Teaching & Living the Faith

O Antiphons

Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!

The outline for the entire hymn dates back to a thousand years ago. A week before Christmas, Monks would chant poetic verses to commemorate the arrival of Jesus. In the 1800s John Neal took those chants, turned them into a song and called it “Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel.” The significance of the Gregorian chants are their names for Jesus: wisdom, Adonai (Hebrew name for God), root of Jesse, key of David, dayspring, King of the Gentiles, and Emmanuel.

If you take the first letter of these words in Latin, and read them backward, they spell “ero cras,” a Latin phrase meaning, “I will be present tomorrow.”

That’s the point of Christmas. Christmas is a promise that God will be present tomorrow. Belief that God will be present in all of our tomorrows makes today more bearable. We worry about tomorrow. We fret over the unknown. What if you had a choice: you could either know all of your tomorrows or you could have God with you in all of your tomorrows. You couldn’t handle knowing all your tomorrows at once. The weight of the suffering and the anticipation of the joy would overwhelm you. Having God with you through all of them–that enables you to enjoy today and anticipate tomorrow.

For today, thank God that He is the God of tomorrow.

A true Thanksgiving

The worship of the Catholic Church offers a reminder that every celebration of the Eucharist is, by definition, Thanksgiving. Our proper orientation is that of gratitude for being given life, freedom, love, virtue and friendship.

It is proper and right to hymn You,
to bless You,
to praise You,
to give thanks to You,
and to worship You
in every place of Your dominion.
For You, O God, are ineffable,
inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible,
existing forever, forever the same,
You and Your only-begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit.
You brought us out of nothing into being,
and when we had fallen away,
You raised us up again.
You left nothing undone
until You had led us up to heaven
and granted us Your Kingdom, which is to come.
For all these things,
we thank You and Your only-begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit:
for all things we know and do not know,
for blessings manifest and hidden
that have been bestowed on us.
We thank You also for this Liturgy,
which You have deigned to receive from our hands,
even though thousands of archangels
and tens of thousands of angels stand around You,
the Cherubim and Seraphim, six-winged, many-eyed,
soaring aloft upon their wings,
singing the triumphal hymn,
exclaiming, proclaiming, and saying,
Holy, holy, holy, Lord Sabaoth,
heaven and earth are filled with Your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest

-from the anaphora (offertory prayer) of the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom
Image: The Hospitality of Abraham (mid-6th century mosaic, detail), Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy

Happy Fourth of July 2019

Happy Fourth of July –US Independence Day

The Mass Collect for Independence Day is given below to help orient our prayer today. Pray for our country and her leaders.

We have much to be grateful for, much to ask for forgiveness and much hope for the future.

“Father of all nations and ages, we recall the day when our country claimed its place among the family of nations; for what has been achieved we give you thanks, for the work that still remains we ask your help.”

Our Lady of Perpetual Help, pray for us.
All Saints and Blesseds of the USA, pray for us.

Moved from theologia to technologia

I recently found this admonition by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware on certain connections:

“Once theology forgets the unavoidable limitations of the human understanding; once it overlooks the apophatic dimension of theology; once it replaces the ineffable Word of God with human logic, then, as the Cappadocians assert, it ceases to be theo-logia and sinks to the level of techno-logia.”

It seems that theologians, public thinkers, and the clergy, have already arrived a technologia. The poor state of preaching, writing/speak, and catechesis demonstrates this fact. The disconnect between faith and reason is key in this regard.

The Holy, Just, and Long-suffering Job

The Prophet Job’s feast on the Byzantine liturgical calendar is May 6 and the Latin Church’s liturgical calendar on May 10.

Job is the archetype of the just man. According to the religious and ethical thought of his time, which viewed material prosperity as evidence of an upright life, Job was expected to be wealthy, and yet he was afflicted with suffering. Modern scholars point out that Job was not a historical person, but an ‘epic character.’ While this is no doubt the case of the Job of the first of the Wisdom books, the author probably based his work on the Job of ancient tradition, who was believed to have lived during the patriarchal age on the borders of Arabia and Edom.

The Book of Job is cast in dialogue form between Job and three friends who come to commiserate with him over his misfortunes. They insist that his condition is a punishment from God for his sins, but Job maintains that he is innocent. Near despair, he demands a hearing from God, and this he is granted. God speaks from a thunderstorm to expose as futile all the solutions of Job and his friends since God cannot be judged and his ways are inscrutable.

The Church uses the book of Job during Holy Week, where Job’s suffering innocence serves as a prophetic reflection of the innocent suffering of Christ.

