The Great Antiphon for December 23
O Emmanuel, God with us, our King and Lawgiver, the expected of the nations and their Savior: Come to save us, O Lord our God.
O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, exspectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.
Isaiah 7:14; 88:8; 33:22; Genesis 49:10; cf. Ezekiel 21:32.
Symbols: tablets of stone, Chalice and Host.
“A Prayerful Advocate”
This week, I made such a request of someone the first time I spoke to her, and I have a good hunch that she’ll follow through.
Her name is Jenna Marie Cooper. She is 23 years old and a graduate student in theology at Ave Maria University in Florida. On Saturday, Jan. 3, she will be consecrated to a life of virginity at an 11:30 a.m. Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Newburgh to be celebrated by Auxiliary Bishop Dominick J. Lagonegro, co-vicar for Orange County and pastor of Sacred Heart.
As a consecrated virgin, the oldest form of consecrated life in the Church, Ms. Cooper will spend much of her time in prayer. (A Vatican II document called for a revision and revival of the Rite of Consecration to a Life of Virginity for Women Living in the World, restoring the ancient vocation in the life of the modern Church.) It will not be a great departure from her current daily life, which includes praying the Liturgy of the Hours five times, attending Mass and spending other time in prayer.
Chief among her intentions are the Church and people of New York. Cardinal Egan granted permission for Ms. Cooper to be consecrated and she will remain directly under his authority as Archbishop of New York.
She said she felt privileged to be invited to attend the Mass for clergy and religious that Pope Benedict XVI celebrated in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in April. “That was such a wonderful and awesome experience. I couldn’t talk about anything else for a week afterward,” she said.
When the Holy Father thanked those present for their prayers on his behalf, it made a firm impression on her. “That sense that prayers were needed and appreciated was very meaningful to me,” she said.
She will be the youngest person in the United States living as a consecrated virgin, and one of four active in the archdiocese, according to Father Bartholomew Daly, M.H.M., who as co-vicar for religious is in charge of their oversight and meets with them regularly.
During our phone interview, Ms. Cooper said she had felt a religious calling since she was about 12. She is part of a devout Catholic family that includes her parents, Douglas and Judith, and two younger siblings, Joseph and Tess. They are parishioners of St. Thomas of Canterbury parish in Cornwall-on-Hudson. She assumed that she would eventually join a religious congregation. She met with several during her undergraduate days (she holds a bachelor’s in philosophy from Seton Hall University), but didn’t feel like that was the right choice for her. Still, she continued to feel a call to serve the Church in a special way.
In 2004 she met Father Luke Sweeney, now the vocation director for the archdiocese who was then serving at Sacred Heart in Newburgh, where Ms. Cooper at times attends Mass. He gave her information about different religious orders and showed her a copy of the rite for consecrated virgins. She said that she was familiar with the lives of some of the consecrated virgins of the early Church, including some who were martyred for their faith.
“The courage they had to live a Christian life in such a hostile culture made me realize what a foundation they were for the Church,” she said. “I wanted to be able to imitate that courage and love in my own life.”
Eventually Father Sweeney arranged for her to meet with Father Daly. Last year, she began meeting with him on a more regular basis in pursuing her vocation. She had to formally request Cardinal Egan’s permission for her consecration, which was given shortly before the papal Mass.
The prayer request I made of Ms. Cooper was for Catholic New York and its readers. It’s only fair that we return the favor as she enters consecrated life.
Robert George is the Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, where he teaches Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. As a leading scholar of Natural Law, we interviewed him about the role of religion and tradition in the so-called United States Constitutional Experiment. His contribution takes a proper place in the current debate about the relationship between state, religion and society.
