Communio – Page 559 – …bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

A Christmas Carol

The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
But here is all aright.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary’s heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world’s desire.)

The Christ-child stood on Mary’s knee,
His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.

G.K.Chesterton

Father, son and Holy Church

Ruth Gledhill of the Times Online (of London) posted this story today on a very unique circumstance: a father & son who poped and are now Catholic priests.

In what is believed to be a first, a father and son, both former Anglican clergy, have been ordained as Catholic priests and are now working for the same archdiocese, Birmingham.

Father Dominic Cosslett, 36, and his father, Father Ron Cosslett, 70, were both ordained by Archbishop Vincent Nichols, pictured above by Peter Jennings. Nichols is the favourite to succeed Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor as Archbishop of Westminster when he steps down early next year and the latest ordination of Father Dominic on 20 December shows he is continuing in the tradition of true Catholicity to which the British church has so long been witness.

Father Dominic was formerly an Anglican priest at the Church of Christ the King at Lourdes in Coventry. His father, Father Ron Cosslett, aged 70, also a former Anglican priest, was ordained as a Catholic priest by Nichols 3 July 2005. He is now priest-in-charge at St Joseph’s, Darlaston in the West Midlands.

Father Dominic, who is not married, has from a young age felt called to a celibate lifestyle. “Although as an Anglican marriage was open to me the way I live my life is naturally a celibate one,” he told me yesterday. His mother converted five years ago at the same time as his father and his sister and their children followed them over about a year ago.

Father and son concelebrated, celebrating the eucharist at the older Father’s parish, for the first time at Christmas.

“Both of us were in the Catholic tradition of Anglicanism,” said Father Dominic. “Like a lot of us in that tradition, we had always felt the Catholic Church was the rock from which we were hewn. It was always part of our journey, our faith, to seek unity with Rome. We came to the point where we felt we could not exercise our understanding of Catholicism within Anglicanism. It was time for us to go home.”

His father started out in Monmouth, South Wales and then moved to Burslem, one of the Five Towns in the Potteries in the Lichfield diocese. The family returned to Wales and his father’s last Anglican parish was St Paul’s in Swansea.

Under the guidelines agreed in the Catholic church for the reception of Anglican clergy who wish to become Catholic priests, Father Dominic, who studied theology at Llampeter and trained for the Anglican priesthood at the high church Mirfield College of the Resurrection before being priested in 1997, underwent a shortened training as to be a Catholic priest. He spent a year in the Spain at the Royal English College at Valladolid and then went to seminary at St Mary’s Oscott.

As an Anglican, he served his curacy in Abergavenny in the Monmouth diocese when his bishop was Dr Rowan Williams, now Archbishop of Canterbury. He moved to his own parish in the Birmingham diocese when its bishop was Dr John Sentamu, now Archbishop of York. He speaks highly of both men, but neither was enough to make him stay.

“I realised my own journey was to seek unity with Rome. Balanced with that was the awareness that the Anglican Church was going in a very different direction with various decisions it was making. I just felt I could not agree with those decisions. It comes down to authority. As an Anglican, it was sometimes very difficult. One parish might believe one thing, another might believe something else.

“There is an incredible rainbow of thought in the Anglican Church. Perhaps I was looking more for a central authority of teaching that the Catholic Church has. It was something I had always been looking for.”

He recognises his situation, with his father as a priest, might appear unusual to some but for him it feels normal. There is a long tradition in the Anglican church of father-and-son priests. The ministry often runs in families.

Asked whether he believes all Catholic priests should be allowed to marry, he said: “That is not my decision. The teaching of the Church is there. The Holy Father has graciously allowed those who are former Anglicans who are married to become priests. The teaching remains the same and that is certainly not for me to comment on.”

But he was careful to emphasise that his new path was not a reaction against Anglicanism.

“Becoming a Catholic is not so much about being disatisfied with being an Anglican as about having a positive engagement with the Catholic Church. I am very grateful for my Anglican days. But I realised there is something else in the Catholic Church. That is very much what lay behind my decision.”

Archbishop Nichols, in his words of welcome at the start of the ordination, said: “This situation a unique occasion and a great day in the life of the diocese. Both a father and his son – after his ordination – will be serving as Catholic priests.”

More than 60 Catholic priests, including Father Dominic’s father, witnessed the ceremony.

Archbishop Nichols continued: “Just as the Angel Gabriel told Mary, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow’, so also this will manifest for Dominic.

“How else, except through this gift could Dominic ever make Christ present in the life of the Church? It is the same gift given all those centuries ago in Nazareth that is given in Coventry today.

