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Order of Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem CT meet for Vespers

Before Gaudete Sunday Vespers and Rosary with the Dominican nuns of Our Lady of Grace Monastery (North Guilford, CT), some members of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem met with Brandy, the horse, to see if we wanted to resume our privilege of riding into Church on horseback.

St John of the Cross, feast

“Blessed be the Lady who intends me to quit this life this Saturday. I know that God, our Lord, is about to do me the mercy and favor of allowing me to recite Matins in Heaven.”

“The little white dove
Has returned to the ark with the bough;
And now the turtle-dove
Its desired mate
On the green banks has found.”

St. John of the Cross was born in 1542 in Fontiveros, Spain. The son of a poor but noble family, he was raised in an orphanage. Recognized for his joyful spirit, he was sent to a Jesuit College. He entered the Carmelite Order, studied theology at Salamanca, and was ordained a priest. He supported St. Teresa of Avila’s reforms of the Order. Opponents to the reforms imprisoned him in deplorable conditions. He died in 1591 and was canonized in 1726. In recognition of his mystical writings; The Dark Night of the Soul, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Spiritual Canticle, and Living Flame of Love, he was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1926.

St John of the Cross pray for us

All Saints of the Order of Malta

We gathered earlier this evening at the Cathedral of Saint Patrick (NYC) for Solemn Vespers for the feast of All Saints of the Order of Malta. The feast day is actually on November 19 but since the 19th was a Sunday this year, the observance was transferred to Monday. We also had the privilege of venerating the relic of the founder of the Order of Malta, Blessed Gerard.

May the saints and blesseds of the Order of Malta intercede for us before the Throne of Grace.

Our Focus on the Heart

A key point of Luigi Giussani’s on the spiritual life is the heart. In several places Giussani calls us to focus on our singularity of heart’s focus, the intention of the heart, or as traditional spiritual theology calls purity of heart. Having just finished what the Eastern Church calls Pure Week at the start of Great Lent (the Fast) we ought to continue to go deeper into the heart. The goal of the lenten Fast is to develop a transcendence of egocentrism closes down the heart from reality. The Church as teacher and mother shows us that the period of fasting we engage in at this time of the year is seen as a time of “showering of mercy,” with prayer, good deeds and philanthropy. This perspective of mercy evidences the surpassing self-love.

Great Lent is always a journey in which the Church calls us to an ever-deepening purity of heart. The external observances that are a part of it have significance only insofar as they help us live a more authentic expression of this. Above all, purity of heart means continually directing our intention to fulfilling the will of God as faithfully as we understand it. This is where true reconciliation with God occurs. (NS)

I was reading a bit of Giussani on the heart and the author/editor of the text placed the reality of the heart (and the heart’s needs) with the Christian idea of friendship.

Charity [says St Bernard] generates friendship, it is like its mother [charity is love for the other as affirmation of his good destiny, as a desire to affirm that his right destiny should be fulfilled, for Christ is the Mystery of which He is a part, and in which He participates]. It is God’s gift, it comes from Him, for we are carnal. He causes our desire and our love to begin from the flesh. In our hearts God inscribes for our friends a love that they cannot read, but that we can show to them. The outcome is an affection, more often an affectus, a profound, inexpressible attachment, which is in the order of experience and which fixes rights and duties for friendship.

Daily we pray, as Giussani directs, the Angelus to keep our hearts focused on the Mystery of the Incarnation. The gift we ask for is “Thy grace into our hearts.” But that grace is only present if the heart is pure –singularly focussed.

A queen revealed

Spring is time to clean out debris from the bottom board of the hive and to locate the queen, or at least to see the results of the queen’s work by noting if there are eggs and capped brood. These last days I have been going through my hives and of the hives that over-wintered, all of the queens are reigning.

The queen is the mother of the hive. She sets the tone until or unless, the community of bees decides otherwise.

Thanks be to God and the guardian angels of the bees.

Save the bees, save the Church.

St Luke

A blessed and glorious Feast of the Holy Apostle, Evangelist, Physician, and Iconographer Luke, to all celebrating today; a happy patronal day to all bearing his name.

(Icon of St Luke by the hand of Michael Kapeluck, Carnegie, PA)

Art restoration as an act of hope at Portsmouth Abbey

There is a beautiful though modern art piece which hangs over the central altar at the Benedictine Abbey of St Gregory the Great, Portsmouth, Rhode Island. As with all art in order to be formed by it, to be educated by it, you have to listen in silence. Now some art is vacuous. This piece at the Abbey is anything but empty of meaning. When I sit in prayer before this piece of art I am filled with amazement of the beauty of the Most Holy Trinity, the Crucifixion of the Lord, and the wide horizons of the theological virtues come which come alive in a myriad of ways.

I offer this piece for your consideration.