A. P. : Do you think that religion is meaningful to interpret the US Constitution?
R. G.: Yes. The US is a religious Country. It remains a much more religious Country than most of the Countries of continental Europe. And this is not new. The American Revolution was not like the French Revolution. The American Revolution was not an anti-religious revolution. On the contrary, it appealed to the core ideas of ethical monotheism, which are derived from the witness of the Bible. The language of the Declaration of Independence represents an interpretation of the idea from Genesis that all the men are created in the Image and Likeness of God. This is the foundation of the principle of equality – which, in turn, is the foundation of democracy. Democracy is based on the idea that all men are equal and worth of dignity. And they have right to have their opinion taken into account for the formation of the public policy. This is true if and only if human beings have an equal dignity.
What is the source of that dignity? The Declaration of Independence says it is because of our Creator – that God created us equal. Again, this is the reflection of the Biblical idea that we are created at the image and likeness of God. We have reason, and we have freedom – we have these powers, which are small but meaningful share in God’s own powers. So, the US is truly a religious country, even in the sense that our Constitutional principles are considered the effectuation of the declaration of independence.
As late as 1953 Justice William O. Douglas – which is much recorded from the left wing of American politics and Constitutional interpretation – could still say in the decision Zorach vs. Clauson: “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose the Supreme Being.” And this is true. Our institutions presuppose the idea that there is a Supreme Being, a God who is the Source of human dignity and human equality.
A. P.: So you mean that Christianity and Christian history does matter, even in policy, right now?
R. G.: Yes, of course. But not simply Christian history. It is the Biblical witness. The ethical monotheism. Something which is common to Christian and Jews, and perhaps even to Muslims, although I don’t know the Muslim tradition very well. But it is not a specific Christian tradition. US weren’t just founded under the preposition that Christ is the Son of God, or that God is three Persons in the Trinity, but on the proposition that there is a Divine Ruler and Judge of the Universe. According to the Declaration of Independence, for instance, there is a Divine Ruler and Judge of the Universe and that we are His children, and share a profound and equal dignity as a result of our relationship to Him.
So, all the American policies are supposed to be in line with this idea that all men are created equal, that there is a Creator and that all of us share His Image and Likeness so we own dignity and must be respected, via the political institutions and society.
A. P.: Which is the role of tradition in American Constitutional history, in your opinion? Does tradition play some role in interpreting Constitution?
R. G.: In my opinion the question touches the sources of Constitution. These are the text, the logical implications of the provisions of the text, the structure of the document, the provisions within the document and its historical understanding.
It is in this broad sense – the historical understanding of the text – that tradition plays a role. We look at what was the goal of those who were responsible in making the Constitution. These goals are meant to be the effectuation of the values for the sake of which the Constitution was created and the institutions put into place. In our commitment to understand them, for example, we can consider the “equal dignity of the human person”. The Declaration of Independence, which was the founding document of the American regime, says “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. The Constitution, ratified many years later, was meant to give life to these principles.
So our tradition is one of respect to these principles and the role of the Constitution is to give life to them. So our tradition of Constitutional interpretation pays attention of the historical purposes of the Constitution. So this, too, might be understood as a role that tradition plays in the interpretation of our Constitution.
A. P.: So which is your opinion about Justice Scalia’s approach, who pays much attention to the Framers?
R. G.: Scalia is not purported to get into the subjective consciousness of the Framers who ratified the Constitution, but rather to recover what was understood, at the time of the ratification by all those who deliberated and participated in the debate on the particular provisions of the Constitution, should be ratified.
That attempt to recover the understanding is itself something difficult and is a matter of tradition: the historical understanding of the text and the meaning of the text of the Constitution. So I think this is the role for tradition.
We also have a common law tradition, which has an impressive difference from continental European systems. Tradition inside the tradition: this is the idea that the decisions can establish a tradition, which should be respected even if decisions in the first instance are not entirely correct.
Interview with Robert George by Andrea Pin from the Oasis Center
The Great Antiphon for December 22
O King of the Gentiles and their desired One, the Cornerstone that makes both one: Come, and deliver man, whom You formed out of the dust of the earth.
