Organic Vinegar –monastic style

brother-victorOutside Poughkeepsie, NY there is a Benedictine Hermit, Brother Victor-Antione d’Avila Latourrette who lives his vocation with intensity. His residence is called Our Lady of the Resurrection Monastery.
 
You may know Brother Victor from his various books, including “Twelve Months of Monastery Soups”, “From a Monastery Kitchen: The Classic Natural Foods Cookbook” and “Sacred Feasts: From a Monastery Kitchen” among others.
He is quite the monk and son of St Benedict.
 
Here is a nice write-up in yesterday’s Poughkeepsie Journal:
 

By what intention do we judge?

These days are tense.  We are faced with important decisions by which we engage others. At a recent memorial service for the police officers killed in Dallas, Texas, the following was said by our former President.

“At times, it seems like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Argument turns too easily into animosity. … Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions.”

George Bush
former President of the USA and former governor of Texas

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

“A man was rushed to a New York City hospital unconscious and dying. The nurse saw the man was wearing a brown scapular of a Our Lady of Mount Carmel and called for the priest. As the prayers were being said for the dying, the man became conscious. ‘Father, I am not a Catholic.’ The man said. The priest asked why he was wearing the scapular. ‘I promised friends I would wear it and say one Hail Mary each day.’ The priest asked the man if he wanted to baptized. The man desired his whole life to become Catholic. He was baptized and received the Last Rites and died in peace.”

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for us!

Dorothy Day and the Benedictines

I found the following file on my computer this morning by accident –I wasn’t looking for it, but I was happy to find it. I’ve been harping on the Benedictine influence upon Dorothy Day and the importance the Rule of Benedict and the influence various monks had Day. For example, we have a good example of Dom Virgil Michel working with Dorothy Day at the Catholic Worker. Another is Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila Latourrette. Day’s sainthood cause is being studied at the moment and these things matter, in my opinion.

Virgil Michel, O.S.B., and the Benedictine Influence on the CW Movement:

Virgil Michel, Fellow Worker in Christ
by Dorothy Day

To us at the Catholic Worker, Father Virgil was a dear friend and adviser, bringing to us his tremendous strength and knowledge. He first came to visit us at our beginnings on East Fifteenth Street. He was like Peter Maurin in the friendly simple way he would come in and sit down, starting right in on the thought that was uppermost in his mind, telling us of the work he was engaged in at that particular moment and what he was planning for the future. He was at home with everyone, anywhere. He could sit down at a table in a tenement house kitchen, or under an apple tree at the farm, and talk of St. Thomas and today with whoever was at hand. He had such faith in people, faith in their intelligence and spiritual capacities, that he always gave the very best he had generously and openheartedly.

He was interested in everything we were trying to do, and made us feel, at all the Catholic Worker groups, that we were working with him. When he came in it was as though we had seen him just a few weeks before. He was at home at once, he remembered everybody, he listened to everybody.

Orate Frates, January, 1939

St Bonaventure

St BonaventureWe are honoring the memory of St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (ca. 1221-1274) today. One of the great scholastic theologians and pastors of the Church. I hope the Thomists won’t get mad!

There are many who make the claim that the best general introduction to the thought of Bonaventure is Sister Ilia Delio’s, Simply Bonaventure (New City Press, 2nd ed.) And I agree. But if you need another resource, consider this encyclopedia entry (2005/2013).

Bonaventure, having joined the new movement of Friars in Paris, his priestly and academic career was centered at the Franciscan School of Theology at the University of Paris from 1248-1257. By this time he garnered the attention of his brothers and churchmen at large. He was elected General Minister of the Order governed his brothers for 17 years. It may be said that after the early days of Francis and the early leadership of the Franciscan movement Bonaventure makes his Order credible and and reliable. Thereafter, Bonaventure was elected to serve the Roman Pontiff as Cardinal-Bishop of Albano and expert at the Second Council of Lyons; At Lyons, he died during the Council.

The scholarship on Saint Bonaventure reveals to us that he emphasized all learning must serve the ultimate goal of human life: communion with God. His work is greatly trinitarian and Chriwstocentric. For him, and for us, Christ is the one and true Master! This is a critical point for knowing today’s saint: learning is not meant for self-aggrandizement but to help a person realize that he or she is on a journey toward union with a loving God –a communio theology. You could say with seriousness that to do otherwise is to reduce theology and learning to absurd levels and miss the point of knowing, loving and serving the Blessed Trinity.

