“Every day you provide your bodies with good to keep them from failing. In the same way your good works should be the daily nourishment of your hearts. Your bodies are fed with food and your spirits with good works. You aren’t to deny your soul, which is going to live forever, what you grant to your body, which is going to die.”
Saint Gregory the Great
When the Church prays the Mass and the Divine Office today we’ll ask God to hear in the “intercession of Pope Saint Gregory, [to] endow, we pray, with a spirit of wisdom those to whom you have given authority to govern, that the flourishing of a holy flock may become the eternal joy of the shepherds.”
We rely on Saint Gregory’s intercession in a big way today.
We are reminded by Pope Saint Gregory that “The only true riches are those that make us rich in virtue. Therefore, if you want to be rich, beloved, love true riches. If you aspire to the heights of real honor, strive to reach the kingdom of Heaven. If you value rank and renown, hasten to be enrolled in the heavenly court of the Angels.”
Gregory (540 – 604) was born in Rome and was a civil servant, the usual path for a man of an aristocratic family; he became Rome’s Prefect.
In time, Gregory became a monk and then he founded a monasteries in Rome and in Sicily. As a deacon he was sent as an envoy to Constantinople.
History tells us that Gregory was the first monk –likely to be living the Rule of Benedict– to be elected Pope. His papacy was reform-minded when it came to property, service, concern for the poor and marginalized, the Church’s liturgical life, including sacred music. You can say that Gregory had a working relationship with people in tension with the Church, especially the Barbarians threatening the peace of peoples.
Beside his prodigious intellectual and social work, Gregory ought to be remembered in a significant way for setting the course of evangelizing the English peoples when he sent Augustine and his monks to England in 596.
The Cistercian nuns of the Monastery of Blessed Mary of Font of Peace (in Arabic, Dier al Adrha Yanbu’a-s-Salam) Azeir, Syria are speaking out:
The people are straining their eyes and ears in front of the television: all they’re waiting for is a word from Obama!
A word from Obama? Will the Nobel Peace Prize winner drop his sentence of war onto us? Despite all justice, all common sense, all mercy, all humility, all wisdom?
The Pope has spoken up, patriarchs and bishops have spoken up, numberless witnesses have spoken up, analysts and people of experience have spoken up, even the opponents of the regime have spoken up…. Yet here we all are, waiting for just one word from the great Obama? And if it weren’t him, it would be someone else. It isn’t he who is “the great one,” it is the Evil One who these days is really acting up.
(excerpt from 29 August 2013 letter, the full text is here)
This is a matter of faith and the public order. These voices need to be heard and prudent action needs to be taken up. Killing more people to save face is not the Christian way.
Typically, you don’t hear from Cistercians in this way. They are now speaking up for justice and peace at a time when another World War is possible. Following the 6th century Rule of Benedict and the Constitutions of the venerable order of Citeaux. You may say, the small group of nuns of Blessed Mary of Font of Peace have as their key work to pray for peace and to work on their conversion.
The monastery is located in Syria, on the boarder with Lebanon in a village of Maronite Catholic. Historians will note that the intuition of the Cistercian nuns coheres well with the context in which they find themselves: at the crossroads with East and West, where Christianity began, and where culture flourished. From where the nuns are located, you can see the Good News sent abroad to Asia Minor, Greece, France, Rome, Armenia, India, China. The nuns, too, rely on the intercession of saints like Afraate, Ephraim, Cyrus, Simeon the Protostilite, Maron, John Maron, Isaac of Niniveh, John Chrysostom, John of Damascus, Rafka, and countless others who followed Jesus Christ.
Our Lady of Peace, and all Syrian and Cistercian saints, pray for us.
On Sunday, the Pope’s weekly Angelus prayer and address included an invitation to prayer, fasting and awareness for the situation of peace in Syria. On the vigil of the Nativity of Mary, Pope Francis –with all local churches around the world, will meet in supplication. The portion of the Pope’s invitation from the Angelus address is here:
May the plea for peace rise up and touch the heart of everyone so that they may lay down their weapons and let themselves be led by the desire for peace.
To this end, brothers and sisters, I have decided to proclaim for the whole Church on 7 September next, the vigil of the birth of Mary, Queen of Peace, a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria, the Middle East, and throughout the world, and I also invite each person, including our fellow Christians, followers of other religions and all men of good will, to participate, in whatever way they can, in this initiative.
On 7 September, in Saint Peter’s Square, here, from 19:00 until 24:00, we will gather in prayer and in a spirit of penance, invoking God’s great gift of peace upon the beloved nation of Syria and upon each situation of conflict and violence around the world. Humanity needs to see these gestures of peace and to hear words of hope and peace! I ask all the local churches, in addition to fasting, that they gather to pray for this intention.