O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limo formasti.
Psalm 2:7-8; Haggai 2:8; Genesis 2:7; Ephesians 2:14-20.
Symbols, Crown, scepter.
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by John Greenleaf Whittier |
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The sun that brief December day Rose cheerless over hills of gray, And, darkly circled, gave at noon A sadder light than waning moon. Slow tracing down the thickening sky Its mute and ominous prophecy, A portent seeming less than threat, It sank from sight before it set. A chill no coat, however stout, Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, A hard, dull bitterness of cold, That checked, mid-vein, the circling race Of life-blood in the sharpened face, The coming of the snow-storm told. The wind blew east: we heard the roar Of Ocean on his wintry shore, And felt the strong pulse throbbing there Beat with low rhythm our inland air. Meanwhile we did your nightly chores,– Brought in the wood from out of doors, Littered the stalls, and from the mows Raked down the herd’s-grass for the cows; Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; And, sharply clashing horn on horn, Impatient down the stanchion rows The cattle shake their walnut bows; While, peering from his early perch Upon the scaffold’s pole of birch, The cock his crested helmet bent And down his querulous challenge sent. Unwarmed by any sunset light The gray day darkened into night, A night made hoary with the swarm And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, As zigzag, wavering to and fro Crossed and recrossed the wingèd snow: And ere the early bed-time came The white drift piled the window-frame, And through the glass the clothes-line posts Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. As night drew on, and, from the crest Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank From sight beneath the smothering bank, We piled, with care, our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney-back,– The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty forestick laid apart, And filled between with curious art The ragged brush; then, hovering near, We watched the first red blaze appear, Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, Until the old, rude-furnished room Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; While radiant with a mimic flame Outside the sparkling drift became, And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. The crane and pendent trammels showed, The Turks’ heads on the andirons glowed; While childish fancy, prompt to tell The meaning of the miracle, Whispered the old rhyme: “Under the tree, When fire outdoors burns merrily, There the witches are making tea.” The moon above the eastern wood Shone at its full; the hill-range stood Transfigured in the silver flood, Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, Dead white, save where some sharp ravine Took shadow, or the somber green Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black Against the whiteness at their back. For such a world and such a night Most fitting that unwarming light, Which only seemed where’er it fell To make the coldness visible. |
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Mission Statement
I AM A PART of the Fellowship of the Unashamed.
The die has been cast. The decision has been made. I have stepped over the line. I won’t look back, let up, slow down, back away or be still.
My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, and my future is in God’s hands. I am finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, the bare minimum, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, mundane talking, frivolous living, selfish giving, and dwarfed goals.
I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, applause, or popularity. I don’t have to be right, first, the best, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I now live by faith. I lean on Christ’s presence. I love with patience, live by prayer, and labor with the power of God’s grace.
My face is set. My gait is fast, my goal is heaven. My road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions are few, my Guide is reliable, and my mission is clear.
I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of adversity, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity.
I won’t give up, shut up, let up or slow up until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up, and spoken up for the cause of Christ.
I am a disciple of Jesus. I must go till He comes, give until I drop, speak out until all know, and work until He stops me.
And when He returns for His own, He will have no difficulty recognizing me. My banner is clear: I am a part of the Fellowship of the Unashamed.
Adapted from the original (author unknown) by Patrick Madrid
The Great Antiphon for December 21
O Dawn of the East, brightness of the light eternal, and Sun of Justice: Come, and enlighten them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.
O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae: veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.
Zac 6:12; Habakkuk 3:4; Malachi 3:20; Psalm 19:6-7; 107:10; Luke 1:78.
Symbol: rising sun.
O God, Who did strengthen blessed Peter Thy Confessor, in virtue and learning for the defense of the Catholic faith: mercifully grant that through his examples and teaching, those who are in error may be brought back to salvation and that the faithful may persevere in the confession of the truth.
