The Mass prayer for today’s liturgical memorial may be found here.
The post from 2008 can be read here.
… for at the altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary, O Father, You mystically espoused Your Son to Your servant Clare, whom Blessed Francis had inspired with the desire of a higher life; You raised her to the summit of seraphic perfection, and chose her to become the mother of a family of virgins … (Franciscan Preface, feast of St Clare)O Light from Light, all splendor’s Source, Whose clear beams shine with heaven’s joy, We give you thanks for Mother Clare, And ev’ry form of praise employ.
Enticed by Francis’ preaching sweet, Christ Crucified became her spouse; She gathered sisters to her side Where poverty would grace their house.
She left behind all earthly gain
That riches true might be her all;
In poverty, obedience,
And chastity she heard Christ’s call.
As mother to her flock, she lived
And modeled Christ to ev’ryone;
In loving service spent herself
In toil from dawn to setting sun.
As she has shown us, Lord, your way,
So give us grace like her to be,
That we may turn from self to you
And in your way be truly free.
Most high, omnipotent, good God,
O Father, Son, and Spirit blest,
With Mother Clare and all your saints
Bring us, your Church, to endless rest.
J. Michael Thompson
Copyright © 2009, World Library Publications
LM; CREATOR ALME SIDERUM, BRESLAU, O WALY WALY
“As for yourself, be self-possessed in all circumstances…. I am already being poured out like a libation.” –From the Second Letter of Paul to Timothy, and from the Gospel of Matthew.
When the papal legates came to the Franciscan convent, bearing the cardinal’s red hat of the see of Albano, they found Brother Bonaventure doing the dishes outside. In dishwater up to his elbows, the story goes, he pointed to the branch of a nearby tree and said, “Hang it there.” Self-possession is all right up to a point. Myself, I’d have poured out that magic detergent as a libation, and have made a dive for the “merited crown reserved for me.”
Saint Bonaventure had reason to be self-possessed. He was the general of the Franciscans at thirty-nine and curial cardinal a year before he died at fifty-nine. Just a year or so before this, his friend Aquinas had refused the archbishopric of Naples. And Saint Albert the Great, Aquinas’ teacher in Cologne, died as the Archbishop of Regensberg.
All three men I’ve named were later designated doctors of the Church and all three were mendicant friars. Is there any realtion between their state in life and the theological eminence –or even their office as teachers of the least of the commandments? The answer, I think, is yes and no. The first concern of the early friars was not intellectual. It was to break out of the mold of static institutions which were impeding the spread of the Gospel. Monasticism meant hugh landholding –a princedom for the abbot– as witness Monte Cassino where Saint Thomas did his grammar and high school. The parish clergy were illiterate. The monks who could read and preach were immobile. Francis, Dominic, the varying reform-fashioners of the Augustinians, the Carmelites, the Gilbertines, all decided to “get the Church moving.” They brought the monastery into the marketplace; they preached sermons in the streets to octogenarians who had never heard a sermon before. They even invaded the new universities –already the preserve of the secular clergy. They were poor men, and let the light of their goodness and dedication shine. They became students perforce because the great charity which men of that time needed to have shown them was broken bread of God’s word in all its purity and strength,
What the worker priests, the little brothers and sisters of Charles de Foucauld, lay missionaries and secular institutes are in our day, mendicant friars were in theirs. All human institutions, groupings excluding the family, tend to outlive their usefulness and die. That could include today’s relgious orders as we know them. New needs arise. But some things are constant: charity, stability, chastity, wisdom, obedience, utter fidelity to the Master’s message.
Gerard Sloyan
Homily, NOYP, 197-99
The feast of the great theologian and Doctor of the Church, Saint Bonaventure, is observed today. A theologian points us toward what is revealed by God, and so a thought of his helpful for us today.
We have been brought to life through Christ. The apostle makes this known in [the] passage when he says: “He has brought us to life together with Christ.” The apostle says this because God brings is to life in Christ, with Christ, through Christ, and according to Christ.
In the first place, God has brought us to life in Christ, because he has shared our mortality of life in his person, according to that passage in John: “As the Father has life in himself, even so he has given to the Son as life in himself” (5:26). Therefore, if the Son has life in himself, while he has taken to himself our mortality, he has joined us to the true and immortal life, and through this he has brought us to life in himself.
He has brought us to life with Christ, while Christ himself, who was life, lived among mortal men… So while he was seen on earth and lived among men (Bar 3:28), God brought us to life with Christ, when he made us live with him.
He also brought us to life through Christ, when he snatched us from death through his death, according to that passage of the First Epistle of Peter: “Christ also died once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us back to God. Put to death indeed in the flesh, he was brought to life in the spirit” (3:18). When Christ laid down his life for us, God brought the dead human race to life through him.
Finally, he brought us to life according to Christ when he guided us through the path of life according to his example, according to that passage of the psalmist: “You have known to me the paths of life when he gave us faith, hope, charity, and the gifts of grace. To these he added the commands according to which Christ himself walked and in which the path of life consists. It is according to these that Christ has taught us to walk. God has brought us to life according to Christ because he guides his imitators to life.
Saint Bonaventure (+1274)
Loving God, upon this day
Sing we all in joyful praise:
Anthony, your faithful son,
On this day has heaven won.
He, the preacher of the Word,
Lived in deed the truth he heard;
Called by martyr’s death to be
Vowed to holy poverty.
Lord, accept the hymns we raise,
Singing Anthony’s holy praise!
Faithful friar, in Francis’ step
Bids us go where he has led,
Drawn by him, we offer laud
To Christ Jesus, Son of God.
Fearless teacher of the way,
Guiding us to work and pray,
Through his never-ceasing prayer
Leads us Christ-ward ev’rywhere.
Lord, accept the hymns we raise,
Singing Anthony’s holy praise!
To the Father and the Son
And the Spirit, Three-in-One,
Hymns of glory, songs of love
Sing we, echoing those above.
With the angels’ chorus high
Earth now makes this joyful cry;
With Saint Anthony we sing,
Praising God, our heav’nly King.
Lord, accept the hymns we raise,
Singing Anthony’s holy praise!
J. Michael Thompson
Copyright © 2010, World Library Publications
77 77 D; MENDELSSOHN, (or, without refrain, SALZBURG)