Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem – Page 3

Saint Helen, Empress, Mother, Pilgrim

In Rome and Jerusalem especially, and especially for me in the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, we celebrate today Saint Helen (d. 327 A.D.), empress, mother, pilgrim of the Holy Land, who made worship places and relics of the history, the mystery of salvation.

Several years ago I was privileged to live at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Rome where the relics of the Lord’s passion reside. It was a beautiful thing to have some daily prayer in this holy place.

Let us pray for the Church and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

Image of St Helena at the Basilica of Santa Croce in Rome.

What the emblem of Order stands for?

The badge of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, formed by a large Greek cross surrounded by four small crosses, symbolically represents the five wounds of Christ which are like the “Gates of Heaven”. This emblem is not a decoration but a mission whose spiritual meaning is illuminated in the light of the teaching of Pope Francis.

Indeed, since his election, the Holy Father urges us to touch the wounds of Christ, like the Apostle Thomas did after the resurrection, to welcome the mercy that radiates from Him as a source of peace. “If we put our hands together into these wounds and confess that Jesus has risen, and if we proclaim Him as our Lord and our God, if recognizing our shortcomings, we dive into His wounds of love, we can find the truth.” Joy of forgiveness and getting a foretaste of the day when, with God’s help, we will be able to celebrate on the same altar the Passover mystery,” he emphasized, especially from an ecumenical perspective, during a pontifical trip.

“A saint was saying that the body of Jesus crucified is like a bag of mercy, reaching us all through his wounds,” he also explained on the occasion of Mercy Sunday.”

“We all need mercy, we know it.” Let us draw closer to Jesus and touch his wounds in our suffering brothers. Jesus’ wounds are a treasure: that’s where mercy flows. Let us be brave and touch the wounds of Jesus. With these wounds, he stands before the Father, he shows them to the Father, as if he were saying, “Father, this is the price, these wounds are what I paid for my brothers.” Through his wounds, Jesus intercedes before the Father. He gives us mercy if we draw near, and intercede for us. Do not forget the wounds of Jesus” (Regina Cæli, April 28, 2019).

Each member of the Order is therefore called to first carry in his heart the symbols of the badge sewn on his mantle and to spread the veneration of the Holy Wounds of Christ, sources of forgiveness and mercy. They cleanse and heal. If we embrace them, they can truly change our lives. (EOHSJ)

Fortunato Frezza becomes cardinal

On Sunday, May 29, Pope Francis announced his intention to create 21 new Cardinals at a Consistory on Saturday, 27 August. One of the 21 is Reverend Monsignor Fortunato Frezza, canon of Saint Peter’s Basilica and Master of Ceremonies and Spiritual Assistant of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, will be created Cardinal by the Pope. Frezza work for several years at the Secretariat General for the Synod of the Bishops.

The Order of the Holy Sepulchre has provided us with a brief tribute to the Cardinal-designate here by Leonardo Visconti di Modrone, Governor General of the Order.

Photo of cardinals with Pope on May 3, 2021. (Credit: CNS photo/Vatican Media)

Lift high the Cross

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, formerly celebrated on May 3, for the finding of the True Cross of Christ by Emperor Constantine and his mother Saint Helen. The Cross is exalted and honored as a trophy for its Easter victory and a sign that will appear in heaven announcing to everyone the second coming of the Lord.

Prayers for the good work of the Knights and Dames of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

Here is a miniature taken from the magnificent Breviary of Jerusalem (XIV sec.), from the “Ludovic II De Torres” located at the Library of the Archbishop’s Seminary of Montreal.

Sunday of the Holy cross

Today in the Byzantine Catholic Church it is the Sunday of the Holy Cross. It is a day on which we recall that wood heals wood, the wood of the cross heals the wood that tree in paradise we were told not to eat from. Today we venerate the Holy Cross and it signals mid-Lent. As members of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem we are keenly aware that the cross is intimately connected with the Lord’s victory over death, and thus our salvation.

St John Chrysostom teaches us:

“Therefore, no one should be ashamed of the venerable symbols of our salvation: of the cross, which is the summit of our goods, for which we live and are what we are. Instead, let’s carry the cross of Christ like a trophy everywhere! All things, among us, reach their fulfillment by means of the cross. When we have to be reborn, the cross becomes present; when we feed on the mystical food; when we are consecrated ministers of the altar; when other mysteries are fulfilled, this symbol of victory is always present there.”

Homily on Matthew 54, 551B-552A.

St Hilary of Poitiers

This post was written for members of the Order the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem and posted on FB.

Today the Church gives us the feast of a great Father and Doctor of the Church of the West: St Hilary of Poitiers (315-368), one of the important figures of the fourth century. He was a convert to the faith. At the time of his election as bishop of Poitiers by the lay faithful and clergy, he was married with one daughter (who became a nun known for her charity and later a saint). Our saint was known as the “Hammer of the Arians” (Malleus Arianorum) and the “Athanasius of the West.”