Jesuit Father John Hardon’s brief note on Saint Peter Canisius
On the third centenary of the death of the Saint Peter Canisius, Pope Leo XIII wrote to the Bishops of Austria, Germany and Switzerland:
7. This is not the place to recall in detail the life of this man, so eminent in sanctity; the zeal with which he labored to restore harmony and union to his country torn by dissension and revolt; the ardor of his public debates with the teachers of error; his inspiring sermons; the persecutions he suffered; the many countries he travelled through; and the difficult missions he undertook in the interest of the faith. However, to return to the weapons of knowledge which we have mentioned: how constantly, readily, wisely and fitly he employed them! Upon his return from Messana where he went as a teacher of rhetoric, he committed himself to the teaching of the sacred sciences in the academies of Cologne, Ingolstadt and Vienna. Here he followed the royal road of the most approved learned men of the Christian school and revealed to the Germans the treasures of scholastic philosophy. As this philosophy was shunned at that time by the enemies of the faith because it was a great support of Catholic truth, he had it taught publicly in the schools and colleges of the Society of Jesus for whose establishment he had worked so hard.
8. He did not hesitate to descend from the heights of wisdom to the basics of writing. He undertook the instruction of children and even composed elementary writing books and grammars for their use. Indeed, just as he often came back from preaching to the courts of kings to address the people, so, after learned writings on dogma or morals, he used to compose pamphlets destined either to strengthen the faith of the people or to
arouse and nourish their piety. He had wonderful success in preventing the inexperienced from getting caught in the nets of error. The Summa which he published for this purpose is a compact and tightly-knit work, written in beautiful Latin and not unworthy of the Fathers of the Church. This remarkable work was enthusiastically received by learned men in almost all the countries of Europe. Less voluminous, but no less useful, were the two famous catechisms which this blessed man wrote for less cultivated minds: one for the religious instruction of children, the other for young men already involved in the study of the arts. These two works had such a great success among Catholics immediately upon publication, that almost all professors charged with teaching the basics of the faith had them in hand. They were used not only in the schools as a spiritual milk for the children, but they were also explained publicly in the churches to the benefit of all. Thus, during three centuries Canisius has been regarded as the teacher of Catholics in Germany. In popular speech, “knowing Canisius” was synonymous with “preserving the Christian faith.“
Pope Leo XIII, Militantis Ecclesiae (On St. Peter Canisius), August 1, 1897.
Come forth from the holy place,
Sweet Child,
Come from the quiet dark
Where virginal heartbeats
Tick your moments.
Come away from the red music
Of Mary’s veins.
Come out from the Tower of David
Sweet Child,
From the House of Gold.
God has become man. He has become a child. Thus he fulfills the great and mysterious promise to be Emmanuel: God-with us. Now he is no longer unreachable for anybody. God is Emmanuel. By becoming a child, he offers us the possibility of being on familiar terms with him.
I am reminded here of a rabbinical tale recorded by Elie Wiesel. He tells of Jehel, a little boy, who comes running into the room of his grandfather, the famous Rabbi Baruch. Big tears are rolling down his cheeks. And he cries, My friend has totally given up on me. He is very unfair and very mean to me. Well, could you explain this a little more? asks the master.
Okay, responds the little boy. We were playing hide and seek. I was hiding so well that he could not find me. But then he simply gave up and went home. Isn’t that mean? The most exciting hiding place has lost its excitement because the other shops playing.
The master caresses the boy’s face. He himself now has tears in his eyes. And he says, Yes, this is not nice. But look, it is the same way with God. He is in hiding, and we do not seek him. Just imagine! God is hiding, and we people do not even look for him.
In this little story a Christian is able to find the key to the ancient mystery of Christmas. God is in hiding. He waits for his creation to set out toward him, he waits for a new and willing Yes to come about, for love to arise as a new reality out of his creation. He waits for man.
Benedictus
Pope Benedict XVI
