Mary, the Immaculate Conception

“Who are you, O Immaculate Conception?” asks St Maximillian Maria Kolbe, the 20th century martyr and saint who founded a Marian movement. Accordingly, he teaches us, based on his prayer and experience, that the perfect love of the Holy Trinity meets an adequate response in the perfect love of the Immaculate, which is the name St Maximilian gives to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In another place he says, “In the union of the Holy Spirit with her, not only does love bind these two beings, but the first of them [the Holy Spirit] is all the love of the Most Holy Trinity, while the second [the Blessed Virgin Mary] is all the love of creation, and thus in that union heaven is joined to earth, the whole heaven with the whole earth, the whole of Uncreated Love with the whole of created love: this is the vertex of love.”

St Maximillian gave us a mature perspective of Mary under this title.

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was declared and defined by Bl. Pius IX in 1854: “The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.” (Ineffabilis Deus )

Since Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception let us pray for our nation today.

St Ambrose

Today is the liturgical memorial of St. Ambrose reputed to be the greatest Archbishop of Milan (at a time it was the center of the Roman Empire). Ambrose was elected bishop when he was still a catechumen who was competent in civil and ecclesial administration but he’s also known for his acumen in theology and hymnody. It is his relationship with the Holy Trinity that orients our attention, especially with regard to the Incarnation. If we don’t get the Incarnation of the Eternal Word of God correct, nothing else in our Catholic life will be correct. In this period of preparation for the Nativity of the Lord, Ambrose sets our meditation in a way no other can.

He wrote of the Son of God: “And the Word was with God. This that he said is to be understood thus: The Word was just as was the Father; since He was together with the Father, He was also in the Father, and He was always with the Father. […] It is of the Word to be with the Father; it is of the Father to be with the Word, for we read that the Word was with God. So if, according to your opinion, there was a time when He was not, then, according to your opinion, He too was not in the beginning with whom was the Word. For through the Word I hear, through the Word I understand that God was. For, if I shall believe that the Word was eternal, which I do believe, I cannot doubt about the eternity of the Father, whose Son is eternal” (The Sacrament of the Incarnation of our Lord (III, 15-18, from the Vatican web site).

And again, Ambrose says, “He lay in the crib, that you might stand at the altar. He came to earth, that you might come to the stars” (Exposition of Luke 2.41).

St Nicholas Day

 

Blessed feast day of St Nicholas!

 

Thy just works have shown Thee to thy flock as an example of faith, an image of meekness and a teacher of abstinence. By humility Thou didst achieve exaltation, and by meekness, riches. O Father Bishop Nicholas, intercede with Christ our God to save our souls.

(Troparion for St. Nicholas)

St John of Damascus

Today being the feast of Saint John of Damascus, it is crucial that we think of the Trinity:

“Think of the Father as a spring of life begetting the Son like a river and the Holy Ghost like a sea, for the spring and the river and sea are all one nature. Think of the Father as a root, and of the Son as a branch, and the Spirit as a fruit, for the substance in these three is one. The Father is a sun with the Son as rays and the Holy Ghost as heat.”

Eternal Kingdom and the dignity of its King

The glory and nobility of God’s eternal Kingdom have to be estimated from the dignity of its King, since a king is not derived from a kingdom but a kingdom from a king. And he indeed is King who has on his garment and on his thigh a name written: King of kings and Lord of lords (Apoc. 19:16), whose power is everlasting power that shall  not be taken away (Dan. 7:14), whose kingdom will not be destroyed and whom all tribes ad peoples and tongues (Apoc. 7:9) will serve throughout eternity. He is truly a peaceable (1 Chron. 22:9) King, whose countenance both heaven and all the earth desire to look upon  (1 Kings 10:24).

In this eternal kingdom, all good and perfect gifts come down in plenty and abundance from the Father of Lights (James 1:17) through Jesus Christ, who is the super-essential Ray and who since he is one, can do all things, and renews all things (Wisdom 7:27).

St. Bonaventure
The Tree of Life

Blessing the Truly Blessed

Today is the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary into the Temple. Latin Catholics and the new calendar Eastern Christians (Catholic and Orthodox) celebrate a feast with the biblical basis in a book that is not part of the canonical Scriptures, the Proto-Evangelium of James.

The meditation by Sister Vassa Larin herein asks a good question in our participating in liturgical services, or merely paying lip-service to the Divine Majesty, the Mother of God or the saints when we do not have our spiritual life put in order or at least trying to live rightly. The spiritual life is a journey, one that we need to take seriously. As Mary lived so ought we…

The mediation:

“Blessed are the blameless in the Way, who walk in the law of the Lord.” (Ps 118/119: 1, Septuagint)

Is it pointless for us to “bless” and praise “the blameless” (οἱ ἄμωμοι, непорочнии), for example, the Theotokos, whose Entry into the Temple is celebrated today on the “New” Calendar; or the archangels and angels, whose feast is celebrated today on the Older Calendar,– if we ourselves are not “blameless”? No, of course not. Because by celebrating the “blameless” in the law of the Lord, we are reminded of the kind of “celebrity” that is truly praise-worthy in God’s eyes, and are inspired to desire it for ourselves. This is particularly counter-cultural in our day, when so much press is wasted on, and “lip-service” paid to, celebrities both famous and infamous.

Lord, let me not bless, nor desire to be like, those who have the dubious “blessing” of our press. Let me rather bless those who are blessed in Your “press,” in Holy Scripture: “Blessed is the man that has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the pestilent.” (Ps 1: 1)

 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It’s the birthday of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky (born in Moscow in 1821).