In the controversy with the Arians, Hilary devoted his energy defending and teaching orthodox Christian faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ, Son of God and God as the Father who begot him from eternity; by comparison the Arians considered Jesus the Son of God to be an excellent human creature but only human. You might remember that Arian “theology” spread through music. Opposing the Arian hymns, Hilary wrote hymns to foster Catholic faith. St Hilary’s method for his theological reflection began in baptismal faith. The starting point of Christian life is and has always been the sacrament of Baptism, and it is a point that members of the EOHSJ take as critical in living our vocation.

In his famous work, De Trinitate, Hilary writes: Jesus “has commanded us to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, that is, in the confession of the Author, of the Only-Begotten One and of the Gift.

The Author of all things is one alone, for one alone is God the Father, from whom all things proceed. And one alone is Our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom all things exist, and one alone is the Spirit, a gift in all…. In nothing can be found to be lacking so great a fullness, in which the immensity in the Eternal One, the revelation in the Image, joy in the Gift, converge in the Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit.”

God the Father, being wholly love, is able to communicate his divinity to his Son in its fullness. Particularly beautiful and insightful is the formula of St Hilary composed to understand the Mystery: “God knows not how to be anything other than love, he knows not how to be anyone other than the Father. Those who love are not envious and the one who is the Father is so in his totality. This name admits no compromise, as if God were father in some aspects and not in others.”

St Hilary of Poitiers is the patron saint fighting against snake bites. As his name suggests, Knights and Ladies of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem ought to be people of good cheer as we give good witness to the truth of Jesus Christ.

St Hilary, pray for us.

Where and how are we educated?

This post was written for the Order of the Holy Sepulchre for January 8, 2022.

“The place where the educational process unfolds must be a place where all of reality is presented” (Luigi Giussani, The Risk of Education, 133).

This blog post is less about an educational theory of two well-known theologians than about staying in front of the reality we are presented as a place where grace operates in our life, that is, the inner Life of the Holy Trinity. Grace is relational not a bag of good things given by God to make us feel good.

As we move into 2022 I think we are faced with some serious questions regarding our life and work as members of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. Being in realtionship with the Holy Trinity requires us to face life squarely and with certainty. How do the real events of life of the human person affect us personally or the Church at large? What or who responds to our human questions? Do we place our constructed utopias in the path as an answer to the thirst within the heart of man?

“What does your Lord require of you, but to look at all things as they really are, to account them merely as His instruments, but to believe that good is good because He wills it, that He can bless as easily by hard stone as by bread, in the desert as in the fruitful field, if we have faith in Him who gives us the true bread from heaven?… Doubt not, then, His power to bring you through any difficulties, who gives you the command to encounter them” (St. John Henry Newman, CO).

As 2022 progresses I hope that we find the reason and hope for living: Jesus Christ here and now. Intellectually many of us know that only Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is the answer and response to reality as it is. But does this fact impact us deep in our sinews? Nicodemus knew this when Jesus challenged him to question to whom did he belong. The same challenge remains for us when we consider our Noble Ideal: teach the faith, feed the poor, educate children, visit the elderly, or live in relation with our enemies.

May Our Lady of Palestine, pray for us.

St. John Henry Newman, pray for us.

May Blessed Bartolo Longo, intercede for us.

St. John the Apostle model for Knights and Dames of Holy Sepulchre today

This reflection was written to explore, to renew, and to re-commit my life as a member of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem in light of the liturgical memorial of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist (whose feast is celebrated by the Latin Church today. It’s also published on one of the Facebook groups of the Order.

St. John the Evangelist giving Holy Communion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, by the Baroque Spanish painter Alonzo Cano.

The opening collect for the liturgical memorial of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist reads:

O God, who through the blessed Apostle John have unlocked for us the secrets of your Word: Grant, we pray, that we may grasp with proper understanding what he has so marvelously brought to our ears.

The Church’s prayer elicits for me two things: 1.) am I a protagonist in sharing Divine Revelation and Tradition with those in the Church and with those who have fallen away from the practice of Catholic faith, and 2.) has my understanding of the Good News taken firm root in myself so as to be a witness to the noble ideal that the Grand Master spoke of in the Jerusalem Cross (October 2021)?

The Apostle who is called the Beloved Disciple knew so well, Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation; as God-Man Jesus is love par excellence. The image of John resting on the breast of Jesus comes to mind. But how does that image impact me? Benedict XVI told us St. John’s work was to demonstrate that “the essential constituent of God is love and hence, that all God’s activity is born from love and impressed with love: all that God does, he does out of love and with love, even if we are not always immediately able to understand that this is love, true love” (Audience, 9 August 2006).

In the same audience the emeritus Pontiff said the “precept to which John refers, Jesus presents his own Person as the reason for and norm of our love: ‘as I have loved you.’ It is in this way that love becomes truly Christian: both in the sense that it must be directed to all without distinction, and above all since it must be carried through to its extreme consequences, having no other bounds than being boundless.”

The feast of St. John the Apostle ought to be one of the points of our reflection today to renew our commitment to know and to live more abundantly a life of conversion, vocation, and mission as knights and dames of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. The Apostle teaches us to be in love, to act in love, and to be missionary of Love.