“It is only our unity in the Church which ensures that we are faithful to what we have been given. This Ordination is part of a great Tradition – a great handing on – from one age to the next of his gift of the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

“Indeed, this sense of Tradition is crucial – Apostolic Tradition. The vital question for all of us and for Dominic is where is it to be found?

“We rejoice in the answer during this Ordination Ceremony. It is to be found, with utter reliability, in union with Peter the first Apostle, and in union with his Successor the Bishop of Rome.

“It is this visible unity which gives the Church the sure capacity to be faithful in the Apostolic Tradition; to hand on whole and entire, and to explore and develop its Doctrine in a faithful and secure manner. This unity is a great joy and a pearl of great price.

“So today we thank God for Dominic’s life and ministry as a priest in the Church of England. We rejoice as he steps into the priesthood in this full Communion of the Catholic Church through his ordination in this visible Apostolic Tradition.”

Saint Thomas Becket

Almighty God, You granted the martyr Thomas the grace to give his life for the cause of justice. By his prayers make us willing to renounce for Christ our life in this world so that we may find it in heaven.

A few words on Becket.

Feast of the Holy Family

Father in heaven, creator of all, you ordered the earth to bring forth life, and crowned its goodness by creating the family of man.

In history’s moment when all was ready You sent your Son to dwell in time, obedient to the laws of life in our world.

Teach us the sanctity of human love, show us the value of family life, and help us to live in peace with all men that we may share in your life forever.

Saint John the Evangelist (the Beloved Disciple)

Saint John, Saint John was Christ’s disciple,
and Evangelist also;
He for the sake of Jesus Christ
Much pains did undergo,
Because he loved our Saviour Christ,
As Holy Scriptures say,
And was belov’d of him also,
And in his bosom lay.

Chorus

Saint John for love of our Saviour
Did undergo much pain
And never ceased during life
To preach Christ Jesus’ name.

Saint John, he at Jerusalem

Did preach God’s holy word,
And for the same the spiteful pagans
They did him cruel scourge.
Then did he for the same rejoice,
That he was counted worthy
To suffer for the sake of Christ,
And would him not deny.

To Patmos banish’d was Saint John,
As Scripture doth record,
For the testimony of Christ,
And his most holy word.
And as he was in the Spirit
On the Lord’s blessed day,
Our Saviour by an Angel spake,
and unto him did say,

I am Alpha and Omega,
Which was and is to come;
And what thou seest write in a book
Thus said he to Saint John
And send it to the Churches then,
Which are in Asia seven.
And said the Angel to Saint John,
Which came to him from Heaven.

Continue reading Saint John the Evangelist (the Beloved Disciple)

Yesterday, with exultation: In honor of Saint Stephen

Yesterday, with exultation,
Join’d the world in celebration
Of her promised Saviour’s birth;
Yesterday the Angel-nation
Pour’d the strains of jubilation
O’er the Monarch born on earth;

But today o’er death victorious,
By his faith and actions glorious,
by his miracles renown’d,
See the Deacon triumph gaining,
‘Midst the faithless faith sustaining,
First of holy Martyrs found.

Onward, champion, falter never,
Sure of sure reward for ever,
Holy Stephen, persevere;
Perjured witnesses confounding,
Satan’s synagogue astounding
By thy doctrine true and clear.

Thine own Witness is in Heaven,
True and faithful, to thee given,
Witness of thy blamelessness:
By thy name a crown implying,
Meet it is thou shouldst be dying
For the crown of righteousness.

For the crown that fadeth never
Bear the torturer’s brief endeavour;
Victory waits to end the strife:
Death shall be thy life’s beginning,
And life’s losing be the winning
Of the true and better life.

Fill’d with God’s most Holy Spirit,
See the Heav’n thou shalt inherit,
Stephen, gaze into the skies:
There God’s glory steadfast viewing,
Thence thy victor-strength renewing,
Pant for thy eternal prize.

See, as Jewish foes invade thee,
See how Jesus stands to aid thee,
Stands at God’s right hand on high:
Tell how open’d Heav’n is shown thee,
Tell how Jesus waits to own thee,
Tell it with thy latest cry.

As the dying martyr kneeleth,
For his murderers he appealeth,
For their madness griefing sore;
Then in Christ he sleepeth sweetly,
And with Christ he reigneth meetly,
Martyr first-fruits, evermore.

Words: “Heri mundus exultavit,” Adam of S. Victor (d. 1192). Translation by John Mason Neale; Music: “Heri Mundus Exultavit,” by Walter Macfarren; Meter: 887 887. Hymns Ancient and Modern. London: William Clowes and Sons, Ltd., 1922, #64, p. 64-5.

