Communio – Page 85 – …bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Blessed Pierre-René Rogue

Vincentian Father Pierre-René Rogue is a martyr of the French Revolution who suffered death by guillotine on 3 March 1796. His mother witnessed the death of her son. The Church beatified Father Pierre-René on 10 May 1934. His mortal remains can be found interred in the Cathedral of St. Peter (Vannes, France).

Rogue was a sensible, prudent and holy man who maintained good relations with civil authorities. Yet, in a time of persecution of the Catholic Church in France, Blessed Pierre-René was betrayed while bringing Viaticum on Christmas Eve 1795.

The liturgical memorial for Blessed Pierre-René is today according the most recent changes to the liturgical calendar, but he had initially his own liturgical memorial on May 8th. He is called a Martyr of the Eucharist.

Byzantine New Year 7525

Happy New Year!

September 1st is the Byzantine New Year 7525. Western Christians begin their new liturgical year on the First Sunday of Advent. The Greek Church, today.

Historically, “the First Ecumenical Council established that the Church’s year would begin on September 1st, continuing the practice of the Roman Empire at that time. For centuries, the beginning of the civil year coincided with the Church year, but later changed, first in western Europe, then in Russia in the time of Peter the Great.”

IN the Divine Liturgy we sing the following trope:

O Lord, Maker of the Universe, who alone has power over the seasons and times, bless this year with your bounty. Preserve our country in safety. Keep your people in peace. Through the prayers of the Mother of God, save us. (from the Troparion)

St Aidan

I doubt many people know much about Saint Aidan except surface level stuff. The name “Aidan” is a beautiful name and it carries with it the beauty of the best of Catholicism in Ireland and parts of England and Wales. Saint Aidan was seeking someone great –he was truly seeking God. This seeking is the principle, the grammar by which we truly live the Faith.

“Monastic founder, bishop, and miracle worker known for his kindness to animals. Known as Edan, Modoc, and Maedoc in some records, Saint Aidan was born in Connaught, Ireland. His birth was heralded by signs and omens, and he showed evidence of piety as a small child. Educated at Leinster, Saint Aidan went to Saint David monastery in Wales. He remained there for several years, studying Scriptures, and his presence saved Saint David from disaster. Saxon war parties attacked the monastery during Saint Aidan’s stay, and he repelled them miraculously. In time, Saint Aidan returned to Ireland, founding a monastery in Ferns, in Wexford. He became the bishop of the region as well. His miracles brought many to the Church. Saint Aidan is represented in religious art with a stag. He made a beautiful stag invisible to save it from hounds.”

Saint Aidan, pray for Us!

Sts Margaret Ward, Margaret Clitherow, Anne Line, and Blessed John Roche

One of the liturgical memorials we observe today is that of the collective of Saints Margaret Clitherow, Anne Line, and Margaret Ward. All are martyrs. These three are also sometimes lumped with 284 other canonized or beatified martyrs of the English Reformation on 4 May but some of the canonized are recalled today. The liturgical calendars for England and Wales are particular.

Margaret Clitherow died at age 30 on March 25, 1586, her last words being, “Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, have mercy on me!” She was canonized in 1970 with 39 others. As a group they are known as the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales. These martyred men and women were killed between 1535 and 1679.

A few words on Saint Margaret Ward and her servant, Blessed John Roche.

They were arrested for helping Father Richard Watson escape from Bridewell Prison smuggling him a rope and helping him once he was outside. She can be said to be an apostle of the works of mercy, especially visiting the imprisoned.

Her captors wanted her to give up Father Watson and convert to the new Church of England. Ward refused. Thereafter, Ward was imprisoned, flogged, and tortured; hanged, drawn, and quartered on 30 August 1588 at Tyburn, London, England

The personal servant of Saint Margaret Ward, John Roche, helped Father Richard Watson, escape by meeting him outside the prison with a boat, then changing clothes to throw off the witch hunt. It was a crime to aid a priest. Like Ward, he was offered freedom if he asked the Queen’s pardon and promised to worship in the Church of England; he replied he did nothing against Queen and that he could not attend a non-Catholic Church. Roche was hanged 1588 at Tyburn, London, England.

Blessed Ildefonso Schuster –man of God, man of holiness

We commemorate the 62nd anniversary of the death of the Blessed Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, Archbishop of Milan.