Dostoyevsky published his first novel — a short novel in letters called Poor Folk — in 1846, and hailed as a great new voice of Russian literature. Vissarion Belinsky, an acclaimed Russian literary critic,  spoke of Dostoyevsky as the new Gogol.

Dostoyevsky was no saint, but as an Orthodox Christian he knew well the Gospel and tradition of the Church. His religious beliefs were complicated and identifiable.

St Elizabeth of the Trinity

A very Happy Feast of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity! In this longer post we wanted to share a little about Carmel’s newest saint for those who don’t know her and then also share an except from one of her beautiful letters. “Laudem Gloriae”!

Saint Elizabeth was born as Elizabeth Catez on July 18, 1880, in a military camp near Bourges. Her mother gave birth just at the end of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which her father, Captain Catez, had arranged to have offered for his wife and child, whom he feared he was losing during a difficult delivery. At the age of two, she was taken to Dijon where her father had been transferred and there St. Elizabeth had the joy of gaining a little sister when Marguerite was born on February 20, 1883.

St. Elizabeth was difficult and temperamental as a child and very hard to manage. Her mother persevered in loving yet strict discipline. It was Jesus, however, who provided in her first sacramental confession the grace she needed to grow. After that great event which profoundly affected the saint her efforts at self-control began to bear fruit.

April 19, 1891, she made her First Holy Communion. Tears of happiness poured down her face. To a little friend she whispered as they left Holy Mass: “I’m not hungry; Jesus has fed me.”

That evening her mother took her to the Carmel and the Prioress told her that “Elizabeth” meant “the house of God.” The meaning of her name took root in her soul. In time, the Mystery of the Divine Indwelling became the central theme of her entire spiritual life.

Her entrance into Carmel was delayed for quite some time because of the great reluctance of her widowed mother, for she did not wish to give up her beloved daughter. Finally, St. Elizabeth was permitted to enter at the age of twenty-one on August 2, 1901. On December 8, 1901, she received the habit, and she made her profession on the feast of the Epiphany, January 11, 1903.

Eight days after entering Carmel, St. Elizabeth and the nuns discussed religious life at recreation. When asked what her ideal of sanctity was, she replied: “to live for love” Pressed further as to how she would attain her ideal, she answered: “I would endeavor to become very little and give myself irrevocably.”

St. Elizabeth of the Trinity lived her Carmelite life with great fidelity, entering ever more deeply into the mystery of the indwelling Trinity. In Saint Paul, she found her “new name”, “Laudem Gloriae” that is, “the praise of His glory.”

In early 1903, she began to show the first signs of Addison’s disease. In Lent of 1906 she became so ill that she was moved to the infirmary.

St. Elizabeth endured her great sufferings with joy and with heroic fortitude. She died, only twenty-six years of age, on November 9, 1906, the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, her last words being: “I am going to light, to love, to life.”

St. Elizabeth was canonized on 16 October 2016.

The following is an excerpt from Letter 185 to l’Abbé Chevignard dated 28 Nov 1903.

“Monsieur l’Abbé,
Thank you for your good prayers, thank you for your letter. What you tell me about my name does me much good; I love it so much, it expresses my entire vocation; when I think of it my soul is carried away in the great vision of the Mystery of mysteries, in the Trinity that even here below is our cloister, our dwelling, the Infinite within which we can pass through everything. At the moment I am reading some very beautiful pages in our blessed Father Saint John of the Cross on the transformation of the soul in the three Divine Persons. Monsieur l’Abbé, to what an abyss of glory we are called! Oh! I understand the silence, the recollection of the saints who could no longer leave their contemplation; thus God could lead them to the divine summits where union is made perfect between Him and the soul who has become His bride, in the mystical sense of the word. Our blessed Father says that then the Holy Spirit raises it to so wonderful a height that He makes it capable of producing in God the same spiration of love that the Father produces in the Son and the Son in the Father, the spiration that is the Holy Spirit Himself! To think that God calls us by our vocation to live in this holy light! What an adorable mystery of charity! I would like to respond to it by living on earth as the Blessed Virgin did, “keeping all these things in my heart,” burying myself, so to speak, in the depths of my soul to lose myself in the Trinity who dwells in it in order to transform me into itself. Then my motto, “my luminous ideal” as you said, will be accomplished: it will really be Elizabeth of the Trinity!”

May we all grow in the loving awareness of and be transformed in Love by the indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity! Happy Feast!

(courtesy of the Discalced Carmelites, Washington Province)

Brother Santiago named a Martyr for the Faith

Yesterday, 7 November 2018, Pope Francis received in audience Cardinal Angelo Becciu, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, where it was decided that James Alfred Miller was a martyr for the faith.

James Alfred Miller – in religion he was Leo William and known also as Brother Santiago. He was a professed member of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Miller was a native of Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

Brother Santiago was a missionary in several Central America countries and over the years his life was threatened. The Brothers of the Christian Schools sent to him to teach agricultural studies and give witness to Jesus Christ. On February 13, 1982, Brother Santiago’s life was sacrificed for the faith as he was shot several times by three hooded men and he died instantly. Pope Francis and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints recognized that Brother Santiago was indeed a martyr.

You may read a brief biography of Brother Santiago here.

Feast of All Dominican Saints and Blesseds

 

O God, who has pleased to make the Order of Preachers fruitful in an abundant progeny of Saints, and has gloriously crowned in them the merits of all heroic virtues, grant unto us to tread in their footsteps, that we may at last be united in perpetual festivity with those in heaven whom we venerate today under one celebration upon earth. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.