Meditation by the New Skete Communities

Who God is reveals our Christian life

As we move toward Lent and therefore to the Paschal Mysteries of Easter, we ought to reflect upon who God is (theologia) and not merely what God does (ecomomia). Both aspects of our spiritual life are important but acts can not be put before being. Our liturgical prayer, for example, first identifies who God is, and then shows us what He has done for us, and then we make His name known in the doxology.

We are members of a family of faith concerned with the covenant relationship (communio). When we consider who are as Christians we baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity and taught to observe what we have learned of Christ Jesus. In baptism we are created in priest, prophet and king according to the mind of the Lord. Study in the Creed, the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed –all in the light of the Gospel. The proclamation of the Gospel leads us to baptism (not the other way around) and then the Christian manner of living. This is a history that reveals the Mystery.

We are the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21), a constant theme in our faith and how we live this faith.

A prayer to a guardian angel

October 2nd is the day to commemorate the Guardian Angels. While it is a Sunday, the feast gets trumped by the Sunday observance.

The teaching we hold dear about the Guardian Angel is that an angel is (a created, non-human, non-corporeal being) that has been assigned to guard a particular person, with concern for that person to avoid spiritual and physical dangers and work out one’s salvation. The Directory on Piety and the Tradition of the Church says serenity and confidence in facing difficult situations, since the Lord guides and protects the faithful in the way of justice through the ministry of His Holy Angels.

In sacred Scripture, the Prophet Daniel speaks of Michael as “the great prince who has charge of your [Daniel’s] people” (Dan. 12:1). Michael is depicted as the guardian angel of Israel.

Saint Matthew’s Gospel speaks of Jesus talking about are guardian angels for all persons, particularly little children. He says: See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven (Matt. 18:10).

‘A prayer to the good angel’

O sweet angel, to me so dear,
Who night and day standeth me near
Full lovingly, with mild mood, [gentle mind]
Thanks, honour, love and praising,
Offer for me to Jesu, our king,
For his gifts great and good.

As thou goest betwixt him and me,
And knowest my life in every degree,
Telling it in his presence,
Ask me grace to love him truly,
To serve my Lord with heart duly,
With my daily diligence.

Keep me from vice and all perils,
While thou with me daily travels
In this world of wickedness;
Cause my petitions to be granted
By thy prayer daily haunted,
If it please thy holiness.

O sweet angel, who keepest me,
Bring me to bliss, I pray thee!

From the manuscript from which this prayer comes we can note that it was in a volume owned by Margaret Beauchamp, the Duchess of Somerset, mother of Margaret Beaufort, and grandmother of Henry VII.

Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century, ed. Carleton Brown (Oxford, 1939)

Know your angels

Angels are everywhere. Do you notice the angels? Do you know they possess us? Are you in friendship with your Guardian Angel? On the 29th of September we had the feast of the Holy Archangels and on the 2nd of October we have the feast of Guardian Angels. Catholic theology, like that of Jewish theology, teaches the existence and work of angels. Some catechesis on video and some book recommendations:

Watch Mike Aquilina: Angels

Watch Scott Hahn: Angels and Saints

Watch Mark Miravalle: The Nine Choirs of Angels and their relation to Mary the Queen of Angels

Christ has become our neighbor

Christ has become our neighbor; or rather, our neighbor is Christ who presents himself to us in this or that form. He presents himself to us, suffering in those who are sick, destitute in those in want, a prisoner in those who are captives, sad in those who mourn. But it is faith that shows him to us thus in his members. And if we do not see him in them, it is because our faith is weak, our love imperfect. That is why St. John says that if we do not love our neighbor whom we see, how can we love God whom we do not see? If we do not love God under the visible form in which he presents himself to us, that is to say in our neighbor, how can we say that we love him in himself, in his divinity?

Blessed Columba Marmion, OSB
Christ the Life of the Soul

Distinguished from Christ

We have arrived at Gaudete Sunday, the Third Sunday of Advent. It’s a short time before the celebration of the Lord’s Nativity. In both forms of the sacred Liturgy we encounter the Lord’s cousin, Saint John the Baptist. The supreme lesson the Baptist teaches is that we are not Jesus, which seems obvious to say but in reality so many think they are the messiah and therefore do not live in humility. Here is an excerpt from a meditation by Saint Augustine on the Prophet Saint John the Baptist:

“What does to prepare the way mean, except to pray as you ought, to be humble-minded? Take an example of humility from John himself. He is thought to be the Christ, but he says he is not what people think. He does not use the mistake of others to feed his own pride. Suppose he had said: I am the Christ. How easily would he have been believed, since that was what people were thinking before he spoke! But he did not say it. He acknowledged who he was, distinguished himself from Christ, humbled himself.”