Cardinal Schuster was born in Rome in 1880 to German parents, entered the Benedictine Abbey of St Paul’s Outside-the-Walls. After ordination to the priesthood of Jesus Christ, he served his community as master of novices and prior before being elected abbot and appointed procurator general of the Cassinese Congregation of Benedictines (now the Subiaco-Cassinese Congregation. He is also served as president of the Pontifical Oriental Institute. In 1929, Pius XI named him to See of Milan, the same episcopal See as Saint Ambrose and St Charles Borromeo. Schuster had a rapid rise in the Church structure by being created a Cardinal less than a month after his appointment to Milan; he was consecrated bishop by the Pope in the Sistine Chapel.

Schuster had several difficult years as the Shepherd of Milan with rise of Fascism and then advent of WWII. What is keenly recalled of Schuster as bishop is his solicitude of the people having visited every parish of the diocese five times, holding several diocesan synods, writing several pastoral letters and founding a seminary in Venegono. Monk or not, he was a true apostle for the good of the Church’s holiness and engagement in the world.

The funeral Mass was offered by the Cardinal Roncalli, now St. John XXIII. In 1985, the cardinal’s his tomb was opened and his mortal remains were found to be intact; the monk-bishop-cardinal-man of God was beatified by Saint John Paul II on May 12, 1996. The relics were given for the veneration of the faithful in one of the side-altars of the Duomo.

One of the things I treasure of Blessed Schuster is his scholarship in the Liber Sacramentorum, known in its English translation as The Sacramentary. It was written while he was Benedictine monk with the supreme reverence for tradition, adoration and intellect. With some things the volumes are dated yet the work remains an invaluble reference point for liturgical scholarship today.

To the seminarians of Milan he taught in a characteristically Benedictine manner of the futility of ministry without personal holiness:

I have no memento to give you apart from an invitation to holiness. It would seem that people are no longer convinced by our preaching; but faced with holiness, they still believe, they still fall to their knees and pray. People seem to live ignorant of supernatural realities, indifferent to the problems of salvation. But when an authentic saint, living or dead passes by, all run to be there. Do not forget that the devil is not afraid of our [parish] sports fields and of our movie halls: he is afraid, on the other hand, of our holiness.

With the Church we pray,

Almighty God, through your grace, Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, by his exemplary virtue, built up the flock entrusted to him. Grant that we, under the guidance of the Gospel, may follow his teaching and walk in sureness of life, until we come to see you face to face in your eternal kingdom.

Blessed Ildefonso Schuster, pray for us!

Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist

The Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist (cf. Mark 6:17-29) is liturgically recalled today. For centuries, St. John the Baptist served as the principal model for those in religious life and as a model for Christian manhood. I always find John the Baptist a figure that convicts my Christian life.

There was a time when images of sainted founders of religious orders and other holy personages were painted with an image of the Baptist to remind the viewer many Christian virtues: the pursuit of and willingness to die for the truth, the discipleship needed to be a proclaimer of the Gospel, to build a relationship with the Messiah, to be in pursuit of the virtue of perseverance of the seeker, living the ascetic ideal, and the like.

We have to attend to St. John the Baptist not only because he was a cousin of Our Savior, but he also presents to us a method of how to live in relation to Him from whom we have eternal life. The Church gives us a rare example of holiness to contemplate that is not given to other saints: a feast of birth and death.

On the score of what the Baptist faced with passion, that is, the categorical rejection of sugar-coating the truth, and the refusal to be politically correct, the saint is images the correspondence of faith and reason. The high degree of intercourse with reality is something we don’t much appreciate today and much less desire to walk in the same footsteps. We too often lack courage –the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The enduring importance of St. John the Baptist’s example, hence, is the important call to each of us to ask the Holy Spirit to give us the gifts we need to be disciples of the Lord and missionaries in the world today. We can’t be faithful to God’s holy word with Divine Help, the same help St. John the Baptist relied upon.

St Augustine

Today, though Sunday, is the liturgical feast day of the great saint of Hippo, Augustine. While his point in some areas of out theological life are germane today, his work requires us to wrestle with his ideas and spiritual journey. The Church prays for this grace through Saint Augustine’s intercession which I think is some for all of us to ponder a little more: we are looking for the Mystical Body of Christ on earth to be renewed in the same spirit given Augustine –that we may thirst for God,
the sole fount of true wisdom, and seek God, the author of heavenly love.