Cardinal Filoni wrote in the spirit of “as I have loved you.”: “As an Order that has a constitutive commitment to the Holy Land, we must ceaselessly re-evoke the two aspects of our commitment: the ecclesiological dimension of our work, which delineates the horizon of the commitment itself, and the personal spiritual and charitable dimension, which renders us the protagonists of our work which is never mediocre or mechanical.”

In Thomas à Kempis’ famous late Middle Ages book, The Imitation of Christ, wrote:

“The love of Jesus is noble and generous: it spurs us on to do great things, and excites us to desire always that which is most perfect. Love will tend upwards and is not to be detained by things beneath. Love will be at liberty and free from all worldly affections… for love proceeds from God and cannot rest but in God above all things created. The lover flies, runs and rejoices, he is free and not held. He gives all for all and has all in all, because he rests in one sovereign good above all, from whom all good flows and proceeds” (Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book III, Chapter V, 3-4).

A fun fact for today’s feast: we bless wine on the feast of St. John the Apostle. The blessing of wine is sign of God’s love for us.

Happy Christmas and Happy Feast.

Living on the edge of eternity

The following reflection was written for members of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem and published on one of the Facebook groups of the Order.

In a week’s time we will be celebrating the Nativity of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. A fact. An experience of Faith. The Fathers of the Church teach us that the Incarnation means that God Who is incomprehensible and inexpressible lowered Himself in His mercy taking human nature to not only restore what Adam lost, but to offer us the possibility of our participation in His divine nature. This participation is what we call theosis.

Here is something for us to think about as we prepare for the Nativity of the Lord. There’s a Divine promise contained in the event of the Incarnation. The following homily for Advent delieverd by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) notes for us the contours of the promise.

“We know that there are three comings of the Lord. The third lies between the other two. It is invisible, while the other two are visible.“In the first coming he was seen on earth, dwelling among men; he himself testifies that they saw him and hated him. In the final coming all flesh will see the salvation of our God, and they will look on him whom they pierced. The intermediate coming is a hidden one; in it only the elect see the Lord within their own selves, and they are saved. In his first coming our Lord came in our flesh and in our weakness; in this middle coming he comes in spirit and in power; in the final coming he will be seen in glory and majesty.

“In case someone should think that what we say about this middle coming is sheer invention, listen to what our Lord himself says: If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him [Jn. 14:23].

“There is another passage of Scripture which reads: He who fears God will do good, but something further has been said about the one who loves, that is, that he will keep God’s word. Where is God’s word to be kept? Obviously in the heart, as the prophet says: I have hidden your words in my heart, so that I may not sin against you.

“Keep God’s word in this way. Let it enter into your very being, let it take possession of your desires and your whole way of life. Feed on goodness, and your soul will delight in its richness. Remember to eat your bread, or your heart will wither away. Fill your soul with richness and strength.

“Because this coming lies between the other two, it is like a road on which we travel from the first coming to the last. In the first, Christ was our redemption; in the last, he will appear as our life; in this middle coming, he is our rest and consolation.

“If you keep the word of God in this way, it will also keep you. The Son with the Father will come to you. The great Prophet who will build the new Jerusalem will come, the one who makes all things new. This coming will fulfill what is written: As we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, we shall also bear the likeness of the heavenly man. Just as Adam’s sin spread through all mankind and took hold of all, so Christ, who created and redeemed all, will glorify all, once he takes possession of all” (Office of Readings, Wednesday, First week of Advent).

St. Bernard’s theological reflection can be said as follows:

~First Coming – Jesus’ birth at Bethlehem;

~Second Coming – Spiritual coming of the Lord to each believer, sacramentally;

~Third Coming – Jesus coming again at the end of the world.

In what ways does what St. Bernard impact our our lives as members of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre? Hopefully, it re-orients how we live the reality of our sacramental life, and to give good witness to the Good News. As Knights and Dames of Holy Sepulchre we may want to consider what we are looking forward to on December 25th and in the Octave that follows.

Advent is a time of waiting for the Messiah: we wait for God to come into our lives, in reality. Christmas teaches us that sentimentality isn’t the goal, but the Infinite God is. The Word made flesh, the Incarnation, is the center of time and energy today.

However busy or distracted you might be in the coming days before Christmas, take note of what St. Bernard says about the coming of the Messiah, and the think about promise it contains for us. It is not merely a theological reflection, it is an experience.

Take courage, live in peace.

Artwork: The Nativity by Marco Foppoli, a heraldic artist and illustrator living and working in Brescia, Italy.

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien to lead the Order of the Holy Sepulchre

It sounds like this appointment of Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, 72, to head the 1000 year old lay group Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem.

The video of the press conference where Archbishop Edwin O’Brien announces he’s going to head the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

Up to now he’s been the 15th Diocesan Ordinary of Baltimore; in 2007 Benedict appointed O’Brien to succeed Cardinal William Henry Keeler.

Several articles from Baltimore’s Catholic Review shed some light on Archbishop O’Brien: here, here and his own remarks.

As the Archbishop promised when he took over the Baltimore Archdiocese nearly four years ago, “Whatever I am and all that I have, I give to you” will be the same pledge to the Knights and Dames of the Holy Sepulchre.

Here’s a piece on the playful side of Edwin F. O’Brien.