Nativity

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb, Now leaves His well-belov’d imprisonment, There He hath made Himself to His intent Weak enough, now into the world to come; But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn no room? Yet lay Him in this stall, and from the Orient, Stars and wise men will travel to prevent; The effect of Herod’s jealous general doom.

Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith’s eyes, how He which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie? Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high, That would have need to be pitied by thee?

Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go, With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

John Donne (1572- 1631)

Magnum nomen Domini Emmanuel

Evangelizo vobis gaudium magnum: natus est vobis hodie Salvator, Christus Dominus.

I proclaim to you good news of great joy: today a Savior is born for us, Christ the Lord.

God, who gladden us by the yearly expectation of our redemption, grant that we may merit to see Your Only Begotten, our Lord, Christ Jesus, whom we in joy are now receiving as the Redeemer also see in safety when He is coming as the Judge.

Hodie Christus natus est. Hodie Salvator apparuit. Hodie in terra canunt Angeli, lætantur Archangeli. Hodie exsultant iusti dicentes: Gloria in excelsis Deo! Alleluia.

Today the Savior has appeared: today the Angels sing, the Archangels rejoice: today the just rejoice, saying: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will towards men: Alleluia.

Today, the twenty-fifth day of December

Unknown ages from the time when God created the heavens and the earth; And then formed man and woman in his own image.

Several thousand years after the flood; When God made the rainbow shine forth as a sign of the covenant.

Twenty-one centuries from the time of Abraham and Sarah;

Thirteen centuries after Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt.

Eleven hundred years from the time of Ruth and the Judges;

One thousand years from the anointing of David as king;

In the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel.

In the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad; The seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the city of Rome.

The forty-second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus; The whole world being at peace,

Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,
Desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming,
Being conceived by the Holy Spirit,
And nine months having passed since his conception,
Was born in Bethlehem of Judea of the Virgin Mary.

Today is the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.

Amen.

Fr. Julián Carrón speaks of Christmas & Hope

I was struck by the readings that the Ambrosian Liturgy proposes for Monday of the third week of Advent. How must the members of the ancient people of Israel been disconcerted at the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “It will devour your harvests and your bread; it will devour your sons and daughters; it will devour your flocks and herds; it will devour the fortified cities in which you placed your trust” (Jer 5:17). He was telling them that another nation was going to conquer the kingdom in which they had put their trust. “Then, if they say: ‘Why has the Lord our God done these things?’, you will answer: ‘Just as you have abandoned the Lord and served foreign gods in your country, so will you serve foreigners in a country that is not yours'” (Jer 5:19).

It is as if this were said for us; today we see signs that make everyone afraid, it seems that what has supported our history is unable to withstand the test of our times: one day the economy, finance and work, the next day politics and the judiciary, then the family, the beginning of life and its natural end. So, like ancient Israel before a frightening situation, we, too, ask ourselves: “Why is all this happening?” It is because we, too, have been so presumptuous as to think that we can still get along after cutting the roots that supported the foundations of our civilization. In recent centuries, our culture has believed it could build a future for itself while abandoning God. Now we see where this presumption is leading us.

Now, what does the Lord do in the face of all we have brought upon ourselves? The prophet Zechariah tells us, speaking to his people Israel: “Look, I am going to send you my servant Branch” (Zc 3:8). Notice the name. It is as if before the crisis of a world, our world – the prophets would describe it with an image dear to them, that of a dried-up trunk – a sign of hope were springing up. The enormity of a dried up trunk cannot prevent the sprouting of a humble, fragile branch in which lies the hope for the future.

But there is one drawback: we, too, when we see this branch appearing -like those before that child in Nazareth–can be scandalized and say: “How can something so ephemeral be the answer to our need for liberation?” Can salvation come from something so small as faith in Jesus? It seems impossible that all our hope can rest on belonging to this frail sign. The promise that only from this can everything be rebuilt seems scandalous. Yet men like St. Benedict and St. Francis started from that. They began to live while belonging to that branch that had grown through time and space–the Church, and in this way became protagonists of a people and of history.

Benedict did not face the end of the Roman Empire with anger, pointing the finger at the immorality of his contemporaries, but rather witnessed to the people of his time a fullness of life, a satisfaction and a fullness that became an attraction for many. This became the dawn of a new world, small as it was (almost a nonentity compared with the whole, a whole that was in total collapse), but a real world. That new beginning was so concrete that the work of Benedict and Francis has lasted through the centuries, has transformed Europe, and humanized it.

“He has revealed himself. He personally,” said Benedict XVI, speaking of the God-with-us. Fr. Giussani told us, “That man of two thousand years ago is hidden under the tent, under the appearance of a new humanity,” in a real sign that arouses the inkling of that life that we are all waiting for so as not to succumb to the evil in us and to the signs of the nothingness which is advancing. This is the hope that Christmas announces to us, and that makes us cry out: “Come, Lord Jesus!”