The Christian finds in human work a small part of the cross of Christ and accepts it in the same spirit of redemption in which Christ accepted the cross for us. In work, thanks to the light that penetrates us from the resurrection of Christ, we always find a glimmer of new life, of the new good, as if it were an announcement of “the new heavens and the new earth” in which man and the world participate precisely through the toil that goes with work.
Blessed John Paul II
Laborem exercens, 27
Saint John of Kronstadt said, “When you pray, try to let the prayer reach your heart; in other words, it is necessary that your heart should feel what you are talking about in your prayer, that it should wish for the blessing which you are asking… Observe, during prayer, whether, your heart is in accord with that which you are saying.”
We are asked to remember these two intentions for the month of September in union with the Pope.
The general intention
That people today, often overwhelmed by noise, may rediscover the value of silence and listen to the voice of God and their brothers and sisters.
The missionary intention
That Christians suffering persecution in many parts of the world may by their witness be prophets of Christ’s love.
The Holy Father has appointed Archbishop Pietro Parolin, 58, his Secretary of State, replacing Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, SDB. He will turn 79 on December 2.
The Secretary of State functions as the Prime Minister.
Until now, and since 2009, Archbishop Parolin has been the Nuncio in Venezuela. He was the Undersecretary of State for Relations with States between 2002-2009. The transition happens on 15 October 2013.
He will follow what Pope Francis asked the world to do at his first Mass as the bishop of Rome: to walk, to build and to confess.
He’s been a bishop for 4 years. He will be made a cardinal in the next round of new cardinals.
Here is Archbishop Parolin’s statement.
May the Holy Spirit guide the Archbishop’s work.
Just in case you’re looking for something to read this summer (what’s left of it) …
Francesca Ambrogetti and Sergio Rubin, Pope Francis: His Life in His Own Words
Father Robert Barron The Strangest Way: Walking the Christian Path
Pope Benedict XVI, What It Means to Be A Christian
Father Peter John Cameron, O.P., Praying with Saint Mark’s Gospel: Daily Reflections on the Gospel of St. Mark
Mary Eberstadt, Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution (Ignatius Press, 2013).
Father Michael Gaitley, MIC, The ‘One Thing’ Is Three
Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Conversions in the Christian Life
Father John Hugo, Weapons of the Spirit (Dorothy Day retreat master)
Ralph Martin, The Fulfillment of All Desire
Barnabas Senecal, OSB, Beauty in Faces & Places (NP, 2012).
Girgis Shrif, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George, What is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense (Encounter Books 2012).
The New York Province of Dominicans have brought together several media initiatives and created for themselves a new media division under the sponsorship of the Province of Saint Joseph with the debut of Blackfriar Films. They are off and running…
Here we have a treat with Father Austin Dominic Litke, OP, Father Robert Koopman, OSB and Leah Sedlacek performing a new arrangement of the beautiful 17th century hymn, “Come, My Way, My Truth, My Life.” The beautiful scenery of New York City is the God-given canvas for preaching Gospel and sharing the Christian faith with the world.
Father Austin is a campus minister at NYC and Father Robert is a monk of Saint John’s Abbey (MN) where he’s a music educator and artist.
In case you want to meditate on the beautiful words Father Austin is singing, here they are:
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
such a way as gives us breath,
such a truth as ends all strife,
such a life as killeth death.
Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
such a light as shows a feast,
such a feast as mends in length,
such a strength as makes his guest.
Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
such a joy as none can move,
such a love as none can part,
such a heart as joys in love.
In 2010, there was an interesting “find” for the biblical world of our era. This article is three years old but it ought to raise our interests in the biblical narrative not merely for literary and artistic considerations, but for matters pertaining to divine revelation. We have a lot more work to do if we are to say we “know it all” when it comes to the bible.
I say this because while news reports reveal what can be viewed as a testimony to the attractiveness to the biblical tradition of the Christian Church. The attractiveness of a dynamic faith in Jesus as Savior and Messiah. The realization that our Christian faith is based on meeting God and that we just don’t make things up as we go along.
What is now considered to be among the oldest surviving works of Christianity, the Garima Gospels date perhaps to the early fourth century first came to light in the 1950s; scholars and philanthropists in England are helping to preserve the treasure today.
The Monastery of Abba Garima in northern Ethiopia is one of many places where Christians have conserved their ancient texts relating to the Good News preached by Jesus Christ. That we have a fourth century manuscript with some very early extant Christian illustrations is stunning. The images have Coptic similarities. One more reason we need to have concern for Christians who live in Egypt, Ethiopian and Eritrea. According to reports, the Garima Gospels contain portraits of the Evangelists. A literary and cultural find for some, another piece for biblical archeology for scholars, these Gospel pages are relics of a living faith.