Consider this passage from his treatise, “The Tree of Life”:

“You soul devoted to God,
whoever you are, run
with living desire
to this Fountain of life and light
and with the innermost power of your heart
cry out to him:

‘O inaccessible beauty of the most high God
and the pure brightness of the eternal light,
life vivifying all life,
light illumining every light,
and keeping in perpetual splendor
a thousand times a thousand lights
brilliantly shining
before the throne of your divinity
since the primeval dawn!

O eternal and inaccessible,
clear and sweet stream from the fountain
hidden from the eyes of all mortals,
whose depth is without bottom,
whose height is without limit,
whose breadth cannot be bounded,
whose purity cannot be disturbed.

From this Fountain
flows the stream of the oil of gladness,
which gladdens the city of God,
and the powerful fiery torrent,
the torrent, I say, of the pleasure of God,
from which the guest at the heavenly banquet
drink to joyful inebriation
and sing without ceasing
hymns of jubilation.

Anoint us
with this sacred oil and refresh
with the longed-for waters of this torrent
the thirsting throat of our parched hearts
so that amid shouts of joy and thanksgiving
we may sing to you
a canticle of praise,
proving by experience that
with you is the fountain of life,
and in your light we will see
light (see Ps 36:10).”

This image of Saint Bonaventure, is depicted by the Veronese painter, Paolo Morando Cavazzola (1486-1522). Few medieval depictions of Bonaventure exist; Bonaventure was not canonized until 1482.

Yielding to public opinion is tragic

In business, in politics, and in fact, in the holy Church of Christ on earth, we are more governed by trends and the opinions of others than seeking the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Dietrich von Hildebrand has something to say about this fact…

“In general, however, the heads of Catholic institutions do not prohibit the teaching of heresies not because they have definitely lost their faith, but because they yield to public opinion and to fashion.  They fear to be called ‘reactionaries.’  They shudder at the thought of violating this allegedly holy academic freedom.  Of these St. Augustine says: ‘Who is the hireling who, seeing the approach of the wolf, takes flight?  He who seeks himself and does not seek what is of Jesus Christ; he who does not dare to frankly admonish the sinner (1 Tim. 5:20).  See, someone has sinned, gravely sinned; he should be admonished, excluded from the Church.  But, excluded from the Church, he will become its enemy and will try to ensnare it and harm it where he can.  Now the hireling, the one who seeks himself and not what is of Jesus Christ, will be silent and will not give any admonition, in order not to lose what he seeks, namely the advantages of personal friendship, and in order to avoid the unpleasantness, worry and personal enmity.  The wolf at that moment takes hold of the sheep to throttle them…You are silent O hireling, and do not admonish…Your silence is your flight.  You are silent, you are afraid.  Fear is the flight of the soul. (St. Augustine, Tractatus in Joannem, XLVI, 7-8)’.”

St Kateri Tekakwitha

Statue Kateri Tekakwitha, Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, Santa Fe, NMToday the Church in the USA liturgically remember one of her own, Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American woman proposed for canonization. In fact, she is the fourth Native American person to be venerated by the Church. Saint Juan Diego and two other Oaxacan Indians are indigenous peoples accorded the honor of religious veneration.

Kateri Tekakwitha was the daughter of a Christian Algonquin woman captured by Iroquois and married to a non-Christian Mohawk chief. Kateri was orphaned during a smallpox epidemic, which left her with a scarred face and impaired eyesight. She converted and was baptized in 1676 by Jesuit Father Jacques de Lamberville. As a convert at  nineteen, she was renamed Kateri, baptized to honor the great saint,  Catherine of Siena.

Her biography reveals that Kateri was shunned and abused by relatives for her faith who witheld food from her on Sundays and stoned her when she entered the chapel, Kateri then escaped through 200 miles of wilderness to the Christian Native American village of Sault-Sainte-Marie (near Montreal).