(Father) Julián Carrón

President of the Fraternity of Communion & Liberation

Letter to the editor of the Italian daily La Repubblica,
published December 23, 2008

Nativity of the Savior

This sermon is one of the most, if not THE most, recommended texts for this feast. The theology is crisp and eternal. Therefore it is used in the East and the West alike.

Homily by Pope Saint Leo the Great (Sermon 21)

Our Savior, dearly-beloved, was born today: let us be glad. For there is no proper place for sadness, when we keep the birthday of the Life, which destroys the fear of mortality and brings to us the joy of promised eternity.

No one is kept from sharing in this happiness. There is for all one common measure of joy, because as our Lord the destroyer of sin and death finds none free from charge, so is He come to free us all.

Let the saint exult in that he draws near to victory. Let the sinner be glad in that he is invited to pardon. Let the gentile take courage in that he is called to life.

For the Son of God in the fullness of time which the inscrutable depth of the Divine counsel has determined, has taken on him the nature of man, thereby to reconcile it to its Author: in order that the inventor of death, the devil, might be conquered through that (nature) which he had conquered.

And in this conflict undertaken for us, the fight was fought on great and wondrous principles of fairness; for the Almighty Lord enters the lists with His savage foe not in His own majesty but in our humility, opposing him with the same form and the same nature, which shares indeed our mortality, though it is free from all sin.

Truly foreign to this nativity is that which we read of all others, “no one is clean from stain, not even the infant who has lived but one day upon earth.” Nothing therefore of the lust of the flesh has passed into that peerless nativity, nothing of the law of sin has entered.

A royal Virgin of the stem of David is chosen, to be impregnated with the sacred seed and to conceive the Divinely-human offspring in mind first and then in body. And lest in ignorance of the heavenly counsel she should tremble at so strange a result, she learns from converse with the angel that what is to be wrought in her is of the Holy Ghost. Nor does she believe it loss of honor that she is soon to be the Mother of God. For why should she be in despair over the novelty of such conception, to whom the power of the most High has promised to effect it. Her implicit faith is confirmed also by the attestation of a precursory miracle, and Elizabeth receives unexpected fertility: in order that there might be no doubt that He who had given conception to the barren, would give it even to a virgin.

Therefore the Word of God, Himself God, the Son of God who “in the beginning was with God,” through whom “all things were made” and “without” whom “was nothing made,” with the purpose of delivering man from eternal death, became man: so bending Himself to take on Him our humility without decrease in His own majesty, that remaining what He was and assuming what He was not, He might unite the true form of a slave to that form in which He is equal to God the Father, and join both natures together by such a compact that the lower should not be swallowed up in its exaltation nor the higher impaired by its new associate.

Without detriment therefore to the properties of either substance which then came together in one person, majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality: and for the paying off of the debt, belonging to our condition, inviolable nature was united with possible nature, and true God and true man were combined to form one Lord, so that, as suited the needs of our case, one and the same Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and rise again with the other.

Rightly therefore did the birth of our Salvation impart no corruption to the Virgin’s purity, because the bearing of the Truth was the keeping of honor. Such then beloved was the nativity which became the Power of God and the Wisdom of God even Christ, whereby He might be one with us in manhood and surpass us in Godhead.

For unless He were true God, He would not bring us a remedy, unless He were true Man, He would not give us an example. Therefore the exulting angel’s song when the Lord was born is this, “Glory to God in the Highest,” and their message, “peace on earth to men of good will.” For they see that the heavenly Jerusalem is being built up out of all the nations of the world: and over that indescribable work of the Divine love how ought the humbleness of men to rejoice, when the joy of the lofty angels is so great?

Let us then, dearly beloved, give thanks to God the Father, through His Son, in the Holy Spirit, Who “for His great mercy, wherewith He has loved us,” has had pity on us: and “when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together in Christ,” that we might be in Him a new creation and a new production.

Let us put off then the old man with his deeds: and having obtained a share in the birth of Christ let us renounce the works of the flesh.

Christian, acknowledge thy dignity, and becoming a partner in the Divine nature, refuse to return to the old baseness by degenerate conduct.

Remember the Head and the Body of which thou art a member.

Recollect that thou wert rescued from the power of darkness and brought out into God’s light and kingdom.

By the mystery of Baptism thou weft made the temple of the Holy Ghost: do not put such a denizen to flight from thee by base acts, and subject thyself once more to the devil’s thraldom: because thy purchase money is the blood of Christ, because He shall judge thee in truth Who ransomed thee in mercy, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit reigns for ever and ever. Amen.