Neri’s missionary impulse for the city of Rome became the seeds of what we call today the Universal Call to Holiness (Cf. V2 and the Opus Dei).

St. Philip Neri held: “Cheerfulness strengthens the heart and helps us to persevere. A servant of God ought always to be in good spirits. Charity and cheerfulness, or charity and humility, should be our motto.” From the perspective of St. Philip, joy and humility were indispensible from one another and essential for a healthy Christian life.

St Isaiah, the Prophet

One of the things I try to do with this blog is educate myself (and others) on the liturgical traditions of the Holy Church –East and West– and one of those traditions is the saints. Many people of the Eastern and Western Churches don’t know that some Old Testament figures are honored as saints with their own feast days. In part, a Catholic of the Latin Church may not realize this because they don’t celebrate the the OT people at the altar; sometimes the logic is: not celebrated at the altar there’s no feast day. That’s faulty logic. The Eastern Christians know that the OT prophets are saints because they are celebrated at the altar.

Today, we have as our saint, Isaiah the Prophet. He from the the 8th c. BC.

History reveals to us that the Holy Prophet Isaiah lived 700 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, who was of royal lineage. Isaiah’s father Amos raised him in the fear of God and in the law of the Lord. Having attained the age of maturity, the Prophet married a pious prophetess (Is 8:3) and had a son Jashub (Is 8:18).

The Martyrologium Romanum has this entry for him.

1. Commemoratio sancti Isaiae, prophetae, qui, in diebus Oziae, Iotham, Achaz et Ezechiae, regum Iudae, missus est ut populo infideli et peccatori Dominum fidelem et salvatorem revelaret, ad implementum promissionis David a Deo iuratae. Apud Iudaeos sub Manasse rege martyr occubuisse traditur.

Lift high the Cross

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, formerly celebrated on May 3, for the finding of the True Cross of Christ by Emperor Constantine and his mother Saint Helen. The Cross is exalted and honored as a trophy for its Easter victory and a sign that will appear in heaven announcing to everyone the second coming of the Lord.

Prayers for the good work of the Knights and Dames of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

Here is a miniature taken from the magnificent Breviary of Jerusalem (XIV sec.), from the “Ludovic II De Torres” located at the Library of the Archbishop’s Seminary of Montreal.

Mary’s love and longing

A most holy and blessed Easter to all!

“While it was still dark Mary Magdalene had come to watch at the tomb, and she found Jesus whom she sought standing there in the flesh. But you must know him now according to the spirit, not according to the flesh, and you can be sure of finding his spiritual presence if you seek him with a desire like hers, and if he observes your persevering prayer. Say then to the Lord Jesus, with Mary’s love and longing: ‘My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks for you.'”

From an Easter sermon by Guerric of Igny

St Ambrose’s sermon on Lent

Whether you are an Eastern Christian or a Western Christian, it is said that we are at mid-lent. The intensity of prayer, fasting and almsgiving ramps up to discipline or body, mind and soul in preparation to receive the graces of Holy Week and then Easter. The following text from Saint Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor of the Church, will give us perspective thus helping us to reflect upon our spiritual journey thus far. Many of us will weaken in our lenten observance. But don’t that happen. There is much at stake.
St Ambrose’s preaching:

Give thanks, Brethren, to the Divine Mercy which has brought you safely halfway through the season of Lent. For this favor they give praise to God, thankfully and with devotion, who in these days have striven to live in the manner which they were instructed at the beginning of Lent; that is, those who, coming with eagerness to the Church, have sought with sighs and tears, in daily fasting and almsdeeds, to obtain the forgiveness of their sins.

They, however, who have neglected this duty, that is to say, those who have not fasted daily, or given alms, or those who were indifferent or unmoved in prayer, they have no reason to rejoice, but rather, unhappy that they are, for mourning. Yet let them not mourn as if they had no hope; for He Who could give back sight to the blind from birth (cf. Jn 9), can likewise change those who now are lukewarm and indifferent into souls fervent and zealous in His service, if with their whole heart they desire to be converted unto Him. Let such persons acknowledge their own blindness of heart, and let them draw near to the Divine Physician that they may be restored to sight.

Would that you might seek the medicine of the soul when you have sinned, as you seek that of the body when you are ill in the flesh. Who now in this so great assembly were he condemned, not to be put to death, but to be deprived of his sight only, would not give all he possessed to escape the danger? And if you so fear the death of the flesh, what do you not fear more than the death of the spirit, especially since the pains of death, that is, of the body, are but of an hour, whilst the death of the soul, that is, its punishment and its grieving, has no end? And if you love the eyes of your body, that you soon will lose in death, why do you not love those eyes of the soul by which you may see your Lord and your God forever?

Labor therefore, Beloved Children in the Lord, labor while it is yet day; for as Christ Our Lord says, The night cometh, when no man can work (Jn 4:4). Daytime is this present life; night is death, and the time that follows death. If after this life there is no more freedom to work, as the Truth tells us, why then does every man not labor while he yet lives in this world?

Be fearful, Brethren, of this death, of which the Savior says: The night cometh, when no man can work. All those who now work evil are without fear of this death, and because of this, when they depart from this life they shall encounter everlasting death. Labor while yet ye live, and particularly in these days; fasting from delicate fare, withholding yourselves at all time from evil works. For those that abstain from food, but do not withhold themselves from wickedness, are like to the devil, who while he eats not, yet never ceases from evildoing. And lastly, you must know that what you deny yourself in fasting, you must give to heaven in the poor.

Fulfill in work, Brethren, the lesson of this day… lest there come upon you the chastisement of the Jews. For they said to the blind man: Be thou his disciple (Jn 9:28). What does being a disciple of Christ mean if not to be an imitator of His compassion, and a follower of His truth and humility? But they said this meaning to curse the man. Instead it is a truly great blessing, to which you may also attain, by His grace Who liveth and reigneth unto ages of ages. Amen.
God invites us today to recommit ourselves to the disciplines of this holy season. Keep in mind, the end of our journey is in sight: the feast of the Holy Resurrection –Pascha – Easter.