As a young girl, Kateri took a vow of chastity in 1679 and held a spirituality and austere lifestyle. Hers was a life of prayer, mortification and works of charity. Tekakwitha’s notable value for chastity, she is often referred to as a lily, (Lily of the Mohwaks) a traditional symbol of purity.

He final words were, “Jesus, Mary, I love you!” After he death her grave became a pilgrimage site and place of miracles for Christian Native Americans and French colonists.

Our saint’s tomb reads: Kateri Tekakwitha -Ownkeonweke Katsitsiio Teonsitsianekaron- The fairest flower that ever bloomed among red people.

As a friend said, may she “who sees through difficulty” intercede for us.

Sts. Louis and Zélia Martin –a sainted couple

Martin familyWe liturgically remember Saints Louis and Zélia Martin, the married couple whose human love cooperated with Divine Grace which generated the beauty of the Little Flower.

As with all holy men and women, saints, they had a lived in a recognition –continual– that God is all and the desire to give all. From this recognition, 5 daughters entered consecrated life; 4 in Carmel and one in the Order of the Visitation.

Pope Francis acknowledged that the Church wants and needs married couples who point to Christ and so canonized Louis and Zélia during the Synod on the Family on 18 October  2015; becoming the first spouses in the church’s history to be canonized as a couple.

The choice of a liturgical memorial on 12 July marks the date of their matrimony in 1858.

May Saints Louis and Zélia help us to integrate our faith in every aspect of family life remembering that the married vocation is to help each other become saints.

St Benedict –our Father

Sts Benedict, Placid and MaurusAt the Introit, we sing today on the feast of Saint Benedict:

Let us all rejoice in the Lord, celebrating the feast in honor of Benedict, in whose happy solemnity. The angels rejoice and praise the Son of God.

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised In the city of our God, on his holy mountain. (Ps. 47:2)

Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI wrote this about this man of blessings:

The obedience of the disciple must correspond with the wisdom of the Abbot who, in the monastery, “is believed to hold the place of Christ” (2, 2; 63, 13). The figure of the Abbot, which is described above all in Chapter II of the Rule with a profile of spiritual beauty and demanding commitment, can be considered a self-portrait of Benedict, since, as St Gregory the Great wrote, “the holy man could not teach otherwise than as he himself lived” (cf. Dialogues II, 36). The Abbot must be at the same time a tender father and a strict teacher (cf. 2, 24), a true educator. Inflexible against vices, he is nevertheless called above all to imitate the tenderness of the Good Shepherd (27, 8), to “serve rather than to rule” (64, 8) in order “to show them all what is good and holy by his deeds more than by his words” and “illustrate the divine precepts by his example” (2, 12). To be able to decide responsibly, the Abbot must also be a person who listens to “the brethren’s views” (3, 2), because “the Lord often reveals to the youngest what is best” (3, 3). This provision makes a Rule written almost 15 centuries ago surprisingly modern! A man with public responsibility even in small circles must always be a man who can listen and learn from what he hears.

Benedict describes the Rule he wrote as “minimal, just an initial outline” (cf. 73, 8); in fact, however, he offers useful guidelines not only for monks but for all who seek guidance on their journey toward God. For its moderation, humanity and sober discernment between the essential and the secondary in spiritual life, his Rule has retained its illuminating power even to today. By proclaiming St Benedict Patron of Europe on 24 October 1964, Paul VI intended to recognize the marvellous work the Saint achieved with his Rule for the formation of the civilization and culture of Europe. Having recently emerged from a century that was deeply wounded by two World Wars and the collapse of the great ideologies, now revealed as tragic utopias, Europe today is in search of its own identity. Of course, in order to create new and lasting unity, political, economic and juridical instruments are important, but it is also necessary to awaken an ethical and spiritual renewal which draws on the Christian roots of the Continent, otherwise a new Europe cannot be built. Without this vital sap, man is exposed to the danger of succumbing to the ancient temptation of seeking to redeem himself by himself – a utopia which in different ways, in 20th-century Europe, as Pope John Paul II pointed out, has caused “a regression without precedent in the tormented history of humanity” (Address to the Pontifical Council for Culture, 12 January 1990). Today, in seeking true progress, let us also listen to the Rule of St Benedict as a guiding light on our journey. The great monk is still a true master at whose school we can learn to become proficient in true humanism.