Do we seek the face of God –Father, Son and Holy Spirit?

In the Confessions we read:

O Eternal truth, true love and beloved eternity. You are my God. To you do I sigh day and night. When I first came to know you, you drew me to yourself so that I might see that there were things for me to see, but that I myself was not yet ready to see them. Meanwhile you overcame the weakness of my vision, sending forth most strongly the beams of your light, and I trembled at once with love and dread. I learned that I was in a region unlike yours and far distant from you, and I thought I heard your voice from on high: “I am the food of grown men; grow then, and you will feed on me. Nor will you change me into yourself like bodily food, but you will be changed into me.”

I sought a way to gain the strength which I needed to enjoy you. But I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who is above all, God blessed for ever. He was calling me and saying: I am the way of truth, I am the life. He was offering the food which I lacked the strength to take, the food he had mingled with our flesh. For the Word became flesh, that your wisdom, by which you created all things, might provide milk for us children.

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

Our Lady of Czestochowa

Prayer to Our Lady of Czestochowa

Our Lady of Czestochowa, Queen of Poland, pray for us Holy Mother of Czestochowa, you are full of grace, goodness and mercy. I consecrate to you all my thoughts, words and actions – my soul and body. I beseech your blessings and especially prayers for my salvation.

Today I consecrate myself to you, good Mother, totally – with body and soul amid joy and sufferings, to obtain for myself and others your blessings on this earth and eternal life in heaven. Amen

Our Lady of Czestochowa, Queen of Poland, pray for us.

Queenship of Mary

Today is the octave day of the Solemnity of the Assumption and we honor Mary in her Queenship.

There are a few times during the liturgical year that the Church uses royal titles for the God and the Mother of God. There may be a slight disconnect for some with the use of titles that denote royalty but what we understand to be regal, majestic, and powerful in this world with kings and queens, it is not at all the same for God and the Mother of God. Indeed, the world’s royals have had, and continue to have a certain amount of power and privilege. What we attribute to the world’s elite is not what we attribute to the Divine. Our theology says that we understand on this plain is far exceeded when speaking of God. For example fatherhood is not the same as Divine Fatherhood; biological father is imperfect but the perfection we have in God is utterly different.

So, what do we say about Mary’s Queenship? Mary is the sinless Virgin who humbly accepted God’s will for her; as a mother she experience a life of great suffering with the death of her Son; Mary’s Queenship exists in the sense that her motherly love and concern for all of us is total and majestic. It is with a special concern for our salvation wrought through her Son’s saving Paschal Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection finds a place in our devotion. Her is a key point: Mary has a queenship, in fact, Queen Mother, because her Son is King. Without this connection to Jesus, the title falls away.

Called a queen does not replace Mary’s essential role as mother. As John Paul said, “her queenship remains a corollary of her particular maternal mission and simply expresses the power conferred on her to carry out that mission.” She is not exclusive in her concern for all of the Father’s creation: her particular mission is for all humanity.

Mary’s mission is recognized as St Germanus preached about Her: “You [Mary] dwell spiritually with us and the greatness of your vigilance over us makes your communion of life with us stand out” (Horn. 1, PG 98, 344).

Vatican II spoke of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in “body and soul into heavenly glory,” and also teaches Mary was “exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords (cf. Rv 19:16) and conqueror of sin and death” (Lumen gentium, n. 59).

Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of the Queenship of Mary to be celebrated on May 31st, the last day of the month dedicated to Our Lady. The Second Vatican Council liturgical reform moved the feast to today, the octave day of the Assumption.

Father Franz Reinisch

On this date in 1942, Father Franz Reinisch was beheaded in Brandenburg, Berlin. He was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest and member of the Schoenstatt Movement.

A staunch critic of the Nazis, he refused to take the oath allegiance of Adolf Hitler and believed he was the personification of the Antichrist. He was arrested, tried, and convicted by a military court. He was sentenced to death. Father Reinisch made Holy Confession and received Holy Communion.

Father Reinisch is currently in the process of Canonization by the Catholic Church.